ACRL Diversity Committee (Association of College and Research Libraries)

Hi everyone,

I'm looking forward to seeing most of you in San Francisco in just a few days!

As you may have noticed on our ALA agenda, we'll be discussing the Diversity Standards and the results of the survey we recently conducted in order to assess their effectiveness and identify areas in need of revision. In preparation for our meeting, I'm sharing a snapshot compilation of the 113 responses we received (see attached PDF).

We also received substantial feedback from two colleagues at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Amy Gibson and Sara Olsen. I’ve attempted to summarize their main ideas below; Amy is going to try to make it to our meeting, in which case she can clear up my inevitable misapprehensions:

• Expand the Standards’ framing to emphasize the importance of pushing back against notions of cultural hegemony (as opposed to focusing primarily on the value of diversity);


• Consolidate the Standards, with some of the current standards being assimilated into others;


• Revamp some of the language to avoid words such as “mainstream” and “traditional” (which could be read as othering);


• Back up specific assertions with evidence (e.g. the assertion that “campus communities” are composed of “increasingly diverse constituencies”) or omit.

We'd like to have a conversation about the results and possible next steps. In light of that, be thinking about the following questions:

• What did you find most surprising or interesting about a particular response and/or the results as a whole?


• What suggestions/ideas require further clarification, discussion, and/or research?


• What suggestions/ideas would you like to see prioritized?

Thanks, and see you all soon!

Megan