Introduction
If we aggregate all non-white categories, the University Library’s staff is notably less diverse (at about 16%) than that of the University (20+%) which in turn is notably less diverse than the population of the state of Virginia (30+%). These numbers only reflect racial/ethnic diversity, and of course there are other dimensions as well, where tallies are not so readily available in institutional dashboards: LGBTQ staff, neuro-diverse staff, and staff with disabilities, to name a few.
The Library has staff expertise in polling and data analysis, and we take regular climate surveys. Surveys administered as part of the Library’s Inclusive Excellence process told us that the majority of our staff think the Library is a good place to work — but what we were after was an understanding of how a minority of the population feels, so we followed up with a variety of opportunities for small group conversations with staff members from the Library’s Inclusive Excellence (IE) Task Force and its standing committee on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA). Staff participated broadly in gathering information as well as in providing it, and the results of this qualitative phase told us that we had long-standing unaddressed issues in our organizational culture that made the Library a difficult, unwelcoming, and even hostile place to work for some among us — including those who felt that LGBTQ issues were being ignored and those who felt that the Library only tolerated a narrow band of political opinion.
Over a number of years, different University Library administrations have made efforts to improve inclusion and diversity both in the short and the long term, but with little tangible impact to date on job satisfaction in key demographics. For example, although the UVA Library was one of the first in its national peer group to create and hire a full-time director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, that person retired at the beginning of the pandemic and a successor has not yet been hired. Pipeline programs have languished as a result: three years ago, the Library participated in the Association of College & Research Libraries’ Residency program, which resulted in the hiring of two Librarians into term positions. Both have successfully gone on to good jobs in the library profession, but the Residency program is on hold until the hire of a new director, as is our two-week summer program for minority high-school juniors and seniors interested in librarianship.
Given even this abbreviated context, the Library clearly faces challenges and opportunities across all the dimensions of Inclusive Excellence. We run technical and intellectual infrastructure that provides access to the information and expertise necessary for education and scholarship. We have climate and intergroup problems, and we have both successes and failures that we could point to, when it comes to community engagement. We have taken the opportunity offered by Inclusive Excellence to review our services, our collections, our spaces, our technology, and our organizational culture. The IE Task Force has done most of the work of producing this report, but the IDEA Committee has been developing competence with respect to some fundamental best practices, including how to recruit and retain diverse staff. They will begin by assisting in the search for a new Library DEI Director. All of this will in turn take place in the context of a Library-wide effort to reconsider its mission, its operations, and its culture in light of the urgent need to address racism in all of America’s systems and organizations, not least those that shape our thinking — as libraries do.
Meanwhile, the Library has successfully undertaken three important initiatives in the last few years, each of which generally improves equity and increases job opportunities. The first is a systematic equity review of compensation for all Library staff. This was initially delayed by the implementation of Workday, and then again by the pandemic, but we have now reviewed half of the Library staff salaries and we have made substantial adjustments to many of them. We believe this will help us demonstrate that we value our staff and we reward them equitably, a necessary step in attracting and retaining excellent and diverse staff, nationwide. Second, we have instituted a new career ladder in the ranks of professional librarians, where no differentiation previously existed. Years of staff feedback told us that there was a lack of opportunity for career advancement in the previous job structure: our implementation of this change also was dependent to a certain extent on larger changes ongoing in University HR. Third, there is now a Library track in the Academic General Faculty, which will allow us to appropriately recognize and promote Library staff when their work is research and/or teaching*. This also helps to make us competitive in recruiting among our national peer group, and should help us to reward and retain staff, including diverse staff, with national and international profiles.
These concrete successes are encouraging, and they will help us to recruit and retain a diverse workforce, but only if we become an inclusive organization. Inclusive Excellence is a starting point, and the Library’s report outlines goals and strategies in each of IE’s areas as they apply in our part of the University and the world. This report will face some skepticism in our own ranks, and not without reason: we have proclaimed our principles in the past and called for change without making it. We not only have to implement this plan but also track the change to our culture. Our metrics may need revision to capture impact, and we need to measure our progress regularly. Most importantly, if we do not see improvement toward a more inclusive organization, we will need to revisit our strategies and develop new ones. The staff (including senior leadership) who have contributed to this report all know that unless we follow through with a sustained and shared effort to change our Library culture for the better, this report will not matter. We think we can do better than that though, in part because of the end of the pandemic. Like staff in most in-person organizations, the Library’s staff has never had a year off from one another, and the return to in-person work offers an unprecedented opportunity to reset organizational culture, which is what we mean to do.
