Highlights

Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce Call for Applications—Deadline July 31, '08

Synergy: News from ARL Diversity Initiatives, no. 5 (Feb. 2008)

Overview

ARL's Diversity Initiatives encapsulate a suite of efforts implemented across ARL's strategic directions that aid the Association with defining and addressing diversity issues in ARL libraries, while supporting activities that encourage broad participation in the field.

ARL Diversity Initiatives seek to encourage exploration of the rich gifts and talents that diverse individuals bring to the library. ARL staff work closely with a broad range of libraries, graduate library education programs, and other library associations to promote awareness of career opportunities in research libraries and support the academic success of students from groups currently underrepresented in the profession.

To meet these programs goals, Director of Diversity Initiatives Jerome Offord Jr., along with other ARL colleagues, provides staff development seminars, presentations, and on-site, e-mail, and telephone consultation; facilitates staff discussions; conducts research via reviews of the literature and site visits to institutions; prepares articles and publications to share the findings from the program; seeks to identify strategies for adaptation by libraries and library schools; identifies issues and strategies and promotes them within ARL, as well as other national library-affiliated groups; and fosters partnerships on behalf of ARL with natural allies in the profession.