Tag Archives: Diversity

Conference

Symposium for Strategic Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

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ADWhiteReadingRoom, CornellUniversity

Registration and travel awards are available for the Symposium for Strategic Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, cosponsored by Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). The symposium will be held Thursday–Friday, May 10–11, 2018, at the Marquette Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a preconference on Wednesday, May 9.

The Symposium for Strategic Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will increase understanding and capacity among academic and research library professionals for creating healthy organizations with diverse, equitable, and inclusive climates. This event will provide actionable information and tools for library and archive leaders to take back to their organizations and help develop authentically inclusive environments, where people from underrepresented and marginalized groups can thrive and succeed. Additionally, the symposium will strengthen the community of practice around diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic and research libraries and archives.

Featured Speakers

Symposium speakers will include:

  • DeRay Mckesson, Host of Pod Save the People, organizer and civil rights activist
  • Rusty Barcelo, Visiting Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Diversity at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Who Should Attend?

The primary audience for this event is human resources, organizational development, and other professionals in academic and research libraries and archives who have leadership responsibilities for institutional or campus diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. ARL member library directors and assistant/associate directors will also find value in the symposium.

Symposium Registration

The Symposium for Strategic Leadership in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion registration fee is $250. This fee includes breakfast and lunch on Thursday and Friday, May 10 and 11, as well as the reception on Thursday night. Register online by April 20, 2018.

Training

Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups

University of Minnesota entrance sign 1
This looks like a great program!!! If you would qualify: check it out!! If you know someone else who might qualify: please let them know about this institute! CMLE members: we will give you a scholarship of up to $300 to attend this training!

From their website:

The University of Minnesota Libraries will offer its 11th week-long Institute for 26 early career college and university librarians who are from traditionally underrepresented groups and are in the first three years of their professional careers.  The program will run from July 16 through July 20, 2018.

Overview

The Institute focuses on the development of library leaders from diverse backgrounds. Participants will develop specific leadership abilities proven to be necessary for organizational success.

The necessary starting point in any leadership development journey is personal awareness. The Institute intensely focuses on enhancing personal awareness — creating unique opportunities for participants to reflect on personal leadership styles and preferences, explore strengths and areas for continued development, and connect unique cultural insights and experiences to one’s professional journey.

Because early career librarians are often asked to give shape, definition, and leadership to whole new areas of work (data curation, publishing, e-learning, and multi-institutional collaborations to name a few), the Institute enhances the personal leadership content with explorations of topical case studies and rich engagement in understanding and building leadership skills.

Learning Objectives

The Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians will:

  • Expose career professionals to a variety of topics relevant to current and changing realities of academic librarianship
  • Introduce participants to experts representing diverse backgrounds, perspectives and contributions to the library, higher education, technology, and archival communities
  • Learn about and explore the leadership challenges related to the increasing interdependencies of institutions and potential for collaboration
  • Facilitate participants’ identification of personal leadership behaviors and goals
  • Create a platform for participants to reflect on how their diverse identities are and will be leveraged in the service of their leadership goals, their organizations and the profession
  • Create a plan for immediate development and long-term professional growth

Continue reading Minnesota Institute for Early Career Librarians from Traditionally Underrepresented Groups →

Advocacy

Applications sought for 2018 Coretta Scott King Book Donation Grants

From the American Library Association:

Contact:

Jody Gray Director; Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services; jgray@ala.org

CHICAGO — Underfunded libraries, schools and non-traditional organizations that provide educational services to children are invited to apply to receive one of three Coretta Scott King Book Donation Grants. Every year, in the process of choosing the Coretta Scott King Book Award winners and honor books, the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) of the American Library Association receives multiple copies of approximately 60-100 titles by African American authors and illustrators

Awarded by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee, the grant program provides books submitted for consideration for the Coretta Scott King Book Awards to libraries and other organizations to expand their collections.

Each year, three organizations that demonstrate need and potential benefit from receiving the collection are selected. All three libraries will receive copies of titles submitted for consideration for the 2018 awards, including a full set of the 2018 winning titles.

