Best of Core Forum: Cultivating Equitable Hiring Practices for Academic Librarians; Bridging Perspectives of Applicants and Hiring Committees
Description: After experiencing inconsistent search committee processes at our university libraries, with little opportunity for training, we recognized that these inconsistencies created equity issues, barriers to attracting diverse candidates, and problematic search practices. Inspired by faculty-driven initiatives, we created a hiring guide that outlines best practices for search committees and how these practices can be consistently applied. We use these practices to aid the library’s efforts to attract excellent and diverse applicants, conduct fair and equitable candidate evaluations, and hire and retain well-qualified staff. To further the implementation of these practices, we aim to present highlights from the guide to every search committee in order to stress the importance of these processes. During this session, attendees will learn about the content of our hiring guide and search committee presentation, discuss obstacles to the consistent application of equitable practices, and the challenges to changing workplace culture. We will also discuss the importance of thoughtful, purposeful, and collaborative onboarding practices once the candidate is hired. With this work, we strive to create a template to guide search committees through the process of recruiting, selecting, and retaining outstanding candidates for positions, while drawing particular attention to issues of equity and inclusion.
This webinar was previously presented in-person as a session at the 2023 Core Forum. We are hosting this webinar, with the session adapted and presented live as a virtual event, to extend its reach.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:
- Identify the need for equitable and consistent practices for library search committees;
- Differentiate between hiring practices that improve or hinder equitable processes; and
- Develop methods to create hiring and onboarding materials for their organization.
Potential job seekers will be able to identify when problems they encounter in the recruitment process are a result of systemic issues rather than application deficiencies in order to maintain confidence in their value, contributions, and worth despite roadblocks in the process.
Who Should Attend: Managers, employers, and job seekers.
Presenters:
Erica R. Lopez is a Teaching & Learning Librarian at the University of Houston Libraries. Erica has published and presented on inequitable practices in academic librarian hiring, the childcare-conference conundrum in academic librarianship, and science information literacy. Erica’s most recent conference presentations include Core Forum, the Connecticut Academic Library Conference, and the Texas Library Association District 8 conference.
Carolina Hernandez is a Student Success Librarian at the University of Houston Libraries. Her current research interests include critical information literacy, inclusive pedagogy, and inequitable hiring practices in librarianship, which she has presented on most recently at Core Forum and ACRL. She received her MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Kathryn Sullivan works as Head of Reference & Instruction at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). In this role, she oversees research support services, library instruction, and the subject librarian program. She holds an MLS from the iSchool at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Joanna Gadsby works as the Instruction Coordinator and a Reference & Instruction Librarian at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She holds an M.Ed. from Loyola University Maryland and an MLIS from University of Maryland, and she has been working in education for twenty-five years. Her research interests include relational practice, critical and constructivist pedagogies, gendered labor in librarianship, and inequitable hiring practices in libraries.
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