Janet M. Suzuki

Janet Suzuki (1943 – 1987) was a library leader. She devoted her life to social justice and civil rights issues. Feeling that the needs of Asian American librarians were unrepresented and under served by the American Library Association, she co-founded the Asian American Librarian Caucus (AALC) in 1975. It was the first Asian-American library organization that served the pan Asian American librarian community.^[1] It was a predecessor to the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association.^[2]

Early life

During Suzuki's lifetime, the U.S. was in a state of crisis. Suzuki was born in Westboro, Ohio in 1943. She was born at a time when other Japanese were being placed in internment camps (Japanese American internment). When Suzuki was in high school and college in the 1960s, the civil rights movement was very alive with leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. protesting for equal rights in the South and Washington. Suzuki graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1968. In 1969, she received her MSLS degree from the University of Denver. After she graduated, she started to work for the Chicago Public Library where she stayed until retirement.^[3] Probably being influenced by the events during her lifetime, Suzuki carried on the struggle for Asian Americans locally in Chicago and nationally, within the ALA.

Activism

Suzuki held a number of positions in the Asian-American library community and Asian American community at large:

• Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, Board of Directors, 1973-1983.^[4]
• Chicago’s Japanese American Resource Center (JARC), Board Member and Founder,1974 and First Chair, 1975.^[5]
• Japanese American Youth Organization, Advisor.^[6]
• Asian American Librarian Caucus(AALC) (later known as the Asian American Librarians Association (AALA)), Co-Founder, 1975.^[7]
• AALA’s Constitution Revision Committee, Member, 1979-80.^[8]
• Asian/Pacific American Librarians Midwest Association (APALMA), Founder, 1981.^[9]

Writings

Suzuki continued her activist activities even in her writing. In her library articles "Asian Americans and libraries,"Suzuki writes to possible Asian-American librarians considering careers in the library profession. She dispels the myth that Asian Americans have somehow "made it" when there exists a class ceiling preventing them from attaining positions of real power.^[10] She states that Asian Americans should not feel the need to go into technical services and libraries with large Asian populations, where Asian Americans are typically found in the profession. She encourages Asian Americans to take administrative positions and feel comfortable work in areas where there are few or no Asians.^[11] Regardless of where Asian Americans work, she hopes that Asian Americans will make sure that library collections reflect the fact that Asian Americans are part of the fabric of this country, from the building of the transcontinental to the internment of Japanese Americans.^[12] Her writing suggests that the biggest resource that Asian Americans are adding to a library collection is their ethnic background.^[13]

In her article, "Asian Americans and Libraries," Suzuki's audience is the American Library Association. Suzuki reports on the activities of Asian American libraries and librarians.^[14]

Death and legacy

Suzuki started to have serious health problems in the late 1970s. She retired from the Chicago Public Library in the 1980s and died from complications from lupus in 1987.^[15]

Not much has been recorded about Suzuki's life. The Suzuki family and the ALA headquarters have no records of her work. Much of what is known and written about her life is by written in an article by Kenneth Yamashita, who worked with Suzuki from 1975-1978 in the Chicago Public Library and stayed in contact with her until her death in 1987.^[16] Had she lived longer, she would have seen the seeds of her activism bear fruit but also would have had more literature written by and about her.

Bibliography

Yamashita, Kenneth A.(2000), Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association— A History of APALA and Its Founders, Library Trends 49 (1) 2000: Ethnic Diversity in Library and Information Science: 88-108.

Suzuki, J. (1976), Asian Americans and libraries, The ALA yearbook: A review of library events for 1975 (pp. 88–89). Chicago: American Library Association. ISSN 0364-1597

Suzuki, J.,& Yamashita, K. A. (1977). Asian American public librarians. In E.J. Josey & K. E. Peeples Jr. (Eds.), Opportunities for minorities in librarianship. Metuchen, NJ: Scare-crow Press. ISBN 0-8108-1022-0

References