Editor’s note: We welcome a guest blog post from Jay Singley, Document Delivery and Circulation Desk Manager at North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
In March 2025, Ex Libris unveiled their AI-powered Research Assistant tool for institutions using Summon. Within a week, Summon users reported error messages with specific search terms and topics. The first error reports shared in a listserv for Summon users contained “Tulsa race riot” and “Tulsa race massacre.” Test searches by reference librarians and systems librarians containing these search terms generated no results.
I work in an academic library in a public state university system serving high school students and have since turned on Research Assistant in our Summon Preview Environment (a beta testing environment hidden from users). I have begun testing terms and topics systematically using a methodology akin to Matthew Reidsma’s auditing of algorithms, which seeks to expose the implicit biases of opaque technological systems.
In addition to “Tulsa race riot” and “Tulsa race massacre,” my audit of “controversial” search terms conducted in March-April 2025 turned up error results for the following:
Genocide in Palestine
Gaza war
Rwandan genocide
Armenian genocide
Genocides across the world
History of genocides
lynching
lynching in the united states
lynchings in the united states
january 6
covid
covid data
COVID-19
Ex Libris responded to initial reports about “Tulsa race riot” and “Tulsa race massacre” error results with the following:
“This is due to safeguard policies enforced by our AI service provider to support ethical and responsible AI use. It’s not something the Primo or Summon applications control.
If a query does not return a result, please try different phrasing. For example, ‘tulsa black wall street’ will return results that are directly related to the race riots.”
Despite requests for more information in the same listserv, Ex Libris has not provided a comprehensive response to librarians’ concerns about who the third-party provider is, what the ethical and responsible AI use policies are, whether local control can be made available, what known search terms and topics are obstructed, and more. As one librarian aptly noted, academic users want and need access to information that may be blocked by AI use policies meant for the general public.
An essential note is that Summon’s Research Assistant is not limited to an institution’s catalog. Instead, the AI tool searches the entire Central Discovery Index of Ex Libris’ available records regardless of whether the material is actually available to the user or not. (As of June 2025, Ex Libris has provided an option to limit search results to a user’s institutional catalog.) When the AI generates an error message (or perhaps more aptly refuses to run a search or share results), it is not necessarily because the material is unavailable. Rather, the third party “safeguard” policies obstruct the search to begin with.
In running test searches, I also uncovered troubling instances of suppressed results. I recently saw the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, co-directed by Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers. I decided to ask Research Assistant about this film. Searches for most of the directors generated the same no results error messages. A search for one of the co-directors generated partial and inaccurate results. Research Assistant made several guesses as to what the film No Other Land was about and why it was important. Could this be an example of biased third-party policies preventing searches about this Palestinian film and filmmakers? Is it also possible that Research Assistant is accurately reflecting the lack of materials related to No Other Land available in Ex Libris’ entire Central Discovery Index and widespread censorship of this film (and more broadly Palestinian people, culture, and experiences) in the United States? Are there truly no academic sources talking about this film and these filmmakers, one of whom was recently attacked outside his own home by Israeli settlers? More research is needed to clarify why “controversial” searches return error messages, inaccurate results, or partial results. The current state of Research Assistant partial results and error notices for “controversial” topics warrants more inquiry.
I know with near certainty that if a student user at my workplace received an error message when searching for “Tulsa race massacre,” they would switch their topic and probably not tell me or their instructor about the error message. To my users, “we couldn’t generate an answer for your question” translates to “your topic is not worthy of pursuing—change it.”
Uncritically adopting AI tools in discovery systems will perpetuate, if not exacerbate, existing biases and suppression of minoritized people. Try this safer topic. Try this approved topic. Try this unobstructed topic.
Libraries, museums, and information sciences are a frontline in resisting the federal administration’s targeting of minoritized people as well as their whitewashing, disinforming, censoring, and defunding tactics. In the age of AI, our access to information is not spared from these attacks. We must uncover answers to the questions Safiya Noble, Joy Buolamwini, and others elicit: Who and what is safeguarded through AI tools in discovery searches? Whose safety and comfort are prioritized? At whose expense?
