Creating the Future Library Workforce: An Activist's Agenda

Libraries thrive because of the people who lead them, work in them, and support them. Our future depends on creating and sustaining a diverse, action-oriented, technically proficient, and community-engaged workforce. Learn what available data tell us about the current composition of the library workforce, job prospects for the future, and the pipeline of new workers. Explore how the legacy of a white, educated women’s profession affects compensation, training and education, rewards and recognition, supervision and leadership, and opportunities for advancement. Connect how these interrelated challenges hamper our progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and diminish our ability to recruit the people we and our communities need. Participants will reflect, individually and in groups, about the qualities of library workforce of the future and select a challenge from the presenter’s list or their own experience to create their personal action agenda.