LibVoices

Treshani is a cataloging librarian at an academic library in the Southeast region and has been employed in academic libraries since 2014. Her research interests include critical cataloging and diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic libraries and higher education. Treshani enjoys mentoring students of color in LIS and higher education, in general.

Katrina Spencer worked as the Librarian for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She is also an active writer whose works include “Uprooted, Nomadic & Displaced: The Unspoken Costs of the Upward Climb,” “The Comprehensive Guide to Resisting Overcommitment,” and various contributions to WOC + lib and Hack Library School. For Katrina’s tips on navigating the academic librarianship job market, check out her content on TikTok channel @katleespe. Also, visit her personal website, www.katleespe.com, for even more.

Nicky Andrews is the Open Education Librarian at the University of San Francisco. Originally from Aotearoa, they are of Māori and Pākehā descent and an enrolled member of the Ngāti Pāoa iwi. They graduated with a BA in Social Sciences from Auckland University of Technology, a Master of Library & Information Science from the University of Washington, and a Master of Indigenous Studies from the University of Otago. Nicky has participated in many library communities, including as an ALA Spectrum Scholar, ALA Emerging Leader, NCSU Libraries Fellow, and SPARC Open Education Leadership Program Fellow. Their work exposing imposter syndrome's racialized and misogynist nature earned them the 2021 ACRL WGSS Award for Significant Achievement in Women & Gender Studies Librarianship. Outside of libraries, they dabble in poetry, catch Pokemon, and watch dinosaur documentaries with their cat.

Nicky Andrew's website.

Crystal Chen is the Digital Educator Support Manager & Archivist at Facing History & Ourselves. She received her MSLIS from Pratt Institute and is an active member of the Chinese American Librarians Association and Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. She also serves as a community admin for We Here (wehere. space), a supportive community for BIPOC in LIS.

Nicollette M. Davis (she/her) is based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and is an assistant librarian. She’s a community admin for We Here, a supportive space for BIPOC library workers and archivists. Before becoming an academic librarian, she spent several years working in public libraries as a supervising Reference librarian and Circulation head. Her interests include critical librarianship, BIPOC community building, community engagement, and critical pedagogy in library instruction. All views and ideas expressed are her own.

Isabel Espinal is a Research Services Librarian for Afro-American Studies, Latin American, Caribbean, and  Latinx Studies, Spanish & Portuguese, and Native American & Indigenous Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She was born in New York City, two years after her parents immigrated from the Cibao countryside in the Dominican Republic. She has an AB in Romance Languages and Literature from Princeton University, a Masters in Library and Information Studies from UC Berkeley, and an MA and Ph.D. in American Studies, English department, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a past president of REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking, and has written and given presentations on whiteness and diversity in librarianship, information literacy, the climate crisis and libraries, Dominican women writers in the United States, and Latinx literature, among other topics. Her most recent publication is the book chapter “Microaffections and Microaffirmations: Refusing to Reproduce Whiteness via Microaffirmative Actions,” in the book Dismantling Constructs of Whiteness in Higher Education, edited by Teresa Y. Neely and Margie Montañez and published by Routledge in 2022.