Libraries Address Inequities - Speakers
Keynote Speaker: Felton Thomas, Jr. - Cleveland Public Library - felton.thomas@cpl.org
Session Time: 10:00 am - 10:45 am CDT
Session Title: Opening Keynote - Libraries: Community Deficit Fighters
Session Description: Before libraries can successfully combat the many deficits challenging their communities, they should be able to identify their strengths, challenges and ability to partner. This training will focus on three critical areas where libraries can fortify their staff and their organizations’ culture and face inequities challenging their communities.
- Identify community deficits and evaluating library assets and community partners to assist community efforts.
- Examining how library directors can encourage emergent leaders within their organization to take on surfacing leadership deficits.
- Addressing the need for healthy leaders to create healthy organizations.
Speaker Bio: Felton Thomas, Jr. has served as Executive Director of Cleveland Public Library (CPL) since January, 2009.
As Director of Cleveland Public Library, Thomas has launched initiatives aimed at addressing community needs in the areas of access to technology, education, and economic development.
Director Thomas’ awards and accomplishments include being named a “Mover and Shaker” by the Library Journal and being named a White House Champion of Change for Making in 2016. Nationally, in 2015, Felton was elected as President-Elect of the Public Library Association (PLA), served as President in 2016. Felton is currently the Vice Chair of the Digital Public Library of America. He also serves as a trustee on the boards of FRONT International, University Circle Inc., Cleveland Museum of Art and United Way of Greater Cleveland.
Felton lives in Shaker Heights with his wife and has two college-aged daughters. He is an accomplished musician and has become a devoted Cleveland sports fan since his arrival on the shores of Lake Erie.
Speaker: Erin Kelly - Enoch Pratt Free Library - ekelly@prattlibrary.org
Session Time: 11:00 pm - 11:45 am CDT
Session Title: Improving Library Accessibility
Session Description: Learn how to improve the library's accessibility to customers with disabilities. Discuss potential barriers to access-including using the library’s resources, navigating the library's physical and digital spaces, and communicating with staff-and review best practices for providing high quality customer service to all. Discover resources that will help staff expand their knowledge and promote accessibility in library spaces.
One facet of this session is to give participants in any library role specific ideas that they can take back to improve accessibility right away. Another is to give ideas for more long-term projects like making your library website accessible, addressing issues with the library's physical space, etc.
Speaker Bio: Erin Kelly is an Accessibility Coordinator, with a focus on accessibility and reasonable accommodations for library patrons, ensuring compliance with ADA guidelines, training for staff, and more. She has worked at Pratt since 2001, previously working as a librarian in the Information Services and Fiction/Humanities Departments. She has taught classes about service to patrons with disabilities for library staff statewide and has served as an accessibility resource at Pratt since 2012. She is passionate about ensuring excellent service for all library patrons!
Speaker: Autumn Brown - Oklahoma State University - autumn.brown@okstate.edu
Speaker: Bailey Hoffner - Oklahoma State University - bailey.hoffner@okstate.edu
Speaker: Tuesdae Pelt-Willis - University of Oklahoma - tuesdae.d.peltwillis-1@ou.edu
Session Time: 11:00 pm - 11:45 am CDT
Session Title: The Freedom Center Community Archive: A Post-Custodial Example of Community-Owned Service Work
Session Description: What role do publicly-funded libraries have to play in the creation, use, and future success of independent community archives, especially those that serve BIPOC populations? How might the service aspect of our missions provide a foundation for expanding archival and oral history work outside the walls of the library? How can we do this work in a way that is not just community-led, but community-owned? How do we ensure sustainability is built into post-custodial work?
The creation of the Freedom Center Community Archive, as part of the larger Clara Luper Civil Rights Center, is one example of such community-owned service work that began, and continues to develop, through collaborative partnerships with both the University of Oklahoma Libraries and Oklahoma State University Library. In this session, we’ll discuss the above questions, how to develop partnerships with independent community groups, and explore arguments for why libraries’ commitments to service and DEI not only allow for this kind of work, but require it.