Wow, this year has been a lot. In every conversation with a colleague, it seems we’re talking about workload, institutional turbulence, the roller coaster of extreme weather, and/or the state of the world. I feel like I’m alternating between a head-down-and-muscle-through mindset and a frazzled lack of focus edging on burnout. Seeking some kind of mental reset, I’m thinking back on a conversation I had a few weeks ago.
I’ve mentioned before (like here and here) that my colleague and I co-host a podcast, “From Concept to Creation: Uncovering the Making of Scholarly and Creative Accomplishments.” The idea of the podcast is that we talk with folks from our institution about the process of their research and inquiry experiences — the steps they took in a research project or on a professional path and the practices, attitudes, and skills they used or developed along the way. The goal is to peek behind the curtain to reveal the parts of this work that are so often invisible (and undervalued), to increase the transparency and therefore the accessibility of these experiences, and to normalize the challenges and roadblocks that we inevitably encounter along the way. (You can check it out on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, if you’re so inclined.)
We’re putting together the lineup for season 4 this summer so we’ve been having exploratory conversations with potential guests. We use these meetings to get to know folks and their work and to brainstorm if and how we might structure an episode around their experiences. It’s a thread from one such conversation that keeps coming to mind for me. In reflecting on his professional progression, one potential guest commented on the social and societal pressures to define life paths from an early age. He characterized his own journey as loose and amorphous, encouraged by his parents to live in the moment rather than establish a clear trajectory or goal. This approach, he felt, allowed him to take advantage of the opportunities he encountered, to veer off course you might say. By contrast, he noted, the kind of pressure so many young people feel to focus early, to identify a dream job or find a passion, narrows their perspectives. Serendipity is missing from so many people’s lives, he said — being open to the world around us reaps great rewards personally and professionally.
I can see what he means. Too narrow a focus reduces opportunities for unexpected discovery. But not just the opportunity — also the attitude. When our lives are increasingly governed by algorithms, for example, not only is our exposure to unanticipated information limited but our confirmation bias is also exacerbated. And it seems to me that when the workload or the world (or both) are overwhelming, when we feel overloaded or uncertain, it’s natural to close off, to make ourselves small. With that comes a reluctance to engage with the opportunities around us, or even the inability to see them as opportunities — to see them as inconveniences or even threats instead.
My podcast work is a kind of exercise in serendipity, come to think of it. On the one hand, there’s no real external mandate for me to do this project (that adds to my workload). So by committing to it (and sometimes taxing my capacity), I’m likely limiting my ability to see and engage in the other opportunities around me. At the same time, though, the podcast creates the opportunity to participate in the types of meandering conversations I really don’t have anywhere else in my professional life and with people I wouldn’t otherwise encounter. I would have had no reason to have had this rather fun and thought provoking conversation with our potential guest, or even to explore the train of thought that led me to discover his work. Time and time again, when my collaborator and I wonder why we keep giving ourselves this work, it’s this idea that we come back to: we find so much inspiration in it.
It strikes me then that maybe serendipity isn’t actually as happenstance as it sounds. It can take intention to make it happen. Maybe we have to build a structure to create space for it, seek it out — whether that means carving out time and mental space by adding a new project to our to-do lists or just adding a regular block on our schedules to read at random or follow a meandering thought and see where it goes.
How do you search for serendipity? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Interestingly, however, the current administration and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Michael Kratsios have given no indication that they will backtrack mandates laid out by the previous administration’s Nelson Memo, which advised federal funders that grant recipients should make their funded research outputs publicly available without an embargo period (among other things). The goal of the Nelson Memo was to “…promote the rapid sharing of federally funded research data with appropriate protections and accountability measures [that] will allow for greater validity of research results and more equitable access to data resources,” along with the rationale that “There should be no delay between taxpayers and the returns on their investments in research.” This memo was widely seen as a major win in the open knowledge community, and also apparently meets the approval of the current presidential administration and their appointees (more on that below).
