What Colour is Your Diversity? Demystifying Diversity for Librarians
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This is a presentation for the online webinar for the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Western Canada Chapter. June 24, 2018.
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What Colour is Your Diversity? Demystifying Diversity for Librarians
- 1. What Colour Is Your Diversity? Demystifying Diversity for Librarians Allan Cho for SLA Western Canada Chapter (SLA WCC) June 24, 2018
- 2. Goals for today’s webinar ● To explore the concept of culture and diversity as it pertains to library services ● To heighten awareness that implicit bias has on our expectations and interactions ● To develop skills and strategies to mindfully and effectively communicate with library users of diverse backgrounds, languages, and experiences ● To recognize and build upon the skills and strategies already developed from what you already know
- 3. Agenda ● Examine some key resources for libraries (15 min’s) ● Quiz and Exercise (15 min’s) ● Case Studies (15 min’s) ● Questions (15 min’s)
- 4. More About Myself ● 10 years as an academic librarian; ● Public, academic, and special libraries ● Editor ● Research in diversity and intercultural understanding initiatives ● Community engagement ● Member of BCLA and ViMLoC
- 5. Part I
- 7. Diversity Quiz - No Googling ;-) 1. How many countries are there in the world? 2. In 2016, what percentage of immigrants in Canada aged 25 - 64 had a university degree? al?
- 8. Diversity Quiz - Continued 3. How many new immigrants arrived in Canada in 2016? 4. What year did the greatest number of immigrants arrive in Canada? a) 1975 b) 1991 c) 1913 d) 2016
- 9. BCLA Multicultural Services Committee The Mandate is: ● to improve services to ethnic communities; ● to improve collections and access to collections in languages other than English; ● to provide help, support, advice, and to share information, ● resources and experience with libraries and library staff in British Columbia ● https://bclaconnect.ca/msc/
- 10. Visible Minority Librarians of Canada Network (ViMLoC) Collaborative network to connect, engage and support visible minority librarians of Canada. The mandate is to: ● Connect and represent visible minority librarians in Canada ● Empower visible minority librarians of Canada by providing professional development support ● Engage, collaborate and support research in the area of visible minority librarianship ● Extend support to librarians working with multicultural users and collections
- 11. Race == Diversity Implicit bias are attitudes — positive or negative — or stereotypes someone has toward a person or group without being conscious of it. ● BIPOC ● LGBTQ+ ● Disability / Accessibility
- 12. Part II
- 13. The Iceberg Model of Culture
- 14. Activity #1 - What does this picture tell you?
- 15. Activity #2 - What does this picture tell you?
- 16. Activity #3 - What does this picture tell you?
- 17. Part III
- 18. From “Multi to Inter-Cultural” Understanding There are 5 stages on this continuum of cross-cultural competency: 1. Denial 2. Polarization 3. Minimization 4. Acceptance 5. Adaptation Bennett, 1998.
- 19. The Colour of Diversity French waiter in Vancouver says he was fired for his 'direct, honest' personality
- 20. Dispelling the Colour of Diversity, Part 2 Study on Starbucks customers in six Chinese cities. Customers in rice-growing regions were less likely to sit alone and squeezed themselves through narrow aisles, whereas customers in wheat-growing regions were more likely to move a chair blocking their way.
- 21. Part IV
- 22. Some Takeaways 1. Keeping up with the Literature 2. Challenge your unconscious bias 3. Take the Project Implicit online test https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit
- 23. Some Important Titles ● Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science ○ Editor: Gina Schlesselman- Tarango
- 24. Some Important Titles ● “Where are all the Librarians of Color?: The Experiences of People of Color in Academia” ○ Editors: Rebecca Hankins and Miguel Juárez
- 25. Questions?
