Using Internet Resources

In order to be able to address discrimination in an academic library it is necessary to learn about what constitutes discrmination. Often when people hear the word 'discrmination' they only think about race discrmination. While this is always an important one, we also need to consider other ways we discrminate based on age, ability, perceived culture or religion, and gender. Thankfully it is very easy to find webpages and websites that contain diversity awareness activities and provide other information on how to identify and correct disrminatory practices and behaviors.

The first, and most obvious, website is to look at the American Library Association (ALA). You can directly access their list of diversity and discrminination education resources here, This listing is broken down by type of discrmination and contains educational resources, resources about the laws pertaining to discrmination and information on types of discrminatoy behavoirs. ALA is an expected choice, but truly has excellent resources presented in a clear and concise manner.

Next on my list is the University of Houston Center for Diversity and Inclusion. This website inlcudes links to diversity training activities for adults, information on diversity and inclusion workshops presented by U of H, and other links to access additional training materials and workshops. This gives any group resources to present focused diversity awareness and training particular to their group, or the ability to request someone from U of H to come in and present to their group. I really like the listings of training activities for adults, as adult education resources are more difficult to find than school-aged training resources. Also having the ability to 'call in the pros' can save valuable employee time as an employee can focus on their job instead of taking on the job of organizing training.

Breaking the Prejudice Habit also provides a listing of adult training activities. This list was compiled based on research at Ball State University. I find a lot of relevance in another university-designed list of activities. I feel that activities designed at a university, as opposed to those designed just by a non-educational entity, are likely to be more applicable to an academic library. Breaking the Prejudice Habit really focuses on finding similarities between targeted groups, such as religions that typically hold biases against one another or turning generational differneces into similarites. They even have a section on microagressions, which can be a very insidious type of discrmination that is difficult to recognize and rectify.`

My final resource in this collection was put together by Not in Our Town (NIOT). This group helps to provide a community-based attidute toward discrmination. While it is the least academic-library focused resource, it is still applicable because univeristies do not exist in isolation and they do not provide resources solely to students, faculty and staff of the university. NIOT ties together community entities, such as police, community, and education, to open dialogue between such entities. They have movies, videos, activities and guides available to communities. NIOT has an anti-bullying focus. Now, before you think of bullies as only being in schools, consider that even adults can be bullies, so bullying can take place in the workplace and even at home.

While few resources specifically address diversity and discrmination in academic libraries, many resources do address such issues within the context of the workplace or community. The academic library is a workplace, a community within itself, and a part of the surrounding community. Ideally, no one would reach adulthood without being educated about what makes us more similar than different, but we all come from different backgrounds. If you live in a homogenous community, you may be unaware of biases you hold or know how to address differences in a constructive manner. Implementing diversity and discrmination education in the library setting can go a long way toward the library becoming a place of acceptance in the community; kind of a community role model. The internet provides a wealth of resources, why not use them?