Chris Bourg
Chris Bourg is the Director of Libraries at MIT, where she also has oversight of the MIT Press. Prior to joining MIT, she served in a variety of leadership positions with the Stanford University Libraries, where she was most recently associate university librarian for public services. Bourg’s career began with 10 years of service as an officer in the United States Army, including three years on the faculty of the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she taught sociology and leadership.
Bourg received her BA from Duke University, her MA from the University of Maryland, and her MA and PhD in sociology from Stanford. She is keenly interested in issues of diversity and inclusion in higher education; and in the role libraries play in advancing social justice and democracy. She has written and spoken extensively on the topics of libraries, leadership, diversity, and social justice. Her recent publications include Feminism and the Future of Library Discovery, with Bess Sadler; and Diversity, Social Justice, and the Future of Libraries with Myrna Morales and Em Claire Knowles. Chris blogs at Feral Librarian, and tweets from @mchris4duke.
Lareese Hall
Lareese Hall is the Architecture + Art Librarian at MIT. She has been an academic librarian for over six years and also has a decade of experience working in the non-profit sector and in diverse learning environments. At MIT Lareese is responsible for collection development, research collaboration and assistance, community engagement and outreach, and library instruction for the architecture and art communities. Lareese also manages the exhibition program at Rotch Library, where she collaborates with the MIT community to develop and curate exhibits. Her own research focuses on the physical spaces of learning and making; the experience of the analog in the digital world; rethinking physical reference collections; and book arts and printmaking in academic library environments. She is also a visual artist and fiction writer. She is currently working on a video series about artists’ books and a new radio show/podcast about research. Lareese holds a BA from Oberlin College, an MFA from Goddard College, and an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh. Additionally, she spent two years as an architecture graduate student at the University of Virginia, where she spent all of her time in the library.
Ione T. Damasco
Ione T. Damasco serves as a Cataloger Librarian at the University of Dayton. She earned her M.L.I.S. from Kent State University in 2005. Her primary work involves cataloging, metadata and digitization projects, as well as collection development and liaison work for several subject areas. She has also successfully implemented several NEH-sponsored public programming grants, the most recent of which focused on the history of civil rights in the United States. Her most recent research has focused on race and diversity issues in librarianship, and co-authored an article on tenure and promotion issues for academic librarians of color, which was published in C&RL in 2012. Most recently, she participated on a panel fostering dialogue around diversity in higher education at ACRL 2015. She continues to explore the intersections of diversity, librarianship, and higher education.
Emily Drabinski
Emily Drabinski is Coordinator of Instruction at Long Island University, Brooklyn. She sits on the board of Radical Teacher, a journal of socialist, feminist, and anti-racist teaching practice, and is series editor for Gender & Sexuality in Information studies from Library Juice Press/Litwin Books. She has an essay about professionalism forthcoming in a special issue of Library Trends about ALA’s Core Values of Librarianship, edited by Heidi LM Jacobs and Selinda Berg.
Isabel Espinal
Isabel Espinal is the librarian for Afro American Studies, Native American & Indigenous Studies, and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she has worked since 1998. She has also been an Information Literacy Specialist and an Outreach Librarian. She is also currently pursuing a PhD in American Studies with a dissertation on contemporary Dominican women writers in the United States. She previously worked at various public libraries, including the New Haven Free Public Library, the Norwalk Public Library and the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Connecticut. She was President of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking in 2013-2014 and is currently Director at Large and REFORMA representative for the newly formed Joint Council of Librarians of Color. Her publications include: “The Diversity Mandate,” Library Journal (2004) (with Denice Adkins); “A New Vocabulary for Inclusive Librarianship: Applying Whiteness Theory to Our Profession,” in The Power of Language/El poder de la palabra (2001).”Wanted: Latino Librarians,” Críticas (2003); and “What do Latino Students Know Anyway About Information Literacy?” Versed (2004): 2-4. Her presentations and panel participation include: “From the Individual to the Institution: Exploring the Experiences of Academic Librarians of Color,” Association of College and Research Libraries, 2015, “Library Power to the People: Facing Up to the Climate Crisis with Information & Action,” (REFORMA President’s Program), American Library Association Conference, 2014; “Children of Undocumented Immigrants and Their Right to Information,” REFORMA National Conference, 2008; and “Latino Information Literacy: Models for Success,” First Joint Conference of Librarians of Color, 2006.
