We did it! ¡Enhorabuena, Félicitations, Congratulations and Mazal tov! Our adventure called, Notes Between Us (NBU) is officially one year old. And the path to arrive here has truly been an adventure of learning from each other, collaborating and giving words to our thoughts and perspectives. Over the past year, we have been able to grow into 27 contributors located throughout the United States and Canada, more than a 100 posts shared every week in a variety of topics, and thousands of people have read, liked, shared and enjoyed being part of this journey with us.
Usually people ask me how the blog came together and what it represents. I’d like to think that the work the contributors put together every week speaks for itself. However, in order to celebrate this one year anniversary, I’d like to share some thoughts on why I created this blog, feature our amazing contributors and their perspectives, and what’s next for NBU.
In the professions we represent and work in (i.e. librarianship, law and law librarianship), there are many important conversations and actions taking place around dismantling and reimagining structures of power that have long repressed and ignored underrepresented and minority groups. As someone who identifies with multiple personal identities, I welcome these conversations and more importantly, I want to be part of the action taken to acknowledge and move us forward. However, I can’t help but to notice that these steps sometimes miss those exact same voices, opinions and perspectives that we were trying to uplift in the first place. How about we just step aside and just give the space to the people that have long remained silenced and just let them speak with their unfiltered voices and unlimited power without any pipelines, guidelines or prefabricated paths? Personally, I think that without including unfiltered storytelling and letting the unrepresented voices drive the conversation we won’t be able to achieve much or meaningfully change anything whatsoever. I think storytelling is the key to everything.
NBU aims to provide a space for our perspectives and voices to take center stage and allow for some crucial storytelling to happen. A year ago, I reached out to some amazing people I had worked with only virtually and proposed them to be a part of this journey. Their reactions and that of other contributors was all I expected and more. Clearly, other people were also eager to find a space from which they could share their thoughts and opinions and share it with other like minded people and everyone else.
The diversity and stories of our contributors are the blog’s strength and core behind its success. I invite everyone to click on each of the contributors’ pages to read the posts they have written so far. There is no better way to learn about what we are trying to achieve and our interests than by reading our posts and following us in our social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. From Visualizing dockets, Changing Jurisdictions and Being a Bookmark Hoarder to Advocating for Yourself, Attending a Shiva and Universal Design. Our contributors bring their unique perspectives in a wide range of interests to the blog. We have also feature posts dealing with “Sovereign Citizens”, Boycotting Silence, and Americans and the Holocaust. NBU Canada has written about Cultural Identities, Public Law Librarianship, Gender Inclusivity, Indigenous Peoples and of course, Books. We are still growing and new voices have joined our blog adventure recently. Ana Rosa Ramirez Toft-Nielsen, Le’Shawn Turner, Mike Martinez, Sabrina Sondhi, Marlena Okechukwu and Itunu Sofidiya are our new members joining our excellent team. We can’t wait to feature them and read the contributions to our notes.
Stay tuned!
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Notes Between Us (NBU) is a blog about conversations and topics of interest to the writers. The writers are expressing their personal opinions solely. The essays represent their personal beliefs and not that of their workplaces or any organization they are associated with.