I made a split second decision at ALA’s Annual Conference this year, and veered off from my planned schedule to instead hear Sonia Sotomayor. The impetus for her new children’s book was her experience hearing someone else describe Sotomayor as a drug addict because they had seen Sotomayor give herself an insulin shot. Her book is titled Just Ask!/¡Solo pregunta! and encourages children not to make assumptions about other people.
When asked by someone in the audience what she would like law librarians (or research librarians in general) to be able to do, she is one of the few people I have ever heard succinctly state (I am paraphrasing from memory) “librarians help researchers think more broadly about the topic.” She wished librarians could just reach inside the researcher’s brain because we are so good at helping frame the research topic through our knowledge of different disciplines. The American Libraries coverage describes the other delight in attending Sotomayor’s talk: “Sotomayor noted that as a child she could never sit still and was soon walking the aisles of the auditorium—followed closely by her security detail—telling her story, hugging attendees, and being serenaded for her upcoming birthday (June 25).
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