Who We Are
The African American Medical Librarians Alliance (AAMLA) is an affinity group of the Medical Library Association (MLA) formed out of the realization that there was no space for minority librarians to be organizationally present in terms of our thoughts, emotions, and voices, thereby enabling us to freely express ourselves. Prior to 2000, African American librarians in MLA would communicate more informally throughout the year as a collaborative and networking initiative, culminating in annual social gatherings at MLA conferences through dinners and other activities. After many years of social networking, we realized that in order to have forward progression in the Association and thrive in a predominantly white female profession, we would have to be more strategic and formative in how we operated as a group.
We were aware that the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Special Interest Group (SIG) had been formally established in 1994 as a new MLA SIG with the premise that they would not be duplicating the efforts of or competing with an established MLA Section. They were a personal identity group, just as we were, and similar to them, there was no other group seeking to do (or already doing) the work in which we were interested in. Seeing no reason to prevent our establishment as a SIG, we pursued that pathway, gathering signatures for a petition to form and meeting any other criteria that had been set. We officially became the African American Medical Librarians Alliance SIG in 2000 at the Annual MLA meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
As a personal identity SIG with a majority membership of African Americans, some of our goals were to become more involved in the activities of MLA and especially those framed around the context of MLA priorities. We wanted to increase our presence at the table by establishing more leadership opportunities; cultivating opportunities for outreach, recruitment and retention of minority librarians; becoming more engaged and active with Sections to partner for MLA programming (co-sponsorship from an MLA Section was required); tracking our history of engagement with MLA; increasing communication and networking for our members; and providing mentoring opportunities, especially for new librarians of color.
SIGs could not collect dues, and though donations were permitted, we decided against doing that since it might be a financial burden and not inclusive for some members. Some SIGs did collect donations, and though our decision may have been prohibitive in our group being able to fully participate in annual meeting activities, inequities would have persisted nonetheless based on these criteria. Not having to pay additional dues was one of the reasons why we chose to pursue becoming a SIG in lieu of a Section.
Today, the AAMLA Caucus of MLA is composed of information professionals who are largely employed at academic institutions, hospitals, and community colleges throughout the United States. The Caucus is committed to and has a history of providing leadership and support for minority librarians on a variety of issues, including recruiting and retaining diverse librarians, developing mentoring and leadership opportunities, and creating an expertise and special skills repository.
AAMLA stands committed to bringing the challenges and issues of minority librarians and information professionals to the forefront. In this capacity, we help all health sciences librarians and other information professionals understand and appreciate the dynamics of cultural diversity, as well as recognize and address the needs for cultural competence and humility in healthcare environments.