Welcome to the Wrap Up
Welcome to the Wrap Up
Welcome to the 2022 we here wrap up
The 2022 We Here Wrap Up is a summary of the things the private space admins, program and project leaders, and contributors did during the year. The Wrap Up is always a special document for us to create because it gives us a chance to be reflective at the start of every year, giving us energy for the current one.
A note about productivity
The We Here private community was born out of a need for community among people who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) who work in libraries or archives. The business side of We Here (the LLC), was born in 2020, out of the need to pay people we work with for their time and expertise. Additionally, we wanted to host events and professional development workshops, which also required purchasing software, apps, and website subscriptions, which today is where the majority of We Here revenue goes.
From March through December of 2020, we launched a publication, mentorship program, professional development program, and started our first ever mutual aid program. All of this during the first year of a global pandemic. It was a lot and we’re grateful the project and program leaders during that time remain part of the We Family today.
In 2022, we contracted less and hosted fewer events, including fewer Community School workshops. This was a year of change for many – new jobs, new families, illness and caretaking, not to mention stress, anxiety, and guilt. Through necessity and kindness for each other, we have put our wellness first, covering for each other when needed, changing schedules, taking breaks, and setting more realistic goals and expectations. We declined offers, even ones that included grant funding. As individuals and as a team, we engaged more closely with the truth that the pandemic has taught many of us, that:
Productivity purely for productivity’s sake is part of white supremacist capitalist culture.
We love this work and do not yet see an end to it. But we are also doing this work on our own terms, attempting to dream and build new ways of being, which takes time, being present and accountable.
Thanks for reading our 2022 Wrap Up.
We Here® seeks to provide a safe and supportive community for Black and Indigenous folks, and People of Color in library and information science professions and educational programs and to recognize, discuss, and intervene in systemic issues that have plagued these professions both currently and historically.
Our Mission
Our methods
Member-Only Communities and Opportunities
We Here's private communities are open to folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) who work in the library and information science fields. Our communities, established in 2016, are at the center of our work. Member-only spaces, events, and other opportunities are essential for keeping our members safe and supported. Community first.
Community Learning and Growing
We work with members of our community to lead courses and workshops that center BIPOC for the Community School and those who generously offer their time and energy for We Together, We Here’s mentorship program. The organizers and participants of Community Study build community spaces for the purpose of learning and exploring topics together because it is a joyous and generative form of community.
Uprooting Knowledge, Celebrating BIPOC Authors
We work within and outside the We Here community to publish the works of BIPOC and to celebrate BIPOC authors through up//root and We Reads. up//root exists to center the works, knowledge, and experiences of BIPOC within the context of the library and archives community. We Reads is an ongoing, collective effort to feature literature by, for, or heavily featuring BIPOC, meant to support and nurture the needs of folks who seek new reading materials for their personal or library collections.
The We Family
We Here’s Project and Program Leaders
Team we here
The main priorities of the private community Admins include keeping our community safe, onboarding new members, responding to inquiries from members, and keeping members informed on We Here events, opportunities, resources, and calls.
-
Jennifer Brown
COMMUNITY MANAGER
-
Crystal Chen
COMMUNITY ADMIN
-
Nicollette Davis
COMMUNITY ADMIN
-
Jennifer A. Ferretti
FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL
CREATIVE DIRECTOR -
Charlotte Roh
COMMUNITY MANAGER
Learn in community
The community school
Jennifer A. Ferretti, Founder & Principal
(be)coming together in study
Community study
nicholae cline, Organizer
Sofia Leung, Organizer
Jorge López-McKnight, Organizer
a we here publication
up//root
EDITORIAL TEAM
Megdi Abebe, Editor
Joyce Gabiola, Editor
Sofia Leung, Editor
Jorge López-McKnight, Editor
Kristina Santiago, Editor
We’d like recognize and give thanks to the founding editors, Joyce, Sofia, and Jorge, for their incredible work on building up//root into what it is from 2020-2022. Their editorial terms ended December 31, 2022.
ADVISORY TEAM
Jennifer Brown
Jennifer Ferretti
Charlotte Roh (term ended 2022)
The Advisory Team would like to recognize and give thanks to Charlotte Roh who had been an Advisory Team member since up//root’s beginning and through the time of her resignation (November 2022).
Literature that nourishes us
We reads
Jennifer Brown
Crystal Chen
nicholae cline, Project Founder
Charlotte Roh
Reimagining mentorship for mutual growth and liberation
We together
Crystal Chen, Program Manager
Nicollette Davis, Program Manager
Private Communities
Community First
Our members
All We Here’s projects and programs came out of needs identified by our private communities. This is why we say ‘community first.’ Our private communities are the foundation of our work. We ended 2022 with 2,167 people in our Facebook group, 626 people in our Google Group, and 771 people in our Slack project. Some folks are part of multiple spaces.
Every year we consider the pros and cons of these virtual platforms, including their shortcomings, biases, and ethical practices. (Read on for more.)
