Writing & Scholarship
My writing has taken on many forms, from personal essays to historiography, traditional academic scholarship to technical writing for librarians, technologists, and digital humanists. Below are some of my works, some of which were published under my given name, Ashley Maynor.
Op-Eds as A 2022-23 Public Voices Fellow
In 2022, I was selected as one of twenty thought leaders in the inaugural cohort at NYU for the Public Voices Fellowship, a part of a national initiative launched by The OpEd Project to change who writes history, with the dual goal of fostering and amplifying a set of new diverse voices and ideas.
As part of this project, I published opinion pieces, including an essay on the timelessness of library work opposing censorship and fundamentalism in Progressive Magazine and a call to action for everyday Americans to prevent gun violence in Newsweek.
Problem-Solvers & Problem-Makers: The Librarians of the New South (A Multi-Modal Essay)
Despite the recent focus on dispelling librarian stereotypes, the bespeckled, bunned-shushing-spinster persists in the minds of many Southerners (and Americans, for that matter), especially if they had such a librarian in their school or hometown. In this multi-modal essay, I argue for an updated, less reductive vision of who librarians are today through the incredible work they are doing, documented in video and photos.
From saving the audiovisual record of Appalachia to making the Internet of Things accessible for everyone, the librarians you will meet are invariably smart, creative, entrepreneurial, and dedicated to making our South a better place.
Libraries & Librarians in the Aftermath: Our Stories & Ourselves
This autoethnographic essay penned for a special issue on disaster response in libraries weaves personal experience and methodological research into an essay that argues for more flexibility and less rigidity about any role or responsibility of an archive, library, or individual when a tragedy takes place in their community.
Response to the Unthinkable: Collecting and Archiving Condolence and Temporary Memorial Materials following Public Tragedies
This book chapter of case studies outlines a history of temporary memorials and "grief archive" collections from its earliest history to 2015. It includes a list of essential questions for collection managers and a set of lessons learned and suggested best practices. This chapter has been consulted by many condolence project managers, from UCSB to Charleston to Orlando and Parkland, following mass casualty events.
How We Do & Don’t Collaborate at The Library Collective
At the heart of The Library Collective’s efforts is a unique style of collaboration. The following column outlines how the Co-Founders and Co-Directors use and don’t use collaboration to create a professional development environment that embraces creativity, celebrates failure, and doesn’t cost a fortune.
The Collective Approach: Reinventing Affordable, Useful, and Fun Professional Development
This article outlines how two intrepid librarians set out to redefine the conference format for library professional development and includes enough detail for other individuals to use similar techniques to start their own conference revolution.
Sustainable & Accessible Interactive Documentary Storytelling Without Heavy Coding: The Story of the Stuff
This "How Did They Make That?" style article shares essential tools and skills for making an accessible interactive web documentary without programming language, including a Q&A about the making of the project.
Additional Articles Published in Blogs & Online Formats
On Crisis Response & Archives
On Librarianship