Miguel,
Yes, Mexican membership is an issue that the society has been concerned
with. Mexico is actually represented on the Board by the South Regional
Representative. Mexico is also part of the Texas-Mexico Chapter and after
a couple years of outreach to our colleagues in Mexico we now have two
Mexican members in our chapter. Both attended our Fall chapter meeting.
Our chapter requested and received funds from the society for a travel
award to enable a Mexican member to attend our conference. It is too early
for us to be able to determine the success of our efforts (as far as
retention and spreading the word about our society is concerned). When
compiling a mailing list of Mexican art librarians for our chapter outreach
efforts, I went through ARLIS/NA directories going back about 15 years to
look for past society members. There were about a half dozen names but
these were rarely in the directory for two years in a row. Possibly our
Mexican colleagues joined only when they could attend the annual conference
(just a suggested reason--no survey was undertaken). Reasons I have been
given why our Mexican colleagues are not interested in participating in
ARLIS/NA: closer ties to art history professional societies than to
librarianship societies; Art Libraries Section of IFLA more closely meets
professional development needs and is more important to parent
organization; lack of institutional support (funding); only a relatively
small number of Mexican librarians work in art & architecture libraries.
Texas-Mexico chapter members are more than willing to assist Mexican
members to form their own chapter when they are ready to do so. (These are
all my observations--other chapter members might want to contribute their
own observations.)
The School of Architecture at U.T. Austin is beginning to develop ties with
several architecture schools in Mexico. I've been trying to make contacts
with the librarians at these institutions. Just last week I assisted the
Chairman of the Advisory Board one of these schools while he was doing
research in my library. We have already been in contact by e-mail and he
is promotting relations between our schools among his faculty. I am
eternally optimistic but also value any advice anyone might have about
successful outreach strategies!
As part of my work on the North American Relations Committee, I will be
exploring the possibility of arlis/na affiliation with a Mexican library
association. Perhaps affiliation will help foster ties. One of the
benefits of affiliation: affiliated society members are able to attend each
other's conferences at member rates. Perhaps members of the Membership
Committee might comment on the work of their committee in this area?
As far as recruitment of ethnic minorities in our society is concerned:
would you be interested in a summary of Diversity Committee (formerly
Cultural Diversity Committee) activities in this area? (I would!) Off the
top of my head these are some of activities that I recall the committee
undertaking: Panel sessions on diversity issues in the profession were
sponsored, a proposal for a workshop was submitted (but did not make the
cut for financial reasons), budget proposals for travel & internship awards
were submitted (one major hitch: the Development Committee is dependent on
the interests of donors), fundraisers were suggested, suggestions for
French & Spanish versions of our membership brochure were submitted, the
possibility of a brochure advertising our profession to undergraduates
featuring photographs of ethnically diverse art librarians in a variety of
settings was investigated, arlis/na brochures were distributed at meetings
of ALA's Black Caucus, REFORMA, library schools, & elsewhere, contacts were
made with library school faculty involved in mentoring minority students,
committee members met with minority library school student associations,
plans were made to add a section to the Chapter Success Book that would be
a resource for Chapters interested in working on minority recruitment
issues with library schools in their regions, articles were written for
ARLIS/NA Update. I'm sure the recent committee members could add to this
list. Some projects were less successful than others, but I'm sure we can
learn from both successes and failures.
About committee membership: my experience is that although committee chairs
are appointed, committee members volunteer rather than get recruited by the
chair. I know I was contacted by a committee chair (someone I did not
know) after I had filled out my committee interest on a membership renewal
form. This was not too long after joining the society. And I've always
encouraged my mentees to contact committee chairs to express their interest
in serving. I'm curious--are volunteers now getting turned away?
Sorry for being so long-winded.
Janine Henri
>Karen:
>
>I agree, we need to be inclusive and include ethnicity from all member
>countries. I'd like to know what Canadian ARLIS/NA members are doing to
>mentor/coach/recruit ethnic minorities for careers in art librarianship? Is
>there an internship program that seeks to recruit and introduce Canadian
>ethnic minorities to art librarianship? How successful have your efforts
>been? We can learn much from your successes. :-)
>
>Also, there's not even a Mexican representative on the ARLIS/NA board so
>there may not be much representation (except from some of the book vendors)
>from Mexico. Can headquarters provide us with a number of ARLIS/NA members
>from Mexico (on-going, year to year members and not only people who receive
>the travel awards and come to one conference). Perhaps an ARLIS/Mexico
>Chapter could be formed. Is representation from Mexico an issue, should it
>be one?
>
>Miguel Juarez, Assistant Librarian
>Art, Art Education, Art History, Photography
>Center for Creative Photography Library
>University of Arizona Library
>P.O. Box 210103, Tucson, AZ 85721-0103
>Phone: (520) 626-9434/FAX: (520) 621-9444
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