Cultural Competency Defined and Explored

Cultural competency, variably known as intercultural competency, cross-cultural competency, cultural diversity competency, global competency, international mindedness, among others,¹ is multifaceted, flexible, and best understood as a framework or set of concepts. Cultural competency begins with an awareness of self; this self-cultural analysis reveals biases and values, among other things. Cultural competency is firmly process oriented, meaning it emphasizes growth, continuing work, and action. And the framework includes a concept of a continuum on which to locate oneself. In general, scholars and practitioners across disciplines agree that cultural competency is management of human interactions across our differences, with results of more appropriate and effective outcomes at the individual, relational, group, and organizational levels.² Many definitions are available to us. Dennis Meissner's 2016 presidential address to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) offered the Intercultural Communication Institute's definition: “the set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills and characteristics that support appropriate and effective interaction in a variety of cultural contexts,” a definition closely resembling that in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence.³ The World Health Organization defines it in the context of global competency, simply “. . . as a demonstrated ability to work constructively with people across differences.”⁴

When parsing the concept of cultural competency by its component words, the literature generally agrees upon an understanding of “culture” as shared actions of groups of people, expressed daily, that are the results of historically or socially transmitted customs and traditions.⁵ On the use of the term “competency,” here it refers to ability developed over time rather than any set of concrete skills. In this context, the word communicates “having the capacity to function effectively” and “integrated intelligence that is part of and woven into every other skill and competency.”⁶ Thus, competency does not equate to cultural knowledge across all the world's cultures. It does not demand that one knows all. Rather, when competent, one is sensitive to self and to others, engages with others with humility, and knows that cultural differences exist as do similarities.⁷ Competency can be understood as capability.

Cultural competency emphasizes three aspects that together comprise effective interaction with difference. These are knowledge (cognitive), skills (behavioral), and attitudes (affective), or “KSAs,” alternatively articulated as mindset, skillset, and heartset or the head, hand, heart components. Knowledge includes cultural self-awareness, as well as knowledge of others' cultures, languages, histories, and lived realities. Essential skills are listening, observing, reflecting, empathizing, and communicating. Attitudes, increasingly recognized as core to cultural competency, are those of curiosity, humility, open-mindedness, respect, and tolerance for not knowing (ambiguity). Janet Bennett, an interdisciplinary scholar and executive director of the Intercultural Communication Institute, summarizes the key cognitive competency as cultural self-awareness, the key behavioral as empathy, and the key affective as curiosity.⁸

A useful concept for understanding cultural competency is that of the continuum, developed initially by a team of social workers led by Terry Cross and later adapted by others. The continuum is a conceptual structure on which to locate possible personal and organizational behaviors. The Cross continuum sets cultural destructiveness, incapacity, and blindness on one end of the continuum; next resides precompetency or limited competency; and at the high end of the continuum is cultural competency and proficiency. Self-reflection or analysis, professional development, and personal cross-cultural experience progress individuals through the continuum.⁹ It is helpful, too, to visualize the tangible goals or recognizable characteristics of a culturally competent individual or system. Individuals display KSAs such as self-awareness, curiosity, humility, dexterity, and world-mindedness; they actively seek knowledge, professional and personal development, and interaction with varieties of cultures. Organizations demonstrate capacity to value diversity, conduct self-assessment, manage the dynamics of difference, acquire and institutionalize cultural knowledge, and adapt to the cultural contexts of individuals and communities they serve. Each of these elements needs to occur across all levels of any system.¹⁰

Cultural Competency across Disciplines, with an Emphasis on Library and Information Science

Cultural competency is well recognized in many fields and prominent among cultural diversity concepts. It has been so for decades. General benefits of its application in practice-based fields include improved service to clients, knowledgeable self and colleagues, improved reflective skills, and strategic use of (ever-present) human differences toward personal, organizational, and societal goals. Numerous professions, particularly those centered on human services, incorporate cultural competency. First applied in the United States in the health field, it evolved there among other intellectual structures and service methods to help address disparities related to the provision of health services. Psychology, social work, education, law enforcement, and other fields now employ this framework at individual and organizational levels to improve human services. And, cultural competency is found in the corporate world, located among global talent management and effectiveness, social responsibility, and inclusion work, where the strategic nature of it is well recognized. It is truly interdisciplinary.¹¹

