I love walking through graveyardsThe dead don’t say much
Don’t get me wrong
I didn’t say they don’t say anything
I said they don’t say much
They understand the value of silence
Of time
They’re in no hurry to explain accuse exculpate
There are no arguments debates soliloquies
Just quiet
And the occasional whisper
A reminder to honor the dead
And the living
And time
This Open Access Week, I’m proud to help spread the word about a new platform for sharing library and archive work, the newly launching (as of October 25) LIS Scholarship Archive, or LISSA.
Screenshot of LISSA landing page
Set on the Open Scince Framework platform and with the support of the Center for Open Science, LISSA is meant to be a place for providing secure, easy, and most important, open access to the broad range of materials that information workers produce—everything from data sets, to posters, to image collections, to oral history files, and yes, even traditional article preprints. In addition to welcoming a broad range of materials, we also eagerly welcome submissions from library and archives workers and students of all types, from the public library circulation clerk, to the archive and museum studies student, to the early career special librarian. Our hope is that LISSA can become a repository for those who otherwise do not have access to one.
In particular, we are proud to be providing a service alongside the longstanding and internationally renowned eLIS preprint server. While eLIS has long provided a place for depositing traditional LIS scholarship, we look to provide an option for a broader range of works. We look forward to possible future collaboration with eLIS in sharing the LIS disciplinary repository space.
On behalf of our steering committee—which I admit is for now very North American, but rest assured we will be working intentionally to lead with more global inclusivity—we invite you to check out LISSA and consider using it as a home for your information work.
For more info, find us at lissarchive.org.
I’ve recently gotten back into my poetry writing. So I’ll be dropping some lines in here for you all from time to time as the Spirit moves.
****
“That was a good book”
I read that book and now I just wanna eat it
Cram it in my mouth and chew sop it up with a biscuit
Roast it on an open spit drizzle it in gravy plough right through
Rip it apart page by page at the spine and suck the marrow dry
Take the binding soak it in broth get a good stew going
That book was so good I wanna dice it up fine slice mince sprinkle it on some chips serve it with carrot sticks
I devoured it with my eyes my mind but that’s not enough it was a really good book
Open my center pour it in I wanna start it all over again
Today is Columbus Day, but I’m in the midst of a social media break so you won’t see this post until much later. Still, I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and it’s really come to a point where I’ve got to get the thoughts down.
I just eavesdropped on a white woman talking about her family’s participation in the New York City Italian-American community’s Columbus Day celebrations. (Columbus Day became a holiday in the U.S. initially as a way for marginalized Italian immigrants to celebrate their heritage.) There will be protest by native folks and allies against the settler colonization and genocide that Christopher Columbus represents. In the words of this woman, “I get it, but I don’t get it.” Then, she proceeded to give all the usual trite arguments:
I don’t mean to rag on this woman. She’s only saying what many other well-meaning, white, liberal Americans say. But this thinking is the very epitome of why we will likely never decolonize and dismantle white supremacy in the country (or anywhere else really).
White people are just too married to their own supremacy and privilege. Even the well-meaning, so-called “liberal” and “progressive” ones.
Over the last few months with all the hullabaloo about taking down Confederate monuments, so many well-meaning liberal white folks took to their thinkpieces to explain why it’s the white (do I mean “right”? Is that really a typo?) thing to do to take down the Confederate monuments, and why it’s okay to leave monuments to other well-known slave-owners and native murderers because of “all the good they did in founding our great country.”
Huh. Cue thinking-face emoji.
What “good” did they do? For whom? What “great country”? For whom?
Because from where I sit, I see native peoples being chased by dogs and teargassed for trying to protect the sanctity of their (and all of our) water.
From where I sit, I see black athletes, whose very bodies are owned by wealthy white men (sound familiar?) being castigated and Black-balled (quite literally) for engaging in peaceful protest against state-sanctioned, racist violence.
From where I sit, I see Spanish-speaking, colonized Americans, Black, Brown, and every shade in between, being left to die of thirst and disease in the midst of one of the worst natural disasters in their living history.
But yes, let’s please preserve the racist legacy of the racist people who built this racist country. By all means.
I say tear it all down. I say this as a proud American who wants to be even prouder of her country. I say this as a Black woman, most of whose ancestors didn’t choose to be here, but here we are, so deal with me. I say this sincerely and unequivocally.
Until we’re willing to, figuratively and literally, tear down every vestige of our nation’s racist, white supremacist history—from Washington to Jackson to Tr*mp—we will never attain the equality and equity we like to talk so glibly about. We need to confront our history and our present, and then we need to tear it down.
Until then, enjoy your ridiculous parades and bank holidays. I’ve got better things to do.
At The Intersection 