Speaker Bio: Autumn Brown earned her Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education from Oklahoma State University where she is a research professional in the Edmon Low Library with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program. Her dissertation was an educational biography of teacher activist Clara Luper (1923-2011) and Luper’s work with Oklahoma City’s NAACP Youth Council leading our nation’s first sit-in movement–preceding Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Woolworth sit-ins. Dr. Brown uses oral history methodology to collect and preserve stories about Oklahoma City’s Civil Rights Movement, (re)presenting Oklahoma City as a radically activist state. Autumn has published book chapters on Black women and sexuality, racial dimensions of life writing, and the history of all-Black schools in Oklahoma City, and journal articles on the policing of the Black woman body and the 2018 Oklahoma City teacher walkout. Autumn served as IMLS Research Scholar on the Eddie Faye Gates Tulsa Race Massacre Collection at Gilcrease Museum from 2021-2022. She was also the 2022-2023 Duane H. King Postdoctoral Fellow at the Helmerich Center for American Research at Gilcrease Museum/University of Tulsa. Dr. Brown is also part of the inaugural cohort of John Robert Lewis Fellows and Scholars with the Faith & Politics Institute in Washington, D.C. Autumn runs her own research consulting business named Winona Jewel Research Consulting, LLC, serves on the Board of Directors for BLAC, inc. (Black Liberated Arts Center), and manages the Clara Luper Freedom Archive in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Speaker Bio: Bailey Hoffner is the Metadata Librarian for Digital Resources and Discovery Services at Oklahoma State's Edmon Low Library. In her own research and creative work, she is interested in investigating ways in which metadata and descriptive practices have the power to uphold or dismantle the structural racism, sexism, able-ism, and discrimination inherent in their creation and use, with a particular interest in the representation of Autistic experience in libraries and library metadata.
She was a founding member of the University of Oklahoma Libraries' Learning and Working Group on Metadata Justice and her background is in archival processing and metadata.
From late 2020 to early 2023, she worked with Christina Beatty of the Freedom Center of Oklahoma City and with her employer at the time, the University of Oklahoma, to develop a post-custodial partnership, resulting in the initial processing of the Freedom Center Community Archive, thanks in part to an Oklahoma Heritage Preservation Grant from the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Speaker Bio: Tuesdae Pelt-Willis, 3rd Year Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department at the University of Oklahoma. Her focus is on African American History and Women and Gender Studies. She received her BA in History at the University of Central Oklahoma. She earned a Masters’s in American History, specializing in African American History and Women and Gender at the University of Central Oklahoma. Her Master’s Thesis, “The Moment We Realized: Triple Consciousness and the Intersectionality of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in 20th and 21st Century African America Women,” explored double consciousness theory by W.E.B DuBois with an added element of gender and sexuality. She is currently working with the Clara Luper Freedom Center archives. She plans to utilize research regarding Ms. Luper, The NAACP Youth Council’s Freedom Center in Oklahoma, and Oklahoma’s grassroots activism in her doctoral dissertation. In addition to historical work, Tuesdae has worked in LGBTQIA+ centers and archival collections and teaches community college.
Speaker: Maria Cahill - University of Kentucky - maria.cahill@uky.edu
Speaker: Denise Adkins - University of Missouri - adkinsde@missouri.edu
Speaker: Bobbie Sartin Long - Emporia State University - blong6@emporia.edu
Session Time: 11:00 pm - 11:45 pm CDT
Session Title: Engaging Families of Young Children with Disabilities: Directors' Perspectives (session will not be recorded)
Session Description: For all children, the quality of learning environments and interactions in the first years of life set the stage for school success and have lasting impacts on mental and physical health and wellbeing across the lifespan (Wong, Odom, Hume, Cox, Fettig, et al, 2014; Reynolds et al., 2011). However, the importance of quality early learning experiences is amplified for children with disabilities and/or developmental delays who in addition to needing access to mainstream child-focused programs and services promoting learning, play, participation, peer interaction and friendships-experiences that are essential for all children-also require targeted intervention services. While there is some evidence that libraries are making efforts to serve young children with special needs, it is not clear how effective nor widespread those efforts are, nor what specific strategies are ideal for overcoming barriers.
Through the multi-state Services for Children of All Abilities in Libraries: An Exploration (SCALE) Research in Service to Practice project, we conducted interviews with directors in libraries large and small in rural, suburban, and urban communities. This presentation focuses on the strategies those directors enact that lead to a culture of inclusion and support librarians in their efforts to serve families of children with disabilities.
Speaker Bio: Maria Cahill is a Professor at the University of Kentucky. Her teaching and scholarship focus on library services for children.
Speaker Bio: Denise Adkins is a Professor at the University of Missouri who has expertise in public libraries, library services to children, and library outreach to under-served populations.
Speaker Bio: Bobbie Sartin Long is an Assistant Professor at Emporia State University. She has expertise in public library children's programming and has actively engaged in deaf and hard of hearing early literacy research.
