A key part of this Program is promoting the voices, ideas, and lived experiences of the authors we have chosen to feature. They have generously donated their time and expertise towards helping teach others. The members of the committee want to thank our featured Guest Authors for their work, and provide a space to learn a bit more about them on this page. We encourage our readers to keep an eye out for more great work coming from these folks!
Author of Incorporating Intergroup Dialogue into the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Conversation
Ione T. Damasco, M.L.I.S., is Coordinator of Cataloging and Professor at the University of Dayton. She chairs the University Libraries Diversity and Inclusion Team, collaborating with campus and community partners to foster greater awareness of equity, diversity, and inclusion issues. Her recent research explores intergroup dialogue as a form of social justice experiential learning. View her researcher profile: https://works.bepress.com/ione_damasco/
Karen E. Downing (kdown@umich.edu) is the Education Librarian at the University Library, University of Michigan. In addition to that role, she is currently serving a three-year term as an elected member of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Executive Board. She received her Ph.D. in Education in 2009 from the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and her M.I.L.S. in 1989, both from the U-M. In past positions she coordinated the social sciences, directed the nationally renowned Peer Information Counseling program (a retention program for underrepresented minorities), served as Assistant to the Dean for Cultural Diversity, and as Coordinator of Academic Outreach. In 2009, she received the ALA Equality Award, and in 2010 she was named the first Diversity Research Center Visiting Scholar at Rutgers, Newark. She is the co-editor of Multiracial America: A Resource Guide on the History and Literature of Interracial Issues, published in 2005 by Scarecrow Press, and more recently, On Being a Multiracial Librarian in a Mono-racially Conceived Library World (2017), in Race as multidimensional: The personal shaping the professional in the library and information field. Advances in Librarianship, 42, 155-170.
Tashia Munson is the Access Services and Outreach Librarian for the University of Michigan. She represents the available services of the library to the campus and surrounding community. Her research interests include management and leadership, diversity, outreach, and ways institutions of higher education can evolve to meet the needs of underserved and underrepresented populations. In 2017, she co-presented "Youth Empowerment through Community Partnerships" at the National Conference for African American Librarians (NCAAL). She is a member of ALA and BCALA and currently serves as a Editorial Board member for ACRL CHOICE and an associate member of the ALA Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC).
Marna Clowney-Robinson (clownm@umich.edu) currently serves as the Information / Access Services Librarian at the University of Michigan Library. She holds a MLIS from Wayne State University School of Library and Information Sciences; and an MSW from the University of Michigan School of Social Work. In her librarian role, she performs a variety of managerial and operational duties to assist patrons in the use of library resources and services the library offers and has assisted with providing instruction support. In addition to her librarian role, she is also a therapist with Catholic Social Services and Amplify Colectivo where she specializes in Identity issues; eating disorders; trauma issues, and mixed race identity issues. Marna has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR) discussing issues related to eating disorders in minority populations and has extension lecture experience on mixed race issues. Marna currently serves as secretary for ALA Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT). Current interests include identifying strategies for multicultural community-based research and practice, multicultural education for social work practice, and trauma informed librarianship.
Darlene Nichols (dpn@umich.edu) currently serves as the Social Work Librarian at the University of Michigan Library and has been liaison librarian to several social science schools and departments during her career. She was the first coordinator of the University of Michigan Library’s Peer Information Counseling, launching and shaping the program’s early days. Some relevant publications and presentations include “Developing Inclusive Research Libraries for Patrons and Staff of All Abilities”, Research Library Issues: A Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC, with Anna Ercoli Schnitzer, and “Connecting Social Justice to the Workplace: Issues of Diversity in our Professional Lives”; presentation title: “Developing Intergroup Relations and Intercultural Competency” ARLIS/NA + VRA 3rd Joint Conference 2016. She was also a co-editor of and contributor to Multiracial America: A Resource Guide on the History and Literature of Interracial Issues, published in 2005 by Scarecrow Press. Her interests include diversity and racial justice. She is a community facilitator for dialogue programs on race and conciliation.
