Meet Annie Downey, our new UW Tacoma Library Director and Associate Dean of University Libraries! Annie recently joined us in May and brings her vast knowledge of academic libraries and her expertise in supporting student success to our community. We recently had a conversation with Annie and learned about her interests, her passions, and what specifically brought her to the UW Tacoma Library. Read the transcript of the interview to learn more!

Elexa Moore: So today we are interviewing Annie Downey, our new UW Tacoma Library Director. We are so excited to talk with you today, Annie, and excited to learn more about you. How are you today?

Annie Downey: I’m great! How are you?

Elexa: Good, thank you. So for our first question, we wanted to know … about your trajectory into libraries. So what drew you into working in libraries?

Annie: What drew me to libraries was that I had an undergraduate degree in anthropology and I knew I wanted to go to graduate school and I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I knew I did not want to be a classroom teacher, or I thought I didn’t want to be a classroom teacher. I’m still pretty sure I was right about that. I knew I wanted to do something in research, but I wasn’t completely convinced that I wanted to do a PhD. 

I did of course go on to do a PhD later, but when I first went into libraries I wasn’t sure that that was something that I was interested in doing. And so my sister at the time was working for the Austin History Center in downtown Austin and she worked really closely with reference librarians. She was a page and she did a lot of pulling books for them for their reference questions and this is, of course, pre- all research being on the Internet. It was so interesting to me that that was a job. It really was, like, almost impossible for me to fathom that I could actually have a job where I just did research and answered questions and explored stuff with people, so I was really intrigued. I’d been a library user my entire life but I never really made the connection between the people in the building and the library and so kind of making that connection was really big for me. Kind of shockingly eye opening considering how old I was.

But that really made me want to work in libraries. So I started library school and then I really enjoyed my classes. I enjoyed my professors.  But what really made me develop my real love for the work was when I was a graduate assistant in the library, as you all are, and getting to work at the reference desk. I did about 20 hours a week at the reference desk for about two years and I learned so much, and I just felt like I got smarter and smarter every day that I worked. And I just loved libraries ever since.

Lyneea Kmail: That’s awesome. Okay, um, so what areas or aspects are you most passionate about within the LIS field?

Annie: So this has changed over the years, as I think it does. I’ve been in libraries for 20 years now. So things have kind of morphed along for me. When I first started, I didn’t really think that I wanted to teach because I was painfully shy. I didn’t actually think I would be able to stand up and speak to a class. So I was interested in going into academic libraries, but I was terrified of that component, and so I took an academic libraries class with a woman, a librarian who became my mentor, and she kind of helped me come out of my shell and helped me teach and helped me learn how to teach. She was just very gentle and helped me grow a lot and that really launched me into teaching. So my first passion in libraries was teaching.

Information literacy. I did my dissertation research on critical information literacy and [was] very fascinated with how critical theory and social justice can sort of come into its own in library classrooms and the opportunities that it creates for students to be able to go on and learn. So, my first passion was critical information literacy.

I’ve done a lot of work around K-20 information literacy. So the idea is that the students that we get, by the time we get them in college, they’ve had all of this stuff that’s happened to them and sort of “Where are they?” by the time we get them in higher ed[ucation].

I’ve done a lot of work around user experience and service design. I’m really passionate around how our spaces and our services are actually used by people and also kind of what people’s dreams are for our spaces and how can we make those dreams a reality. 

And then the research I’m doing right now that I’m very excited about is feminist management and libraries. So I’m working on a duoethnography project right now around power in libraries and how it has shown up. How it showed up before COVID and how it’s shown up during COVID. But really this sort of historical perspective on how women have been in libraries for a very, very long time, obviously, and we still haven’t managed to get a hold of this profession and lead it in the direction that I feel that we want it to go. So, feminist management to me is this way that we can really enact library values within the library community with our staff and librarians and students and everybody that we work with. 

So I have a lot of passions. Those are some of them.

Elexa: Yeah, those are so exciting! I can’t wait to learn more! 

Annie: Thank you!

Elexa: So what attracted you to the UW Tacoma Library specifically?

Annie: So many things. So the first thing, I will be honest, is the Pacific Northwest. I lived in Portland for seven years and fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. When you live, when you’re a librarian in the Pacific Northwest, the University of Washington is kind of like…everybody knows what’s happening at the University of Washington, if you live in it and if you’re a librarian in the area. So I’ve, of course, always kind of had this fascination with what’s going on up in Seattle and what’s going on at UW.

