This roundtable discussion held on Tuesday, March 28, 2023, 10-11am EST, will explore the ways invisible labor shows up in library work. Created by Amanda Belantara & A.M. Alpin, Rule N° 5 is a collaboratively-created work that centers the voices of library workers as they reveal to listeners the magical, mysterious, complicated, and controversial world of libraries. Through one large and five smaller interactive sculptures installed in NYU Libraries, Rule N° 5 examines practices and objects that shape how we can search, who we will find, and what we remember. As an interactive audio experience, listeners are invited to open doors and drawers, plug in, and push buttons to explore and contemplate what it means to collect the world’s knowledge, preserve the past, and shape the future.
A.M. Alpin is an award-winning filmmaker, librarian, and scholar who uses digital and analog technology to tell compelling stories. Her work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the Gotham/Independent Filmmaker Project, the Austin Film Society, the Southern Humanities Media Fund, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She serves as director of the Library Lab and Special Projects at NYU Libraries.
Amanda Belantara is an audiovisual artist-anthropologist, librarian and co-founder of the art collective, Kinokophone. She has worked as a creative producer and teaching artist, collaborating with cultural heritage institutions in New York, Japan and the UK to create interactive audio installations, audio tours, and oral history projects. Her work has been supported by Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Agency for Public Affairs, Government of Japan. She is the Instruction and Outreach Librarian for the School of Professional Studies at NYU Libraries.
To be read for Tuesday's session: The Work of Women of Color Academic Librarians in Higher Education: Perspectives on Emotional and Invisible Labor (title linked).
The article linked above is a first-person account of the ways in which three BIPOC librarians experience emotional and invisible labor in their workplaces and within the profession. We will use this piece as the basis of our conversation to explore what invisible labor (and emotional labor as a subset of invisible) looks like for each of us.
Symphony Bruce is the Critical Pedagogy Librarian at NYU. Largely influenced by her time as a high school English teacher, Symphony believes deeply in the power of relationships and care in the ability to create powerful learning experiences for students and instructors alike. In the classroom, her favorite lessons include critical evaluations of authority and information ecosystems and is developing an interest in digital privacy and anti-surveillance. She earned her MLIS from the University of Missouri in 2017.