You Can’t Hurry Love: Slow Library Education in Culturally Diverse Society.

Abstract

IFLA adopted its Multicultural Library Manifesto in 2008. Meanwhile, contemporary scholarship in library and information studies suggests that North American Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) graduates are not completing their degrees with a solid foundation in the core library value of diversity. The School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta (Canada) recently approved a new course in the University Calendar. Titled LIS Services in Culturally Diverse Society, the course examines the central concepts of diversity and inclusion and a range of related issues and contributions with respect to specific populations and traditionally underrepresented groups, and their support systems, in library and information settings. Drawing on the experience of an intellectual freedom and social responsibility scholar who developed and delivered the course, this paper lays open the importance of acknowledging tension between a tripartite of sister core library values - diversity, intellectual freedom and social responsibility. This paper asserts that the enduring debate about library neutrality and concomitant dilemma over what constitutes library work and what is or is not a library issue plays into the complexity of teaching and learning about diversity in library and information studies education. Recognition of how acceptance of differences can place individual and collective values in conflict, including in inside library culture and not just for the public served, is a necessary component of MLIS education.