University Libraries
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/10
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Reevaluating the University of Maryland's Urban Information Specialist Program(2022-05-06) Bradley, BenjaminThis presentation is an overview of archival research I have performed focusing on the student experience and response to the closure of the Urban Information Specialist Program (UISP) at the University of Maryland's School of Library and Information Service (SLIS). The UISP was developed by Mary Lee Bundy and lead by James Welbourne, and was designed to recruit lower income students, especially African Americans, to serve as librarians in lower-income communities. The UISP was an experimental program that remove barriers to access a Masters in Library Science, but the end of the program was controversial and resulted in at least one campus protest and Bundy & Welbourne published a book arguing that the university cut the program purely out of racist hatred. This presentation provides an overview of the program and discusses some of my findings in the Bibliophile (the SLIS's student newspaper) and the Diamondback.Item Segregation in UMD Libraries and UMD Library Education in the Early 1970's(2021-06-03) Bradley, BenjaminThis presentation is an introduction to some research-in-progress, rooted in the Diamondback and the Black Explosion, that I would like to share on racial (in)justice issues affecting the University of Maryland and libraries that happened in the early 1970’s. The first story focuses on accusations from McKeldin Library staff and the library Equal Education and Employment Officer about discrimination library employees faced. The second focuses on the story of the Urban Information Specialist program in the School of Library and Information Services. The program, pioneered by James Welbourne, was a radical program that focused on developing black library leaders to serve in inner cities. The Master’s degree program didn’t even technically require an undergraduate degree and focused on site education rather than classroom and textbook focused programs. The program was controversial and only supported by the federal government, not the library school or the university. When the program stopped receiving federal funding, the school decided to discontinue with program which garnered student protests.