Copley Connects Fall 2025 / Spring 2026

Instagrammable Moments: A Librarian’s Reflections on San Diego and USD

Faculty Spotlight: Millicent Fullmer Associate Professor, Acquisitions and Cataloging Librarian, Liaison Librarian

As a visual literacy scholar and elder millennial, I take to Instagram to see what’s been going on since my arrival at USD in January, 2018. Unsurprisingly, I first posted a picture of the grand Mother Hill Reading Room, filled with art, architecture, and art history books (the subject I serve as liaison librarian). My later posts remark on the eerie morning fog that envelopes the west side of campus, in contrast to the breathtaking sunsets that grace campus in the evening. Work related content includes a post about cataloging a deck of tarot cards, images from touring the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Valencia, a post honoring British art historian Sister Wendy Beckett, visits to the Huntington Library in LA, and the installation of “Story Work — The Prints of Marie Watt” exhibit in Copley. This fall, my posts highlighted a conference trip to present at the International Visual Literacy Conference (IVLA), where the theme was “The Power of Images in Sacred and Festive Practices,” hosted by the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, Mexico. My presentation, titled “Celestial Celebrations: Reclaiming Matariki, The Maori New Year,” discusses the decolonization of time in Aotearoa New Zealand after the government formally adopted the holiday, the mythology and symbolism, and how contemporary Indigenous artists visualize this event. A less remarkable post from several years ago is of my office calendar, which displays an

interior photograph of Cafebreria El Pendulo in Mexico City. The accompanying text describes a research consultation with a student about the El Transito Synagogue in Spain. This student arrived with some trepidation, but their eyes immediately lit up on seeing their favorite bookstore on the wall of my office. What followed was a lovely and relaxed conversation about the bookstore (which includes a cocktail bar), and a productive

research session. The joy I shared in making a student feel at home and welcome in the library is what endears me to librarianship; making connections in both my professional and personal life is where the magic happens. As a first generation student who was particularly shy, socially anxious, and filled with imposter syndrome in my young life, I am a compassionate resource and feel especially protective of vulnerable students on campus. I serve on the library’s

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