Registration Open for Free ACRL ULS Professional Development Committee Webinar, “Working on Ourselves: Mitigating Unconscious Bias in Literature Searching” (Mon., Dec. 9. 1:00-2:00 PM CST)

Monday, December 9th 2019 1:00-2:00pm CST
Register Here

Sponsored by the ACRL ULS Professional Development Committee

Unconscious, or implicit, bias in medical research and care is well documented– black patients on average receive less pain medication; heart attacks are underdiagnosed in women; and non-white, non-male populations are underrepresented in clinical trials. We offer our experiences as medical librarians as a starting point for this interactive workshop, which explores tools that librarians can use to recognize and address unconscious bias in scholarly research and library systems. While this program focuses on health sciences materials, we invite librarians from all subject specialties to participate. Participants will receive a copy of the curriculum to adapt to their own contexts.

Molly Higgins, MLIS, is currently a Reference and Digital Services Librarian and the Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service. She has previously worked at Stony Brook University’s Health Science Library and the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Lamar Soutter Library. She has experience in the health sciences, Asian American Studies, and business librarianship. She specializes in the intersections of instructional design, technology, and issues of diversity and representation. She holds an MLIS from the University of Washington and a BA in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. In this webinar, she is not representing the Congressional Research Service, and the views expressed herein are her own and not presented as those of the Congressional Research Service or the Library of Congress.

Rachel Keiko Stark, MS, AHIP, is the Health Sciences Librarian for Sacramento State University. She has previously worked as a Library Manager for Kaiser Permanente and as the Pharmacy and Health Sciences Librarian at the University of the Pacific. Rachel has also worked as a Youth Services Librarian and as a Medical Librarian. She holds a MS from Drexel University and a BA from Willamette University. Her research interests include intergenerational communication in librarianship, intergenerational communication in the Japanese American community, and Interprofessional Education. When not working, Rachel enjoys spending time with her two large dogs and playing both video and board games.

This free presentation is sponsored by the ACRL University Libraries Section Professional Development Committee. It will take place on Monday, December 9th from 1:00-2:00pm CST via Zoom. Register here.

If you can’t make this session but wish to view a recording later, please register so that you’ll receive an email that includes a link to the video of the presentation.

Please direct questions and concerns to Laura Gariepy (lwgariepy@vcu.edu), Chair of the ACRL ULS Professional Development Committee. A full list of the committee’s past and future programs are available here.