Interview with Peggy Nzomo

Peggy is Senior Associate at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs and International Library Initiatives Specialist. Together with Clara Chu she has been conducting the 2023 Mortenson Associates Program.

Ulrike: Peggy, thank you for granting me this interview! We are close to the end of the 2023 Mortenson Associates Program – your first one since you joined the Mortenson Center. How do you feel?

Peggy: I feel proud and grateful. I think the job with the Mortenson Center is the best one I could ever have, because it opens up a world of cultural and professional exchange. There is a diversity in library types, countries, cultures, enabling the possibility for sharing new ideas and experiences. I think the group has been great, because they were open to sharing and asking questions and were not intimidated which is great because I think curiosity is important and because we all have something to share.

Ulrike: What would you like to do differently next time?

Peggy: I consider it important to have evaluations and feedback directly after every session in order to identify areas of improvement. What did participants like, what did not work well for them and why not? I also think that we might also do with less programming and more time for participants to reflect on what they have observed/ experienced or learned and also leave ample time for open discussion.

Ulrike: Your job also involves travelling. If you were to choose to travel your to “dream country” – where would that be?

Peggy: I would love to travel to Israel and Switzerland, also Australia and New Zealand – so far I have not been in this part of the world!

Ulrike: You mentioned in a conversation that you are interested in research on machine translation. Could you tell me more about it?

Peggy: Actually, research I’m currently starting to work on is on alternative facts/ fake news and how language affects that, i.e. do the facts change according to the language in which they are presented? Examples of news items to look at would be Megan and Harry or Donald Trump and US politics/elections, and COVID-19. Is something lost in the course of translation, does terminology affect the perception? What role would AI and its capabilities in Natural language processing play in this? I think that the internationalization and localization of news is a fertile ground for alternative facts – and I would like, with the help of others who speak other languages, to do some content analysis on this.

Ulrike: How did you become interested in international librarianship?

Peggy: The participants for my PhD study were international students. They were grateful that someone was interested in hearing their opinions on library resources and services as well as how language affects information searching. One of the participants commented: “Thanks so much for doing this, it makes me proud to be bilingual!” And before my job with the Mortenson Center, I was Global Education Librarian at Kent State University where there was an influx of international students at the time. International librarianship gives me something to advocate for – e.g., library services for multicultural populations such as international students and refugees. I hope to develop and teach a course for the iSchool on that as I think overall we have to make our libraries more inclusive. I’m also interested in advocating for more global collaborations and partnerships in order to enable information sharing, research collaborations and also foster equitable access to information.

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