Autoethnographic Narrative:

I approach In Our Own Words not as an external observer, but as a librarian working within the professional structures the project seeks to document. My relationship to this community is both professional and relational. As a practitioner in public library makerspaces, I have witnessed firsthand how narratives about librarianship are often shaped through institutional language that emphasizes neutrality, service, and innovation while leaving little space for conversations about race, power, and lived experience. These tensions shaped my initial curiosity and ultimately informed the creation of this archive.

My lived experience within librarianship revealed a gap between official professional narratives and the emotional, political, and identity-based labor performed by BIPOC colleagues. While institutional archives preserve policies, reports, and administrative documentation, they rarely preserve the embodied experience of navigating the profession as a person of color. Through autoethnographic reflection, I began to recognize my own positionality within these systems—both as a participant and as a curator. This recognition required me to acknowledge that archival work is never neutral and that my role in shaping this project carries responsibility.

Autoethnography informs the project methodologically by centering first-person interpretation. Participants are not treated as subjects of study but as narrators of their own professional histories. My own reflective practice guided the development of open-ended prompts that prioritize self-definition over categorization. In situating myself within the archive, I understand In Our Own Words as both a scholarly intervention and a relational act—one shaped by lived experience, professional practice, and a commitment to community-authored memory.