BCALA NEWS Volume 41, Issue 3

Summer 2014

29

Library and Information Science Professionals: A Field in Need of greater Diversity

BY IRENE OWENS, NORTH CAROLINA CENTRAL UNIVERSITY

As the Information and Digital Age evolves and matures, the role of the information professional grows ever more vital. This is reflected in the employment forecasts of the U.S. Department of Labor, which list information professionals among the top 10 jobs most needed in the years ahead.

Concern continues to grow in the profession, however, about its lack of diversity. According to the American Library Association (ALA), nearly nine out of 10 degree-holding information professionals are White. Here is the ALA’s racial/ethnic breakdown of the profession for 2012.

Chart I: Percent by Ethnicity: Information professionals with ALA-accredited degrees

Non-Hispanic whites currently account for about 63 percent of the United States population, and it is estimated that when you add together all the minorities they will cease being a majority in about 30 years. Acknowledging this trend, the ALA has for several decades been seeking ways to develop a workforce that more closely reflects the nation as a whole. It has supported the creation of special scholarships to recruit more minorities to the profession and encouraged ALA-accredited programs to recruit more minority students.

Despite these efforts, ALA-accredited programs are still not producing an adequate number of minority graduates on the master’s level, and even fewer at the Ph.D. level.

North Carolina Central University’s (NCCU) School of Library and Information Sciences (SLIS) is uniquely positioned to help remedy the shortage of minority information professionals. It is the only ALA-accredited Library and Information Science program at a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). Although fewer than half of the program’s students are African- American, NCCU produces more African-American graduates than any other ALA-accredited program — more, in fact, than all the other programs combined.

In the United States and Canada, 51 institutions offer ALA-accredited degrees in Library and Information Science. But most of the diversity that exists in the profession comes from NCCU and a small number of other schools.

The chart below shows the 2012 minority enrollment for the five programs identified by the Association of Library and Information Science Educators (ALISE) as having the greatest number of students from racial and ethic minority groups.