Library and Technology Services Department Inaugural Meeting

Submitted by: Karyn

New this year, Library, Ed Tech, and Tech have remixed into one department, and today was the first time the group was able to meet. Much of our time was spent introducing our two new team members and discussing what our various roles are; the staffing and title changes mean that most of us have new job descriptions. We spoke briefly about the guiding questions for fostering equity and inclusion in our classroom practice as well as the need to also look at what this means for our practice beyond the classroom in terms of curating collections of material (books, hardware, software, AV equipment, and all the attendant documentation) and running passive and active programming as well as maintaining two Instagram accounts. In the next few weeks, department members will asynchronously read through the resources from Kalil and gather discipline-specific resources from our professional networks (ALA, AISL, ISTE, NYCIST, etc.) into a shared Google Doc; we will then meet again to establish guiding principles that reflect our work across all three divisions. The librarians had already begun (last year) a process of auditing the books we promote and that work will continue alongside the examination of classroom practices.