Episode 2: Combating Oppression at a Leadership Level with Adrienne Doman Calkins & Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney

In this month's episode, we have a discussion with Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney, Library Director at the Driftwood Public Library in Lincoln City, OR,  and Adrienne Doman Calkins,  Library Manager at the Sherwood Public Library, about implementing EDI and Antiracism tool-kit training for their library staff as an attempt to combat racism and oppression.

Date of interview: March 16, 2022
Hosts: Brittany Young & Yelitza (Yeli) Boots

OLA EDI & Antiracism Toolkit: https://bit.ly/3qSMDF7

Transcript

[Intro music playing]

Yeli Boots:
Hi. My name is Yeli, Yelitza Boots. I am the Bilingual Outreach Librarian for the Hood River County Library, [Spanish 00:00:10] Hood River, part of the Oregon Library Association Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Antiracism Committee.

Brittany Young:
My name is Brittany Young, and I am a law librarian at the Lane County Law Library in Eugene, Oregon, and part of the Oregon Library Association Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Antiracism Committee.

Yeli Boots:
This is the second episode of the podcast, OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, focusing on antiracism policies and practices for libraries.

Brittany Young:
Today, we are talking with Adrienne Doman Calkins at the Sherwood Public Library and Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney at the Driftwood Public Library about implementing toolkit training for their library staff to combat racism and oppression.

Yeli Boots:
Adrienne, just give us a little bio about yourself.

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
Hi. I'm Adrienne Doman Calkins. My pronouns are she/her. I'm sitting here at the Sherwood Public Library today in my role as library manager and where I've been for about seven years. I worked for Timberland Regional Library in Washington State at the Olympia branch and, prior to that, various public academic libraries going back nearly 30 years, starting as a part-time job shelving books.

Yeli Boots:
Kirsten?

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
Hi. I'm Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney. My pronouns are she or they. I am the director of Driftwood Public Library, which is in Lincoln City here on the Oregon coast. Been here for about 10 years, and prior to that, I was a branch manager and a children's librarian in West Philadelphia with the Free Library of Philadelphia. But I've been in libraries now since 2004.

Brittany Young:
Thank you both, Kirsten and Adrienne, for being here today. I'm going to start us off with our first question, and this one is particularly fun. I'm going to start with Kirsten. You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
Under pressure by Queen and David Bowie. I annoy my husband how often I want to listen to it already, so if I had to listen to it for the rest of my life, I think I'd be okay.

Brittany Young:
Adrienne, what do you have for us?

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
I thought about this one for a while. I have really eclectic music taste, and I have a lot of songs on repeat, but none of those are going to work because they're all specific moods. So I thought of Vivaldi's Four Seasons because it's kinda got all of it and I rarely listen to classical, and I think I'd be happy with that one for a long time.

Yeli Boots:
Awesome. Thank you. Now let's test it out and play them all day. Adrienne, this one's for you. What is something surprising you have learned since you started training around EDI and anti-racism for your staff that you would want other libraries to know as they consider implementing their own training?

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
I like this question a lot. Most of us know this work is hard. It requires a lot of soul-searching and humility, and mistakes are going to happen. We're going to sometimes say or do the wrong thing. But what surprised me is that by walking into the EDIA work, there's this really powerful and positive momentum that builds up, and it helps pave the way for deeper and deeper work with more meaningful impact. I sometimes think of library works and then a scientific experiment, like a Petri dish, that has collection development and customer service. If we change one thing to see, "Well, what's going to be the impact, was there a change," and sometimes we see those results with data, like door counts or circulation, or, in the case of EDI work, maybe the data's about various own voices authors and collections that we are adding or participation in a community reads program about understanding racism.

Sometimes we see the results with service stories and the anecdotal observations that staff have, maybe more people of color browsing the new books or attending programs or coming up to staff and saying, "My, what a lovely library you have." We also get feedback regularly from patrons and board members about how they see the important equity work we are doing and they commend it. And so there's this self-perpetuating feedback loop that feels really positive and affirming. To me, that's really the best indicator that we're on the right path.

Yeli Boots:
Thank you. I loved your answer. Kirsten?

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
I've had both positive and negative surprises. One kind of negative surprise that I had is how easy it is to backslide EDIA work. It's really easy to go back to the comfort place and not keep pushing forward. For example, you've been doing a really great job with making sure that all of our signage and things like that were translated. And then, during the pandemic, because the library building was closed, you know, we kinda got out of the habit of doing that. When we reopened, one of my staff members had to come to me and say, "Hey, we're backsliding on this. A whole bunch of our stuff isn't getting translated anymore." That was kind of a wake-up call, like, "Whoa, okay, yeah, this is definitely not something you can be, like, one and done," like, "Oh, there, I did it. Check that box off." It's a constant thing.

