LibGuides: Memorial Library Staff Information: Diversity, Equity &amp; Inclusion

"We must foster a culture that does not discount, disparage or limit others because of personal attributes." -- Berry College President Steve Briggs, November 2, 2020

Commitment to Strengthen the Culture of Belonging on Campus
Message from President's Office, November 2, 2020

Library Statements on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

As a member of the American Library Association and the Georgia Library Association, we join their condemnation of systemic violence and racism against Black people and People of Color.

Other relevant statements:

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Keywords & Terminology

Critical Librarianship - According to Elaine Harger, librarians that practice critical librarianship strive to communicate the ways in which libraries and librarians consciously and unconsciously support systems of oppression.[2] Critical librarianship seeks to be transformative, empowering, and a direct challenge to power and privilege. (Kenny Garcia, Keeping Up with ... Critical Librarianship.)
Cultural Competence - Cultural competence requires that librarians and library staff examine their own cultural backgrounds and identities to increase awareness of personal assumptions, values, and biases. The individual’s self-awareness of their own cultural identities is as fundamental to service as the informed assumptions about constituents’, colleagues’, and co-workers’ cultural backgrounds and experiences in the United States. This awareness of personal values, beliefs, and biases informs services to constituents; influences collection development, cataloging practices, program delivery, and library assessment; and influences relationships with colleagues and co-workers. Cultural competence includes knowing and acknowledging how fears, ignorance, and the “-isms” (racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, heterosexism, ageism, able-bodiedism, and classism) have influenced their attitudes, beliefs, and feelings. (ACRL Diversity Standards - Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries, 2012)

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Databases

Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) This link opens in a new window
Indexing and abstracting for key journals, books, research reports.
Indexes more than 600 periodicals, plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more.

Coverage Dates: 1964 - present
Library Science Database This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to top publications in library and information science.
Specifically designed to provide full-text support for the core titles included in ProQuest's authoritative Library & Information Science Abstracts database (LISA). It covers a range of titles and topics relevant to the theoretical and applied study of library science, including trade publications aimed at the library profession as well as scholarly journals.

Can also be searched as part of ProQuest Central.

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General Books

College Libraries and Student Culture: what we now know by Lynda M. Duke; Andrew D. Asher
Call Number: Ebook & Print at Z675.U5 C6458 2012
Publication Date: 2011
Includes "Supporting the academic success of Hispanic students" by David Green
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Action by Christine Bombaro (Editor)
Publication Date: 2020
All too often, in a hurried attempt to "catch up," diversity training can create division among staff or place undue burdens on a handful of employees. Instead, academic libraries need approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that position these priorities as ongoing institutional and professional goals. This book's model programs will help academic libraries do exactly that, sharing a variety of initiatives that possess clear goals, demonstrable outcomes, and reproducible strategies. Librarians, administrators, and directors will all benefit from the programs detailed inside, which include such topics as a university library's community of practice for interactions and learning around DEI; cultural competency training to create more welcoming instruction spaces; student workshops on literature searches that mitigate bias; overcoming the historic tendency to marginalize LGBTQ+ representation in archives; a curriculum and design workshop that moved from discussing social values to embedding them in actions; the founding of a library-led LGBT club for students at a rural community college; a liberal arts college's retention-boosting program for first-generation students; tailoring a collection and library services to the unique needs of student veterans; and a framework for moving from diversity to equity and inclusion, toward a goal of social justice. With this volume's model programs to guide them, academic libraries and their staff can successfully strengthen their own DEI initiatives.
Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries: a call to action and strategies for success by Shannon D. Jones (Editor); Beverly Murphy (Editor)
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2019
The news and scholarly literature are replete with stories and articles describing the challenges that diverse individuals face in their local communities and workplaces. Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries: A Call to Action and Strategies for Success is arranged in three parts: Why Diversity and Inclusion Matter, Equipping the Library Staff, and Voices from the Field. This book tackles these issues head on and should appeal to a broad audience interested in diversity as it relates to libraries and librarianship, including professional librarians and paraprofessional library staff. Offering best practices strategies tempered by experiences and wisdom, this book will help libraries realize a high level of inclusion.
Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals by Nicole A. Cooke
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2017
Filling a gap in the existing library and information science literature, this book consolidates recent research and best practices to address the need for diversity and social justice in the training and education of LIS professionals. * Addresses perennially important and emerging hot topics in librarianship, such as diversity, cultural competence, and social responsibility * Updates the ongoing discussion on cultural competence and diversity with new concepts, such as critical race theory * Authored by an expert who actively teaches and conducts research in the subject areas of library instruction and information literacy as well as diversity and social justice in librarianship
Knowledge Justice: disrupting library and information studies through critical race theory by Sofia Y. Leung (Editor); Jorge R. Lopez-McKnight (Editor)
Publication Date: Forthcoming in April 2021
In Knowledge Justice, Black, Indigenous, and Peoples of Color scholars use critical race theory (CRT) to challenge the foundational principles, values, and assumptions of Library and Information Science and Studies (LIS) in the United States. They propel CRT to center stage in LIS, to push the profession to understand and reckon with how white supremacy affects practices, services, curriculum, spaces, and policies.
Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Academic Libraries by Deborah A. Curry (Editor); Susan G. Blandy (Editor); Lynne M. Martin (Editor)
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 1994
This important book is one of the first in the field to explore the myriad issues surrounding racial and ethnic diversity in academic libraries. It triggers thought, discussion, and understanding to guide readers as they take action to resolve diversity issues in their own institutions. After an overview of the state of diversity in academic libraries, the book addresses training, mentoring, and supervision; building diversity collections; access to diversity materials; electronic and print reference sources for multicultural subjects; and work with racially and ethnically diverse student populations.
Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Editor)
Call Number: Ebook
Publication Date: 2017
Includes Chapter 11. Mapping Whiteness at the Reference Desk; Chapter 14. Disrupting Whiteness: Three Perspectives on White Anti-Racist Librarianship

