Elva Yañez Oral History Interview

Amanda Belantara: Today I'm speaking with environmental health and justice advocate, Elva Yañez. The interview was conducted for Bibliopolítica, a digital history of the Chicano Studies Library. The interview took place at Whittier College on January 10th, 2023, recorded by Sonia Chaidez. Richard Chabrán, former coordinator of the Chicano Studies Library, is here with us today for the interview. The interviewer is Amanda Belantara.

Amanda Belantara: Thank you for joining us today, Elva. Could you start off please by introducing yourself and giving us a bit of background about yourself and your work?

Elva Yañez: Sure. My name is Elva Yañez. I live in Los Angeles. I've been working in the field of public health for the last 30 years. Prior to that, I was a a research librarian. I worked in a variety of different settings. And I got my start in libraries at the UC Berkeley Chicano Studies Library. Way back, I would say 1971 or early ‘72, I can't remember exactly, but I was a work study student. The way I got introduced to the library was by taking a Bibliography 1 class. I got kind of got my mind blown. And that's how I kind of looked around and found Jose Arce. And he was able to get me a position with the emerging library.

Amanda Belantara: So I understand that you actually studied at Mills College in Oakland.

Amanda Belantara: You mentioned the Bibliography 1 class. How did you learn about the Chicano Studies Library? And what was it like for you to discover it?

Elva Yañez: So I had been at UC Berkeley and I had taken the Bibliography 1 course at UC Berkeley. At that point in time, the library was not recognized by the UC system. So I started poking around. I was very much into the whole Chicano Movement and I searched around and found Jose. And what he was doing sounded like the right fit for me. Working in a traditional library was never a right fit for me. So I don't even know how he put me onto the classification system, but that's where I immediately went. I was fascinated by the idea of classification and the idea of a lexicon. I think it's just kind of hit me how ridiculous the UC classification, was it LC, excuse me, Library of Congress Classification system was and the subject headings. It was at best offensive and at worst racist. And I didn't have the words for it at that time, but I think it evolved in my awareness as very much a proponent of white supremacy. And the fact that the library was not recognized, it was not only were those terminologies, those vocabularies, lexicons, classification systems, a way of putting others into a box, but the libraries themselves, the [ethnic studies] collections themselves were seen as invalid in that system. And that really upset me. And it upset a lot of people and gave them an impetus to create and establish these institutions and struggle through a period of lack of formality. It was like going from a really clear idea of wanting a collection for a new area of study to going into a desert. We were figuring it out. There are all these young Chicanos who had no idea what libraries were about, but I remember talking to people about it. It's like this is not rocket science, right? This is very learnable, right? Very practical. And then coming out on the other side with the tools, modifications of classification systems, modifications of subject heading lists that really served as the foundation for these collections. In addition to the hard work of securing the money and those more administrative tasks, there was a clear focus on how is knowledge perceived differently by people who are working in this new field, people who are establishing this new field, the scholars who were developing this new field. It was pretty exciting.

Amanda Belantara: Definitely, and I want to go into the Chicano classification system and the thesaurus a little bit later on. But before we get there, I just want to backtrack for a minute and see if you can recall one of your early experiences of connecting with Jose and visiting the library. What was it like for you to first encounter and experience the library?

Elva Yañez: It was mind blowing to be doing such creative work. And I was so impressed with Jose, right? He was a little intimidating. He was very serious, no nonsense, and had a really clear vision. And that was very attractive and inspiring. So yeah, I got very excited about the, I guess the power of knowledge in the main library and the Bibliography I class and immediately being able to find Jose and being totally motivated by his enthusiasm, by his vision. And he was a planner, right? I work with a lot of planners now and it's just a very different orientation than library science. His vision was much bigger and much more exciting.

Amanda Belantara: You mentioned that you got a work study to be employed at the Chicano Studies Library. Can you talk a little bit about when you started working there and who you worked with at the time besides Jose?

Elva Yañez: It was a very early, early days. So it was like, as I recall, not a whole lot of structure, just trying to figure it out. And I didn't even know what Jose was doing, but when he talked to me, it was really clear that he wanted somebody to do the classification work. And my interest in it, that's where he directed me into that. And like I said, he was older, I think he was a graduate student at that time. So he was an older person and I was intimidated, but I really respected what he said and was happy to be mentored by somebody like Jose.

Amanda Belantara: You mentioned that he was excited to work with you on the classification. Did Jose already have a plan to start an alternative classification? Or was that something that you came up with him together as you started perusing the collection? Could you talk about how the plans for it really took off?

