Welcome to the Wrap Up
The 2023 We Here Wrap-Up knits together information about all of the work our private space admins, program and project leaders, and contributors accomplished last year. We love creating the Wrap Up every January: tallying up numbers, revisiting old projects, and peeking back into the docs where we’ve been dropping info all year. The swirl of information always turns into a story that energizes us for the months ahead.
Introduction
This year was about doing what we do well. We didn't stretch ourselves thin trying to grow in all directions — we nurtured what was already thriving: our communities and our ongoing programs. This felt especially important as community members navigated another year of shifting pandemic life, witnessed international violence in places like Gaza and Ukraine, and found themselves in the midst of culture wars against libraries and the freedom to read.
In the background, we were also dream-shaping We Here’s future, solidifying ideas and paths for 2024 that we’re excited to share soon.
We are doing this work on our own terms, attempting to dream and build new ways of being for folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC) in library and information science, which takes time, being present and accountable. Thank you for being with us in this work.
Let’s get into the wrap-up.
Our Mission
Community—Joy—Growth
We Here® seeks to provide a safe and supportive community for Black and Indigenous folks, and People of Color in library and information science professions and educational programs and to recognize, discuss, and intervene in systemic issues that have plagued these professions both currently and historically.
Our Methods
Community first—community learning—joy and celebration
We Here’s private communities for library and archives workers who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color were established in 2016 and are the center of our work. Member-only spaces and opportunities are essential for keeping our members safe and supported.
At the center of our programs is the desire for shared community learning and growth: We work with members of our community to facilitate courses and workshops for the Community School, explore topics together through Community Study, create opportunities for mentorship and encouragement through We Together, and nurture the needs of folks who seek new reading materials for their personal or library collections as We Reads.
Through knowledge sharing and community building, we are carving out spaces in LIS that are for us and by us.
2023 We Family
Meet our Project and Program Leaders
new members
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nicholae cline
COMMUNITY ADMIN
COMMUNITY STUDY CO-ORGANIZER
WE READS TEAM MEMBER -
Sofia Leung
COMMUNITY SCHOOL MANAGER
COMMUNITY STUDY -
Becca Quon
COMMUNICATIONS AND OUTREACH MANAGER
continuing members
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Megdi Abebe
EDITOR, UP//ROOT
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Jennifer Brown
COMMUNITY MANAGER
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Crystal Chen
COMMUNITY ADMIN
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Nicollette Davis
COMMUNITY ADMIN
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Jennifer A. Ferretti
FOUNDER & PRINCIPAL
CREATIVE DIRECTOR -
Jorge López-McKnight
COMMUNITY STUDY CO-ORGANIZER
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Charlotte Roh
COMMUNITY MANAGER
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Kristina Santiago
CO-EDITOR, UP//ROOT
Our Communities
Our Spaces
community first
Our private communities are the foundation of our work. We welcomed more than 150 new members across platforms in 2023. Each space is unique, but across all three, we share victories, post opportunities, ask for advice, and learn from one another’s experiences.
taking care
Our Safe Space Agreement and our Admin Team are the reasons our communities thrive — supporting members and facilitating spaces where we can show up, be real, and share joy. This June the team shared important updates to our member agreement reflecting the ever-changing nature of the internet, centering privacy and care across our platforms.
the admin team
This year we welcomed nicholae to the Admin Team. We met each month to coordinate work and lay groundwork for future programs. In response to the annual community survey, we changed up when we sent our weekly bulletin and created new ways to see positions submitted to our Job Board. We also hosted a Family Meeting, which are events for We Here members only on timely topics.
We Here Members by Platform
more stats
3,724 members across three platforms
33 slack channels - 262, 673 slack message sent (all time usage)
over 100 Facebook posts each month
98 responses to our annual community survey
Community Mentions — Departures & Arrivals: A Musical Memoir by Katrina Spencer, July 23, 2023.
Some folks are members of multiple spaces.
Public Communities and Supporters
Patreon and Seed Circle
Our Patreon and Seed Circle communities help us achieve our goals to support, uplift, and compensate folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color in library and information science professions, all while receiving exclusive and early access to We Here content.
Through Patreon and Seed Circle memberships, we've been able to pay speakers for free community events, maintain costly subscriptions needed for operations, purchase gifts for We Together mentors, and much more.
