Monday October 4 : Diversity Librarian

Monday October 4
Dana Wright, the Diversity Librarian at the Undergraduate Library spoke about her role as Diversity Librarian as well as her temporary role of information literacy Librarian. In the set-up at UofI, the undergraduate library is considered the primary home of the undergraduates, although they are encouraged to use the departmental libraries as well.

The important question to ask is "What is the library's role in undergraduate education?"
The answers: - to make sure that the students become competent in doing research during the time they are here and to ensure that they students are successful. The biggest challenge is that they don't know what library experience the students have, other than it is quite uneven and that there also is a big divide. They don't assume that the students have any skills at all. Similar to our experience in South Africa.

So what do they offer?
- Tours on the physical space of the library (the physical space can be quite confusing)
- General classes where students and staff can sign up online. These classes are run at different times during the day and evening. They run 4 different workshops
- Workshops for courses that demonstrate writing requirements. The instructional librarian offers sessions to each class
- Creation of online handouts and tutorials

In some courses, there is a writing requirement, and the Instructional Librarian offers a session to each class, including handouts.

In discussing Dana's role as Diversity Librarian, she pointed out that Diversity means different things -- and for her diversity includes physical, gender, economic, religious and ethnic diversity. There is also diversity in library experience and diversity in the expectations of what the library can deliver. She works closely with the Minority Office and various student units who work to make the students successful, doing outreach to diverse students.

Some facts and figures about the Undergraduate Library:
* 2003 undergraduate enrolment was about 28 500, with 6 811 first year students; number of first year students for this year has increased to 7 284.
* 5 librarians including Head of Undergraduate Library who does a couple of desk shifts on the reference desk a week. The Head of Media Resources Center does not do desk shifts, as I understand, so it leaves 3 librarians to do ref desk shifts, including evening ref shifts from 6 - 9 pm. The reference desk is assisted by 9 Graduate Assistants (these are LIS students) who also then assist with the information literacy sessions.
* There are student assistants on the circulation desk and on the reserve desk. My overall very generalised impression about the academic libraries that I have seen, is that the majority of the staff in all dpts -- from Cataloguing and Acquisitions to Conservation -- are student assistants