We Here Members by Platform
Private space evaluation
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ALLOW MEMBERS TO CONNECT WHERE THEY ALREADY ARE. BUT THIS CONVENIENCE COMES AT A COST.
We Here started as a Facebook group in 2016 and has expanded to three separate platforms: Facebook group, Google Groups, and Slack. The Facebook group is by far our largest community, but we have concerns about Facebook’s privacy, censorship, lack of features, and business practices. The community also voiced similar concerns. In 2019, 68% of members said they would move away from Facebook due to its issues around data and privacy. In an effort to not make a unilateral decision as Admins, we called on the community to help us research other virtual spaces but were not able to get the conversation off the ground. We Here Admins hope to get back to this pressing work in 2023.
Support Communities
Patreon and Seed Circle Communities
Join us
Join us
Our Patreon and Seed Circle communities help us achieve our goals to support, uplift, and compensate folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color in library and information science professions, all while receiving exclusive and early access to We Here content.
Through Patreon and Seed Circle memberships, we've been able to offer mutual aid micro grants; pay speakers for free community events; purchase gifts for We Together mentors, and much more.
These supportive membership communities allow us to center our work and communities rather than centering revenue.
Anyone can join either community at the $5 per month or $60 per year level.
We World
What We Worked on During 2022
The community school
Learn in community
The Community School, which has included multi-week courses, seminars, and webinars, seeks to provide a learning community with opportunities for personal and professional development based in anti-racist pedagogy, as well as recognizing and acknowledging systemic racism and oppression.
The Community School takes a lot of labor and care, which lead to fewer workshops this year and an emphasis on asynchronous courses rather than webinars or seminars.
The Community School Numbers
5
Instructional Designers
2
Webinars
3
Asynchronous Courses
3
Course Scholarships
164
Registered Attendees
Community school catalog
-
Writing Your Annual Review and Strategic Plan
WITH SAIRA RAZA
Workshop
-
Words on Display: Curating Library Exhibitions
WITH LOURDES SANTAMARIA-WHEELER
Asynchronous Course
-
Care through Creativity: Centering Attention with Visual Journaling
WITH JEWEL DAVIS
Workshop for We Here Members Only
-
Critical Concepts in Library and Information Science: Research, Teaching, and Practice
WITH JAMILLAH R. GABRIEL
Asynchronous Course
-
Critical Management Studies: Critical Praxis for Library Managers
WITH SILVIA VONG
Asynchronous Course
Community study
(be)coming together in study
Community Study is an ongoing constellation of study groups, immersions, community learning spaces, and reading groups centered around BIPOC being and (be)coming together in study. Community Study believes that learning and exploring together is a joyous and generative form of community (and community building) that facilitates curiosity, intimacy, and care—all of which are deeply needed now.
Community Study formed in 2021 by organizers nicholae cline, Sofia Leung, and Jorge López-McKnight and officially became part of the We Family in 2022. This provided an opportunity to offera space for Community Study on the We Here website and for them to link to We Reads' Bookshop.org page, which helps fund the Community Study scholarship program.
While Community Study participation is exclusively for folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, the organizers make reading (and music) lists publicly available on the We Here website.
Reflections and takeaways for the year
-
In order to encourage conversation and community, participants are organized into clusters, or smaller groups, and typically a study is led by one of the organizers or volunteer coordinator. Organizers created documentation for this process and began meeting monthly with study coordinators. to help provide a supportive container and ensure a more consistent experience.
-
Community Study launched a scholarship program, in conjunction with and supported by We Reads. The program makes Community Study more accessible to a wider group of folks by alleviating the cost of participation. Community Study provided 5 scholarships for folks involved in the bell hooks immersion.
-
Community Study organizers collaborated with up//root editors to publish a series of reflections by participants from the Remembering bell (bell hooks) study organized in Spring 2022. The series was published in November and it was up//root's first series.
-
Organizers are excited to be collaborating with a study participant who had a different approach to Community Study, which in the past has been entirely text-based. It was always an intention to share organizing and planning duties with study participants, so they are excited to invite new folks in to organize studies.
Community study studies
-
Remembering bell: a bell hooks immersion
March - June 2022
-
Indigenous Lifeways & Liberation on Turtle Island
July - October 2022
up//root
a we here publication
up//root: a we here publication is a publishing collective that exists to center the works, knowledge, and experiences of folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color within the context of the library and archives community.
This year up//root was awarded a second $20,000 grant from SPARC, which allowed us to compensate editors, authors, peer reviewers, Community Award recipients, and event participants.
In 2022 the editorial team took a hiatus to review processes and workflows, including codifying the perpetual work of nurturing and developing approaches of care to the publishing experience. Part of this documentation process also included a guide for authors who want to include an audio reading of their published work. So far, five authors have recorded audio files.
