Competency Statement: Articulate the importance of designing programs and services supportive of diversity, inclusion, and equity for clientele and employees.

Introduction

In the United States, a polarized political landscape and a growing economic gap have limited access to self-actualizing information for many individuals. Global migration has brought the people of the world closer and our communities are growing in diversity. Retention of marginalized individuals in the information profession has been poor. This competency enables information professionals to welcome positive change and confront negative change in their information organizations, benefiting the growth and sustainability of their patron community by providing equitable access, diverse resources, and inclusion of multiple perspectives.  

Awareness of Diversity

The needs of the communities a public library serves reflect the changes in the economic, political, and social environment. In State of America’s Libraries Report 2023, libraries identified diverse needs from their patrons, including digital equity, personal documentation, access to tools and transportation, nature education in urban communities, family-friendly spaces for technology access, and small business education (American Libraries Association, 2023).

In academic libraries, the number of international students in the U.S. rose exponentially between 2003 and 2016. While it dipped during the pandemic, the numbers are quickly catching up to pre-pandemic levels, with only a difference of 38,111 students when comparing the 2022/2023 and 2018/2019 academic years. Many schools accept most if not all international applicants, and they account for 5.6% of the student population (Open Doors, 2023).

Special libraries serve users with different habits and roles on their repositories. Information professionals in special libraries may need to design specific workflows, controlled vocabularies, and access points for different disciplines and departments. They may also need to “set system policies regarding usage rights in collaboration with the legal department,” and enforce access permissions for different user roles (Horodyski, 2022, p. 118)

Impacts of Diversity

Diversity in information settings calls on the library to make changes to effectively serve its patrons. It drives libraries to proactively assess their collection, services, outreach, and even hiring to meet the needs of potential user groups. For instance, public libraries may serve a community with a growing population of immigrants. While immigrants might find appreciation in knowing there is a library as a resource, they are largely unaware of the range of library services available nor do they know how to use those services according to their needs (Linden, et al, 2014).

In academic libraries, first-generation college students and international students may not be familiar with the research methods and library systems of their host institution and may experience affective barriers that prevent them from using library services (Houlihan, et al, 2017).

As for special libraries, without consideration for the user habits of various departments, failure to function as expected can occur when users choose instead to find workarounds or wholly avoid doing tasks, such as preserving their work in the repository with appropriate metadata, if the tools offered are inflexible and too difficult to use.  

Promoting Diversity

Knowing the consequences of restricting diversity may help understand why promoting it is necessary. Diverse representation in books and other media can help a child in a dominant culture develop empathy or help a child in a marginalized culture develop their sense of self (Pickering, 2023). Without authentic windows or reflections of diverse representations, society would fall apart due to disconnect and apathy. In 2022, conservative and religious groups were successful in the attempt to restrict materials with LGBTIA+ themes by taking away a library’s funding (American Library Association, 2023). Not only did the group manage to take away resources that could develop empathy or reflect the personal experiences of readers, but they also took away “access to life-changing services for job seekers, new computer users, budding readers, entrepreneurs, veterans, and tax filers” (American Library Association, 2023, p. 5, para. 3).

Information professionals can consider ways of promoting diversity by assessing whether one’s library provides equitable access to information and content relevant to all patrons regardless of aspects of identity, ability, and status would support their patrons’ right to intellectual freedom (Bright, 2022). Libraries can also benefit from recruiting and hiring individuals who have connections to underserved communities. For example, the Tully Community Branch Library was opened by the San Jose Public Library system in 2005. The area where this library serves had a rapidly growing Vietnamese population after the war between the 80s and 90s, and some who were raised in that community were hired and created programs that satisfied a need for patrons looking for self-improvement support, including English-learning opportunities and the path to citizenship and naturalization (Langner, 2022).

Evidence

The evidence I chose to present to demonstrate this competency include a reference response to an incarcerated patron from INFO 210, a discussion about an academic research article from INFO 285, and a design proposal from work experience.

Evidence #1 – INFO 210 – Reference and Information Services – Reference for Jail And Re-entry Services (JARS)

For INFO 210, I was accepted as an intern to perform reference by mail with the San Francisco Public Library’s Jail and Re-entry Services as credit for my final project. The reference by mail program serves incarcerated persons throughout California, who live under restricted conditions and experience information poverty and digital inequity. In a study on reference by mail for the incarcerated, it was found that letter writers ask questions to solve their daily incarceration problems that they can’t get in their small rounds, issues that follow upon release, and post-incarceration employment opportunities (Drabinski & Rabina, 2015). This was the case in my letter from “Wilson,” who requested information on self-starting an online magazine/on-demand printing business, as seen in the evidence. The experience was humbling: Letter writers are only allowed a response of 20 double-sided black and white pages, a limit that can quickly be met depending on the question, and follow-up, as recommended in the RUSA guidelines, cannot be conducted. I struggled with the restrictive circumstances and tried to fit as much as I could, hoping that “Wilson” would somehow find it helpful in his post-incarceration plans.

