Beate Gersch is busy getting out there professionally. As part of a Northeast Ohio Regional Library System event on May 3, 2018, she will participate in the Critical Conversations Mini-conference: Tolerance is Not Enough: Libraries Respond to Hate. According to the website, she will kick off the day with an interactive presentation entitled “Library staff and information professionals as cultural brokers: Celebrating the joys and tackling the challenges of cultural diversity and inclusion.”
In addition, she and Stephanie Dawson Everett will share an encore of their ALAO presentation from last fall for a Race Card Project webinar this April.
This presentation demonstrates the evolution of the “race card project,” inspired by Michele Norris (www.theracecardproject.com) and describes how the project got started at Bierce Library within the context of the annual Rethinking Race event. They will share the simple steps of setting up a race card wall and monitoring the comments, as well as the challenges that are involved with a sensitive topic like this, particularly when dealing with a diverse student body.
Here is the full text from the ALAO announcement:
This presentation demonstrates the evolution of the “race card project,” inspired by Michele Norris (www.theracecardproject.com), at a large public university. We describe how the project got started within the context of the university’s annual campus and community wide diversity awareness programming. We will share the simple steps of setting up a race card wall and monitoring the comments, as well as the challenges that are involved with a sensitive topic like this, particularly when dealing with a diverse student body. Finally, we will outline our efforts to incorporate this outreach event into the curriculum through collaboration with faculty. The audience for this presentation will be able to a) plan this outreach event on a very low budget, b) anticipate potential challenges based on the characteristics of their own institution, and c) identify partners for collaboration outside their library.
Nicely done!