On behalf of SLIS, several of us were honored to represent our library school and TLAM at the 2nd Joint Conference of Librarians of Color in Kansas City, Missouri, September 19-23.
With commitments to staff the SLIS booth, a van full of us, including Omar, Robin, Jake, Janetta and Dorothy, left Madison early Wednesday morning on our way to Kansas City. For our first unscheduled stop, we found ourselves at the Goodyear in Marion, Iowa to get our tires changed (they were quickly deflating!). While we waited, Janetta and Dorothy shopped at Goodwill, conveniently situated next door, while Omar slept in the grass and Robin and Jake played catch. We figured it was a good start to our trip.
All in all, we had truly memorable and meaningful experiences at the conference. On our first night, we visited the Kansas City Public Library, recently renovated, for the opening reception. It is a gorgeous community space, complete with rooftop terrace and larger-than-life book covers. We met up with old friends and met some great librarians, including SLIS alumni.
During the course of the conference, Jake and Robin attended the American Indian Library Association (AILA) session “Navigating Indian Country: Library Services to Indigenous Communities”, where we met former and current leadership of the organization and participated in a discussion about the AILA’s future. We sat in on sessions about serving homeless families, advocating for diversity within the field, family literacy, and combating depression in the workplace. In one session, we learned about how to serve Native students in academic libraries and in another, about documenting histories of tribal libraries in “Stories of Arizona’s Tribal Libraries: An Oral History Project.”
Omar presented a poster “Convening Culture Keepers: Bringing Together UW-Madison SLIS and Wisconsin’s Tribal Librarians, Archivists, and Museum Curators.” Dorothy, Robin, and Jake all participated in the
session as well, giving the student’s perspective to complement Omar’s. It was energizing to talk about our project with old friends and members of the various caucuses who had not heard of the work we are doing.
We attended an awards breakfast to celebrate Janice Rice, our own librarian here at UW-Madison and former TLAM instructor. She received the Distinguished Service award from AILA, and we are so proud to say that we know her.
In the evenings, we had a chance to explore the up-and-coming Crossroads Arts District, with it’s local food restaurants, abandoned warehouses turned art galleries, and surprises of live music in a parking lot and a Friday night Farmer’s Market.
Although we heard and can understand that it’s quite difficult to get all five of the ethnic caucuses together for a conference (the last one happened six years ago!), we all hope that we’ll be able to attend the 3rd JCLC conference very soon.
-Robin and Jake