Elva Yañez: I really can't remember the precise details, but it was clearly of interest to him and it was of interest to me. And he just assigned me the task of looking at the classification system and seeing what we could do with it. And I'm very kind of detail oriented and no matter what work I've done, I always kind of dive deep into the weeds, kind of nerdy. So yeah, I just nerded out on the whole idea of the classification system and this idea that the university library system, a world-class library system rejected the idea of a special collection for this new [Chicano Studies] department. I don't want to rag on librarians because I became a librarian, right? But there was at that time and in that system, there was a lot of resistance to the idea of establishing a special collection that was not within the library system. So what would have happened, if that had been the case, is that the whole collection would have been distributed across multiple libraries. And within those libraries, the [materials] would have been stacked as a way of scanning a collection, books about Chicano in education would be right next to a book about blacks in education in very general classification. And that just seemed ridiculous given the intent of Chicano Studies scholars who wanted their collection altogether, right?

Amanda Belantara: You mentioned that you might not have really in-depth memories of the process, but do you remember what it was like for you as a young student trying to imagine how to classify this new collection? How did you start? And one of the things that Richard's conveyed to me in the past is that there's a special class in the PX section. Could you talk a little bit about that if you have memories of it?

Elva Yañez: You know, what I recall is that I had to get a broad awareness and understanding of the entire LC classification system. So it was kind of trying to understand where we fit in, where that book about bilingual education would fit into another field that was brand new, right? Where was it gonna fit into this larger system? And at the end of the day where you ended up with these very long classification numbers, it just was ludicrous because if you actually did correct classification, your number would be quite large. And this idea of having a classification number that reflected the classification of knowledge developed in the late 1800s or early 1900s. It's like, why would we do that? I mean, at the time, if you look back historically when those systems were created, eugenics were okay. Absolutely no awareness at the time that the scientific method of classifying people was a problem. And I think Jose understood it and I understood it very quickly. I think what we recognized was that by not following those rules, by disrupting the system and saying, no, we're going to put them all together and adapt the system to work for a special collection that brings all the books together and avoids that whole, the most problematic nature of the classification system. It's where knowledge is subdivided to the point of where you finally get to the ‘other’ and you fit them in, right? It's like, no, the worldview in that collection is the Chicano Studies Library, the Chicano Studies universe of scholarly information, right? So it turned the whole system on its head and said, no, this is a center of the universe from which we understand knowledge and classify knowledge.

Amanda Belantara: In addition to creating the Chicano classification system, the Chicano Studies Library staff worked with other librarians across the Southwest to create the Chicano Periodical Index and the Chicano Thesaurus. Can you tell us about your contributions to the Thesaurus?

Elva Yañez: Once you've dealt with the classification system, then it naturally evolves into having to address the subject heading. I think because it was a continuation in terms of the thinking and understanding and problem solving. After I came back from a trip to Mexico for a year and and I was at Mills College, I wanted to continue to work in the Chicano Studies Library. So I was able to get funding from the American Library Association Social Responsibility Roundtable. I wrote a proposal and went to the Social Responsibility Roundtable Meeting at UC Berkeley and pitched them the idea. They were very excited, right? These were the liberal of the liberals in libraries and a lot of very progressive people in the system, but the system itself is very conservative and old and rigid. So I got some funding. I was able to use that funding and Richard Chabran was able to figure out UC being able to receive that money and then give it back as part of my work study wage. That was how we made it happen in terms of my working on it. The work itself, it was basically very similar in nature in that the subject headings, any document, any book, any paper, has multiple subjects that it covers, right? And in the mainstream library system, you would get whatever the topic area, education, for example, and then there would be a term for Mexican Americans, right? And I can't remember the details, but it was like you're put into boxes that didn't quite match the way knowledge was organized in a cohesive collection. And so the challenge was how do you modify the subject headings for such a collection while retaining the dignity, if you will, of the subject matter, right? I mean, it would be things like, almost a way of demeaning and ghettoizing Mexican Americans, Chicanos, because that's what the language of the subject headings of the Library of Congress, right? I know that I'm not explaining this well, but it's like, how do you look at knowledge conveyed in a book and make it relevant to the intent of the collection? And rather than demeaning or boxing people into a very narrow category of ‘other,’ you're more expansive. You have that freedom to be respectful and precise at the same time.

Amanda Belantara: According to some of the project documentation that I've looked at in the process of doing some research about the library and the thesaurus, I've seen that you played a major role in terms of advising on the hierarchical listings within the thesaurus, and that you made some suggestions when Lillian Castillo-Speed was updating the thesaurus in the 2000s. Could you share a little bit more about your direct involvement or advising on the thesaurus?

