Please distribute in your professional networks! Sorry for duplicates.

Dear Colleagues:

Greetings!

This message is for all public library workers  (e.g., staff, paraprofessionals and professionals, friends of the library, volunteers, etc.) working in the American South (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia).

We are Dr. Bharat Mehra, EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama and Dr. Kimberly Black, Associate Professor in the Department of Computing, Information and Mathematical Sciences and Technologies at Chicago State University. 

We are sending you this email to invite you to participate in an online Strategic Planning Workshop (via zoom) on the topic of EDUCATION scheduled on September 28, 2023 (2.00-3.00pm CST) [Thursday] as part of a grant project, “Civic Engagement for Racial Justice in Public Libraries (RJ@PL)” funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG-L)– FY 2022 Guidelines (Implementation – Project Type), from August 2022 – July 2025, awarded to the University of Alabama and Chicago State University [PI: B. Mehra. Co-PI: K. Black]. [LG-252354-OLS- 22]. 

RJ@PL seeks to explore the role of public libraries in their support and promotion of racial justice and positive social change in communities. The purpose is to document the perspectives and experiences of public library staff about their information offerings, activities, and initiatives to address issues related to racism and racial justice in their communities. Data collected from this research will help develop contextually relevant strategic information tools (e.g., roadmap, strategic action plan) that public libraries can use to overcome problems related to racism in their communities. 

The purpose of this message is to invite you to participate in the SECOND of our monthly RJ@PL Strategic Planning Workshop and provide you with the instructions for participating. The goal of each workshop is to revise and finalize the roadmap and strategic action plan for the attainment of racial justice in communities through public library civic engagement in a specific domain or sphere of community life. The domain for our second workshop is EDUCATION.

If you are willing to participate in the RJ@PL Strategic Planning Workshop on Education, please follow the steps listed below:  

Step 1: Sign-up for participating in our RJ@PL Strategic Planning Workshop via Google Docs at URL:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CV2bea2wfiglvFikDWLE5osKKwgz__K1F-KekQ1OKIQ/edit?usp=sharing

Step 2: Once you have signed-up, you will receive an email with a link to the draft document of our RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Education) with instructions on how to leave feedback asynchronously. You will also receive the zoom link to attend the live event on September 28, 2023: (2.00-3.00pm CST).

Step 3: You will have time to review the rough draft of the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Education). Please provide your feedback on this rough draft by the end of the month. Further instructions are provided on the document draft.

Step 4: Please attend a one hour online workshop to discuss the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Education) which will be held on Thurs., September 28,  2023: 2.00-3.00pm CST. 

If you are unable to attend the meeting (Step 4), you can still provide feedback on the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan by the end of the month.

BACKGROUND

In the first phase of the RJ@PL project (August 2022 - July 2023), we conducted online surveys of public library staff asking them about the potential for civic engagement for racial justice by public libraries in the American South; we also asked them for examples of activities that they conducted to promote racial justice in their communities. We used the data collected in the first phase to create a very rough draft of a roadmap for public library civic engagement for racial justice and a strategic action plan (i.e., goals, objectives, activities) for the domain of education. The RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan (for Education) contain the following sections: 

(a) summary of the survey responses to each question (i.e., roadmap) 

(b) initial draft of the strategic action plan (i.e., goals, objectives, activities)

(c) quotes (data from open-ended survey questions that illustrate the draft of the goals and objectives of the Strategic Action Plan for the EDUCATION domain). 

The rough draft of the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan is a work in progress. Please review the document and provide your ideas for editing, modifying and adding to it by inserting comments in the draft. There are more instructions in the document itself.  

At the workshop meeting on SEPTEMBER 28, we will discuss the roadmap and the strategic action plan. By the end of the meeting, we hope to have a set of amended and revised goals, objectives and possible activities that can be done to promote racial justice in communities through public library civic engagement. The workshop will be open to public library staff throughout the Southern U.S. After the workshop, you will have a final opportunity to revise the drafted and revised roadmap and strategic action plan. The google document will be open for modifications until the end of the month.

FUTURE WORK

We will follow this process for each of the twelve domains of community life. By the first Thursday of every month, we will advertise the opportunity to participate and share feedback (asynchronous and synchronous) on the rough draft of the roadmap and strategic action plan for that month’s domain. A tentative schedule of the meetings and the domains appears below:

Tentative Schedule [last Thursday of the month, all meetings will be 2.00-3.00pm CST]

1. August 31, 2023:  Economy 

2. September 28, 2023: Education  

3. October 26, 2023: Farming/Agriculture  

4. November 30, 2023: Entertainment and Sports  

5. January 25, 2024: Environment  

6. February 29, 2024: Government, Politics, and Public Policy  

7. March 28, 2024: Health  

8. April 25, 2024: Information Technology  

9. May 30, 2024: Law and Justice  

10. June 27, 2024: Manufacturing/Retail  

11. July 25, 2024: Youth Families 

12. August 29, 2024: RJ@PL Internal Workplace 

We are ever thankful for your time and expertise devoted to improving our communities. Please feel free to invite your public library colleagues to provide asynchronous and synchronous contributions to the RJ@PL Roadmap and Strategic Action Plan for Education for them to sign up here: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CV2bea2wfiglvFikDWLE5osKKwgz__K1F-KekQ1OKIQ/edit?usp=sharing

For more information about the RJ@PL project, please visit our website http://civicengagement4racialjustice.ua.edu/.  If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us - Drs. Mehra and Black, at [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]!