It was nearing the end of 2019, when with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from UCLA and about ten years of disparate experiences in the workforce, Chanda Briggs set her sights on a new career; one which would require more schooling, but would bring her great personal and professional reward. She was determined to become a librarian and had decided to entrust her educational ambitions to the Syracuse University iSchool.
After graduating with her master’s in library and information science, Briggs landed the first job she applied to. At the University of San Francisco’s Gleeson Library, Briggs serves as the Outreach Librarian as well as the liaison for USF’s humanities program. She spends much of her workday in the library tending to responsibilities ranging from library communications and newsletters, arranging special events and managing students employees, to teaching information literacy classes. Her primary focus, as she says, “is building partnerships, and community, to achieve Gleeson Library’s Vision and Mission. The library is uniquely suited to serve the interests of the students and faculty, their well-being, academic performance, and intellectual curiosity and growth.”
In her current role, Briggs loves working with students, and feels fortunate to be surrounded by such a competent and caring cohort of colleagues. “We have a lot of solidarity with each other. We love to do projects with one another and be supportive, and we’ve built up a really strong community, which the students definitely benefit from as well.” She goes on to explain, “my favorite thing is the independent research portion of my info-lit classes. I learn so much about what students are interested in and new ways of thinking about topics. I’m always learning so much, it keeps the job interesting, and it makes me feel more hopeful. It’s invigorating to be around people who’s journeys and contributions have just begun.”
In addition to her roles in the Gleeson Library, Briggs had also accepted an invitation to be a part of a committee associated with the Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table (GNCRT). Immediately after seizing on this opportunity, her mailbox was flooded with new promotional graphic novels and comics for her to review. It had been many years since Briggs had personally added to her own collection of this genre, but she was quickly returned to the excitement and anticipation of thumbing through each new illustrated story. She soon noticed how much more sprawling and diverse the topics had become, there were now many new subgenres like graphic medicine, graphic memoirs, etc., The explosion in this style of storytelling got her thinking about how much information can be conveyed through accessible and engaging, albeit nontraditional modalities. “You don’t have to be a scholar of a certain topic in order to understand it if you have a handy graphic novel right there. There are so many [novels] that are made in many beautiful ways, and they’re also extremely cost effective,” she explains. For Briggs, the cost versus benefit of growing Gleeson’s collection of graphic works was a no-brainer, and she enthusiastically took up the mantle of curating this important initiative.
Building the collection for curious readers to access on their own is one thing, but deploying graphic storytelling in meaningful ways to enhance educational efforts and social environments requires an ability to connect with what is important to the target audience, and what will grab their attention. Briggs recently used her knack for connecting with students while designing a program, coinciding with Valentine’s Day, to use sequential art to continue and emphasize conversations around sexual reproductive health. The success of her outreach efforts were noticed and she recently published a piece in Booklist’s Guide to Graphic Novels in Libraries titled Graphic Medicine as Library Outreach, in which she reviews a number of works, and prescribes potential uses for them in library outreach settings.
Graphic novels are beginning to gain a lot of traction in academic spaces, showing up as cited sources in scholarly papers, and in academic library collections. Briggs is experiencing firsthand the uptick in faculty requests for these types of materials so they can be added to reading lists and syllabi. She has also attended events showcasing graphic storytelling artists which are open to the public and end up being standing room only. The demand for consuming this type of media is in the midst of a massive resurgence.
Dipping into her anthropological background, Briggs suspects that the current demand for graphic novels and comics, especially in education, mirrors the modern attention economy which we are living in. This mode of communication delivers information “quick and dirty” with the added benefit of artistic illustrations– giving the reader relatable and interesting storylines to follow.
Briggs has followed her passions and her instincts into a position which brings her great personal reward. She is on the front lines of helping people in her community to navigate their own passions and interests, and helping to broaden the scope of who she is able to reach and how she is able to reach them. Briggs is often reminded of the ways the iSchool helped prepare her for her current role. Wearing many hats and working in a dynamic and ever evolving environment requires a special world view and savviness which are hallmarks of the school’s approach to education.
When Briggs first began working in libraries she assumed her colleagues had had similar experiences and paths to librarianship as she had, but she found that was not necessarily the case. She is thankful for the path she forged which took her through the iSchool. Compared to the anecdotal experience of others, she says she realized that, “the iSchool is really rigorous and it prepared me to do more in depth assessment and analysis in a way that some other programs may not have afforded their students. We were also given a view of the big picture and how things work together, so that we could take an idea and turn it into something actionable.”