Linda Ann Eastman
Birth-death: 1867-1963
Workplace: Cleveland Public Library (for almost half a century)
Her contributions: Linda brought library services to people in the community, especially to immigrants and the handicapped. She established libraries in hospitals and sanitariums, and she added a Braille collection and reading group for the blind. Thanks to her, by the time she retired, the library was serving 30,000 blind readers. She also reached out to older adults by creating a directory of "adult-education opportunities and advisers to counsel the influx of jobless borrowers" (Sicherman, 1980, p. 216).
Sadie Peterson Delaney
Birth-death: (1889-1959)
Workplace: 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library
Her contributions: She worked to help improve the quality of life for young African Americans, Chinese, Jews, Italians, and people of other ethnic backgrounds. In doing so, she would hold special programs for foreign-born young people to help them understand and adjust to the culture of the United States. By holding regular story hours and discussion groups for them in the library, the library became a community and cultural center for people with a wide range of interests as a result. Appealing to people in the hospital, she experimented with using library materials and library activities to rehabilitate patients, especially mental patients. Her talent in bibliotherapy changed many lives both directly and indirectly.
Marta Estrada
Workplace: Border Heritage Center of the Paso Public Library
Her contributions: As the director, Marta Estrada explains that the Border Heritage Center is “used by people of diverse backgrounds for many personal and professional matters, and is of great significance in supporting the work of citizens, students, authors, and historians who utilize this resource for Hispanic and other border-life documentation." Activities that promote understanding and appreciation of the region's history and culture are an integral role of the center. The Center's Southwest Collection consists of a preservation of materials on the history and culture of the Southwest, including Western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, as well as Northern Chihuahua and Sonora. Estrada notes that it "contains important reference works and a wide selection of specialized monographs, as well as photographs, architectural drawings, manuscripts, clippings, files, maps, periodicals, and other materials." All of her hard work helps people get in touch with their past and better yet, preserves their history (Deitz, 2007).
Foster Mohrhardt
Birth-death: 1907-1992
Workplace: National Agricultural Library (1954-1968)
His contributions: Mohrhardt mobilized people and resources to promote libraries and expand librarianship throughout the world. He was an innovator, willing to implement new approaches, to cultivate cooperative activities, and to change organizations that were stuck in their old ways. Mohrhardt often represented libraries at planning activities that rarely included other librarians, and according to Cragin, "this is evidenced by a series of engagements in high-level organizational work, which show his deep dedication to, and conviction of, the important role of libraries and librarianship in scientific communication." Mohrhardt actually became a librarian later on, and he held interesting jobs and many high-ranking positions in national and international professional organizations making him view the world from a unique perspective (Cragin, 2004).
Betty J. Turock
Birthplace: Scranton, Pennsylvania
Workplace: Montclair Public Library (New Jersey), President of the ALA
Her contributions: Not only did Turock change the library culture, she helped change the American perception of what women, particularly married women, could and should do. She was often called the "The Peripatetic Librarian", as she completed her MLS at Rutgers University while her and her husband, a corporate executive, raised their two sons. According to Turock, when she started her new career in 1971,
"the East Winston Library was, until two years before, segregated. I didn't know such things still existed. It was there that I learned the myth of separate and equal is the reality of separate and unequal. All the civic groups of the area, including the Black Panthers, brought children to the library. Kernersville was in a predominantly white community. East Winston served an exclusively African American population. Both libraries needed to do the same thing-become responsive to their communities. East Winston had nothing on the shelves that spoke to the current history of Black Americans, not even the literature of the time by authors like Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, H. Rap Brown, and other new voices that should be heard. As East Area head I had the opportunity to bring courses from the county technical institute into the libraries, to start adult literacy classes, and to take the library's programs and books to child care centers and senior citizens' dwellings. I think I succeeded in bringing both libraries a lot closer to their communities. It changed me and changed the way I thought about my profession."Later in her life when she retired, she added a final note on diversity in the workplace:
"The demographic ballasts of our country are shifting, even as our professional moorings remain static. The need to recruit and retain a diverse workforce continues to be desperate. At the same time the literature repeatedly cites data that show women have made strides in reaching leadership positions in the past two decades. But none of these figures reflect women in leadership ranks in proportion to their numbers in the profession. The conclusion that in the future more women and minorities will enter leadership positions overlooks the necessity to root out the discrimination that is still prevalent in our profession. That mission is not yet complete" (Deyrup 2005).Miriam Rodriguez
Birthplace: Cuba
Workplace: Dallas Public Library
Her contributions: Rodriguez is Dallas Public Library's first Multicultural coordinator, and it is her goal to provide programs and services that meet the needs of the city's multilingual and multi-ethnic community. She has already spearheaded several programs, such as a Hispanic heritage drawing contests for elementary and middle school students. There's also an ongoing student poetry contest in different languages being run in cooperation with the Dallas Independent School District, and Rodrignez recently held her own workshop promoting multilingual services to the Dallas Association of School Librarians. The library is also building an Asian-language collection and planning programs with Kast Indian community groups. Rodriguez states, "I want to spread the word about the incredible resources available here. It's free, take advantage" (Ishizuka, 2004).
Discussion Questions: What are some other ways to integrate diversity in libraries? With the growing populations of minorities, how can we, as future library leaders, attract people that are not currently using library resources?
References
Cragin, M. H. (2004). Oster Mohrhardt: Connecting the Traditional World of Libraries and the Emerging World of Information Science [Electronic version]. Library Trends, 52(4), 833-852. Retrieved November 28, 2007, from ProQuest.
Deitz, R. (2007). Marta Estrada Border Heritage Center Librarian [Electronic version]. The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, 17(20), 32-33. from ProQuest.
Deyrup, M. M. (2005). ChangeMasters All-A Series on Librarians Who Steered a Clear Course toward the Twenty-First Century [Electronic version]. Library Administration & Management, 19(3). from ProQuest.
Ishizuka, K. (2004). Texas Librarian Promotes Diversity [Electronic version]. School Library Journal, 50(10), 21. from ProQuest.
Sicherman, B. (Ed.). (1980). Notable American Women. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University.
Wynar, B. S. (Ed.). (1978). Dictionary of American Library Biography. Littleton: Libraries Unlimited Inc.