Elva Yañez: I really can't remember quite what the tasks that were put before me, but after the Chicano Studies Library, I went on in library work to specialize in thesauri and those kinds of issues at the LA Times, at the Spanish-speaking Mental Health Research Center, at the Bay Area Bilingual Education League Libraries, all of which were doing that deep dive into creating systems that made sense. At the time, we weren't digitized in the Chicano Studies Library, but we were moving forward, well, the world was moving forward to a more digital reality. I'm assuming that we were looking at that and taking that into account as we were going further down the path of Chicano Studies librarianship. It wasn't just classifying books and putting them on the shelves and checking them out to people. That's the thing that I recall. It was like a creative process, a puzzle in a sense, right? How do you deal with the parameters or the requirements of classification while dealing with this very unique population that has its own societal parameters as well, right? And each group of what would be considered ‘others’ has that reality. So it's like layering things on and then pulling things back and modifying the terminology, the lexicon, to really follow the rules of lexicon development and hierarchy, for example, while not putting people into boxes or putting knowledge into very limited categories that are not necessarily helpful. I mean, it's really easy to get sort of lost in the nitty gritty, right? It's kind of like, well, if I do this, and to me, it's a challenge of strategy and more traditional classification, right? What's this about? But then the strategic elements of, well, how do we create that structure for people's knowledge to go into?

Amanda Belantara: Elva, I was curious what you would think. I don't know if you're aware, but the Chicano Thesaurus was actually added or accepted by the Library of Congress as an official alternative vocabulary. So for anybody that might be cataloging materials, they are allowed to, because the Chicano Thesaurus has been officially accepted by the Library of Congress. Somebody can, when describing materials, use a special code within the machine readable catalog record to indicate that they're using a term from the Chicano Thesaurus. So I would be curious what your perspective is on that, because it was a lot of work from a group of dedicated individuals to realize the thesaurus. What do you think about it being added and made available as an alternative form? And what do you think could be done to expand awareness so that libraries know that they can incorporate the Chicano Thesaurus terms instead of having to use the ones that are included in Library of Congress, subject heading lists?

Elva Yañez: First of all, I think it's about time. The work that got carried on after I had moved on was done by people like Richard and Lily Castillo-Speed and others. That level of integrity is demonstrated by the fact that the Library of Congress accepted that work. It was yeoman's work. It was groundbreaking work. And it's not really, I don't think, a very easy topic to understand or to do, but really valuable, foundational, right, to institutions like the Chicano Studies Library at UC Berkeley or anywhere else. If you don't have those tools, then there's no consistency across the field that's cataloging materials. It's kind of a mess. I think creating order in this process was really a valuable thing to do. Even though many people didn't understand what they were doing, it was super important. So after I went on, the continuation of that work really is phenomenal. Everybody who worked on that tool was totally committed. So it's long overdue. It would have been amazing if the UC Library System had embraced those efforts earlier. And the fact that I was trying to find anything on the Chicano Studies Library's thesaurus [on the Internet] makes me think that there still is a way to go, that it really needs to be elevated. I'm glad you're doing this. Hopefully it will make a dent. But, you know, sometimes when people are marginalized, pushed to the side, the determination and the commitment is enhanced by that, right? Without the rejection, without the refusal to integrate materials in a way that made sense for a new body of knowledge to move forward. That was a huge impetus for what happened. And I'm glad I had something to do with that.

Amanda Belantara: And what impact would you say the library or working at the library, what impact did it have on you as a person and community member or your career?

Elva Yañez: So that's an interesting journey. I was a librarian until around 1991. Oh no, 1990, I would say. And the reason I got into libraries in the first place was because it was an issue that needed to be dealt with. It was an injustice to understand the science behind and the philosophy and the belief system behind a cataloging system, a classification system and its subject headings, right? Not something that a lot of people were into, but that's what touched me. The power of libraries has stayed with me, even though I left the field. I started libraries and hired librarians to create collections. I helped create an alcohol industry tracking database so advocates were able to follow the misdeeds of the alcohol industry. I did the same thing at the Americans for Non-Smokers’ Rights and that system was able to help advocates track bad behavior of the tobacco industry. So it's resonated in my career. Most recently, I was on the Federal Reconciliation In Place Names Committee. It's dealing with the racist names that were given to physical features through the Department of the Interior and the National Park System. They are looking at the terms used to name park features like valleys, ridges and mountains and so forth, and trying to get rid of those racist names. That's a whole other type of nomenclature that comes from the same period, primarily during Western expansion. Think about Native Americans or Mexican Americans or African Americans wanting to go to a park that refers to them in a degrading manner. It's a little bit different than classification, you know, which is structured and hierarchical. It's across the board offensive. So changing that has similar technical challenges, and I had no idea. There are people who study this, usually geographers. That's been very interesting. So that whole notion of classification, naming, and the current work I'm doing, on the built environment, land use, and parks. It totally changed my work life. The vibrancy that evolved out of the Chicano Studies Library, I think it impacted thousands of people, if you were to look back. Not just those who worked there, but those who relied upon it for professional, educational, and social enhancement of their lives. It's deep, it's very deep.