Finally, it should also be noted that in the process of developing the goals and actions that make up the Library’s Inclusive Excellence report, we realized that we are thinking of the challenges we face as things that we have to solve on our own, instead of thinking about the existing programs, partnerships, and pathways that the University and the community have already created. In other words, we are insular in our perspective, and in many cases the first thing we need to do is to understand the work that has already been done, and that we haven’t been drawing on, at least in recent years. If nothing else, we hope that the experience of compiling this report will save us from re-inventing wheels, ignoring predecessors and pathbreakers, or accidentally disrupting existing partnerships.
*Faculty tracks in the Library have a history of provoking a sense of inequity in the ranks, but Library Administration thinks it important to classify positions as faculty when the work involved fits the description of that track. This matters for reasons of governance and representation, recruiting and retention, and also the evaluation of impact. According to this list of academic libraries sorted by whether they offer faculty positions, nearly ten times as many such libraries have some kind of faculty status (239) as don’t (28).
Credits
The work represented in this report was done by two groups: the Inclusive Excellence Task Force and the Library’s standing committee on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA). Each group met 22 times during the June 2020 to June 2021 time period. On the Task Force, all meetings were devoted to producing this report; for the IDEA Committee, many were. Many of these people spent significant time and effort outside of meetings to gather information, draft documents, do research, and lead efforts to change our Library culture. Members of both groups are listed below, with chairs parenthetically identified and members of the Library’s Senior Leadership Team italicized. Important administrative support for both groups was provided by Sunny Taylor and October Edwards from the Office of the University Librarian and Kathy Soule from Project Management and Training.
The Inclusive Excellence Task Force
Veronica Fu, East Asian Collections Librarian
Patrick Garcia, Major Gifts & Grants Officer in Library Advancement
Elyse Girard, Executive Director of Communications and User Experience
Brenda Gunn, Associate University Librarian, Special Collections and Preservation (co-chair)
Debra Guy, Public Spaces and Special Events Manager
Meg Kennedy, Curator for Material Culture
Anthony Lindsay, Data Analyst in Library Assessment
Cecelia Parks, Undergraduate Student Success Librarian
John Unsworth, Dean of Libraries (co-chair)
Penny White, Reference Librarian
Mark Witteman, Integrated Library Systems Engineer
The IDEA Committee
Eze Amos, Technical Lead, Digital Production Group
Joseph Azizi, Library Stacks Coordinator, Special Collections
Suzanne Bombard, Training Specialist
Ruth Dillon, Project Manager
Meredith Gillet, Associate Director for Annual Giving
Robin Mitchell, Executive Director of Advancement (co-chair)
Rose Oliveira, Accessioning Archivist
Regina Rush, Reference Librarian
Mira Waller, Associate University Librarian, Research & Learning Services (co-chair)
Meridith Wolnick, Director, Teaching and Learning
Appreciation is also due to the many Library staff who engaged with the work of their colleagues as it was being drafted, offering suggestions and posing questions that improved the final result. For reasons of brevity, audience, and focus not all of that input is reflected in this document, but all of it has been captured and substantive issues not addressed here will be separately published and addressed within the Library, in a coda to the Inclusive Excellence process.
Signatories
The report as submitted has been reviewed and approved by Library Administration:
- John Unsworth, Dean of Libraries, University Librarian, Professor of English
- Carla Lee, Deputy University Librarian
- Donna Tolson, Associate Dean for Administration
and by the rest of the Library’s Senior Leadership Team:
- Elyse Girard, Executive Director of Communications and User Experience
- Brenda Gunn, Associate University Librarian, Special Collections and Preservation
- Stan Gunn, Executive Director of Information Technology
- Robin Mitchell, Executive Director of Advancement
- Carmelita Pickett, Associate University Librarian, Scholarly Resources & Content Strategy
- Mira Waller, Associate University Librarian, Research & Learning Services
Signed,
John Unsworth
Dimension 1: Access and Success
2030 Vision: Recruit and support exceptionally talented, diverse, and service-oriented students. Recruit, support, and retain excellent and diverse faculty and staff.
