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Hello,

The West Virginia University Libraries are developing an exhibit, Hacking the Library, to launch this fall at the WVU Downtown Library and online. Hacking the Library will present artwork that highlights the intersecting values that shape our libraries, reflecting on challenges and definitions of libraries past and as we move into the future. 

Instead of integrating the artwork with educational or informational content, we would like to make connections to the state of libraries by highlighting “Community Connections”—that is, responses from librarians to the artwork in the exhibit. It’s an idea that came directly from the experience of the exhibit committee as we met to review the exhibit applications. Some of us were charmed by entries others found perplexing. We praised works of remarkable skill even as we disagreed on their precise relevance to the exhibit’s theme or their plausible relation to libraries as we know them, use them, or work in them. One provocative piece about trauma and healing inspired an open, unguarded conversation on the threats and acts of violence that libraries and librarians historically have endured, and continue to endure, with distressing consistency.

In short, choosing the artwork for the exhibit spurred a conversation that we would like to keep going. We are writing to invite you to view online the artwork chosen for the exhibit and contribute your own response(s) to them. The new ways of imagining libraries that we hope this exhibition will inspire can begin to materialize right now, through your generous participation. Your feedback need not be polished, scholarly or analytic (though it’s fine if it is!) Your casual, spontaneous and unfiltered thoughts on what and how these artworks help you think about libraries are welcome and encouraged.

The response submission form is here. Please respond to as many or as few pieces as you like by April 30, 2023.

Thank you so much for your time, and please reach out with any questions to Sally Brown, WVU Libraries Exhibits Coordinator, at [log in to unmask].

Sincerely,

 

Beth Royall (she/her)

Creative Arts Librarian, Evansdale Library

West Virginia University

PO Box 6105

Morgantown, WV  26506-6105

304-293-9755

 

Schedule an appointment with me

 

WVU Land Acknowledgement

WVU, with its statewide institutional presence, resides on land that includes ancestral territories of the Shawnee, Lenape (or Delaware), Cherokee, and Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois--the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Tuscarora), and other Indigenous peoples.