 All right well good morning or good afternoon, depending on what time zone you're in. Welcome to our San Jose State University iSchool celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month in the symposium on Hispanic and Latinx Library Services. My name is Dr. Anthony Chow. I'm the proud new director of the San Jose State School of Information and as a first-generation American born son of immigrants, I'm fully committed to all things associated equity, diversity, and inclusion. And now truly understanding and not merely tolerating our nation's unique diversity truly paints the profound and beautiful tapestry that ultimately defines who we are as Americans. This symposium will be the first of many that the iSchool will sponsor as part of our commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Special thanks to my colleagues, Drs. Kristen Rebman, Michelle Villagran, and Alfredo Alcantar for their hard work and support in making this symposium happen and certainly all of our distinguished guests that you will hear from shortly. You'll see in our agenda that we have, we will have a keynote address followed by two panel discussions. Also our proceedings today will be recorded and widely distributed via our YouTube and social media channels afterwards. Our theme today is making vital connections, understanding, and serving the Hispanic Latinx community. Now let me introduce our outstanding keynote speaker, Dr. Jose Aguñaga. Dr. Jose Aguñaga received his EDD in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University. He also has an MPA from California State University Long Beach and his MOS from the University of Arizona. He first joined the academy in 1994 and has worked for close to 12 years as library faculty at Glendale Community College. He's currently the branch coordinator at the North Campus Library. He is also a fellow Spartan, a member of the iSchool for the past two years teaching info 210, which is our reference and information services course. He's been actively involved in professional library associations and higher education throughout his career and has served as vice chair, chair and past chair of ACRL Community Junior College Library section. At this time, he's also serving as the chair for the National Council for Learning Resources and Affiliated Council for the American Association of Community Colleges and also co-chair of the ACRL Diversity Alliance Task Force. Besides his actual involvement for organizations, he's also presented and published. Dr. Aguñaga's most recent chapter publication is from 2018 entitled What I've Learned from the Past, Present and Future in the edited edition by Teresa Neely and Jorge Lopez McKnight in Our Own Voices Redux the Faces of Librarianship Today. On another note, Jose is an avid San Diego Padres and Chargers fan. He is a native California from San Diego, although he now resides in Arizona. And finally, he currently is a candidate for election to the ACRL advisory board for 2022-2023 for vice president and president-elect. And lastly, Jose's higher education philosophy. I got this from your LinkedIn page, sir. I provide for the development of student, staff, faculty and the general public. He's also dedicated to encouraging the ongoing success of BIPOC and completing their higher education goals. So join me in welcoming Dr. Aguñaga. Thank you, Dr. Chal. And thank you to Dr. Redmond and Dr. Villagran for offering me this opportunity to provide a story where I've come from and what I've been doing and how I think the theme for my brief talk today is how family is a vital component and how I connect and always remember that I'm Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, and a little bit of Basque involved. So just to give you an overview of my career path, what you see in the background with my virtual background is the actual library where I work at in Glendale, Arizona. Thankfully, we are now under 100 degrees, actually under 90 degrees. So we are very grateful for that, for that wonderful weather. But to get back to my story, I must always be thankful and grateful that I had a wonderful mom who's no longer with us and also a wonderful abuelita. And of course, my dad, the three of them were able to inspire me but also to keep me on track with my educational potential. I grew up in San Isidro, California. If those of you that are from California may know where San Isidro exists, it's the last city before you go into Mexico, Tijuana, Mexico. And growing up in San Isidro as a in a section eight apartment complex taught me many valuable lessons but also made me remember to remain humble, to be appreciative of the opportunities but also to continue moving forward. And just to share a small story about living in the apartment complex. Having that family, not just blood relatives but having the neighbors that were also an extended family for us that really resonates in my mind and in my life and in my practice, not just as a librarian, but also as a human being grateful for that. So if you wonder how did I get into the field and how do I tie this in with our month? This is the end of our month of Hispanic heritage. I was reflecting on that and it dawned on me. My first summer job when I was in the ninth grade was working at the local branch of San Diego Public Library, the San Isidro branch, just by shelving books and understanding the value of the library. I think that began the growth and planted the seed in my mind, but also it made my mom and my grandma quite proud of what I was doing in that I was with books. I was learning. I was learning the value of information at that young age. After spending that summer there and then completing my high school years, I moved on to the university. I went to the University of San Diego, Catholic University in San Diego, and this is where a true valuable lesson took place. I was not prepared. My study skills were not up to par for the going from a high school to the collegiate level, and after three semesters I was academically disqualified. So talk about a hard lesson, but thankfully I had faculty at the University of San Diego that encouraged me to retreat and go back to a community college, which I did, and that was in Chula Vista at Southwestern College, completing that journey, getting my grades up, fulfilling what I needed to do, and then reapplying to complete my study at University of San Diego. I completed my bachelor's with a degree in international relations and a minor in italiano, so talk about romance languages, a beautiful language to know and to practice. That's where the next chapter of librarianship took place. My last two years at University of San Diego as part of my work-study assignment, I was assigned to the library, the undergraduate library, and by working there I worked with the reference librarian. Mr. Devin Milner became in many ways a first mentor that guided me and planted the other seed to think about graduate school beyond completing my undergraduate degree. He would always find time to talk to me to give me some ideas to, hey, what are you thinking about? Do you love working in this kind of facility? What about a career? So having said that and graduating from University of San Diego, the family practice continued with Mr. Devin Milner. He stayed in touch with me as I ventured into the business world. My first career path was working with Ford Motor Credit Company, the finance arm of Ford Motor in Pleasanton, California up in the Bay Area. As you might imagine, that wasn't my cup of tea. I was a customer service rep and dialoguing with individuals that were, let's just say, I had to remind them of their monthly application, instilled a different type of education for me. I heard many colorful language use when I was talking with them. So after two years, I decided, going back and forth to San Diego to visit my mom, my grandma, I decided, what do I really want to do? And I had a meet-up with Mr. Devin Milner, the reference librarian. And he encouraged me at that moment, you need to consider applying for graduate school and become a librarian. He supported my applications with great reference letters. And after four years with Ford Motor Credit, I was accepted at University of Arizona and talked about a new adventure. I had never lived out of San Diego. So by living up in Pleasanton, that was a new experience. And then traveling and residing in Tucson would become another rich experience that would be a just a great moment, not just for myself, but for my family, but also my development as an individual and a future information professional. So going through those kind of experiences has certainly given me an opportunity to understand the value of librarianship, but also as an information professional and understanding that there are always individuals that are looking out for you, trying to help you out. But taking their information and then putting the effort and also the initiative to succeed takes some time to say the least. While at the University of Arizona, I was there for a period of 18 months, completed my degree. But while working there, I had another experience. I worked at the main library at the University of Arizona as a library skills assistant. I shelve books, I gain additional experiences, additional contacts, but also you'll find this interesting. If you know our wonderful, wonderful founder of Reforma, Dr. Arnoldo Trejo, I worked for his Hispanic books distributors as a part-time cataloger and having conversations with him during the brief time that I worked for his outfit was quite valuable. I recall his style of being somewhat quiet, but also very with profound advice regarding the profession, career path, and also paying back to your own community in many ways that you can. The other experiences while at the University of Arizona, continuing with the theme of family, familia, I became a member of Reforma. I joined Reforma with the student chapter that Mr. Bob Diaz at the University of Arizona is still there and I joined that chapter and I'm glad I did because that was another rich experience to also to understand how librarians that desire to help out their own specific community can do in many ways. I joined ALA and just as a matter of a coincidence, I just renewed my ALA membership and I'd realized this is my 30th year as a member of ALA and then obviously I've joined ACRL and also the State Library Associations where I lived in my career path. So after graduating from University of Arizona with my MLS, I once again took a chance and I ventured, talked about creating new family connections. I moved to the state of Texas, Houston, Texas. My first career opportunity was at the University of Houston and Ms. Dana Rooks served as another wonderful mentor in this process. I was hired on a two-year temporary position for social sciences. So talk about taking a chance, not knowing what the future would be, but within that time period, she gave me an opportunity to oversee the human resources factor of the University Library. I became the coordinator for human resources involved in recruitment, retention, training of the entire library staff. Talk about a leap and a great opportunity to be involved. While there, I was a librarian also for Mexican American Studies and Dr. Dacho Mendiola who was a director at that time. He provided very insightful deep insights from an academic point of view but also from a humanistic point of view regarding the community of Houston and also the many issues that in some ways still remain in our country. So going from Houston, I went back to my alma mater at the University of San Diego to join the library there to now as a professional, as a librarian, and that experience was also insightful. And I must go back in my story here. While I was in Houston, one of my classmates also relocated to Houston and we had a deep friendship that eventually evolved and we got married. And so we became the married couple and out of the cohort from the library school, there were about 10 of us and I believe three or four marriages developed from library school. So I talked about having double librarians in a family. So going from California and in transitioning to other aspects, when I was at Cal State Long Beach, another opportunity. I was once again a social sciences librarian. But my last year at Cal State Long Beach, not only did I complete my Master of Public Administration, but I also was able to live on campus the last year. My wife and I have lived on campus. They had a program in the dormitories, faculty and residence program. If you contributed 10 hours of assistance with student work and so forth, they would provide free room and board. So talk about learning and experience, learning from the actual students, happening what's going on in their own personal life and assisting them with their own research. And after while completing my MPA, the book planted in me that I was really engaged in the academic study of public administration. I wanted to pursue a doctorate. I applied at various universities and I got accepted at Arizona State University. After one year at Arizona State University, it was not a the right fit. And that happens in life at times. So I continued working and I was now working with the community college, Glendale Community College. And that has been a tremendous experience helping students that want to do something with their life, whether it's to get a certificate, career skills or pursue it beyond the associate's degree. So those experiences have really inspired me and always have reminded me to connect with family. Family goes beyond the members of your house or your blood relatives. It continues in your life. And that's something that keeps me connected and keeps me humble, but also grateful that I'm living this experience and I'm finding ways to continue to contribute back to our community but also to honor those that have come before us. So that's just my brief story of what family and how family connects by being Hispanic, Latino, Chicano, Mexican American, the whole gamut. So I appreciate your time. If you have questions, if we have time, I'd be happy to answer some. If not, I'll be hanging around to be with the rest of the program. Here are our wonderful panelists and our students that will be providing a wonderful presentation during the student showcase. Thank you. Thank you, Jose, very much. So our next panel will be led by Kristen Redmond. Kristen, go ahead. Thank you, Anthony. And thank you, Jose. I connected so strongly with everything that you said about family and Amelia and just the power of stories and how you overcame challenges. And I think that's so much for our community, understanding how to overcome challenges is not always visible to everybody. And so to have people talk about how they overcame whatever they were experiencing academically or professionally is really rich and really helpful to have discussions about that. So thank you. And I'm glad to hear that you're interested in joining with the panel discussion that's coming up next. We have a panel of four, five, including you as you stick around, which is related to diverse voices of the Hispanic Latinx community. And I'm just going to introduce everybody. And then we'll talk a little bit more about questions. Okay, so our first panelist is our very own Dr. Michelle Viagran. And she's an assistant professor. And but she is also an accomplished educator, as we all know, an innovative speaker, entrepreneur, consultant, and really has deep, deep expertise in cultural intelligence and diversity and inclusion, strategic initiatives. Dr. Viagran earned her Doctorate of Education and Organizational Leadership with her dissertation focusing on cultural intelligence in 2015. She also received a few awards very recently and has just been a leader in our school in the area of leadership in service and leadership in diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. I'm really proud to have her part of this panel. We also have Martin Gomez, who's president and CEO of MJ Gomez Associates, LLC, an independent consulting firm that was created to support the work of libraries and nonprofit organizations. So the focus of his firm is to help organizations renew and refine their priorities through strategic planning, organizational assessment resource, alignment, and executive recruitment and coaching. And so he just has a really deep expertise and a strong leadership background as well. I welcome you, Martin, and I'm just excited to have you here. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and received his Master's in Library Science from the University of Arizona, where he received the 2001 Outstanding Alumnus Award from the College of Behavioral Sciences. So such a rich, deep background. Next we have Max Macias, an independent award-winning librarian, author, educator, consultant, and speaker. I can't say enough about how much Max has done to support our school and to raise our visibility in the area of equity, diversity, and inclusion, so I'm so happy to welcome him. He earned his MLS from Emporia State University in 2009, and he has some special academic interests in the realm of culture and information, hip-hop and information science and teaching, cannabis and libraries, as well as teaching in general. And he's very also like all of us, so committed to family and enjoys spending free time with his wife and his three children in the Northwest. We also have Rosa Rodriguez, who is the outreach coordinator at the California State University of San Marcos University Library, and she's a first-generation college student working towards a Master of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University. She also has a Master of Arts and Sociological Practice from Cal State San Marcos, and she has a background in community outreach, library programming, event planning, bilingual services, and working with Spanish speaking communities. She's the current president of the iSchools Reforma Student and Alumni Group, which is fabulous. She's just such a leader in our program and so I'm just so happy to welcome her. She's got some fabulous things to share with us, so and of course we have Jose sticking around. Who is, by the way, I should mention a candidate or for Vice President, President-Elect in Spring 2022 for ACRL's Board of Directors. So hopefully everyone will take note of his name and again I want to thank him for the wonderful story that he shared. So welcome panelists. We've got a couple of questions relating that we thought the structure of the panel will basically be able to talk about. We'll kick around a couple of questions. I'll pose a question to the first person and then hopefully open it up to feedback from everyone who wants to chime in. And if, as time permits, hopefully we'll have some time for questions over time. Okay, so the first question is to Michelle, Dr. Michelle Viagran. And so we felt like, you know, we talk so much about identity and the way that we express our Hispanic, Latinx, Chicanox for some of us, identities and these terms. So how can we define, I can't think of anybody more qualified to define these terms, Hispanic, Latinx. Can you tell us more about those terms and how our libraries keep players and supporting the Latinx community and thinking about those identities and serving those identities in our community? Sure. Thank you, Kristen. And while this question could be a whole webinar, all day topic, a seminar in itself, but I'll give the quick 101 around these terms that will hopefully help us in considering each of these different terms. So historically, Hispanic, I'll start with Hispanic, is used to identify those whose heritage ties back to native Spanish speaking countries. If we look at the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, OED defines Hispanic as quote, Spanish speaking, especially applied to someone of Latin American descent living in the United States. And this term, Hispanic has been used officially to identify Spanish speaking people since the 1980s. Now the word in and of itself is a reminder of European colonization and the actions against indigenous peoples in Latin America. So there's some controversy in utilizing that term only alone. But now if we think about Latino or Latina, this refers to those that have ties to the Latin Americas, Central America, Latin America, Spanish Caribbean areas. And these terms actually emerged in the 90s. So pretty recent, doesn't go back further than that. But Latin X, so this is a term we're using today. It's a term that we're seeing a lot of, really embraces, I would say, the inclusivity of identification of Hispanic and Latin ethnicity, even cultural identity. And it moves away from the feminine masculine dichotomy of the Latino, Latina. So inclusivity is really the key when you think of Latin X. And it's been morphed over the years. I think Latin with the like the at symbol, Latin, that was, and it morphed into eventually the Latin with the small X, and then the Latin with the large X, where the large X, it removes that again, the restriction, I would say of the O or the A, and then offers that wider or broader perspective or even spectrum of identities. And it first appeared actually in 2004, if you look in the literature. So it's pretty recent, though, I thought there's an interesting statistic. Pure research, they did some research around looking at Latin X and Hispanic. And according to pure research, only about three to four percent say that they actually use Latin X to describe themselves. And there's been an increase if we even look at the Spanish language where L-A-T-I-N-E, Latin or Latin, which is also gender neutral. And it flows more if you're a Spanish speaker than the Latin X in speaking Spanish. Now, these again, are all identifiers or I don't like the term labels, but labels around ethnicity, around our cultural identities. And however, or no matter which term or terms you utilize, they are representations of who you are, your culture, your background, how you identify your experiences, and form a broader part of your identities and even the intersectionality that might come in with those identities. So when we're speaking about these, just these two terms, we'll say Hispanic and Latin X, they are very broad and it's a very broad community. There's diverse needs of each of the communities. So we have to take that into account. Now, Kristen, you asked about libraries and the roles they play. I have a lot to say on this, but I'll make it short. And I'm sure the panel and those attending can also contribute here further. When I was posed this question and thinking about it, I think part of our job as librarians, as faculty, as students even as parents, we're really here to help equip the next generation with the expertise, the resources that are needed to help the next generation be better, be smarter, be more culturally competent. And I think libraries play a key role here in, we'll just start with literature. Literature is a great example. So literature or library resources, databases all play a significant part here. Literature offers, again, stories we talked about right in the beginning with our keynote from Jose. Literature offers a way to open our eyes and open our minds to the world and a way for us all to learn about even complicated topics or maybe topics we don't necessarily understand or know a lot about, such as Latinx heritage or even topics on immigration. And even libraries play a key role in offering these resources for native speakers, so materials in Spanish and in other languages. So many things libraries do, offering paths to citizenship, helping, again, language support, housing. They're also key players in supporting that path to information literacy. And I think the huge role of being a, we'll say sanctuary or even a space or a place for those entering those new Americans that are coming into our communities, being that place where they can go to have the support, have the resources and feel welcomed. There is a great piece from American Libraries in 2014 that was published about strategies to reaching out to these communities and I'll put it in the chat in a moment. But we have to remember that Hispanic and Latinx communities, going back to my earlier point when talking about the terms, are very diverse in each of these communities themselves. So librarians are really trying here and are helping to close the gaps by working closely with their communities and even partnering for outreach, programming and other aspects. So I'll add that in the chat and Kristen, thank you. I'll turn it back to you. Thanks, Michelle. That's just really some lovely perspectives that you're sharing about language. And we talk so much about language in the courses that I teach about how we think about communities and how we serve them. So much starts with dignity and the dignity that we want to extend to the communities we serve and that much of that begins with language and how we leverage language in strategic ways. So I appreciate everything that you said. I know that we, with our thinking about programs and services, there's very traditional ways that libraries, if we think about the history of libraries emerging and developing over time and serving diverse communities and that a lot of what we've done over the years is people are rethinking it, how to be more strategic and relevant to community members. And so that's always at the forefront of my mind as well. Did anybody else want to chime in on any of these issues of language? There are some other terms like Latinidad and issues of solidarity in our field. I didn't know if anybody on the panel had any perspectives on that. Max, you sound like you want to jump in. I'd just like to say that can you all hear me? All right. I'd just like to say that we shouldn't neglect our indigenous heritage as well. I haven't heard much of that in this, and it's very important. It's so important that it's directly related to the whole immigration debate, right? And I think we ought to really beef up our indigenous speech about speaking about indigeneity and how that relates to the freedom of an indigenous people to migrate on their own continent. And that's very powerful. So yeah, just just that. That's all I want to say. Awesome. Beautiful talk. Beautiful stuff. Michelle, thank you. Yes, that's something that's definitely a part of my biography with having native backgrounds and how that's negotiated in terms of identity. And so you could, when somebody asks about your background, you can say so much about our identities and how they're intersecting in lots of different ways with lots of different communities and negotiating with the language around indigenous perspectives. So a native perspective is so important. Even the term Latin America, right? Like even the term Latin America takes away from indigenous America. That's why I don't really use the term Latino, because Latino to me doesn't mean from Latin America. I study Latin, right? I know where Latin comes from. And what the word means is some people who speak Latin come from Europe. So like indigenous America is what I would say. But awesome. I agree with everything you said pretty much. It's great stuff. This is, we could have a full semester just on language and how not to erase folks. Yeah. Does anybody else want to chime on some of these issues of language and the way that we talk about ourselves, which I think is so, so important? So our next question that we wanted to pose to the panel is primarily posed to Martine. And I wanted, we wanted to talk more about the challenges that libraries face and effectively serving Hispanic, Latinx communities. And so how can libraries and communities work together to help solve these challenges and problems? And so that's always something, a big issue that we that we face in the courses that we design for students. We can talk a lot about community scans and asset mapping. And but we really struggle to communicate to students those challenges and what they're going to face as new professionals. So I don't know if you can say a little bit about that. Thank you for inviting me here, Anthony. And there was a note by the way in the question and answer about the article being available through chat. I don't know if they fixed that or not, but there was a question that people couldn't see the chat. So just put that aside for a moment. You know, having had the opportunity to be in this profession for, dare I say, over 40 decades, four decades, excuse me, four decades, you know, I've had a chance to have a front row seat in many cases. In other cases, a back row seat to some of the things that have gone on. Like Jose, I spent a lot of my career in public libraries, primarily in the San Diego area. And I remember back in the day, where having been hired as the first librarian of Hispanic heritage in the San Diego Public Library, just before Prop 13 passed, there was a whole question was, how do you get Spanish books into the collection? And, you know, it was like a no brainer in my mind, because, hey, there's a place called Tijuana, it's about, you know, 15 miles away. And we went and set up a channel there. But, you know, I had the biggest struggle because the policies and the acquisitions department from the library didn't have them set up as vendors. You know, you had to be part of the vendor program. Anyway, we ended up solving that problem. But it was like those challenges then, I think, in some ways still exist. You know, but I do think in terms of immediate challenges for libraries, you know, I mean, you can't ignore the pandemic. And that's, you know, a challenge, not just to our community, but all society at this point in time. But in particular, you know, we struggle a lot just to be able to conduct effective outreach to Spanish speaking communities, to people who are young Latinos who are in school, who maybe don't have the benefit of, you know, working with using our public resources like libraries. So just reaching them on a normal situation. So that's been aggravated, of course, by the pandemic. The other thing I think is kind of a more immediate is that, you know, in some ways, a pandemic is an opportunity for us to take more risks and to reinvent some of the approaches to library service, you know, this profession, I, you know, you can slash me if you want. But I think this is a very conservative profession. And we need to be more willing to take risks in the profession. I mean, I couldn't believe when I was in Logan Heights that I had the chance to meet with a library director at that time, who we ended up getting rid of eventually, but to be able to, you know, have an audience with somebody at a high level in the organization after having just basically gotten out of library school and presenting my case about getting Spanish language materials in the library collection. But, you know, I think more often than not, we need to be able to take more risks in the profession and push the envelope. I mean, we, if we're good at what we know about ourselves and about community, we know where those community needs are. We also, you know, should be in contact with our community. And so how do we match those two things? So one of the things I thought a lot about is how we reach out to Latinx communities and the challenge for us, I think, is not just how, but with all the technology, with all the the avenues, we still struggle on how to do that. And I think that one of the big things that we need to think about doing as a library profession is getting more involved with those who set policy in our libraries, in our communities, and in particular at the state, local, and federal level. I mean, one way to do that, of course, is to get involved with the boards, to help on elections, to work for elected officials on a voluntary basis, to possibly even run for a law office yourself, to be a member of your library board. There are all, all these ways, but the policy is really where the rubber hits the road. We also need to take a look at developing new leadership initiatives. I'm proud to say that I was a member of the first generation of Glisa, that was at the University of Arizona, the Graduate Library Institute of Spanish-speaking Americans. And when you think about it, I was surprised, maybe I shouldn't have been, but at one time in California, we had three graduates from my class running some of the largest libraries in California. Luis Herrera was running the San Francisco Public Library, Jose Aponte was running the San Diego County Library, and I was running the Los Angeles Public Library. And all of this goes back, frankly, to Anu Fotrejo, Jose mentioned him earlier, who was in many ways a visionary leader in his own right. He wanted to make sure that we had opportunities in our community to be able to represent, to serve, and to provide the leadership. So, you know, the challenge I think for us, certainly, is to provide greater leadership development opportunities. We also have a responsibility to mentor the next generation of library leaders. Early in the day, as I mentioned earlier, the problems or concerns or challenges for us were about collections and, you know, library employees and workers who were bilingual, bicultural. I'm not saying we've solved that, but we've made a lot of progress. And I think the things we need to do now is really focus on mentoring the next generation of leaders, as well as developing our initiatives to higher levels of either academia or government, all those policy areas. So, you know, we're always going to have challenges, but we need leadership to be able to address those challenges. Thank you, Martín. Those are just fabulous perspectives. And so much of what you said, and I think is, reflects even just with collections, just taking collections, for example. I see hundreds of students every year. I mean, they come to me, they're excited, they want to design for diverse communities. And they start developing the tools to, you know, do these innovative things. And then I say, okay, have you done an audit of your library's collection? Tell me about the audit. And that's, you know, I want you to do that. And they go and they do their audit and they come back and they say, there's no books in my library. I want to design this beautiful guide for my communities. And there's no books. And I said, I know, I know. And so, it's still a big issue, collections, 100%, 100%. And it's still a big issue to, for communities, our leadership to recognize that we still have a long way to go. When I was early in my career, I had a chance to, and by the way, people need to give other people opportunities and chances to speak and be seen and be heard, right? So when you're in a higher level position, you know, I can't encourage people to do that more often than not. But I had that opportunity, Brooke Sheldon, a library leader back in the day, invited me to speak at a conference. And I got, you know, first, it was very nerve-wracking for me. But in the end, you know, it gave me exposure to a lot of different folks and ideas. And the, one of the folks that I met was a person who was a staff member at the Kellogg Foundation. And, you know, she said to me, you know, how can we help you? And at that time, I didn't really have a good grasp on, you know, and long story short, as she gave, I was, at the time, president of LaFoirema. And she granted us a small grant of, would seem like a lot of money to me, $15,000. And we use that money in LaFoirema to create something called the National Report Card on Library Services, to kind of speak in communities. And that publication now is, you know, probably lost. It's probably, you know, 40-some years old. And maybe we need to do something like that again. You know, I could see a foundation or the IMLS or somebody funding to kind of give us a snapshot of where are those challenges? What do we need to do next? What progress have we made? I love those ideas. It sounds like Michelle has some other perspectives, but that kind of got me excited about thinking about formal structures for auditing programs in services. So important. Go ahead, Michelle. I just wanted to respond to that to let you know, Martine, that that is in progress. We actually, there is a new Reforma National Committee, the Research Committee, and I am chairing it. So we're formulating this fall and we will start doing really researching the trends and what's been going on in our communities and hopefully producing a bi-annual report and other publications. So that is in the works and we'll have more information hopefully by next year. That's great news. Anybody else want to chime in on some of these challenges? COVID, of course, is a huge challenge. A lot of my work has been in digital equity and a lot of people are cell phone only. They don't have broadband. There's a lot of solutions out there that you can try, but if we don't have the backhaul to propagate, it's hard to create new community spaces and a lot of libraries that are under resourced, those are challenges that are remaining a lot. And so our new professionals need to be dimble if able to adapt, right? You know, I was going one of the posts that I missed in the chat box was from Jillian and from our fall, the panel that's coming up and she talked a little bit in her chat about the Filipino community also experiencing language issues. And so this is something that professionals of color, community members of color are having to negotiate and with the issue of language and identity and the expression of that in a complex culture like what we're living in. So thank you for that. So our next question is actually to Max. And we talked a lot about serving communities, but I always tell my students in the class, we not only are serving our community members, we're serving each other too. And the treatment that we give to our colleagues is so important to reflect on and to be prepared to do well. And so some of the biggest challenges facing Hispanic and Latinx information professionals is giving voice to the pushback we face and recognition as well as representation. Okay. And so in the workplace, and we've there's lots of misconceptions and assumptions people have about communities and their colleagues. And so how do you, you know, can you share some of the observations of what folks are facing professionals or anyone and what role you see that maybe some of the activism center movements might play in improving things. This is something that for those of us who have been in the field for a while, the activism that is so important and is gained in steam again, sometimes I find that it ebbs and flows. So maybe I would love to hear your perspectives on these issues. Yeah. Thank you. I feel very honored to be here. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Great question. I'm wearing this t-shirt today. Black Panther Party. You know, they tried to start up American Community College and they were thrown out. That's kind of like a metaphor for like activism and libraries and organizations to me. It's like a, yeah, same kind of thing. Like the real change comes from outside of the organizations. I don't know if you've all saw the women of color and library statement about the co-option of lack and a BIPOC work and anti-racism with no accountability and how the library industry uses anti-racism DEI as a tool for PR but doesn't really stand behind these statements and doesn't really create change. I'm talking about people with power. We have a dean here. He's a school director. He's got a lot of power. He can create some change. People need to create change. The kind of change that I'll say, Mr. Trump creates for his people. We need BIPOC leaders to create that kind of change for us. Oh, I don't want to offend people. This and that. We need to be treated like equally as human beings and we're not. And we need to say that out loud. Martin raised the point about free speech a little while ago. Librarians, they're defenders of free speech, right? But you better not say something because you won't get a job. I've been kept out of the library industry and I say industry because it's an industry because of my anti-racist work. I was doing anti-racist work before I knew it was called anti-racist work. I thought I was doing DEI work. But anyway, libraries need to get on board with creating change. They need to be pushing change. One thing that I think that libraries can do, I had some notes here. Let me get my notes. We can talk about the social media problem. It's super disturbing to me to see libraries jumping wholeheartedly into social media without being uncritical about how it's destroying our democracy, about how it's creating a platform for white supremacy. Social media is the white man's land. I say white man's land because white man's land, it's not white women's land. White women help. When I say that, I don't mean all white people, right? I hate explaining this, right? I'm talking about white races and people that don't claim racism. We grew up in the Americas. Everybody in America is racist because we grew up in a culture that's foundations are based on colorism and racism, starting from the Spaniards. Yeah, that's something that we could be doing is we could be talking about that. It's stunning to me. Information literacy doesn't take on culture. Why should I believe, here's another one. Where's the statement from ALA about critical race theory? Who's in leadership right now in ALA? Is it a white man? So, DEI, anti-racism, et cetera, without accountability is, and I know I'm in academia here, but it's bullshit. I'm sorry to say that. It's bullshit. We need to hold people accountable. I hold ALA totally accountable. They're not doing anything. Very much. There's a lot of grants. There's a lot of trainings and stuff. But guess what? Racism isn't about ignorance. Are there ignorant racists? Yeah, but racism is about power. And people don't give up the power willingly. They don't go, oh, I didn't know that we were treating black people so bad. Like, oh, we're going to give up our power or think about this one. Min, oh, it's a patriarchy. That's wrong. We're going to give up our power willingly tomorrow. Is that going to happen? No, it ain't going to happen. We need to be rational and think about this stuff in rational terms. I had something else I wanted to say. Yeah, topics like that. We need new people. I just gave a talk yesterday of Library Journal's class on anti-racism, and it was ROI, anti-racism as ROI. Academia is an incestuous gene pool. When I look at it, I go, man, the reason why there hasn't been any change is because there's a bunch of generations of college educated people with the same backgrounds, even people of color. A lot of times I meet people of color, and I'm like, hey, what's up, man? How's it going? Oh, yeah, my dad was a professor, and my dad was a librarian or whatever. My dad was a fucking heroin addict. Another thing I'd like to say is academia shouldn't isolate itself from people, right? From the people. Right now, academia's got a problem, a big problem with legitimacy. People don't believe in science and in facts. They don't believe in concepts anymore that have been proven because education's got so far away from people. Right? Anyway, that's what I'd like to say is that we need to get more real, and we need to talk about this stuff. People are suffering right now. There's people riding away in jail cells. There's people at the border suffering all over the place, and we need to talk about it. I know I have limited time, and I don't want to take up anybody else's time. I really respect this, and I just wanted to say thank you again for being able to let me speak. I think free speech is a huge deal. That's another issue in libraries. I'll say one last thing. Hate speech is not free speech, and we can't let people hide behind free speech when they have symbols that symbolize the destruction of another culture, another people, et cetera. That's a big problem in libraries too. I sound like a bad librarian or something, or like I hate libraries. I love libraries, and that's what I'm saying when I'm talking. That's what I'm saying when I'm saying, because I love libraries. Thank you. You're welcome, and thank you, Max. The perspectives that you're sharing right now are so important for people to hear, and people don't like to hear things that are pesky. They don't like to hear negativity even when it's really happening. They don't want to hear it. There's a couple of things that I found really that I connected really strongly with, and one of them is this unveiling that has to happen. People have to acknowledge the structures that are undermining justice in library work and then information work, and so that unveiling has to happen. I think that when you talked about truth and science, and things like that, that this post-truth movement that we have in our field, we don't hear a lot about how it intersects really strongly with issues of racism and the structures in our field. But I think that that dialogue needs to happen, and that some of those post-truth issues in the social media are really like corruptive to our field, and to the success of our new professionals, our existing professionals, and our communities. I appreciate you raising those issues. Did anyone else want to have any chime in on this discussion? It's really challenging. Okay, so thank you, Max. I really appreciate your comments on these issues. We need to keep the dialogues going on these challenges. So our final question is to Rosa. I mean, so you're a new professional, and we're so inspired by our students that are doing fabulous things, students like you, and you see the tensions with serving communities effectively, the tensions between treating our colleagues well and with humanity. And you were sort of part of the planning of this, and I want to make that known, that you're part of planning this event, which is I think a really fantastic thing. And so you have a unique perspective on leveraging Latinx identities, both as a student and as a new professional toward the development of rich programs and services for Hispanic communities. And so you helped us plan this event, which was fabulous. I'd like to invite you to share the infographic that you created, and to talk a little bit about that. I don't know if you can share your screen to do that. And I love this idea that you're going to exemplify libraries as leaders in the design and programs and services for Latinx, Chicanox, and Hispanic communities. So I'm excited. I think everyone's going to love what you've created here. I went ahead and put that in the chat. So hopefully everyone got it. And I'd really just like to talk a little bit more about the best practices, if I may. I have worked in a public library before working in the academic library that I work in now. And one of the things that I had the privilege and really honor to do while working for the public library is manage a bookmobile. And I don't know if anyone has really fond memories, but I know that I have fond memories of bookmobiles. And that having that experience really taught me a really good lesson was that we went out and served the community in three different locations. And even though the locations were all Spanish speaking communities, all their needs were different. And the assumption was, you know, they're going to want bilingual books. They're going to want information about these things. But in reality, all those needs were different. So after spending some time with them and getting to know the community members by one speaking in their language. So one of the things that I do really want to point out and it's a shared in the infographic is we need to make sure that we open our doors and make people feel welcome, whether it's a public library, whether it's an academic library. That's one of my big things that I do with an outreach is how can I make the students where I work with feel welcome. And when I was at the public library, that's one way that we do is engage with them, talk to them in their language, offer handouts that are both in Spanish and English. And don't assume that their needs just because they look like they speak Spanish that that's all they want. I encountered a gentleman that was from Oaxaca, who was learning how to speak Spanish at the same time as he was trying to learn English. So it wasn't just learning English that he needed. So, you know, ask questions and really make yourself available to that because I think that's one of the key things that we need to do is have those conversations in order to better serve the community. And then we can start creating these programs that are that better serve those communities. And within that stop, I found that in one community, people, the adults really wanted to focus on materials that help them with raising their kids, how to talk to teenagers. Another community really wanted to focus on, you know, how to how to become citizens, how to speak English better, you know, what are some other resources in the community that offered these language classes. Another community had just a majority of teens. So having a teenage population there really helped me learn about, you know, a different age group where I was more used to working with adults. So that's one of the things that I really wanted to point out was the importance of really making them feel welcome. Another thing that I wanted to talk about was in academics. I know people have mentioned education in these past few comments. And for me, I'm a first generation, as you mentioned earlier, Latina, Mexican. And as a first generation coming back to academics, because I actually came back in 2008 to finish my college degree. And I didn't know how to navigate academia. So working in an academic space now, I realized that creating these partnerships within the community are very essential. So we need to really learn about our own communities and start to create those relationships with those people that are coming and organizing things for students. So our library has really tried to engage with new students as well as transfer students to inform them about our library services at the resource fair. And one of the key things there was that not only did I get to talk to students, but also their parents. And coming from a Mexican background, you know, parents are very cautious about where their kids are. They want to know that their kids are safe. So the parents were able to ask, like, what happens after 10 o'clock? Are you really still open? And answering these types of questions to make them feel comfortable that their students are safe on campus was really essential for them. And then we can start providing these programs and services that we want for our students. One of the things that are shared in the infographic is, you know, creating those campus partnerships or community partnerships, because it opens up to opening up relationships with people who already serve the Hispanic Latino community, right? So then you're also informing perhaps new library patrons about the services that you have. And not only that, but it also it gives a conversation going about, you know, what kind of programs will better serve in that particular area. So that's another thing that I wanted to talk about was, you know, the importance of building those campus and community partnerships and wherever your space is. Also, Rosa, do you mind if I share my screen to show the infographic? Okay, go ahead and keep talking. I apologize for interrupting. Oh, no, no problem. I'm just going to take a little sip. Okay, let's see if I can. Sure. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I think everyone wants to see the fabulous work you've done. I wasn't able, let's see if I can make your full screen. So there are some key points, and I know some people have already mentioned these already about building collections. Some of the things that I mentioned there was assessor collection, you know, what kind of budget do you have to spend, review, some of the subject headings and public catalogs, are they accessible to the people that you're trying to actually inform them about the books you have in your collection? Ask users for their recommendations because they're the ones that are going to be checking these books out, these materials out, right? So we need to hear from them as well. And then also stay connected, you know, about new authors, new publishers, books, attend book fairs. Those are also very informative. Another key thing is having bilingual staff and retaining bilingual staff, and also offering that paid differential for bilingual skills, because that's important. You know, we don't want to undermine what they're bringing to their positions and to the community that they're serving. And encourage staff to join professional organizations that support Spanish-speaking Latinx communities and also provide professional development funding for library staff to attend. And as far as programs, creating programs that reflect the culture of the community, you know, we all live in different types of communities. We might have a larger population of people who are from, you know, Mexico City or Oaxaca or maybe Guatemala or wherever and use them to see what kind of programs that they want. You know, we're on the campus that I work for, we have a low-rider culture there. So I collaborated with the University Police Department and the Latino Center and the Latino Association of Faculty and Staff to create or to help organize the low-rider experience where we have people all the way from Arizona come and attend. So really talk about what their needs are, what they would like to see, and also build their collections with that in mind. You know, if they're interested in these type of, like, low-riders, then purchase some books on low-riders and evaluate your programs to improve them. That's always essential. How can we better improve our programs to better serve those communities? And most of all, share your success. I can't say that enough. You know, if we don't share our success, then we can't ask for more funding to support some of these programs and initiatives that we want to implement in our libraries and in our communities. And another thing too that's important is, you know, what kind of barriers are set in place in the library that are preventing us from serving our users? And one of the things that we've encountered is, you know, library cards. You know, we ask for different types of form of ID and maybe try to see how you can ask for a different type of identification, perhaps, you know, ask for something that's been mailed to their home instead of a physical ID or a passport or something else that they might have on hand versus what you typically ask for a library card. You know, what kind of barriers are we putting? And also, review your policies. You know, what kind of policies, maybe they need to be revised to make sure that they're meeting the community needs and you're not creating some of those barriers. Yeah, so that's all I have. And if anybody else wants to add anything, that would be great. This is fabulous, Rosa. We have one question in the Q&A about Adriana Poo, who I think is one of my former students. Hi, Adriana. I guess, building community is so important. Share your story and ask questions that shows your interest in them. A question, have you ever experienced imposter syndrome and how have you overcome those feelings? Absolutely. You know, I know we're limited on time, but that's something that I have experienced since the very beginning. You know, when you're trying to learn how to navigate academia, you walk into a building and you don't see someone that reflects you. So you feel a little bit uncomfortable. You know, you're like, is it okay to ask or shouldn't I know this? I'm an adult. You know, I should already have this knowledge, but in reality we don't. It actually took a professor when I was at a community college to tell me and say, hey, go to the library. They have so many resources for you because I didn't know what kind of the differences and the citations that I was needing to use for her class. And she opened my mind. I'm like, what the library is going to show me how to, you know, how to cite my sources correctly. And she's like, oh, yeah, they have tutors that have this, you know, all these resources. So, you know, having that imposter syndrome, not feeling like you don't belong. It's always in the back of my mind. And someone once told me, no matter how many initials I have behind my name, I still feel that being Mexican. No matter how many initials I have, I still can't get over that. And so I totally agree with that. It's, you know, as educated as we are, I think it's just the culture that we, that I at least I have, I speak for myself is that, you know, we are taught respect this, you know, you know, when we have undocumented families, don't ask too many questions, you know, and as we start to get older, we still feel those, we still feel those experiences. And it's hard to overcome that. Thank you, Rosa. Does anyone else want to chime in on her fabulous presentation about infographic, which I love? And it covers so much, so much important information. So, thank you. Well, I hopefully will have a little bit of time at the end for more questions for everybody. But for now, I'm going to try to move to our next panel, actually. So I want to thank everybody on this panel for the information that they shared and the good perspectives, which are rich and so helpful to everybody. So our second panel is really about expanding the discussion on best practices. And I think that the graphic is a great segue, as everybody is commenting in the chat about how wonderful the graphic is. And it's a great segue into this discussion about best practices. And so our second panel, the members are Catherine Blackmore-Race. And I'm just, I'm going, I apologize for paper shuffling, but I have these wonderful biographies that I want to share. And she's the director of and librarian of Africana, Asian American Chicano, Dr. Catherine Blackmore-Race. I apologize for fluffy enough. And Native American Study Center at SGSU King Library. And she joined SGSU in 2007. So she holds a BA in Chicano Studies and Sociology from UC Davis and has completed graduate work toward the PhD in Sociology at SUNY Binghamton. She's an SGSU alumna where she received her MLIS. She's been a personal inspiration to me because I share her work with my students almost every day of the semester. Look at what these beautiful research guides that have been created at the King Library. So I've always been excited about your work. Now I'm just happy to connect with you more. So as director of the AAA CNA, she oversees the growth development and programming of this, the collaborative space and its collections. So she's done some awesome stuff. I'm excited to see what she shares today. Another member of our panel, we have three students, Linda Dumney. He's from San Diego. More San Diego peeps. I'm a San Diego peeps. So I love to see my San Diego connections. And she has some experience running a student bookstore. She owned a business for seven years and currently works as a library clerk at the San Diego Public Library. I grew up in the, I was a library kid in the county libraries in San Diego. So I love these systems there. She graduated from University of California, San Diego with a bachelor's in anthropology and is currently an MLS student at SDSU. She's really committed to issues of equity and inclusion. And she's been doing some great work in my class. And she's going to share some big suggestions and some other information. So thank you. Jillian Mariano is another student enrolled in N5075. She works as a Filipino community organizer and aspiring public librarian hoping to sort, build and connect communities and her day to day life. And Jillian is interested in sharing information about how the Hispanic and Filipino communities have worked together in solidarity like during the 1965 dollar note grape strikes. And so that's some interesting perspectives that will come from Jillian. And finally we have Monica Roman. And she's from Southern California. She received her BA in history from Southern New Hampshire University back in 2020. So she is following a mixture of youth services and public librarianship MLS career pathways at San Jose. And she's hoping to graduate this spring. She has about eight years of experience working in libraries. And she'd like to become a children's librarian in the public library. So she also has some resources that she's going to share. I'm excited to hear her examples of innovative programs and resources. So I'm just going to set the introductions there. Extend a warm welcome to Catherine, who is our first panelist. So Catherine, do you want to jump in and share what you came to share with us today? Sure. Thank you, Kristin. And thank you, all the previous speakers. I've known Martin I think since when I started library school. He's one of the first Latino librarians that I remember hearing about. And certainly have also worked with Jose through reforma. But I mean, my mentors as librarians, and I was very fortunate in that I had a very strong Chicana, Chicano mentors as in faculty. And then also as librarians, which is, I think, interesting in that at Davis, I had Helen Moreno, and I think it's her name, I can't remember, but she she was great. I didn't use her because I felt like I could manage the library as a student, you know, navigating those sort of challenges as an undergraduate and thinking that you understood. And part what's happening in that sort of description of the imposter syndrome, which I don't really like to use, but I do or associate with. But I think, you know, we all have to go into new environments, and we all are challenged to deal with new environments, and we should never feel that we don't belong. And we have to own it, and we have to learn. So, you know, going to a university as UC Davis, having grown up, been born and raised in San Francisco. Nine months of the year, and then three months of the year I was in Mexico City, where I was with my cousins and my grandparents and extended family. I mean, I had great free more freedom in Mexico City. Why I don't know that I did in San Francisco, but but it was, you know, Davis to me was a culture shock. Davis to me was, I couldn't relate, I couldn't, I couldn't relate to my classmates who thought, you know, $50 was nothing to pay for City College. And not understanding the economic, I guess, difficulties for anybody who had $50 that could buy shoes, pay a bill. You know that, you know, college education, even at City College $50 too much. But those were conversations I was having with my, my classmates in the dorms. And, and it was, it was very hard. And like Paul said, I got into academic probation and, you know, and I struggled and and but, you know, you persevere, you know, fortunately, I never wanted to work out, you know, I never wanted to live in my parents' home. So for those desires, I got myself back into into Davis, and, and I was able to complete my, my, my education. And, and frankly, it was libraries that really helped me understand that I could be a student. And it was a fact, of course, that I took with Vicki Louise in Mexican American history, where she made us go to the Bank Roth Library at UC Berkeley. And all of a sudden, it just like, wonders opened to me. And, and I felt like, okay, this is my end, library is my end, I can do research, I can, I can, I can analyze the materials, and I can do the paper, I still might not write all that great. But I can do it, I can think. And I think that was really something that that was really important as, as an undergraduate student. But as I said, I had librarians, Chicano, Latin, Chicana and Chicano librarians, Richard Chabran, founder of the UCLA Chicano Research Center, founder of the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies, or Chicano Studies Library, and then later, Lillian Castillo Speed, and then Rafael Castro, who would later join UC Davis. And, and so I, I not only had the librarians, but I had the professors. I had, I, as an undergraduate, I had a majority Chicana faculty. And, and that is also an unbelievable statistic in many, many of my, many of my friends that I've known, who did Chicano Studies outside, and other universities often would tell me that they only had one female as an instructor. So, so I had very positive images, and very strong images. And, and I learned how to navigate academia as an undergraduate, and I paid attention. I think that's, that's the thing is that you have to pay attention. You just can't, you know, just kind of go with it. And so, so that, that to me was really, really important as an undergrad. But I think, you know, as a, and then as a graduate student, I found myself in Binghamton and where it's sort of this public Ivy League school and a lot of the inner city kids from New York City were attending Binghamton. I was on a fellowship, I wasn't having to, I wasn't required to, to TA or teach. And many of my classmates in the department were international students that had no idea about the US race, ethnic literature, nothing. And so, they would send me their students. And so I would have a conversation with them as to what, to their paper, their topic, what they wanted to do, you know, I've tried to say, let's just get the assignment done. And then I would take them down to the library, and I would show them how to find the resources. So I really love that conversation. I love that ability to work with students and love what I was, what I was teaching and how I was engaging with the students. And so I got back to San Francisco. And that's when I decided to apply to library school. And so I've been very fortunate in my academic appointments, having been at UC Santa Cruz, at Sac State, and now at San Jose State. And I think here at San Jose State, I've had the fortune to, to oversee the race ethnic collection. So it's a long name, Africana Asian American Chicano and Native American Studies Center. It's a, it's a center that originated with the, the inauguration of the Chicano Studies Research Center at San Jose. San Jose State was the first CSU to have a Mexican American Studies graduate program. And so the