Last week, Shavonn, Margaret and I attended the 2023 Association of College & Research Libraries Annual Conference. Discussions about remote learning, social justice, and sustainable work-life balance centered around the theme “Forging the Future.”

Our poster, “Indigenous Knowledge Organization: A Practice in Co-Creation of Methodologies, Relationships, Vocabularies, and Values,” invited attendees to imagine a future reality where professional norms are embracing, safe, and responsive to local communities. We believe that our work to co-create an Indigenous knowledge organization system, with a focus on Indigenous Hawaiian communities, takes us one step closer to such a reality. To view a .pdf of our poster, visit: https://www.hawaii.edu/kawaihapai/acrl-2023-poster/.

With this poster, we focused on our co-creation methodology and processes, while also sharing preliminary outcomes, vocabularies, and workflows. We hoped that our ACRL colleagues would walk away from our poster feeling empowered to:

• Critique social injustices and inequities in mainstream information systems in order to contribute to a professional culture that better aligns with the values, protocols, and languages of local communities
• Review a methodology for the co-creation of an Indigenous knowledge organization system – one grounded in the authority of Indigenous worldviews – in order to evaluate its potential application in other contexts
• Discuss iterative, imaginative approaches to description and organization work in order to formulate tools and strategies to increase and improve the intellectual access points available to underrepresented communities

Mahalo to those who stopped by our poster to chat about all things Indigenous knowledge systems, knowledge organization, and description! While our context is specific to Native Hawaiian worldviews and communities, we recognize the many parallels of our work to that of other under-represented and under-supported communities. It was inspiring to hear from folks about their work to support more equitable futures. For example, both the opening keynote from Rebecca Nagle and the closing keynote from Heather McGhee highlighted how social justice work can benefit all of us, not just those whose voices need to be heard. I was also really grateful to meet Dr. ‘Ilaheva Tua’one, the inaugural endowed Professor of Storytelling at the Kraemer Family Library at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Retelling our stories and reclaiming our narratives are such powerful tools for transformation and liberation.

Consequently, I left ACRL 2023 with a renewed and heightened sense of significance for our final project documentation, its form, content, and function. We could have done a 3-hour workshop about our methodology and processes – there’s just so much to talk about, and squeezing all of it into a 45-minute poster presentation was challenging! But maybe that’s the point: for the poster to be a springboard to future conversations. I’m excited to start brainstorming about what the future reflections of our project will look like.

P.S. check-out the ACRL 2023 Wrap-Up Video. You might see some familiar faces flexing their cornhole skills around the 2:47 mark 😉