Diversity in Libraries
Global Perspectives and Data-Driven Insights
March 30, 2024. Vol. 2, Issue 14.
Welcome to Infophilia, a weekly letter about the human love of information and connections. This is one of the places where I’m pioneering a positive psychology of information, an avant-garde research project. If this is your first time, I am glad to have you here. Check out the Archive or start with Infophilia and the Dopamine Connection! Welcome back everybody else! As always, thanks for reading.
Happy Spring and happy Easter too, if you celebrate it!
I am delighted to share that two of my papers about library diversity were recently published. I also introduce the Anti-racism Digital Library and International Anti-racism Thesaurus, and related papers. I warmly welcome your questions and suggestions.
Philoxenia, meaning an appreciation of diversity, openness to and acceptance of others, piques my curiosity. It’s opposite, xenophobia —fear, hostility, or dislike of people from different countries or cultures—stands in stark contrast. I wonder if infophiles also appreciate diversity and about the connections between the two.
Now, the citations first, and then, the summaries.
Coleman, A. (2022). International Contexts and US Trends in Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Libraries. Library Trends. Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 254-283. Available online via Project Muse (paywall). DOI: 10.1353/lib.2022.a922378
Buchel, O. & Coleman, A. (2022). A Statistical Essay on Diversity in the Library Professions Compared to Other Occupations in the United States of America. Library Trends. Vol. 71, No. 2, pp. 303-337. Available online via Project Muse (paywall). DOI: 10.1353/lib.2022.a922380
Anti-racism Digital Library & International Anti-racism Thesaurus.
Coleman, A. (2022). Diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism in collection development. In Berryhill, C. (Ed.) Collection development in theological libraries. (pp. 55-64). ATLA Open Press. https://books.atla.com/atlapress/catalog/view/89/227/884
Coleman, A. (2017). Using the Anti-racism Digital Library and Thesaurus to understand information access, authority, value, and privilege. [Paper presentation] 71st Annual Conference of the American Theological Librarians Association (ATLA), Atlanta, GA, June 14- 17, 2017. Also published open access in Theological Librarianship, v. 13, no. 1. 2020 and available openly in the ADL https://sacred.omeka.net/items/show/237
Coleman, A. (2016). “Theology, race, and libraries.” In Burgess, T. (Ed.) Summary of the Proceedings of the 70th Annual Conference of the American Theological Librarians Association (ATLA), Long Beach, California, June 15 – 18, 2016. pp. 65-74. Also available openly in the ADL https://sacred.omeka.net/items/show/91