Library Committee Handbook

Diversity Committee 

E-mail:
diversity@library.uiuc.edu

 

Library Diversity Committee Meeting Minutes

October 9, 2007
10-11am
423 Main Library

Present: Cindy Ingold, chair; Mary Beth Allen; BA Davis-Howe; Emily Love; Kim Matherly; Lisa Romero; Gennye Varvel

  1. The Minutes from the September meeting were approved.

  2. Diversity Website Update
    Emily Love (Diversity), Sarah Shreeves (IDEALS), and Scott Walter(Services) recently met with staff from the Office of Equal Opportunity and Access, Center on Democracy in a Multi-racial Society, and the Chancellor's Office to discuss each group's approach to providing information about diversity on the web.  There is considerable interest in working together to eliminate redundancy in the information that is being provided.  The new Inclusive Illinois site will take the lead in providing information to the campus community about diversity.  They were very impressed with the thoroughness of the Library's diversity site and will incorporate much of that information into the general campus site.

    The Library Diversity site is still not officially linked from the Library's Office of Services, but Emily will contact Scott Walter regarding this point, and will convey to him the Diversity Committee's endorsement that this be a priority.

  3. Staff Training and Development for Diversity
    Beth Woodard will attend the Diversity Committee's November meeting to discuss staff training and development.  The group is interested in suggesting that a diversity component be included in GA training.

    Emily suggested that the Diversity Committee adopt a firm stance on holding diversity events on a regular schedule or at regular intervals throughout the year.

    Emily recently met with LSSC to discuss the possibility of holding a diversity session just for staff.  We discussed the success of the session presented by Menah Pratt-Clarke at the September Library faculty meeting, and decided that repeating this for the staff would be appropriate.  We also discussed introducing the Diversity website to the staff at such a session.  BA communicated tips from staff to ensure the success of such a session:  offer at 2 different days/times; have Cindy Kelly announce that it is an approved event; make the presentation personal and informal; offer refreshments; use endorsements from 1 st session attendees to advertise the 2 nd session.

    The group decided to use the work on this session to make a one-page checklist of what needs to be done to hold staff events.  Include a timeframe, boilerplate information to announce, remind, approval from Cindy Kelly, etc.  This sort of internal committee documentation could reside on the committee's website but a hard copy could also be made.

    Next we discussed the idea of a one-question survey of staff ideas about diversity to inform the session.  We agreed to seek exact phrasing from Menah Pratt-Clarke.  We would like the survey question to be sent out and replies collected by LSSC.  BA will contact LSSC to see if they will do this.  If they agree, he will work with them to draft the email containing the survey question.  A general announcement about the event will be sent out by Cindy on Libnews before LSSC sends out the survey question email.  LSSC will give the collected replies--with all identifying information removed--to BA, who will share them with Menah and the committee.  The session will be scheduled, advertised, followed by an endorsement/official approval from Cindy Kelly, than a reminder.  We will try to schedule this event the 2 nd or 3 rd week of November, with December-January as a backup.

    BA will contact Jodi about sending info via LSSC.

    Emily will contact Menah about dates and will schedule the room.

    Cindy will work on the initial email.

    Kim will arrange refreshments.

    Our goal is to have the organizational work complete by end of next week (Oct 19).

  4. Briefly discussed having a representative occasionally attend the Staff Training & Development Committee.  Emily is interested in doing this.
  5. Cindy will check with Library IT to set up a committee email account:  diversity@library.uiuc.edu   and to get a shared folder on the G: drive.

Respectfully Submitted by Mary Beth Allen

10/09/2007