Interview by Rob Green, Editor, Information Professional
18 May 2022
As Higher Education looks at how to decolonise curricula, Regina Everitt and Jess Crilly – editors of Facet’s Narrative Expansions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic Libraries look at how decolonisation is being enacted in libraries in various contexts and places. In this Q&A they show how the picture is changing as the decolonisation movement continues to gain support, and ask how to make sure momentum is not lost.
Can you introduce yourself? Both professionally, and in terms of your role with Narrative Expansions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic Libraries?
RE: I am Regina Everitt, Assistant Chief Operating Officer (ACOO) (Service Excellence) and Director of Library, Archives and Learning Services (LALS) at University of East London. I have strategic leadership responsibility for delivering services that meet the learning, teaching and research needs of our institution, community and collaborative partner stakeholders. I am also lead for the cross-institution customer experience strategy. So, that’s the day job!
As one of four black or brown global ethnic majority (GEM) Directors and Assistant -Directors of academic libraries in the UK, that I am aware of, I am committed to developing more GEM staff to leadership positions in the HE sector to better represent the diverse stakeholders at our institutions. When I was appointed as Director, I was the only black or brown GEM that I was aware of, so four is a great improvement!
So, how does that link with Narrative Expansions? Well, in the introduction, we reference Keele University’s Manifesto for Decolonising the Curriculum to unpack the term ‘decolonisation’:
Decolonisation involves identifying colonial systems, structures and relationships, and working to challenge those systems. It is not ‘integration’ or simply the token inclusion of the intellectual achievements of non-white cultures. Rather, it involves a paradigm shift from a culture of exclusion and denial to the making of space for other political philosophies and knowledge systems. It’s a culture shift to think more widely about why common knowledge is what it is, and in so doing adjusting cultural perceptions and power relations in real and significant ways. – Keele University, 2018
So for me, GEM representation at leadership level is an integral and visible part of this paradigm shift toward broadening “cultural perceptions and power relations”.
JC: I am Jess Crilly, and I have worked most of my career in academic libraries: most recently I was Associate Director for Content and Discovery at University of the Arts London, responsible for the management of library and archive collections, and I retired in 2020. It was in that role that I really became interested in the significance of collections for our students and their sense of belonging in the institution, in critical librarianship and decolonisation. I wanted to understand the term decolonisation, as different from the familiar ‘diversity’ and the implications for change in the library and university. The focus on decolonisation has bought to light information that was previously absent from historical narratives1; the story of empire, slavery and colonialism wasn’t taught in history lessons or elsewhere, so like many people I have a lot to learn. The challenge for the library is what we do in response to these understandings from theory and history, recognising the impact of coloniality on knowledge production – so as to make a real difference.
Can you introduce Narrative Expansions.
RE/JC: The book explores the ways in which academic libraries are working to address the historic legacies of colonialism, in the context of decolonising the curriculum and the university. It acknowledges and explores the tensions and complexities around the use of the term decolonisation, how it relates to other social justice aims and approaches, including critical librarianship, and what makes this work specific to decolonisation.
Narrative Expansions includes perspectives from the UK, USA, Kenya and Canada. It explores the contexts and specific histories of colonisation and decolonisation, the resulting legacies and challenges for libraries. The first part of the book discusses experiences and impacts of legacy knowledge systems and pervasive whiteness, particularly in higher education from the perspectives of students and academic staff. In the second part of the book, theory and practice converge featuring case studies interpreting what it means to ‘decolonise’ in information literacy, collection and metadata management, inclusive spaces, LIS education, research methods and knowledge production through the lens of critical pedagogy, critical information literacy and Critical Race Theory (CRT). The book also addresses the impact and implications of the whiteness of university library staffing.
The contributors bring a broad range of perspectives, as well as international focus; the authors are librarians, curators, anthropologists, lecturers in LIS and academic literacies, and there is also a broad interpretation of ‘academic’, with a case study from the British Library. The inclusion of the broader context that libraries operate in is really helpful, such as Sara Ewing’s chapter on decolonising research methodologies.
You talk about the movement to decolonise the university and the curriculum moving from the fringes to the mainstream – how is that manifesting itself?
RE: The movement to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ originated through student activism from the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at University of Capetown in 2015 and later at Oxford University through to the ‘Why is My Curriculum So White’ campaign at UCL in 2016. Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, the National Union of Students (NUS) Vice President for Higher Education, opens the main body of the book with her personal reflections about the definition of the term ‘decolonisation’ and speaks passionately about collective action with the NUS to reimagine education that ‘challenges racism, colonisation and imperialism’ and embraces ‘cultural, psychological and economic freedom’.