The Library’s standing Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee worked on this first dimension of the Inclusive Excellence Plan and contributed it to the overall effort being led by the Inclusive Excellence (IE) Task Force. The IE Template for this dimension notes that it “refers to the compositional diversity among the organization's constituent groups (staff, faculty, students, visitors, patients, alumni, customers, community partners, etc.) and their context-specific outcomes or benefits gained from their relationships with the organization. Processes like recruitment, retention, development, and long-term outcomes (graduation, tenure, career advancement, etc.) are the key focus of this dimension. Questions we asked in this dimension cover a number of topics:
- Recruitment: How do we invite people to join us?
- Admissions & Hiring: Who gets to be here?
- Advising & Career Ladders: How do we provide support?
- Graduation & Career Outcomes: Who benefits and how?
We gave this dimension to a standing diversity committee in the Library because we want that committee to become the Library’s repository of expertise and documentation of best practices in recruitment, hiring, and retention of a diverse Library staff.
| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: Working with University HR, the Talent Community of Expertise, and the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights, the Library will review current recruitment and interviewing practices and solicit feedback from recent hires and recent search committee members. |
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Action 2: The Library will collaborate with University HR and the Talent Community of Expertise to develop strategies for recruiting more diverse talent. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will form an Employee Onboarding Team of no more than eight members** and develop a program that begins with a strategic introduction of new employees to those they will need to interact with most. Biannual general Library overviews will be provided for new employees. |
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Action 2: The Library will create a new employee resource page on Confluence that provides professional development resources and career opportunities within the UVA Library and the library profession. |
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Action 3: The Library will hire a diverse student workforce and increase the economic diversity of Library student workers by hiring more Federal Work Study students. |
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Action 4: The Library will provide both horizontal career paths and career ladders in addition to those provided at the University level. |
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**The Employee Onboarding Committee would include both stakeholders and volunteers. Stakeholders would include a representative from the Events Team, Administration and Planning, Information Technology, and Library Staff Council. Volunteers (up to four) would represent SLT areas and could include the “Onboarding Buddy” from the department. Stakeholders could serve for up to two years; volunteers would serve for one year.
Dimension 2: Climate + Intergroup Relations
2030 Vision: Continuously promote and strengthen an inclusive community of trust, a culture of integrity, mutual respect, excellence, collaboration, and innovation.
This dimension refers to what it feels like for individuals to work in the Library and the behavioral experiences and norms that are present. Evaluating the collective experience of the Library community is complex and based on individuals’ perceptions. To be specific and intentional in this dimension, we have reflected on our organizational behaviors, examined our strengths, and studied our strategic opportunities with a focus on staff members’ experiences of respect, career development and growth, empowerment and intergroup connections. Both past and recent staff climate survey results have provided a broad sense of staff members’ individual feelings and experiences and 2021 targeted surveys and listening sessions refined our understanding. We have paid equal attention to prevailing and non-prevailing thoughts and analyzed the available data and information to identify priorities. The following table distills these priorities into five goals with accompanying specific action plans and measurable results.
| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Action 1: In partnership with EOCR, the Library’s Senior Leadership Team will establish a Library Code of Conduct that emphasizes respectfulness in all workplace interactions. SLT will share the draft with Library staff, so they can provide feedback and suggestions before SLT finalizes the document with EOCR. |
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Action 2: The Library will provide programs on implicit bias and other subjects that promote cultural competencies and a workplace culture where all staff discourage exclusionary or disrespectful behavior including but not limited to race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, and neurodiversity. Annual performance reviews should reflect participation in at least one such program, under the Understanding Difference goal. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will build on the work of the Communication team’s etiquette pages to establish Library standards for methods of communication, use of communications channels, methods of address, and timeframes for responses (see Communications Toolkit, Basic Slack Etiquette for Library Staff, etc.). |
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Action 2: The Library will work with the IDEA Committee, Library Assessment, and Library Staff Council to develop new climate survey questions on diversity and inclusion. The climate survey will be supplemented with listening sessions. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will develop the IDEA Committee as a staff advisory group for DEI training and goals. |
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Action 2: The Library will establish a formal mentoring program and encourage staff at all career stages to seek out mentoring from the Library, the University and external mentoring programs. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will charge the IDEA Committee with developing guidelines to ensure equitable and diverse representation on committees and establish transparent nomination processes. |
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Action 2: The Library will establish short-term leadership or project management assignments to empower staff, building on the success of the pre-pandemic Summer Leadership Program. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will highlight the routine work as well as the special projects our colleagues accomplish in all-staff meetings and in staff newsletters. |
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Action 2: The Library will budget annually for low-cost informal team-building opportunities at the departmental level. |
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Dimension 3: Education + Scholarship
2030 Vision: Enable faculty, staff, and students to work across traditional boundaries and prepare servant-leaders to shed new light on enduring and profound questions in our diverse community and globally connected world.