Helen Look, MSI-LIS, (hlook@umich.edu) is the Collection Analyst for the University of Michigan Library. She supports the assessment of the Library’s collection development programs and the strategic allocation of library resources. Her research interests include collection development, multiracial families, DEIA, library assessment, and public health. Ms. Look is the co-author of a chapter published in Multiracial America: A Resource Guide on the History and Literature of Interracial Issues. She has published and presented on multiracial issues and literature. Ms. Look currently serves as the Jury Co-Chair for the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and an elected board member of the Michigan Academic Library Association.
Author of From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces
Samantha Schmehl Hines, Associate Dean of Instructional Resources for Peninsula College in Port Angeles, WA, got her MS in library science from University of Illinois in 2003 and has worked in a variety of libraries in higher education institutions across the US. A prolific scholar and frequent conference presenter on issues of library instruction, copyright and publishing, and management, Samantha is also a PhD candidate in Ethical and Creative Leadership at Union Institute and University.
Sine Hwang Jensen is the Asian American and Comparative Ethnic Studies Librarian at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library. Before becoming a librarian, she worked as a racial justice facilitator in Baltimore, MD. After earning an M.L.S. in archives and M.A. in History from the University of Maryland, College Park, she has worked at the intersection of social justice, libraries, and archives. She was a coordinator for the Igniting a Model Minority Mutiny: AAPI Communities and the Movement for Racial Justice network gathering and the Radical Archives, Libraries, and Museums track at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, Michigan. She was also a contributor to the anthology Asian American Librarians and Library Services: Activism, Collaboration, and Strategies (Clarke, Pun, and Tong, 2017).
Melissa Stoner (Diné) is the Native American Studies Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library. Previously, she worked in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Library Digital Collections Department as Project Workflows Manager for the National Endowment for the Humanities funded National Digital Newspaper Program for the state of Nevada. Melissa also worked as Digital Projects Librarian for Nevada State College on a Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to digitize oral histories. Melissa graduated from San Jose State University Masters of Library and Information Science, with a focus on emerging technologies, and the digitization practices of historical and ethnographic materials that contain culturally sensitive information and/or restricted tribal knowledge. She was a 2016 American Library Association Emerging Leader.
Lillian Castillo-Speed began her career on campus as the Coordinator of the Chicano Studies Library after earning her Master's degree in Library Science at the University of California, Berkeley Library School in 1983. She was the Managing Editor of several reference books published by that library, including the Chicano Periodical Index. In 1997, the Chicano Studies Library, the Asian American Studies Library and the Native American Studies Library merged into the Ethnic Studies Library and she became the Head Librarian. She continues to manage the Chicano Database, the online version of the Chicano Periodical Index, and she is a founding member of the Latino Digital Archive Group. She has compiled and published several bibliographies as well as the reference work Chicana Studies Index: Twenty Years of Gender Research, 1971-1991. She is the editor of Latina: Women’s Voices from the Borderlands (Simon & Schuster, 1995). In 1996 she received the Librarian of the Year Award from REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking; and in 2012 she received the Distinguished Librarian Award of the Librarians Association of the University of California, Berkeley Division.
Author of Five Ways to Foster Individual Responsibility and Transform Libraries
Kathryn Kjaer is Head of Library Human Resources at the University of California, Irvine. She received her MLS from the University of Iowa and has had experience in technical services, public services, and collection development at Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, Colorado State University, and UC Irvine. In her current role as Head of Library Human Resources, she plays a lead role in addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion in the UC Irvine Libraries. She is active in ALA and ACRL and has been the facilitator for the LLAMA Diversity Officers Discussion Group.
Author of The Role of Empathy in Improving Academic Library Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives
Adriene Lim, PhD, MLIS, is the Dean of Libraries and Philip H. Knight Chair at the University of Oregon (UO). Her research interests include managerial leadership, organizational development, technology, and diversity, and she has been active in ALA, LITA, and ACRL, most recently serving as the two-term chair of the ACRL Professional Values Committee. She currently serves as a Board member for the Association of Research Libraries.
Author of More than a Thought Experiment: Designing Anti-Oppressive Events and Instruction
Amanda Meeks is a Teaching, Learning, and Research Services Librarian at Northern Arizona University. Her instruction and outreach efforts focus on developing an intentionally reflective, feminist and critical praxis in order to integrate information literacy and social justice. She is interested in cultivating meaningful relationships and collaboration with faculty and students, mentoring new professionals and finding new ways to make librarianship her creative outlet, as well as her professional one.
