Articulate the importance of designing programs and services supportive of diversity, inclusion, and equity for clientele and employees
It’s widely acknowledged throughout the profession that, regardless of institutional context, libraries have a mandate to support diversity, inclusion and equity for both patrons and employees. The ALA maintains a lengthy list of diversity related resources for librarians in various types of institutions. A philosophical / design approach that is based on these values can not only guide the creation of library programs and services but also inform a wide array of crucial concerns from strategic planning, collections management policies, and outreach to configuring a library’s physical spaces and even its furniture choices.
Strategic planning is a profoundly important structuring and culture-shaping activity for many libraries, one that ultimately brings a host of impacts to its users and other stakeholders. This activity is resource and time-intensive and usually aims to guide the organization over a 3 to 5 year timeline. The process of strategic planning typically begins with formulating mission, vision and values statements. These are meant to answer several existential questions including “What is our purpose?,” “Why are we here?,” and “Who are we serving?” According to Michael Allison “a mission statement is a statement of purpose, a vision statement is a vivid image of the future you seek to create, and a value statement outlines your organization’s guiding concepts and beliefs” (2015).
Once a library’s leadership – directors and administrators, academic executives, and Boards of Directors – has solicited and considered input from other stakeholders on these and related topics, they must reach consensus on the exact language of the statements. They are then circulated internally and publicized externally. It’s vital that staff and management are not only aware of but actively discuss and support these statements and treat them as a “living document.” Distilling the purpose and identity of the library, the statements will resonate through the entire strategic planning process at each stage of development: during implementation of strategy in policies, projects and objectives and in the planners’ attempts to measure and analyze their plan’s results. They will have a similar effect on collection management and selection policies which I’ll discuss later. These statements frequently draw on the ethics of diversity, inclusion and equity as guiding principles. These can be implied in a mission statement, but because mission statements are so concise, it’s more common to see the longer-form values statement make direct commentary on these principles. The Boston College Libraries’ values statement, for example, provides justification for foregrounding diversity, inclusion and equity by “[acknowledging] historical, structural, and systemic injustice. The struggle against racism, prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination is central to our mission and profession” (2020). Many libraries and professional associations – among them the ALA, ACRL, SAAA – go further by articulating separate diversity, inclusion, equity statements and ancillary action plans that elaborate on their commitments to these core values.
In a sign of how important these institutional affirmations of diversity and inclusion are in our field, numerous libraries and library associations have released statements on the implications of the Black Lives Matter movement for libraries and in support of the adoption and advocacy of related goals. While the number of corporations with Chief Diversity Officer positions has been steadily growing over the past two decades, and some high-profile universities like the University of Michigan have been experimenting with creating similar roles at campus and departmental levels, the idea has yet to find much of a foothold in academic libraries. In an article about an EDI (equity, diversity, inclusion) “climate study” that San Jose State University’s School of Information participated in last year (2020), SJSU library science professor Kristen Rebmann argues that academic libraries should begin adapting the standards for Diversity Officers being used by universities (The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education) for their own contexts: “library and information science [should] further expand our own definitions and embrace of the role as a crucial step on the path of developing collections, programs, and services reflective of excellence in antiracism and inclusive excellence in librarianship” (2021).
Diversity and inclusion are also embodied in the aspirational, transformative planning process itself. Strategic planning should solicit input from a wide range of stakeholders, from administrators to front-line staff, user communities, governmental agencies, partners and even taxpayers. Stakeholder buy-in ideally begins during the creation of the mission, vision and values statements, as described above. Conversations with internal and external stakeholders ought to continue during the early phases of planning to identify “mission critical” programs and other core activities. Rosenblum argues that “a good plan includes external stakeholders … communication with community stakeholders served by the organization (and also not served by them) can provide additional input on how well the plan is helping the information organization to accomplish its ultimate goals (2018).” The specific kinds of external stakeholders will differ by library type, and in many cases their invitation to join the planning process reflects EDI values, e.g. – public libraries partnering with non-profit organizations that focus on underserved communities including the homeless and new immigrants. In terms of internal stakeholders, Roth proposes a “truly participative” approach to strategic “design” which asserts that “everyone affected by a designed change must be made cognizant of that change, must be asked for input, and must agree to it before implementation, ensuring integration” (2015).