The US government reports that “More than two-thirds of prisoners are rearrested within 3 years of their release and half are incarcerated” (ASPE, n.d., para. 1). Reference services can assist the incarcerated by providing information to prepare themselves for reintegration into public society.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to empathize and promote equity of access to an underserved community.

Evidence #2 – INFO 285 – Research Methods in Academic Libraries – Research article discussion

For INFO 285, I discussed an academic research article concerning microaggressions in academic libraries from the perspective of academic professionals. The assignment was intended to give students an opportunity to talk about their perceptions of academic libraries. However, this particular article caught my attention because it took an existing study of microaggressions against race, gender, and sexual orientation, and applied it to researchers in the global south, with the understanding that plenty of similar research was done in the US and the UK, which may not apply in institutions elsewhere. Although in the end the findings were similar, including that data is important for researchers who need to consider regional differences when designing and planning improvements.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to understand and discuss the importance of inclusion of underrepresented communities.

Evidence #3 – Work experience – Leveraging Spotify API for music search on Rocksmith+ proposal

When I was employed at Ubisoft between 2016 and 2024 as game designer on their Rocksmith+ product, I looked at Reddit and Discord forums dedicated to it after its release in 2022 to see how users were doing. It was clear that even with a library of 7,000 songs to play, some users could not decide on what song to play next (Kudzu_93, 2023). Rocksmith+ already had machine learning capabilities that would make song recommendations to players, but there wasn’t enough user data yet for the AI to make recommendations that were good or relevant to their interest or playing level. The music library team manually curated songs every month to help fill that gap, which helped some users. More adventurous users would simply choose a random song that had an official hand-crafted (instead of machine generated) arrangement available. I thought about other ways people find music, specifically Spotify and how it’s quite good at choosing new music that is similar in sound and style to songs I tag as “Like”. After spending some time researching, I wrote a proposal to utilize a few API calls that would allow us to tap into a player’s Spotify playlists to see if any of those songs are in the Rocksmith+ library or suggest similar artists or songs available in the Rocksmith+ library if the original search came up empty. Spotify has a user base of 626 million users, and I speculated that Rocksmith+ players would also have a Spotify account and would find it convenient to have both accounts linked.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to understand diverse user habits and promoting different ways for users to access materials in a special library.

Conclusion

As a self-identified queer Asian-American cisgender female born to Vietnamese refugees, I am always reluctant to talk about this competency because I am not used to asking for solutions to relieve my personal inconveniences. However, as an information professional, I realize that my empathy and insight can uncover opportunities for change, and that I can strategically utilize this competency to effectively give better and legal access to underserved members of a community and advocate for adaptive change in information organizations.

References

American Library Association. (2023). The State of America’s Libraries 2023. https://www.ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2023

ASPE. (n.d.). Incarceration and Reentry. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved September 10, 2024, from https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/human-services/incarceration-reentry-0Links to an external site.

Bright, K. (2022). Equity of access, diversity, and inclusion. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (3^rd ed., pp. 193-223). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Drabinski, E. & Rabina, D. (2015). Reference services to incarcerated people, part I: Themes emerging from answering reference questions from prisons and jails. Reference and User Services Quarterly 55(1), 42-48. https://doi.org/10.5860/rusq.55n1.42

Horodyski, J. (2022). Metadata matters. CRC Press.

Houlihan, M., Wiley, C. W., & Click, A. B. (2017). International students and information literacy: A systematic review. Reference Services Review 45(2), 258-277. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-06-2016-0038

Kudzu_93. (January 23, 2023). How do you choose new songs to learn in Rocksmith + ? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/rocksmith/comments/1dmfv1q/please_recommend_fun_songs_to_play_like_the_doors/

Langer, I. (May 11, 2022). Pathfinder Diep Nguyen: Finding family in the community. San Jose Public Library. https://www.sjpl.org/blogs/post/pathfinder-diep-nguyen-finding-family-in-the-community/Links to an external site.

Open Doors (2023). 2023 Open Doors Report. Institute of International Education.  https://opendoorsdata.org/data/international-students/enrollment-trends/Links to an external site.

Pickering, G. (2023). “Harmful to minors”: How book bans hurt adolescent development. The Serials Librarian, 84(1-4), 32-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2023.2245843

van der Linden, K., Bartlett, J., & Beheshti, J. (2014). New immigrants’ perceptions and awareness of public library services. The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 38(2), 65-79. https://doi.org/10.1353/ils.2014.0008Links to an external site.