Fridays in May will take place in person each May Friday from May 2nd, 2025 to May 30th 2025.
This program will include in-person tours, workshops, and mediated conversations led by, with and among QBIPOC library, archives, and information professionals across the NYC metropolitan area on topics related to engagement, exhibitions, collections processing, queer histories, professionalism in queer contexts, and more.
Find more information about each session below:
Grounding in DEI: Entering Work Whole as a QBIPOC Professional - Part 1
Followed by lunch
Friday, May 2nd, 2025 from 11 am to 2 pm
Pratt School of Information - 144 W 14th St 6th floor, New York, NY 10011
Room 610
This workshop will explore conversations of queerness, race, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion within the LIS field, and help participants to unveil for themselves what it is they have at stake in their own work experiences as QBIPOC information workers and professionals.
For this first session, participants will:
- Introduce themselves and be welcomed into the program
- Locate themselves in ancestral connection
- Brainstorm common points of struggle and points of connection between queer librarians, archivists, and information professionals
- Identify their personal mission in library engagement and practice
This session will be facilitated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz
Lunch will be provided by Pratt Institute.
About Shawn:
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz is an Assistant Curator and Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning, and Engagement at New York University Division of Libraries where she serves as the Faculty Diversity Search Liaison. Shawn is also an adjunct at Pratt School of information, teaching Reference & Instruction allowing her to steer this program. Shawn is a long-time volunteer at the Lesbian Herstory Archives, a co-convenor of the Reference & Instruction Special Interest Group at METRO where she co-curated the Critical Pedagogy Symposium and Case Studies in Critical Pedagogy series. Shawn is also the Managing Editor of Sinister Wisdom: A Lesbian Literary and Art Journal. She has a BS in Queer Women’s Studies from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program, an MFA in Creative Writing/Fiction, and an MLS with a focus on Archiving and Records Management from Queens College. Her two-book series was released in 2024: Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations in Archives and Practice and Queer Conversations in Identity and Libraries by Litwin Books.
Tour: Barnard Milstein Center tour with Miriam Neptune, Director of Milstein Center
Exhibits, Programming and Public Engagement, followed by lunch
Friday, May 9th, 2025 from 11 am to 2 pm
3009 Broadway New York, NY 10027
In this tour, we will meet with Miriam Neptune at the Milstein Center for Teaching & Learning at Barnard College, and review the various spaces that make up the Milstein Center. In this tour, participants will:
- Learn about the vision for exhibitions, programming, and engagement of the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning
- Receive descriptive overviews of the various spaces and how librarians and library staff engage with these spaces for students and a wider public
- Engage in a Q&A including context to being a queer library worker in the field
Lunch will be provided by METRO.
About Miriam:
Miriam Neptune is the inaugural Director of Milstein Center Exhibitions, Programming and Public Engagement. She has worked at Barnard College Library in various capacities since 2011 and at Smith College as Digital Scholarship Librarian from 2015-2018. She was previously Barnard Library’s Director of Teaching, Learning, and Digital Scholarship, and Interim Co-Dean, and as the Senior Associate Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. From 2021-2023, Miriam co-curated the exhibition Undesign the Redline @ Barnard. In her new role, she has curated and cultivated public engagement in collaboration for several installations, including Am Queen Mary, and Trigger Planting, 2.0. She also co-produced the bilingual digital humanities project Nos Cambió La Vida: Our Lives Transformed. Miriam is also a filmmaker whose creative work focuses on resistance to anti-blackness, forced displacement, and gendered violence in the Americas, partnering on activist media projects with Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees.
Tour: Brooklyn Public Library, Kings Bay Branch w/ Rakisha Kearns-White, Branch Manager, followed by lunch
Friday, May 16th 2025 from 11 am to 2 pm
3650 Nostrand Ave, between Ave W and X.
Limited space in the parking lot is available. Bus Lines: B3, B36, B44; Subway Lines: 2,3, B, Q subway lines. (This is a two-fare zone address) Library is wheelchair accessible.
