Interview

Podcast #6: Leslie Kuo

Leslie Kuo describes herself on her website as “a librarian, a designer, a translator, and both a first and second generation immigrant”. Currently she works at the Berlin-Pankow Public Library District. She is part of the management team and responsible for a programme on ‘intercultural opening’ (a term we discuss within the podcast). For her thesis, Kuo interviewed library staff with ‘immigration background’ in Berlin and analysed their experiences. Kuo is also a member of the International Federation of Libraries and Associations where she is the information coordinator of the section “Library Services to Multicultural Populations”.

In our conversation we discussed different aspects of how to create a library which is open and accessible for as many people as possible, dissected terminology, gushed about Sara Ahmed’s research and writing about ‘diversity work’, dove into the results of Kuo’s research about marginalized library staff, spoke about libraries in different countries, and about which step could reduce the barrier to use a library significantly.

(Recorded: July 2019/ DownloadSpotifyApple Podcasts)

Photo credit: Photographed by Klaus Heymach.

Leslie Kuo also shared this list of books and other material mentioned in the podcast – also check out the media list on her blog:

Ahmed, Sara. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham ; London: Duke University Press.

Ataman, Ferda. 2019. Hört auf zu fragen! Ich bin von hier. 1. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.

El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2011. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. Difference Incorporated. Minneapolis, Minn. [u.a.]: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2016. Undeutsch, Die Konstruktion des Anderen in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft. X-Texte zu Kultur und Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839430743.

IFLA. 2011. “The IFLA/UNESCO Multicultural Library Manifesto.” De Gruyter Saur.

Simon, Nina. 2016. The Art of Relevance. http://www.artofrelevance.org/

Simon, Nina. 2018. “Keynote.” presented at the Next Library Conference Berlin 2018, Berlin, September 20. https://vimeo.com/290934027.

Terkessidis, Mark. 2004. Die Banalität Des Rassismus: Migranten Zweiter Generation Entwickeln Eine Neue Perspektive. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Terkessidis, Mark. 2013. Interkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Vassiliou-Enz, Konstantina, Ferda Ataman, Alice Lanzke, Sina Laubenstein, and Shion Kumai. 2017. Glossar der Neuen deutschen Medienmacher: Formulierungshilfen für die Berichterstattung im Einwanderungsland. 6. Auflage, Webversion. Berlin: Neue deutsche Medienmacher e.V.  https://www.neuemedienmacher.de/wissen/wording-glossar/

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