On the positive end, I have been pleasantly surprised by the warmth and the positive feedback that I've received from our community. There's always the question of, "How is this going to go? Is there going to be pushback? Are they going to see it as an agenda that they don't agree with?" Instead, almost 100% of the feedback I've received from everyone has been positive. Every once in a while, a program or something like that will people say they don't like it, but I've gotten far, far more compliments and positive comments from folks in the community than I have negative. My library board has been very appreciative, and what's really neat is when one of my regular patrons comes up and says something like, "Oh, hey, you know, I read such and such book, and it was so interesting. Thank you so much for having that in the collection. I really learned a lot." And that's always just a good feeling. So would say I've been pleasantly surprised by just the positivity that I've gotten from the community.

Yeli Boots:
Thank you, Kirsten. I just wanted to say that as a native Spanish speaker, sometimes people that are non-native Spanish speakers often will think, "Well, what's the big deal, you know? We all speak and read in one language." And it's like, well, no, we don't. It's far more than just seeing the sign translated. It has a welcoming feeling to it. You kind of walk in and you're like... Sign of relief, and you're like, "Okay, this is a safe space," and that's huge. Thank you for that.

Brittany Young:
I also appreciated that solid example of how this work is always ongoing. It's not done ever. So, Kirsten, in which stage of the diversity collection development audit do you think that your library is in?

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
Well, we're finishing up revising our collection development policies with the library board, and then we are the early stages of doing the full collection audit. We've been partnering with the other libraries in our consortium, so we're going to be able to get the shared collection done at the same time. We're going with... Ingram has a service that will do that. Once we have that data, it's not just like, "Okay, checkbox, checkbox, checkbox." We're going to want to do spot checking to look at the collections and see, "Okay, so, statistically, we have this representation, but is it actually solid representation? Is it own voices? Is it up to date?" All of those things, too. As far as auditing the entire collection, I think we're at the pretty early stages. But, at the same time, I think that, as far as incorporating EDIA into our selection processes, we've come a long way on that and have been making that a practice for the last few years.

Brittany Young:
Thank you. So Adrienne?

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
We revised our collection development policy a few years ago. We've actually been looking at it recently to see, "Should we make it even stronger?" I think it's a hefty lift a few years ago when we did major revisions to it, and I feel like it's served us really well, but we may want to strengthen the parts about hate speech. We're currently wrapping up our first full diversity audit of our entire print collection. We ended up budgeting for the Ingram iCurate diversity audit service. It's pretty detailed, so we're pouring through that. Goal is to have our orders in to fill gaps by the end of the month. So that's step seven, page 34 of the toolkit, which is the use the statistics gathered, in this case by Ingram, to help direct future behaviors in ordering.

There's a step eight, which is optional. So I feel pretty good we made it to step seven. So we're placing those orders now to fill gaps. We'll be able to keep using those reports because, of course, there are more recommendations in the report than we have funds dedicated. So we'll keep using those reports for probably another year or so while they're still current and relevant using our regular budget in next fiscal year. We've been really focused on dedicating funds for diversifying our collections for about six years now, so I was really pleased to see that work reflected in the reports that they gave back to us. Do still have gaps, of course. Some of those are gaps that we hadn't been focused on quite as much, and some of those are gaps because there are challenges in finding material. Are they being published? How easy is it to get those material? But we've come a long way toward a more inclusive library collection, and that feels really good.

Brittany Young:
Thank you. And you went above and beyond because I don't think we were looking for the number inside of the toolkit. The listeners will appreciate it.

Yeli Boots:
That's awesome. Thank you. Kirsten, what challenges have you faced in implementing the OLA EDIA toolkit?

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
One challenge has been with the pandemic that a lot of our effort were paused, in particular, outreach to our Spanish-speaking population here in Lincoln City. That became really difficult because our outreach coordinator, Star, her big talent is making those personal connections with people, and it becomes so much harder to do when nobody's having big public events. Internally, one of the other challenges has been…make sure that people are continuing to think about it. It's important that we do this and had everyone read the manual and we attended training, but it's sometimes challenging to make sure that I'm clear about expectations and remember to keep reiterating and speaking up.

