Hannah Sutherland
MLIS, Library Studies | UCLA, 2024
Photo by Lewis Kopenhafer
Welcome to my digital portfolio!
This digital portfolio serves as fulfillment of the requirements outlined by the UCLA Information Studies Department for degree completion. This portfolio includes papers, projects, my course list, advising history, curriculum vitae, and a professional development statement.
You can view or download my complete portfolio in one concise PDF navigable via table of contents here. You can also download each individual paper on the associated webpage if you prefer.
About Me
Besides my work as a student, I’ve also worked as an Instructional Designer at the UCLA Library since 2019. In my time, I’ve co-led the WI+RE (Writing Instruction and Research Education) team in developing online tutorials for scalable learning, as well as served as a library liaison to the Global Islam Cluster, a year-long interdisciplinary class for freshmen. These experiences, as well as the opportunity to provide research assistance and library instruction, have greatly supplemented my understanding of the library landscape.
I’m also an avid reader, home cook, climber, and yoga enthusiast. I love games of all kinds — video games, analog games, and my weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. My household is completely run by my three cats: Skillet, Phoebe, and Hauser.
I’m thrilled to be starting a position as an Open Science and Collections Librarian at the UCLA Library starting in July! My work will primarily support the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences.
(Photo by Lewis Kopenhafer)
Digital Accessibility Statement
Using the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE) tool, this portfolio has been checked for accessibility and is in compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 standards. This website was built in Squarespace using a maximally compliant template; I made few changes to the design to maintain the accessibility.
My complete portfolio is also available in PDF form on this homepage. Each component of the portfolio is also available as a PDF on the corresponding page. Links to PDFs open in a separate browser tab. The primary difference between downloading the entire portfolio versus each component is that I’ve removed all headings from individual papers within the complete portfolio. This is to increase ease of navigation for the portfolio committee but I encourage anyone who prefers a complete headings structure to download individual papers on their associated pages on this website.
One issue I ran into was adding alt text to the grid of menu items below. While each menu item is navigable via text, I am currently researching methods for adding accessible text to the accompanying images. If someone knows how to do this, I welcome recommendations; it is unclear to me if my inability to do this is a limitation of using Squarespace as my hosting platform. In the meantime, to amend this, I’ve included a list with descriptive text of the photos in the grid.
While I strive to employ Universal Design principles to my work, there may be problems that I’ve missed. If you experience any issues with this site, especially as it relates to assistive technology, please feel free to email me using the form on the Contact page. I welcome any feedback on how to improve in this area.
Acknowledgments
A heartfelt thank you to my partner Lew, for reading and providing feedback on every single one of these papers, as well as taking care of our house, cats, and me these past three years. Thank you for sitting beside me while I spent countless hours writing and then taking me out for much needed fun. Your partnership has gotten me through some of the most chaotic years of my life. Thank you to my dear friend Nick for inspiring me to apply to this program and always pushing me, in all aspects of my life, to try seemingly impossible things; I wouldn’t have done any of this without your encouragement. Thank you to Matty for your friendship, kindness, and wit. You’re the kind of friend and librarian that I aspire to be. Thank you to Sylvia and Salma for the endless support with school, work, the job hunt, and all things life. I don’t know what I would have done without the vending machine conversations, pop culture education, and endless, endless advice. Thank you to Ellie for being my unofficial advisor and life coach. You’re such a gem. Thank you to Thi for reading my statement of purpose and being a source of inspiration. Thank you to Professor Furner for the constant support, availability, and inviting classrooms. Thank you to Shea, Lily, Krista, Bibba, Jimmy, Ashley, Chris, Eileen, my D&D group, and the Sandy B. Film Club for the conversation, the friendship, the patience, the laughs, and more than I can say. Lastly, shout out to Lofi Girl. If you know, you know.
All photos, unless otherwise stated, were taken by me. The grid/menu of photos below contains the following images, from left to right:
A white mushroom enveloped by green grass
The brightly colored stained glass ceiling from Canter’s Deli
Ice on a puddle of water visually resembling oil on water
A cactus with small yellow buds
My siamese tabby cat, Hauser, lounging on a record player
Pale red desert flowers with pale sage green buds and curly leaves
UCLA is a land grant institution. The Gabrielino/Tongva peoples are the traditional land caretakers of Tovaangar (Los Angeles basin, South Channel Islands). I pay my respects to Honuukvetam (Ancestors), elders, and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging.
To learn more about the Gabrielino/Tongva community’s connection and relationship to the Los Angeles area, visit Mapping Indigenous LA: Placemaking Through Digital Storytelling.
I’m deeply grateful to Professor Cindy Nguyen’s Global History of Libraries: Colonial Pasts, *(Decolonial?) Futures class for its impact in my understanding of colonization and my role in it and in helping me imagine alternative futures. In “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality,” I found Nelson Maldonado-Torres’ call for a differentiation between “colonialism/decolonization” and “coloniality/decoloniality” extremely useful in maintaining active engagement with the structure of colonialism, especially as it exists in the academy. He writes that ”colonialism and decolonization are usually depicted as past realities or historical episodes that have been superseded by other kind of socio-political and economical regimes. In this way, colonialism and decolonization are locked in the past, located elsewhere, or confined to specific empirical dimensions,” whereas “coloniality and decoloniality refer to the logic, metaphysics, ontology, and matrix of power created by the massive processes of colonization and decolonization.” (10). Removing the fixed historicity of colonization and instead, seeing it for the ongoing and structural state of oppression, warlike conditions, and metaphysical wreckage that it is, is helpful in keeping settlers, like myself, accountable in working towards dismantling it.
Lastly, I recommend the article “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang which examines the use of the term within educational advocacy and scholarship, reminding us that, “Decolonization offers a different perspective to human and civil rights based approaches to justice, an unsettling one, rather than a complementary one. Decolonization is not an “and”. It is an elsewhere.” (36).