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Technology and Innovation
Poster Session
Sunstar Vue
Graduate Student Instructor
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Johnny Vang
Graduate Student
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Blia Mary Her
Graduate Student
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Most assume that Hmong are Asian Americans (AAs), commonly defined as Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Korean, and Vietnamese, but they are a separate ethnic and linguistic group. Facing genocide because of their CIA affiliation during the Vietnam War, the Hmong sought political asylum in America in 1975 (Yang, 2003). Our research explores representations of Hmong and Hmong Americans (H&HAs) in digital libraries (DLs). Specifically, are H&HAs present in LIS DLs and what keywords are associated with the records, from here, we can do a study on representation.
We use Critical Race Theory as our theoretical framework because of race, a social construction, begets oppression in contemporary society and provides a lens through which one can analyze and contest how race and racist ideologies have shaped Hmong representation in DLs (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001).We use content and textual analyses to conduct keyword searches for how often Hmong appear in DLs, in what DLs they appear, and we hope to determine the resources available for LIS scholars interested in studying H&HAs, and by extension AAs. Doing so either assures that H&HAs are included in the discourse or make a case for the need for them to be added. The research for our literature review for this project revealed 4527 positives for AAs, of that only 40 records (0.009 percent) were about H&HAs. Through full-text analysis, none of the 40 featured a discussion on DLs. We wonder if we will obtain similar results in our research of actual DLs.