The
Annual Member Meeting (virtual)
happened May 19, 2023!
We shared what’s happening at the Network, and we arranged for a talk we think you’re really going to like.
After a bit of business, including the announcement of who in our region earned the award for Excellence in Library Service (big congratulations to Morgan Bond of SUNY Oswego), we’ll hear from the authors of a new ALA special report on Cultural Humility.
Cultural humility is an approach to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) efforts in libraries that helps us recognize and redress structural issues and power differentials that interfere with providing good library service to all.
Beginning with critical self-reflection, compassion, and appreciation, cultural humility offers a way to navigate the spontaneous interpersonal interactions in libraries, whether between our patrons and our staff or staff members with one another, and to develop and review institutional practices, policies, and services. Cultural humility can serve as both a lens to understand and a practice to improve institutional culture.
In this talk, presenters will define and explore the concept of cultural humility and how to begin, develop, and/or continue a practice of cultural humility in our working lives. We find cultural humility to be a transformative approach to librarianship, both for individuals who commit to practicing it and to the library services they provide.
PRESENTERS:
 |
Sarah R. Kostelecky (Zuni Pueblo) is the Director of Digital Initiatives and Scholarly Communication at the University of New Mexico Libraries. She earned her Master’s in Library Science from the University of Arizona. Her research interests include Indigenous representation in library collections, outreach efforts to Indigenous communities and cultural humility in libraries. |
 |
Lori Townsend (Shoshone-Paiute) is the Learning Services Coordinator and a Social Sciences Librarian at the University of New Mexico Libraries. Her research interests include cultural humility, genre theory and information literacy, and undergraduate understandings of digital sources. She is a Series Editor for the recently launched Libraries Unlimited Series on Teaching Information Literacy Today. |
 |
David A. Hurley is the Discovery & Web Librarian for the University Libraries. In addition to cultural humility, he writes and presents on search, reference services, and information literacy. He was previously the director of the Diné College libraries on the Navajo Nation, chief of the library development bureau at the New Mexico State Library, and branch and digital services manager for the public library of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. |
Together, they co-authored the ALA Editions Special Report Cultural Humility (2022) and co-edited Hopeful Visions, Practical Actions: Cultural Humility in Library Work (2023).
ALA Editions agreed to a discount on it. Use Code HVPA23 to be entered at checkout online at https://www.alastore.ala.org/