Felicia A. Smith

Felicia A. Smith, MLIS, is the inaugural Racial Justice and Social Equity Librarian at Stanford Libraries. Felicia’s primary focus is on Stanford Libraries’ database called KNOW Systemic Racism (KSR). She is responsible for outreach to faculty and students interested in issues of race, ethnicity, and social equity across all departments, schools as well as the Equity, Community, Leadership (ECL) centers. Felicia is responsible for collection development of research materials in all formats that support the research and teaching needs of scholars working on those issues. She works with other bibliographers to identify publishers and data sources that expand the breadth of Stanford’s collections.

In solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, Felicia is creating a KNOW Systemic Racism (KSR) database. This will enable users to discover factual data about interconnected systems that pose threats to people of African descent in the United States that have been shaped by racist policies and practices of institutions across decades. It will also help people take action against these threats by knowing their rights and finding, evaluating, and connecting with government agencies and community groups that address systemic racism.

Felicia was also the visionary for an exhibit titled, Say Their Names – No More Names. This forget-me-not exhibit highlights 65 names of recognizable victims who represent larger groups of lesser-known victims. This exhibit includes the names of 330 victims and 3 admitted cases of governmental systemic racism. This exhibit aspires to make the unknown victims - known.

Felicia believes that as an African American librarian, she is charged with the awesome responsibility of being a keeper of the light and protector of our shared memories. Felicia believes that before we as a society can “Know Justice” we must interrogate the injustices and right the wrongs of society, and only then will we “Know Peace.” Articles about Stanford Libraries' Say Their Names – No More Names exhibit were published by Stanford Report and The Stanford Daily.
Please visit the aforementioned exhibit at https://exhibits.stanford.edu/saytheirnames

In addition to her numerous national and international presentations, Felicia has published several peer-reviewed articles as well as a book, Cybrarian Extraordinaire, detailing her highly successful and unique approach to library instruction. Felicia created a program that taught Information Literacy using Kindles for inmates in a Juvenile Jail. Previously, Felicia was as a Criminal Defense Private Investigator in Chicago, Illinois, specializing in homicide and narcotics. Her motto is, "I make the unknown, known."

Felicia received a Master of Library Science degree, from Dominican University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her past positions include serving as the Latino Studies Subject Specialist as an Assistant Librarian, at the University of Notre Dame.