Surveying Racial Equity in Libraries

In 2019 The ALA Racial Equity Task Force was formed and charged with developing a framework for libraries to implement. As part of this goal, a wide-reaching survey was designed and analyzed by a small research team in 2020. The goal of the study was to assess public and academic libraries racial equity efforts, employees’ perception of those efforts as well as their experiences with racial equity and inequity within their library. Utilizing an online survey, the data was used to identify areas of improvement in regard to racial equity efforts in public and academic libraries and seeks to answer the question: How are libraries moving towards transformation and justice in regard to racial equity? While the overwhelming majority of the 717 participants believe their institutions have a responsibility to address racial equity, the data also reveals that our practices are not aligned with our values. In this session, Caragher and Bryant will discuss the disaggregated results of the survey by racial identity, specific to job security, promotion, and retention. We invite the audience to discuss the blind spots in racial equity work in academic and public libraries