September 2022 | Volume XL, Issue 3 »
SIUE’s Diverse Librarianship Career Training and Education Program A Lack of Diversity: A Call to Action
September 1, 2022
Tammie Busch, Lora Del Rio, Elizabeth Kamper, Shelley McDavid, Lamonta Swarn, & Simone Williams; Southern Illinois Unviersity Edwardsville
According to a member survey conducted by the American Library Association in 2017, 86.7% of members identified as white (Rosa & Henke, 2017). Despite our ongoing quest for diversity and a growing number of initiatives, literature, and conversations related to diversity, the demographics of the professional librarian population have not significantly changed. This lack of diversity should be seen as an invitation to critically question our practices and investigate what barriers exist in librarianship that prevent people from underrepresented backgrounds from entering and staying long-term. As librarians, we need more than awareness of how privilege, bias, power differentials, and oppression affect individuals and the systemic levels of our profession. We need action. We must consider how actions or lack thereof impact the experiences of people from underrepresented backgrounds within our dominant (white, heterosexual, cisgender, and patriarchal) culture.
On Tuesday, November 7, 2017, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) convened experts to explore how to strengthen the formal education component of the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program (LB21) grant to best support library and information science (LIS) programs to meet the needs of students and libraries while increasing diversity within the library and archives professions. Dr. Sandra Toro, Senior Program Officer at IMLS, read from an evaluation of the LB21 program: “It is also important to prepare all librarians for work in a multicultural society, particularly because the recruitment and education of diverse individuals to serve the communities they represent takes time, both to enter the ranks and later assume leadership positions” (Sands, et al, 2018).
Based on the current state of the profession and of lack of diversity in libraries, 5 librarians from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) realized the need to challenge the state of our own profession and make a meaningful impact within our local community and library systems. The project is led by Library and Information Services (LIS) staff, including principal investigator (PI) Tammie Busch, MLIS, assistant professor and catalog and metadata librarian, and co-PIs: Lora Del Rio, MSLIS, associate professor, director for research, teaching, and learning, and humanities librarian; Elizabeth Kamper, MLIS, assistant professor and information literacy librarian; Shelly McDavid, MLS, assistant professor, director for access, discovery, and systems, and STEM librarian; and Simone Williams, MLIS, assistant professor and diversity and engagement librarian. An additional key staff member is Denice Adkins, PhD, MLS, professor at the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri, and co-editor of Journal of Education for Library and Information Science. Adkins serves as project evaluator.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [Log Number: RE-250110-OLS-21].
DEVELOPING AN IMLS GRANT
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Marketing and Communications
When conceptualizing the IMLS grant, Librarians from SIUE’s Lovejoy Library envisioned a career training program that would introduce ten high school seniors from East St. Louis Senior High School to careers in librarianship. Over the course of this two-year program, a team of academic librarians along with staff at partner institutions would mentor, educate, and train students from diverse and underrepresented minority groups (primarily low-income and African American). Our goal was to recruit students from East St. Louis School District 189 Career Technical Education (CTE) program, which is part of a national initiative to provide skills-based, hands-on training to high school students. This project sought to address and reduce the most pervasive issues related to recruiting and retaining diverse library employees by providing a pathway to the profession prior to entering an LIS graduate program and by developing a more equitable approach to recruitment and retention.
Several libraries and cultural institutions in the area expressed interest in serving as workplace partners or offering support by spreading the word about our program and toolkit. These institutions included: St. Louis Public Library, Missouri Historical Society, The State Historical Society of Missouri, SIUE East St. Louis Learning Resource Center (ESLLRC), East St. Louis Public Library, and Edwardsville Public Library.
CREATING A REPLICABLE PROGRAM
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 98 percent of public-school districts had high school CTE programs in 2016-2017 (U.S. DOE, 2018). By partnering with a high school CTE program, especially one that serves diverse and underrepresented minority groups such as East St. Louis Sr. High, the grant team focused on getting students interested in librarianship before leaving high school. Our program utilizes a cohort model that brings the students together monthly so they can learn about different library jobs in their community from their cohort peers.
