Diversity Committee: Recent Activities

DEI Speaker Series

ALAO Diversity Committee is excited to launch an inaugural DEI speaker series following the ALAO preconference this fall.  At the preconference tenants of Appreciative Inquiry and Design Justice will be put into practice in order to co-design and reimagine DEI advancement in academic libraries. Attendees will then have the opportunity to join speaker tracks in order to put new frames into practice.

To that end, the committee is seeking applications for speakers to develop or utilize existing content for two 1-hour sessions on DEI including but not limited to: anti-racism, cultural humility, indigenous approaches to DEI, social justice, decolonization, global DEI practices in the academic library. Suggested general topics could include but do not need to be limited to the following: 

• Leadership
• Instruction (library, community, and K-12)
• Student engagement (e.g. student workers, student research)
• Resource description access: cataloging, metadata, etc.
• Collection development and management
• Community engagement, programming, and outreach
• Digital humanities and data
• LIS committee and service work
• Research services
• New areas of librarianship
• Tentative dates for the sessions will be according to session leaders’ schedules sometime between December 2023-April 2024. Speaker stipends available.

All interested session leaders are asked to submit a short proposal (maximum 500 words) covering a brief outline and learning outcomes to be met, by August 31^st  to diversity@ALAOweb.org. Selected participants will be notified in September.