Social Movements & the Law

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are fundamental values of the association and its members, and diversity is listed as one of ALA's Key Action Areas. The Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services uses a social justice framework to ensure the inclusion of diverse perspectives within our profession and association to best position ALA as a trusted, leading advocate for equitable access to library services for all.

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

Freedom libraries in the south provided Black residents with access to spaces and books, whether in church basements or private homes.

Home | Proactive Preparation | Responding to an Incident | Meeting Community Needs | Special Considerations & Resources What prompted the need for this document? | Assistance and Consultation | Definitions What prompted the need for this document? After the 2016 elections, there was a spike in reported hate crimes in American libraries. Consequently, questions about hate speech, the First Amendment, and patron behavior in the library are escalating.Hateful Conduct in Libraries: Supporting Library Workers and Patrons

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…

A VOICE AND A FORCE FOR LIBERAL EDUCATION. AAC&U advances the vitality and democratic purposes of undergraduate liberal education.

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.

The university announced courses would resume “immediately online and asynchronously,” but questions about academic freedom, transparency, and more, remain.

For black conservationists, work can be a challenge: 'All you have to get is that one person who's going to call the cops and you're the next hashtag.'

The first of 1,000 planned ‘Freedom Libraries’ opens in the Massachusetts prison where the campaigner was incarcerated in the 1940s

Librarianship has remained overwhelmingly white for decades. Leaders say recruitment, retention and a change in policies and culture are needed.

Hispanic-Serving Institutions make up 17 percent of all U.S. public and nonprofit colleges—yet they enroll 67 percent of all Hispanic and Latino ...

Here’s how I’m going to tackle this issue in 2022.

The U.S. Department of Education has recognized the UA's success in the enrollment of Hispanic students and in providing educational opportunities to them.