Hello! My is Ione Damasco (they/them) and I'm the Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence and Organizational Development at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio. I'm responsible for the oversight of our library's work around inclusive excellence and I'm the standing chair of our University Libraries Diversity & Inclusion Team (which we have had for a long time). We launched a DEIA strategic plan for the Libraries in 2021, and we are in the final year of its implementation and we are likely going to issue an updated version of it next year to guide the next 3 years of our work.
We have really been trying to embed an inclusive excellence framework across all areas of our work. This has meant pretty much every one in the Libraries has been involved in some way. We have worked to make our hiring and onboarding practices more inclusive and equitable, ensured our instruction librarians are considering inclusive pedagogy as they teach, created a regular professional development program for our faculty and staff through our D&I Team (we host Lunch & Learns), are working on making our collection development policies more inclusive and actively anti-racist, integrating universal design for accessibility where we can, just to name a few things we have been trying to do.
I think our ultimate goal is to operationalize our values around DEIA as part of our regular work--our plan helped lay the foundation for this, but I'm really trying to work with my colleagues to ensure we actually shift our mindsets so that equity and inclusive excellence is normalized as part of our day-to-day operations, and not seen as additional work. We're not quite there, but we're making good progress. I look forward to hearing what others are doing at their institutions (especially in these challenging times) to advance DEIA work. Glad to be here!
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Ione Damasco
Associate Dean for Inclusive Excellence, Engagement, and Operations
University of Dayton Roesch Library
They/Them/Theirs
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Original Message:
Sent: Apr 03, 2024 01:32 PM
From: Corliss Lee
Subject: Welcome! Please introduce yourself, say a little bit about your library's EDI activities (or lack thereof), and what you hope to get from joining this discussion group
Hi, everyone! I'm Corliss Lee, co-convenor of this Discussion Group. I am the American Cultures librarian at UC Berkeley and also the Doe Library liaison to the Ethnic studies, College Writing, American Studies and Legal Studies departments. My co-convenor, Brian Lym, and I co-edited a book, Implementing Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, published by ACRL in 2022. That experience reinforced for us that EDI work requires continuing education and growth; this work is never "done." In talking to other librarians we realized that there was a need for a forum for discussion and community building - hence this discussion group.
Librarians and staff at my library have undertaken a variety of EDI related projects over the years, and the Librarians association has had a Diversity committee for over 20 years, but there was no library-wide committee until the Task Force on Racial Justice was formed in 2020. One of the recommendations of the Task Force was the formation of a standing committee, the Library Equity and Inclusion Commitee, which began its work in April 2022; I'm currently the past chair.
Looking forward to learning from the folks in this community!
Corliss
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Corliss Lee
American Cultures Librarian
University of California - Berkeley
She/Her/Hers
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