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Strategic Planning for Diversity

The Office for Diversity is pleased to provide an ever-growing collection of resources to help you plan for diversity. If you have materials and resources to share with your fellow librarians and feel they should appear on this page, please email your suggestions to diversity@ala.org!

Building a Diversity Plan

Creating a Diversity Plan for the library is one of the most important actions we can take to ensure that diversity and inclusion become integral to the way our institutions function, both internally and externally. When crafting a resonant and viable Diversity Plan it is critically important that buy-in exists at all levels of the library. From the library director to the front-line library worker, every staff member must be involved, in some way, in the development and management of the Diversity Plan if it is to be a truly kinetic and meaningful document. Whether a Diversity Committee appointed by the library director, or a portion of the annual library staff inservice devoted to review, personnel time should be formally allocated for the ongoing assessment and evaluation of Diversity Plan performance. Also necessary is a mechanism for reporting back to library leadership and for holding staff members at every level accountable for both successes and breaches.

Certainly the most expedient way to get started crafting the Diversity Plan after completing the organizational scan is to review the plans of other institutions both within and outside the field. It may be that no one plan meets all of your institutional needs, thus making it necessary to borrow various approaches from documents. Undoubtedly as important as reviewing the various types of Diversity Plans available, is making contact with relevant staff members at libraries and other institutions to inquire about both crafting and living with the plan. There are many Diversity Plans that look impressive on paper but fail flatly during implementation. To ensure the success of your library's Diversity Plan do seek the direct involvement of library leadership; create opportunities for contribution and feedback from all staff members; build in mechanisms for periodic assessment, evaluation, and adjustment; and finally, ensure accountability through formal training opportunities and performance reviews.

Following are some Diversity Plans for review:

• Diversity Action & Inclusion Plan, American Library Assoiation
• Diversity Action Plan, Rare Books & Manuscripts Section of the Association of College & Research Libraries
• Diversity Plan, Ohio Library Council
• Diversity Reports & Communiques, University of Arizona
• Diversity Team 3-Year Plan and Annual Reports, Fletcher Library Arizona State University 
• Diversity Plan, University of Louisville
• Diversity Plan, Ocean County (NJ) Library

You may also want to take advantage of these readings and resources:

• Rating Library & Institutional Priorities in Managing Diversity 
  Results of a Preliminary Study by Janice Simmons-Welburn, Director, Human Resources and Processing Services, University of Iowa Libraries
• Diversity Climate Surveys: Worth the Effort 
  By Pat Disterhoft, associate professor of education; Debbie Giunta, director, Center for Cultural Fluency; and Arianne Walker, director, Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, all of Mount St. Mary’s College, Los Angeles, California.
• ProMosaic™ II - The Diversity/Inclusion Assessment Tool

Developing Cultural Competencies & Standards

Diversity Toolkits

• The Necessary Measure (PPT)
  Exploring Opportunities for Staff Diversity at the University of Wisconsin Libraries presented by the ALA Office for Diversity, April 2005.

Trainers