APALA President’s Program: Community Driven Justice in Our Work: Library and Archival Workers of Color Advocating for Self-Preservation, Solidarity, Change and Justice in Communities, Workplace and in the Profession at Large (Co-sponsored by BCALA, SRRT and EMIERT)
Date/Time: June 26, 2021, Saturday, 12:45-1:45 pm PT/2:45-3:45 pm CT/3:45-4:45 pm ET
Description: Racing to contain COVID-19, with increasing anti-Asian racism, xenophobia and racial injustice, 2020 was full of upheavals and global challenges. This year’s APALA Presidential theme is Activism and Advocacy. What are library workers and archivists doing to foster community advocacy and anti-racism? How are they partnering with organizations in combating racial injustice and xenophobia, and documenting the moments and experiences to bear witness to the converging crises for a better future? What about self advocacy in our experiences during these challenging times? Co-sponsored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA), Social Responsibility Round Table (SRRT) and the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT), the APALA President’s Program will center on these key issues and questions in a panel discussion. Panelists will highlight their work on critical partnerships with community advocacy groups and how they promote solidarity to dismantle white supremacy, combat racism and xenophobia, and advocate for Asian/Pacific American and Black communities at large.
Speakers:
- Candice Wing-yee Mack, APALA President (moderator)
- Deimosa Webber-Bey, Scholastic Corporate Libraries & Archives
- Sine Hwang Jensen, UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library
- Holly Smith, Spelman College
- Bernadette Birzer, Tulane University
Holly A. Smith serves as the College Archivist at Spelman College. Previously she served as African American Materials Specialist in the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in History and Black Studies from The College of William and Mary, an M.A. in History from Yale University, and her M.S. in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archival Management, from Simmons College. Ms. Smith has served as chair of the Society of American Archivists Diversity Committee, and co-chair of the Women’s Collections Roundtable. Additionally, she is the proud co-author of the article “This [Black] Woman’s Work: Exploring Archival Projects that Embrace the Identity of the Memory Worker” (KULA Journal) and author of the piece “Radical Love: Documenting Underrepresented Communities Using Principles of Radical Empathy” (Journal for the Society of North Carolina Archivists). Ms. Smith has had the pleasure of speaking on panels about HBCU archives, digital collections, and the papers of lesbian feminist activist/writer Audre Lorde. She is passionate about community archives and archival advocacy related to collections for historically under documented communities.
Sine Hwang Jensen – Sine Hwang Jensen (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Asian American memory worker currently living in Huichin, the unceded ancestral homeland of the Lisjan Ohlone peoples. They are the Asian American and Comparative Ethnic Studies Librarian at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library. Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, Sine worked as a racial justice facilitator with Baltimore Racial Justice Action and earned their MA in History and MLIS at University of Maryland, College Park. They have contributed writing to the anthology Asian American Librarians and Library Services: Activism, Collaboration and Strategies and the Asian American Literary Review, and were one of the co-organizers of the Radical Libraries, Archives and Museums Network Gathering at the 2020 Allied Media Conference. They are passionate about working at the intersections of social justice, libraries, and archives and believe in the power of intergenerational histories of resistance and resilience of communities of color to inspire social change today and into the future.
Deimosa Webber-Bey is the Director of Information Services and Cultural Insight at Scholastic Inc., where she supervises the library and archive—the comprehensive collection of everything Scholastic has published throughout its 100-year history. Deimosa also contributes to On Our Minds, the official blog of Scholastic, runs the Employee Reading Club, and is a member of the company’s Diversity in Publishing Committee, where she co-chairs the sub-committee on Research. Deimosa serves on the BCALA Literary Awards jury and the GNCRTxBCALA Black Lives Matter Comic Reading List task force, and was a member of the ALA Nominating Committee for the 2021 elections. Prior to her time at Scholastic, Deimosa worked at schools and libraries throughout the country as both a high school English teacher and a teen librarian. Deimosa holds a B.A. in African & African American Studies and English Literature from Dartmouth College, a M.S. in Adolescent Education from Queens College, and a M.S. in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute. Outside of work, she enjoys quilting and comics.
Bernadette Birzer is the Archivist for Collection Management and Digital Initiatives at Newcomb Archives and Vorhoff Collection at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. Her responsibilities include the management of archival and special collections material, the management of digital collections, and the long-term preservation of digital archives. She received her MLIS and a graduate certificate specializing in archives and special collections from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2012. Bernadette is a Certified archivist via the Academy of Certified Archivists and is completing a Master of Liberal Arts degree at Tulane University.