The ACRL Digital Scholarship Section is committed to anti-racist and anti-oppressive professional engagement. We seek to create a space where all members feel safe and a sense of belonging. Our Community Agreement, adopted summer 2019, establishes norms for face-to-face and virtual interactions, outlines consequences for members who do not live up to these expectations, and encourages allyship and upstander behavior. Our DSS feedback form provides members with an opportunity to share their experiences.
This page documents the ongoing work of DSS to engage in anti-racist and anti-oppressive work, from programming to partnerships.
Activities and Programs
DSS Executive Board Actions
- DSS open letter to members in response to incident of racialized aggression at the 2019 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle (February 4, 2019).
- DSS Town Hall and Bystander Training: This online meeting was open to all DSS members. The town hall addressed member questions and concerns related to diversity, equity, and inclusion; collected feedback on an in-progress DSS Code of Conduct [now called the Community Agreements]; and discussed concrete allyship practices in preparation for ALA Annual 2019. Dr. Roopika Risam, Assistant Professor of English and the Faculty Fellow for Digital Library Initiatives at Salem State University [now Associate Professor of Secondary and Higher Education and English at Salem State University], facilitated the allyship training (June 11, 2019). No recording available but notes are accessible.
- DSS Anti-Oppressive Meeting Facilitation Training: Developed with the EDI Committee’s support, this training was led by Maisha Carey and Tyler Dzuba, both from DeEtta Jones and Associates. The training is highly recommended for all DSS committee chairs and discussion group conveners. All Section members are encouraged to watch this video, which informs interactions across DSS and in our local daily professional practices (September 2019).
DSS EDI Actions and Activities
- Development and ongoing oversight of Community Agreements. DSS groups are encouraged to adapt/incorporate these Community Agreement slides for their meetings and events.
- Creation of the EDI Toolkit for Digital Scholarship: The purpose of this toolkit is to help the ACRL Digital Scholarship Section (DSS), including its volunteers and its members, build equitable and inclusive practices into their professional work, whether that is with DSS committees and forums or in their general work in digital scholarship. The toolkit is a living document that will continue to grow and evolve.
- EDI Outreach across ACRL Sections and Groups: Beginning in Summer 2020, we have been hosting meetings with members from various ACRL sections and groups committed to social justice work. The meetings are an opportunity to share information and work towards collective action. We are developing a plan to share organizing responsibility across sections to continue this work.
- Algorithms of Oppression Reading Group: The RBMS EDI committee invited DSS EDI to partner on a virtual reading group around Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression (May 23, 2019).
DSS EDI-related Partnerships
- EDI Committee, Professional Development Committee, and Outreach Committee: Born out of a conversation among the DSS Advisory Group, this ongoing collaboration strives to embed and amplify anti-racist practices in Professional Development activities, including adopting EDI frames for CFPs and for virtual engagement in professional development events (Fall 2019-present).
- EDI Committee and Membership Committee: The EDI committee approached the Membership Committee in Fall 2020 to explore points of mutual interest related to the climate and experience of DSS for its members. We have been collaborating on an EDI-infused welcome email to new members and an exit survey for those who leave the DSS. Our hope is to identify potential problems that we can address to improve DSS climate. We look forward to partnering in the future on a more general member survey to gauge the DSS climate on a regular basis and ensure that we are living up to our values.
- EDI Committee and Digital Scholarship Centers Discussion Group: DSC-DG approached EDI about partnering on a public program, Human-Centered Digital Scholarship Centers. An EDI representative joined the planning group and helped facilitate the meeting, held on February 12, 2021. The session focused on creating responsive, welcoming digital scholarship spaces: “As Digital Scholarship Centers are often both new and necessarily dynamic, they also present great possibility for creating dynamic services that respond to their users’ needs. With Human-Centered Design as a principle, and equity and inclusion at the forefront, we will partner with our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee colleague Amy Gay (Digital Scholarship Librarian, Binghamton University) to explore through discussion how we are recruiting engagement with our Centers, lowering barriers for entry, learning from our design challenges and failures, and making certain we’re soliciting input from the entirety of the people we seek to provide support to and collaborate with.”
How to Get Involved
The DSS believes that social justice work is everyone’s responsibility. The EDI Committee currently exists to help facilitate that work across the section, but we cannot do it alone. We welcome all DSS members to reach out to us with questions, ideas, and invitations to collaborate. Our names and emails are available on our committee page (you must be logged in).
Updated March 17, 2021