Diversity Committee Meeting, March 12, 2003
Room 605, Hodges Library, 1-2 pm
Members present: G. Bayne, Mack, Manoff, R. Smith, T. Conner, Blocker, Stephens, Royse, Roller
Thura is now part of the “Life of the Mind” Committee that is co-ordinating “The Color of Water” events on campus. The committee will schedule 180 sessions so that all freshmen will have an opportunity to discuss the book. Library staff may be asked if they want to volunteer to be a moderator for these sessions.
There will also be a library committee to co-ordinate library events. Thura will be the chair of this committee. All activities done by the Diversity Committee will be co-ordinated through this committee. The Diversity committee will still be doing the display case, and the web portal (Anthony and Troy.)
Thura proposed that the Diversity Committee not meet in April to take a little hiatus. [I’m not sure what we decided : ) ]
Our trip to Alex Haley Farm must be postponed because Mr. Abif is no longer the director. Anne Pemberton will be able to report on this at our next meeting.
On March 27, all those going to TLA will have a chance to do a run-through of their programs for the committee to get feedback.
The “Barriers to Diversity” group outlined some of their ideas and showed the group a draft of their evaluation form and got valuable feedback.
TLA pre-conference: Molly reported that there must be 10 people signed up for the pre-conference to ‘go.’ If that doesn’t happen, the program can still be presented elsewhere to fulfill the requirements of the LAMA grant.
Student recognition—we need to do something to honor the students who were missed in the fall, then we can move the annual event to the spring from now on. There are 2 students in Circulation that we need to do this for. The plan is: LouAnn will contact Becky Roller to get the students’ names and majors, then she will choose a book for them from the stacks and have Preservation make the bookplate. She will then inform Thura so certificates can be made for them. We want the students to go to lunch with either Aubrey or Barbara, their supervisors, and Thura (if schedule permits.) We want to do this in mid-April.
Our call for new members should go out in June. Thura will talk to Barbara about the committee chair, and about what input Barbara wants to have on member selection. LouAnn will send a message to the whole committee to find out who is planning to return next year.
Some concern was expressed that we have not had enough programs for library staff this semester. Our focus this semester has been on other things, but we know that during the summer some people who have been working on presentations will present them to library staff. During the fall we hope all staff get involved in the “Color of Water” program.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
LouAnn Blocker