- 26. References French waiter in Vancouver says he was fired for his 'direct, honest' personality. CBC News. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/french -waiter-in-vancouver-says-he-was-fired- for- his-direct-honest-personality-1.4581933 Schlesselman-Tarango, Gina. Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science. Miguel Juárez, Where are all the Librarians of Color? The Experiences of People of Color in Academia. Library Juice, 2016. Bennett, Milton J. Developmental model of intercultural sensitivity. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998
Editor's Notes
- This webinar will help anyone to build upon current experience and strategies to develop increased awareness and communication skills for working with diverse client communities in public and customer service-oriented positions. By better understanding the term ‘diversity’ which is often used in training and everyday lingo, this workshop explores the concept of culture and diversity as they pertains to library services while also raising our awareness of the impact cultural differences that have on our expectations and interactions in the workplace. Using a variety of case studies and small exercises, this webinar will help develop skills and strategies to mindfully and effectively communicate with library users with diverse backgrounds, languages and experiences despite our inherent biases developed both consciously and without our even knowing them.
- A manual for intercultural communication cannot exist.
- According to Welcome BC, “almost 30 percent of British Columbians immigrated to B.C. from another country. Just under one-quarter of the people in B.C. are a visible minority. Another five percent of the population is Indigenous. However, a good portion of those immigrants and minorities face several barriers in their everyday lives, including, but not only, limited language skills, lack of jobs, poverty, cultural difficulties and racism. Library staff face many challenges when it comes to connecting with and serving those communities. The challenges are present in many forms: What’s the best way to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English? How to interact with a man who doesn’t want to shake my hand? How do I tell a woman she is welcome to stay as long as she wants if this is her first time in a library? Racism in Libraries survey that, ideally, will help us capture a wide picture of incidents in and around libraries and their staff and patrons. The survey will go out in the Spring of 2018 and findings will be shared later in the year.
- 1. Answer - 195 according to UN 2. As of the 2016 Canadian census, 4 in 10 immigrants aged 25 to 64 had a bachelor's degree or higher
- 3. Answer - 300,000 4. Answer - (c) 1913 - 400,000 arrived - European exodus
- According to Welcome BC, “almost 30 percent of British Columbians immigrated to B.C. from another country. Just under one-quarter of the people in B.C. are a visible minority. Another five percent of the population is Indigenous. However, a good portion of those immigrants and minorities face several barriers in their everyday lives, including, but not only, limited language skills, lack of jobs, poverty, cultural difficulties and racism. Library staff face many challenges when it comes to connecting with and serving those communities. The challenges are present in many forms: What’s the best way to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English? How to interact with a man who doesn’t want to shake my hand? How do I tell a woman she is welcome to stay as long as she wants if this is her first time in a library? Racism in Libraries survey that, ideally, will help us capture a wide picture of incidents in and around libraries and their staff and patrons. The survey will go out in the Spring of 2018 and findings will be shared later in the year.
- What is race? Race is understood through the collective and politically perpetuated through society and its institutions. In fact, not only is the library not a neutral egalitarian institution, but, as a result of of its lack of professional diversity and its claim to neutrality, has historically served the interests of a racial project by aiding in the construction and maintenance of an American (and in our case British Canadian) citizenry as well as the perpetuation of privilege in the structures of the field itself. (Gohr, 2017) Librarians cannot claim to be neutral in an institution subject to the dominant society’s ideologies and values, especially when these ideologies are disproportionately represented. Libraries are embedded in larger historical contexts, inherit their values from those larger structures, and are constrained by them. In libraries, this has manifested in various ways, through collection development; hiring practices; and the organization of knowledge; among the many
- Culture has been compared to an iceberg. Just as an iceberg has a visible section (one-ninth of it) above the waterline and a larger, invisible section below the waterline, culture has some aspects that you can observe and others that you can only imagine or intuit. Like an iceberg, the part of culture that is visible (observable behavior) is only a small part of a much bigger whole. “Blink” - Malcolm Gladwell - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking -- The author describes the main subject of his book as "thin-slicing": our ability to use limited information from a very narrow period of experience to come to a conclusion. This idea suggests that spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones. Gladwell also uses many examples of regular people's experiences with "thin-slicing," including our instinctive ability to mind-read, which is how we can get to know a person's emotions just by looking at his or her face. Cognitive Dissonance - is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. The occurrence of cognitive dissonance is a consequence of a person performing an action that contradicts personal beliefs, ideals, and values; and also occurs when confronted with new information that contradicts beliefs, ideals, and values.
