The Canadian Library Association has approved the proposal to establish The Visible Minority Librarians of Canada Network (ViMLoC).

During my recent research on ethnic minority librarians, I had a very difficult time finding any statistical information on minority librarians and couldn’t reach them through a common listserv. After my initial contacts with CLA, Geraldine Hyland, CLA Member Services Manager, directed me to the possibility of creating a network for minority librarians. This was in early November, 2011. I jumped at this opportunity, and in mid-November an email was circulated on CLA-L, the listserv for CLA members, to recruit the first 10 founding members to establish the network. Heather Cai, from McGill, and I are the moderators.

In the coming New Year, ViMLoC will be looking to recruit individuals to join this network. Watch for ViMLoC at the CLA conference in 2012, where Heather and I will present a poster to show off the network. Please contact Maha Kumaran for further information on this Network.

Maha Kumaran
SHIRP Librarian
107 Wiggins Road
Health Sciences Library
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E5
Phone: (306) 966-8739
Email: maha.kumaran@usask.ca

http://bcladiversity.wordpress.com/collections/vpl-vendor-list/

In Part 2,  the BCLA Diversity and Multicultural Services Committee members, Barb Buxton, Chair, Ada Con and Wendy Jang presented a summary of the intercultural cultural communication  training workshop.  The session was well attended, as 40 librarians from across Canada participated in this interactive session, answering diversity questions,  viewing photos , doing the exercises that were described in the training.  At the end of the session, librarians from Kingston and McGill University were interested in using the BCLA Diversity and Multicultural Services workshop materials to create their own workshops for their  staff.  A Quebec librarian was also interested in translating the documents into French to be used for French speaking library staff.

Please contact the Chair of the Committee, Barb Buxton, barb.buxton@cityofportmoody.com, 604-469-4704 for permissions on the use of materials.   We ask that acknowledgement to the BCLA Diversity and Multicultural Services Committee be provided for all materials used.

Jennifer Hoyer, Resource Coordinator of Edmonton Social Planning Council  and Barbara Buxton, Head of Adult Services, Port Moody Public Library and Ada Con, Diversity Services and Programming Coordinator, Fraser Valley Regional Library will discuss the issues in the increase of immigrant movement, diverse library services to immigrants, and the intercultural communication workshops for library staff.

Along with other resources available on its Immigrant Talent Integration webpages, the toolkit provides tips and information concerning culturally competent sourcing, hiring and retention practices. It is designed to assist HR and hiring managers to better understand the cultural differences of skilled immigrants and to challenge common biases that Canadian HR professionals might have when interviewing and/or hiring internationally-trained applicants.

The toolkit lists 6 steps: advertising the job, screening the applicants, interviewing and testing, reference checking, offering the job & providing feedback, and ensuring success in the workplace.

Also on offer are 5 tools for cultural competence (screening, communication for interviews, awareness of body language at interviews, testing performance and skills on key job criteria, approaches for integrating skilled immigrants) as well as downloadable templates that can be adapted to any organization’s hiring needs.

January’s Edition includes a front page article on VPL’s ESL bookclub (at a level 3 reading level) as well as a general explanation of how to get a library card (at a level 2 reading level).

The front page of the Reader is archived online and additional teaching resources including audio files are included with each issue.

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