Reflection and Process Narrative
Process Narrative:
David Strand: I helped coordinate meetings, assisted in drafting and revising our proposal, acted as a project manager creating docs to compile content, helped conceptualize the topic focus, drafted a timeline, and helped organize content. I researched and created the Historical & National Perspectives section of the LibZine and helped Joe draft the introduction section.
Joe Lollo: I was the first person to reach out to everyone, by starting our initial email thread and creating our group chat, and let us use my Zoom room for our meetings. Furthermore, I was the one who came up with the idea of using Pressbooks for a LibGuide-esque page, since not only do I have experience writing and teaching with this tool but also found out that none of us had Springshare access to create a LibGuide. I also wrote and curated content for the State Perspectives section of the LibZine, and took on an editor role when the time came to transfer all the content into Pressbooks. Lastly, I designed the cover art using a mix of stock images and Adobe Illustrator.
Victoria Rincon: I helped with developing our scope and when we finally settled on it for our project I focused on finding resources that applied specifically to the University of Washington and its campuses. One of the first things I found was a set of guidelines for the Tacoma campus and based on how this document was specifically for that campus it had me think that each campus had different policies but found they were the same across the board. I then looked into policies that went into more specific forms of freedom of speech like handbill distribution. I also found a set of guidelines that nonparticipants can use should they encounter a demonstration that has turned violent. Once I gathered all of the resources I felt I could use I wrote short descriptions that would explain what they were.
Reflection:
This resource at the moment is not meant to be comprehensive, rather it is a jumping off point that our audience can use to start thinking critically about freedom of expression and intellectual freedom. In future work, we can see this project evolving into a full LibGuide that can support students’ exploration of free speech, free expression, and protesting, that the UW Libraries can share with all students browsing their website.
In terms of collaboration, we did encounter some challenges with coordinating schedules and making sure we all understood what was happening. However, since we each had different skills that we brought to the project, it was easy to delegate roles based on our different strengths and interests, and our communication through the group chat whenever we had updates went well. Since we are all passionate about the topic at hand, which made it a lot easier for us to create something that we would want to share with others. Overall, teamwork was one of the most memorable parts of this project, since once we were on the same page we all worked extremely well together and were able to bring our different skills.
One important takeaway we had was that many skills we learned in the MLIS program are applicable to working in an academic library. We built on our abilities to conduct background research on databases, create taxonomies for the web, and present digital content to make a unique information resource similar to what we would do in a professional career. That said, not all of us had used Pressbooks before, which while challenging at first, became easy to use as we got familiar with it. During our first Zoom meeting, we thought about creating a LibGuide or similar library resource, and Pressbooks was decided upon as a fair replacement for Springshare, which none of us had access to (or knew, in fact, that we could access if we asked). Since 3/4 of the team had familiarity with web design or markdown, working on Pressbooks was not hard at all.
Scaling down our project to its current state was a great learning experience, since we had lofty goals and ideas that would not have been possible given our quick turnaround and time frame. We learned to be realistic when it came to our goals and expectations for this kind of work, and this was a great takeaway from our project since many similar projects in academic libraries have quick deadlines. The result was something that each of us was proud of, that we can talk about in interviews and continue to build on for professional development. Since we were dealing with such a “big” topic and were unsure how to deal with it at first. We had the primary goal of connecting students to resources, but were not sure which facet of intellectual freedom we wanted to cover. Our group had different interests – including anti-censorship resources, free speech guides, or the censorship and free expression of specific cultural groups – but we thought that we were trying to do too much with such little time. We chose to focus on free speech and protesting on college campuses, and created a guide to support students’ free expression on campus, and used resources found from those other interests as a way to give national and historical context to the issue.
This project was guided by our passion for creating something that advocates for students’ rights, as a way to show them that they are part of the broader conversation around social issues. We found many resources, and thought that it was easy to connect our project to social justice issues once we had a narrower scope for our project. We learned the important lesson that, sometimes, “less is more” when it comes to library projects, especially when it comes to information resources that support students. Our more specific ideas would not have been representative of all student populations and their identities, which is important for topics like intellectual freedom and open engagement with information. A fundamental part of the resource guide we created was that all students could benefit from it, which helped us make better choices in terms of what resources we shared.
Our project focused specifically on “free speech” in higher academic settings, but also connected more generally to the wider issue of free speech vs. censorship in American society, and to the larger issue of intellectual freedom, and then also to the historical issue and national issue of constitutional rights. The most significant idea that may be drawn from this research project and guide may be that, free speech and censorship, including healthy free speech and including unhealthy free speech and including healthy self-censorship and including unhealthy self-censorship, is an indicator of the health of an intellectual climate and of an information ecosystem and of a democratic ecosystem. Thus, when the goal of promoting free speech is pursued, in context of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and sovereignty, the individuals and the institutions involved must be careful to respect the constitutional rights and civil liberties of all citizens.