Cultural competency commands a presence within the field of library and information science/studies (LIS). As in other fields, this presence is most established within the discourse on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) as well as occasionally in talent management and leadership, and it developed within the milieu of multiculturalism and diversity efforts.¹² The American Library Association Policy Manual's “Positions and Public Policy Statements” Diversity section partners cultural competency with inclusion; defines it as “the acceptance and respect for diversity, continuing self-assessment regarding culture, and the ongoing development of knowledge, resources, and service models that work towards effectively meeting the needs of diverse populations”; and claims it critical to equitable service.¹³ As summarized by authors Patricia Montiel-Overall, Annabelle Villaescusa Nuñez, and Verónica Reyes-Escudero, “LIS professionals' interest in cultural competence followed many years of discussions about multicultural and diversity issues, for instance, recruiting minorities to the profession. Shifting demographics, increasing populations of immigrants and English-language learners (ELLs), and minorities with limited access to information became a cause for concern among LIS professionals beginning in the 1980s.”¹⁴ “Culturally Competent Libraries,” a 1994 article by library and organizational development consultant Kikanza Nuri-Robins, is the LIS field's first publication on the topic.¹⁵ Nuri-Robins connects cultural competency to organizational development, embraces the model of the continuum, and asserts the primacy of self-awareness. Nuri-Robins recognizes the nonthreatening nature of cultural competency, because it honors whatever place workers or an organization might occupy on the continuum. Furthermore, she articulates the nature of the framework as inward out—centered on the self, rather than on others. Relatedly, this framework relieves the minority members of a profession from the core of EDI work, instead placing the primary role and responsibility on those in the majority.¹⁶

Cultural competency in LIS was, and remains, most frequently discussed in area specializations and ethnic or identity affiliate groups, as well as in management and leadership literature due to connections with recruitment, public service modes, professional standards, and education. A cover spread and strong editorial in 1999's Library Journal report of the 4th National Conference of African American Librarians asserts a collective failure. “True cultural competence has rarely blessed our professional practice or even penetrated our professional consciousness,” writes editor-in-chief John Berry, reminding readers of the library profession's history of expecting others to assimilate to the dominant paradigm.¹⁷ Other key articles in prominent American library journals followed. They emphasize various elements of the cultural competency framework.

A cross-disciplinary team comprised of a librarian and a faith community leader, Nancy Ottman Press and Mary Diggs-Hobson, published their experiences providing health information to a community “where they are, not where we want them to be.” They articulate some of cultural competency's knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) as applied to library work. According to this article, attitude begins with self-awareness and then extends to awareness of cultural heritage and context of others; self-assessment, and comfort with difference, are key elements, as are valuing identities and intersectionality. Knowledge in their context means librarians' awareness of systemic barriers affecting users and users' information-seeking requirements. Skills include cross-cultural communication abilities, building alternative roles for the librarian (such as ombudsperson or consultant), and honoring indigenous or existing information providers and systems.¹⁸

Medical librarian Misa Mi extends the requirement or prerequisite for cultural competency demanded in other professions to LIS, calling for similar requirement of librarians.¹⁹ Mi also calls for action at leadership organizations: “National, regional, and local professional organizations should take initiatives in promoting cultural competent skills for library staff, sponsoring or developing cultural competence programs and C[ontinuing] E[ducation] courses, and compiling a bibliography to meet the needs of libraries and librarians for information about providing cultural competent services.”²⁰ Librarian and consultant Sandra Ríos Balderrama claims cultural competency as critical to libraries and reminds readers that learning and growth occur at the point of tension and conflict. Ríos Balderrama also notes the strategic benefit of cultural competency at both the personal and system levels: “Differences . . . offer new insights and the capability for deeper understanding. Differences offer outcomes that come out of synergy. Awareness of our cultural values and growing our cultural competence in order to interact effectively and respectfully across cultures are the first steps toward tapping into the richness of ‘multi.’”²¹

