Hello all,

I am a librarian at the University of Saskatchewan.  I am writing to ask if you would be interested in contributing a chapter to our book as shown below.  If you are a visible minority librarian and would like to contribute a chapter, please contact me at maha.kumaran@usask.ca or 306-966-8739

Sincerely,

Maha Kumaran

Invitation to Visible Minority Librarians to contribute a chapter for a book

There is a growing interest in the efforts of visible minority librarians and their contributions to libraries in Canada and United States. For example, The 21^st Century Black Librarian in America: Issues and Challenges, Pathways to Progress: Issues and Advances in Latino Librarianship, Leadership in Libraries: A Focus on Ethnic Minority Librarian are some recent contributions by and/or about visible minority librarians.  Apart from books, many articles have been published on diversity issues in libraries about hiring, socialization and retention of visible minority librarians.

The field of visible minority librarianship grows with each passing year.  These above books planted the seed of an idea for putting together a book for visible minority librarians in Canada to contribute their ideas and experiences of working in libraries.  It is common to see and hear of visible minorities entering the field of librarianship in Canadian library schools, completing their programs and graduating from them – and a handbook from those of us who have been making our way in libraries now seems in good order.

I am writing to ask you to contribute a chapter to this book on your experiences in entering the profession and working in Canadian libraries.  This is an opportunity to expand the research field in the area of visible minority librarians.  Some of the topics you can write about would be: your reasons for deciding to choose a career in libraries; how you have made a difference in your library with colleagues and your library patrons, your general librarianship experience; your mentorship experiences or how the lack of it has affected your role as a librarian; challenges and issues you faced and overcame along the way and anything else you can think of in relationship to libraries and librarianship.  You can also write about the advice you would like to provide to the next generation of aspiring visible minority librarians in the areas of education, training and mentorship.

Please note that my colleague at the University of Saskatchewan Library, Deborah Lee, is also asking these same questions to Aboriginal librarians in Canada, with the goal of combining our contributions to form a handbook for both Aboriginal and visible minority librarians and employees.  We have vetted our idea for the book with Scarecrow Press and now have a contract with them to launch this initiative as editors of the book and are now looking to to recruit contributors.

We are asking interested contributors to provide us with a draft or outline of their essay / book chapter by August 31, 2012.  Those contributors who are selected to write a full chapter will then have until June 1^st 2013, to write their chapter and submit it to the editors.  Expected length of the chapters will be from 3,000 – 4,500 words.  Any copyright permission required for your chapter will be your responsibility.  Also, due to cost considerations, we will have to limit the number of photos, tables, illustrations, etc. that can be included in the publication.  It is likely that you will need to present a case to include non-textual items in your chapter.

I hope you are interested in contributing a chapter to the book.  If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

You may be wondering about the idea of inviting non-Aboriginal people to contribute a chapter to this book.  Deborah and I discussed this and we felt that we wanted first to provide a voice for visible minorities (and in her case, Aboriginal people) through this book.  We are open to the idea of Volume II, where non-Aboriginal people would be asked to contribute a chapter about their experience of serving and working with Aboriginal people and visible minorities or multicultural groups in libraries or information centers.

Regards,

Maha.

Note: Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour”.