For those unfamiliar, publishers of scholarly journals often require authors to agree to an embargo period, which means no version of their article may be made publicly available on any other platform for a certain amount of time (usually 6 to 24 months depending on the journal). This allows publishers to profit from subscription-only access to new research during its period of highest readership. After the embargo period, publishers have generally allowed authors to make available the “author’s accepted version” of the article (the version after peer review but before publisher copyediting and typesetting) in a funder’s repository, institutional repository, or disciplinary repository. The practice of sharing items openly in this way is often referred to as “self-archiving” or “green open access.” It is also very common for journals to offer a pay-for-open model, through which authors can pay an article processing charge (APC) to apply a Creative Commons license to their article instead of transferring all rights to the publisher. This is often referred to as “gold open access.” Federal funders have typically allowed authors to use grant funds for APCs.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has long required grant recipients to deposit copies of grant-funded articles in their openly accessible PubMed Central repository, but until this year, the NIH allowed publishers to retain sole distribution rights for a 12-month embargo period if authors chose not to pay for open access. In turn, many publishers have offered authors the service of depositing the appropriate article version in PubMed Central on their behalf after the embargo period ends.
Showdown
Last year, in compliance with the Nelson Memo, the NIH announced an updated Public Access Policy, originally slated to take effect on December 31, 2025. On April 30, newly appointed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a 6-month acceleration of the policy’s effective date, to begin on July 1. The new policy “…requires Author Accepted Manuscripts accepted for publication in a journal, on or after July 1, 2025, to be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication, for public availability without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication.” Unsurprisingly, it seems several of the largest publishers are not happy about this new public access policy.
As an early career librarian trying to parse this complicated, evolving situation, I’ve relied heavily on my professional communities. Conversations on the University Information & Policy Officers listserv have been really helpful for my understanding. Jeremy York, Assistant Director of the Copyright Office at University of Michigan Library, kindly granted me permission to quote his summary of publisher reactions.
“Publishers are responding to the new policy in different ways. Some publishers, like Wiley and Springer Nature will no longer deposit works in PubMed Central on behalf of authors unless authors pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) to make the work available under an open license. They also are not allowing deposit by the author of the author accepted manuscript (AAM) in PubMed Central and see the pursuit of this ‘green open access’ route by authors as a violation of their publishing agreement.
The American Chemical Society (ACS), on the other hand, has implemented an Author Development Charge (ADC). If authors do not pay the APC to have their work published with an open license, they can still pay the ADC to be able to deposit the author accepted manuscript (AAM) in PubMed Central to comply with NIH’s policy.[1] If authors deposit the AAM in PubMed Central without paying the ADC, ACS sees this as a violation of the publishing agreement.”
The complicating factor here is that the NIH’s claims over funded research outputs predate any author’s agreement with a publisher. The NIH is simply exercising a right that all federal funders have held for a long time, called the Federal Purpose License. In the NIH’s case, their version of federal purpose license states grant recipients “…may copyright any work that is subject to copyright and was developed, or for which ownership was acquired, under a Federal award. The HHS [Department of Health and Human Services] awarding agency reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes, and to authorize others to do so.”
In response, certain publishers are advising authors that the only way to comply with both a) the NIH public access policy and b) their journals’ copyright agreements is to pay some sort of fee. They are signaling an unwillingness to publish paywalled articles that will be made publicly accessible on another platform; if a preexisting claim to an article exists, then publishers may simply choose not to publish that article despite acceptance by an editorial board, unless the author pays a fee.
Yet, the purpose behind federal funders’ public access policies is not to force authors to pay for open access, as evidenced by the NIH’s announcement on July 8, which revealed plans to cap the amount of NIH-funded dollars that authors can spend to make articles open access (or in other words, cap the amount authors can spend on APCs) beginning in 2026.[2] Clearly, the NIH does not want to pay exorbitantly for articles it already holds rights over via the federal purpose license.
Breakdown
This is an important historical inflection point in the funder/author/publisher triangular relationship, in part because the NIH awarded over $26 billion across 41,304 research project grants in 2024, up from $22 billion in 2019 (although those numbers may deteriorate going forward given the current presidential administration’s proposed budget). Needless to say, federal funding is integral to the United States’ research infrastructure, meaning federal funders possess a lot of leverage to shift that infrastructure. What happens over the coming months as other federal funders’ public access policies take effect may significantly alter available open access publishing pathways for scholarly authors and influence subscription negotiations for libraries.