Then in 2009, librarian and professor Patricia Montiel-Overall published “Cultural Competence: A Conceptual Framework for Library and Information Science Professionals,” an influential article providing a broad LIS vision for cultural competency. In it, she pens a definition for LIS that has been frequently cited and embraced by others:

Cultural competence is the ability to recognize the significance of culture in one's own life and in the lives of others; and to come to know and respect diverse cultural backgrounds and characteristics through interaction with individuals from diverse linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic groups; and to fully integrate the culture of diverse groups into services, work, and institutions in order to enhance the lives of both those being served by the library profession and those engaged in service.²²

This article provides other valuable insights. Montiel-Overall centers cultural competency in cultural psychology, which embraces mind and culture as inseparable. This differs from general psychology and indeed from the Western theoretical grounding widely embedded throughout LIS: the objectivist notions of knowledge and the behaviorist notions of learning through practice, training, and skills, wherein “mind and culture are separate.”²³ Montiel-Overall's model for LIS perpetuates the continuum, stresses the primacy of process, and introduces its three domains: the cognitive, the interpersonal, and the environmental. Domains are not exclusive of each other, and each can include its own continuum. Self-awareness and building cultural knowledge are located in the cognitive domain. The interpersonal domain includes cultural appreciation, caring, and matching our practice with our values. The environmental relates to understanding the environment, such as resources and assets (e.g., language and dialect) and systems and structures affecting the community.²⁴ Though Montiel-Overall does not explicitly state it, current majority culture's ability-, class-, gender-, and racial-based systems belong within the environmental domain; an understanding of culture certainly demands recognition of power structures.

Cultural competency is established within LIS in Australia and New Zealand too, including in education and training. Australian librarian Fiona Blackburn writes that cultural competency is included in the policies and strategies of major institutions, and professional training programs incorporate it to various extents.²⁵ LIS scholars Nicole Gaston, Alison Fields, Philip Calvert, and Spencer Lilley outline that in New Zealand, due to leadership at the national level by both the national LIS organization and Te Rōpū Whakahau (the national body that represents Māori engaged in libraries, culture, knowledge, information, communication, and systems technology), LIS sector workers “are expected to be able to competently engage with a wide variety of cultures. . . . The tapestry of social and cultural inclusion in New Zealand is being woven into all areas of the library and information profession in New Zealand, with initiatives seen in all areas of LIS education, the wider profession and in service to the communities and clients they serve.”²⁶ Furthermore, their successful model is in part due to the wider LIS field actively changing through incorporation of Māori, a nondominant culture.²⁷

In the United States too, advocates are advancing cultural competency particularly in regard to professional training and development. The 2017 monograph by Professor Nicole A. Cooke, Information Services to Diverse Populations: Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals, a text for LIS graduate students in the United States that provides graduate lesson plans and further readings, is also valuable for practitioners and those seeking professional development. Cooke reinforces and contextualizes the pertinent literature to date and, among other things, presents “counter-storytelling,” a method to disrupt and democratize dominant narratives, as one element of culturally competent training. Cooke extends the concept of the continuum to that of a cycle, its movement regressive as well as progressive, explaining “. . . it might be even more useful to think of this development as a cycle, instead of a linear process, as cultural competence does not simply begin and end, it is an ongoing process . . . [that] requires consistent work, and . . . it is possible to move backward on the scale. . . .”²⁸ Cooke highlights cultural humility within cultural competency, linking humility to improving power imbalance, and social justice work.²⁹

Others call for embedding cultural competency into national formal education. Generally, scholars discuss cultural competency vis-à-vis professional education in the context of EDI and to address the scarcity of social justice and EDI content in the LIS classroom.³⁰ Professors Kafi Kumasi and Renee Franklin Hill recognize “a need to better infuse cultural competence learning objectives into the LIS curriculum” and that deliberate cultural competency standards would improve outcomes and assessment.³¹ Outreach librarian Alexandra Rivera presents cultural competency as a method to right the LIS field's minimal efforts to address foundational issues of racism and disparities within research and service, and promotes LIS programs that develop skills of contextual inquiry in students. Rivera reiterates the “virtuous circle” introduced by scholars Paul Jaeger and Renee Franklin wherein a diverse faculty, and curriculum that is based in cultural competency, foster diversity within students, faculty, and by extension the profession at large. And Rivera extends responsibility for the development of cultural competency from graduate education to the wide LIS ecosystem, including work organizations and professional standards.³²