Also, it's difficult for staff that will have elements of their lived experience specific to EDIA goals and trying to figure out how not to have people feel like the spotlight is on them, or there's sometimes the impression that they're the ones who are driving the EDIA initiatives rather than it being, like, something that's coming from me as the director. Do I make sure that folks know that, yes, this is a priority? Those are, like, weird sort of psychological things that you kinda just have to address as they come up.

Yeli Boots:
Thank you. That's super mindful. It's a lot of work to take on, too. Just like making that observation, that's huge, so thank you.

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
Well, and, for me, I think it's really important that I take on the work and don't just let the folks who are most directly affected doing the heavy lifting. And I've been really pleased that I've noticed some of my other members of staff starting to step up and be more vocal in the larger library community. That makes me feel really good because it tells me that I'm succeeding in communicating and doing the right thing.

Yeli Boots:
Yeah. I agree. Adrienne?

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
Where I've seen challenges the most with doing EDIA at our library is internally to government. There've been just a few people within the government and elected officials and very few, as Kirsten said, patrons, definitely the few voices we've had, but I've been told to stay in my lane. I've been told to just focus on books. I've had to justify how we can advocate for social justice without being involved in politics. I've been told I will alienate patrons. I've been told to rethink displaying LGBTQIA and antiracism books. It sometimes feels hard and frustrating to stop and dedicate the time. But every time that there's been that challenge, it's also helped to then strengthen the convictions in our argument and kinda make it more solid into a learning moment or a teaching moment, show this is related and this is what library work is today.

So the social issues sometimes can feel impossible to solve. I find the best ways to move forward is to focus on that positive feedback that we've been getting, continue to engage with the library advisory board, and our boards is really supportive, and then budget accordingly to accomplish our EDI goals and make those small changes. And then those small changes are going to make systemic change over time. Our board is so wholeheartedly behind it that I feel braver because of that, and that really helps me. It lends me more conviction in the work. For this, I'm very grateful and inspired to keep going. Its EDI work permeated everything that we're doing, and so it does become more natural. Even when these challenges come up, it's just like, "Okay, well, what's the next step forward?"

Yeli Boots:
Thank you. All right. This is our last question. And this time, I'm going to call on Adrienne. Do you have any special advice to library staff that want to start their journey in the EDIA antiracism workplace?

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
I have three tips that worked well for me. Tip one, build an awareness of biases and terminology. Make sure we're all using the same words and we understand what they mean and why we're using those words. And for us, this was all staff trainings. Then we build up from there as a group into self-reflection and learning and analysis and planning and budgeting and community engagement. And then number two is library not being neutral. This was a harder one for me. I grew up in the era of librarianship and library work where we were really proud of being neutral. So I had to step away from that and learn that neutrality also provides us excuses for not doing the work and it perpetuates outdated practices and stereotypes. The danger of perpetuating the library as a neutral space is that we won't be doing enough to truly make it feel safe and welcoming for everyone. I'm going to quote our own website at Sherwood. We have this line that says, "As library staff, we want all community members to feel welcome, heard, supported, and to thrive."

 And then my third tip. If you go to sherwoodoregon.gov/library/DEI, you can see it there. So several years ago I went to this training. It was an operationalizing equity training, and the trainer urged us to make a public statement, even if just starting this work, we barely had anything to say or we didn't feel confident yet, and to put it out there on the website and that that would put our goals and our accomplishments in the public space to show our commitment and have accountability. I did that, and it did feel awkward, but it was so invaluable, and I'm so glad that I learned that. So now I review it several times a year and I edit it and I add, and I can point to that when questions come up. So if anybody says, "Well, isn't this political," or, "Stay in your lane," it's all thought out already about why we're doing this and why it's relevant and the work that we've done.

It's also made us more grant work. We got our first ALA grant partially because it was the work we're doing and making it visible. And then I can show it to prospective board members who are applying or applicants who are thinking of applying for our position, and it helps to have a conversation about whether our values are aligned and helps us to hire the right person or appoint the right person for the position so that we can keep doing that work and bring everybody up to speed and have common goals.

Brittany Young:
Thank you. I appreciated the part about moving from neutrality to being a safe and welcoming place for diverse populations because if you are safe for them, you're safe for everyone. All right. Kirsten?

