Shared notes for this session:
https://goo.gl/yCWj3R Our biases are influenced by our background, environment, and personal experiences, and bias happens by our brains making incredibly quick judgments and assessments of people and interactions outside of awareness. Though racial bias and discrimination is well documented, biases may exist toward any social group. One’s age, gender, gender identity/expression, physical abilities, religion, sexual orientation, weight, and many other characteristics are subject to bias. We naturally bring these biases to the library, and they can heavily influence recruitment, hiring, teaching in the classroom, interactions with patrons, displays, signage, collection building--essentially every aspect of our daily work. It's easy to get preoccupied with gender pronouns and labels, but in this interactive discussion we will talk about that issue and go beyond the pronouns to look at our unconscious gender biases.
Discussion topics will include:
- detecting unconscious biases in yourself and your library;
- building skills related to empathy and openness;
- creating an inclusive library and workplace;
- implementing your personal action plan.
