Library and Information Science Commons^™

Challenging The Glass Ceiling: Collaboration As The Key To Increasing The Number Of Librarians Of Color In Academic Libraries, Janet M. Reid, Patricia D. Sobczak

Collaborative Librarianship

Currently, libraries are engaged in creating environments that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). This includes having candidates for hire submit statements regarding their approach to DEI and internal committees to look at policies and procedures regarding DEI. Also there is a lot of both internal and external training designed to help organizations and their members become more adept at creating environments with DEI in mind. What is often missed in all of this activity is how individual librarians, through mentorship and collaboration, can come together to foster DEI and support each other in success. This field report shows how …

Tackling Organizational Equity At Scale, An Academic Library Consortium Responds, Kim Armstrong, Gayle O'Hara, Josie Ragolia, Sarah B. Watstein

Collaborative Librarianship

This article focuses on the myriad ways the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a regional academic library consortium, has responded to the growing and longstanding need to address equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in library spaces and organizations. Specifically, the article highlights a range of initiatives and approaches to advance EDI that the Alliance believes are in the mutual best interest of Alliance staff, its leadership (Board of Directors and Council), collaborative workforce (Teams and Groups), and ultimately, Alliance member libraries and the users they support.

Driving Change: A Model For Collaborative Librarianship In Prince George’S County, Maryland, Nicholas A. Brown, Kyla Hanington

Collaborative Librarianship

The Prince George’s County Memorial Library System (PGCMLS) has a long-standing partnership with the county’s human rights education and enforcement agency, the Office of Human Rights (PGCOHR), formerly the Prince George’s County Human Relations Commission (PGCHRC). The two agencies serve over 967,000 Prince Georgians, a majority-Black (64.4%) and Latin or Hispanic (19.5%) population with a sizable immigrant community (22.7%). The civil rights issues of 2020 hit close to home in Prince George’s County and the agencies have sustained a multi-year effort to provide residents with opportunities to learn how to engage with social justice topics for personal and collective advancement. …

From Host To Home: Reflections On Institutional Readiness, Denisse Solis, Carrie L. Forbes, Jack M. Maness

University Libraries: Faculty Scholarship

The creation of library residency programs, intended to diversify the library profession, has increased significantly over the last two years; for example, institutional membership in the ACRL Diversity Alliance grew from 36 to 53 from 20171 to 2019.2 As Dr. Alston notes in his research, “Diversity residency programs have become a popular way for academic libraries to demonstrate a commitment to diversity initiatives and to recruit and retain practitioners of color.”3 However, many host institutions and librarians rarely make significant efforts to deconstruct whiteness within themselves and at the organizational level.

This chapter is a reflective case study of the …

Working Toward Human-Centered, Reparative Change Through Print Collection Development At The University Of Denver, Jennifer Bowers, Katherine Crowe, Peggy Keeran, Jack M. Maness, Denisse Solis, Shannon Tharp

University Libraries: Faculty Scholarship

In 2014, the DU Libraries began to address a lack of work by and about the Cheyenne and Arapaho people in its collections, and moved toward reparative change in response to historical traumas suffered by Indigenous Peoples. The history of this work and its origins—which led to the creation of the Libraries’ Collection Diversification Task Force (CDTF) and now informs the Libraries’ collection development philosophy and operational inclusivity—are discussed in the “Developments Leading to the Collection Diversification Task Force” section of this chapter. Further on, the “Collection Diversification Task Force” section clarifies methodology, recommendations, and self-discovery on the part of …

What We Are Learning About The Diverse Backgrounds Of Academic Library Users: An Overview Of Research Designs And Methods In Information Behaviour Studies, Krystyna K. Matusiak

Library and Information Science: Faculty Conference Presentations

Academic libraries increasingly serve a more diverse population of users not only in regard to race and ethnicity, but also to age, gender, language, sexual orientation, and national and cultural backgrounds. This papers reports the findings of the study that explored information behaviour research as a potential source of information about diversity of academic library users and examined the relationship between the use of different research designs and data collection methods and the information gathered about users’ diverse backgrounds. The study found that information behaviour research offers limited insight into the diversity of academic library users. The choice of a …