Recap of ARRT Dealing in Diversity and Announcement of Part 2 With a Bestselling Author!

To start off the week I wanted to recap the ARRT program that I helped to coordinate this past Friday and promote Part 2 of the program coming this October.

Friday morning, we had over 60 library workers join us for a very honest and blunt conversation about diversity in our libraries, but unlike many of these types of programs we went beyond service to children, we focused on serving our adult patrons AND dealing with creating a welcoming atmosphere for all-- including staff. 

All four presenters not only shared their expertise in the world of libraries and writing- of which they have A LOT- but each was also very honest about being a POC themselves and how that complicates the issue. 

Below, and at this link, ARRT has made some resources available, including a Storify I compiled of all of the Tweets during the presentation, slides from Skokie, and documents from the other presenters. The links for the Tweets does NOT require you log into Twitter and serves as extensive notes of what was said during the 2 hour program. Please take some time to look through those if you work with adults in any library...anywhere.

June 2017: Dealing in Diversity: Proactively Serving Communities Through Authentic Representation  

Thank you to Robin Bradford, Mikki Kendall, Annabelle Mortensen and Mimosa Shah for presenting and to Skokie Public Library for hosting this event. 

Program live tweets from Becky Spratford (@RAforAll) 

Robin Bradford’s Librarians in the 21st Century: The Power of Our Choices 

Mikki Kendall’s How to Write About Black Women 

Skokie Public Library EDI: Equity Diversity and Inclusion 

Resources and links from 2016 RUSA CODES Convo on Diversity

And ARRT is also happy to announce that we will be presenting PART TWO of this frank discussion at the ILA Annual Conference in Tinley Park, IL on 10/12/17. 

The conversation, moderated by Heather Booth and myself will feature:

• Annabelle Mortensen giving an update on how things are progressing with the EDI committee at Skokie. She will talk about successes, failures, obstacles, and goals
• Todd Stocke, VP and Editorial Director at Sourcebooks who will talk about how the publisher has seen financial success by looking to diverse authors and audiences
• And... bestselling romance author, and crowd pleasing presenter Sonali Dev talking about her insanely popular stories with a decidedly Bollywood Beat. Ms Dev will stay after to sign books. We will have some for purchase, but she will also sign your personal or library copies.

This is a not to miss program. It is at 1:45 on the final day of the conference, so don’t leave early or you will miss it. If you are a fan of Ms. Dev you must register for the entire day of the conference if you would like to see her.

ARRT is happy to provide these links to you for free. Please consider signing up for our newsletter in the right gutter of our homepage. You do not need to live in Northern IL to follow us. We provide notes for all of our programming, especially our popular Genre Study and Book Club Study, for free. Click here for more details.