This profile of Judy Yung, in American Libraries, appeared in 1973, two years before she was hired to be head librarian for the Asian Community Library, and suggests the vision that she brought to the project.
The profile sketches her upbringing with working-class, immigrant parents in San Francisco’s Chinatown, her education at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley, and her extensive experience working in San Francisco’s public libraries.
In her interview, she criticized the education she received when completing a masters in library science at UC Berkeley, noting how the curriculum was not centered on serving and assessing community needs. She argued that library science needed to devote “more time on innovative library services, on how to relate to the community you’re supposed to serve, on evaluating the needs of your community. That kind of education could help produce librarians who’d know how to make libraries important to the people they serve.’”
Yung also argued that libraries had a responsibility to the disadvantaged, and needed to “start hiring minorities and socially conscious people who can best understand and meet the needs of these people”.
