Although the issues of diversity and representation are often discussed within academic librarianship in Canada and the United States, the field has made little headway in being inclusive of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) who work within it. If academic libraries are to become truly authentic and inclusive spaces where BIPOC are central not only to shaping the values of a library but also to determining how those values are accomplished, we must examine the traditional ways in which libraries function. One of these traditions is a reliance on bureaucracy and its associated practices such as structured group work and meetings, which are presumed to be inherently neutral and rational ways of working. Critical examinations of bureaucracy within higher education reveal how its overadoption is absurdly at odds with the social justice–oriented missions of most libraries. Furthermore, not all who are involved in libraries are equally harmed through this overreliance on bureaucracy; this article employs Critical Race Theory to uncover the insidious and specific deleterious impacts bureaucracies can have on BIPOC library workers. The antithesis of a neutral system, bureaucracy instead functions to force assimilation into a system entrenched in whiteness.
As librarians consider ways to engage students in research, particularly those who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), it's increasingly apparent that the transactional nature of the one-shot instructional model is inadequate for fostering thoughtful and critical discussions about information literacy and the scholarly publishing cycle. The one-shot also amplifies librarians' attendant anxieties related to quantitative data collection and capitalistic work expectations. Additionally, socially constructed ideas around time, along with narrow epistemic perspectives that center Western thought, stanch librarians' abilities to critically teach students about the research process. Incorporating autoethnography to exemplify the concepts discussed in the paper, the authors argue for a slow, relational approach that deprioritizes widget-like technical training in favor of student and librarian reflection, redresses epistemic injustices in scholarly research, and, most importantly, celebrates multiple epistemologies and expertise.
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