Authors of Let’s talk theories!: Incorporating queer, feminist, and critical theory into our teaching practice
Charissa Powell (pronouns: she/her/hers) is the Student Success Librarian for Information Literacy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is also a co-founder and editor of The Librarian Parlor, a community for library researchers. You can find her on Twitter @CharissaAPowell or through email: charissa@utk.edu.
Lizeth Zepeda (pronouns: she/her/hers), is a Diversity Resident Librarian and Research Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. She was formally an Outreach Archivist and Librarian at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, Arizona. Her research and archival interests include working with traditionally under-documented communities, outreach programming, Spanish-language materials, and queer(ing) archives and pedagogies. You can find her on Twitter @LizZepeda714 or through email: Lzepeda@utk.edu.
Author of New Day, New Way: Engaging HBCUs and Students of Color in Diversity Recruitment and Collaboration
Tina D. Rollins is the Director of the William R. and Norma B. Harvey Library at Hampton University. She completed her B.S. degree in Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University and her M.L.S. degree at North Carolina Central University. While at NCCU, she was a member of the Diversity Scholars Program which was an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded program to recruit students of diverse backgrounds into the library and information sciences field. This experience led to an interest in promoting and researching diversity within librarianship. Rollins has committed herself to bringing awareness to the lack of diversity within all facets of the LIS field. She currently serves as principal investigator on an IMLS grant awarded to Hampton University. This award entitled the Hampton University Forum on Minority Recruitment and Retention in the LIS Field, an August 2018 national forum convened to discuss effective strategies and action planning. The grant continues to support virtual meetings and training sessions for LIS professionals. Tina Rollins holds various memberships in both regional and national organizations and is a dedicated mentor to both new and seasoned librarians. Additionally, she volunteers in literacy outreach organizations and initiatives in the region.
Author of Fostering Inclusivity Through Improved Recruitment Practices
Edith Scarletto, Reference and Instruction Librarian at Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, got her MLIS at Kent State University in 2002. She is a co-chair of the Academic Library Association of Ohio Diversity Committee and she has been active in ALA and ACRL. Her research interests have included map and GIS services in libraries with recent scholarship centered on rethinking recruitment processes for diversity in academic libraries.
Author of “It’s not me, it’s you”: The Problem of Retention in Librarianship
Kellee E. Warren is Assistant Professor and Special Collections Librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her article “We Need These Bodies, but Not Their Knowledge: Black Women in the Archival Science Profession, and Their Connection to the Archives of Enslaved Black Women in the French Antilles” was published in the Spring 2016 edition of Library Trends. Her research interests include critical information literacy and culturally sustaining pedagogy in the Special Collections classroom, online learning, digital humanities, Twitter social media platform, oral histories, and connecting underrepresented groups to their cultural heritage through traditional and non-traditional archival source materials.
Author of What Does EDI Work Look Like in LIS Education?
Helene Williams is Senior Lecturer at the University of Washington Information School. A longtime academic librarian, she worked in instruction, reference, e-resources, and collections at a diverse range of institutions ranging from Seattle Central College, Michigan State, University of Washington, Northeastern, and Harvard, before transitioning full time to training the next generation of library leaders. Social justice, diversity, and equity values are the backbone of her curriculum, and she collaborates across disciplinary boundaries to bring that work to other departments and organizations. A tireless advocate for students in both the residential and online MLIS programs, she is currently working with students to create an alumni mentoring network to recruit and retain students of color to the profession.
Katherine Yngve, a “recovering” Senior International Officer, now co-directs Purdue’s new Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentoring, Assessment and Research (CILMAR). As a fulltime assessment professional for Purdue, she specializes in scaling up evidence-based intercultural learning on campus and abroad and supports the use of over 20 validated instruments, many of them free. In 2017 alone she provided intercultural pedagogy training to more than 120 Purdue faculty and staff. Prior to Purdue, Katherine founded the first Office of International Programs at the American University of Beirut, often considered the #1 research university in the Arab world. As a doctoral student under R. Michael Paige, she was one of the first instructors to operationalize online intercultural mentoring for semester-abroad students, an experience that led to the creation of intercultural pedagogy workshops for Purdue faculty in 2016. Katherine received her M.A. from the University of Chicago and B.A. from Indiana University.
