Libraries at Emory & Henry Receive Grant Funding to Support Health and Diversity Education
The School of Health Sciences Library at Emory & Henry is a new member of the Network of the National Library of Medicine. As a member of the network, Emory & Henry was chosen to be awarded the Collection Equity award, a $2,000 grant, to build a new collection of health and medical textbooks that address the lack of diversity in medical textbooks.
Jana Schellinger, School of Health Sciences Library Liaison, worked alongside Emory & Henry faculty to develop the Diversity in Health Collection. The collection of books includes:
– “The Purple World: Healing the Harm in American Health Care” by Joseph Q. Jarvis
– “The Modern Clinician’s Guide to Working with LGBTQ+ Clients” by Margaret Nichols
– “Occupational Therapies Without Borders: Integrating Justice with Practice” by Dikaios Sakellariou, Ph.D., MSc, BSc, FHEA; and Nick Pollard, Ph.D., MA, MSc, DipCOT, FHEA
– “Developing Cultural Competence in Physical Therapy Practice” by Larry D. Purnell Ph.D. RN FAAN and Jill Black Lattanzi PT EdD
Health science texts and resources are often produced without considerations for diversity. It is crucial to Emory & Henry, the faculty who teach here and the students who learn here that they are provided with access to healthcare training that is considerate of a diversity of people and experiences. “We are very excited about this project, and the books have started coming in already,” says Schellinger.
In addition to the new collection of diverse healthcare textbooks, the Frederick Thrasher Kelly Library on Emory & Henry’s campus is developing a software tool to assess the diversity of the college library collection. Adam Alley, Public Services Librarian, has taken the lead on the development of the new tool. There have previously been no tools available to evaluate the diversity, equity and inclusion of the library’s collection in the past. Alley’s work was presented by Ruth Castillo, Director of the Library at Emory & Henry, to the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) Collections Forum. VIVA Director Anne Osterman asked for an early look at the software to evaluate so that it could be used across many colleges in Va.
For more information about the School of Health Sciences and programming, visit www.ehc.edu/academics/school-health-sciences
- Kelly Library at Emory & Henry College