Scholarly Articles - General

Alabi, J. (2018). From Hostile to Inclusive: Strategies for Improving the Racial Climate of Academic Libraries. Library Trends, 67(1), 131-146.
Though the LIS literature addresses recruitment and retention of people of color, very few articles acknowledge that some individuals from underrepresented populations may experience the profession as chilly or even hostile due to racism, especially as it is manifested in the form of racial microaggressions. Although often delivered unconsciously, these seemingly benign exchanges convey to the recipient negative and denigrating messages about that person’s race or ethnicity. The burden of work relating to diversity and inclusion in the profession has typically been placed on people of color, but those of us who are White also have a responsibility to engage in these endeavors. This article will identify steps that White academic librarians can take to prevent and address racial microaggressions in order to become better allies to our colleagues of color.
Brook, F., Ellenwood, D., & Lazzaro, A. E. (2015). In Pursuit of Antiracist Social Justice: Denaturalizing Whiteness in the Academic Library. Library Trends, 64(2), 246-284.
Examines racism and the culture of Whiteness in academic libraries in three major areas of public services: space, staffing, and reference service delivery. The authors perform a critical discourse analysis, drawing on critical race theory, critical geography, critical education, and social psychology to examine foundational library scholarship and professional standards. Academic libraries, as products and representations of their parent institutions, are situated within the well-documented systemic and institutional racism of higher education in the US. It is seen in the organizational culture and hiring practices of libraries, which are overwhelmingly staffed by White workers, while serving an increasingly diverse student body. Finally, it is reflected in the traditional tenets of reference service delivery, including approachability, responsiveness, and objectivity. The authors argue that racism is embedded in academic libraries through a culture of Whiteness. Consistent with social justice traditions in librarianship, they offer tools and suggestions to realign the profession with antiracist values and practices that will enable libraries to better serve their communities.
Brown, J., Ferretti, J. A., Leung, S., & Méndez-Brady, M. (2018). We Here: Speaking Our Truth. Library Trends, 67(1), 163-181.
In this article, we seek to seed an honest conversation about how librarianship needs to meaningfully address systems of structural oppression in order to actualize diversity and inclusion initiatives at large. We will investigate issues of recruitment, retention, education, and mentorship within the library and information science profession through the lens of our experiences as women of color, and as early-career librarians; we will also weave relevant insights reflected from within the literature to support our narratives. Central to this work is an understanding of the barriers that people of color (POC) face in our workplaces and the profession at large; we will discuss this at length throughout. Finally, we will conclude with recommendations on how the profession, as a whole, can do better at retaining and supporting its marginalized workforce. This is a call to action for librarians at every level to hold themselves accountable for the ways in which they are complicit within systems of oppression and inequality. Concurrently, this article aims to generate momentum in coalition building as a tool for POC attempting to navigate the overwhelming whiteness evident within the profession.
Clarke, M. (2020). Liberate our Library: doing decolonisation work at Goldsmiths Library. Art Libraries Journal, 45(4), 148-154. (full text not currently available)
Library work now has a role to play when it comes to decolonisation. This article outlines what Goldsmiths Library, University of London is doing, through the Liberate our Library initiative, to diversify and decolonise its collections and practices against the backdrop of worldwide movements for education and social justice led by both students and academics to challenge the dominance of the ‘Westernised university’. Examples of how we are doing this work are explained using critical librarianship as our guide, whilst recognising that we are still developing expertise in this evolving field of practice. This decolonisation work also uses critical race theory (CRT) as a means to dismantle racial inequality and its impact on higher education.
Drabinski, E. (2019). What is critical about critical librarianship? Art Libraries Journal, 44(2), 49-57.
Library work structures intellectual worlds as library workers collect, organize, make accessible, and preserve materials for use. This work is not neutral. Libraries, like all institutions, are produced in and through systems marked by racism, patriarchy, and capitalist modes of production. Critical librarianship offers a framework for thinking about our work that asks how library structures came to be and what ideologies underpin them. Viewing librarianship through this frame allows us to imagine new and better worlds on our way to making them.
