Diversity is a cornerstone of the library profession and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has recently announced a renewed emphasis on diversity and inclusion. In response to this initiative, this paper will review the current academic literature relating to diversity initiatives in academic libraries. Specifically, it will discuss diversity as it pertains to staffing, culture, collections, services and programming. These five areas are good starting points for libraries to reflect on the current state of diversity at their institutions and plan for meaningful change.

abstract: This article presents a case study of an urban academic library’s attempt to identify factors that influence the perceptions of students of color concerning the library as a welcoming space. The goal of this study is to determine if there are qualitative divergent factors along racial lines concerning how students use this library. The research is grounded in the theory of symbolic interactionism and Critical Race Theory. The authors then used these theories to focus on three themes that emerged reflecting racial differences among library users. This project adds to the limited scholarly research concerning the influence of the library on the experiences and the retention and success rates of students of color.

This study looks at undergraduate Hispanic students’ interpretations and current perceptions of the academic library’s purpose, usefulness and value. What are the reasons to use the library? What are the barriers to use? This study will examine academic libraries’ move toward electronic library materials and what it means for Hispanic students. The results of this study will help academic libraries at Hispanic Serving Institutions to better understand how they are currently being perceived and what they need to do to market themselves and their collections to better serve Hispanic students.

Health science libraries are ideally suited for proactive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, as their work and spaces transcend disciplinary boundaries. In 2018, a DEI Team was created by the Health Science Center Libraries at the University of Florida, with the purpose of improving the library’s climate for its diverse patrons and employees. This article provides an overview of the Team’s formation and development, including its charge, culture, structure, team-work, leadership, and reporting processes. Recommendations are offered for other libraries seeking to establish simi- lar committees.

William C. Welburn

Getting along with others is about more than just having things in common.

EDUCAUSE is committed to enabling sustained growth in DEI, both internally as an association and for you, our community of IT and technology professio

PEN America's report on school book bans offers the most comprehensive look at banned books in the 2021–22 school year, with counting more than 2,500 bans.

The following text was written by Baharak Yousefi, Ebony Magnus, Yoonhee Lee, and me. It was originally sent as a response to a list-serv discussion…

Collecting for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Best Practices for Virginia Libraries presents an overview for auditing library collections, from selection and cataloging to policy and community engagement statements. Developed in concert with public, school, and academic libraries, appendices support all library types.

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Programs subcommittee at University of North Carolina (UNC) Charlotte’s Atkins library formed in 2019 and created a series of DEI-themed staff development programming to engage library employees. The programs, which included facilitated discussions, short presentations at staff meetings, and interaction with video or article content, were all intended to foster a culture of reflection and awareness. To accommodate changing necessities of virtual and in person work environments, the subcommittee transitioned their work to be applicable both online and in person with an educational hub to promote cultural humility practices. The subcommittee began assessing the results of this programming in an informal process and laid groundwork for a more formalized assessment to inform their future DEI work.

Research suggests that the relationship between Black employees and their employing organizations is, at best, a tenuous one. Black employees — at all levels — feel that they have not been adequately heard, understood, or granted opportunities to the same extent as their white peers. The author has devised a framework to help people from different backgrounds build stronger relationships in the workplace. Known by the acronym LEAP, the framework encourages company leaders — particularly people managers — to become better allies by: Listening and learning from your Black colleagues’ experience; Engaging with your Black colleagues in racially diverse and casual settings; Asking your Black colleagues about their work and goals; and Providing your Black colleagues with opportunities, suggestions, encouragement, and general support.

Written by Amy Bintliff

Recent years have seen a resurgence in widespread activism throughout the country. Librarian's Library columnist Allison Escoto suggests helpful resources for librarians seeking to understand—in both theory and practice—the role of libraries in a time of increased social activism.

Exploring the diverse terrain that makes up library and information science (LIS), this collection features the work of scholars, practitioners, and others who draw from a variety of theoretical approaches to name, problematize, and ultimately fissures whiteness at work. Contributors not only provide critical accounts of the histories of whiteness - particularly as they have shaped libraries and archives in higher education - but also interrogate current formations, from the policing of people of color in library spaces to imagined LIS futures. This volume also considers possibilities for challenging oppressive legacies and charting a new course towards anti-racist librarianship, whether in the classroom, at the reference desk, or elsewhere. -- from back cover.

