INTRO
I’m going to talk to you about a project our hospital library participated in to work with our institution’s Diversity & Inclusion Council to bring D&I programing and resources to our campus.
The goal of this project was to build a partnership between our hospital library and the institution to enhance diversity-related educational opportunities and resources for our communities. In 2016, employees of National Jewish Health founded a Diversity and Inclusion Council in order to promote a climate of respect, understanding and value for members of the NJH community. The council’s objectives include providing D&I trainings and educational opportunities. I joined in 2017 and have been volunteering as the Education subcommittee chair for this time. The Council is entirely volunteer based at this point, and receives occasional financial support from the administration, though we have not been given a formal budget. Working within these constraints, we’ve been able to host speakers on a variety of topics who are willing to donate their time or who will speak for a small honorarium. I sought funding opportunities that might allow us to broaden our capacity for this.
In 2019 I applied for a grant through the NNLM MidContinental Region, who has a Diverse Populations & Program Inclusion Award. The grant is designed to support partnerships between health sciences libraries and community organizations to promote D&I initiatives, so the scope of our project was a little outside the defined parameters, but in the end it was approved and we were awarded $2,500. Our funding period was July 2019 to March 2020.
Funding from this grant supported two related goal: 1) to bring one or more speakers to our campus to provide educational sessions on diversity and inclusion topics, and 2) the launch of a dedicated D&I print collection to be housed in the medical library.
Our first grant‐sponsored event was a workshop called “Cultural Humility: amplifying our missing voices.” It was hosted by Jamie Laurie and Stephen Brackett, the lead emcees of the Flobots, a Denver‐based alternative hip‐hop band known for their platinum single, “Handlebars,” and for their commitment to grassroots social change. We worked with them to create an immersive workshop, something that had not been offered before here. They invited participants to look at how people experience diversity, equity, and intersectionality and examined ways in which personal stories, collective voice, and disciplined humility can become tools for building community.
These are a few photos from the event, where participants worked in groups on a “social justice party” activity. A final activity activity involved group singing, ending with everyone singing ”Lean On Me” together. While there was a lot of general apprehension about singing in public, this turned out to be a very powerful activity, unlocking surprising emotions amongst the crowd.
For our next speaker, we collaborated with the institution’s Clinical and Translational Research Section to co‐sponsor a speaker in January. Dr. Susanna McColley spoke to the institution about how health care systems and other risk factors create disparities in outcomes for CF patients, illuminating systemic factors that create different health outcomes for people of different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The grant paid for part of her honorarium, allowing the D&I Council to use our branding on publicity for the talk and for her to be introduced by one of the council members. In addition to the presentation, Dr. McColley met with the D&I Council for an hour to discuss diversity and equity challenges in hospitals and how we might best allocate our time and resources.
For the D&I book collection, the librarians, including the Director, worked together to craft a definition of the collection and develop collection standards to use going forward. A list of 19 seed titles was developed that met the scope of the collection, nonfiction books that relate issues of diversity and inclusion to health and well‐being, or nonfiction books that are considered fundamental for understanding constructs around diversity and bias. To find these titles, I consulted a lot of recommended lists, and looked at other libraries’ similar collections. I sent out queries within several MLA caucuses and help and suggestions came from from there, too. Knowing we couldn’t be exhaustive at this point, the goal of this seed collection was to represent several important areas.
Since this would be a new type of collection for our library, we knew we would have trouble getting patrons through our doors to access the books. To help remedy this, the library purchased a book cart, and we made the collection mobile and created an on‐the‐go checkout so we could be present at key events and get the books into people’s hands when they were most invested.
Looking at our outcomes, for the Cultural Humility workshop, we had 66 attendees and 53 of those filled out evaluations. Of those 53, 52.8% were first time attendees at a D&I sponsored event. 96.2 % of respondents rated the program as good or excellent and 88.7% said they were likely or very likely to apply something they learned from the program to their lives.
Using a 0‐100 scale, we asked participants to rate their knowledge on three key learning objectives before and after the event: their ability to identify the differences between diversity, inclusion, and equity; their awareness of ways to question their own cultural norms to build community; and their ability to define the term “power sharing.” These bars represent the mean score, where the participants ranked their knowledge before the event. For each question there was a perceived increase of knowledge across each learning objective.