Espinal, I., Sutherland, T., & Roh, C. (2018). A Holistic Approach for Inclusive Librarianship: Decentering Whiteness in Our Profession. Library Trends, 67(1), 147-162.
This paper traces the published literature on whiteness in libraries, identifying major themes in that literature, and then highlights the importance of decentering whiteness for moving the information professions forward. Engaging a dialogic ethnographic methodology, this paper was borne of conversations between librarians of color who worked in the same predominantly white library. The salient themes from those dialogues were the many ways that adherence to whiteness in libraries has had deleterious affective and career implications for librarians of color. The authors argue that to decenter whiteness in libraries and other information centers, it is crucial to center the experiences and well-being of librarians of color; diversify the ranks of librarians through bold initiatives, significantly increasing the numbers of librarians of color; and make large-scale incisive structural change at organizational levels. The paper concludes with an invitation for all information professionals to participate in inclusiveness initiatives by moving from microaggressions to microaffections.
Schlesselman-Tarango, G. (2016). The Legacy of Lady Bountiful: White Women in the Library. Library Trends, 64(4), 667-686.
White supremacy and patriarchy have acted upon and through the white female body, which has implications for library and information science (LIS), a white- and female-dominated field. Insisting that we investigate librarianship through a lens that does not consider gender alone, this paper draws on whiteness, critical race, and feminist theories to explore the formation and persistence of a particular mode of whiteness in LIS. Calling on the “Lady Bountiful” archetype, the paper interrogates the ways in which patriarchy, white supremacy, and notions of ideal femininity have worked together to craft a subject fit to perform the work of colonialism in its variegated and feminized forms. By exploring how the white woman was deemed an appropriate agent for the racial, missionary, and “civilizing” projects of early libraries, one can better locate her legacy in contemporary pedagogies, practices, and representations. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing this undertheorized yet prevalent archetype in both LIS scholarship and teaching.
Schlesselman-Tarango, G. (2017). How Cute! Race, Gender, and Neutrality in Libraries. Partnership : The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, 12(1), 1-18.
Explores how feminization and a particular aestheticization thereof is called upon to attempt to mitigate, veil, and neutralize whiteness in libraries and librarianship. It looks specifically at cuteness, an aesthetic category historically shaped by, and deeply invested in, hegemonic formulations of gender, race, and consumption. This paper explores the types of projects cuteness might abet in librarianship-particularly aspirations of political neutrality-by positioning itself as for all and against none. Indeed, by calling forth its purported timeless appeal and assuming an aesthetic that no one can resist, cuteness positions the whiteness central to it as both harmless and universal. This essay explores how this category, with its claims of innocence, utilizes a nostalgic white femininity to gesture to a romanticized yet fabricated past that subsequently precludes acknowledgment of and engagement with the present, including race, gender, and other axes of difference. It also addresses how this aesthetic has surfaced in critical and progressive library spaces, drawing attention to the ways in which it has been celebrated, subverted, and made politically productive. Finally, this paper demonstrates the importance of exploring aesthetics and material culture, however tangential they might seem to both the practical and theoretical work of libraries. We must ask after what cuteness and other aesthetic categories that mark librarianship invite us to do, as well as the types of work that they preclude.
Sweeney, M. E., & Cooke, N. A. (2018). You’re So Sensitive! How LIS Professionals Define and Discuss Microaggressions Online. The Library Quarterly, 88(4), 375.
Analyzes a lengthy online discussion thread about racial microaggressions in a social media group for librarians to find out how library and information science (LIS) professionals define and discuss microaggressions through informal conversation. The findings reveal that there are multiple and conflicting understandings of microaggressions, along with significant gaps in knowledge regarding how microaggressions relate to larger systems of power and privilege. This research has implications for LIS educators and for the professional development of LIS practitioners, underscoring the further need to actively teach about microaggressions in the context of power and privilege in the LIS classroom and in continuing education settings.