I would say that engagement with the movement by university staff members was at individual rather than institution-level. Individual staff members worked with students to understand what ‘decolonisation’ meant in practice and pedagogically. Those individual efforts evolved into the formation of working groups at many institutions, as discussed in the case studies in the book. Critical analysis of collections is the starting point for most library services. This analysis then progresses to metadata, procurement practices, spatial imagery, inclusive pedagogy, etc. And going back to the Keele University Manifesto, the critical analysis must also include the cultural representations and power dynamics within institutions. Is the leadership representative of the stakeholders: students, staff, local community?
JC: I have noticed the term decolonisation, and certainly decolonising work, coming into Teaching & Learning Strategies, the work of pedagogic experts in universities, in staff development, library strategies and policies2, as well as more recently into anti-racist strategies, so in that sense it is becoming more mainstream. Decolonising the curriculum is not a quick or trivial undertaking, and nor is decolonising work in libraries, whether this is being progressed as a result of individual initiatives and working groups or through more systematic approaches, is harder to know.
And where does Narrative Expansions fit into that picture?
RE: Narrative Expansions is a compilation of interpretations about ‘decolonisation’ in libraries and how these interpretations are put into practice within institutional contexts. The book is not meant to provide solutions, but to share current practice. It will be interesting to see how this practice evolves. The book was created during an interesting time in history: the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump era, the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent global Black Lives Matter protests. When we review the essays and case studies in the book in a few years’ time, will we have the same convictions? Will the approaches taken be sustainable? Or will we simply move on to the next pressing issue?
And following on from that, Who is the book for? How and why should they use it? What are the benefits for an institution that moves to decolonise?
RE: The book will be of particular interest to LIS professionals who will be thinking critically about their practice and the audiences that they educate. However, for anyone seeking to understand what “decolonisation” means, it provides a range of interpretations in a single collection. Although the book will not and does not seek to provide definitive answers, it explains how others have approached the topic within their institutional or personal contexts. So, readers will take from the essays and case studies that which is relevant to them.
JC: I hope it’s also useful for LIS students. We are facing multiple and interrelated pandemics, of health, racism, and climate – and need multiple sources of knowledge, a plurality of narratives to try to understand and address them. There are also issues of knowledge justice, and who we recognise as a producer of knowledge, and who is excluded.
When you were editing the book, was there anything that particularly surprised you?
RE: There were no surprises to me, but I most enjoyed reading about the experiences of international colleagues. Rachel Chong and Ashley Edwards’ chapter discusses the process of reconciling with the colonial past of Canada and challenging its institutions, structures, and knowledge to acknowledge and include indigenous people and their culture. Syokau Mutonga and Angela Okune’s chapter discusses post-colonial Kenya’s reckoning with the colonial past, examining the inclination by some to ‘forget and move on’. And Angela Pashia’s chapter discusses the challenges of teaching information literacy in Trump-era America with the backdrop of misinformation and disinformation.
JC: Not surprising exactly, but I learned a great deal from the book – from all of the authors. The juxtaposition of case studies from the UK, the historic colonial metropole, alongside case studies of libraries in settler-colonial and post-colonial/ neo-colonial contexts is really interesting – revealing how these different contexts have led to both similar and different challenges for libraries. The work being undertaken by staff at the British Library, with its unique history and role, was also new to me. The case studies brought many interesting perspectives – in SOAS Library, a discussion of the issues around provenance of special collections and archives and the pros and cons of digital repatriation.
As we have said, support for decolonising the university and the curriculum is growing, but how do we make sure that the momentum is maintained?
RE: For those of us in HE, our students will hold us to account. They will, and must continue to demand to be seen and heard – to co-create their education. That challenge to the status quo is how change comes.
Also, it is our job as LIS professionals to educate our users to critically analyse information, question its origin and challenge its validity. So, we must ensure that they have access to multiple perspectives and sources from which to draw conclusions. Where our collections or services tell one story, we signpost users to other sources to get a rounded view. For me, the core of ‘decolonisation’ work is accessing stories from different perspectives.
