Developing and Implementing a Diversity Plan at Your Academic Library

This article outlines steps that librarians can take as they begin to develop diversity plans for their institutions. The aim is to provide broad, simple, adaptable guidelines that librarians charged with creating diversity plans for the first time can use as they begin the process of developing and implementing their plans. This article will highlight steps towards developing and implementing diversity plans. As the Association of College and Research Libraries notes, "Diversity is an essential component of any civil society. It is more than a moral imperative; it is a global necessity. Everyone can benefit from diversity, and diverse populations need to be supported so they can reach their full potential for themselves and their communities."1 Diversity isn't just a moral imperative or global necessity. As Winston points out, it makes sense for libraries and higher education to pay attention to diversity. Writing about diversity at small liberal arts colleges he notes a "relationship between diversity and organizational success or performance in the academic environment. The institutions that are rated most highly in terms of diversity are also rated highly in relation to other measures of organizational success... these results suggest important implications for academic libraries, based on the relationships between larger institutional efforts to foster diversity and similar efforts undertaken within the college library."2 Library diversity plans are important for the library, but also for the larger campus community. [Barbara Dewey] and [Jillian Keally] note that "academic libraries are well qualified to play leadership roles in advancing campus community diversity initiatives because of the inherent commitment to encompassing people and the multitude of ideas reflecting the breadth and depth of the human experience."3 The creation of a diversity-specific plan in the library is one way to help advance diversity initiatives internally, and perhaps to help encourage the advancement of initiatives externally as well. Library diversity plans should be developed collectively by a representative group and result in a regularly reviewed, assessed, and revised document. They should be based in a strategic framework addressing the library's underlying beliefs, central diversity values, vision of diversity, mission, diversity goals and strategies and should be driven by climate assessment, include a timeline for review, and include meaningful goals, objectives,