This post is by Kelly Delevan, Instructional Services Librarian at Le Moyne College. She was a recipient of one of CLRC’s Professional Development Awards, which she used to attend the ACRL/NY 2015 Symposium.
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Thanks to a professional development grant from CLRC, I was able to attend the ACRL/NY Symposium on December 4th at Baruch College in New York City. The theme of the symposium was “Social Responsibility, Democracy, Education, and Professionalism: Supporting Core Values in Academic and Research Librarianship.” The day’s thought-provoking program covered a variety of topics, including radical librarianship through a leadership lens, diversity as a democratic agenda in libraries, and the ways in which our professional values are present within our services and organizations. I encourage you to take a look at the various presentations and talks, which are available here.
I was intrigued with a presentation that was given on library diversity plans by Ione Damasco from the University of Dayton. Damasco reported on preliminary results of her study of diversity plans at libraries at colleges and universities across the U.S. Her research project aimed to analyze existing diversity plans at college and university libraries using ACRL’s Diversity Standards: Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries (2012) as a framework.
Two findings from her presentation were particularly concerning to me:
Of the 1,561 colleges and universities surveyed, only 22 (1.4%) libraries reported having a diversity plan in place.
According to a content analysis of the published diversity plans, there was no mention of the terms racism, whiteness, privilege, sexism, or inequality.
The lack of stand-alone diversity plans in libraries should not be surprising to me; we don’t have one at my library and is not required by our accreditors to have one. But the ACRL’s diversity standards provide libraries with a helpful set of guidelines for creating such plans. Why hasn’t diversity planning happened on a larger scale? Why is diversity not a priority? Are we waiting for our institutions to lead the way? I believe we can and should make our own decisions about how we will practice diversity.
For those institutions that have already created diversity plan there may still be work to do. Damasco found many silences and omissions in the texts of those plans. What does it say about a library’s diversity initiatives if their plan does not acknowledge systems of oppression like racism and sexism that have contributed to inequities? If libraries truly value diversity shouldn’t they have the courage to name these issues and advocate for positive change?
Academic libraries may be linked to their institutions and their values, but as centers of learning on college campuses, I believe libraries are in a strategic position to lead by example. We can take an active stance on promoting diversity and inclusion in our hiring, our collections, our programming, and our research agendas.
I attended the symposium because our library is in the middle of strategic planning process. I know that I will be sharing what I learned with my colleagues when we meet in January. I look forward to asking some difficult and challenging questions. I hope that we are willing to try and answer them.