JC: It’s also about who works in our libraries and archives, removing the barriers to entry into the profession, and recognising the negative experience of staff of colour, these experiences are described in the chapter by Ishaq and Hussain, along with recommendations for improvement. Briony Birdi’s chapter advocates the inclusion of content around decolonisation into the LIS curriculum and this is another way of ensuring that it remains on the agenda.
What challenges do you see to keeping this on the agenda and ensure long-lasting change?
RE: A major challenge is leaders having the bandwidth to keep driving change. Transitioning out of the pandemic. Rising operating costs. The Augar review. Student numbers. Global events impacting people, mobility, research and partnerships. Colleagues liken the balancing of priorities to a game of whack a mole; once you deal with one crisis, another one pops up! We must get to a place where respect, or at least tolerance for others’ culture, history, right to exist is endemic.
JC: The rapid adoption of a decolonising discourse does risk it being seen as a transient cause, and in the Introduction we discuss the risks and tensions of using the term, in summary – of decolonisation being used as a metaphor for various social justice aims as described by Tuck and Yang, and of being reduced to a buzzword. The idea of the library as a neutral space is effectively debunked, and that idea and its implications will persist whether it’s under the framework of critical librarianship, decolonisation, or ongoing institutional anti-racist and EDI initiatives. Librarians need time to think and unlearn/learn. Some problems seem if not ‘wicked problems’, then certainly logistically and philosophically challenging – the inherent bias of legacy classification schemes for example. The case studies describe realistic and strategic interventions for example in cataloguing and classification practices at the Scott Polar Research Institute and African Studies Libraries at Cambridge University. Strategies of acknowledgement and Critical Information Literacy are very effective and perhaps a way of understanding library users’ positions and priorities.
Libraries are also using their influence and purchasing power with publishers, aggregators, metadata suppliers who are recognising what libraries are trying to achieve3. Libraries have quite reasonably focussed on efficiency, but there is a tension between efficiency (of staff time, money, speed of delivery) and increasing the diversity of collections for example working with smaller suppliers may be more time consuming.
These challenges, of labelling and narrative construction, exist across the cultural sector and we can learn from each other. Change can come from clarity of vision and persistence, and the uptake of calls for cultural restitution of looted artefacts in the museum sector is an example of that. Despite the challenges we should be optimistic, and I really like the concept of hopeful practice described by Eades-Miller, Ramejkis and Duncan in their chapter on workshops with students at University of the Arts London.
Where does the university library fit into overcoming those challenges?
RE: We continue to educate our users to question and enable access to information to provide multiple perspectives. In our institutions, we ensure that our staff members are representative of the communities that they serve. To achieve this, we need to attract more GEMs into the profession and appoint more GEM leaders. We have been having the conversations about equity, diversity and inclusion in our institutions for years. Keep the conversations flowing but a bit more action, please.
JC: The western university is ‘a key site through which colonialism – and colonial knowledge in particular-is produced, consecrated, institutionalised and naturalised’. (Bhambra, Gebrial and Nisancioglu 2018) Libraries are clearly a part of that function of institutionalisation and naturalisation. They reflect the curriculum and research interests, what it is to study a particular discipline, past and present, but are also a pool of resources, expertise and relationships that enable the construction of new or silenced narratives, knowledge, and voices. Concepts such as epistemic coloniality are really pertinent to the library, and explain many legacy systems, resulting in a shift in understanding and perspective that is evidenced in practice in many ways – librarians working with course teams, with students, looking at reading lists, looking critically at the metadata they use; how the library works as a space. This activity is broader than supporting curriculum change and is happening in many types of library and archive, as evidenced in the book.
References
Bhambra, G, Gebrial, D. and Nisancioglu, K. (2018) Decolonising the university. Pluto Press
Keele University (2018) Keele Manifesto for Decolonising the Curriculum
Rhodes Must Fall
Rhodes Must Fall Oxford
Tuck & Yang.(2012) Decolonisation is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol 1, no.1 pp1-40
UCL Why is my curriculum white.
1. An example being the work of the Centre for the study of the Legacies of British Slavery.
2. An example is LSE Library Collections Policy
3. OCLC Reimagine descriptive workflows
If you want to explore this subject further there will be a session at CILIP Conference - Decolonisation 2.0 – lessons learned covering projects and programmes to decolonise the curriculum have been taking place across the UK for a few years. The session will look at what lessons have been learned from the first efforts to put this work into practice and how our experience of ‘Decolonisation 1.0’ can drive ‘Decolonisation 2.0’ and the work going forward.
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