Research & Academic Scholarship

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

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.

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.

Many organizations are struggling to diversify their ranks through the flawed application of well-intentioned diversity policies. DEI policies are only as good as the people responsible for carrying them out. If those people don’t fully understand what problem new processes or policies are solving, they won’t understand their role in bringing those plans to life — or how to hold themselves and others accountable. The author has developed a three-part framework for driving better accountability around DEI by focusing on educating people on the why, not just the how; listening to feedback and iterating on policies; and celebrating your wins while nudging those who need it.

Professional development initiatives intended to help underrepresented employees don’t always lead to the progress leaders think they will — especially if those initiatives are designed around a harmful expectation of assimilation. The authors suggest examining the company’s expectations of assimilation and professionalism, reframing professional development programs, adjusting feedback processes, and focusing on relationships.

How an intention to address racial equity can influence institutional impact investing strategy.

Abstract: As the growth in Latino college enrollment is expected to continue for years to come, academic libraries at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) and beyond will be serving increasing numbers of Hispanic students. Since Latino educational attainment remains lower than than of other groups and academic libraries’ impact on retention, GPA and related educational outcomes has been well documented, it is crucial that academic libraries actively foster Latino students’ success. A review of the literature on Hispanic students and library use, the article also includes recommendations for practice and offers a local example to illustrate strategies libraries may implement to better meet the educational needs of Hispanic students.

Articles published by student-run law reviews were cited more often after they adopted diversity policies for selecting editors, according to a study that will be published in the Columbia Law Review.

This column shares the experience of one minority Collection Development Librarian throughout their career and their lessons learned. Also sharing pra…

Academic librarians, like so many others in the higher education and library sectors, have discussed equity, diversity, and inclusion for many years. A number of prominent initiatives have worked to address these issues across the profession and within individual institutions. Yet, libraries have struggled to make progress on these stated values, especially in meeting their goals of employee diversification. The organizing led by Black Lives Matter activists in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd sparked an increase in demands for racial justice across the higher education sector. Many leaders called for an end to police violence and pledged to address their institutions’ history of racism. Academic libraries in turn have grappled with renewed attention to increasing the diversity of their employees, addressing retention issues, and fostering equity and inclusion for both internal and external constituents. Some have also focused their efforts on library practices such as increasing the diversity of their collections. To better understand the impact of these national events and long-standing challenges on academic libraries, we surveyed 638 library directors in fall 2020 to examine how perspectives and strategies relevant to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism evolved over the last year

Abstract Training culturally competent and socially responsible library and information science (LIS) professionals requires a blended approach that extends across curricula, professional practice, and research. Social justice can support these goals by serving as a topic of inquiry in LIS curricula as well as by providing a scholarly framework for understanding how power and privilege shape LIS institutions and professional practice. This article applies social justice as a topic and tool for transforming LIS curricula and culture by exploring the implementation of social justice–themed courses and an extracurricular reading group in one LIS department. Exploring curricular and extracurricular cases in a shared institutional setting contextualizes key challenges and conversations that can inform similar initiatives in other institutions. Transforming LIS culture to prioritize social justice values, epistemologies, and frameworks requires multivalent strategies, community buy-in, and shared responsibility in terms of the labor of leading and sustaining engagement with social justice.

In an increasingly globalized world, social justice issues dominate the news. Libraries are often viewed as places where social justice ideals are upheld and pr...

Automation is coming to HR. By automating the collection and analysis of large datasets, AI and other analytics tools offer the promise of improving every phase of the HR pipeline, from recruitment and compensation to promotion, training, and evaluation. These systems, however, can reflect historical biases and discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and class. Managers should consider that 1) models are likely to perform best with regard to individuals in majority demographic groups but worse with less well represented groups; 2) there is no such thing as a truly “race-blind” or “gender-blind” model, and omitting race or gender explicitly from a model can even make things worse; and 3) if demographic categories aren’t evenly distributed in your organization (and in most they aren’t), even carefully built models will not lead to equal outcomes across groups.

Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the primary goal of integrating the workforce and eliminating arbitrary bias against minorities and other groups who had been historically excluded. Yet substantial research reveals that racial bias persists and continues to limit opportunities and outcomes for racial minorities in the workplace. Because these denials of opportunity result from myriad individual hiring and promotion decisions made by vast numbers of managers, finding effective strategies to reduce the impact of bias has proven challenging. Some have proposed that a sense of accountability, or “the implicit or explicit expectation that one may be called on to justify one’s beliefs, feelings, and actions to others,” can decrease bias. This Article examines the conditions under which accountability to a committee of peers reduces racial bias and discrimination. More specifically, this Article provides the first empirical test of whether an employment committee’s racial composition influences the decision-making process. My experimental results reveal that race does in fact matter. Accountability to a racially diverse committee leads to more hiring and promotion of underrepresented minorities than does accountability to a homogeneous committee. Members of diverse committees were more likely to value diversity, acknowledge structural discrimination, and favor inclusive promotion decisions. This suggests that accountability as a debiasing strategy is more nuanced than previously theorized. If simply changing the racial composition of a committee can indeed nudge less discriminatory behavior, we can encourage these changes through voluntary organizational policies like having an NFL “Rooney Rule” for hiring committees. In addition, Title VII can be interpreted to hold employers liable under a negligence theory to encourage the types of changes that yield inclusive hires and promotions.

The United States has been steadily growing more racially and ethnically diverse, especially over the past several decades. Yet, as a profession, law librarianship has been slow to reflect the country’s increased diversity. Taking the most recent U.S. Census statistics into account, this article evaluates the implications that a progressively diverse population poses for law librarianship. Reasons for low levels of diversity among law librarians, as well as past and suggested efforts within the profession to further increase diversity, are discussed.