Borne of a professional development workshop, Teaching for Justice highlights the commitment and efforts of LIS faculty and instructors who feature social justice theory and strategies in their courses and classroom practices. This book is geared towards LIS instructors who have begun to incorporate social justice into their course content, as well as those who are interested in learning more about how to address social justice in their classrooms. Chapters provide a pedagogical foundation and motivation for teaching social justice in LIS as a stand alone course or as a theme integrated within topical courses that seemingly "have no relationship" to such issues. The experiences and reflections of chapter contributors will prepare readers with strong arguments for the inclusion of social justice in their LIS classroom, curriculum, and school policies, provide an array of practical techniques intended to secure such inclusion, and a instill a sense of confidence for advocating for the incorporation of social justice as a mainstay of LIS education.

Over the past fifteen years, librarians have increasingly looked to theory as a means to destabilize normative discourses and practices within LIS, to engage in inclusive and non-authoritarian pedagogies, and to organize for social justice. "Critlib," short for "critical librarianship," is variously used to refer to a growing body of scholarship, an intellectual or activist movement within librarianship, an online community that occasionally organizes in-person meetings, and an informal Twitter discussion space active since 2014, identified by the #critlib hashtag. Critlib "aims to engage in discussion about critical perspectives on library practice" but it also seeks to bring "social justice principles into our work in libraries" (http: //critlib.org/about/). The role of theory within librarianship in general, and critical librarianship more specifically, has emerged as a site of tension within the profession. In spite of an avowedly activist and social justice-oriented agenda, critlib--as an online discussion space at least--has come under fire from some for being inaccessible, exclusionary, elitist, and disconnected from the practice of librarianship, empirical scholarship, and on-the-ground organizing for socioeconomic and political change. At the same time, critical librarianship may be becoming institutionalized, as seen in the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, the January 2015 editorial in College and Research Libraries that specifically solicited articles using critical theory or humanistic approaches, and the publication of several critical librarianship monographs by the Association of College and Research Libraries. This book features original research, reflective essays and conversations, and dialogues that consider the relationships between theory, practice, and critical librarianship through the lenses of the histories of librarianship and critical librarianship, intellectual and activist communities, professional practices, information literacy, library technologies, library education, specific theoretical approaches, and underexplored epistemologies and ways of knowing. Karen Nicholson is Manager, Information Literacy, at the University of Guelph, and a PhD candidate (LIS) at Western University, both in Ontario. Her research interests include information literacy and critical university studies. Maura Seale is History Librarian at the University of Michigan and was previously Collections, Research, and Instruction Librarian at Georgetown University. She received an MA in American Studies from the University of Minnesota and an MSI from the University of Michigan. She welcomes comments and can be found on Twitter at @mauraseale.

This book offers a guide for librarians who see their profession as a chance to make a positive difference in their communities -- librarians who recognize that it is no longer enough to stand behind a desk waiting to serve. R. David Lankes, author of The Atlas of New Librarianship, reminds librarians of their mission: to improve society by facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. In this book, he provides tools, arguments, resources, and ideas for fulfilling this mission. Librarians will be prepared to become radical positive change agents in their communities, and other readers will learn to understand libraries in a new way. The librarians of Ferguson, Missouri, famously became positive change agents in August 2014 when they opened library doors when schools were closed because of civil unrest after the shooting of an unarmed teen by police. Working with other local organizations, they provided children and their parents a space for learning, lunch, and peace. But other libraries serve other communities -- students, faculty, scholars, law firms -- in other ways. All libraries are about community, writes Lankes; that is just librarianship. In concise chapters, Lankes addresses the mission of libraries and explains what constitutes a library.

"This essential resource helps educators tackle common and challenging dilemmas that arise in today's classroom-such as diversity, privilege, and intersectionality. This book examines common issues educators face when teaching social justice and diversity-related courses and offers best practices for addressing them. Contributors discuss the many roles instructors play, inside and outside of college and university classrooms, for example, in handling personal threats, responsibly incorporating current events into classroom discussion, navigating their own stigmatized or privileged identities, dealing with bias in teaching evaluations, and engaging in self-care"--

"In this report, the authors introduce the findings of a research study that explores Black and African American students' experiences with libraries, examining the role that race has played in these students' library experiences to identify potential opportunities for libraries to better meet the needs of these users"--

"This report provides an overview of the historical exclusion and disenfranchisement of Blacks and African Americans from libraries and educational institutions in the United States and explores the ways in which the legacy of this exclusion manifests today"--

Reflective dialogue asks us to pause before reacting, to ground ourselves in a sense of compassion for ourselves and others, and to use that grounding to open a space to listen and to speak with the goal of recognizing a shared humanity and appreciating difference. In four sections, Libraries Promoting Reflective Dialogue in a Time of Political Polarization explores the various ways in which librarians experience and respond to political polarization and its effects, both in our everyday work and in our professional communities.

