Cultural Humility with Sarah Kostelecky, Lori Townsend, and David Hurley

We are pleased to invite you to the first event of the new discussion group Indigenous Ways in Librarianship. This is a UK based group which aims to engage new audiences with Indigenous contributions in librarianship. We aim to discuss how these practices inform the care for, and access to, materials related to Indigenous peoples and how these practices might be extended to collections that have been, and continue to be, geographically distanced from their communities and/or place of origin. We hope this group grows awareness of the importance and variety of Indigenous library and print practices, makes relevant collections visible, and invites collaborations.

In this event we talk to Sarah Kostelecky, Lori Townsend, and David Hurley about cultural humility and their upcoming edited volume Hopeful Visions, Practical Actions: Cultural Humility in Library Work. Cultural humility offers a renewing and transformative framework for navigating interpersonal interactions in libraries, whether between patrons and staff or staff members with one another. It foregrounds a practice of critical self-reflection and commitment to recognising and redressing structural inequities and problematic power imbalances. Join for a conversation that explores what cultural humility means in Indigenous contexts and how it can be used as a critical framework and process in library work.

The conversation will refer to Sarah, Lori and David’s report on Cultural Humility in Libraries which attendees are encouraged to read in advance.

The event is free. To secure a place please sign up.

The session will consist of a chaired panel discussion and audience Q&A. These sessions will not be recorded. Please email indigenouswaysinLIS@outlook.com with any questions and refer to the Terms of Reference for more information.

The speakers

Sarah R. Kostelecky (Zuni Pueblo) is the Director of Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication at the University of New Mexico Libraries. She earned her MA in Library Science from the University of Arizona. She is co-author, along with Lori Townsend and David A. Hurley, of the ALA Special Report Cultural Humility. Her research interests include Indigenous representation in library collections, outreach efforts to Indigenous communities and cultural humility in libraries.

Lori Townsend (Shoshone-Paiute) is the Learning Services Coordinator and a Social Sciences Librarian at the University of New Mexico Libraries. Her research interests include cultural humility, genre theory and information literacy, and undergraduate understandings of digital sources. She is co-editor, along with Sarah R. Kostelecky and David A. Hurley, of the ALA Editions book Hopeful Visions, Practical Actions: Cultural Humility in Library Work. She is a Series Editors for the recently launched Libraries Unlimited Series on Teaching Information Literacy Today.

David A. Hurley is the Web and Discovery Librarian for the University Libraries. In addition to cultural humility, he writes and presents on search, reference services, and information literacy. He was previously the director of the Diné College libraries on the Navajo Nation, chief of the library development bureau at the New Mexico State Library, and branch and digital services manager for the public library of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. Along with Sarah R. Kostelecky and Lori Townsend, he co-authored the ALA Editions Special Report Cultural Humility (2022) and co-edited Hopeful Visions, Practical Actions: Cultural Humility in Library Work (2023).

The chair

Rebecca Slatcher is a final year AHRC CDP PhD candidate with the University of Hull's Treatied Spaces research group and the British Library. Her PhD focuses on the British Library’s books in North American Indigenous languages (post 1850) from the perspective of how the holdings have been collected and catalogued. Her research has benefited from a BAAS funded placement at the American Philosophical Society, and an AHRC International Placement at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institute.