Changing the Canadian academic librarianship landscape through diversity among librarians

Abstract

Background: Kumaran’s recent sabbatical project was to explore diversity and leadership in Canadian academic libraries. For this presentation at IIT, she explores and presents results from part of her qualitative survey results where participants identified the best characteristics of their previous and current (retrospective and prospective) librarian positions they held/hold. Method: This project was conducted using the appreciative inquiry (AI) framework to learn and understand what has worked well in the context of diversity. AI does not emphasize on the weaknesses, but directs attention towards identifying strengths and positive characteristics. Identifying the positive and creating more of those characteristics will enable librarianship to focus on transforming the academic librarianship landscape from a diversity perspective. Results: The reasons for participants’ appreciation of their current jobs in comparison with their future employment goals were identified and categorized. A combination of resources were used to determine these categories and themes (Hoffman, Berg & Koufogiannakis, 2014 & 2017; Kalleberg, 1977; Laden & Hagedorn, 2000; Sabharwal & Corley, 2009; Seifert & Umbach, 2008;)The broad categories identified as were Financial, Career, Convenience, Relationship, Resource Adequacy, and Intrinsic factors. There was also some connection of the participants’ diversity characteristics and their best leadership statuses.

Conclusion: Knowing what participants enjoyed or continue to enjoy in their positions will help us learn the strengths of a librarian position. It will also help us emulate more of such positions in all libraries and at various levels including leadership. This information can be shared with library administrators so they can design pathways to do more of the same in their attempts to be inclusive and diverse.