For interpretations of what this ongoing situation means for authors and advice about how to navigate the publication process as a grant recipient, I recommend Authors Alliance, who put together this excellent FAQ page [and update here] on the current “contradictory policy environment,” and are co-hosting a webcast on August 5, 2025 focused on new federal funder sharing requirements.
For academic libraries, one likely outcome in the immediate future is increased traffic on existing read-and-publish deals and increased pressure to engage in new and/or bigger read-and-publish deals from research faculty.[3] However, many academic libraries receive some portion of indirect costs paid by federal funders to universities for grant oversight, so any budget squeeze due to the White House’s proposed cap on indirect costs would make it difficult for those libraries to invest in new or more expensive read-and-publish deals.
On the other hand, if both publishers and federal funders were to hold firm in their current standoff, public access policies and publication fee caps could gradually redirect authors away from pay-for-open publishing models and toward outlets that allow for self-archiving or use a free-to-read, free-to-publish model (sometimes referred to as “diamond open access”). Big for-profit publishers are relying on their journals’ prestige and importance in tenure portfolios to withstand these shifting sands, but if the cost of publishing in their journals remains unaffordable for authors, readership and tenure committees could begin to elevate free or affordable open access journals in their place. Many such alternative outlets exist; for journals with zero-embargo deposits, you can check JISC open policy finder, and diamond open access journals are easily found on the Directory of Open Access Journals by selecting the “without fees” filter. It is worth noting that, among the big publishers, Sage stands apart by providing a relatively generous zero-embargo self-archiving policy.
A world in which libraries regain some financial relief from big publishers, and in which more people can benefit from openly accessible research findings, is one we should hope for. The actual outcome of this standoff is impossible to predict but is certainly worth monitoring for academic librarians.
[1] Several smart folks, including Authors Alliance, have doubts about whether authors will be allowed to use NIH grant funding to pay for an ADC. From Jeremy York’s summary: “The NIH guidance states that ‘Costs for publishing services that are charged differentially because an Author Accepted Manuscript is subject to the NIH Public Access Policy or the work is the result of NIH funding are unallowable because charges must be levied impartially on all items published by the journal, whether or not under a federal award’ (GPS 7.9.1).”
[2] The announcement did not indicate an effective date or exact cap amount.
[3] For those unfamiliar, read-and-publish deals (sometimes referred to as “transformative agreements”) between libraries and publishers provide a mechanism for an institutions’ authors to publish through an open access pathway without themselves paying APCs. Instead, the institution can draw from a pool of funds or credits to cover the APC on behalf of the author. This open access mechanism is part of the library’s subscription to the publisher’s journal portfolio. Aside from libraries shouldering massive subscription costs, the main drawback of read-and-publish deals are that libraries are often subscribing to journal access as opposed to purchasing perpetual access for that year’s journal issues. This move toward conditional access and away from ownership creates an increasingly difficult situation for libraries to extract themselves from, lest they lose access to journal backlogs from the years they subscribed instead of purchased.
Reflections on facilitating difficult conversations about Indigenous knowledge and settler accountabilityin drama in education research.
The Moment
We were supposed to end the workshop with collaborative visioning and clear pathways forward. Instead, some participants felt confused and tense. Some thought they should avoid teaching Indigenous perspectives altogether. In contrast, others were uncertain about how to move forward in a responsible manner. I spent months getting ready for the international workshop “Honoring Indigenous Roots, Forging Inclusive Routes: Reimagining Drama in Education.” My colleague, Vina Begay, works as the Assistant Librarian and Archivist at ASU’s Labriola National American Indian Data Center. Working with Vina is a privilege and responsibility. I value her deep knowledge of Indigenous Knowledge Systems, cultural protocols, and decolonial librarianship. This expertise shaped our approach. There is simply no way the workshop could have happened without her expertise, and she deserves so much of the credit.
