Connie Siebold

Objective – Immigrants’ adjustment to U.S. society, also known as immigrant acculturation, is a vast area of study, but there are few studies relating to immigrant acculturation within the library and information science field. Methods – Data from 131 survey responses and 20 interviews suggest that library workers are somewhat familiar with the immigrant acculturation process, but specific and evidence based training can further their knowledge. Results – Insight on immigrant acculturation contextualizes immigrants’ realities and thus assists library workers in being aware of and responsive to the nuances of adjusting to and thriving in a new country like the U.S. Conclusion – In the face of anti-immigration legislation and heightened xenophobic misinformation, librarians need professional development drawn from empirical investigations of immigrants’ acculturative experiences.

Team meetings are a key part of professional life which are experienced as sociotechnical, interpersonal phenomena. This interview study examines the intersection of modality, disability, and technology in the team meeting setting. Persistent concerns emerged across meeting modalities: participation as a sociotechnical challenge; social/teamwork considerations; stigma, disclosure, and expectations regarding professionalism; a lack of information regarding meetings; productivity problems; and dueling accommodations between disabled individuals. These themes represent challenges about taskwork, teamwork and social perception, and sociotechnical aspects. Findings suggest that flexibility to choose the modality of attendance based on individual context, along with flexibility to choose in-meeting supports, can help with dynamic needs. The accessibility interventions most desired by participants are both readily available and benefit all workers regardless of disability status, but require simultaneous infrastructural, technological, and process interventions to address.

Multilingual education and acculturation research share a parallel history of problematic research paradigms that center the majority viewpoint and view minorities through a lens of deficit. This continual pathology of cultural difference has led to the pathologization of minority individuals, and has hampered our efforts to effectively understand and educate in a nuanced and culturally sensitive manner. In our focus on quantifying stress and deficiency, we have failed to understand emic experiences of joy and agency that can better inform our teaching and research. This article asserts a model of research and teaching that prioritizes narrative reclamation, while developing the concept of acculturative joy as a lens of study.