Jacquelyn Kim first joined the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library in 2022 as a student worker, where she helped build an exhibition that examined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The exhibition was curated by UVA alumni and community members and gave Kim a crash course in what she calls “the importance of co-creation.”
Kim’s time as a student worker was so successful that she joined UVA Library as an Exhibitions Coordinator after graduating from UVA in 2023. Her duties include helping to build exhibitions — from developing themes and writing display text, to painting walls and mounting objects — as well as public engagement, through social media management and class tours. In addition to her full-time job, she is pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science degree from Indiana University, for which she was awarded a scholarship by the American Library Association.
We spoke to Kim about her love of archiving, foraging, and going down research rabbit holes.
Q. Can you describe your typical workday? How often do you interact with students and faculty?
A. One of the reasons I love working in exhibitions so much is because every day looks different! Some days, I’m meeting with folks who are curating an upcoming exhibition and helping them to distill their ideas and draft exhibition text, or I’m working with colleagues to highlight the magic that happens in the Special Collections Library through public programming, social media content, and exhibition tours. Other days, I’m preparing for an upcoming installation by painting gallery walls, mounting objects, and removing adhesive from various surfaces.
Our exhibition curators are different each year and range from faculty and staff to students and community members. When I’m interacting with faculty and students, it’s typically in the context of planning an exhibition or a class doing an exhibition visit. Our last primarily student-curated exhibition was in the spring of 2024 — “Collective Bargaining for the Common Good” — and I loved being part of many of these students’ first experiences working with archival materials and conducting archival research.
Q. What are some of the most memorable exhibitions you’ve worked on, and why?
A. My favorite exhibitions I’ve worked on are those that have directly involved community members in the curation of objects from our institution’s collections to reflect their stories, and that’s been a common thread through many of our recent exhibitions.
One of the very first exhibitions I worked on when I first joined Special Collections as a student worker in 2022 was “No Unity Without Justice,” an exhibition largely curated by UVA alumni and community members who had taken a stand against anti-fascists during the “Summer of Hate” in 2017. That exhibition included not only materials that were collected by librarians during and after that traumatic experience but also many materials loaned from community members, some of which were later donated to our collections.
More recently, “Visions of Progress” involved extensive community engagement to illuminate the lives of African American central Virginians whose portraits were taken at the Holsinger Studio, and, for “Anne Spencer: I Am Here!,” we worked with Shaun Spencer-Hester, Anne Spencer’s granddaughter, to paint a vibrant picture of her grandmother’s legacy and highlight her papers here at Special Collections.
These exhibitions really emphasized for me the importance of co-creation, and the process of developing each project raised important questions for me about the politics of archiving and collecting.
Q. What are some of your favorite items in Special Collections and why?
A. Choosing a favorite is too difficult, but I do have a soft spot for The Virginia Weekly, an alternative student-run publication of the late 1960s and early ’70s, because learning about the existence of the newspaper in Special Collections was what first sparked my interest in archival research as an undergraduate student.
Q. What are your favorite parts of your job?
A. The weeks leading up to our main gallery exhibition opening in the fall are always intense, but I love seeing all the pieces we’ve been working on over the past year come together in a flurry. Seeing how the space transforms every year with Holly’s brilliant designs is magical. [Holly Robertson is Curator of University Library Exhibitions.]
I also love having the opportunity to learn about so many different topics with each unique exhibition we take on and going down research rabbit holes. I’ve learned so much about the history of Charlottesville and central Virginia while working at Special Collections, and I’m grateful for the relationship to place that knowledge has helped me develop.
Q. In August, you started a master’s degree program in library and information science at Indiana University – Indianapolis (for which you were awarded the 2025 Tom and Roberta Drewes Scholarship by the American Library Association). How do you balance that with your work in Special Collections? What are some of the most interesting things you’ve learned so far in the program?
A. Before starting the program, I chatted with a few colleagues here at the UVA Library about their experiences completing an MLIS program while working full-time, and I found that it’s actually not uncommon for folks who somehow find themselves working in a library, like me, to decide to pursue an MLIS while working at an institution. Everyone emphasized that it requires careful time management but is certainly doable, and their reassurances made me feel less nervous about juggling both school and work.
So far, I’ve only taken a couple required introductory classes, but it’s been interesting to hear the wide range of perspectives on AI usage and implementation from folks working at different types of libraries (public, private, K-12, college, etc.).
Q. What do you like to do outside of work and school for fun?
A. I’m always thinking about archives — even outside of work — and am interested in exploring land as an archive, so foraging has been an important and beloved method of cultivating connection with land. I’ve foraged plants, mushrooms, and even wild clay! I’ve also been taking pottery classes for the past year or so, and I’m always grateful for time to be offline and simply playing with dirt.
Q. In your opinion, what is a library for?
A. I think libraries are fundamentally about cultivating relationships — whether that be through facilitating access to information that broadens horizons and illuminates community histories, providing space for gathering, or a myriad of other functions. In an era of increasing privatization of and divestment from community resources, I believe libraries are worth fighting to protect as a public good.