Surfing the Health Sciences LIS Student Pipeline

Background: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are hot topics and buzzwords in librarianship. These ideas for equitable work environments result in new committees or working groups tasked to explore and develop policies and programs to address these challenges. One way to remedy the inequities is to recruit and retain a diverse workforce. Health sciences libraries expand opportunities to diverse communities by training library and information science (LIS) students from groups that are underrepresented in health professions and biomedical research to pursue health sciences librarianship.

Description: A health sciences library created an award program to promote the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion in health sciences librarianship to library school students and recently graduated health science librarians from Underrepresented in Biomedical Research (UBR) populations. The award provides funding for students to participate in meetings, conference sessions and other activities designed for them to learn the importance of health information outreach and services conducted by health sciences librarians. The awardees pursue an area of health librarianship that explores providing health information to underrepresented and underserved communities.

Conclusion: This talk will discuss the development of the award and highlight the experience of the first cohort.