September
19, 2003
Mellon-Funded
Librarian Recruitment
Program Includes Mount Holyoke
| 
Photo: Todd M. LeMieux |
The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation has awarded $500,000 to six academic libraries, including
Mount Holyoke’s, to collaborate on a major project to address
librarian recruiting and diversity issues at the undergraduate
level.
The multitiered librarian recruitment effort will include broad-based,
issues-oriented programming that will familiarize large nubers
of undergraduate students with significant challenges facing the
library profession, draw their attention to librarianship as a
career, and alert them to the selective internship opportunities
the project offers.
“We are delighted to have this opportunity to get the word
out about librarianship as a profession,” said Kathleen
Norton, assistant director of library, information, and technology
services for collection development. “Libraries are complex
organizations, requiring people with skills and talents in teaching,
database design, budgeting, even marketing. They are also vital
organizations, engaged in many of the key issues of the day: privacy,
intellectual freedom, and economics of information. We hope this
grant will give many students an opportunity to think about libraries,
both as places in which to learn and possibly, to begin a career.”
The libraries of the Atlanta University Center (serving Clark
Atlanta University and Morehouse and Spelman colleges) and of
Oberlin, Occidental, Swarthmore, and Wellesley colleges will also
participate in the project. The Mellon award builds on an earlier
grant Oberlin received from the Institute for Museum and Library
Services.
“This initiative will help address the serious shortage
of professional librarians facing the country,” said Ray
English, project coordinator and Oberlin’s director of libraries.
“Although professional library organizations have identified
recruitment and diversification as urgent priorities, most programs
designed to address these needs focus on graduate library school
and the postgraduate years, the profession needs models that address
recruiting at an earlier stage of the pipeline, when students
are beginning to think seriously about career choices. It’s
especially important to attract highly talented students who can
provide leadership for the profession.”
The initiative is also designed to help broaden the racial and
ethnic composition of the library profession so that it can better
serve increasingly diverse populations. All four federally defined
underrepresented groups (African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic
Americans, and Native Americans) are seriously underrepresented
among practicing librarians. “The participating schools
are well positioned to address this important goal of the project,
given the composition of their student bodies,” noted English.
Each campus will inaugurate the project with programs for student
library assistants focusing on major issues that emphasize librarianship
as a changing and dynamic profession critical to the strength
of a democratic society. The programs also will be announced to
the general student body and may be coordinated with faculty who
teach relevant courses.
Among the topics to be addressed will be privacy issues and the
USA Patriot Act; intellectual freedom and First Amendment rights;
the economics of information, including barriers to access; collection
preservation and the potential loss of cultural and intellectual
heritage; the importance of information literacy and critical-thinking
skills needed for an increasingly complex information environment;
and issues of diversity and multiculturalism in librarianship.
A second component of the project is a selective undergraduate
internship experience designed to give students at each campus
a thorough understanding of librarianship as a profession. In
addition to learning about the nature of professional library
work, participants will complete projects under librarian mentors
and participate in summer internships at other libraries.
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