We began the process of developing goals in this dimension by asking simple questions: who is and is not using Library resources, collections, services, and spaces? What do we collect? What types of research do we support and how? We were largely unable to answer these questions based on existing data collected by the Library and University. We struggled to answer these questions when broken down by the categories central to Inclusive Excellence work, such as race, gender, age, disability, sexuality, and status. But even though answering these questions is crucial to our Inclusive Excellence and other IDEA work, we should consider whether a technological solution to the gaps in quantitative data is the best choice. To begin with, there are questions of privacy, consent, and surveillance that the Library is already confronting in other contexts. We are also aware that the institutional data that might be available to us may not be complete enough to be accurate. Nonetheless, collecting baseline data as the first step in the process is crucial for measuring improvements in Library engagement with historically underserved communities over time. Therefore, we will begin with an emphasis on personal interaction, while we analyze existing data resources and consider what open, voluntary, and ethical steps we might take in the future to track the impact of our collections and services online.
| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will gather and review data that it has already collected that will help us understand where gaps and inconsistencies exist. Going beyond internal data collection, the Library will seek to collaborate with campus partners to identify and review existing data. These efforts may also help us understand when we are reaching new student, faculty and external underserved communities — for example, new users, new search topics, web referring page stats etc. |
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Action 2: The Library will conduct qualitative assessments, including focus groups, surveys, and interviews with representatives from historically underserved communities. These groups should include representatives from within (including students and faculty) as well as from the Charlottesville/Albemarle County community members. |
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Action 3: The Library will review and create a plan for future data collection, including the possible implementation of standard data collection parameters. This will include timelines for reporting across Library units. |
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Action 4: The Library will develop strategies to create and foster inclusive collections, spaces, and services through outreach by Library Liaisons and other units, and through regular consultation with non-library representatives from the relevant communities with the goal of involving them as central stakeholders. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will identify the Library’s and University’s current funding allocations that do or could support DEI initiatives. |
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Action 2: The Library will plan, develop, and implement new strategies for fundraising and allocations necessary to fulfilling Goal 1, including but not limited to advancement initiatives, collections budgets and funds, hiring practices, and grants. |
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Action 3: The Library will implement the strategies developed in Goal 1 through new and ongoing initiatives like the Art in Library Spaces working group, collection development, Open Scholarship resources, community centered programing and engagement, and hiring to fulfill staffing needs related to those strategies. |
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Dimension 4: Infrastructure + Investment
2030 Vision: Be a community that consistently lives its values and ensures that our systems enable our students, faculty, and staff to do their best work.
This dimension refers to the policies, resources, organizational and communication structures, and performance measures that inform and enable an intentionally inclusive, equitable, and innovative organization. In addition to the priority goals listed below, we also identified other ways that the Library could examine accessibility, such as using technology for wayfinding, reviewing accommodations needed by new and current staff, and establishing an advisory group to systematically examine accessibility measures in the Library and to make recommendations for continual improvement. We also recognized current efforts underway in the Library, including plans to conduct research on circulation user data; the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Collections effort whose members analyze current collections and target the purchase of new library materials from diverse authors, countries, and publishers; and the Subject Access Enhancement Initiative, which seeks to improve subject access to our resources, with a focus on marginalized groups.
| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will schedule rotating ADA audits (to include an assessment of barriers for neuro-diverse students, staff, faculty, and communities). |
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Action 2: The Library will ensure, through regular assessment, that Library online resources are accessible to all members of the community. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will take stock of existing Library representatives to diversity and inclusion units within the UVA community and assign representatives where none exist. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will code expenditures on objectives established in the IE plan, IDEA committee programs, and other related actions. |
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Dimension 5: Community + Partnerships
2030 Vision: Be a strong partner with and good neighbor to our region, contributing economic and social well-being by providing accessible healthcare, innovative education, and opportunity, and by engaging alumni.
