Marin library system rolls out anti-racism plan

The document calls for hiring more people of color, hiring a public relations representative and offering staff more racial equity and anti-discrimination training.

The Marin County Free Library has unveiled a new five-year “anti-racism and equity” plan.

The library paid the Margaret Sullivan Studio, a design firm in New York City, $100,000 to help it create the plan. Jamillah Jordan, director of the county’s office of racial equity, also assisted.

“We focus on communities of color in this plan, which we define as a collective term for non-White individuals who share a common experience, whether racially, ethnically or lived experience,” said Lana Adlawan, the library’s director, in a briefing before county supervisors on April 2.

The plan begins with a “land and labor acknowledgement” that Marin County is situated on the traditional homelands of the Coast Miwok people and that the United States was built on the “labor of enslaved people.”

The plan acknowledges “all immigrant and indigenous labor, including voluntary, involuntary, trafficked, forced and undocumented people who contributed to the building of the country and continue to serve within our labor force.”

The document also states that “early public libraries in the United States excluded various groups, including indigenous peoples, communities of color, queer and nonbinary individuals, people with different abilities, women and children,” and affirms the library’s commitment to “practicing anti-racism and equity to dismantle oppressive systems.”

The consultant said the Marin County Free Library is one of the first libraries in the nation to center its plan on race equity.

The library system is a special taxing district that has branches in the Civic Center, Novato, Corte Madera, Fairfax, Inverness, Bolinas, Point Reyes, Stinson Beach and Marin City. It also operates two mobile libraries.

Notable plans in the document include altering qualifications for hiring library personnel to facilitate the hiring of more people of color; hiring a public relations representative for the library; and offering library staff more racial equity and anti-racism training.

In 2017, Marin County required all county employees to attend eight hours of “cultural intelligence” training as part of its racial equity plan.

In March 2021, the county agreed to pay BiasSync, a Los Angeles company, $150,000 over two years to conduct a series of unconscious, or “implicit,” bias tests on employees and to provide related online educational videos. Adlawan said she doesn’t recall how library personnel scored on the tests.

The library’s previous mission statement adopted in 2013 was to “provide welcoming, equitable, and inclusive opportunities for all to connect, learn and explore,” Adlawan said.

“Our new mission,” she said, “is even more expansive to allow any library patron to experience our services and information holistically as welcoming, equitable and inclusive.”

Raemona Little Taylor, the library’s assistant director, said the strategic plan prioritizes “community power, collective impact and joyful learning.”

“To build community power we need to be outside our branches at community events meeting the community wherever they are,” Little Taylor said. “We have moved beyond the library as a space of correction, discipline and fines.”

Adlawan said, “As we embrace anti-racism and equity, we as a collective community can experience joy and better understanding of one another, and the strengths we have as individual members with different lived experiences in Marin.”

The library did away with fines for overdue books in 2019 because they were viewed as a barrier to access.

“We have deep internal and external work to do,” Adlawan said. “We will conduct a year-long assessment of our services, develop new career pathways to remove barriers to join the library’s workforce, and center the active participation and perspective of communities.”

She said one change the library is contemplating is removing the requirement for librarians to have a master’s degree in library and information science.

“That’s a huge expense and can be a burden for some individuals to accomplish in their lifetime,” Adlawan said. “We’ll be working closely with our department of human resources.”

In November 2022, Marin residents who live in the system’s taxing district renewed and increased a parcel tax for another nine years that has helped fund the library since 2010. The tax was increased from $57.56 per parcel to $98 per parcel. The tax also increases yearly by the rate of inflation. It is estimated the tax increase will boost the amount of revenue generated annually from $2.8 million to $4.7 million.

Adlawan said the renewal of the tax put the library “in a solid place to complete this plan.”

Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, however, said, “It seems like that won’t even be enough. What are the budget impacts, if any, and what is next? So that we can get a little prepared.”

Josh Swedberg, the county’s budget director, said that for the fiscal year that ended in June, the library’s revenues exceeded costs by $2.3 million, due mainly to higher-than-expected tax revenue and lower-than-anticipated spending on salaries.

Adlawan, in an email, said, “We reduced our vacancy rate to 10% just a few months ago, which was cause for celebration.”