Elizabeth Kamper has been teaching information literacy in libraries for 10 years and received their MSLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They are currently the Information Literacy Librarian and an Associate Professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Elizabeth also teaches in the University Honors Program on ‘Questions and the Spirit of Inquiry’ and ‘the Nature of Liberal Education’. Elizabeth has served on several university and national committees focusing on information literacy in university curriculum and held faculty fellowships supporting the campus freshman experience. Their research interests include criticality in information literacy, LGBTQIA+ librarians, wonder-led inquiry for research and writing, as well as using tabletop gaming to roleplay empathy in the classroom.
Gayle Porter holds the rank of Assistant Professor in the Gwendolyn Brooks Library at Chicago State University. She earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Brigham Young University and a Master’s degree in History from Chicago State University. As an academic librarian, her specialty is cataloging materials in all formats. Her research interests include cataloging and metadata description.
Hunter Dunlap is a tenured professor and systems librarian at Western Illinois University, where he serves as the Coordinator of Resource Management Services. Dunlap has written widely about technology and academic libraries over his 28-year career, including authoring the widely held book “Open Source Database Driven Web Development” (Chandos). The senior member of the (all) nine librarian faculty eliminated at Western (effective May 2025), he created the savewiulibrarians.org website to help mobilize support for academic librarianship at WIU, and beyond.
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This was a useful conversation.
What happened at WIU was the result of administrative panic over a budget deficit created by discounting tuition to attract students, the failure to retain those students, and a high tolerance for multi million dollar athletics deficits. The administrative panic was caused by a BOT (who had approved the tuition discounts and was complacent about athletics deficits) suddenly demanding immediate large deficit reductions which led to the layoffs. The librarian layoffs were in no small part the result of administrative ignorance about what we do (apparently they seriously thought our “value proposition “ was zero ) and administrative incompetence at all levels when blithely acting on this ignorance. People in positions of responsibility who presumably knew better did not oppose the administration. The BOT, equally ignorant about the library, did not oppose the administration it had just demanded to reduce the budget. And they will continue to support the administration.
The WIU librarians have fought back hard. The union is fighting back. I’m proud of them. Without pressure from the BOT which I doubt (may I be proved wrong) will be forthcoming, the administration (and BOT) will persist like any other bureaucracy in their madness. Their defense will be (I’ve already heard it) that they were forced by circumstances to take drastic actions. In other words the administration/BOT is a victim, too. Don’t blame them. Blame the circumstances…the ones they were instrumental in creating. Thus ever bureaucratic politics.
Educate the upper administration about your value, but when an institution starts running high deficits (like ISU, for instance) plan your escape. Fight but prepare for rational flight.