Reading Reflections

The Diversity Mandate was written by Denise Adkins and Isobel Espinal in 2004. The article about the need to overcome the lack of librarians of color. The authors acknowledge that while LIS as a profession has put effort into becoming more diverse, the increase is not yet enough to reflect actual population numbers and therefore be truly meaningful. The authors then give examples on programs that actively seek recruit students Latino and Native students, it mostly comes down to the programs providing adequate support. The classes offered reflect what students of color might be interested in, and how best to serve their communities, but the programs also offer monetary support. The authors then explain that while LIS programs aren’t seeing a large increase of students of color, they are beginning to see an increase of students of color graduating. They then go one to explain that those numbers are also reflected in the faculty. The authors also list all the programs with the highest rates of graduation of students of color. The article closes with statements about how important funding is to these programs, and a reminder on how the point of libraries is to serve communities and that the best way to do that is have librarians who reflect those communities. This article was published in Library Journal, so the intended audience is other librarians, regardless of focus or type of library, it’s an attempt at impacting LIS as a whole. What stood out to me in this article is the need to support students of color. It shows that part of the problem is the education that LIS students receive.

One of the other articles is Racial Microaggressions in Academic Libraries: Results of a Survey of Minority and Non-minority Librarians written by Jaena Alabi in 2015. This article is an analysis of racism in librarianship because the author sees a need to broaden an otherwise limited pool of literature on the subject. Alabi argues that racism being prevalent and unseen by a majority of librarians (i.e. white librarians), may contribute to burn out among librarians of color. Alabi draws support for this argument from the results of a survey that, while limited, does show that microaggressions do occur and white librarians are not aware Alabi concludes that this needs to be addressed in order to retain librarians of color better. This article was published in The Journal of Academic Librarianship, which is a multidisciplinary journal for academic librarians. What stood out to me in this article is almost same as the previous article.

Both of these articles point to the problem of retention of people of color within librarianship, both students and fully employed librarians. Alabi even mentions that burnout is at the bottom of the inability to retain librarians of color. I think that is also true for the previous article as well. Programs are so white that students of color don’t get the support they need to finish their degrees emotional or monetary. We need to start in investing in librarians of color, and the programs that support them. This needs to be a monetary investment as well as a re-evaluation of libraries themselves. I think part of the way we do this, is by practicing what Melody Hobson is talking about in her Ted talk “Color blind or color brave?” we need to start addressing the problem head on, rather than shying away and ignoring it. Because there is a problem and it isn’t going to go away on its own.






Adkins and Espinal. The Diversity Mandate. Library Journal, Apr 15, 2004. Vol 129 (7) pp 52-54.

Alabi, J. (2015). Racial Microaggressions in Academic Libraries: Results of a Survey of Minority and Non-minority Librarians. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 41(1), 47–53. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2014.10.008

TED. (2014, May 5). Color blind or color brave? | Mellody Hobson [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKtALHe3Y9Q