Dr. Lotsee Patterson, professor emerita of library and information studies at the University of Oklahoma, says “a longstanding, historical absence of funds” for libraries in tribal communities is why so many indigenous people are largely unfamiliar with them. When Patterson began teaching 50 years ago at a rural public school of mostly American Indians, she was dismayed and appalled that it had no library. She went on to help secure permanent federal funding for tribal libraries.
As a sign of how slow progress can be, however, Aguilar still encounters students whose high schools did not even designate a specific room as a library or whose tribal community library was limited to children’s and young adult literature.
Aguilar doesn’t recall a librarian working at the tiny library in her elementary school. Santo Domingo Pueblo did not have a community library either until she was an undergraduate at UNM in the 1980s. But because her mother had no day care for her children while attending UNM, the young Aguilar accompanied her mother to college libraries. Her mother would research while the girl got help from staff librarians in how to use a card catalog. An avid reader, Aguilar spent hours poring over science fiction and fantasy books.
Patterson, who has mentored dozens of librarians among native people, recruited Aguilar to OU for her master’s in library and information studies. Aguilar joined UNM as a librarian in 2002.
