Heightened Awareness of Oppressive Systems May Impact Black Library Workers’ Perceptions of Inequitable Hiring and Retention Practices in Public and Academic Libraries

Abstract

Objective – To measure Black and non-Black library employees’ perceptions of their library’s efforts to hire, retain, and promote Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) library employees. Design – Literature review and subsequent questionnaire. Setting – Academic and public libraries in the United States and Canada. Subjects – 717 survey participants who met the criteria of working in the United States or Canada, and either being currently employed, retired, or unemployed library workers whose experiences are placed in an academic or public library. 68 subjects who selected Black as their ethnicity were coded separately from other ethnic designations. Methods – A joint effort of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services (ODLOS) and the Public Library Association (PLA) launched the Building Cultural Proficiencies for Racial Equity Framework Task Force in 2019. A subset of this task force broke out to create a survey titled Racial Equity in Libraries. A three-part survey was devised, covering demographics, personal experiences with racial equity, and workplace experiences with racial equity. The task force used non-probability convenience sampling and distributed the survey to several library listservs across the United States and Canada. Quantitative results underwent descriptive statistics; qualitative results underwent iterative thematic analysis. Main Results – Black participants made up 68 (9.5%) of all responses. Five qualitative themes emerged: unsuccessful hiring searches; acknowledgement that hiring of BIPOC is an ongoing issue; no BIPOC employees; organization-based issues impacting hiring; and hostile work environments for BIPOC. Conclusion – Black participants were more likely to report that their library hires, promotes, and retains BIPOC library workers compared to non-Black participants. However, Black participants were also more likely to refute that their employers were making efforts to hire, retain, and promote BIPOC library workers than their non-Black counterparts. This may be due to Black participants’ greater sense of awareness of oppressive systems surrounding them.