The Library is already engaged with the Charlottesville and Commonwealth communities in multiple endeavors, but we lack a community engagement strategy. We can’t be a good partner if we’re not a purposeful participant. The new DEI Director might be key in helping develop this strategy. Meanwhile, we have many staff who are already quite actively engaged in the communities around us in a variety of ways, so we could begin by understanding the existing commitments of Library staff and where those staff see opportunities to build and diversify more formal partnerships between the Library and its communities.
| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Action 1: The Library will assess existing community engagement by Library staff and canvass staff for organizational opportunities. The Library will also assess established and emerging University pathways to community partnership, beginning by establishing an organizational relationship with UVA’s Center for Community Partnership (CCP). |
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Action 2: The Library will identify staff who have volunteered in the community and those who have provided Library resources to community partners. |
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Action 3: The Library will establish a community engagement and partnership strategy in coordination with relevant University, School, and College initiatives and input wherever possible. The strategy will address possibilities for community-initiated partnerships in addition to Library- or university-initiated partnerships. |
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Action 4: Guided by the Library’s community engagement strategy, the Library will work with local libraries and schools to provide access to our spaces, events, circulating collections, and wherever possible, our electronic resources. This will involve consultation with representatives from the relevant communities. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will review UVA’s procurement vendor list and compare it to Library’s frequent vendors. |
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Action 2: The Library will track and report Women-owned, and Minority-owned (SWaM) vendors for Library whenever possible. |
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Dimension 6: Healing + Repair
Racial Equity Report: How can higher education learn to run while we still struggle at times to walk or even to crawl? Are we as an institution prepared to consider how certain systems have stacked the odds of thriving at UVA in favor of some, and to the detriment of others? Are we prepared to rethink practices, traditions, and norms that have not operated to equalize the probability of success for generations of students, staff, and faculty? - Racial Equity Task Force, “Audacious Future: Commitment Required,” page 8.
The Library’s standing Committee on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) and the Inclusive Excellence Task Force chose to add Healing + Repair late in the process of producing this report. Though not listed in the Inclusive Excellence toolkit, Healing + Repair has a direct relation to the University’s Racial Equity Task Force Report and it also accurately captures the spirit of some ongoing and planned activity in the Library.
| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will develop a plan for engaging historically disenfranchised communities, starting with a land acknowledgment that shows respect for the traditional custodians of the land on which our Library stands and for the enslaved Africans, enslaved laborers and free Black laborers who built the University. In consultation with members of the community, including the descendant community of the University’s enslaved and free laborers, and with the Monacan, Powhatan, and other tribes, the Library will also consider permanent plaques embodying these recognitions to be placed in the renovated main library. |
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Action 2: The Library will reconsider the names applied to our Libraries and library spaces, starting with Alderman Library, but also including other named spaces. Where a University process exists (e.g., for building names) we will use that process. Where one does not exist (e.g., for room-level naming) we will develop an internal process that is transparent and inclusive and will seek feedback from students and faculty. |
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| Actions | Metrics | Timeframe | Responsible Party | Resource Allocation |
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Action 1: The Library will reassess art displays in Library spaces to align with Library mission and values and document the results of the reassessment and the decisions made. |
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Action 2: The Library will mount exhibitions and programs that use an anti-racist framework for curation, design, writing, and production. As in the past, the Library will continue to partner with students and faculty on exhibitions and programs when the occasion allows. |
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Action 3: The Library will sponsor and participate in social justice research events for faculty, staff, and students, both internal and external to UVA. |
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Action 4: The Library will continue the work of the “Art in Library Spaces” working group and establish a standing committee to recommend art for addition or removal from Library spaces. This group will include representatives from outside the Library, for example library users, Fine Arts faculty, and student artists curators from campus and local museums, or others. |
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