From Host to Home: Reflections on Institutional Readiness

The creation of library residency programs, intended to diversify the library profession, has increased significantly over the last two years; for example, institutional membership in the ACRL Diversity Alliance grew from 36 to 53 from 20171 to 2019.2 As Dr. Alston notes in his research, “Diversity residency programs have become a popular way for academic libraries to demonstrate a commitment to diversity initiatives and to recruit and retain practitioners of color.”3 However, many host institutions and librarians rarely make significant efforts to deconstruct whiteness within themselves and at the organizational level. This chapter is a reflective case study of the University of Denver Libraries and its first Residency program intended to help other libraries view their organization’s readiness through the lens of racialized organizational theory. We posit that libraries are racialized organizations and must admit to and grapple with this reality. The authors will draw upon recent work in organizational studies, specifically, Victor Ray’s Theory of Racialized Organizations which can inform librarians as they consider beginning or continuing residency programs. We will analyze how certain aspects of libraries, at both the micro and macro level, need to be transformed to be conducive to successful residency programs. As researchers’ our beliefs, values systems, and moral stances are fundamentally present and inseparable from the research process. Therefore, it is our ethical duty to intentionally and mindfully make our readers’ aware of our racial identities and backgrounds to be fully transparent about how we have approached our experiences with diversity residencies within academic libraries through the following positionality statements