Diversity (11/08)
By Carol Barra
For the last three years I have attended the Diversity Symposium at AALL. The first year I attended was the result of volunteering to represent the LexisNexis® Librarian Relations Group at the meeting. LexisNexis sponsors the symposium and the reception following the program. Well, after that meeting, I was hooked. That was in 2006, and I attended the next two and plan to continue to attend in coming years.
I want to share with you some of what I took away from the 2008 Diversity Symposium in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Maurice Wheeler spoke about how to define diversity. He reminded those in attendance that diversity is about many things, not just race or ethnicity. He talked about gender, sexual orientation, cultural differences, age, etc. Dr. Wheeler set the stage by defining diversity broadly. Two of the other speakers I want to talk about briefly shared what they are doing on the ground to promote diversity for our profession and to help people realize their potential.
Dr. Patricia Montiel Overall spoke about her work with Knowledge River. “Knowledge River is a Tucson-based educational experience within the School of Information Resources and Library Science (SIRLS) that focuses on educating Hispanic and Native American library and information professionals." http://knowledgeriver.arizona.edu/. She has been working with this select group of people to introduce them to librarianship as a career choice. The program provides a level of financial and guidance support that may not be readily available at other institutions. I was excited to hear about this program because it is opening up our profession to an under-represented group of individuals.
Dwight King is the other speaker I want to mention. At the University of Notre Dame he is also working to recruit the next generation of librarians from a diverse population of high school students that the Law Library recruits for summer internships. The program provides an introduction to librarianship to students who are planning to attend college. The hope is that the program will entice some of these students to consider librarianship as their profession.
For some reason this year’s program remained with me through the rest of the summer. It may have been the expanded definition of diversity. It may be because I am so impressed with the two programs I have mentioned. The first, of course, took a lot of planning and funding to implement. The second program is something that many of you could accomplish in your own libraries on a smaller scale. When I worked in a law firm library, we participated in a program with local high schools to hire students during the school year for 10 – 15 hours a week and full-time during the summer. This was a very rewarding experience for me because I worked with some very bright and eager students who were planning to attend college. I like to think I helped them understand the importance of the library to the larger organization, that librarians are wonderfully helpful and friendly people, and how to conduct themselves in a business setting.
All of the speakers at this year’s Diversity Symposium helped me realize how lucky I have been in my professional career to work with a diverse group of people and how rewarding that has been. And, how much I have grown as a person because of the diverse groups I have been privileged to work with.
What can you do to help promote diversity in our profession?