However, I really love the smaller to medium-sized campuses. I started my career at the University of North Texas, which is a beast of a campus. It’s like, I think they are up to 55,000 students. And so I started in this giant system and I was very specialized in what I did, and I really wanted to have a better understanding of how libraries worked because I felt like I knew my one little area but didn’t know the rest very well. So I went to Reed [College] in Portland and that’s where I feel like I learned how all the library stuff comes together. Like, really understood the big picture of the library. And I like that size. It was a little too small and a little not university enough. So I went to the University of Redlands, and that was kind of the sweet spot for me, and the University of Washington Tacoma is the same size. Small enough where you get to know the community and you really get to know students and faculty and staff and everybody that’s on campus, but large enough that there are a lot of different opportunities and innovation. And then the thing that makes the UW Tacoma position even more exciting to me is I get to be a part of the larger UW system while living my dream of running the medium-sized library. So it’s kind of the best of all worlds, in my opinion.

And then the other thing about Tacoma, in a less professional sort of career sense, is that I’m very excited about the urban campus and the demographics of the students and how the mission of Tacoma is really about helping, helping students have future financial and personal success, which is what I was seeking when I went to college. I was a low income college student, and so I think that…I can’t even believe the opportunities that higher education has provided for me personally and for my family. My children live a very different life than I lived. And so I’m very excited that UW Tacoma does the same thing – that the mission of the University is to help people move where they want to go.

Lyneea: It is a really special campus and we’re so excited that you’re here. 

Annie: Thank you.

Lyneea: What excites you most about your position here at UWT?

Annie:  I’m really excited about the Learning Commons project and the way that that project is bringing together different groups on campus and the mission and vision is really about how do we create a place for students to feel welcome to go and take care of a lot of different needs but, most importantly, feel like this is a really welcoming place that’s for them on campus. So I’m very excited about that project.

I’m really excited about trying to get to know the community really well and figuring out what kinds of programming works really great for this community. I’m excited to work with everybody in the library to figure out what services and resources are really going to be meaningful for people and doing what I call radical access where we focus a lot on the outcomes that we’re seeing students have, as opposed to sort of the inputs that we’re putting in. So we can really evaluate if we are really providing the access that leads to truly more opportunity, as opposed to just kind of providing that base level access where, yes, you can check out a book, and here it is but all of the other opportunities aren’t necessarily very clear. so I’m really excited about working with this group of librarians and staff that really, in my interview process, made it very clear to me that they also are very interested in doing that kind of work. I’m excited to work with a group of people that wants to do that work with me to figure out what this community really wants out of our library.

Elexa: Definitely. Thank you for that. Have you read or watched anything good lately?

Annie: Oh wow. So during the pandemic, Audible became one of my closest friends and so I have listened to a lot of audiobooks. I tend to go to books that are not very happy. This is something my family has been sort of, like, poking me about, like, “you need to watch and listen to something a little bit more happy”. So I’ll tell you something happy that I’m watching with my daughter right now. I’m watching On Pointe on Disney+, which is about the American School of Ballet. And it’s really fun and, of course, doesn’t focus on any of the difficult parts of ballet so it’s just a fun watch. 

Right now I’m listening to The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead because I have wanted to read it for a long time but didn’t actually feel like maybe I could handle the print. But the listening, I can sort of process a little better. So that is really good, it’s really good. Of course, it’s not fun, but it’s very good.

I also…I just listen to a ton of music. I’m a huge music lover and something I’ve been listening to a lot lately, my mother is spending the summer in Tennessee, so I’ve been listening to Our Native Daughters a lot and just some other kind of, like, folk kind of stuff. I also am a huge, this always surprises people, a huge hip hop fan. I love 90s rap. I just discovered there is a radio station in Tacoma that, on Friday mornings, does commercial free throwback rap and it’s very good. So I have a lot of interests.

Lyneea: That’s awesome. One more question to wrap up the interview and that is what do you like to do in your free time?

Annie: I like to spend time with my family. I have three children, so I spend a lot of time with them. They are 20, 16, and 11, and my 20-year-old is home from college this summer, so we do a lot of TV watching together. I have wanted to have a really big, nice yard probably my whole adult life and this is the first time I have, so I’m having so much fun picking weeds, which I never thought I would say, but I’m having a great time doing that. I’m really looking forward to the music scene opening back up and so have started looking at concert tickets. Just yesterday I bought tickets to see Julien Baker in Seattle in November and so I’m very excited.

Lyneea: That’s awesome.

Elexa: Well, thank you so much for doing this interview with us and taking time to talk to us. Yeah, we’re so excited that you’re here and can’t wait to introduce you to the UW Tacoma community.

Annie: Thanks so much. I’m really excited to be here. It’s been great talking to you. 

Photo: UW Tacoma Library Staff welcome Annie at Tea Time!

This blogpost was created by Lyneea Kmail and Elexa Moore.