2026 ALISE Annual Conference

Ethnic studies librarians occupy an unusual structural position at CSU academic libraries: simultaneously peripheral to institutional power and central to the curricular mandates institutions claim to prioritize. This research-in-progress examines that position through the concept of bridging labor — the largely unrecognized work of translating between epistemological frameworks, institutional logics, and community knowledge claims that ethnic studies librarianship routinely requires.This reframes what counts as a good question in LIS research and education. Concepts developed here — bridging labor, precarious centrality, documentary translation — extend existing frameworks in epistemic injustice (Fricker; Dotson) and community cultural wealth (Yosso) toward practice-level analysis of structurally complex professional roles.