As I am new to the library profession and therefore lacking in experience, I believe my greatest strength is that I am open to new ideas and looking for what is on the horizon.  I was intrigued to read about Messina’s idea of a Full Stack Employee (Stephens, 2016). I hope to be the type of librarian that has an appetite for new ideas and best practices, who will be curious, looking for ways to be more productive and happier, and wanting to make my mark.

 

The new horizon in librarianship is the technology at our fingertips. I think there was a time that we all believed that it was technology that would lead us to a better future where we are all connected, but the reality is that we brought our flaws with us on to the internet. In What World Are We Building?, we are confronted with our early visions of tech utopia. “In the late 90s, the hype around the Internet became bubbalicious, and it started to be painfully clear to me that economic agendas could shape technology in powerful ways” (Boyd, 2016). Boyd had an early notion, of what many of us have only realized decades later, that racism, sexism, and all the other isms are built into our data, so that data feeds models that become racist, sexist, etc.  

One example of this was Grok, Musk’s AI model, began referring to itself as “MechaHitler” and suggesting the Holocaust was a solution to dealing with “anti-white hate” (The Grok chatbot spewed racist and antisemitic content : NPR). This is a clear example of what Boyd described as “unchecked, new tools are almost always empowering to the privileged at the expense of those who are not” (2016).

 

Our challenge as librarians is to make connections, leveraging the power of technology, while resourcing our communities with information literacy. The technology is already in our hands, we need to work toward inclusive communities “by casting light on blind spots, advocating, opening people’s eyes, giving them tools to work with hidden biases, trying to understand the structures we are living in, put things into action and really start to dance with people who don’t look like ourself” (Do you want to dance? Inclusion and belonging in libraries and beyond, Lauersen, 2018).