Central Library exterior

Note: From Central Library [photograph of the Central Library building in Multnomah County], n.d., Multnomah County Library. https://multcolib.org/hours-and-locations/central-library

One of the resources included in this week’s module that I enjoyed was the video created by the Multnomah County Library titled: “Creating conditions for equity to flourish.” The video began with an acknowledgement by the director of libraries of the Multnomah County Library system, Bailey Oehlke, that Portland Oregon is one of the whitest cities in America, and has had a history of excluding many people based on racial and ethnic differences. I believe before any library can establish hyperlinked communities they need to acknowledge the historical barriers to entry that many of their patrons have had to face when accessing library resources. 

An important step the Multnomah County Library System took was to hire Sonja Ervin as their Equity and Inclusion manager. A powerful statement she made was, “we very often hear we need to diversify which in my opinion is the worst thing we can do” (American Library Association, 2019). Her justification was that when you bring diverse people into an organization and system that is not inclusive or equitable you run the risk of having unhappy staff and people quitting. One way they have combated this is by allowing staff members to establish internal groups like the Black Cultural Library Advocates (BCLA) which creates a space for patrons and staff to do outreach and programming together. They also established the “We Speak Your Language” team where they hired over 80 bilingual staff members to better serve their immigrant and refugee communities across all their library locations. As their director of Neighborhood Libraries, Rita Jimenez, expressed, this team was not only an asset to the library through their passions, skills, and knowledge but also for their commitment to serving their communities (American Library Association, 2019). Being the son of immigrant parents and being bilingual, I would really be interested in working with a team like this or establishing these types of resources in the institutions I work with in the future. 

References:

American Library Association (2019, June 17). Multnomah County Library: Creating conditions for equity to flourish. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKGlxh-zc0Y&t=352s