Core Competency C: cultural and economic diversity

“Core Competency C — recognize and describe cultural and economic diversity in the clientele of libraries or information organizations.”

As library professionals, we may encounter very diverse demographics even within one small community. At one library where I worked, we had patrons of many ethnicities and religions, including homeless people, Buddhist nuns, Goth teens, parents who homeschooled their children, and women in hijabs all coming into our library, all seeking materials and information. The materials people seek are just as diverse and a good reference interview is crucial to help the patron find that information he or she is seeking. In order to conduct an effective interview, the patron must be understood both linguistically and culturally by the reference librarian helping them.

The organizations themselves may be just as diverse. I earned my undergraduate degree at the University of Southern California which boasts 23 separate libraries in the USC library system. Each library exemplifies the very diversity discussed here, from the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives to Norris Medical School library to the Gerontology library to the East Asian Library. Doheney Memorial library is open to members of the community in which the university is located – South Central Los Angeles. The University library that I particularly enjoyed was the Hoose library of philosophy. I blogged my study of this library because it impressed me with its classic architecture, mosaics, and stained glass (see C_Evidence_1). Not far from Hoose library on the same campus is Leavey library which is a more modern building, more metal and glass than marble and more technology, as well, with its public computers, printing stations, and carrels with outlets for personal laptops. The focus at Leavey is on research and computing.

USC is also the home of the ONE National Gay and Lesbian archives. The founder of the ONE archive, Jim Kepner, started collecting newspaper clippings and books about homosexuality after witnessing the now infamous Black Cat gay bar raid in in 1942.  He started his collection with a copy of Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Lonliness.  He kept his growing collection in his apartment, calling it “The Western Gay Archives.”   Presumably, his collection grew beyond his apartment’s capacity, because it was moved to a Hollywood storefront and named “the National Gay and Lesbian Archives.” In 1994, The ONE institute, which Mr. Kepner helped found, acquired Mr. Kepner’s collection and it has grown into what is now the ONE National LGBT Archives.  In 2000, the collections were sponsored and moved to their current home on Adams by the University of Southern California and ten years later, they are now a part of the USC Library system. The archive is touted by USC as the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world. I was honored to visit this archive and my report on that visit is entered as evidence of my competency in this area (see C_Evidence_2).

Collections in a library is one place in which the diversity of the community that library serves may be reflected. As part of strategic planning and collection building and development for a library, a study of the demographic of the community that is and will be served by that library is necessary. As part of learning about collection development, I had the opportunity to study the demographics of a community served by an academic library, East Los Angeles College located in Monterey Park, California. This exercise was a challenging and rewarding opportunity to see firsthand how the diversity of a community creates that community. It was also fascinating to see how the college itself would affect the demographics of the community – would the academic campus be an insular island, a pocket with its own separate demographics or would the students be from the community and reflect the area at large? I offer a presentation of my findings as further evidence of my competency. I found that the diversity of the community was enhanced by the students attending the college the library served while serving the academic population of students, faculty and staff (see C_Evidence_3).

Libraries serve communities and, while communities are created by common interests, they are populated by diverse individuals. Diversity, whether cultural or economic, creates opportunities for people to learn from one another and to forge bonds that go beyond what is diverse and by what we all hold in common. The library, with its commitment to equality of access and intellectual freedom, could easily be the heart of that community.