Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee Meeting: October 18, 2024

CONFERENCE CALL

Members Attending: Mitchell Haas, Blanca Hernandez, Shekinah Lawrence, Sarah McHone-Chase, Pattie Piotrowski, Leora Siegel

Members Absent: Jeanne Link, Julie Murphy, Sara Palomo

CARLI Staff Attending: Margaret Chambers, Yanira Cruz, Nicole Swanson, Marisa Tolbert

Announcements   

• CARLI Announcements
  • New CARLI staff, Yanira Cruz, joined the DEI Committee meeting and introduced themselves.
  • Reminder that the CARLI Annual Meeting will take place Tuesday, October 22, 2024 - 10:00am to 3:00pm, in-person and virtually.
• Committee Member Announcements
  • No committee member announcements today.

Updates:

• Annual Meeting Topical Table Talk “Are DEI Efforts Still Happening on Your Campus?” with Leora, Shekinah, and Mitchell
  • Question prompts
  • Shekinah mentioned that they will keep the conversation casual to encourage candid discussion as this can be a difficult topic.
  • Shekinah encouraged members of the DEI committee to attend the discussion
  • Members that cannot attend in-person, pass on comments and questions for the session to the panelists via email: Mitchell, Shekinah, Leora 
• AI Symposium
  • Blanca and Shekinah are interested in leading a panel on AI/plagiarism detection tools and how they flag students’ works. Focus on how these tools are equitable especially regarding individuals where English is not their first language.
  • Public Services Committee Correspondence  
  • Pattie brought up the prevalence in AI with student college applications. Interested in learning more about plagiarism as faculty seem to want to heavily rely on AI detection tools to understand how students are using AI.
  • We will send out an additional Doodle/when2work poll for the AI symposium.
• If you are interested and wanted to be added to the poll, please email Blanca and Shekinah by 10/25/24 so that we can reply to the Public Services Committee by 10/31/24, when they need a response by.

Discussion

• Community Agreement - developing a draft for the committee.
  • Shekinah went over the draft agreements once more
  • Community agreements have been approved by the committee
    • Motion to approve and adopt the draft by Co-Chair, Shekinah
• Poll for December Meeting Discussion
  • Discussed poll at the beginning of the meeting and have chosen the date: 12/13/24 at 8:30am
  • Please complete the poll if you have not, in the case that 12/13 does not work
• Brainstorm activities / programs.
  • Shekinah posed the question to the committee, “What is happening on your campus with DEI efforts... and is there a difference in what is happening at your institution VS what is happening at your library?”
  • Anonymized answers:
    • Library contributes to EDI efforts with programs and offering the physical library space for events that have an EDI lens. Wants institution to see the library as a partner more concretely.
    • Library seems like a natural place to promote equitable work. Wants to create a space for information to support filling gaps in equity work. Work might have been done, but according to research they looked at assessments are lacking; deficiency in understanding changes and improvements as a result of DEI work.
    • Institution is on smaller scale, so it is difficult to have programming that is only being led by the library. They feel good and included in the work that is happening campus-wide.
    • Actions and steps have been taken at a campus-wide and system-wide level to address diversity and inclusion. Struggle with having a diverse library staff, but they are flourishing in hiring student staff that reflect the diversity of the campus. Interested in a DEI audit, but not sure if library is there yet.
  • Shekinah suggested that as we are looking towards actions in 2025, we create booklists that we can share with the CARLI network (possibly around February)
    • Mitchell reminded the group that October is LGBTQIA+ History Month
    • Nicole shared this link mentioned that we could possibly collaborate with Tony Diaz on DEI booklists
    • Shekinah encouraged everyone to create booklists and imagine that the topic is for “global awareness of DEI” - drop booklists in Box folder created
    • Yanira suggested we highlight one book or author on a weekly or monthly basis
    • Marisa suggested we also think about where we are sourcing our collection(s) from (Amazon VS small BIPOC sellers)
    • Mitchell shared this link as a useful source for locating local bookstores
    • Marisa shared this article by Alex Brown that helped them re-frame the purchasing model at Lincoln

Decisions

• Minutes of the September 2024 meeting approved.
  • Motion to approve minutes by Shekinah.
• Tentatively scheduling the December meeting for 12/13/24 at 8:30 a.m.
• Meeting adjourned at 9:50 a.m.

Tasks Assigned

• Blanca took meeting minutes
• Shekinah has been assigned meeting minutes for November
• Blanca will check in on 10/25/24 and send out a poll for dates that work for all interested in presenting at the AI Symposium. Will pass on dates to CARLI staff by 10/28/24 so they can be shared with the Public Services Committee
• Everyone (if there is capacity) will drop DEI booklists in the DEI Booklists Folder with ten or more books on the topic of “global awareness of DEI” OR DEI books that fit your institute goals

Meeting Dates

• Next Meeting: Friday, November 15, 2024 8:30 am

ADJOURNED: 9:50 am