Scholarly Articles - Collections

Bowers, J., Crowe, K., & Keeran, P. (2017). “If you want the history of a white man, you go to the library”: Critiquing our legacy, addressing our library collection gaps. Collection Management, 42(3-4), 159-179.
In 1864, the same year the University of Denver was founded by John Evans, then the territorial governor of Colorado and the superintendent of Indian affairs, a group of U.S. militia attacked and killed vulnerable members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations at Sand Creek. Using critical race theory and the feminist “ethic of care,” we critique our collections in terms of the massacre and absent Native American voices in order to develop a collecting philosophy and direction to acknowledge and address the gaps and to formulate strategies for teaching students to interrogate a predominately white institutional archive to give voice to the absent or silenced.
Conner-Gaten, A., Caragher, K., & Drake, T. (2017). Collections Decoded: Reflections and Strategies for Anti-Racist Collection Development. State-It: Connecting Students to the Archives, 151.
How are collections processed and presented regarding race and ethnicity? What is not collected and why? Who gets to say what is worth collecting? Operating from three distinct but interlocking perspectives, the authors will discuss their experiences navigating collection development and collection development policies as a Black woman archivist, a White woman anti-racist public librarian, and a Black woman academic librarian. The authors will look at the ways in which Black women as collections professionals face invisibility, coded language, and increased mental and emotional labor while operating in a profession that is majority White. The authors will offer practical strategies for developing an anti-racist agenda at your institution, specifically how to be an agent of change at the administrative level. The authors will also discuss how anti-racist accomplices can both support and follow the lead of Black women librarians and archivists as well as strategies for developing anti-racist collection development practices.
Herrera, G. (2016). Undergraduate library collection use and diversity: Testing for racial and gender differences. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 16(4), 763-774.
This study examined gender and racial differences among undergraduate library collection users at the University of Mississippi. Checkout and electronic resource use data were compiled for the calendar year 2014. These data were used along with statistical testing to distinguish between groups and determine how well the library collection was serving both historically underserved and nonminority populations. The results indicate that minority groups are served as well as, if not better than, the control groups.
Phelps, S. F. (2020). Assessing a Consortium for a Multidisciplinary Subject. Collection Management, 1-22.
This paper reports on a study to assess the Orbis Cascade Alliance’s print collection for material supporting the Black experience. It covers descriptions of general methods used for collection assessment as well as those used to assess the Alliance including Brief Tests, List Checking, and Comparison Studies. Each method is described with its strengths and weaknesses as well as their application to a consortium of libraries with Black experience being the subject matter of the material collected. These methods can be used for other multidisciplinary topics. Issues with subject headings, publishing, acquisitions, and racism emerged during the study and are covered in the discussion.
Wickham, M. E., & Sweeney, M. E. (2018). Are We Still Transmitting Whiteness? A Case Study of a Southern, Rural Library's Youth Collections. Library Trends, 67(1), 89-106.
Analysis of Rural Branch Library’s (RBL) easy reader and juvenile biography collections confirms an overrepresentation of White authors and characters and storylines that privilege White racial frameworks. Analysis of RBL’s collection development policies and practices reveals that color-blind selection policies, lack of weeding, and constraints in resources and staffing create a structure that fosters the transmission of Whiteness in the youth collections over time. This study contributes to understandings of library collections as sites of social power and has implications for the collection development policies and practices of similarly situated small and rural public libraries.

