A year in review

In an attempt to review this year, I think about David Chang’s recent memoir, Eat a Peach. There’s a brilliant, and poignant, chapter entitled “Thirty-Five” (pg. 163) where he “looks back on that time with sorrow, regret, terror” and wanting to “edit this period of [his] life” (Chang, 2020). He frames the actions he took and the thoughts he had for specific events with crossed out words, which are followed by red words signaling the psychological appraisal of his past self. He states, “I wish I could am going to rewrite this whole chapter” (Chang, 2020).

It feels almost too on the nose to lift this writing technique to find therapy during this stressful year, but I find that transparency and communication has always been a defining factor in both professional and personal growth. For so long I have felt as if writing was reserved for those that either had the skill or the credentials to prove so. I have always been a writer, and I think that if I had continued to work at it, then I probably would have come to more self-realizations about myself in the past year, or even decade.

There’s been so much at stake with this year, and I think that it’s helped me to forge a path forward even if I don’t know what comes next. Much of the work done in library and archives is project based. In addition, you have to read more in order to understand the needs of your users, meeting them at the middle, and gaining the ability to communicate more resources. I have not read as much as I should have this year, but who’s keeping count? I think I could be a little more forgiving of myself, because so much of this year’s time has been dedicated to protecting myself and the collections in their respective spaces.

The one thing that I worked the hardest on this year was actionable diversity and equity goals. Part of this meant reviewing collection maintenance and acquisition to strengthen its voice for marginalized writers, publishers, and editors. This task also included collaborating with colleagues to understand the identity-based harm a collection could have. Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many other Black Americans deserve justice and the system has failed them. No amount of work in the library or archive collection can bring them justice, but I will continue to fight for Black Americans’ and other people of color’s voices. It’s my life principle to tend to the light.

Another task I worked on is weeding materials, including nonfiction resources. Weeding is a process of collection maintenance that requires assessment of outdated materials. The evaluation of weeding can be circulation based, and it can include a timeframe of when a resource was not checked-out, thus providing statistics and trends in the collection to start pulling books – more or less. If I had to be honest, the act of throwing away books takes a great deal of discipline. One has to separate their own feelings to books and the process of publishing them. But I’d be damned to not admit that it’s fascinating to think that books are the physical embodiment of ideas. By that same token, it is the successful exchange of ideas that allows for them to exist in one’s hand.

I also had to start throwing away DVDs. I am still not ready to let go of the DVD as a format.

The beauty of working in a library and archival collection is that there are many opportunities to reinvent the wheel, especially when thinking about the current times and how the collection functions. This year in review has taught me that the collection space is the port of ideas where people are able to trade their experiences and lessons. When they leave port, they carry with them the weight of another’s culture, identity, and opinion. In good times, we can only hope to share their happiness, hope and courage. By learning these lessons throughout the year, I hope to continue to reinvent myself. Every day is an opportunity to see a new coast.