- Dominic Noonan was the crime boss in a notorious British gangster family thought to have committed 25 murders.
- Bobby Fischer is the chess genius
- Sixty years ago, six young women programmed the world's first all-electronic computer, the ENIAC. Their ballistics program used hundreds of wires and 3000 switches. Never introduced, they never became a part of history. Programmers worked tirelessly to make programming easier for all. They created the first sort routine, software application and instruction set, and classes in programming. Their work dramatically altered computing in the 1940s and 1950s. They paved the path to the modern software industry.
- Cross-cultural competency is “the willingness and ability of an organization to value the importance of culture in the delivery of services to all segments of the population”. There are 5 stages on this continuum: Denial: Denial consists of a Disinterest in other cultures and a more active Avoidance of cultural difference Polarization: Polarization is an evaluative mindset that views cultural differences from an “us versus them” perspective. Minimization: strategy can have survival value for non-dominant culture members and often takes the form of “go along to get along.” When Minimization exists in organizations, diversity often feels “not heard.” Acceptance: Acceptance and Adaptation are intercultural/global mindsets. With an Acceptance orientation, individuals recognize and appreciate patterns of cultural difference and commonality in their own and other cultures. Adaptation: Adaptation enables deep cultural bridging across diverse communities using an increased repertoire of cultural frameworks and practices in navigating cultural commonalities and differences. When an Adaptation mindset is present in the workplace, diversity feels “valued and involved.”
- But I want to stress in this webinar that diversity is not based on colour and not based on ethnicity. Prejudice is not a colour problem. For many instances, it is a cultural misunderstanding, particularly in the workplace
- The book talks about how there is an overwhelming whiteness in a “race-blind” LIS profession has been rendered invisible via colonialism Multiculturalism within the profession has been “celebrate” and “discussed” at length Case studies, research, and statistical data report do little to address deep-seated institutional structures of discrimination being perpetuated within libraries as a reflection of the society in which they operate Calling for an increase in recruitment of minority librarians rather than addressing the underlying cause of these inequalities is really just a self-congratulatory exercise In fact, “diversity” rhetoric trivializes the injustices experienced by the oppressed
- In order to truly understand why librarianship lacks diversity, we need to critically examine these realities and how they affect the profession as a whole, especially as we move towards greater reliance on online education in the context of a growing digital divide. To participate in higher education, a person must already be in possession of various social capital that allow them the means to pursue higher education in the first place. In a society that functions around meritocracy, social status is highly dependent on a person’s level of education Colleges and universities are now the “gatekeepers” of class position that determines the future stratification of society. Librarianship assumes access to wealth to afford tuition, professional membership, and service opportunities Many of the barriers to librarianship for marginalized groups begin even before the MLIS, and are only exacerbated following graduation. For example, only students with access to money can afford to take an unpaid internship; skewing and preserving middle class and social hierarchies
- This webinar will help anyone to build upon current experience and strategies to develop increased awareness and communication skills for working with diverse client communities in public and customer service-oriented positions. By better understanding the term ‘diversity’ which is often used in training and everyday lingo, this workshop explores the concept of culture and diversity as they pertains to library services while also raising our awareness of the impact cultural differences that have on our expectations and interactions in the workplace. Using a variety of case studies and small exercises, this webinar will help develop skills and strategies to mindfully and effectively communicate with library users with diverse backgrounds, languages and experiences despite our inherent biases developed both consciously and without our even knowing them.