Karen Nakamura
Acclaimed anthropologist Karen Nakamura will present the keynote address for a forum on “Diversity and Accessibility: Designing for Innovation and Inclusion” preceding the 2016 National Diversity in Libraries Conference (NDLC ’16). Nakamura is the Robert and Colleen Haas distinguished chair of the Disability Studies Research Cluster, Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley.
The one-day pre-conference forum will be held on Wednesday, August 10, 2016, at the Charles E. Young Research Library on the UCLA campus.
Professor Nakamura’s address, “Cripping the Library: Rethinking Disability and Access at the Heart of 21st-Century Universities,” will explore the concept of “access” read broadly, as a form of social justice and equity, and will challenge audience members to focus energy on the full inclusion and retention of staff as well as patrons with disabilities. Nakamura will chart a vision of how “cripped” libraries need to exist at the heart of contemporary universities and colleges.
The schedule for the pre-conference forum will include several concurrent workshops on the following topics:
- Customer Service: etiquette and effective communication
- Instruction & Teaching: universal design of instruction
- Web Design: principles of accessibility, overview of tools
- Procurement: procedures for buying accessible materials; policy; Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT); documentation
- Exhibit Design: collections without barriers
- The Intersection of Race and Disability
The forum content will be relevant to a broad range of professionals from all types of libraries (academic, public, special, archives) as well as museum professionals. A full agenda for the event is forthcoming.
Register online for this one-day pre-conference forum. You do not need to register for the NDLC in order to attend this event.
Support for “Diversity and Accessibility: Designing for Innovation and Inclusion”is provided by the Association of Research Libraries and the Claremont Colleges Library.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 124 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at https://www.arl.org/.
About the Claremont Colleges Library
Located at the heart of the seven campuses it serves, the library is the preeminent academic resource for the Claremont Colleges. With a combined user population of more than 7,200 students and 3,600 faculty and staff, the Claremont Colleges Library benchmarks against midsized academic libraries. Committed to fostering intellectual discovery, critical thinking, and lifelong learning, the library ties the academic community to varied cultural and scholarly traditions by offering user-centered resources and services, developing innovative technologies, and providing an inviting environment for study, collaboration, and reflection. The library is supported by a staff that has a deep commitment to best practices and innovation and to the delivery of exemplary service to the colleges’ students and faculty. For more information see: http://libraries.claremont.edu/.