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
My first advice is, if you're communicating with the public or with your board or your city council about equity, diversity, inclusion, and what the library is doing, one of the things I do is I approach it as though, like, obviously, this is a great thing and they will be happy about this and this is an accomplishment. Basically, don't go in with a defensive crouch. Far as staff who are doing the work themselves, I would say read as much as you can. One of the things that was incredibly helpful to me is last year I undertook an intensive group study of Layla Saad's "Me and White Supremacy," where we met every two weeks to work on sections of the book together, and not just reading the book and answering the questions in our head, but journaling it, making our journals so that other people could see our answers and we could have conversations about it.

And that was incredibly helpful because every two weeks, I'm meeting. I've got to do the reading. I've got to be accountable, not just to myself, but to the other people in the group. Just finding those fellow travelers is hugely helpful in making sure that you stay on the right track and keep at the forefront of your mind. Having colleagues to bounce things off of so that you can say, "Hey, I'm feeling some kind of way about this, can I talk it out with you," is so important because this is not work that you can do in a vacuum. And, one of the ways that it becomes engaging and even fun is by working on it with other people. And then the last thing I would say is that this is an iterative process. You're never done. But the other thing is that you are going to be constantly going back and rethinking things. Even stuff that seemed like a great idea two years ago, you're going to look at it and think, "Oh, I can improve this," or, "That was a misstep, we can correct."

And one of the elements of white supremacist culture is that we get this feeling like we have to make a big grand gesture and move very quickly. And even if you're moving more slowly, if you're doing it in a mindful way, really thinking about it, always with the idea that you're going to revisit things over and over again, that's the way to think about it rather than worrying about, "Well, you know, I have to get it perfect the first time around." Like, that's another part of white supremacist culture, and then also us as professionals, we tend to be perfectionists. Sometimes I think we put things off, at least I do, because you're planning but you're afraid to pull the trigger because you want it to be perfect right off the bat, and it doesn't work. If you're going to get the work done, you have to be willing to make mistakes, apologize, and try again, and do better.

Yeli Boots:
Yeah. Thank you both so much. My heart is racing and pumping and feeling, like, full of butterflies because I'm just so excited to hear that you both are working so hard to ensure that there is such a safe, welcoming space and not just saying it, but it's visible and you're standing there. I remember being the kid that just always hid into the libraries. Like, I was, like, in the corner at school because that's where I felt the safest, and now that we're all kind of working towards the same goal, it's just…it's really exciting, and I see you both, and I appreciate you.

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
Thank you.

Brittany Young:
Yes, thank you both. You have given me all kinds of things to reflect on and think about, and I'm really excited to hear about, when people listen to this, what ideas they get from it, too. Then you have more travelers that you're meeting on this journey, and I like that. I thank you both for being here today and talking to us.

Kirsten Brodbeck-Kenney:
Thank you so much.

Adrienne Doman Calkins:
Thank you. Yes. Thank you.

Yeli Boots:
We would like to ask our listeners to reflect and act on the information gained from this. Brittany, a takeaway from this interview.

Brittany Young:
I would say the biggest takeaway for me was that neutrality is no longer good enough in our libraries. We need to make them safe and welcoming. So we're growing from just that need to be neutral. What about you, Yeli?

Yeli Boots:
I just want to piggyback off of that because I also believe, you know, what are we doing to create safe environments for BIPOC folk in our library spaces, whether it be in your mission and visions, visible signs, translated signs, and just, like, welcoming spaces.

Brittany Young:
After reflecting, we want you to take action. What is one action that you could take?

Yeli Boots:
After thinking a little bit more about this, we were thinking that an action could be a reflection, a walkthrough of your library and spaces. What can you improve, change, modify for folks? Keep an eye or ear out for the next episode of OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries. We'll be hearing from Debbie Reese.

Brittany Young:
On selecting and promoting diverse books for children and young adults.

Voiceover:
OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries would not be possible without the generous support from the Oregon Library Association and the State Library of Oregon, whose vision is to provide leadership and resources to continue growing vibrant library services for Oregonians.

Voiceover:
We would like to take time to acknowledge historical injustices. We recognize Oregon was established as a white sanctuary state with the intent to exclude African-American and Black people on ancestral land stolen from dispossessed Indigenous peoples. We recognize and honor the members of federally recognized tribes and unrecognized tribes of Oregon. We honor Native American ancestors past, present, and future whose land we still occupy. This acknowledgement aims to deconstruct false histories, correct the historical record, and disrupt genocidal practices by refocusing attention to the original people of the land we inhabit, the slave trade and forced labor that built this country, and to the oppressive social systems interwoven into the fabric of our national and regional heritage. We ask that you take a moment to acknowledge and reflect as well.

[Outro music playing]