May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. It is a time to reflect on and celebrate the vital contributions that our Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community members have made, and continue to make, to the United States. You can learn, reflect and grow by taking part in the UNM Health Sciences programming, reviewing the resources that PBS has to offer, and interacting with the content on the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month homepage.
In reflecting, we must not look past the reality of ongoing, and increasing, hate crimes and violence against the Asian Pacific American community. As such, reflecting and learning are important, but at this point action is what is needed. Therefore, you must consider the question: “What can you do this month to change this reality?”
The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) has been doing work to create a more inclusive and welcoming environment. An action step that the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center (HSLIC) has taken is the creation of a Health Justice & Equity databases section to make it easier to find the resources that can help in this vital work. We have also developed the Justice, Equity, and Inclusion Committee with representation from across campuses and various stakeholders.
Do you have any comments or thoughts about how we can make the library a more welcoming space for you? Do you have any feedback on our Justice, Equity, and Inclusion Committee charge? Let us know!
Your comments would be reviewed by our Justice, Equity, and Inclusion Committee which is chaired by your Student Success and Engagement Librarian, Kelleen Maluski and our members.
The Charge of the HSLIC Justice, Equity and Inclusion Committee is the following:
The HSLIC Justice, Equity, and Inclusion Committee is dedicated to providing leadership in the development of a welcoming and inclusive environment for our diverse patrons and employees. The committee promotes equity, inclusion, justice, anti-racism, and accessibility initiatives within HSLIC and beyond through collaboration with members of the campus and the community. The primary goal of the committee is to strengthen and promote the role of HSLIC as a space that utilizes cultural humility, cultural wealth, and asset-based thinking to support and demonstrate the value of our learners and community members. The purpose of the committee will be to work appropriately with reflection and learning to better understand the needs of our community and the ways to make an impact, while also identifying and taking action to create change.
Specific Charges:
- Address employee concerns around equity and inclusion that were brought forth after the June 11th Journal Club: How HSLIC Can Address Systematic Racism - Our Role in Supporting Diversity at UNM.
- Assess and identify equity, inclusion, accessibility, anti-racism, and justice opportunities within HSLIC’s spaces, including our online spaces and for employees.
- Apply assessment findings in order to develop programming, spaces, and other activities to enhance HSLIC’s efforts around equity, inclusion, accessibility, anti-racism, and justice for our patrons.
- Apply assessment findings in order to make suggestions and plan trainings, team building, policies, reflection on certain damaging practices of the sciences, and other action items that HSLIC could take to promote an understanding of the importance of justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism, and accessibility amongst all employees. These suggestions should help in a culture shift towards building a more inclusive environment for engaging with each other and our patrons. This will also include reviewing recruiting and retention practices at HSLIC.
- Align HSLIC diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice efforts to broader efforts across the Health Sciences Center, UNM, and our professional communities.
Consideration for the charge: It is the hope of this committee that by building a culture shift in understanding and representation for diverse employee and patron types that the institution will also be able to respond to situations happening within our community that might impact how our users and employees engage with our spaces and each other.
Considerations for Members of the Committee: Since much of this work requires emotional labor, reflective thinking, and other stressors on employee time the committee should work to create spaces for members to take appropriate breaks, discuss their emotional wellbeing, and reflect together and individually. With that being the case the committee will also assess their own working habits and needs for this work and create best practices for the duration of their tenure on the committee and members who will follow.
Working on the Committee: In order for a committee such as this to be successful and inclusive it is imperative that the committee be transparent and communicative on every aspect of their work. The committee should work to identify how to make all resources, information, and meeting notes openly available and build in open comments on specific tasks. Having a representative from every department is one way to address this need, but we also want to make sure that other voices are being brought to the table regularly and a workflow for communication and collaboration are created. In addition to communicating we want to make sure guest speakers, task related ad-hoc members, and more are welcomed into the space to improve our work.
We are happy to welcome George Hernandez as the library’s new Accountant 1. George has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from UNM’s Anderson School of Management and is currently working on his Master’s in Information Security at UNM. In the Accountant role, George will be responsible for most of the library’s purchasing and timekeeping. He will also will monitor revenue and expenses for HSLIC’s unrestricted and restricted funds, assist with budget development, and manage our central supplies. 