Specialized librarian groups emphasize cultural competency in professional standards, or note it as critical to LIS training. The standards developed by the Association for College and Research Libraries in 2012 underscore cultural competency by centering it in the title, Diversity Standards: Cultural Competency for Academic Libraries, and stressing key elements such as the primacy of self-awareness and its dynamic nature.³³ The Young Adult Library Services Association included cultural competency throughout a 2014 report, and the 2015 Competencies for Librarians Serving Children in Public Libraries names cultural competency in areas ranging from service to professionalism and professional development.³⁴ The Association of College and Research Libraries/American Library Association Task Force on Core Competencies for Special Collections Professionals invokes the spirit of cultural competency in a few areas of its Guidelines; however, it does not clearly connect these competencies to the cultural competency framework. For example, Fundamental Competency 3 guides a practitioner to “[possess] cultural and linguistic competencies appropriate for their collections and user communities.” And the specialized category of management, supervision, and leadership states that employee professional development is to include the cultural context to one's work.³⁵

The LIS literature invites dialogue among specialty fields and cognate professions. Montiel-Overall called for such in her 2009 article, noting that development of cultural competency in LIS requires broad discussion and exploration of how to best develop it among different areas of the profession.³⁶ Others issue a similar invitation. In Where Are All the Librarians of Color?: The Experiences of People of Color in Academia, a book that provides space and voice to archivists of color and affirms the close relationship between the archival profession and that of librarianship, archivist Rebecca Hankins and librarian Miguel Juárez state an urgent call for such broad discussion regarding EDI. “Diversity is not a settled issue that we can move on from to other concerns. . . . [it is] the most consequential and important issue of our time,” they write, encouraging a large body of research and publication within the library and archives professions.³⁷ And the authors of Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives: Cultural Competence in Action! An Asset-based Approach “. . . invite library, museum, and archive professionals to consider a number of issues. How can cultural competence be developed? How is cultural competence to be evaluated? Should cultural-competence guidelines recommended by one group within the profession apply to the entire profession? To what extent is cultural competence incorporated into the curriculum of LIS schools?”³⁸ Such invitation to pan-professional conversation recognizes the inherent strength that lies in the differences within LIS, and it prompts a close study of the archival profession.

Review of Archival Literature

To explore the extent to which the archival profession in the United States is engaging with cultural competency, I conducted a literature review. I searched databases and read broadly, including in critical archival studies, surveying for any uses of the phrase (or like phrases); I then analyzed any use thereof.³⁹ I next reviewed four prominent peer-reviewed English-language archival journals. My survey of the journals American Archivist, Archives & Records, Archival Science, and Archivaria reveals that cultural competency has been occasionally discussed since 2009, and, with only one exception, these discussions take place in American Archivist.

American Archivist articles and book reviews regarding cultural competency appear within the last five years.⁴⁰ And Dennis Meissner's 2016 presidential address provides the first frank exploration of cultural competency, including the first definition to appear in print in archival literature. Meissner also stressed the importance of its highly individualized work; “[b]efore we attempt to diversify SAA or the archival record, we need to rotate the lens and work on ourselves as SAA members. The way to begin doing this is through increasing our cultural competence as the first step in making us more inclusive individuals.”⁴¹ This speech was published alongside Chris Taylor's “Getting Our House in Order: Moving from Diversity to Inclusion,” an article exploring the internal work necessary to succeed with intercultural competency. Taylor's was the first article in the journal to use “intercultural competency” as a keyword. In 2017, American Archivist included a book review by Margarita Vargas-Betancourt of Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives: Cultural Competence in Action! An Asset-based Approach. Three other articles published in the journal since 2013 include the phrase or a near variation. While these three certainly reference cultural competency, they do not discuss it substantially or explore the meaning of the framework for archivists.⁴²

