Monica Berger - NYC College of Technology
Adina Mulliken - Hunter College
Tom Nielsen - York College/Bronx Community College (CUNY)
Jill Cirasella - Graduate Center
College campuses are auditorily challenging places, especially for those with hearing loss. These auditory challenges are greater now during the COVID-19 pandemic than ever before, thanks to masking, distancing, and near-ubiquitous plexiglass barriers. In this panel, five hard of hearing academic librarians will discuss how these challenges intersect with hearing loss. Of course, librarians’ work is not confined just to libraries but also extends to many of the spaces students, faculty, and staff frequent, including classrooms, offices, and meeting rooms. We will share our experiences of these different spaces and discuss our workplace accommodations: those we have formally sought through human resources, those we have informally arranged with colleagues, and those we do for ourselves. We will also examine the pros and cons of remote work with respect to hearing loss, and report how we are faring (and flailing) now that we have returned to on-site work.