For Dr. McColley’s talk we had 40 attendees and collected 27 completed evaluations. Of those 27, 63% were first time attendees to a D&I event. 100% of respondents ranked the program as good or excellent, and 85.2% said they were likely or very likely to apply something they learned from the program to their lives.
Using the same 0‐100 scale, we asked participants to rate their knowledge on these learning objectives before and after the event: understanding of hos social
determinants of health affect disease; awareness of ways to reduce disparities in health care at the individual and institutional level, and awareness of how major advances in CF care also increase disparities. Again, the mean score for each of these increased.
The print collection for our library is very small. Print circulation numbers for our non‐ consumer‐health titles average about 1/month. The D&I collection was completely new to our library’s scope, so we weren’t sure how well it would take as it required completely different marketing and management. The first numbers were pretty sluggish; between the print collection launch date of November 1st and the end of May, 6 books had been checked out by 9 patrons. However, with the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd at the end of May, and with the ensuing surge of protests and calls to action there was a renewed interest in the collection. The library sent out an email in solidarity and let employees know which books we had available, including new ones that had been recently added. The next wave of checkouts almost tripled our previous circulation in just a couple weeks.
We continued to add even more books. In August, many employees returned to campus, and sent out another email detailing the expansion of the collection. The response to this email was quite strong, and we had 22 circs by the end of the month.
It remains to be seen whether this momentum will continue, but it seems likely we will need to be responsive to community interests and will need to market the collection in new and persistent ways.
As far as challenges go, as mentioned the marketing and promoting of the print collection has required effort. The launch of the collection was met with enthusiasm and praise, but this did not always translate to patrons actually checking out books. Galvanizing events that ignite interest in the books is positive for the spreading of knowledge, but might not result in sustained and ongoing interest. Because the print circulation is typically low at the library anyway, more efforts may need to be made to get the word out about the collection and to encourage engagement.
The second challenge was the speaker fees, which were initially higher than we were able to pay. We were lucky that the workshop leaders worked with us and graciously charged a reduced rate in order to be able to work within the parameters of the grant. Dr. McColley’s major expenses were covered by the Clinical and Translational Research Section, with the grant contributing a portion of her honorarium. Overall, while we were able to do these programs successfully, a realistic budget will be needed to pay people equitably for their time and expertise.
Finally, it is unclear whether the events and resources are reaching those who may benefit from them the most. One criticism we heard in evaluations was that senior
level executives were underrepresented as participants in these events. As the ones that have the most power to enact policy and structural change, we may look at how to encourage participation from those areas.
The D&I Council will continue to invite speakers, though with no set budget there will be limitations on who will be willing to do these talks. There is a greater chance that the speakers will be in a traditional format and from organizations where payment or standard honorarium are not required. The Education Subcommittee is researching additional grants to apply for, potentially from private funding sources. It should be noted that the eventual goal of the D&I Council is to operate with an institutional budget. While grant money will be a way forward for now as a mechanism to show proof of concept and ability to spend wisely, it is ultimately beyond the capacity of the volunteers to seek ongoing grant support for an extended period of time. It is unfortunate, but if the institution is unwilling to invest in these types of programs, there will be limited ability to keep them going with innovative content.
The library has thrown support behind the D&I print collection and has pledged to continue to grow it with money from the library budget.
We are looking into different types of things the library could offer to patrons to encourage engagement with D&I content. Prior to the pandemic, we were in line to check out a VR kit from the Colorado State Library that has modules focused on
diversity and inclusion areas. Would something like this have a unique appeal to patrons?
Overall, this project demonstrated that there is an interest and appetite for continued learning around diversity and inclusion issues throughout the institution.
Establishing a partnership between the library and the efforts of the council has benefited both parties and the institution overall. While the library has always had a general mission towards diversity and equality, focusing the efforts on building the D&I collection encouraged the library to expand its consumer health collection to include new titles and topics brought to the forefront during research for the collection. The council was able to benefit from the library’s goal of providing
resources and education to the campus and showcased the library as a strong partner in these efforts.
Thank you for the NNLM MidContinental Region for making this possible.
Feel free to email any questions and I will try to respond quickly.