The first article within the four journals to reference cultural competency appeared in 2009 in Archival Science.⁴³ Scholar Kelvin White includes the examination of an archival educator's own cultural competency as a key element within the Reflexivity component of his proposed framework for Mexican archival education. White explains “that educators may realize that they need to gain cultural competency (as much as is possible, permitted or appropriate without causing disrespect) by spending time with community members to learn about the object of knowledge and gain a richer and more comprehensive understanding of the group's perspective.”⁴⁴ This discussion of cultural competency is the only one in Archival Science (and its predecessor Archives and Museum Informatics). In my review of the other two journals, Archivaria⁴⁵ and Archives & Records (and its predecessor Journal of the Society of Archivists),⁴⁶ I located no discussions of cultural competency.

Outside of these publications, a few others address cultural competency vis-à-vis archives or special collections. A 2010 article by Rebecca Hankins and Miguel Juárez in the journal Art Documentation asks questions and provides answers for archival practice, in this case for the broadening and strengthening of art collections. The authors stress the need for formal mission statements and collecting policies, as these provide a public and strong statement, and give “weight” to efforts at cultural competence.⁴⁷ The book Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives, published in 2017, includes archives in its title, in its general intent, and in a chapter by curator Veronica Reyes-Escudero on special collections and archival work. There, Reyes-Escudero explores archival functions through the lens of Latinx cultural competency and offers professional characteristics of such. These include some of the KSAs discussed above: awareness of one's own culture; appreciating others; the ethic of caring, understanding situational context; and historical factors; and language fluencies.⁴⁸ This book affirms power-sharing with community. Furthermore, its unique contribution to cultural competency literature is the thoughtful presentation of asset-based thinking, wherein one considers users' contributions more than their needs:

It refocuses cultural competence from a deficit model to an asset model. . . . An asset-based model focuses on what is right in communities and builds programs, services, policies, legislation, and funding around community strengths. In our suggested model, community members are actively involved in the delivery of services. Deficit models focus on the negative aspects within communities, and members are not participants, but beneficiaries, of services.⁴⁹

Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives provides a collaborative pan-professional message, and, as noted above, invites conversation among related fields. Furthermore, the authors urge action, as fitting the spirit of cultural competency: “If cultural competence is to become widespread, however, . . . staff should not wait for it to be regulated [through professional guidelines and educational systems]. Each individual and institution in the profession can play a role in moving cultural competence forward.”⁵⁰ And, in 2018, archivist Mark Shelsted published a case study on an institutional application of cultural competency, in which he and colleagues “tailored” archival work to circumstances that in turn led to engaged users, including a local community that recognizes the institution as providing access to archives “for a more nuanced understanding of . . . history.”⁵¹

With this relatively small catalog of archives-specific published discourse on cultural competency, it is useful to consider the wider archival literature. As noted above, cultural competency resides often within equity, diversity, and inclusion work in many professions; I place it here for the archival profession, as well. Yet cultural competency, and EDI, are examples of the many cross- or interdisciplinary developments affecting the profession. Others include critical theory, cultural relativism, ethnic and feminist studies, globalization, indigenous knowledge, postcolonialism, postmodernism, the rights and justice movements, and developments within education, leadership, management, and technology. As summarized by scholars Kelvin White and Anne Gilliland, “. . . archival studies today transcends the professional field of archival science. It encompasses an ever-broadening array of disciplinary discussions and methodological approaches that are identifying, critiquing, and addressing the shifting social, cultural, philosophical, and political, as well as the technological, imperatives of record keeping and remembering in the twenty-first century.”⁵²

Generally, archival principles, values, and practice are developing and expanding from the foundational to allow for pluralism and alternatives to address the social and cultural aspects of archival activity.⁵³ This maturation was and is affected by critical theory. Critical theory questions assumptions and practices through an ethical or political lens. It identifies, for example, systems of power that are historically racist and sexist and protective of the dominant.⁵⁴ Critical archival studies, by extension, as defined by authors Michelle Caswell, Ricardo Punzalan, and T-Kay Sangwand, examines the relationship between archives and oppression/liberation. It works to “. . . (1) explain what is unjust with the current state of archival research and practice, (2) posit practical goals for how such research and practice can and should change, and/or (3) provide the norms for such critique. In this way, critical archival studies, like critical theory, is emancipatory in nature, with the ultimate goal of transforming archival practice and society writ large.”⁵⁵ One example of a changing archival concept influenced by critical theory is the expansion of the principle of provenance beyond record creators to one that can include the “subjects” of the records, their curators, and users.⁵⁶

