Nicollette Davis, assistant librarian for kinesiology, social work, and health sciences at the Louisiana State University (LSU) library system, was named a 2024 Library Journal Mover & Shaker for her work advocating for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), both in the library system and in the community. We recently spoke with Davis to learn more about her projects.

LJ: What’s happening with your work for the We Here organization?

Nicollette Davis: I’m a community admin, so I engage with our communities. We have private spaces, mentorship programs, we do webinars, a whole slew of things, and the focus is on BIPOC. I’m a co-lead for the mentorship program, which is called We Together. Right now we’re gearing up for our next cohort. We Here was awarded a Mellon grant of $500,000 over three years. It’s funding a project we call Dream-Shaping Our Community. With the grant, we’re able to provide things we weren’t able to provide before. We’re able to pay more BIPOC library workers and archivists to do things like presentations.

When did the grant period start, and how is it going?

It started in January 2024, so this is our first year. It’s been great to have funding for things we previously didn’t. We have a Patreon and some courses where folks can pay, but to have this amount of money has really shifted things in a good way.

For the mentorship, which I specifically work on, we’ve expanded the its offerings. We’ve done webinars and presentations in the past, but with this funding, we’re able to actually pay folks for their time to do these events. We were also able to add another person to our team. We had to ask people to volunteer their time before and wished we could pay somebody to assist us. With the grant, we were able to bring in someone who participated in one of our past cohorts and also has experience with mentorship. They’re helping us and getting paid for their labor. With libraries, there are so many volunteer opportunities where you don’t get paid.

We’re also offering more professional development opportunities. There are folks who are not librarians by title, such as library technicians or assistants. Sometimes they’re not prioritized when it comes to professional development funding. The librarians and higher-ups are prioritized. That’s something I experienced coming up in my career because when I was a library technician, wanting to go to conferences or attend webinars, the funding wasn’t there because of my title. That’s something we wanted to remedy and provide those opportunities for folks who don’t otherwise have it.

There are ongoing media stories about the dangers of racism in medicine. What have you found in terms of racism and medical librarianship? Is there a correlation?

I co-wrote an academic journal article with my colleagues Ray Pun and Patrice Green about the fact that sometimes library collections do contribute to misinformation as far as health specifically related to Black bodies and Black folks. There are journals and publications that were founded on racism, these ideas that Black bodies are inferior and white bodies are superior. Even though science has shown that this isn’t true, there are still people who believe it. They can find old medical texts or journals that feed into these ideas. Medical racism is in a lot of fields, whether gynecology, dentistry, dermatology.

A lot of these things are passed on through families. If you don’t do current research, then these ideas perpetuate through word of mouth. Libraries have a responsibility to provide accurate information, but also to provide the truth. We don’t want to say, “These things are in the past, they don’t affect us now.” They do. They still affect us now. We need to be good stewards of information and provide historical context to certain things and also do our best to provide people with the evidence they need to do good research in medicine. There are still ideas about Black bodies not experiencing pain like white bodies, things like that, that are still being perpetuated in medical science to this day. Even though we aren’t in the surgery rooms, we still have doctors and nurses who come to us for research, and we have a big responsibility to provide accurate information and dispel myths in the literature.

Another thing is that medical and science literature changes pretty often, just because of advances in technology and the like, but some people are still stuck on things from 30 years ago, and that’s not how it should be.

Before working at LSU, you were a public librarian and started the Natural Hair Support Group in 2016. What drove that?

I was going through my own natural hair journey and I felt isolated in it, even though I knew other people, not just women, who were going through their own natural hair journeys. There was only so much I could do watching YouTube. I felt like I needed an in-person community that I could connect with, and I thought, maybe if I’m feeling this way, then others do too. I’d never heard of anything like this in a library and I didn’t think it would be approved. But it was, and we had over 30 people at the first meeting.

When I switched to academic libraries, I turned the program over to a colleague because I’m not in that community anymore. I do hope to bring it to the university in a different way. When I did it at the public library, it was a variety of people, all ages, all races. I think it could be the same within the university setting, but it’ll probably have to look a little different. But I am interested in trying to do that at the university.

Do you have advice for other librarians who are interested in starting a Natural Hair Support Group in their community, whether public or academic library?

I’ve had a few librarians across the country reach out and ask the same question. First of all, listen to [your community’s] needs. I went into starting my group with a vested interest. But during the first meeting, I asked people what they wanted to see. The second thing I suggested is you don’t have to do it on your own. When I started, for some reason, I felt I had to do it on my own. Then I thought, there are people who have expertise in this area that I don’t. I’m not a licensed cosmetologist. I started to bring in guest speakers, licensed cosmetologists who came and talked about natural hair. I brought in folks from social media who are doing things with natural hair. Sometimes you can make that connection with someone local on YouTube or Instagram and say, “Would you be willing to come and speak to the group?”

One of the things I did, which I never in a million years thought I would do, is have a natural hair show. The participants would come with their hair done in a fancy way or new style. It was like a runway show, and it was very fun, lighthearted. We had a good time. It was one of the greatest moments that I had. So just allow things to take their course and have an open imagination.