Government Information Librarianship in Action
I’m very proud of the work that the Data Rescue Project community has accomplished over the past nineteen months. The support from everyone, especially the library community, has been overwhelming. We also greatly appreciate the recognition from the community. As a former government information librarian, receiving the ProQuest Documents to the People award for the efforts of the DRP and our volunteers is incredibly meaningful. I only wish the award recognized work born from something other than the ongoing assault on public access to government data and on the public servants who steward it. But I am proud of what the DRP community did, coming together quickly in response to a difficult moment.
Receiving this award has given me an opportunity to reflect. My career trajectory has changed significantly over the past five years. These days I identify more as a manager. My daily work involves budgets, supervision, and planning more than government information. Before I moved into management, I had the privilege to serve as the chair of the Government Documents Round Table of the American Library Association. As incoming chair, I was excited to help shape the conference program around the issues that mattered most to me. One of my favorite memories in those days was meeting with Kenya Flash, who was a documents librarian at Yale, and chatting about a possible session on disenfranchisement. For us, government information librarianship was about how people access and use information to navigate their everyday lives and participate in their communities. Out of those conversations, we developed a session on voter disenfranchisement, which brought together speakers from outside librarianship to discuss the real-world consequences of access to government information. Later we organized a session on the eviction crisis. Both reflected our view of government information librarianship as actively engaged with the world around us.
I’ve been thinking about Kenya lately. Her untimely passing in December 2021 was heartbreaking for so many who knew her. I can’t help imagining that she would have been a tremendous advocate for the DRP’s work. She was a champion for government information access and for her patrons, and, I believe, would have seen the importance of our work. As we accepted the award this summer, I wished she could have been there to celebrate with us.
Accepting the award alongside Mikala and Lena was a reminder that the Data Rescue Project is and will continue to be a collective effort. We thanked the DRP Steering Committee, ICPSR and Maggie Levenstein, and, of course, the hundreds of volunteers who have given their time and expertise over the past nineteen months.
While in Chicago, I was fortunate to have a ticket for the Obama Presidential Center. Walking through the exhibits on participatory democracy, I kept thinking about the Data Rescue Project. Access to information is what enables our fights for justice and rights.
And the words built into the building’s facade from Obama’s speech “You Are America” resonated so deeply with me, “Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
Public data reflects the same principle. It belongs to all of us. Protecting access is one way we help ensure that “we the people” can hold leaders accountable and participate in public life. And that is what government information librarianship is all about.
