CALCON 2024

In 2019, the Boulder Public Library formed an EDI Team that not only persisted through our district transition, but served as the model for similar teams within the city. By focusing on internal practices that could be better adapted to fit with EDI values, the team opened up various avenues of cross-departmental collaboration. As a result, team members were able to create new programs to support staff (such as an affinity group and a buddy program), researched and created guidelines for accessibility, recruitment, hiring, and retention, and conducted an internal survey to identify EDI pressure points. In this presentation we hope give an overview of our road to creating an EDI team, including the obstacles we faced and areas we achieved success. As we continue into this new era of becoming a district, we'll also discuss some of the ways we were able to lend support and affect change. We will finish off with a Q&A.