Speaker: Kirsten Vega - California Humanities - kvega@calhum.org
Session Time: 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm CDT
Session Title: Designing Library Programs that Engage Immigrants
Session Description: How can libraries best welcome immigrants to our communities? Many librarians want to work with immigrants, but may not know how to begin. In this session, we will share best practices and actionable ideas developed during recent "experiments" conducted by California public librarians and library staff members who have participated in Library Innovation Lab: Exploring New Ways of Engaging Immigrant Communities through Public Humanities Programming.
Speaker: Sierra Walker - Enoch Pratt Free Library - swalker@prattlibrary.org
Speaker: Emily Rosen - Enoch Pratt Free Library - erosen@prattlibrary.org
Speaker: Erin Kelly - Enoch Pratt Free Library - ekelly@prattlibrary.org
Session Time: 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm CDT
Session Title: Equitable Library Programs: Empowering Communities Through Inclusivity and Access
Session Description: In recent years, libraries have increasingly recognized the importance of equity and inclusivity in their programs and services. However, the journey towards achieving truly equitable library programs is an ongoing and dynamic process. This session aims to explore innovative strategies Enoch Pratt Free Library and Maryland State Library Resource Center are using to advance equity internally and externally. The Office of Equity and Fair Practice's team will share ideas for identifying inequities in your community and best practices for developing and implementing library programs that prioritize equity, inclusivity, and accessibility. By examining case studies, sharing success stories, and discussing practical approaches, this session will empower attendees to create meaningful and impactful programs that meet the diverse needs of their communities.
Speaker Bio: Sierra Walker is a Baltimore native, philanthropist, author and servant leader of her community. She currently serves as a Reconnection Navigator through the Office of Equity and Fair Practice at Enoch Pratt Free Library. Through this initiative, she is helping those affected by incarceration successful reentry and creating programs that cause recidivism prevention. Sierra understands the struggle of the underserved. In her life, she has had to overcome many obstacles in her life including domestic violence, sexual assault, ACE's, witnessed drug abuse and seasons of prolonged grief. Because of this, she's dedicated her life to serving others, helping them achieve the best version of themselves holistically. She is the founder of Dana's Daughters Inc, a non profit organization that focuses on holistic healing from trauma for adolescent girls and women ages 12 and up. Sierra attributes her success to her Christian faith, her education at Baltimore City College High School, University of Maryland Global Campus and her three amazing children, Daniel, Gabrielle and Genesis. She believes strongly in this simple philosophy: you can either be impacted by life or make an impact. The choice is yours.
Speaker Bio: Erin Kelly is an Accessibility Coordinator, with a focus on accessibility and reasonable accommodations for library patrons, ensuring compliance with ADA guidelines, training for staff, and more. She has worked at Pratt since 2001, previously working as a librarian in the Information Services and Fiction/Humanities Departments. She has taught classes about service to patrons with disabilities for library staff statewide and has served as an accessibility resource at Pratt since 2012. She is passionate about ensuring excellent service for all library patrons!
Speaker Bio: Through her career in customer service, retail, and restaurant management, Emily obtains valuable organizational and administrative skills. Her coordinator duties include: Leading volunteers and interns, Outreach duties to engage with local community Receiving and tracking food donations, and Maintaining food inventory Data entry/record keeping.
Speaker: Hillary Theyer - Monterey Free County Libraries - theyerha@co.monterey.ca.us
Session Time: 1:00 pm - 1:45 pm CDT
Session Title: Accessibility and Inclusion Without Connectivity
Session Description: While many agencies look to broadband as a robust tool for advancing equity and including more in public libraries, it is not the only way. Learn two concrete ways Monterey County Free Libraries has used to advance equity, accessibility, and inclusion for those without home connectivity or devices: postal mail and telephone.
Speaker: Kelly Williams - Texas A&M University-Central Texas - k.williams@tamuct.edu
Speaker: Margaret Dawson - Texas A&M University-Central Texas - madawson@tamuct.edu
Speaker: Michelle Shea - Texas A&M University-Central Texas - m.shea@tamuct.edu
Speaker: Victoria Eastes - Texas A&M University-Central Texas - veastes@tamuct.edu
Speaker: Dawndrea Casey - Texas A&M University-Central Texas - dawndrea.casey@tamuct.edu
Session Time: 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm CDT
Session Title: Universal Design: Accessible Learning Strategies and Solutions
Session Description: Universal Design (UD) ensures everyone benefits from changes made in educational settings. The main facets surrounding UD are to design and composition of an environment so that it may be accessed, understood, and used to the greatest possible extent, most independently and naturally possible, in the broadest possible range of situations, and without the need for adaptation, modification, assistive devices or specialized solutions, by any persons of any age or size or having any particular physical, sensory, mental health or intellectual ability or disability (2005 Disability Act of Ireland). UD can be applied to physical spaces and online and virtual learning.
