Diversity Committee Minutes
Meeting held September 5, 2002 at 1:10 p.m. in 605 Hodges Library
Members present: Mack, Myers, Blocker, T. Conner, Miller, R.Smith, Manoff, Davis, Roller, Stephens, A. Smith
The Black Cultural Center is having their grand opening tomorrow (Sept 6) at 11. Everyone should try to attend and/or send them a congratulatory email.
We have a brick there. Becky Roller reported it is on the far left side.
Our Welcome display on the 1st floor is down. We are making room for the Banned Books week display.
Tiffani reported that she has been in contact with the Equity and Diversity Office about the Intercultural Communications forum, the Geier decree forum, and the TLA pre-conference. One panelist who was slated to help with the Intercultural Communications forum has had to back out, but is available in the spring. Tiffani has also talked with someone at ORAU who may be able to be/recommend a panelist. The University Studies program may be another group which has suggestions for panelists.
**At our next meeting, we need to discuss whether or not we think this forum should be postponed.
Tamara, Molly and Tiffani may present a TLA program on the Climate Survey—how to do one, and what we learned. Deadline is Sept. 30 to submit.
The TLA program committee working on the Barriers to Diversity program reported that their abstract is written. It will be submitted to Rita Smith very soon, and the group is beginning work on their program. Next week they will view a video with scenarios of different communication styles/problems. Sheila Stephens found the video and has made arrangements for us to have a group viewing room.
Disabilities Forum—will be held Sept. 17 and Oct. 1. If you have agreed to help Anne Pemberton with refreshments, please contact her. We all need to talk about this program in our departments and generate interest. Thura will put up a ShareNews message when it gets closer to the time. Maribeth will post the announcement on the Diversity website.
There was discussion about the website. Is it intended to be purely an internal library page or shared with the public? It is linked from the Administration page. **At a future meeting, the group should discuss the purpose/publicity of the website.
The trip to the Alex Haley farm was discussed. At our next meeting, Anthony will bring us maps for the drivers, we’ll make an itinerary so we will know what time we’ll be back at the library, and we will vote on whether to have a potluck or make donations for the lunch at Anthony’s house.
GOALS: The group looked over the goals ‘condensed’ by the small group from our discussion at our last meeting. The small group had tried to incorporate the ideas from every group into 6 headings. The committee made some changes to the draft. LouAnn will email the revised goals to the group and we will prioritize them at our next meeting. The goals document that we share with the public will be less specific than our own: they will not mention every program or event we are planning.
Some suggestions for specific programs/ideas came out of this discussion. In terms of the collection and collaborating with SIS, we may be able to work with Dr. Robinson who teaches IS 560, the collection development class. There may be a way to have students work on a specific collection at our library for their project.
Also, Tiffani announced that there will be a new class this spring, IS 593, taught by Dr. Raber: “Diversity in Libraries.” We may be able to work with them.
Tiffani also announced there were some ALA grants for collection development, and she will continue to look into those.
Next, Thura gave us information on the budget and annual report in Molly’s absence. The budget, the annual report and the goals should be finalized by our next meeting. Then we can decide in what format we should present them to Barbara.
Our next meeting is September 19.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:15.
LouAnn Blocker