[Pre-print] Radical Re-Imagination: Centering a BIPOC Library Workforce in an Asset-based Autoethnography

### Purpose Academic BIPOC librarians oftentimes struggle to envision themselves and navigate in White-dominant spaces due to deficit thinking. To better understand how diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts can bolster structural change in academic libraries, the two BIPOC authors opted to lean on an asset-based exercise–imagining a positive work environment made possible through a library staffed entirely by BIPOC individuals. ### Study design/methodology/approach Through collaborative autoethnography, the two authors interviewed one another and centered their unstructured conversations around one question: “What would an academic library composed entirely of a Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) workforce look like?” Three emergent themes were agreed upon and finalized by the two authors. ### Findings The authors’ imagined library is able to foster a supportive community and function efficiently thanks to its shared purpose grounded in DEIA. Despite relying on an asset-based framework, the authors found themselves having to reckon with trials and tribulations currently faced by BIPOC librarians. Effectively envisioning the “ideal” library environment is not possible without also engaging with librarianship’s legacy of racial injustices. ### Originality/value Recognizing that confronting systems of oppression naturally invokes trauma, this paper encourages librarians to challenge deficit thinking and instead rely on asset-based models to imagine an anti-racist academic library. The authors acknowledge that BIPOC voices and experiences add tremendous value to the library workplace. At the heart of this paper is the belief that reparations for past racial injustices should not only fix past wrongdoings, but also contribute to positive workplace cultures.