Applications will be accepted through January 31, 2018 and winners will be announced by late March. For more information, and to apply, please visit http://www.ala.org/rt/emiert/cskbookawards/bookgrant.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are presented annually by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee of the ALA’s Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) to encourage the artistic expression of the African-American experience via literature and the graphic arts.

Books, Programs, Resources

ALA Recap: Libraries are Not Neutral Spaces

School Library Journal Logo

from School Library Journal, by

“This past Sunday I had the honor of presenting with a panel of fabulous librarians about how libraries are NOT neutral spaces. Like most librarians, I spent a major part of my career proclaiming that we were. But over time, I have come to realize that we are, in fact, not. For example, if during the month of December you put up a Christmas tree or a Christmas display but don’t acknowledge that any other holidays exist, you are making a non-neutral statement and highlighting certain faiths and traditions over others. Did you choose to avoid putting up a Black Lives Matter display? That was not a neutral decision. This month is Pride, did you put up a Pride display? Whether you answer yes or no to this question, your answer is not a neutral decision. Every decision to do or not do something in our libraries is not a neutral decision, and it often reflects our own personal, cultural or institutional biases.

It has been a process for me to learn how to examine and break down my personal biases in considering everything I do in my library, from putting up a display to deciding when, where, and how to program. The work of being inclusive and advocating for my teen patrons – ALL of my teen patrons – is ongoing and never done. It takes some intentionality on my part and I am working on training my staff to have that same type of intentionality.

In fact, for me, displays and collections are a big part of how I try and be intentional and inclusive. I didn’t have a term for it until this weekend thanks to someone on Twitter, but I regularly perform diversity audits of my YA collection. I will sit down monthly with some type of topic or focus in mind and go through my collection to make sure I have a well represented number of titles and authors that represent that topic. For example, with Pride approaching, I spent the month of April going through every single letter in GLBTQAI+ to make sure that I had a good representation of titles for each letter in my collection. And when doing so I go through and make sure that they include as many POC, LatinX, Native American, Asian and more authors as possible. I don’t want to just be diverse in having GLBTQAI+ titles, I want to make sure that those titles are as diverse and representative as possible. Continue reading ALA Recap: Libraries are Not Neutral Spaces →

Advocacy, Communication, Services

Librarians in the 21st Century: It Is Becoming Impossible to Remain Neutral

Interior view of Stockholm Public Library
This article is from lithub.com. I highly suggest you click here to read the entire thing, after looking at the excerpt we posted below.

I will add that the author is one of my former students in library school, and she was absolutely great there! I was fortunate to have her in classes, and valued both her contributions to class and the time I was able to spend with her. So I’m not neutral at all on the value she brings to the library profession!

Stacie Williams on
How to Confront Microaggressions in the Library

“Library neutrality sounds innocuous, but it’s not, if you’re a librarian. Although neutrality has long been regarded and taught as an important ethic of the profession, a growing number of librarians have begun questioning whether it is preferable—or even possible—for libraries to be neutral. In this essay, Stacie Williams makes the case that it is neither.

–Stephanie Anderson

I love working the reference desk. Like most people, it was my first introduction to librarians as a little kid: the smiling person behind a desk, asking me if I needed help finding anything. In my last semester of graduate school, I took a job working the access services desk at a medical library, where I could meet new people and help them the way that I had been helped in libraries throughout my life. Even as I gained more experience in archives, I continued to look for opportunities to assist at a reference or access point of service.

Working in such a visible position, over the years, I have been constantly reminded that my interactions with patrons are a reflection of my body: my black, female-presenting body. In ways small and large, I have been reminded that nothing about libraries is neutral. Not the desks or furniture that are sometimes built by incarcerated individuals who can’t protest their labor. Not the buildings, some of which lack physical access for individuals who can’t climb stairs or walk over uneven stones and bricks. Not the collections development theories, not the leadership opportunities, not the vacation and break schedules, or the computer use policies. Not our co-workers, our funding models, and certainly not the patrons we serve. Neutrality as we use it in libraries leaves people standing at the margins, demanding to be acknowledged as capable and professional, as human, as having histories and lived experiences reflective of the bodies we inhabit. Our bodies, like the bodies of knowledge we provide access to, are not and never were neutral. Continue reading Librarians in the 21st Century: It Is Becoming Impossible to Remain Neutral →