Attendees will learn how the Universal Design process creates inclusive environments where everybody can have a positive experience. We will demonstrate how Universal Design can enhance library physical and online environments and improve outreach and instruction. Participants will learn how to apply the 7 UD principles in their libraries.
Speaker Bio: Kelly Williams has a Master of Science in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University-Central Texas and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Texas. She’s spent most of her library career working in the technical services departments of academic libraries but recently made a change to reference and instruction. She is currently a Reference and Instruction librarian at Texas A&M University-Central Texas.
Speaker Bio: Michelle Shea, MLS, M.Ed., is an Education Librarian at Texas A&M University- Central Texas. She creates presentations and tutorials for course integration, collaborates with faculty on committees, and promotes student-centered services. Her passion is instruction, curriculum planning, and campus outreach.
Speaker Bio: Margaret Dawson has spent 21 years working in academic and joint-use libraries. She has a Master of Arts in English and a Master of Library Science from Texas Woman’s University. From 2014 to 2021, she worked at Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, Texas as an Outreach and Instruction Librarian, and has developed programs for university students, their children, and the general public. She has presented and published on the topics of instruction and outreach.
Speaker Bio: Victoria Eastes, MLS, MA, is the University Archivist at Texas A&M University-Central Texas. She currently manages collections for the university’s archives and the Central Texas Historical Archive, works with the Graduate School as the Thesis Office liaison, teaches a course on archives, and serves as the reference librarian and subject liaison for history and political science. Her professional interests include improving accessibility for digital archives, preservation and conservation techniques, emergency preparedness for cultural institutions, and copyright law as it relates to archival materials.
Speaker Bio: Dawndrea Casey is working towards a bachelor's degree in history at The University of Maryland and plans to pursue a master's degree with the University of North Texas. She is a military veteran who recently entered the library field. She is currently a library and technology specialist at Texas A&M University-Central Texas.
Speaker: John Sandstrom - New Mexico State University - jsand713@nmsu.edu
Session Time: 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm CDT
Session Title: It Isn't A Competition: Addressing Inequity in an Equitable Way
Session Description: When libraries face addressing institutional inequity, it can often devolve into a competition with several groups claiming to experience more inequity than the others. Librarians often get caught in the middle of these competitions without knowing how to handle them. In this presentation, Dr. John Sandstrom will discuss his lived experience in working to overcome these competitions. He will also share some of the unexpected pitfalls to beware of when these competitions come to the library.
Speaker: Nicole Murph - Loyola Marymount University - nicole.murph@lmu.edu
Speaker: Raymundo Andrade - Loyola Marymount University - Raymundo.Andrade@lmu.edu
Session Time: 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm CDT
Session Title: Who is Angela Davis?: Building Relationships Through a Library Exhibition
Session Description: Angela Davis (1944 - ) is a scholar, author, activist, and a Black feminist philosopher. In preparation of Angela Davis' visit to Loyola Marymount University (LMU) on January 19, 2023, librarians Nicole Murph (Reference & Instruction Librarian) and Ray Andrade (Outreach Student Engagement Librarian) collaborated to co-curate and promote a high-impact multimedia library exhibition, "Who is Angela Davis?". The librarians recognized that not many students as well as some of the faculty and staff, never heard of Angela Davis or knew little about her. Murph and Andrade successfully received feedback and support from LMU's Black Faculty and Staff Association (BFSA), a faculty and staff affinity group, for the library to host the exhibition. The purpose of the exhibition was to educate the community, especially a predominantly white campus community, about who Angela Davis is. The exhibit included large portraits of Davis throughout the years, a biography, political posters, several computer monitors with video footage of documentaries and interviews, and a large poster featuring a QR code connecting to a "Who is Angela Davis?" LibGuide. The LibGuide supplemented the exhibition by giving faculty, staff, students, and the public an opportunity to explore library related materials about Davis and her work as a scholar and an abolitionist. The exhibition opened January 13 and was originally planned to stay up until the end of Black History Month. Due to the demand, the exhibition dates were extended towards the end of March. Faculty and staff members of BFSA visited the library to view the exhibition. Black faculty also brought their classes in which over 100 students learned about Davis and discovered a wide variety of library resources through the LibGuide. The exhibition also provided space for faculty and staff who are new to the university to meet with the librarians and learn further about resources and support the library can provide them for their research.