We carefully created frameworks to shift from extraction to relationality. We also made detailed guidance for educators based on their positions. Plus, we designed an activity to help participants map their ethical tensions. Vina’s leadership in centering Indigenous sovereignty and cultural protocols shaped every aspect of our presentation. Her vision of “Information is Sacred” and commitment to supporting Indigenous communities’ ownership of their knowledge guided our work. Vina had also spent precious time educating me about cultural protocols, dedicating countless hours to helping me in my anti-colonial work as a curator.
Somewhere along the way, we lost our message about building relationships before developing the curriculum. A participant asked how to show the Indigenous perspective in their play. I shared my thoughts on the key difference between real partnership and academic extraction. The conversation turned defensive. The participant argued that non-Indigenous playwrights should include Indigenous perspectives. They believed this should happen even without direct input from the communities involved.
This desire for empathy might seem harmless at first glance. But, as was the point of our workshop, empathy cannot be the sole driver or result of collaboration. Good intentions can often lead to more damage, especially when working with Indigenous communities.
The Vision vs. The Reality
Looking back at our presentation slides, I see how thoughtfully we designed the content. We’d outlined clear “Pathways to Repair” that contrasted extraction thinking with relational accountability. Vina shared frameworks based on Indigenous Knowledge Systems, focusing on six Rs: Respect, Relationship, Responsibility, Reverence, Relevance, and Reciprocity. She created guidance for “Metropolitan (Non-Indigenous) Educators.” It highlighted cultural protocols as “the driving force in your classroom lesson planning.””
Our slide on educator responsibilities was clear:
Avoid myths and legends.
Focus on modern Indigenous literature.
Center cultural protocols.
Acknowledge your limitations.
We understood that this work meant, as one slide said, “sitting with discomfort instead of seeking quick solutions.” It also meant “prioritizing Indigenous community needs over our teaching goals.””
However, we then designed a workshop that did precisely the opposite. We tried to compress complex, relational work into a single session. We asked participants to share personal tensions around colonialism and appropriation without adequate time for processing or relationship-building. We reproduced the very extractive dynamics we were critiquing—taking people’s emotional labor and vulnerability without providing sufficient care and follow-through.
The workshop format itself unintentionally demanded that participants engage with difficult personal and political questions within the constraints of an academic conference schedule, only to end abruptly when time ran out.
The Shock of “No”
What struck me most at that moment was the participant’s genuine surprise that their community work might be subject to critique. Here was someone doing what seemed like thoughtful, partnership-based work, and they appeared genuinely shocked to hear boundaries around Indigenous knowledge or questions about academic-community relationships.
This reaction illuminated something I’d been thinking about but hadn’t fully grasped: how rarely non-Indigenous people in academic settings hear “no” when it comes to knowledge. Librarians are trained to believe that if information exists, is published, and we can access it, then it’s ours to use. The idea that Indigenous communities might have sovereignty over how their knowledge is shared, taught, or represented often comes as a genuine surprise. And how uncomfortable it is for white folks who are allies to analyze their relationship to information critically. We cannot assume that there is always a “better” way to be more inclusive; sometimes, it’s better to stay in our lane.
In our presentation, I highlighted a key difference. Extraction thinking assumes that “if it’s published, it’s public.” In contrast, relational accountability values Indigenous leadership and respects protocols. Shifting from the first mindset to the second isn’t just about thinking. It means building emotional strength to accept “not for you” as the final answer, not just a starting point for negotiation.
White fragility
The frustration in that moment stemmed not from being wrong, but from the shock of encountering boundaries in a space that had felt open and morally correct. They thought about what happens when people dedicated to social justice realize their good intentions may not be enough. They also considered how their methods might need major changes.
White fragility appears in decolonial education spaces like this:
People think good intentions protect them from criticism.
They believe that doing “better” work means they do not have to hold themselves accountable.
They assume that being on the “right side” spares them from facing discomfort about their actions and beliefs.
Ethical mapping
We planned to conclude the workshop with an “Ethical Mapping” activity that would help participants navigate exactly these kinds of tensions. The framework was simple but powerful:
TENSION: What is the ethical dilemma or site of friction?
RESPONSE: How did you navigate it—and what frameworks informed your decisions?
SHIFT: What change is needed—in your system, methodology, or institution?
