Librarians build collections of books that are inclusive of diverse topics and voices (Stephens, 2019). Representation matters. It is important to see yourself in a story, and I think local history collections are great ways to help people connect with local stories and people in their own communities. At my library, we have several books in our local history collection that are written by former students and staff. These books are mainly self-published and not available in other libraries. We include them in our collection because they are of local interest, and it is valuable for our students to see what their peers have done. When I catalog these books, I add a marc field note that indicates it is an alumni or faculty authored book. This enhances discoverability and helps to amplify these authors\u2019 voices.<\/p>\n
My library also houses our college\u2019s archival collections. Again, the work library staff do here to preserve college history and make it easily accessible helps to connect the community to its own stories. I love to help with genealogy research requests and connect people to their own stories through their relatives who have worked or attended school at our college. In our digital archival collections, the yearbooks are usually the most viewed artifacts. People like searching for and finding personal connections.<\/p>\n
Sharing Stories: Library Programs and Displays<\/strong><\/p>\n My college library also has several initiatives that help to share stories within the community. For example, we have a virtual bilingual story time. Children\u2019s stories representing diverse voices from community populations are selected. The library also provides students with a bag containing supplies for a craft and a snack related to the culture in the story. Students watch the story time and do the activities at home with their children. We also create several archival displays every year to put in the library or at various campus-wide events. These archival displays help the campus community learn about its own stories and history.<\/p>\n One new initiative is to record testimonials from our former Justice Involved students. (Justice Involved students are students who are incarcerated at the time they are taking classes.) Feedback we heard from several of these students was that it is hard for them to imagine themselves having a life and being successful outside of incarceration. So, by having former students share their stories, the Justice Involved students can see this is possible.<\/p>\n Making Stories: Library Equipment and Spaces<\/strong><\/p>\n Voice recorder (own photo)<\/em><\/p>\n The library circulates equipment that can be used to record oral histories or podcasts. We check out voice recorders, microphones, and camcorders. The library also has soundproof study rooms that can be used as a place to make and record stories. Admittedly, this equipment is not often used. This module has got me thinking about programming ideas that would promote the recording and sharing of stores for the benefit of the whole campus community. (An oral history archive project would be lots of fun!)<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Stephens, M. (2019). Telling Stories. In\u00a0Wholehearted librarianship: Finding hope, inspiration, and balance<\/em>\u00a0(pp. 91-93). ALA Editions.<\/p>\n Wentz, E. (2013, April 26). The human library: Sharing the community with itself. Public Libraries Online<\/em>. https:\/\/publiclibrariesonline.org\/2013\/04\/human_librar\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The thought that has most stuck with me from the storytelling module is this quote from the Wentz (2013) article: the \u201clibrary shares the community with itself.\u201d I love this idea! We have read throughout this class that the library is a place of community and connection. If the library can use storytelling to further … Continue reading The Power of Storytelling Reflection \u2013 Storytelling in the Academic Library<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":841,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-info-287"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/841"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"voice](\"http:\/\/287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu\/pieceofmind\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/567\/2026\/07\/voice-recorder-cropped-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\n