Your name, current work place and position (for students, please tell us what school you’re attending and if you have chosen a specialization):
I’m Anastasia Chiu, and I’m currently Cataloging and Metadata Librarian at Stony Brook University.
Where did you attend school for your MLIS degree?
I got my MSLIS at St. John’s University.
How long have you been an APALA member? Why did you first join? Are you currently involved as an officer/committee member/other volunteer?
I’ve been a member since late 2014 or early 2015, and I’m presently on the Communications & Media Committee and the Task Force on Intersectionality.
I joined because I was looking for community! I don’t think I consciously understood the importance of being seen and having space held for me by communities of people who share some of my experiences and values until I did an online MLIS, which was a very lonely experience for me. I met some lovely APALA folks who encouraged me to join at ALA Midwinter 2014, and I did so basically the minute I started making a salary.
We’re very interested in the diversity of ethnic/cultural heritage within APALA. Please share your ethnic/cultural heritage with us and any other background information, as desired.
To the best of my knowledge (I’m sure many of you know how hole-y family knowledge can be for second-and-beyond- generation folks), both of my parents were born around Shanghai, both families moved to Hong Kong before the Cultural Revolution, and both families claim ancestral homes in Zhejiang province. I grew up in southern California. We speak a multi-lingual and multi-dialect hodge-podge language at home; it makes for some very funny poop jokes.
What aspects of librarianship are key to your personal satisfaction at work? Please share some of your professional goals and interests.
It’s important to me to keep my practice centered in relationship. How LIS professionals relate to patrons, how library practices affect people’s relationships with each other, and how LIS professionals relate to each other are all important to me. This value can sometimes be tough to enact in my practice, because I am a cataloging and metadata librarian, and a lot of what is traditionally seen as the main “product” of my work is done in a back room with a computer. But what I’m more interested in is not so much my “product,” but my impact; is the impact of my library work aligned with how I value anti-racism, social responsibility, and critical dialogue? As it turns out, not always as well as I would like. Therefore, being part of APALA and other communities for people of color is really important to me, because these communities are where I find new ways to envision my practice of librarianship.