Louis Munoz
Louis Muñoz Jr. is a Reference, ILL, and Outreach Librarian in Morristown, New Jersey, a community that includes traditionally underserved populations. He was previously an academic librarian for CUNY at John Jay, York, and Hostos Community College, getting his start thanks to the ACRL/NY Mentorship Program. He also worked for eight years at Brooklyn Public Library, primarily serving immigrant patrons at the Multilingual Center. He is current National Secretary of REFORMA and former president of the REFORMA Northeast Chapter, where he created a scholarship for library students intending to work with Latino and other underserved populations, and has served on ALA’s Diversity Council and the President’s Task Force on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
A partial list of his presentations include “Assessing Public Library Services to Hispanic/Latino Populations in Florida and New York” (REFORMA National Conference V, 2015); “Libraries Building Bridges: Best Practices and Advice for Serving Your Latino Communities” (ALA Annual, 2013); “Getting Together To Go Forward: The Lessons of Diversity Initiatives and How To Implement Them At Your Library” (Joint Conference of Librarians of Color, 2012); and “Encouraging Diversity: Recruiting Librarians for a Multicultural Community” (NYLA, 2012). Louis earned his MSLIS from Pratt Institute as part of an IMLS-funded diversity initiative and is currently pursuing a second Master’s (Digital Humanities track) at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Jen Hoyer
Jen Hoyer thinks a lot about how equitable information access plays a role in social inclusion and social change. As a librarian, she has worked in libraries and archives across Canada; some of her thoughts on information access and social justice have been published in Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond (Library Juice Press, 2014) and Public Libraries and Resilient Cities (ALA Editions, 2014).
Jen moved to Brooklyn in 2013 to be part of the great projects happening at Interference Archive, which explores the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in an archival collection, public exhibitions, a study and social center, talks, screenings, publications, and workshops. We use cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation, and we consider the use of our collection to be a way of preserving and honoring histories and material culture that is often marginalized. As an archive from below, we are exploring what it means to be a collectively-organized space that provides equitable access to archival collections. In her spare time, Jen also works at Artstor.
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is the Reference & Instruction Librarian at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a volunteer archivist at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, a board member of Fire & Ink, a national organization for LGBTQ writers of African Descent, and a collective editorial member for a special issue of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal. Her writing is featured in journals such as the Journal of Library Innovation, Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Films for the Feminist Classroom, and others. She has published book chapters with Library Juice Press, Vintage Entity Press, Villarosa Media, and others. Shawn holds a BS in Queer Women’s Studies from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, and an MLS and MFA from Queens College. Shawn is editor News from LACUNY Libraries, the biannual newsletter of the Library Association of CUNY (LACUNY), and is the Graduate Center representative on the Library Information Literacy Advisory Council (LILAC). Shawn is the LGBTQ studies liaison where she promotes a queer library collection. You can find out more about Shawn and her work at http://shawntasmith.commons.gc.cuny.edu
Jerilyn Veldof
Jerilyn Veldof leads organization development for the University of Minnesota Libraries in the Twin Cities. In this role she provides consultation, leadership and oversight for initiatives that increase the University Libraries capacity to realize its strategic priorities and work more effectively. She has also served as Director of Coordinated Educational Services, Director of Undergraduate Initiatives, Coordinator of User Education, and Distance Learning Instruction Librarian at the U of MN Libraries. She began her professional library career at the University of Arizona and earned a Masters in Library Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Bachelors in Anthropology, Film and Video from Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. Jerilyn has given over 75 workshops and presentations, written more than a dozen articles and book chapters, published a book with the American Library Association and self-published a book on the Kindle platform.
ACRL/NY Symposium 2015 