Nicole A. Cooke

This was my textbook for an online class I took for library school, Services for Diverse Populations. I was glad I decided to buy the kindle version. Being able to highlight really helped for class discussion posts (and for my memory, which does much better retaining the imaginary than the real), and now I’ll have those notes for review.
It’s a textbook, so it’s not exactly a page-turner, but it’s not as dry as some of the scholarly writing I’ve read for school. It’s readable, interesting, and it introduces concepts I didn’t know about before, or maybe just hadn’t seen them named and defined, like cultural humility, microaggressions (OK, I knew that one), and stereotype threat. It’s a good resource both for public and academic libraries, as well as LIS professors. It has a sample syllabus and sample assignments in the appendices, and I’ll just say I hope not all those assignments were packed into one semester when the author taught it. Yikes!
I would recommend this for professional collections in public and academic libraries and also for personal collections of librarians who didn’t take any courses specifically on this topic during library school. As the author points out, courses addressing diversity and inclusion tend to be electives rather than prerequisites, and it’s up to information professionals to seek out this training and scholarship so they can effectively serve their communities.… (más)