Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 190

LESSONS LEARNED The diversity of our initial applicant pool suggests that focusing recruitment efforts on the staff of urban public libraries is an effective way to increase the racial/ethnic diversity of New Jersey’s libraries. Our recruitment experiences suggest that GRE preparation classes may increase the number of students from New Jersey’s emerging minorities who are eligible for graduate studies. We found that many students of color either did not apply, or were ineligible for the program due to issues related to the GRE. Our experiences with this grant project also suggest that all students would benefit from release time from work while they are taking classes. The effort involved in working full-time and going to school at the pace required by the project was especially difficult for the TESC students. Discussions with the Rutgers/SCILS students suggest that time off from work with pay was a significant factor in their ability to meet their school demands. We also found that student success requires adequate online access and a support commitment from the library director and library colleagues. Those students who were most successful talk about the importance of support from their colleagues, and especially the support of the library administration. We learned that students benefited from the cohort approach, and served as support for one another. This was demonstrated and reported by students in the Rutgers/SCILS program, who used a private discussion group to talk to one another, and were able to make regular contact with each other on campus. The TESC students had neither of these options, and anecdotally reported feeling isolated and overwhelmed. The TESC students benefited from strong presence of college advisors, but seemed to have more difficulty completing their degrees. from the first grant to pay tuition at TESC for another year, so we have requested an extension to allow these students additional time to complete their degrees. Five of the TESC students who have completed their B.A. degrees want to get M.L.I.S. degrees and plan to apply to Rutgers/SCILS under the new grant project. The new grant project incorporates what we learned in the first project. We added GRE prep classes to increase the pool of potential MLIS candidates. The classes, which began in October 2006, meet for six weeks, will be held in northern, central and southern New Jersey, and are free to anyone who is applying for the MLIS scholarships. We hope to provide computers for students who do not own one so that study from home is possible. We recognized that the students at TESC may require more time to complete their degrees, so in the new project, we take advantage of TESC’s rolling admissions process, and plan to allow the new scholarship recipients to begin their studies in January 2007. The new project also has funding so that so that all students can get paid release time while taking classes. At the open houses for the first project, we learned that there were many library workers who had fewer that sixty college credits, so the new grant project will support five students with at least 12 credits to study for Associates degrees. The open houses held in September 2006 were well attended, so our efforts to build New Jersey’s diverse public library staff should attract a sufficient applicant pool to ensure that we meet the new grant’s targeted enrollments. Looking ahead, we expect that some of our IMLS grantees will want to help future recruitment efforts, and that those campaigns will target a wider range of communities, and will extend to high school and college students as well as staff already working in libraries. WHERE ARE WE NOW? Some of the TESC students will not complete their degrees by the end of the grant period. There were funds remaining ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to thank Jana Varlejs for her careful reading and 190
Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

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