Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Libraries are for everyone


Thanks to Rebecca McCorkindale, Hafuboti, we have access to posters at https://hafuboti.com/2017/02/02/libraries-are-for-everyone/and I’m making a word doc to accompany my poster, and the document lists many translations of "Libraries are for everyone." I have been wishing for an

Anishinaabemowin (Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi languages) translation and reached out to colleague Simone Jonaitis, who recommended Kenny Neganigwane Pheasant, Anishinaabemowin Language Coordinator, Little River Band (Odawa), http://www.anishinaabemdaa.com/

I found this word somewhere for libraries: agindaasoowigamigoon. "Everyone" might be conveyed by "bemaadiziwaad"? And "are for" might be conveyed by the idea of "belong to"? dibendaagwaad? 

Kenny said, "I have to think what does a library do, I need to know who, what, where, when and why." So I wrote, "Libraries provide collective (group) access to knowledge recorded in some way. At GVSU, we serve the students, employees, and surrounding communities. As librarians, we are trying to change the idea that only individual people have the right to create information and learn, to the idea that groups have the right to create and use knowledge. The idea of libraries is communal cultural responsibility for teaching and learning. How do we convey the idea that “libraries are for everyone”?

I was able to articulate this after reading some of Roy and Hogan's 2010 chapter calling for "librarians to shift away from an individualist ideology" (123) and to instead, "support indigenous peoples' access to the cultural rights of Article 27 [ of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights] by stressing the plurality of "collective rights to participation in the cultural life for multiple communities" (125). And by moving away from the concept of culture as a consumable object to culture as the activities of communities.

Roy, Loriene, and Kristen Hogan. "We collect, organize, preserve, and provide access, with respect: Indigenous peoples' cultural life in libraries." Beyond Article 19: Libraries and social and cultural rights. Duluth: Litwin Books, 2010.

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