Hi everyone!
The IDEA committee has a lot of big ideas on the table that we hope to deliver on in the long term. A few current initiatives are as follows:
- Julie Setele is working on a diversity audit of the collections at Buff State, and we're pitching in as needed. Once completed, the framework for this initiative may be shared at the conference and set up so that other libraries can follow in their footsteps.
- Bruce Seger at Suffolk County writes regular diversity-minded articles for his school's JEDI council. These articles are being collected in the IDEA committee's files with the hope that the committee can contribute potential topics, and the practice may spread throughout SUNY.
- There has been discussion of pooling resources collected for diversity-related libguides so that those of us doing the work of spreading helpful information don't have to carry the burden as individuals. This may develop into a shared IDEA guide collection in the future if logistics are negotiated and volunteers step up.
- We are (gradually) attempting to connect with the other committees to see what DEI information has been recently collected through various surveys and questionnaires so that we can tailor our own information gathering efforts accordingly. We still hope to release a SUNYLA-wide survey to pinpoint the areas of greatest need for our committee's focus.
- The University of North Texas is conducting a survey examining the experiences of transgender library workers. The survey can be found here:
https://unt.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5cFiua3L2mSetU2 Please consider sharing with any relevant people so that we can help them get a rich dataset for a relatively small population.
Work with the committee is slow at the moment (has this September been wild for everyone or is it just me??) but we continue to putter along in solidarity!
