Title
Incorporating Discussions of Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias into Library Instruction Sessions
Location
Breakout room 2
Start Date
10-8-2018 1:30 PM
End Date
10-8-2018 2:15 PM
Description
Building on our students’ growing awareness of civil unrest in the United States, we incorporated discussions of historical and archival bias in our primary resource literacy sessions. These discussions of bias can help students contextualize and understand our current archival holdings and create greater transparency for our collecting practices regarding underserved populations. In our instruction sessions, students conduct a document analysis followed by a discussion of racism, sexism and other types of prejudice that may influence the creation of documents that represent certain perspectives while excluding others. We will explore our collaboration with the course instructor of the Communication class titled “Rhetoric of Black America” and our process of developing questions to facilitate a discussion of systemic racism in archival collections.
Short bio of the presenter(s)
Laura Cleary has worked as the Instruction and Outreach Coordinator since 2011.
Cecelia Vetter is a graduate student at the University of Maryland and will graduate with her MLIS in May 2018.
Incorporating Discussions of Systemic Racism and Implicit Bias into Library Instruction Sessions
Breakout room 2
Building on our students’ growing awareness of civil unrest in the United States, we incorporated discussions of historical and archival bias in our primary resource literacy sessions. These discussions of bias can help students contextualize and understand our current archival holdings and create greater transparency for our collecting practices regarding underserved populations. In our instruction sessions, students conduct a document analysis followed by a discussion of racism, sexism and other types of prejudice that may influence the creation of documents that represent certain perspectives while excluding others. We will explore our collaboration with the course instructor of the Communication class titled “Rhetoric of Black America” and our process of developing questions to facilitate a discussion of systemic racism in archival collections.