Abstract
During the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic, library workers learned very quickly that institutions see library workers as instrumental to student learning outcomes and faculty research and teaching needs, not as partners or collaborators in these endeavours. In effect, library workers operate institutionally as infrastructure to be relied upon, not as colleagues with whom to collaborate. This chapter seeks to re-centre the human to address this inequity, reconceiving infrastructure through conspicuous repair, rather than attempting to restore a seamless, prior whole. Drawing on Lauren Berlant’s theory of cruel optimism, the Design Justice Principles, and the Japanese tradition of visible mending, this chapter proposes that by re-centring the human we can begin to recognise the interrelationality of infrastructure.
