Except for the Covid Year (Years? Who remembers that time), this is the first back to school that I have not been a part of, which is bizarre.
While I will do a little progress summary at the end of this post, there is something else interesting that I have noticed and been thinking about over the last few weeks while working on my literature review: the importance of increasing the diversity of employees, and whose responsibility that is.
Because my main goal with this sabbatical project is to end up with concrete actions that any librarian (or other library employee) can do, I am not focusing on including much, if anything, on strategies for hiring more diversely. Much of increasing hiring diversity I think comes from the university librarian, the university as a whole, or even LIS as a whole. However, while I was thinking this initially, the hiring of librarians is mainly done by librarians—while the university librarian and president make the official decision, faculty hiring committees really choose who will be filling the role.
So then, let’s say that the librarians’ department wanted to make a commitment to hiring more diverse librarians*. I think this is important and something that should be done. But who makes that call? How is that implemented? I don’t see this as something that I could do upon returning to the library next summer, for example. However, initial steps might be something that can be done by any librarian who finds themselves on the next hiring committee, such as striving for a better understanding of unconscious bias than the HR-provided module may provide. As many of the articles suggested, education is often the first step in any EDI-related work. Some of the articles also had specific advice for individuals who are part of the hiring process that I will definitely be going back to when I inevitably end up on a hiring committee in the future.
There are a few other points I’ve been thinking about with this hiring discussion.
Once an employee is hired, how do we keep them? Especially if they are the only member of their (or any!) equity-seeking group? One thing that came up in the literature often that supports new diverse librarians are mentorship, especially related to encouraging self-promotion and balancing service commitments. I have personally found that I received excellent advice from my mentors around both of these topics which helped me a LOT over the last several years. Much like how Universal Design for Learning supports all students, not just those with disabilities, I think having structured mentorship would help not only new diverse librarians but all.
The next question becomes, if we always have great mentors who support new librarians, do we advertise this on job postings and on the website? If so, where? How? Does that end up looking performative, or does it tell prospective employees that this is a good and positive workplace? I don’t know the answer to this and have been going back and forth on which side I think is correct.
Mentorship and working on unconscious bias and other EDI-related training are both things that any and all librarians can be a part of that will improve the library as a place to work for diverse librarians. This is the main reason why I don’t want to completely write off this topic as something only for the university librarian, university, or librarianship profession on a whole to do, but as something that does include everyone at the library. Sometimes I feel like EDI work (or any work) is easy to push away and say that it is someone else’s responsibility, someone else’s job. However, the second that happens, the work can become no one’s responsibility and falls away completely.
This has been a more ramble-y blog post than I had wanted it to be, but I wanted to write down these ideas and attempt to communicate them to myself more articulately. In summary:
- We all play a role in having a more diverse staff, even if that takes place after someone is hired. If this is always someone else’s responsibility, it might not happen at all.
Sabbatical Work Summary Update:
- Recently Finished: Website scan rubric, sorting notes from articles
- Currently Working On: scanning websites and writing draft of literature review
- Next Steps: …scanning websites and writing draft of literature review. I’m anticipating this is where I’ll be at for most of September!
* I think it would be better to say “librarians from equity-seeking groups” or name a specific group that is being considered every time, but that is wordy and this is a blog post. I know and understand that an individual cannot be diverse on their own!