Our supporters allow us to center our work over revenue. We Here’s private communities for BIPOC are, and will remain, free to join because of their support.
Contributions start at $5 monthly or $60 annually.
Patreon & Seed Circle Perks
10
exclusive content releases
9
early access releases
Patreon and Seed Circle members received exclusive content like the monthly Update, exclusive Q&A with folks with admire, video messages; and early access to things like Community School workshops, up//root features, and We Reads collections. All starting at the cost of a really good cup of coffee.
Thank you to our supporters!
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Thank you to our supporters! 〰️
OurWork
The work of our project and program teams in 2023.
Learn in community
Sofia Leung, Community School Manager
The Community School, which has included multi-weekcourses, seminars, and webinars, seeks to provide a learning community with opportunities for personal and professional development based in anti-racist pedagogy, as well as recognizing and acknowledging systemic racism and oppression.
The Community School led 2 workshops with 63 registered attendees in 2023.
Program Lead
This year we welcomed Sofia Leung, a Community Study co-organizer and founding editor of up//root, into a new role as Community School Manager.
Community School Catalog
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Getting Started: Business Research Basics
WITH SAIRA RAZA
Workshop
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Writing Your Annual Review and Strategic Plan
WITH SAIRA RAZA
Workshop
(be)coming together in study
nicholae cline, Organizer
Sofia Leung, Organizer
Jorge López-McKnight, Organizer
Community Study is an ongoing constellation of study groups, immersions, community learning spaces, and reading groups centered around BIPOC being and (be)coming together in study. Community Study believes that learning and exploring together is a joyous and generative form of community (and community building) that facilitates curiosity, intimacy, and care—all of which are deeply needed now.
Community Study formed in 2021 by organizers nicholae cline, Sofia Leung, and Jorge López-McKnight and officially became part of the We Family in 2022. This provided an opportunity to offer a space for Community Study on the We Here website and for them to link to We Reads' Bookshop.org page, which helps fund the Community Study scholarship program.
While Community Study participation is exclusively for folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, the organizers make reading (and music) lists publicly available on the We Here website.
Community Studies
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You, Me, and We on TV
25 particpants
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Dark Academia Summer
40 participants
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Glitched Out: Intersections of Race & Technology
43 participants
a we here publication
an independent publication
EDITORIAL TEAM
Megdi Abebe, Editor
Kristina Santiago, Editor
up//root is a publishing collective that exists to center the works, knowledge, and experiences of folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color within the context of the library and archives community. Established in 2020 as a We Here project, up//root has published an incredible array of features from members of the community.
A season of transition
This December, at the conclusion of the editorial team’s existing contract with We Here, up//root transitioned to an independent publication, separate from We Here. Our projects and programs, created, cared for, and tended by community members, sometimes grow in new directions that no longer need our support. It’s exciting to be able to take this moment, which stems from a mutual desire to explore new possibilities in the realm of publishing, to do just that. In 2024, we’ll be considering how we want to show up as a publisher in LIS spaces in the future.
We Here is proud to have played a part in establishing this incredible BIPOC-led publishing community, which centers radical ideas, conversations and experiences within the context of libraries, archives and the greater information landscape, and to have supported the publication of the 2023 series HOME: an exploration of being and belonging in resistance.
up//root Features
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Community Forum and Award
Myisha Sims, Chinyere E.Oteh, olivier, Rosario
Santiago & Cathy Messier -
The Work of Women of Color Academic Librarians in Higher Education: Perspectives on Emotional and Invisible Labor
Tamara Rhodes, Naomi Bishop, & Alanna Aiko Moore
an exploration of being & belonging in resistance
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Resistance and Belonging in an Academic Library: Finding Home in the Praxis
Margie Montañez
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Kuʻu ʻĀina Kulāiwi
Kawena Komeiji & Shavonn Matsuda
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Cartomythography
Rosario Santiago
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a nesting place: belonging and critical creativity
Jewel Davis
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pinto, or an open-doored question: On Research, Reluctance, and Returning to the Homeland
Arianna Alcaraz
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The Power of Community Building: Reflections from a First-Time JCLC Attendee
Ramón García
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Home Becomes Myth
Nisha Mody
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A Spectre in My Home
Nicole L. Murph
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Empathy to Empower Libraries: Embracing Haitian Heritage and the Lakou Model for Social Justice and Equity
Sabine Jean Dantus
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A Reclamation of Spaces
CKZ Shareef
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Baltimore
Marlyn Terrell Thomas
Literature that nourishes us
Jennifer Brown
Crystal Chen
nicholae cline, Project Founder
Charlotte Roh
We Reads is, first and foremost, about highlighting BIPOC voices in literature. It is also deeply personal, and joyfully so: we read as our whole selves, bringing our identities and experiences with us when we enter the world of a story or poem. The works collected here have resonated with, shaped, and nourished us, changing us in ways we might not yet understand and living inside us as we once chose to live inside them.
