Laurie Taylor
Senior Director for Library Technology & Digital Strategies
University of Florida
Brian Keith
Associate Dean for Administrative Services and Faculty Affairs
University of Florida
Power inequities mean that even well-intended libraries routinely disrupt people’s knowledge of and access to their cultural heritage. These institutions were allies in or at least instruments of the political and legal dominance of one culture over others. Alternative or mitigative models to this colonization have emerged in response: decolonizing, postcolonial, postcustodial, and slow archives. This presentation discusses an alternative model based on the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), which incorporates tenants of shared governance, mutual aid, generous thinking, community building, polycentrism, collaborative pluralism, and mutual dependency. Importantly, we discuss dLOC’s ways of working: utilizing concepts and methods from agile/scrum technical development and managerial theories based on fairness, fostering self-determination, and supporting our communities. dLOC’s alternative model is baked-in and extends through all aspects, including organizational design and technical development. For example, dLOC’s technical team follows agile and scrum for equitably engaging stakeholders to support each according to their needs. While agile and scrum are often utilized for deeply capitalistic ends, these are also methods that avoid top-down controls and instead enable voice of those most in need and most impacted by digital library technologies. These range from developers to stakeholders at partner institutions. Additionally, dLOC’s alternative model reflects concepts from progressive management theory that have developed over time in the literature but are not commonly applied to scholarship on digital libraries. These broad concepts include agency, procedural justice, and organizational support, and translate to meaningful work and community supports for other stakeholders and institutions.
