Liberty Un-Framed: Unsettling the Coloniality of Genius
“Using the complications and issues of Samuel Jennings’ painting, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks as a guide, Library Company collections will be used to develop a program for youth that teaches fundamental history about abolition, antiBlackness, and the early-modern era. Using a timeline of early African American history as a guide, public school students and educators will work with Library Company staff and fellows to engage collections and research tools. All parties involved will have the opportunity to collaborate and build transformational perspectives around fundamental historical events.”
Liberty Un-Framed: Unsettling the Coloniality of Genius
“Using the complications and issues of Samuel Jennings’ painting, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks as a guide, Library Company collections will be used to develop a program for youth that teaches fundamental history about abolition, antiBlackness, and the early-modern era. Using a timeline of early African American history as a guide, public school students and educators will work with Library Company staff and fellows to engage collections and research tools. All parties involved will have the opportunity to collaborate and build transformational perspectives around fundamental historical events.”
Free Library of Philadelphia Mentoring Program Internship
“From March 2021 to June 2021, I was an intern with the Free Library Mentoring Program. The Free Library of Philadelphia started a mentoring program to provide employees of all job classes with opportunities for professional growth, to define their career paths, and to bond with colleagues and peers. In this program, mentors and mentees agree to meet several times over the course of 6-12 months to discuss topics such as professional development opportunities, enhancing communication skills, and more. Though the FLP Mentoring Program is made up of a team of employees from different departments, my work was supervised through the Strategic Initiatives department. The next mentorship cohort is scheduled to meet in the fall of 2021, as it’s been on hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic. As an intern, I reviewed data from past cohorts, researched topics related to the Free Library of Philadelphia’s current strategic plan and incorporated these findings into outreach and program materials. The resulting materials are intended to raise staff interest and participation in the program as it makes its return.”
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Collections Audit
“I assisted the Lower Merion Library System (LMLS) in their equity, diversity, and inclusion collections audit. The LMLS staff members have attended a seminar on Equity in Action: Fostering an Antiracist Library Culture, which included training on collection audits that focus on a library’s collection in terms of diversity of characters, point of view, and experiences. The staff members who attended the Equity in Action seminar were my mentors. I had the opportunity to meet with the children’s librarians from Ardmore, Bala Cynwyd, Gladwyn, Belmont, Penn Wynne, Ludington, Head of Processing, and the technical librarian. With their assistance, I conducted an audit on the children’s picture books in the LMLS collection. I was introduced to the Diverse Book Finder, a comprehensive collection of children’s picture books featuring Asian/Pacific Islander/Asian American, Bi/Multiracial/Mixed Race, Black/African/African American, First/Native Nations/American Indian/Indigenous, Latinx/ Hispanic/Latin American, and Middle Eastern/North African/Arab.”
Smith College Exhibition Materials Prep Room
Iris prepared the exhibition materials preparation room of Neilson Library at Smith College in anticipation of the start of the new library exhibition program. She connected her capstone with her work as a post-baccalaureate fellow in Smith College Special Collections. This work included learning about best practices for exhibitions in archives and special collections, meeting as a member of Smith College Libraries’ exhibition team, and learning about curation, teaching with primary sources, reference services, and collection development. She was guided by the design thinking process in general, and by the IDEO Design Thinking for Libraries toolkit in particular. As she wrote: “I’m empowered to continue focusing on community-based initiatives and look into public library work in the future as I continue to explore the world of archives and special collections.”
Developing Partnerships between FLP and Local Schools
The project sought to collect information about successful partnerships between public library branches and the schools in the neighborhoods surrounding those libraries, with the intention to provide helpful tools and suggestions for action to librarians at Parkway Central who hoped to achieve similar goals in Philadelphia. The student was mentored by an FLP employee and found the experience tremendously rewarding. She conducted research on successful library/school partnerships and did local outreach as well. As she noted, “The knowledge gained from firsthand experience while interviewing, collecting data, creating and distributing surveys, making connections with teachers, librarians, other professionals, and community members in Philadelphia has resulted in truly invaluable skills and tools with which I can move forward into my pursuit of librarianship with.” The student intends to continue in the MSI program and to develop further community relationships. She concluded, “I genuinely hope I am given opportunities to work with educators, librarians, and other community members to establish creative solutions in order to support our neighborhoods in tangible and important ways.”