When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Knowledge Sharing in Academic Libraries
Fostering Ancestral Intelligence (the Other AI)
Posted on May 12, 2026 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Jamia Williams
When Ruha Benjamin spoke at the ACRL 2025 conference, she discussed “ancestral intelligence” as the AI we should truly embrace. In a moment when academic librarians are inundated with conversations about artificial intelligence (AI), we are constantly asked to assess new tools, design instruction around them, and anticipate their implications for research and learning. AI has become both a promise and a pressure point in our work. But Benjamin’s framing asks us to pause and consider a deeper question. What if the most critical intelligence our institutions need right now is not artificial at all, but ancestral? In this blog post, I want to discuss how we can incorporate the concept of ancestral intelligence in academic libraries by being intentional in our knowledge-sharing practices so that key historical insights are not lost, and everyone has access to them.
Ancestral Intelligence
Ancestral intelligence is the accumulated, embodied, relational knowledge that moves across generations. It is lived experience sharpened by community, struggle, creativity, and care. Benjamin notes that Black communities, in particular, have always used this form of intelligence as a strategy for survival and innovation. It has shaped how we teach one another, how we build networks of support, and how we navigate institutions that were never designed with us in mind. As a Black woman in academia, I see ancestral intelligence in the informal mentoring that happens behind office doors, in the careful guidance shared over coffee, and in the stories that hold lessons no policy manual or LibGuide could ever contain.
Ancestral intelligence asks us to consider what it means to trust knowledge that has been cultivated through lived experience, especially within Black communities where oral traditions, storytelling, and collective memory have long been essential forms of preservation. In academic libraries, this concept challenges us to move beyond rigid hierarchies of knowledge. It pushes us to recognize that not all valuable insight is documented in peer-reviewed journals or institutional repositories.
For me, ancestral intelligence shows up in the quiet ways we guide one another. It is in the colleague who knows the history of a community partnership because she has nurtured it for years. It is in the way we anticipate patron needs based on patterns we have observed but never formally recorded. When we fail to name and share this knowledge, we risk losing it, especially in spaces with many unfilled positions where institutional memory is fragile.
Knowledge Sharing as Collective Practice
Scholars define knowledge sharing as “the process whereby individuals mutually exchange their knowledge and create new knowledge.”1 At its core, knowledge sharing is not about transferring static information. It is about mutual exchange and co-creation. It is about transformation.
In many academic libraries, however, knowledge sharing is inconsistent and often informal. Institutional memory can become concentrated in a few individuals. When those individuals retire or transition, their knowledge leaves with them. New librarians, particularly those from historically marginalized backgrounds, may find themselves reconstructing processes through trial and error because the “unwritten rules” were never made visible.
This dynamic reflects a culture of scarcity rather than one of collective growth. If ancestral intelligence teaches us anything, it is that knowledge is meant to circulate. It is meant to be carried forward, refined, and shared. This is essential now more than ever, given budget cuts, the underfunding of academic libraries, and so many positions that are not being filled or created.
Creating Environments Where Knowledge Sharing Is the Norm
If we want knowledge sharing to become normative in academic libraries, we must design for it. Culture does not shift by accident. Below are some ideas about knowledge-sharing practices.
- Formalize storytelling as a legitimate mode of institutional learning. Onboarding processes should include structured conversations with experienced staff about not only procedures but also decision-making histories, partnerships, and challenges. Recording oral histories of long-serving librarians can preserve institutional memory while honoring lived experience as a form of expertise.
- Align incentives with collaboration. Promotion and tenure criteria often prioritize individual outputs such as publications and presentations. While these are important, institutions can also recognize mentorship, cross-training, documentation practices, and contributions to communities of practice. When knowledge sharing is rewarded, it becomes visible and valued labor.
- Create recurring, reciprocal spaces for exchange. Skill shares, rotating teach-ins, and interdepartmental dialogues allow librarians to learn from one another outside hierarchical structures. A systems librarian may offer insight into workflow automation while learning from a public services colleague about trauma-informed reference interactions. Mutual exchange creates new knowledge at the intersection of roles.
- Leadership must model transparency. Knowledge hoarding is frequently tied to power and insecurity. Leaders who document their processes, articulate rationales for decisions, and invite shared governance send a clear message that information is not currency to be guarded but a resource to be cultivated collectively.
Honoring the Intelligence We Already Carry
As academic librarians, we are often positioned as intermediaries between emerging technologies and our campus communities. In this moment of rapid AI adoption, it is tempting to focus exclusively on technical competencies. Yet ancestral intelligence reminds us that our greatest asset is not simply our ability to evaluate tools. It is our capacity to nurture learning communities.
Many of us, especially Black women and librarians of color, are already practicing ancestral intelligence in our daily work. We mentor informally. We share opportunities through networks that extend beyond institutional boundaries. We debrief difficult experiences and collectively interpret what they mean. These practices are not peripheral to the mission of academic libraries. They are central to sustaining them.
Artificial intelligence can generate text, summarize articles, and analyze data. It cannot replicate relational trust, ethical discernment shaped by lived experience, or the wisdom cultivated through collective struggle and care. If academic libraries want to remain relevant and just in an AI saturated landscape, we must invest not only in new technologies but also in the human infrastructures that make knowledge meaningful.
We can be serious about honoring ancestral intelligence, but we must create a practice for how we share knowledge. Too often, knowledge in academic libraries is siloed. It lives in individual inboxes, in personal notes, or in the minds of seasoned staff who may not always have structured opportunities to pass it on. Ancestral intelligence calls us to remember that knowledge is not only stored in repositories. It is carried in memory, conversation, and community. When we create environments where knowledge sharing is the norm, we honor that lineage and ensure that what we know today becomes the foundation for what we build tomorrow.
—
Notes
- Bart van den Hooff and Jan A. de Ridder, “Knowledge Sharing in Context: The Influence of Organizational Commitment, Communication Climate and CMC Use on Knowledge Sharing,” Journal of Knowledge Management 8, no. 6 (2004): 118, cited in Mírian Oliveira, Carla Curado, and Plínio Silva de Garcia, “Knowledge Hiding and Knowledge Hoarding: A Systematic Literature Review,” Knowledge and Process Management 28, no. 3 (2021): 277.
About the author:
Jamia Williams (she/her) is a health sciences librarian. She is also the co-creator and co-host of the podcast LibVoices and the founder of The Diversity Fellow’s blog.
Interested in contributing to TIE? Send an email to Fatima at Choice (fmohie-eldin@ala.org) with your topic idea.
Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.