Corliss Lee is an American cultures librarian at the University of California, Berkeley. Corliss has been a member of ACRL for 32 years and is your ACRL Member of the Week for June 27, 2022.
Describe yourself in three words: Goofy, creative, info-facilitator.
What are you reading (or listening to on your mobile device)? I am reading Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, The Good Asian by Pichetshote and Tefenkgi, and Alien: The Official Cookbook by Chris-Rachael Oseland (well, mostly looking at the pictures).
Describe ACRL in three words: Community of professional knowledge.
What do you value about ACRL? Librarians do everything in packs – we are stronger together. ACRL is where our pack gathers, so it’s my go-to place for professional development opportunities, and “what are people doing about X?”
What do you as an academic librarian contribute to your campus? I help members of the campus community achieve their goals through use of the Library’s resources. My colleagues and I support the teaching and research that is at the core of the University’s mission. I enable students to learn research skills that will help them succeed at the University and beyond, and I support faculty in developing curriculum and conducting their own research. I have also been involved with the Library’s Wikipedia editathon, have taught disinformation literacy workshops, and created exhibits in support of On the Same Page, the campus common reading program. As American Cultures librarian and one of the campus’ liaisons to the Ethnic studies department I support research and teaching on race and ethnicity throughout the Berkeley curriculum. I facilitated the scanning by our Library’s IT department of the San Quentin News, the nation’s oldest newspaper created by incarcerated authors. And I’ve been involved with organizing two conferences about critical librarianship sponsored by the Librarians Association at UC Berkeley.
In your own words: My colleague Brian Lym and I co-edited an ACRL publication, Implementing Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: A Handbook for Academic Libraries, a process made rather longer and more complicated by the mid-project appearance of a global pandemic. Now I’m hoping to see if I can get some of this implemented at my own campus. The hard work has just begun.
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