Diversity Committee Meeting – January 26, 2006
Minutes
Present: Nassir, Drain, T. Smith, Gray, Mack, Braquet, Roller, Leach, Royse, Keally, Watson, R. Smith, Weaver, Agnew, Manoff, Bright, and Puente
1. Announcements
a. bell hooks visit: Kawanna announced that she had received word through Thura and the English Department that bell hooks will indeed be visiting the University sometime in April. More information is currently not available, but as soon as official dates, times, and activities are made know, they will be shared with the committee.
i. Development of Resource Guide on bell hooks: Barbara has asked that the Diversity Committee along with the Libraries, try help promote and support hooks’ visit. Kawanna suggested that a resource guide could be created. Rita asked what activities would be included in the visit. At this time, this is not known and as soon as it is, it will be decided whether or not a resource guide will be useful and whether or not any classes will be using the hooks’ visit as part of their curriculum.
b. Fall Life of the Mind and Culture Corner – Laila Lalami: Kawanna announced that the Fall 2006 Life of the Mind book has already been selected. The title is Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami. The book has themes of emigration and will provide the theme for the Fall 2006 Culture Corner. Laila Lalami has a blog at moorishgirl.com and she will be visiting the campus on September 13th and 14th.
c. Update on quilt – gift from Tiffani Conner: Kawanna updated everyone on the status of the quilt given by Tiffani Conner as a gift to the committee. Barbara agreed that the quilt could be hung in the staff room. The committee suggested that after some time the quilt might be moved to a new, public location, but that for now, getting it hung was the main priority. Kawanna will contact Aubrey to figure out all of the details of getting the quilt hung.
d. International Fair: Kawanna asked for a volunteer to head up the committee’s involvement in the International Fair this year. In the past, former member Abbas Arab took care of the set up and sign up, and this year someone else needs to keep this on the radar if the committee still wishes to participate.
e. Diversity Resource Guide on MLK featured on library blog: Kawanna shared the good news that the Diversity Resource guide on MLK developed by members of the committee was being featured on the Librarian Net blog, a popular blog in the library world.
2. Student Appreciation Event: The Staff Enrichment committee reported that they would be having a meeting following the Diversity Committee meeting to finalize the Student Appreciation event. Currently the date, location, and time had been selected. Invitations, food, decorations, and other issues were still being considered. (Please see the notes from the Enrichment meeting at the end of the committee minutes).
3. Staff Diversity Celebration: Still in the works but the Staff Enrichment committee will continue to develop ideas to include in the month-long celebration set for April 2006. Some ideas include utilizing the already planned visit of Loretta Parham to speak about diversity. The committee to join in the promotion of this visit and utilize it as part of the celebration. Molly has also spoken with Anthony Smith and he is willing to do a “Let’s Talk About It” on the topic of his genealogy research.
4. New Diversity Spirit Award?: Molly shared with the committee that Barbara is interested in the possibility of adding a Spirit Award for diversity to the list of awards given during the annual event. Everyone felt that the committee should contribute to this decision and to this award in some way but that the official announcement should come from Barbara and the Spirit Awards Committee. Rita suggested that they take a harder look at all of the spirit awards and not just look at adding a new one for diversity. This way they could see how a diversity award would fit in and might also be able to identify other areas where awards are needed. Suggested putting out a call for suggestions on awards and the criteria used to select the awards. Jill mentioned that the Chancellor’s Honors page might be a resource for criteria as there was talk last fall of a campus-wide diversity award.
5. Final Announcements: Mark updated the committee on the program presented by the residents at ALA Midwinter. They were invited to speak about residency programs at an ARL Leadership Institute. Donna informed the committee that she is on a committee with UT’s diversity trainer. The trainer is getting high requests for training and is working on offering a “train the trainer” workshop. She is looking for volunteers and anyone interested should let Donna know. Right now the workshop is general, but specific ones are being developed. We should also consider whether the libraries would like a training session (the committee agreed that this was a good idea). Donna also announced that Emily Singer from Disability Services gave a presentation for SIS faculty member Bharat Mehra’s class on Libraries & disabilities. This might be something that could be included in the April Staff Diversity Celebration. Gail Watson and Donna also worked with Bharat’s class in the fall semester on their grant projects, including how to obtain visual DVDS form other countries or on foreign materials subjects. Molly announced that the article that she, Tamara and Tiffani started a few years ago has finally been published in Portal (available online through the catalog and e-journal list).
Minutes from Staff Enrichment Sub-group meeting: January 26, 2006 (submitted by Becky Roller & Molly Royse)
next meeting: Feb. 9th
(after Diversity meeting or in place of meeting if DC mtg canceled)
The majority of today's meeting involved finalizing plans for the Student
Recognition Celebration planned for February 16, 2005, however a few decisions were made regarding the Staff Appreciation planned for the month of April. Please let me know of any corrections which need to be made.
A program with Emily Singer, the director of UT's Disability Services, was considered and rejected because we did not want to spread ourselves too thin during the April events. We hope to work with her in the summer.
SHARENEW
A notice will be posted to ShareNews by Molly to make the libraries' staff aware of the planned celebration in April.
LET'S TALK ABOUT IT
Molly is talking with Anthony about presenting his genealogy research program and will let us know the date and plans.
"60 SECOND" SURVEY & DISPLAY CASE
We agreed everyone would think about things we might want to ask the libraries' staff for the "60 second" survey. This will also help us determine what we would like to exhibit in the display case.
Addendum
The only thing I would add to our minutes from today's meeting is re. the section on Emily Singer. We also talked about pursuing working with UT's new diversity trainer (out of OED) on doing a workshop for our staff. We did decide that April would not be the best time necessarily and that summer might be a better time. I suggested inviting the trainer (I don't remember her name) to a DC meeting in the spring so we could get a better idea of the kind of workshops she does. Donna is on a committee with her so Donna can be our liaison on this. By the way, after our meeting today, I talked some with Donna about this and she agreed about the timing for the workshop and will try to get the trainer to one of our meetings in March.
Molly
Minutes for whole and sub-committee respectfully submitted by Kawanna Bright, Molly Royse, and Becky Roller