DIAL-South
Draft Minutes
Business Meeting at Mount St. Marys College

Friday, October 20, 2006

Attendees: Marjorie Acevedo, MSMC; Stephanie Ballard, CSUN; Angela Boyd, UCSB; Sophie Lesinska, USC; Sanjeet-Singh Mann, UCLA- MLIS student; Valeria Molteni, CSUDH; Jennie Quinonez-Skinner, UCLA-MLIS graduate; Judith Samuel, Cal Lutheran; Susan Shapiro, MSMC; Jie Tian, CSUF; Chimene Tucker, UCSB; Judy Weedman, Professor, SJSU-MLIS program

1. Introductions:

We were delighted to welcome four new faces to the meeting, including special guest, Professor Judy Weedman from the SJSU MLIS program at CSU Fullerton. Another new attendee was Chimene Tucker, who began working as Information Services Librarian at UC Santa Barbara this September. We also welcomed two UCLA-MLIS students, Sanjeet-Singh Mann, a 1st year student, and Jennie Quinonez-Skinner, a 2006 graduate.

Professor Weedman, Sanjeet and Jennie met DIAL-South members at the UCLA Diversity Summit on September 18, 2006. This year Professor Weedman is faculty advisor for the SJSU-MLIS student organization, LISSTEN. She attended the Diversity Summit to make contacts and to get ideas for recruiting a more diverse student body to the SJSU-MLIS program. Sanjeet is a current Spectrum Scholar at UCLA. Jennie attended the 2006 CARL Conference and is interested in the history of the Southwestern U.S.

2. Announcements:

Stephanie announced that she was voted to serve on the Educational Equity Committee at CSU Northridge. She also mentioned that this year CSUN has hired two library interns and will be advertising for an Outreach Librarian in the spring. She passed around the annual summary of CARL Interest Group Activity, which will be placed in our archives. Finally, Stephanie alerted us to the upcoming Spectrum Scholarship for Ph.D. candidates, which is looking for mentors with ten years of experience in librarianship.

Valeria attended the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color in Dallas, where she participated with Susan Luévano in the roundtable “Latino Information Literacy: Models for Success”. In her presentation, Valeria spoke about the levels of information fluency students from Latin America have when they come to this country, referring specifically to Argentina. She also discussed her recent experiences providing Spanish reference services to students at CSUDH. Susan talked about faculty / librarian collaboration in information literacy instruction at CSULB. Isabel Espinal from the University of Massachusetts, and Laura Maldonado from George Washington University also participated.

The Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) was the first-ever national conference to be held and sponsored by the five ALA caucus associations of color.

The five associations are:

  • American Indian Library Association (AILA)
  • Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA)
  • Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA)
  • Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA)
  • REFORMA, the National Association to Provide Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish Speaking.

Valeria reported that attending the JCLC was a remarkable experience, with more than 1000 librarians exchanging information about working with diverse population.

Marjorie brought in a print-out of the ALA report Diversity Counts, produced by ALA’s Office for Diversity and Office for Research and Statistics. This report, compiled from census data in September, 2006, analyzes diversities of race and ethnicity, age, gender, and ability across the librarian profession and poses questions based on the results. The report is available online. The printout will be added to DIAL-South archives.

2. Approval of Minutes

The minutes of the August 25 meeting were approved and will be posted on the DIAL-South web site.

4. Report on UCLA Diversity Recruitment Summit

The Diversity Recruitment Summit for the Information Professions took place at UCLA on Monday, Sept. 18. Its purpose was to generate ideas on how to recruit a library workforce from under-represented groups. Participants will use the findings of the summit to make visible efforts on their campuses to increase diversity. Preliminary findings are posted on the web site: http://isdiversity.gseis.ucla.edu/summit06/

Several DIAL members attended, including Angela Boyd, Susan Luévano, Valeria Molteni, Marla Peppers, Judith Samuel, and Sophie Lesinska, who reported back to the meeting.

At the Diversity Summit Sophie found out that there is greater diversity in public libraries than in academic libraries and that entry level jobs are often the hardest to get because of competition with more experienced librarians. Some suggested ways that diversity might be increased in academic libraries are: (1) librarians make more of an effort to sit on recruiting committees; (2) try to get institutional commitments to hire librarians of color for entry level positions; (3) to create paid internships and scholarships to give library students experience. Sanjeet emphasized the challenge of finding scholarships and paid internships. Another challenge is to keep MLIS graduates in the library profession.

Sophie contacted the Black Caucus at the Diversity Recruitment Summit to encourage African American librarians and colleagues to join DIAL.

5. New DIAL-South Website

Many thanks to Angela Boyd for designing a new DIAL-South website. Angela demonstrated the new site for us and outlined some of her ideas. Sophie will continue to maintain the old web site on her personal page at USC, and will gradually make the transition to the new website when it is complete and has been tested on a variety of browsers. There were suggestions that we create a new logo, possibly through a student competition. Valeria will check with the Art Department at CSUDH. Valeria and Jennie volunteered to join Angela on a website development committee. They will keep in touch and bring ideas to the next meeting.

6. Election of Officers

Stephanie Ballard, out-going co-chair, distributed ballots and tabulated the results, which included three e-mail ballots received prior to the meeting. The steering committee positions were explained to new members. Also discussed was the possibility of creating some new officers, for example, Web Master/Publicity Director.

Steering Committee members for 2006-2007 are:

Existing co-chair: Sophie Lesinska

New co-chair: Valeria Molteni

Registrar: Marjorie Acevedo

Secretary: Susan Shapiro

Historian: Judith Samuel

8. New Business:

Valeria and Angela are going to draft a proposal for the 2007 LOEX Conference on the theme of information literacy for international students. It must be submitted by November 10. SCIL will be sponsoring the next LOEX Conference in San Diego, to be held on May 4-5, 2007. LOEX is a clearinghouse for library instruction and information literacy information based at Eastern Michigan University. The website is: http://www.emich.edu/public/loex/index.html

9. Next Meeting

The next meeting will be held on December 1st at California Lutheran University. Judith Samuel will contact members regarding directions and any other details. It was decided that following the meeting, attendees who have the time, will visit the Chumash Interpretive Center in Thousand Oaks.


Submitted by Susan Shapiro, DIAL-South Secretary, 2006-2007