Recruitment and retention project team: Opportunities and outcomes

Abstract

The Creative Genius o f Community Sherman Alexie, award-winning author, poet, screenwriter, and Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian from Washington state, celebrates the collaborative relationship of the community, the historical record, and the storyteller. His books, poetry, and films consistently tell the story that needs to be told-that all communities are enriched through the sharing of our lives. The library, as a house of stories preserving the past, providing a home for the present, and forging partnerships with the community, is essential to our democratic society.

Retaining academic librarians: by chance or by design?

“…Other suggestions have included mentoring junior academic librarians in scholarship or the tenure process (Kuyper-Rushing, 2001;Lee, 2005;Farmer et al, 2009), creating orientation plans for new librarians (DiMarco, 2005), and encouraging participation in leadership institutes (Maurer and Coccaro, 2003). In addition, several articles have discussed programs aimed at retaining minority librarians, some of which may be mined for retention ideas that target all staff (for example, Howland, 1999;Acree et al, 2001;Alire, 2001;Trejo and Norlin, 2001). Wilder (1999) has suggested the most obvious incentive -raising salaries -but Hardesty (2002) argues that, as academic librarianship suffers the same budgetary pressures as the rest of academia, libraries are unlikely to be able to increase pay in the foreseeable future and so should concentrate on other factors that encourage employee loyalty.…”

Stop, reflect, replace: Renovating our foundation for inclusive participation

“…A s in many academic libraries all over the country, attracting and retaining people of color has been a continuous, uphill battle." 1 "It is a troubling reality that our current librarian ranks do not represent the communities served by libraries." 2 Sadly, both of these statements, from 2001 and 2003, still hold true today.…”