TALint student has big ambitions for Indigenous collections

To achieve her goal of working with Indigenous Peoples, Adrianna Lewis originally planned to become a teacher. But she switched course after a revelatory stint as a student assistant at the library for Queen’s University’s Indigenous Teacher Education Program. 

Not only did Lewis enjoy working with Indigenous materials, she also spent a lot of time talking to people. “Knowing that I was Indigenous and worked in the library, people came to me with their questions about the resources,” she says. “That’s when I saw that some of the resources were not the best to use in teaching.” 

That experience of working hands-on in a library was so influential for Lewis that when the Faculty of Information offered her what’s known as a TALint position, she couldn’t pass it up and dropped her plans to study at the University of British Columbia.  

TALint, which stands for Toronto Academic Libraries Internship, is an immersive educational experience with extensive mentoring and a guaranteed15-hours-of-work per week in University of Toronto libraries while students complete their degrees. 

“I don’t know if it’s possible or not, but in the future, I want to have the largest collection of published Indigenous materials on Turtle Island,” Lewis says. 

Lewis, who has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Indigenous Studies & Music as well as a Bachelor of Education degree (both From Queen’s), is assigned to the Research and Education unit within Robarts Library.  

As a Kanyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) who grew up on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, some 45 minutes west of Kingston, Lewis’s interests lie in collection building, especially around Indigenous materials. “I learned about an Indigenous classification system called the Brian Deer Classification System,” she said, explaining how the system tailors classifications to the specific community it serves.  

This interest ties into her broader goal of seeing more Indigenous materials and perspectives integrated into library systems across Turtle Island (North America).“I don’t know if it’s possible or not, but in the future, I want to have the largest collection of published Indigenous materials on Turtle Island,” she says. 

While Lewis would like to see more Indigenous courses offered at the Faculty of Information, she said she was happy to hear from two Indigenous librarians early on in her Critical Infrastructures course (INF1324H). ” The first speaker had a museum background and was working in First Nation Library Services, and the other was a previous TALint student working in an academic library, so we had two different perspectives,” said Lewis, who is used to seeing Indigenous topics tacked on to the end of a course.   

Lewis is also finding a sense of community through U of T’s Indigenous resources. She regularly visits First Nations House, where she participates in cultural programming like beading and is looking to act as a firekeeper, a role she held at Queen’s University. “It’s nice to get to know people and find a community,” she said. 

Does she feel at all deterred by the challenges libraries face? No, she says: “When I was applying to library school, my mom told her co-workers and they were like, ‘Why? Libraries are dying’, but I never hesitated because growing up I spent so much time in libraries, and I know they have so much more to offer than books.” 

TALint provides 30 Faculty of Information students (15 in each year) with the opportunity to participate in a two-year paid internship at one of UTL’s 17 Central libraries. Three spots are allocated to Black and/or Indigenous students every year. Read more about TALint