As mentioned in the Community Study section, up//root collaborated with Community Study to publish its first ever series, "remembering bell: reflections from Community Study."
up//root features
-
The Comprehensive Guide to Resisting Overcommitment: Reclaim Your Energy in the Workplace
KATRINA SPENCER
-
Latinidad as Erasure: Words from a Critical Discussion on the Single Narrative of Latinidad
JENNIFER A. FERRETTI, CRISTINA FONTANEZ RODRIGUEZ, YVETTE RAMIREZ, AMANDA TOLEDO, AND GABBY WOMACK
-
loving on bell: an altar
NICHOLAE CLINE
-
On Reading bell hooks and Community Study as Grief Ritual
MARISSA ARTERBERRY
-
How do you declare love is boundless on a billboard with such stark edges?
JAIME DING
-
Can't We All Just Cathect Along
BRITTANI STERLING
-
Permission to Unpack: An Essay-Poem-Visual Response to Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood
JENNIFER PRICE
-
I Remember the Listening
REBEKAH MCFARLAND
-
Series graphic for remembering bell: reflections from Community Study
More from up//root
up//root sponsored, "Knowledge Justice at One," a celebration of the one year anniversary of Knowledge Justice: Disrupting Library and Information Studies through Critical Race Theory, which allowed us to pay participants and purchase a temporary webinar license.
up//root launched its first Community Award for We Here members. Five selected applicants were awarded $500 and the option to publish to their work on up//root in 2023.
We Reads
Literature that nourishes us
We Reads is, first and foremost, about highlighting BIPOC voices in literature. It is also deeply personal, and joyfully so: we read as our whole selves, bringing our identities and experiences with us when we enter the world of a story or poem. The works collected over the past year have resonated with, shaped, and nourished us, changing us in ways we might not yet understand and living inside us as we once chose to live inside them.
We Reads dropped two seasonal collections in 2022:
Spring
May 2, 2022
45 titles
Autumn
November 2, 2022
94 titles
Winter Collection dropping January 2023.
We reads 2022 timeline
March
The We Reads Archives is released - an archival solution for all collections with searchable tags.
April
What We Readin' launched. Each team member shared what they're reading in a story on We Here’s Instagram (@wehere.space).
May
Spring Collection is released. 2022 list was selected for Bookshop.org Collection Spotlight on homepage. 2021 list selected for social media promotion.
July
We Readin' Book Club launch and reading party! Took place on Discord (see more below).
September
Second round of What We Readin' Book Picks on Instagram.
November
Autumn Collection is released.
December
Final round of What We Readin' Book Picks for 2022 released on Instagram.
We readin’ book club and reading party
In July 2022, We Here members were invited to join the We Reads team for their first ever Book Club and Reading Party. The We Reads team chose to read Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (but folks were invited to read whatever they wanted) and we gathered on Discord for music and much needed small community connection.
Bookshop.org affiliation
We Here/We Reads is proud to be a Bookshop.org affiliate because of their mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. Online marketplaces have shown a severe lack of empathy for humanity and as information professionals, we must resist the (often dangerous) convenience. Consider investing in your community personally by purchasing locally or from BIPOC-owned businesses and advocating your organization do the same if you do collection development.
By hosting collections on Bookshop.org, we earn a modest commission when folks click the "Buy It" link on the Current Collections page and make a purchase. The revenue generated goes directly to Community Study scholarships. After 131 book purchases through our affiliate link, we raised $272.50 for scholarships.
We together
Reimagining mentorship for mutual growth and liberation
We Together - Reimagining mentorship for mutual growth and liberation launched in October 2020 and is specifically for folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color. Peer mentoring has always been an important part of our private communities and with the formal launch of We Together, program managers have been able to offer manual, individual matching, plan events, develop curriculum, and take time for program assessment.
The 2022 cohort included 30 people. Program managers organized the panel discussion "Career Transitions," with Roberto Delgadillo, Christian Minter, Katrina Spencer, and Arlene Yu for the cohort. This year they also hosted their first peer to peer pairs for folks open to engaging in conversation with a peer, rather than a more formal mentor.
In loving memory of Roberto Delgadillo. We give thanks for his friendship and honor his contributions to the library and information science community. Rest in peace, Roberto.
Pay Us
Normalizing paying folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color
About pay us
As mentioned in our note about 2022 and productivity, the main motivation for creating an LLC was to be able to pay people for the time and expertise they give to the We Here community.
We started the tradition of totaling up how much we've paid to folks who identify as BIPOC in our first Wrap Up and continue it this year. Although we hosted less events and workshops, we're happy to have been able to distribute the amount we did.
$8,206.06*
Community School Instructional Designers and Support
Three asynchronous courses, two webinars, one recording.
*One instructional designer donated the majority of their compensation to We Together. This total includes their compensation before donation.
$5,600.00
Professional Services
Services such as legal and accounting.
$2,500.00
Microgrant Awards Distributed by up//root
The editorial team awarded $500 to five applicants who responded to writing prompts for their first ever Community Award.
$41,129.56
Total Paid to Contractors
This includes Admins, project/program managers, authors, peer reviewers, event speakers, and instructional designers, for their time and expertise.
Thank You
Thank You
