August 2020

Hello, from the Committee for Diversity & Inclusion!

 

This message reflects the opinion of the Committee for Diversity & Inclusion and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the Iowa Library Association as a whole.  

Over the last few months ILA’s Committee for Diversity & Inclusion has been hosting bi-monthly Zoom calls during which we discuss issues relating to diversity and inclusion. So far we have explored articles, blogs posts, videos, podcasts, and more on the topics of Living With Mental Illness or a Mental Health Condition, Microaggressions, and Ethnicity.

Throughout the month of July we have been reading, watching, and listening to resources about the topic of Sexuality. Discussions are scheduled for August 5th at 9:00 am and August 10th at 2:00 pm. We would love it if you joined us for either or both calls. The level of participation is up to each attendee; you may actively contribute to the discussion or just listen & learn. Here are some resources for this month’s discussion groups: 

 

Read:

• BIPOC LGBTQI Resources

• Library of Congress LGBTQ+ Studies: A Resource Guide

• Disrupting Whiteness in Libraries and Librarianship: A Reading List

• Libraries Can Be LGBTQ-Affirming Spaces on School Campuses

• Network of National Libraries of Medicine's LGBT Health Reading Club

• Over the Rainbow Books: A Book List from Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Roundtable of the American Library Association 

• 46 Terms That Describe Sexual Attraction, Behavior, and Orientation

• Queer in the Cornbelt Zine

• Advancing Racial Equity in Public Libraries Case Studies from the Field

• Healthy People 2020 LGBT health

• National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2019

• Medical Students Push For More LGBT Health Training To Address Disparities

• Questionably Queer: Asexuality in the LGBT+ Community

• How the queer community can embrace the asexual spectrum

• Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (Classic by Adrienne Rich)

Watch:

• [Webinar] Collecting and Protecting LGBTQ+ Materials and Programs

• Fifty Shades of Gay (Ted Talk)

• [Webinar]: Cultural Humility in Public Libraries: Colleagues and Customers

 

Listen:

 

• Thought Project - Episode 59 - How to Classify "Queer" in the stacks

Twitter Feeds to Follow:

• Que(e)ry Librarians 

• ALA’s Rainbow Roundtable

• Libraries We Here

• LIS Microaggressions

SAVE THE DATE! Live Twitter Chat on Creating Inclusive Communities August 5 at 12:00 p.m. Central   Join PLA's Task Force on Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice (EDISJ) for their next live Twitter chat on Wednesday, August 5 from 12–1:00 p.m. Central! The discussion will focus on creating inclusive communities through an EDISJ lens.

To participate, simply follow PLA on Twitter (@ALA_PLA) and log in at noon Central on August 5. The EDISJ Task Force will tweet introductions and discussion questions to get things started. To join the conversation, tweet using the hashtags #chatPLA and #Inclusion.   To ensure a lively discussion, we're providing the discussion questions ahead of time. So get ready to share your experiences and resources, ask questions, and learn from your peers!   How do you identify and prioritize potential BIPOC partner organizations in your community? What can we do to ensure that the partner organizations we work with are reflective of our communities? What can the library do to support and engage new patrons of different races, ethnicities, or languages? Post COVID-19, how can we strengthen and leverage community partnerships to provide more expansive and inclusive services? Post COVID-19, who SHOULD be included in discussions about library policies? If you skipped the last live Twitter chat on EDISJ in library workforce, search #chatPLA on Twitter to see what you missed. To learn more about PLA's EDISJ work and to read their latest statement and call to action for public library workers to address racism, please visit http://www.ala.org/pla/initiatives/edi.

If you have resources that fall under the diversity and inclusion umbrella you feel might be helpful or interesting for the ILA membership, please send them my way and I will work with the committee to share them out as appropriate. 

 

On behalf of ILA CD&I,

Jillian Rutledge, Chair