In this tour, we will meet with Rakisha Kearns-White, Branch Manager at Brooklyn Public Library’s Kings Bay Branch, and review the various spaces that make up a public library space. In this tour, participants will:
- Learn about the staffing and management of a public library branch
- Programming and initiatives as public libraries, namely the Cycle Alliance program, how it came to be, and how to get a program off the ground
- Engage in a Q&A including context to being a queer library worker in the field
Lunch will be provided by METRO.
About Rakisha:
Rakisha Kearns-White is the creative force behind the Cycle Alliance, an initiative she launched as a part of Brooklyn Public Library’s Incubator program in 2019. The Cycle Alliance is a program to help young people learn how to de-stigmatize and de-gender conversations about menstruation and empower teens to advocate for social causes. She also worked across the organization to ensure all of BPL’s 61 locations had free period products in public and staff restrooms. In 2023, Rakisha launched the Period Pantry, organizing donations of free tampons, pads and other products to be readily available in the Youth Wing at Central Library for adult and teen menstruators in need.
As champion of positive sex education and period equity and embodying Brooklyn Public Library’s mission to provide equal access to information and resources to all Brooklynites, Rakisha was named BPL’s inaugural BKLYN Incubator Innovation Fellowship in 2014. As a fellow, Rakisha and her team will be expanding her work of menstrual equity and establishing period pantries across the library system.
Rakisha is also a 2023 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and the 2022 recipient of Brooklyn Public Library's Dr. Lucille C. Thomas Award for Excellence in Librarianship. She was a young adult librarian for 19 years at the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Branch before being promoted to manager of the library’s Kings Bay branch in February 2024. She has also been elected to the executive board of the New York Library Association as councilor at large for Public Libraries and as librarian vice president for the Brooklyn Library Guild, union Local 1482.
Finally, Rakisha has spent the last three years speaking at various library conferences and panels on the importance of menstrual advocacy and sex education literacy in libraries; creating LGBTQIA+ inclusive library spaces; protecting intellectual freedom; and advocating for the trauma informed library management.
Tour: Whitney Museum Archives with Archivist Tara Hart, followed by lunch
Friday, May 23rd, 2025 from 11 am to 2 pm
610 West 26th St, New York, NY 10001
In this tour, we will meet with Tara Hart, Head Archivist of the Whitney Museum Archive, and review the collection. In this tour, participants will explore:
- Learn about the inner workings of the Whitney Museum Archives as it relates to its space
- Receive descriptive overviews of the collection contents with hands-on accompaniment
- Engage in a Q&A including context to being a queer archivist in the field
Lunch will be provided by METRO.
About Tara:
Tara Hart is Head Archivist at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has also held archivist positions at the New Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Fales Library & Special Collections at NYU. Tara has an MLS with an Advanced Certificate in Archives from Pratt Institute and a BA in Visual Arts-Media from UC San Diego. Her writing has been published in Archive Journal, Metropolitan Archivist, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
Tour: Lesbian Herstory Archives with Shawn(ta) Smith Cruz, followed by lunch
Friday, May 30th, 2025 from 11 am to 2 pm
484 14th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
This tour will include a detailed overview of the oldest and largest lesbian archive in the world.
In this tour, participants will:
- Learn about the organizational history and principles of the LHA space and collections
- Receive descriptive overviews of the collection contents with hands-on accompaniment
- Engage in a Q&A including context to being a part of a lesbian volunteer collective
As the final meeting, in addition to the tour and lunch, participants will share reflections of the Fridays in May program. Following the tour and lunch, LHA will become open to the public, and participants are welcome and encouraged to remain and enjoy the space or invite friends, partners, colleagues, or family to join. Due to space limitations, advance registration of additional attendees will be required.
Lunch will be provided by Lesbian Herstory Archives.