students wanted a library. They got the library after, after many years of struggle. These things are never created just because people want to give it to you. They, they're created because of struggle. And certainly the space that I oversee was created through struggle. And thank goodness, we had faculty and community members that advocated for the space that I now oversee. And my predecessor, Jeff Paul, who was, who was also very active in, in reforma and in community. He, he also, he was key in the, in the foundation of the work that I've been doing. So, so what have I been doing as a librarian? I suppose in, in here at San Jose State, and I'm going to, I'm going to start sharing my, my screen, because I have lots of projects and lots of things that I've been doing. And that I don't think I've, I, I think what's been so wonderful about being an academic librarian is that I've been able to, I've been able to do a lot of my interests, what sort of makes me excited with how I, what I breathe. And so there's a lot of creativity involved. I've, I've, I've been able to place my, my foundation as an academic into my work, more so than I think, I don't know where I'm just, it just, it's better than being an academic and as a, as a teaching faculty, I think, because I get the best of both worlds. I get to work with students, I get to do work with an area of work that I'm really excited about, that I'm knowledgeable. And then, you know, I get to build collections and how, how, you know, what, what can be more exciting than that. So, and of course, as Chris mentioned, I do, of course, use the finding aids. And so these are the, the lip guides that I've, one of the many lip guides that I've, I've created. And, and so there are others that these are sort of to help the materials, but that's the basic. I think in this question of community, I have been really, I've been trying to develop digital collections, because my space is not an archive, even though it's considered special collections, that I have no archive space. And so I've been trying to develop these digital collections, these community collections, because it is interesting that San Jose, actually, for its history in California, its history and its involvement in the Chicano movement is not well documented. You can talk about San Francisco, you can talk about LA, but San San Jose is completely off of the map, even though San San Jose had the largest participation membership of the American GI Forum outside of Texas. So, so you had a bunch of, you know, Chicano veterans in San Jose, who were organizing parades for the United States in September, five miles, and they were huge, they were huge parades. And, and everybody would come to San Jose. And it was, they would just be completely taking over the city of San Jose. And so there are things that, for whatever reason, it's just hasn't been documented. And so my goal has been to document San Jose, Chicano San Jose history. And so part of what I've done here is these materials, some of them are not San Jose, but they are related to San Jose. And so I've been trying to create these digital collections. And so, González was one of the, the David Sierra, he was one of the GI Forum members, he was the editor of the local GI Forum newsletter, he was the editor of the National GI Forum newsletter. And so, so it's a, it's his columns, everything he's written. And so those are items that is sort of a one of a kind. I have, I've even placed the flyers of what I've done in the center. Jose Villa was a professor here at San Jose State. He, he was long before, you know, Facebook and Twitter and everything. He, he was the chair of, of a committee that was looking into one of the police brutalities in San Jose of the Chicano here in San Jose. And it's amazing in the documentation that, of how they communicated in that work. Long before, you know, you know, Black Lives Matter, but it's all related. I mean, it's, it's an amazing work of what, what they've done. And so there's other work that I've been doing and trying to document. The work. Currently, I have this project called Before Silicon Valley. And so I'm working with Professor Margo McBain and an oral history scholar Suzanne Guerra and we're, they, they, those two have this rich history of oral histories of cannery workers in the Santa Clara Valley. And also the, the, the night, night clothes, the music. So they've interviewed the, the bands, the musicians and all that. So I have, I've seen their work. I've known their work for a long, long time. And so we were able to get a $200,000 grant from Santa Clara, Santa Clara Historical grant. And so we're, we're doing more interviews. We're developing the Gilroy certain worker canneries interviews. And so we're scanning new materials. And so this is a project that I've been doing currently with Margo and Suzanne. One of the items that I've been doing here, part in, in, because we did the shelter in place. And then on top of the Black Lives Matter movement was the Spartan quest. And, and we, we looked at the, the monuments that San Jose, the university has. And so the, the, the monuments we have in the university work are all student funded, not university administration. And in many cases, even, even the, the athletics, you know, the Smith and Carlos statues. Smith and Carlos were not fondly appreciated by the administration. And so, so until, you know, many years later, the administration discovered that, oh, it could be fundraising effort. And so they've now embraced Smith and Carlos. And so we, in this effort with some, with colleagues from, from here, from the library, and then my advisory board from the center, we, we looked at monuments and also local monuments that speak to the community. And so that's something you may be, I have the links, I'll paste the links to these pages that I'm referring to, so that if you'd like to, to go on your own. Other activities, I've hosted the Latino Comics Expo here at San Jose State. And, and, and it was the first time that the, that the Latino Comics Expo was done at a university, usually they're done, they've been hosted at San Francisco and in the Comics Museum. I got involved in looking at comics because you were starting to see Kickstarter, so from minority individuals, right? So it wasn't the Marvel, it wasn't the, it wasn't the sort of, you know, high profile comments of Superman and Batman and all that, but I was, we're starting to see Chicano Latino characters. And, and they were, the artists were doing Kickstarter projects. And so I really thought there was something very important. I also got to, I've known of Frederick Aldama who is like the Latinx Comics Professor in, in, in the States, right? And, and so there, I was mixing in the popular culture with the academic. And so that was something that, again, that I've, I've been trying to do in my, my own activities. So the other last year, two years ago, I guess, two years ago, I collaborated with the Public Library because this is a joint library with the public and the university. And really, it was the Public Library, the California Room, Stella Inda, who made the effort to, to do this exhibit. The founder of Lowrider Magazine was a student here at San Jose City. You know, there's a sort of information that, that, you know, that is not shared in Lowrider again at San Francisco LA. But San Jose and the conversation, San, San Jose was key to, to having, you know, made the magazine and was founded here. There were very unique styles of, of the cars and the electronics, the hydraulics. So the founder to discover the maker of the hydraulics is, is from San Jose. And so there's, there's such an impact of the, of what has not been documented. And so that, again, is part of the things that I've been doing. So currently, what I'm, I'm sort of trying to do now is I'm looking at the Day of the Dead. It's that season. We do a very elaborate exhibit up on the, on the floor. We, I transform the, the academic space into really a whole sort of gallery of things. I don't, I don't have sort of cater, I'm not a museum person, but, you know, I've learned. And so, so there's quite a bit that, that, you know, that I've been able to do in changing the library into, into this really welcoming, welcoming space. And so it's something that we did as part of the, the, in the pandemic. We, we created an online virtual reality exhibit of the altars. And, and so this is our first attempt we, we, we, and so if you just want to get around here, we created this, this world and, and I don't know if you're, you might get here. We created this, this sort of space for the altars. And, and it's actually comes from the, the old Villa, the Mexican, the Mexico City Villa. And so it's the, the, the colleague that created the space for us took a part of the, of the structure, the old, the old structure and created this, this sort of alleyway of the, for the altars. We took pictures, we created the 3D images. And so this is that, that product. So, so there's a lot that I've done as an academic, as an academic librarian. I do want to mention that part of my own academic involvement, although I am part of Reforma, BPLG, a bibliotecas para la gente was, you know, one of the, I still remember my first meeting in that, but I've always been part of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies. And so that's been very key. The other organization that I'm, I'm now as a, as a, a scholar. I forget what they, they call it. Scholars Council is the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute. And so, so I'm the only librarian in this, this great Council scholars. And so that's really, really exciting to, to be part of that. And I'm, I'm fortunate to really know all of these individuals. And so it's, it's being a part of the Chicana, Chicano Studies circle has been key in the work that I've been doing and what I continue to do. So I think that is enough for now. So thank you. This is fabulous, Catherine. Michelle, I'm going to transition the next components to you. Okay, so next up we have, and the order might have changed a little bit, but I know we're all here. So thank you, Catherine. That was amazing. I'm going to reach out to you because I have lots of ideas and questions. So I'll be in touch. But our next individual, Linda, Linda Damme, will be speaking about book suggestions, as well as points to think about related to developing Spanish speaking collections. So beyond books, thinking about art, holiday, LGBTQIA plus representation on other aspects. So Linda, I'll turn it over to you. Hey, everyone. My name is Linda. I live in San Diego, California. And I currently work as a clerk for San Diego Public Library. I'm part of the EDI committee at the library, trying to make policy changes and programming and provide trainings for employees to make things more equitable for staff and patrons and the public that we deal with every day. So here's my presentation. Some of it's a repeat of a little bit of the stuff Max said, a little bit of stuff Rosa said. I'm sorry if it seems very like elementary, but I wasn't sure like the experience level of the people that are here and what sort of programming they've done, and if they've worked with like how much sort of theory they've gotten into. So here's my presentation. Can you guys see the screen? Yes. Yes, it looks great. And I hope this is working. So I just wanted to talk about doing a collections assessment. I want to encourage everyone to use nontraditional ways to assess your collection. I talked to some of our support staff when I was making this presentation. I talked to security and some of our janitorial staff who happen to be Mexican. Just asking what they felt our collection was lacking and if they use the Public Library, if they read books in Spanish, what would they would like to see in our collection? And they told me that they noticed there was a lack of diversity in adult Spanish books. So there's tons of books for children of all ages. But once you got to the adult Spanish sections, it kind of narrowed out in topics. A lot of it is religious or health-related books. And there are some novels, of course, and there is some nonfiction, but it's not a first study of topics. So if somebody is a native Spanish speaker and is looking for maybe mental health resources or things like that, they can't find what they're looking for. One suggestion by listening to the panel that I thought about suggesting to our EDI committee is putting our book request form that's on our website and other languages, not just English, so that people who are not native speakers can request books. Also, don't assume that you know what the Spanish speakers in your area want or need. It's going to change depending on what country they're from. If you're from Spain, you speak a different form of Spanish than someone from Mexico or from other Latin American countries. And then they're similar to the border, the demographics of the area, whether they're refugees, whether there's an immersion school. So I happen to work at a branch that is near an immersion school. So the kids are actually learning 90% of the day in Spanish and probably they take English classes. So even though they might not be a Hispanic heritage, they are needing a diverse set of