LESSON: What did you learn?
The participant’s reaction would have been perfect material for this kind of collective processing. We could use that moment to ask questions like: What do we do when our wish to do good work clashes with Indigenous community protocols? How do we sit with the discomfort of having our approaches questioned? What does it mean to center Indigenous sovereignty even when it limits our pedagogical options?
Instead, we ran out of time. The workshop ended with raw emotions and no framework for processing them. We’d activated all the tensions without creating space to work through them relationally.
If we had time for ethical mapping, that participant’s experience could have been a lesson for everyone. We could have modeled how to receive critique as information rather than an attack and how to use discomfort as a starting point for deeper inquiry rather than defensiveness.
However, the workshop format didn’t allow for that kind of collective meaning-making. I returned to extraction. I took advantage of people’s vulnerability, stirred up their defenses, and then sent them off to deal with it alone.
The Deeper Structural Issues
This experience made me realize how abbreviated workshop formats often reproduce the very dynamics they’re designed to address. We critiqued extractive academic practices during a workshop. It took emotional labor but didn’t offer enough support. We were advocating for relationship-building while operating in a format that emphasized content delivery over connection.
The real problem is that academic conferences and professional development focus on efficiency. They often overlook the importance of building relationships. We cannot deliver transformative insights in 60-90 minute sessions, changing people’s fundamental approaches to their work without the time needed for genuine relationship-building or ongoing accountability.
Decolonial work takes time. It requires lifelong work: giving up power, questioning assumptions, sitting with discomfort, and following Indigenous leadership. It involves the kind of ongoing relationship that can hold complexity, conflict, and growth over time.
One-shot workshops, no matter how well-designed, can’t create the conditions for this kind of transformation. At best, they can plant seeds. At worst, they can create the illusion of change while reinforcing existing dynamics.
Lessons for Facilitators
This experience taught me several crucial lessons about my position as a white librarian trying to do this work responsibly:
First, good intentions aren’t enough. I spent weeks getting ready. I worked with a co-facilitator, Vina, who is Diné. She has over ten years of experience as an archivist and librarian. We also used frameworks created by Indigenous scholars. I still recreated extractive dynamics. I didn’t take into account the emotional and relational aspects of this work.
Second, the format is the message. You can’t teach about relationality in a format that prioritizes efficiency over relationships. The container matters as much as the content.
Third, white fragility will show up. Some people will see boundary-setting as an attack. They may view criticism as unfair. Also, they might think their good intentions should protect them from feeling uncomfortable. Building capacity to work with these reactions—rather than avoiding them—is essential.
Fourth, unfinished conversations can be more harmful than no conversations at all. Starting tough talks without enough time to think can make people more defensive and resistant.
Fifth, my learning is ongoing. I learned from this experience that I still had assumptions about what participants could handle. I also found that I was attached to others seeing me as a “good” educator who did things “right.”
Designing for Difficulty
If I were to redesign this work, I’d start with different assumptions:
Assume resistance. Create activities that help people see “no” as just information. Don’t be surprised by defensive reactions to boundaries. This way, they won’t feel the need to attack it.
Assume complexity. Don’t try to resolve tensions—help people develop the capacity to sit with them in a productive way.
Assume time—design for multiple sessions over time, with space between for reflection and integration.
Assume a relationship. Prioritize connection and trust-building over content delivery.
Assume accountability. Create structures for ongoing engagement rather than one-time events.
This might mean designing a 3-session series rather than single workshops. It may mean starting with relationship-building activities before delving into more challenging content. It might mean ending with commitments to ongoing learning rather than neat conclusions.
Most importantly, it means being honest about what can and can’t be accomplished in academic workshop formats and refusing to promise a transformation that the container can’t deliver.
The Work Continues
I’ve thought a lot about the participants who left quickly. Did they feel attacked for wanting to do good work? I wonder if our workshop caused more harm than good. I’ve drafted several follow-up emails, trying to find language that acknowledges the limitations of our format while still holding space for the critical questions we were trying to raise.
