CARL has prioritized advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in research libraries as an important area for capacity building within its member institutions over the coming years.
CARL hired its first Visiting Program Officer for EDI and formed an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Working Group (EDIWG) in the summer of 2019 to shape CARL’s EDI-related initiatives and communications and support the planning and delivery of activities in the following areas:
- Recruitment and Retention: Develop guidelines and strategies to promote workforce diversity, including decolonizing through diverse recruitment initiatives, fostering an inclusive environment that ensures long-term staff retention and presents staff with opportunities for professional growth in their library careers.
- Staff Professional Development: Facilitate training opportunities to better prepare staff to support a diverse community of users while promoting cultural competence, cultural humility, and decolonization.
- Services and Spaces: Identify best practices for establishing inclusive, welcoming services, and decolonizing services and spaces in research libraries that promote a sense of belonging for diverse users.
- Collections: Create mechanisms for librarians to share strategies in creating and curating inclusive library collections, encompassing diverse voices, narratives, community knowledge, and prioritizing decolonizing practices while considering a wide range of Indigenous, Black and People of Color perspectives.
To date EDIWG initiatives include:
- Foundational work including developing CARL Definitions of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, Rules of Engagement for the working group, and an environmental scan of CARL and non-CARL libraries’ diversity plans.
- Publishing Strategies and Practices for Hiring and Retaining Diverse Talent.
- Reviewing and advising on a number of CARL projects, including but not limited to the CARL Code of Conduct and the Competencies for Librarians in Canadian Research Libraries.
- Organizing a series of webinars on inclusion perspectives (Summary of Inclusion Perspectives Webinar Series also available)
- Advising CARL on a national diversity and inclusion study of, and for, its members.
- Launching a series of monthly features to highlight the work and contributions of Indigenous, Black and racialized library colleagues, those with disabilities, and those of marginalized or minority genders, sexual identities, religious and cultural groups.
In March 2021, CARL partnered with the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion (CCDI) – an external organization specializing in promoting diversity and inclusion in Canada – to conduct a diversity and inclusion study of, and for, its members. More information on CARL’s Diversity and Inclusion Study
