"Brown has attended career fairs locally and nationally trying to recruit more African-Americans. “With all the technology we have now, the face of libraries is changing,” she said. “They’re not just places where people check out books; it’s becoming more appealing to the community and newer populations of individuals.” Nationally, the numbers of black and brown librarians are dismal. A diversity report by the American Library Association,, showed that among a total credentialed library population of 118,666, only 6,160 are black and 3,661 are Latino." - Anika

Too bad becoming a librarian is more of a class thing. I had briefly considered librarianship, then I noted that my friends who were volunteering at libraries and pursuing that path were all from wealthy families. So, for the same reason I couldn't major in architecture, I had to bypass this. Since I was paying out of my own pocket for my education, I just couldn't afford the degrees. The few scholarships available were geared to go to rich white kids. - Anika

I think we need to get the word out more about all the different paths to get to libraries. Not all of it is unpaid volunteering at public libraries, but of course a lot of people assume it is. - kendrak

I don't see where it says 'unpaid volunteering' is a path, let alone the only one. Also, we were all paid volunteers & not everyone volunteered at a public library. What was certain was that I was never going to afford to do the work required for a degree simply because, as I said above, I lacked the support system. At any rate, that doesn't do much to reach outside of white women. Librarians seem to be great at digging up diversity stats, but doing something about it has always seemed a completely different thing. I mean, LAPL doesn't even pay their staff equally and I've watched black librarians quit for new paths over the past 5 years because of it. - Anika