books, probably more than most other libraries. Spanish speakers are not a monolith, so make sure to include resources and books that are from varying perspectives in countries, not just the countries closest to you. So we happened to be near Mexico. There is a lot of programming for Mexican people in books, but there's also people from Cuba, from Haiti, from Spain, over Latin America, and they have their own unique perspectives, their own unique cultures, and that should all be recognized. And then also, I happen to work with a bookseller, and booksellers and bookstores can be great resources if you're struggling to find new titles for your collections. Talk to some of the booksellers in your area. They tend to have a better pulse on the newest titles and the new authors and local authors in your area. Okay, so our library made this great resource. They had an idea, resources for new San Diegans, because we tend to get a lot of refugees in San Diego. And this does have a lot of really good information, but it's all in Spanish. I mean, it's all in English. It would be nice if we offered it in other languages for the populations that we're trying to help. Sorry, guys, I'm really nervous. Okay, so I also think it's important to provide books in English and in Spanish that show characters or show people in the books that are not just white and are diverse and have different backgrounds. I learned some stuff while making this presentation. I did not know about the Lemon Grove incident that happened in Lemon Grove, San Diego in the 1930s. It was an attempt to segregate schools so that Mexican students had a separate school, then the white students in the area went before it was not segregated. And the students and their parents decided to boycott the Lemon Grove school districts and through the help of the Mexican consulate and the legal case successfully, I don't know what the word is, they were successful in proving that it was not fair to segregate Mexican students from white students and that they were not going to get the same sort of education that they would if the schools were segregated. So they basically stopped desegregation in California and I think probably the rest of the U.S. for Mexican students. And also it's important to have role models for students that are shown that these two books are a Mexican American astronaut. And he wrote the books himself. So they're in his own words. And there's two different versions of the book. It's almost the same title, one's the boy who touched the stars, one's the boy who saw the stars, I think. But I thought that was nice. And it's interesting that it's the same title, but two different books, they're different stories when I look inside. I don't know how to go back. This is Xochitl in the flowers. It talks about a girl who's from, I forget where she's from, but it's not Mexico. It's from somewhere in Latin America and her parents immigrated to the U.S. They're struggling to make a living in the U.S. So this is something that children who live in border areas have probably deal with and can connect to. This book's really cool. The author is from Mexico City and the book incorporates traditional Aztec and Mayan style art. So the little like squirrels that are coming out of the conch shell, that's the speech squirrel that's used in Latin American art. The book, we are the water protectors that didn't want to leave out Native American resources that's written and illustrated by Native Americans. And then the Aztec account of the conquest of New Mexico is written by someone who's Mexican. I also featured a few local authors. Matt de La Peña is half Mexican and this book seems semi-autographical. And Victor Villasenor, it's a magical realism. And I also wanted to encourage everyone to use to include LGBTQ representation, not just during LGBTQ month. I know everybody knows about Frida Kahlo, but there are other important Latin American LGBTQ icons. And then going beyond books, take time to learn about the cultures that you're trying to meet their needs. It kind of made this, it can be applied to any culture. So I'm not, I'm not Latinx, I'm actually Middle Eastern, but there's not many books like showing my experience. So go beyond novelists in the ALA to include things like art, movies, cooking classes, if you can. We started, I started a virtual cooking series while we were closed down during the pandemic called Cooking Around the World and different staff members shared recipes from their homes that they grew up with as a way to connect with patrons even while we were closed. So you could also partner with local organizations. In San Diego, we're lucky there are, there are Kumiay classes and Nahuatl classes that you can take if you want to connect to your heritage that way. And then there are also festival and holidays. Everybody knows about Dia de los Muertos, but we also celebrate Dia de los Niños at our at our work. There's also Mexican Mother's Day. And then Mexican Independence Day is actually a important holiday, not Cinco de Mayo, which is gets celebrated a lot. And also if you have performance spaces or you can partner with local theaters or Danza or Folkloreical performances, it's a great way for patrons to learn more about different cultures or to connect with their own. So here's some cookbooks that we have in our ebook. We have it in person too. A book on Danza and some pictures of us, Tega dancing and Folkloreical. And then some DVDs, nonfiction and fiction. Don't forget to include Latin American music in your collections and movies. And then don't forget about e-services. I haven't heard anybody really mentioning e-services, but one thing that's nice about them is that you can choose the language that your computer or phone or whatever is showing you. So it's a little bit more of an accessible way for people to navigate and find resources that they have in their local collections. So we have something called Canopy at the library. That's for documentaries and TV shows. And then we also have, we use Cloud Library for e-books and audio books. And that's a really good training from info people if anybody's interested in learning on how to be more inclusive in their readers' advisory. Okay, thank you. Linda, that was fabulous. And you did a wonderful job. You had a lot of support. We're all here to support you. So I really appreciate you sharing and all the fabulous things that are being done in San Diego. And I know you guys collaborate like the San Diego, the Law Library and other organizations. So I think the main thing I got from yours was knowing your community. It goes back to who are the communities that are in your neighborhoods around you that might be migrating in and how they might be changing. So really understanding their needs and then pivoting and ensuring diversity of languages, diversity of resources, different modes. And you guys have done a fabulous job. So thank you for sharing. I think, I know that we have two more student presenters. So I'm going to pass it on to the next one to a quick intro. And then I know there's a few questions and hopefully we can get to those at the end. But now I'm going to transition to Jillian, Jillian Mariano, who will be sharing about how the Hispanic and Filipino communities have worked together in solidarity. Jillian. Hi. Thank you so much for having me on. Now all of a sudden I'm super duper nervous. But yeah, I guess I'll just start at the beginning. So I grew up in the Central Valley in a predominantly Hispanic and Latino community. My family was one of the only Filipino families in the area. And you know, we all kind of like knew each other. We were like practically blood related. So basically before the Walmart was built in my hometown, it was of course a mostly farm working community, which is another issue. Of course, the community is still very heavily like agricultural, ringed with like orchards and fields, but definitely the suburban creep is happening. And you know, I didn't know it at the time, but growing up, a lot of my classmates' parents worked in the fields. And it was one of those places where people sort of sold like flowers and fruit and jam on the side of the road. And so my grandfather, before he was sponsored to come here to the United States, was a lawyer for farmers in the Philippines. And then came over here to the United States and became a farm worker himself and was like a lead on the fields, you know, right by other Filipinos and other Mexican folks in the field. Anyways, all that is to say is that I had no idea, even though it was all around me, all of the clues about the solidarity between Latinos and Filipinos during the 1965 Delano Grape Street. Of course, I knew about like Cesar Chavez and all of that during, you know, elementary school, but it wasn't really like mine. And I didn't know about Larry Itlion and Philip Berkuze and other Filipino farm worker leaders until I went to UC Davis and studied Asian American studies. And my friend from the local Filipino Social Club was like, Oh, yeah, I have this internship opportunity. Have you heard of like Cesar Chavez? And I was like, Yes, of course, I've heard of Cesar Chavez. But have you heard of like Larry Itlion? I had no idea what she was talking about. So I did the internship because I really wanted to know and uncover sort of this secret-ish side of like my history. The internship itself was a little wild. Apparently, it was created by this local woman who sort of only did it because she didn't pay some of like her water bills. And the town was going to, anyways, she was amazing. My friend was amazing. And I learned a lot about how the community sort of like came together and worked together to make all of these incredible changes and really gained dignity and respect for the farm worker community who are like so important to California and also to just life itself because we can't live without food. And so that really inspired me to go on to next summer and get involved with what is now known as Project Bulosan. I met my mentor at UC Davis, Professor Robin Rodriguez, who introduced me to like the League of Filipino Students, which I joined later on when I graduated from college. But anyways, so I worked with her on Project Bulosan. I didn't really do sort of the archival work, but I was like on the field, getting hotel rooms and like chasing down old farm workers to have her interview them and be like, oh, who are you again? I'm Jillian. But so yeah, and anyways, that's all kind of what led me here to the iSchool and what has started me on my path towards public librarianship. And oh my gosh, my program was not as cool as everybody else's. But thank you. That's all. Jillian, I think it was cool as everyone else's. That was great you sharing. And I think the importance of, I would say all of the identities, we each have so many identities and the intersectionality between them and how we can, I would say rise up, how we can support each other, connect in solidarity and be stronger together. And then that leads to even having stronger leadership, being better advocates and even being better at advocacy. So I really appreciate you sharing the story and your experiences. Thank you. So let's transition to our next student panelist. Monica Roman is going to speak with us about her library's passive program called Dial a Story, where children can hear a free and fun story in Spanish and English. And I will turn it over to Monica. Hi. I hope everyone can hear me. I have my earphones in so it sounds muffled. But basically my library received this program through the California Library Association, a bunch of our staff entered into a raffle. So that's how we received this. I should mention I work at the Whittier Public Library in California. Whittier is a very, very predominantly Hispanic community. I had to do a scan of our community recently for Kristen's class actually. And I found out our Hispanic community is way huge or way larger than I thought. So according to the data USA, we're at 67.3% Hispanic community. That's quite large. So what the program is, it's basically what it sounds like. It's Dial a Story. There's a phone number available. And I'll share my screen. I just have notes up so I don't want you guys to see my notes. So it looks like I'm prepared. But I'll share that at the end because it has a phone number. So basically you'll be prompted to either press one for English or two for Spanish. And the introduction record is actually by our library manager. Her name is Yvonne Ariola. She's actually a Reforma LA member. So she does like the intro. And then our children's librarian Robin will say like, Hi, my name's Robin. Go ahead and like take a seat and get comfy because the story's about to start. And it's really, really cool. The stories change weekly too. So this week, it's actually Rumpelstiltskin by the Brothers Grimm. And the narration is pretty fantastic. The narrator changes her voice very creepily when she's reading Rumpelstiltskin. And she sings like the little creepy song that he sings. And I had it on speaker and it kind of freaked out my husband. He's like, What are you listening to? It's like, It's for school. Don't worry. So it's very, very fun story. It kind of reminds me not that I was like alive when this happened, but my