Last year, I started writing my first academic article as a faculty librarian a few weeks into my first year on the job. The article began as me telling a story about my experience creating Open Educational Resources (OER) as a marginalized creator, and the first draft was rough.

Within the narrative, I had enough threads to write three separate articles, one of my colleagues told me.

So I pared it down, saved the parts I shaved off for later (I started this practice as a creative writer), and dove into research as I worked to synthesize story and reflection with research.

Before the article saw the light of day, I told my mentor I was worried about telling this story. I was worried about what people would think since the narrative threads occurred while working at my last job. She laughed and told me that’s the last thing I needed to worry about because no one outside the library world reads library journals.

She had a point, and she put my mind at ease. So, here I go. Check out my first scholarly library article. It talks about the exploitative conditions of academic labor and how that combined with the newness of OER can create an unsupportable load of labor for BIPOC folx who endure microaggressions and other invalidating experiences as part of their everyday lives.

Yup, I said that. And I wrote about it for my academic discipline. Hijo la. Here’s the article: Compounded Labor: Creating OER as a Marginalized Creator

Let me know what you think 🤔.