This year, we also began including other types of media in our latest collection — a practice that will continue in 2024. To see our picks for books plus podcasts, films & television shows, and music, visit wehere.space/current-collection.
Explore all the reads collections on the We Reads Archive.
We Reads dropped three collections in 2023:
Winter 2023
January 19, 2023
121 titles
Summer 2023
July 28, 2023
26 titles
Winter/Annual 2023
December 14, 2023
62 titles (plus media recs)
Bookshop.org Affiliation
We Here is proud to be a Bookshop.org affiliate because of their mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. Online marketplaces have shown a severe lack of empathy for humanity and as information professionals, we must resist the (often dangerous) convenience. Consider investing in your community personally by purchasing locally or from BIPOC-owned businesses and advocating your organization do the same if you do collection development.
By hosting collections on Bookshop.org, we earn a modest commission when folks click the "Buy It" link on the Current Collections page and make a purchase. The revenue generated goes directly to Community Study scholarships. After 65 book purchases through our affiliate link, we raised $169.33 for scholarships in 2023.
Help us continue providing scholarships — purchase books through our Bookshop!
Reimagining mentorship for mutual growth and liberation
Crystal Chen, Program Manager
Nicollette Davis, Program Manager
We Together - Reimagining mentorship for mutual growth and liberation launched in October 2020 and is specifically for folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color. Peer mentoring has always been an important part of our private communities and with the formal launch of We Together, program managers have been able to offer manual, individual matching, plan events, develop curriculum, and take time for program assessment.
The program was on hiatus in 2023, as the team took the year to recharge after three years of facilitating the program through the intense pandemic period, to reflect on mentorship possibilities for the community, and channel energy into We Here’s other initiatives.
Program Collaborations
Collabs
Community Study and We Reads linked up to offer up a list of resources to help folks understand why a free Palestine is necessary.
Dark Academia
Community Study and We Reads collaborated again to bring the Dark Academic Community Study to the community. The reading experience found them exploring the underside and unpleasant, unlit and malevolent, the cruel and rude sides of academia.
Pay Us
Normalizing paying folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color
The main motivation for creating an LLC nearly four years ago was to be able to pay people for the time and expertise they give to the We Here community. We started the tradition of totaling up how much we've paid to folks who identify as BIPOC in our first Wrap Up and continue it this year.
$1,078
Total paid for small tokens of appreciation for We Together participants and Annual Survey drawing winners
$600.00
Total paid for speaker honoraria for a free community event.
$79,580.00
Total paid for professional services
Total paid to contractors including two new positions: Communication and Outreach Manager and Community School Manager; accounting services; and legal services for their time and expertise.
The Cost of We Here
What does it take to operate We Here?
Two thousand twenty-three marked the third anniversary of our LLC. As mentioned, the LLC started as a mechanism to pay speakers and we run projects and programs in our spare time, in between full-time jobs and life. Keeping We Here as a part-time effort allows us to do this work on our terms, which is not common in the library and information science space.
This is why our Patreon and Seed Circle communities are so important to us — they allow us to center our work over revenue. New this year, here is a small window into what it takes to operate We Here, mostly from the perspective of the founder/principal. What’s missing, and maybe most important but harder to quantify, is the emotional labor of operating an organization outside of organizations.
THE COST OF WE HERE
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The amount of hours spent in 2023 on things like contracts, meetings, outreach and promotion, private community efforts, customer service, The Get Money List job board, etc.
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Total amount of full days spent working on We Here from January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2023 (or 856 hours).
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Customer service inquiries (website contact form only).
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Cost of maintaining We Here websites (CMS, domains, newsletters).
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Jobs added to our Job Area for members.