grandparents are very, very big on like radio stories. So I think this is kind of like throwing it back to that day when you would just like tune into the radio. And then you would listen to a story like the whole war of the world and people thought like the world was dying when it wasn't it was just like a story. So it's kind of throwback to that. And the story changes weekly too. So you can call it any day, any time from any phone and the story changes weekly. All together the phone call lasted around eight minutes after like prompting English or Spanish. And like Kristen had mentioned earlier, COVID has been a considerable challenge for public libraries all across the board. And a lot of story times had to transition from in person to like YouTube or Facebook live or Instagram live. But like Rosa's graphic pointed out, some Hispanic communities face like technology barriers. They don't have access to the internet. They don't have computers, but more than likely they have a phone. And it's a free number. It's not charging you by the minutes or anything. So if your kid is like, especially children, they love to hear the same story over and over again. So you could just easily hit redial and then press the same buttons and just play the story over. So yeah, that's the program that I wanted to share. And then I'll share my screen so you can see the phone number itself, because now I'm done speaking. So you won't have to see my notes. So that's it. That's a little like infographic for the program. And the phone number is bolded here. And then like I said, you can call any day, anytime, any phone, it doesn't have to be like a landline, it could be a cell phone. And I just think it's a really great program. And that it's, it's a very nice way, especially for patrons who are still sort of wary. We do have outdoor story time, but I know people are still a little cautious about coming back to the library, which is understandable. So this is a great way for them to still get story time, if they can't make it to the library, or if they don't have the means to watch it online, because they don't have internet. Yeah. So that's my presentation. I talked really fast because I was nervous, but that's all I really have to say. Monica, that was great. And I put it in the chat. So if anybody wants to call the phone number and listen to one of the stories, I'm going to call. I think that's really cool. I wanted to ask one question real quickly. How are the stories determined? Like who is there? Or is there like a list you have? I'm not sure. I was trying to get more information from our library manager. It sounds like CLA is the person that is giving us the actual narration of the stories. It's just library staff that's doing like the introduction and then letting them to know, like, please call back next week for a new story. But it sounds like the stories and the narrations themselves are provided through CLA. For those that don't know, CLA is the California Library Association. I might not have said that. So yeah. Thank you, Monica. I know we're at the top of the hour. Kristen, do we have a few minutes to entertain some questions that came in? I do. I have time to state. I think that we lost some people. We lost a few people along the way, but we still have 94 people. And there are some questions in the Q&A. And I'm okay to push it ahead. I do want to thank the panelists that had to leave early because they have other meetings. I know Martine had somewhere where he needed to go. And Jose has to leave soon. So if anyone has a question for Jose, maybe we should do that before he has to leave. I just want to thank you again, Jose, and remind everyone about ACRL's election, of which he is a candidate. And so we don't talk about endorsements or anything like that. We just mentioned it's happening. It's an election. He is a candidate for 2022 president-elect president. So this is exciting time for Jose. And I'm not sure I see a question for Jose right now. But I don't know if you want to take the micro briefly, Jose. I know you have to leave here in a second. Well, yes. I just want to thank everyone. This has been a true dynamic webinar. And I thank Max for inspiring us to be that change. And he's provided enough arsenal in my mind right now that I will be in touch with you, Max, in the near future to talk about other things. I want to thank all of you. This has been fantastic. Thank you for the opportunity to share my story, but also to listen to your stories. All of you are doing wonderful things. And enjoy your weekend. Take care. Thank you, Jose. Thank you. Should we take... I know there's three questions I say. Should we take the one in the chat? There's been a little dialogue around. The one about statistics. Yeah. You know, I think how's that Arizona too bad Jose has to leave. But I thought Arizona State had been a leader with developing some of these strategies for understanding relationships between population sizes and collection building. But I bet there's others here that know more than I do. Let me read the question too for those. And it'll be on the recording. Does anyone have a formula they use to determine the size of their Spanish language collections? Do you generally look at the percentage of the community that's Spanish speaking based on census or other data and try to mirror that percentage? Or do you determine how do you determine these sizes? So I know there were a few responses. I'm scrolling through the chat. I know in a lot of libraries it's completely ad hoc. Yeah. Or maybe based on a needs assessment and what they determine based on their community and how large their communities are. I am aware of some work done by Drexel and by the Arizona State library in this area. I need to read up on it again. I don't think that they came up with an actual formula though. It was more about the steps that you should take to determine what and how much growth you need. Yeah. And I probably depend too. And I think I saw this in the chat about budget. So of course budget and the size of your buildings, not just community demographics. So if you don't have the space or maybe transitioning to the electronic and knowing you might be able to get more in electronic databases or ebooks versus in physical space. And yes, I'll try to share. Maybe when we post the recording, we'll be able to add a few background information resources so that we can share that information. I think that would be great to help address this. It's a big question and we'll have to see what's out there. I mean, if you're going to ask your organization to build in the collection area, they're just going to say no unless you have a good rationale for why it should happen. I think there were a couple of other questions, right? One was for Catherine, but maybe we let's see if it was already in there. I think it's addressed, but we can certainly read it for the recording and then Catherine's response. Oh, okay. I think it was about connecting with special collections. And it sounds like you already answered that, Catherine. Yeah, so I'm in a sort of odd space in that the space was never supposed to have archives. And then I think we all know the relationships of minority groups and university special collections and whether these materials get processed or not. There are collections that I know that are in Stanford like the Dr. Ernesto Galarca materials that he has a relationship. He was part of San Jose State. We have a very strong Galarca scholarship here at San Jose State that those materials at Stanford continue not to be processed. And so there's a lot of critique about special collections via the more minority collections. And the CSUs were never supposed to be special collections. That was UC, right? So when the CSUs started special collections, it was always, of course, collecting either the white faculty collections or the collections and archives of people in the community that had access and of some monetary value. Minority collections were not in that sort of space. So I've, because my space does not have archive space, I have had to work as a broker to send collections, special collections of the university or to the public library, which is great for this institution since both of them are here in one building. So I've had to collaborate with both public library and the university, depending on the interest and sort of focus. So and then there are things that I've been, I've tried to do in the digital format because that's how I've used like scholar works and the debase. So I've had to figure out what I can do within the technology that is in the library utilizing technology in the light, not technology I've had to ask for, but rather what the university, the library has made available. So I've re-envisioned some of this technology to be able to do some of the things that I've been wanting to do. So it's taken a little creativity, re-imagining, some vision. And of course, I think given that my space was part of struggle development, I kind of think that in my previous things never thought that the space would continue, that there would somehow there would be an end to this. And then so why develop it? Why create that kind of space for this space? So that certainly has taken some determination to continue and again to really bring the library's leadership, administration into my own vision and efforts and goals to be accepted and also to bring the special collection directories into the conversation. So it hasn't been always easy. We're not always on the same line, but it's not deterred me. Thank you, Catherine. I know there was a question for Monica and Monica addressed it in the chat about the telecuanto and if statistics are kept for that program and the response was it wasn't sure, but if we track ourselves or if it's through CLA, but Monica will definitely check with the library manager to find out for sure. I think there was one more question for Jillian about access to listening to the recordings of some of these oral histories. And I don't know. Oh, I was trying to find it in the digital archive, but I can definitely get back in touch with Professor Giz and also Jason Sarmiento to see if they still have it. It was like one of the things that we worked on. I just wanted to mention how happy I was to hear about the connections between the Filipino community and Mexican community and that allies, I think this has come through in all the presentations and all the talks is the importance of allies, the importance of mentoring and people that support each other. I also want to throw a little shout out to Lupino American Heritage Month, which is in October. I guess our next talk should be on that. I would love that. Kristen, should we do a quick just closing remarks around, I know we want to talk about some of the upcoming events. Yeah, let's do that. Did you want me to start? Yeah, that would be wonderful. So for those that many of you know, Reforma have heard the name certainly today at the symposium, but for those that don't know that Reforma is the National Association to support Latino and Spanish-speaking communities and you don't need to identify as any of the terms we utilize today, but as long as you support those communities, and I encourage you to join, but I want to let you know that the National Conference is coming up. It's a National Conference 7. It will be virtual. It's November 4th through the 7th and it's almost a combo. We are the change, so I encourage you to register, attend if you can. I'll put the link in the chat. And then also, I would like to mention our next upcoming webinar. We just confirmed it all on October 29th at 10 a.m. Pacific, 11 a.m. Mountain, 12 Central, etc. We'll be having a webinar from Denver Public Library. The Reforma president Nicanor Diaz and one of his colleagues, Nadia, will be speaking about really about collaborations and the successes they've had during Hispanic Heritage Month and the importance of these collaborations and best practices in developing programming around Hispanic Heritage Month. So we'll be sending out information on listservs and social media, so stay tuned for that webinar. As well as there's one on November 9th around humble leadership and humble practice, which can go beyond our profession or even our industry, and this is a speaker from UNLV in Las Vegas, Nevada, a medical librarian that will be speaking about humble practice and what that means related to our profession. So stay tuned for those two next upcoming events. That sounds fabulous, Michelle. Thank you for sharing those. I also just want to say thank you to every single panel member and our keynote and everyone who joined us today and stuck with us over time. 62 of you are out there. I can see you. So thank you for joining us today. It really helps us to build our community within the iSchool and do more of that. So thank you to everyone and I hope we can do more of this stuff. All right, so I guess this is our first Hispanic Heritage Month event, which is now closing. But thanks again, we'll be sharing some links to resources and links to the recording and we'll make an announcement once we do that so that it's something that's shareable to our community's external to the iSchool and SDSU. So take care, everyone, and thank you again.