But I’ve also been thinking about what it means to center Indigenous sovereignty in these conversations, even when—especially when—it’s uncomfortable for those of us who aren’t Indigenous. The resistance at that moment might have been necessary. The discomfort might have been productive. The unresolved tension might be precisely what is needed to motivate a deeper inquiry.
This work isn’t supposed to be comfortable. It’s supposed to unsettle us, prompting us to question our assumptions about knowledge, ownership, and academic freedom. The goal isn’t to make white educators feel good about their diversity and inclusion efforts; it’s to support Indigenous communities’ sovereignty over their own knowledge and cultural practices.
Perhaps the challenge wasn’t that someone got upset but that we didn’t have adequate structures in place to help them—and all of us—work with that upset productively. Perhaps the lesson isn’t to avoid difficult conversations but to create more effective containers for them.
The ethical tensions we were trying to address through our mapping activity don’t disappear when workshops end. They live in our daily practices as educators, researchers, and practitioners. The question isn’t about fixing these issues forever. It’s about building our ability to engage with them thoughtfully and responsibly. We must also be accountable to Indigenous communities.
Work happens through ongoing relationships, and the complex journey of learning to accept “not for you” as a full sentence. It continues in designing educational experiences that honor the principles they’re trying to teach rather than reproducing the dynamics they’re trying to transform.
Decolonial work isn’t just a workshop topic. It’s a lifelong commitment. It involves building relationships, being accountable, and learning to unlearn.
Special thanks to Vina Begay for making the journey abroad for the conference and for patiently teaching so much. Your fierce protection and vulnerability inspires me.
As I sit here preparing myself for a weekend of ALA Annual, I find myself ruminating once again on other modes of conferencing and what is gained or lost depending on how a conference is organized.
I, personally, come to ALA only for Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA) events. Any activity related to my core job duties happens at a different conference or, increasingly, online, and thus every year I find myself torn on whether or not to go to ALA. Attending APALA events is, of course, lovely, but it would be much more fulfilling if I could get more work done in conjunction with them.
And so, virtual conferences. While I like the concept, I’ve found them to be relatively hit or miss. The convenience factor is obviously a plus. No travel means lower costs, both financial and environmental, as well as less time potentially lost to travelling. Video presentations can also in theory be accessed later, relieving some of the time crunch of an in-person conference, at least if you’re organized enough to go back and watch more panels once the conference is over.
On the other hand, virtual conferences require a lot more organization to incorporate the spontaneous interactions of an in-person conference. Forced interaction in a Zoom breakout room is not the same as chance encounters at a conference. Sometimes you do find that spark in a Zoom room, but sometimes it’s missing.
The best “informal” encounter I’ve had to date in a virtual conference was during an early version of the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies, a conference notable for having been conceived of as an online-only affair in order to achieve equitable participation by Indonesian and American scholars. Still in the midst of COVID, when a panel was going well, organizers allowed the conversation to continue past the panel’s allotted time so that attendees could chat more informally with presenters. This ensured that everyone in the Zoom room already had some level of similar interests and laid the groundwork for a conversation not based on ice breaker questions. This might be harder to organize, but I can imagine interest-based Zoom rooms as one way to organize socialization.
Again, this runs the risk of being too forced, which is where enhanced virtual profiles with research interests and other information that attendees can browse might be helpful. I’ve never taken advantage of these features at an online conference, but perhaps they’re working well for others.
Continuing in the realm of virtual conferences, one other mode that I recently heard about was explicitly designed around limiting the environmental effects of travel, in this case through a conference designed around zines. For DIY Methods, Researchers propose their topics, create a zine when accepted, and then copies of the zines are distributed to all participants and made available online. Again, this significantly cuts down on the chance encounters aspect of conferences. That said, it also provides a different way of communicating research and works in progress for those who may not be interested in communicating via another paper presentation but also aren’t ready yet to make the jump to a book chapter or article. I can also imagine a way for this to be expanded to include discussions from “attendees” about the zines.
At any rate, I’m here at ALA, but still not convinced by either in-person or virtual conferences. Have you seen any interesting iterations of conferences focused on inclusivity in some way, be it geographic, financial, or otherwise? If you were to redesign conferences, how would they work? Or, alternatively, just come say hi to me at ALA!
