Kristen Greenland
Chemical & Physical Sciences Librarian
kgreenland@berkeley.edu
Erica Newcome
Technical Processing & Collection Projects Assistant
erican@berkeley.edu
Susan Powell
GIS & Map Librarian
smpowell@berkeley.edu
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
If you use these materials, we'd love to hear from you!
Format:
Session 1: Library Services
[This session was held on Zoom so we used a shared Google Doc with the following content and collaboratively took notes]
Agenda
Welcome & Setup (~5 minutes)
Group Norms (~10 minutes)
Anti-Racism Definitions Discussion (~30 minutes)
Anti-Racism & Library Services (~20 minutes)
EPS Services and Goals Discussion (~20 minutes)
Wrap Up (~5 minutes)
We will be working through this shared document together. The facilitators will do their best to capture notes as we go, but feel free to add anything that gets missed.
Group Norms (~10 minutes)
Background: Group norms are the informal guidelines of behavior and a code of conduct that provides some order and conformity to group activities and operations. We expect that all participants in this series will help create an environment that is respectful and productive. What group dynamics make you feel comfortable sharing your viewpoints? What do you expect of your peers? We will collaborate on a set of norms for the three session series.
Activity: Collaborative group norms/expectations brainstorming on JamBoard [participants added notes with their suggestions for group norms/expectations to a linked JamBoard]
Anti-Racism Definitions Discussion (~30 minutes)
Background: We asked you to read and reflect on two definitions of anti-racism ahead of this session:
Discussion Questions:
Do either of these definitions seem more applicable or useful for applying anti-racism to librarianship, and our work in EPS specifically?
Can we agree on a working definition for anti-racism?
Discussion notes:
Working definition:
---
Background: Now that we have some ideas about how we define anti-racism in the context of our work, we’d like to have a preliminary discussion of what anti-racism means in the context of libraries. We don’t expect to have all the answers at this point, and in fact, this discussion may be more of a question generating session. We've brainstormed a few examples of racist vs. anti-racist library policies and practices to seed the discussion.
Activity: Take five minutes to read the examples and reflect on the discussion questions.
Examples of racist vs. anti-racist library policy and practices:
Discussion Questions:
What does anti-racism mean in the context of library work?
What are some additional examples of anti-racist library policies and practices?
How do we identify policies and practices that require change?
How do we craft anti-racist policies and practices?
Discussion notes:
Anti-Racism and Library Services (~20 Minutes)
Video Clip - 5:29 min - 6:56 min Dr. Cooke Talk on EDI-fying our LIS Services
Activity: Take five minutes to reflect on your own identities by filling out the Social Identities Wheel Handout and answer the questions in the center of the wheel. Your responses will not be shared with the group, but will inform our next discussion.
---
Background: Dr. Cooke mentions in the video that we all bring our identities and complications with us to our interactions with each other and our patrons. In her book, Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals (2017), she discusses cultural competency and cultural humility as essential to providing equitable and inclusive service, with critical self-reflection as an important part of this work: “Library professionals must engage in critical self-reflection and then become involved in the process of getting to know their communities, by conducting their own research and investigation and by building relationships with community members and talking to them.” (p. 12)
Cultural competency: A congruent set of behaviors, attitudes, and policies that enable a person or group to work effectively in cross-cultural situations; the process by which individuals and systems respond respectfully and effectively to people of all cultures, languages, classes, races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and other diversity factors in a manner that recognizes, affirms, and values the worth of individuals, families, and communities and protects and preserves the dignity of each (National Association of Social Workers, 2001).
Cultural humility: A lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique, to redressing power imbalances . . . and to developing mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998).
Discussion Questions:
What are we currently doing to increase cultural competency and cultural humility among our staff and student workers? What would we like to be doing?
What do we need to know about ourselves and our patrons to do this work?
What are the potential barriers?
Discussion notes:
Division Services and Goals (~20 Minutes)
Activity: We asked you to complete a "What I Do" survey about perceptions of your work in the library. You answered these questions:
Read through the compiled survey answers below. Which set of answers corresponds to how you think each group perceives your work?
[Survey answers were de-duplicated and grouped together for participants to read through and guess the category.]
Discussion Questions:
Is there anything that surprised you about the results?
In what ways do you think we understand how our patrons view our work accurately?
What are some of the mis-understandings?
Discussion notes:
---
Background: We asked you to read the first four pages of Assessing Information Needs: Managing Transformative Library Services (2010) where the authors state: “...information professionals typically make management decisions and plan information services based on their experiences and intuition, what they believe to be the needs of their clientele. Furthermore, simply asking clientele to identify their needs is a fruitless task, because people cannot usually articulate the needs they have for information.” (p. 3)
Formulate Division Goal(s) around anti-racism:
The process of thinking about and writing goals now can help us think about what is important to us as a division when we write official goals for next year.
Discussion Questions:
What questions do we have about our communities of users?
What kind of information do we already have?
What are the best methods of answering questions about our communities of users?
What are our overarching goals or things we’re trying to solve with this work?
Goal brainstorming notes:
Potential goals: