Residencies Revisited

Many academic libraries across the country have developed and maintained library diversity residency programs in support of a larger campaign to diversify librarianship as a profession. Library diversity residencies strive to provide early-career librarians of color with the experience and toolkit necessary to pursue a successful lifelong career in academic librarianship.

Beyond the residents themselves, there are various stakeholders involved in every residency program: residency coordinators, library administrators, and the professional organizations that back them. This book provides a space for the perspectives of all types of residency stakeholders to intersect, thereby producing a holistic narrative of library diversity residencies. The intended audience for this narrative is all academic librarians/administrators currently involved or interested in library diversity residency programs or generally interested in diversity initiatives. This work solicits the stories of past and present residents, coordinators, and policy-influencers, and then organizes their stories thematically, interweaving the commentary and analysis of the editors.

Preethi Gorecki is the Student Engagement Librarian at Florida State University. Prior to that, she was a Library Faculty Diversity Fellow at Grand Valley State University. Preethi holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Concordia University in Montréal, Québec, Canada and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Her research interests include practices for diversifying librarianship, project and task management tools and techniques for everyday academic librarianship, and student engagement as related to student wellness.

Arielle Petrovich is the Instruction and Outreach Archivist at the University of Notre Dame. She holds an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a BA in American Studies from Smith College. Arielle’s interests include de-mystifying the archives, diversifying the archival record, fostering historical empathy, and practicing inclusive librarianship.