Scholarly Articles - Information Literacy

Leung, S. Y., & López-McKnight, J.,R. (2020). Dreaming Revolutionary Futures: Critical Race's Centrality to Ending White Supremacy. Communications in Information Literacy, 14(1), 12-26.
In this essay, we reject progress narratives depicting the profession as having arrived, or even moved further, to a critical space, paying particular close attention to the absence of white supremacy, not only in the text Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods but in critical library instruction. We then explore our teaching and learning experiences against, and through, white supremacy-while interrogating, and responding to critical library instruction-by drawing on critical race theory, emergent strategy, and cultural and race-centered pedagogies that offer humanizing and sustaining ways of understanding and being. Finally, we close by moving towards an urgent confrontation with white supremacy, carrying radical hope and imagining liberatory futures for ourselves, communities, libraries, and world.
Pashia, A. (2017). Examining structural oppression as a component of information literacy: A call for librarians to support #BlackLivesMatter through our teaching. Journal of Information Literacy, 11(2), 86-104.
This article calls for librarians to expand our understanding of information literacy to include the connections betweenstructural racism andinformation production, dissemination, and organisation. It begins with an examination of some of the ways libraries have recorded and replicated inequities endemic in Western society. These issues are connected to both the field of critical information literacy and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The author then provides an overview of how these issues are taught ina credit bearing information literacy course.
Rapchak, M. (2019). That Which Cannot Be Named. Journal of Radical Librarianship, 5, 173-196.
his article examines how information literacy is situated in a history of whitesupremacy in academia and academic libraries and provides an overview of some of the historical critiques of information literacy, to which the Framework for Information Literacyfor Higher Education is ostensibly responding. Using Critical Race Theory, I provide a close reading of the Framework, highlighting the ways in which issues of race and racism are elided and white academia is centered. This article also examines critiques of information literacy and how critical information literacy has responded to the Framework. I then propose some ways to emphasize antiracist pedagogy in the information literacy classroom.

Scholarly Articles - Reference & User Services

Broughton, K. M. (2019). Belonging, intentionality, and study space for minoritized and privileged students. Association of College & Research Libraries Conference, Cleveland, Ohio.
Using a critical constructivist approach infused with narrative inquiry practices, this study explores how students’ social identities intersect with experiences in library study spaces and influence sense of belonging at a predominantly white university. Interviews with students from a variety social identity backgrounds were analyzed to better understand what role human interactions and ecological factors in study spaces have on students’ sense of belonging. This study also examines whether the widely reported notions regarding student preferences for library study spaces due to their purposefully built socio-academic nature hold true for both privileged and
minoritized students.
Tewell, E. (2019). Reframing reference for marginalized students: a participatory visual study. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 58(3), 162-176.
How can academic librarians improve reference services for marginalized students? How can research into such questions center students’ ideas and experiences? This study uses Photovoice, a participatory method that combines photography, interviews, and group discussion to create change regarding an issue. Eleven university students from historically marginalized backgrounds were asked to document how they seek information in their everyday activities, and the resulting themes and recommendations were considered in light of potential implications for the design of reference services. Notable findings include participants’ preference for in-person support regarding questions about their academic work, the use of visual information such as pictures and screenshots to aid information seeking, and a desire for the library to improve the ease of accessing articles. Many additional ideas for improving various aspects of the library were shared by participants. The study’s process and findings underscored the uniqueness of participants’ experiences and information practices, suggesting that universal models concerning different user populations can overly simplify experiences and are less useful than a contextual approach to working with learners.