In-depth analysis follows in the form of SWOT reports, environmental scans, needs assessments, internal audits, forecasting and other exercises. This analysis can be folded into the next steps of the planning process: long-term goals setting and “operationalizing” those goals in terms of formalizing processes, assigning responsibilities, allocating resources and determining timelines. The needs assessment, or gap analysis, connects the principles of EDI with collection management, programming and services, floor plans and more. Needs assessments deploy surveys, reach out to key informants, and use other methods to collect data and opinions from the library’s user communities. They use this quantitative and qualitative information to evaluate the gaps between how well the library is serving these communities now and how it wants to serve them in the future. In addition to engaging with the diverse communities of its users, needs assessments attempt to contact non-users as well, and learn how they might develop offerings that could bring them to the library. In academic libraries one often finds “liaisons” who, among other responsibilities, monitor the needs and interests of faculty and students. These activities should be done continuously, not just as a discreet analytical step in a plan. Regardless of its date, or the mechanisms used to gather the feedback, the voices of staff and diverse external stakeholders should permeate the library planning process. In strategic plans guided by EDI, stakeholders eventually influence most public-facing operations as well as the organizational culture, flattening some of its hierarchies.
A group project for INFO 266 (Collection Management) that I was part of involved imagining a fictional library of the future and writing a Policy Manual for it which would spell out collection development policies and explain their links to institutional values. We drafted collection related policies which mandated including some materials that were contentious, some that came from marginalized and underrepresented groups, and some that were purchased from small and independent publishers and content providers. We also stressed the importance of collecting multiple formats and media (several of which were entirely made up to fit the future time period, like interactive books with holograms and VR enabled experiences), both to meet public expectations, to provide access to differently abled patrons, and to stay abreast of technological innovations. In addition to collection management policies, our fictional library offered many programs that aimed to widen public access and interest, increase participatory events and services, and generally democratize and promote the value of the institution to its varied communities. We proposed using data gathered from needs assessments (described above), interlibrary loan (ILL) requests, catalog searches on the library website, and direct requests (DDA / PDA) for specific titles or subject areas to assist in developing a composite picture of patron needs and requests.
References
Allison, M. (2015). Strategic planning for nonprofit organizations: A practical guide for dynamic times (Third ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley.
Duggan, W. (2013). Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion: Values Statement. (2020, December 1). In Boston College Libraries. Retrieved from https://libguides.bc.edu/edi/values-statement
Gosling, J. & Mintzberg, H. (2003). The five minds of a manager. Harvard Business Review (November 2003), 54-63.
Rebmann, K. (2021). Libraries should define and hire library diversity officers with NADOHE standards in mind: Steps toward anti-racism and inclusive excellence in libraries. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348201208_Libraries_should_define_and_hire_Library_Diversity_Officers_with_NADOHE_standards_in_mind_Steps_toward_anti-racism_and_inclusive_excellence_in_libraries
Rosenblum, L. (2018). Strategic Planning. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information Services Today (231-245). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Evidence for Competency C
Evidence 1
The presentation below was created for course INFO 204 on Information Professions. In the world of business management, strategic planning dates back to the 1950s. In this presentation I’ve tried to include and emphasize sources that are more relevant to the non-profit and public sectors. Many experts advise organizational leaders to begin creating a detailed strategic planning roadmap through conversations with both internal and external stakeholders. For non-profit organizations like libraries, these stakeholders include the entire staff of an organization and its volunteers, as well as its board of directors, external partners, advocates and donors, and the patrons and communities it serves. This presentation is meant to provide description of a generic planning process (not specifically tailored for libraries) and merely skims issues that I addressed earlier, namely the influence of equity, diversity and inclusion values on collection development and the stakeholder participation process.
Evidence 2
This group project was created for INFO 266, Collection Management. The assignment was to imagine a fictional library and write a Policy Manual for it that would elaborate on its collection development and selection policies. We used brainstorming sessions to produce an outline for the document, and then assigned chapters to each of the four team members. We also edited each chapter together after the first round of writing. I wrote chapters 1 and 11. In the latter I explored how collection policies were impacted by intellectual freedom and an anti-censorship stance. In chapter 2 we discuss principles behind these policies that relate to diversity, inclusion and equity such as acquiring content from marginalized and underserved communities, media formats that enhance accessibility for users with disabilities, and support for multiple languages.