The Diversity Committee held their day-long workshop, “Outreach: Building Collaborations that Support Campus Diversity,” on Thursday, October 6 at the State Library of Ohio. Thirty librarians from across Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky, representing a variety of libraries and exchanged ideas and best practices for campus and community outreach to promote diversity.  The majority of attendees came from universities and community colleges, but we also saw representatives from public and school libraries.

The workshop opened with a panel of speakers from The Ohio State University’s Thompson Library, who discussed a speaker series that they collaborated to develop. Next, Katy Kelly and Ione Damasco of the University of Dayton presented on two grant-funded series of programs in the humanities. Fannie Cox, traveling from the University of Louisville, Kentucky, provided attendees with information on diversity, recruitment, and engagement at the library.

During the lunch break, while participants networked and compared notes about diversity programming and interests at their home institutions, catering was provided by Freedom a la Cart, a small company local to Columbus that employs and supports survivors of human trafficking.

After the break, the workshop continued with three speakers from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, who discussed their Lunch & Learn diversity program series for students, faculty, and staff. To conclude the day, Katy Matthews provided two presentations, the first focusing on outreach to at-risk first-generation students, and the final program focusing on her work describing the move beyond diversity toward social justice.

Comments included statements such as ‘a great session with a lot of useful information’, ‘presenters were straightforward and honest.  I appreciate when presenters talk about what they learned and what they did better afterwards’; and ‘I was most excited about this session as it is very closely related to work that we are doing at my institution’.

Eileen Theodore-Shusta, Diversity Committee Chair, Ohio University