Weaving Resilience: The Pandemic's Tapestry of Librarianship in New Mexico

Abstract

Public and tribal libraries play an expansive role as community connectors, serving as a visible manifestation and key operator of support systems built through partnership. Pandemic circumstances increased library intentional practice and innovative engagement through partnerships, making the amorphous “community” feel more real, creating access to new resources through diverse social networks while improving overall resiliency and responsiveness in a time of great need. This chapter presents outcomes from interviews with public and tribal librarians in New Mexico, a primarily rural majority-minority state in the United States. We ask, “In what ways have pandemic experiences changed our approaches to meeting information and mutualism needs in our community?” The answer is provided from a systems-based social well-being perspective, in which success is measured by the positive impact on community members’ unique capacity to live a secure and enriched life within the context of a global pandemic. Librarians shared ways in which changes in staffing and operations affected the efforts of marginalized library workers to add their voices to build new professional understandings and the potential for justice-driven approaches to resilience from a community systems-based perspective. While diverse in their responses, the common thread running throughout the narratives of the New Mexican librarians featured in this study is the role of libraries in maintaining, repairing, and enhancing the social fabric of the communities they serve.

Citation

Guinnee, E. and Pickering, K. (2024), "Weaving Resilience: The Pandemic's Tapestry of Librarianship in New Mexico", Irvin, V. and Mehra, B. (Ed.) Reading Workplace Dynamics: A Post-Pandemic Professional Ethos in Public Libraries (Advances in Librarianship, Vol. 55), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 163-182. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0065-283020240000055012