Developing cultural competence

This July, I embarked on a professional class through Library Juice Academy, “Cultural Competence for Librarians.” This week, students were tasked with introducing themselves.

My name is Cynthia Parkhill, and I work in a school library serving a K-8 population. My work as a Library Technician encompasses several library disciplines: circulation, outreach, collection development, and technical services. I perform all of these functions through the lens of youth services.

Earlier this year, I completed my first course in a graduate program to become a degree-backed librarian. In the fall, I will be studying library collection development.

I thought this program through Library Juice Academy would be a useful complement to the academic course, which includes in its description, an “emphasis on diversity.”

As someone who claims membership in “invisible” minority communities, I recognize first-hand, the vital importance and need for diverse collections and programming. Moreover, there’s a need for these values to be vigorously defended.

(Just this past month, my local public library was targeted by a “Hide the Pride” campaign; I authored a letter to the editor in response and it was published by my local newspaper. My ground-rule when writing this letter, was not to validate “Hide the Pride,” nor the organization spearheading it, through any mention of their names.)

Through taking this class, I hope to develop my own cultural competence. I know that just because I claim membership in minority communities, DOES NOT translate to being automatically competent to serve others in my demographic, let alone being able to automatically grasp issues that affect other communities.

During my work, I’ve looked for opportunities with diversity-related projects, including a county reading and educational program that centered around specific books. I made an effort to stock those books in the library and to promote the program and the books’ availability to the teachers at my site.

I also followed school-district discussions around an Ethnic Studies curriculum.

From our reading this week for Library Juice Academy, I appreciated the perspectives of library workers who were interviewed. I was especially gratified that a commitment to diversity is so embedded in their ongoing training (e.g. various topics that are addressed as part of their regular meetings). I especially liked this quote from the article:

“Engaging with diversity and seeking to improve one’s cultural competence are challenges that all in the profession, regardless of their background, must confront. At the individual level, building cultural competence begins with cultural awareness of self and others. Recognizing the ways our culturally informed values manifest in practice and affect patrons with whom we interact allows for the attainment of higher levels of cultural competence” (Ely, 2022, p. 414).

References:
Ely, E.R. (2020). Exploring cultural competence: A case study of two academic libraries. Libraries and the Academy 22(2), 395–419. https://preprint.press.jhu.edu/portal/sites/ajm/files/ely.pdf

Parkhill, C.M. (2022, June 29). A grateful library patron [letter to the editor]. Press Democrat, p. A10.