"The role of archives and libraries in our digital age is one of the most pressing concerns of humanists, scholars, and citizens worldwide. This collection brings together specialists from academia, public libraries, governmental agencies, and non-profit archives to pursue common questions about value across the institutional boundaries that typically separate us." --

Autoethnography is a type of research that uses writing and self-examination to explore far-ranging cultural, political, and social issues through personal experience. It is a qualitative, reflexive, ethnographic method where the researcher is also the subject of inquiry.

Written by three experienced LIS professionals, Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives demonstrates the meaning of cultural competence in the everyday work in libraries, archives, museums, and special collections with Latino populations. The authors focus on their areas of expertise including academic, school, public libraries, health sciences, archives, and special collections to show the importance of understanding how cultural competence effects the day-to-day communication, relationship building, and information provision with Latinos. They acknowledge the role of both tacit and explicit knowledge in their work, and discuss ways in which cultural competence is integral to successful delivery of services to, communication with, and relationship building with Latino communities.

"This book comprehensively but succinctly tells the story of LatCrit's emergence and sustainable presence as a scholarly and activist community within and beyond the US legal academy, finding its place alongside such other schools of critical legal knowledge as Feminist Legal Theory and Critical Race Theory that aim to combust social and legal transformative change"--

"Drawing upon the experience of faculty from across the country, Integrating Doctrine and Diversity is a collection of essays with practical advice, written by faculty for faculty, on specific ways to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion into the law school curriculum. Chapters will focus on subjects traditionally taught in the first-year curriculum (Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Legal Writing, Legal Research, Property, Torts) and each chapter will also include a short annotated bibliography curated by a law librarian. With submissions from over 40 scholars, the collection is the first of its kind to offer reflections, advice and specific instruction on how to integrate issues of diversity and inclusions into first-year doctrinal courses"--

Formal and informal institutions structure our social interactions by giving rise to normative expectations and patterns of collective behaviour. This collection grapples with how affect, imagination, and embodiment can operate to either constrain or enable the justice of institutions and the experiences of specific social identities. This anthology explores the myriad ways institutions work to systematically disadvantage people with particular identities, whilst privileging others, and considers the legal, political, and normative interventions that might serve to promote a more just society. Taken together, the papers represent the scope of existing research within institutional theory, affect theory, race theory, and the force of social imaginaries. Across a range of topics (human rights, the theoretical imagination, social justice practices, and democratic assumptions) this collection critically assesses the extent to which theorists have attended to the conjoined influence of the imagination, embodiment, and affective phenomena on processes of institutional change that aim at the achievement of social justice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Angelaki.

Recent discussions and dissemination of information regarding the rapid growth of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) across our nation are creating some awareness among administrators and educators in higher education institutions regarding the extensive diversity of AAPIs, the struggles of some AAPI populations in pursuing and succeeding in higher education, and the lack of support for their educational success. National discourse on AAPIs among educators, policymakers and AAPI communities underscores the need for more research-including more relevant research-that can inform policy and practice that will enhance educational opportunities for AAPIs who are underserved in higher education. The book focuses on diverse topics, many of which do not appear in the current literature. The chapters are authored by an array of distinguished and emerging scholars and professionals at various universities and colleges across the nation. The authors, whose insights are invaluable in understanding the diverse issues and characteristics that affect the educational success of underserved AAPI students, and they represent the ethnicities and cultures of Cambodian, Chinese, Guamanian/Chamorro, Filipino, Hispanic, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Native Hawaiian, Okinawan, Samoan, Vietnamese, and multiracial Americans. The authors not only integrate theoretical concepts, statistical analyses, and historical events, but they also merge theory and practice to advocate for social justice for AAPIs and other underrepresented and underserved ethnic minority groups in higher education.