Information for Social Change

ISC 11. Book Review:

Gregory L Reese & Ernestine L Hawkins Stop Talking Start Doing! Attracting People of Color to the Library Profession 1999, American Library Association, £23.95, ISBN 0-8389-0762-8

Reviewed by Ayub Khan

This important publication is a practical guide to finding, nurturing and retaining an ethnically diverse workforce for library services in the United States. However this publication has relevance to other counties, which face a similar challenge to ensure that the workforce more accurately reflects the community they serve. This book demonstrates the importance of having strategies to attract an ethnically diverse workforce within the profession and recognizes the difficulties the profession faces to ensure that this happens. This work provides recommended strategies that will ensure issues in relation to cultural diversity are explored in organizational policy and decision-making.

The authors provide information on the following topics to attract, recruit and mentor black and minority in to the profession this includes:

• Marketing strategies geared to the perspectives of minorities and young people with case study material;
• Practical methods for mentoring minorities and guidelines on the role of library schools in minority recruitment.

The text deals with case study material from library districts throughout the United States and a perspective from the American Library Association.

This book has a number of contributors who are well respected in the field and those that have direct experience of issues around race, equality and the library profession. This publication is packed with useful fact and hints that can be applied in other library settings and looks at the practical. It also contains a full index and comprehensive bibliographies for further reading.

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