Additionally, a key component of our program is mentorship. This provides each student with a dedicated mentor who will engage with them throughout the program and into the future.
Our program is unique, but the pieces we brought together to create this model are not. By utilizing existing strategies and theories within the workforce pipeline model, especially ones that introduce a career field before a student graduates, we believe we have created a program model that can be replicated within most communities. With an abundance of CTE programs and underrepresented students across the United States, libraries can use our forthcoming toolkit to continue working to diversify the library profession.
PROGRAM OBSTACLES & LESSONS LEARNED
While implementing this program, we learned several valuable lessons related to recruitment and retention that can be insightful for institutions or individuals interested in starting similar programs. We learned that participant recruitment involves recruiting not only the students, but also their parents. Parents were instrumental in determining if students would participate in the program, as some students opted out of the program due to their parents’ valid concerns about workplace locations and hours. This led to forging last-minute partnerships with Illinois libraries. SIUE ESLLRC and East St. Louis Public Library were unable to commit as workplace partners in the grant pre-planning stage due to COVID but were able to commit post-award.
Since we did not receive our grant award notification until July 30th, 2021, we were dependent on CTE staff to recruit students into cohort 1. By late July 2021, many CTE students had already secured their workplaces for their senior year. We now understand that recruiting earlier is key. Communicating with students in their junior year reaches students who may not even be considering participating in CTE and allows them to learn about the whole program and fit it into their senior schedule. Introducing the program to the entire junior class also makes the program competitive and increases the probability that more students express interest in participating. Early recruitment also gives us more time to field questions from parents, demystifying the program at the beginning stages.
With our determination to take a different approach for recruitment with cohort 2, we created a video and flyer for the entire junior class and held a face-to-face meeting with interested students to discuss the program and answer their questions. We received feedback from one of the CTE partners that our video did not have the impact we intended, which made us rethink out outreach strategies and resources.
Another unforeseen obstacle was the amount of paperwork our cohort students and their parents were asked to fill out, as our cohort students were underage high school seniors working at various partner locations. Throughout the grant process, we have compiled our documentation and organizational strategies to better prepare ourselves for future projects.
Finally, we learned that there can be a disconnect between the mentors and the students. For the first cohort, although the program was designed to demonstrate the day-to-day work of library professionals and offer financial incentives and professional networks, we failed to successfully recruit and retain students. After examining several factors that may have contributed to our low participation and retention rates, we attributed some of the first-year failures to recruiting during a pandemic. Students had spent a full year focused on remote learning and distanced lifestyles, and, in our program, had to become reacclimated to in-person activities, including work. After interviewing students for the second-year cohort, we learned that students were not solely motivated by earning money but also interested in positions that challenged them mentally and took them out of their comfort zones. They wanted a work environment that balanced accommodations with challenging activities. We considered that students’ lack of interest in the program reflected the profession itself and that we were not recruiting or retaining a diverse cohort of students due to lack of representation within the profession.
BROAD IMPACT & LOOKING FORWARD REFERENCES
As the program enters its second year, we hope that cohort 2 will bring us more challenges and insights to further meet our goals. We envision this project will serve as a sustainable model for library cooperative education so other institutions can incorporate high impact practices in their local communities. We believe that libraries should make a local effort to incorporate librarianship opportunities into existing high school partnerships and educational programs, which will have a national impact on library recruitment and bring awareness to the profession. To do this, the grant team is developing a toolkit that will formalize the diversity efforts, partnering libraries and career and technical education programs to replicate in communities across the United States.
This toolkit will be published under a Creative Commons license for reuse and include a curriculum of librarianship for students and library staff that emphasizes leadership training, racial equity, racial justice, inclusion, and culturally responsive education.
References
Rosa, K. and Henke, K. (2017). 2017 ALA Demographic Study. ALA Office for Research and Statistics.
Sands, A.E., Toro, S., DeVoe, T., Fuller, S., and Wolff-Eisenberg, C. (2018). Positioning Library and Information Science Graduate Programs for 21st Century Practice. Washington, D.C.: Institute of Museum and Library Services.
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2018). Career and Technical Education Programs in Public School Districts: 2016–17 (NCES 2018-028).
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