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In this staff spotlight, we are thrilled to highlight the work of Jason D. Phillips. From subject librarian and committee member to researcher and writer, Jason has made an inspiring impact in the time he has been at the UCF Libraries. We sat down with Jason to get a glimpse into some of his achievements, what his daily responsibilities look like and we learned what helps drive his work as an active scholar!

Tell us a little bit about your background and how long you’ve been with us at the UCF Libraries.
I’ve been a fan of libraries since childhood. Some of my earliest memories were trips to the public library where I would leave with stacks of books. I was finishing up my Master’s in History at The University of Alabama and decided I did not want to pursue a PhD. My time spent at the State Archives left me interested in helping others with research, so with that, and a nudge from a friend, I found myself in library school.

I got my start working in libraries in 2006, as a copy cataloger, while finishing up grad school. I then worked as a Government Documents librarian at Mississippi State (2008 – 2010) and Georgetown (2010 – 2011), and pivoted to a more general public service role at the University of Arkansas – Fort Smith (2013 – 2021), where I wore many hats.

After nearly nine years in Arkansas, I felt the need for a change in scenery, new challenges, and a desire to move closer to home (Daphne, AL). I joined UCF Libraries in January 2022.

What have been the areas of your job that you’re most passionate about?
I really enjoy the relationship-building that comes from outreach with faculty or even consultations with students. I love it when faculty or students become regulars with their research requests. I usually learn something from it and it helps me better understand the needs of our community better and how I can anticipate those needs and respond to future trends.

I am also really passionate about library faculty promotion and started the “A/V Club” as a way for library faculty to help encourage and support one another in our efforts to engage in professional service and research opportunities.

What has been your proudest accomplishment here? Can you tell us how that came to be?
One of the outcomes of the aforementioned relationship-building was a summer workshop I co-taught with Corinne Bishop and Andy Todd for the Sociology Department. One of my first faculty relationships I established was with Dr. Alison Cares, and one day, over coffee, she asked if the library would be interested in offering a summer workshop for the Sociology graduate students on evidence synthesis. This not only built on the in-roads I had been making with the department but also a lot of time spent training and learning about evidence synthesis that I had completed in the previous year (see this helpful guide from Cornell to learn more about evidence synthesis). The workshop took place in Summer 2024, and consisted of six or seven three-hour sessions where Corinne, Andy, and I taught the students (and faculty) the nuts and bolts of evidence synthesis reviews. The deliverable for the course was a completed protocol and presentation on the research topic the students chose. I was very proud of how much they learned and what Corinne, Andy, and I were able to accomplish with only six weeks to prepare.

You are a very active researcher and writer; what are some tendencies or details you’ve found to be vital to this process?
I really enjoy the research and publishing process. I try to hang on to nuggets of an idea and will actively pursue collaborations with other colleagues, here or elsewhere. And really, it goes back to that saying: If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with a friend. Collaborating on research not only makes the work easier but I think it makes it better. I find that it’s usually easiest to write about what you know, or in our case, what we do. So, a lot of my research activity – presentations, articles, and books – are based on my work and work-related interests, like burnout and evidence synthesis.

I am really good at setting personal goals or deadlines with my research, usually well in advance of the submission deadline. And just chip away at it a little at a time. I also tend to spend a lot of time reflecting on what I want to write, so by the time I sit down to write it, it usually does not take me too long. But this approach gives one of my frequent collaborators some anxiety as I tend to get down to the wire (with our internal deadline). I also like to come up to my office at night or the weekends to work on my research when fewer people are around.

Do you have any published works that have been recently released?
I recently co-presented / hosted a round table with Corinne Bishop and Sarah Norris about graduate researchers and evidence synthesis models at the ACRL Conference. It’s a highly-competitive process to have a proposal accepted, so it was thrilling we were able to do that. And I think we are very pleased with the quality of discussions that took place during our round table; it’s an experience I hope to have again!

A labor of love I have been working on since March 2022 is a recently published book that I co-edited and co-authored – Censorship Is a Drag LGBTQ Materials and Programming Under Siege in Libraries. Jordan Ruud (my co-editor) and I worked together for nearly nine years at UAFS, and the book was inspired by experiences we shared there involving censorship of LGBTQ books and programming. I told myself at the time “this pain will be useful to you one day,” so our work on the book and our three chapters in it, was a very cathartic experience. The book itself talks about the widespread efforts to censor books, collections, and services for the LGBTQ community in school, public, and academic libraries and archives, and includes a chapter by our own David Benjamin. We were able to make some important contributions to the scholarship on censorship as little has been recently published about attempts to censor LGBTQ materials and services in academic libraries and we also contribute to an emerging field of scholarship on queer battle fatigue. Each chapter includes a tool-kit, which we hope our colleagues will find helpful when preparing for or responding to a situation. And probably one of the most fun outcomes from this book was a recent podcast interview we gave with librarypunk.

Tell us a little about you outside of the Library. What sort of interests and hobbies do you have?
In my downtime I really enjoy gaming – I have to specify PC or console gaming as we have a lot of board-gamers at UCF Libraries – usually with some tv series streaming in the background. It’s a great, mindless activity where I do some of my thinking and reflecting. I also enjoy cooking and exploring the wonderful food scene here in Orlando, traveling to South Florida for fun and frivolity, and trips to the beach or art museum. And I am the servant to four cats (Sheldon, Ben, Little Khoa, and Oreo) and father to two dogs (Nicky and Saban). I’m a pretty boring, introverted coffee-drinker most of the time, in and out of work.

Is there something you want to pursue in the future?
Right now, I’m focused on my work, my research, my service, and will hopefully go up for promotion in rank in two or three years. We’re trying to get an evidence synthesis interdisciplinary research methods course approved and also establish a community of practice for it here at UCF Libraries, so that’s on my horizon. Work has already started on my next book. And I also am running unopposed as President-elect of FACRL, among other developing professional service commitments. That feels like enough!

But I also try not to plan too far into the future because who knows what the future holds? I’m open to pursuing opportunity when it presents itself, feels right for me, and feels like the right time.

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