LibVoices

Loida Garcia-Febo, International Library Consultant expert in library services to diverse populations and human rights. President of the American Library Association 2018-2019. At IFLA: Governing Board 2013-2017, Co-Founder of New Professionals, two-term Member/Expert resource person of FAIFE, two-term member of CPDWL. Currently: CPDWL Consultant, Info Coordinator of the Management of Library Associations Section. At ALA: Chair, ALA UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Task Force and Chair, Women’s Issues in Librarianship. Born, raised, and educated in Puerto Rico.

Jimmy Zavala is the Teaching & Learning Librarian for UCLA Library Special Collections. Prior to joining UCLA, Jimmy was the Project Coordinator Librarian for Transforming Knowledge, Transforming Libraries, a three-year IMLS-funded research project analyzing the intersection of Ethnic Studies and Community Archives at UC Irvine. He received his MLIS from UCLA and also holds a BA in Latin American Studies and an MA in History from California State University, Los Angeles.

Rhiannon Sorrell (Diné) is an Assistant Professor at the School of Arts, Humanities, and English and is the Instruction and Digital Services Librarian at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. Born to Red House People and Tangle People Clans, Rhiannon has an interdisciplinary background in information literacy instruction, creative nonfiction, digital humanities, and special collections and archival services to Indigenous populations. She is a member of the 2018 cohort of ALA’s Emerging Leaders and serves on the executive board of the American Indian Library Association. Rhiannon is a partner and Diné coordinator for the NEH-funded project, “The Afterlife of Film: Upgrading and Tribesourcing Southwest Materials in the American Indian Film Gallery,” and a member of the 2021-2023 cohort of RBS-Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellows.

Ricardo “Ricky” Punzalan, Associate Professor of Information and steering committee member of the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan, is a scholar of archives and digital curation. In particular, he studies the access and use of digitized anthropological archives and ethnographic data on academic and Indigenous researchers. He believes that archives and legacy research data must not only advance academic research but also contribute to the wellbeing of communities. His research has had the greatest impact in the area of virtual reunification and digital repatriation of cultural heritage collections. This research brought to the fore a critical challenge faced by underserved and Indigenous communities and created dialogues between communities and cultural institutions. To do this work, he designs and carries out community-based, participatory research projects, which incorporate the perspectives of cultural heritage stakeholders beyond academic researchers. He is currently a research associate at the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives. He recently concluded his tenure as a Council member of the Society of American Archivists.

Dr. Stanton F. Biddle holds a bachelors degree in government (Howard University, 1965), a masters degree in Library Service (Atlanta University, Atlanta, GA, 1966), a masters degree in Public Administration (New York University, New York, NY 1973), and a doctorate in Library and Information Studies (The University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 1988).

He spent his entire working career as a librarian beginning as a library page in the Rochester (NY) Public Library while in high school and as a library assistant at the U.S. Library of Congress while completing his undergraduate work in college. Upon receiving his library degree, he held increasingly responsible positions at the Municipal Reference and later the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. In 1973 he was appointed Associate Director of Libraries at Howard University in Washington, DC; in 1979 Associate Director of Libraries at the State University of New York at Buffalo; and in 1984 Chief Librarian at Baruch College of the City University of New York. Between 1988 and his retirement in 2011, he held a number of senior positions within the College and City University of New York system.

Stanton has been an active member of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association for 48 of its 51 years. He served on the Executive Board for three terms, as president from 1994-96 and Treasurer from 2002-2008. He edited the proceedings of the first two National Conferences of African American Librarians and served as Conference Treasurer for five of the ten conferences.

Dr. Biddle lives in New York City, where he volunteers with a number of genealogy and family history research organizations and institutions and is still actively involved with the Black Caucus of ALA.

Jennifer Brown is a Black speculative fiction writer & Undergraduate Learning & Research Librarian at UC Berkeley. Critical pedagogies not only guide her day-to-day librarianship, but they also bedrock her work as one of the Community Managers for We Here, an organization that provides a safe & supportive community for Black and Indigenous folks, and People of Color, in library and information science professions.

Learn more about her work by visiting her website, at www.jencbrown.com.

Madeline Peña is the Digital Content Manager at the Los Angeles Public Library. She comes from a background in graphic design, marketing, and TV production and has worked in public libraries for over 12 years. An active member of REFORMA, The National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking, she served as 2018-2019 President and was the recipient of the 2015 REFORMA Dr. Arnulfo D. Trejo Librarian of the Year (LOTY) Award.

Nichelle M. Hayes MPA, MLS, is Vice-President of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and works as the Leader of the Center for Black Literature & Culture (CBLC) ~ Indianapolis Public Library. She is a lover of poetry and a lifelong learner, she blogs at https://thetiesthatbind.blog, where she discusses genealogy and keeping families connected. Hayes is a native of Indianapolis and a civic leader who is active in her local community.

Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Information Studies, where she serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She also holds appointments in African American Studies and Gender Studies. She is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and has been appointed as a Commissioner on the Oxford Commission on AI & Good Governance (OxCAIGG). She is a board member of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, serving those vulnerable to online harassment, and serves on the NYU Center Critical Race and Digital Studies advisory board. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press), which has been widely-reviewed in scholarly and popular publications. Safiya is the co-editor of two edited volumes: The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Culture, and Class Online and Emotions, Technology & Design. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies and is the co-editor of the Commentary & Criticism section of the Journal of Feminist Media Studies. She is a member of several academic journals and advisory boards and holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Library & Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a B.A. in Sociology from California State University, Fresno, where she was recently awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award for 2018. Recently, she was named in the “Top 25  Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers of 2019” by Government Technology magazine.

Natalie + Mieka are two black cis women who are mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends to many.  We both work + live in North Philly and absolutely love connecting with the patrons within the library in authentic and transparent ways.  We truly believe that at the heart of library work, there is learning and growing with the community we serve as well as our fellow co-workers!