Critical theorists, and critical librarian and archival studies, provide thought-provoking context for cultural competency, though this is yet to be fully explored. For example, scholar Todd Honma does not speak directly to cultural competency yet critiques celebration of difference and promotion of cross-cultural understanding as “empty of critical analyses of race and racism that instead adopts a commodified diversity management more in line with capitalist market relations than emancipatory anti-racist struggles.”⁵⁷ And Kelvin White has more recently explored the role of culture and archives, though he does not explicitly discuss cultural competency. In a chapter titled “Race and Culture: An Ethnic Studies Approach to Archival and Recordkeeping Research in the United States,” White argues that the role of culture is key to understanding the interacting dynamics of race, archives, and power. White centers culture within records: “What shapes archival processes and concepts? Culture. What is remembered or recorded is shaped by culture. The archive's form is shaped by culture. . . .”⁵⁸

Other LIS authors clearly link cultural competency and critical theory. David James Hudson, writing with a critical theory lens, appraises cultural competency as a form of liberal antiracism wherein LIS workers individualize racism in a primary goal to create “a heterogeneous harmony that represents respectful working conditions characterized by tolerance and minimal conflict.”⁵⁹ Hudson asserts that LIS's favoring of the individualistic is superficial and problematic. This is a useful critique, as it calls for assessment of cultural competency to ensure it is not a method wherein those in the dominant system can feel comfortable by simply discussing the personal, rather than working consistently toward meaningful change or dismantling a harmful system. Critical archives scholars may concur, due to the strong aspect of self within cultural competency. Archival critical scholars do address reflexivity; as noted by J. J. Ghaddar, Caswell and Punzalan have called for moving beyond rights-based rhetoric and “notions of archival pluralism and a liberal politics of recognition that emphasizes inclusivity, multiplicity, and self-reflexivity” because of its ineffectiveness.⁶⁰ Ghaddar and others find self-reflexivity problematic, for it is “a mechanism for transforming guilt into shame, and bad feelings into good,” and “serves to reinstitute the colonial structural domination it ostensibly seeks to disavow.”⁶¹

Other commentators find confluence with critical theory, while affirming cultural competency's still-nascent status. The authors of Latinos in Libraries, Museums, and Archives note that critical race theory and Latinx critical theory may not be common in discussions in the cultural competency literature, yet these explain underlying biases and policies behind cultural inequities in our systems and are indeed pertinent to cultural competency.⁶² In a journal recognized for furthering and pushing the critical dimension to LIS work,⁶³ Blackburn explores cultural competency, whiteness, and intersectionality, recognizing that self-awareness can lead to awareness of the privilege inherent in dominant culture. “Privilege, while not explicitly referenced in cultural competence theory, is implicit in how culture works; whiteness, again not explicitly referenced in cultural competence theory, is central in Western library structures and operations. . . . If the starting point of cultural competence is an understanding of the role of culture in your life (including your workplace), and in the lives of others, then you will also become aware of . . . privilege and marginalization. . . .”⁶⁴ Awareness of personal privilege, biases, as well as systemic inequity, fit squarely in the KSAs.

Another area of confluence may be found in the ethics of care. Cultural competency developed within the fields of care providers. Curator Reyes-Escudero includes “an ethic of caring” in a list of culturally competent qualities,⁶⁵ and Montiel-Overall explains that one develops “cultural appreciation and an ethic of caring” in the interpersonal domain of cultural competency.⁶⁶ What relationship does cultural competency have to the “ethics of care” introduced by scholars Punzalan and Caswell as a suggested alternative or departure from rights-based archives work? Ethics of care stress that people are linked through webs of responsibilities and emphasize (among other things) connection and context. This feminist framework honors “relationships of mutual obligation that are wholly dependent on culture and context.”⁶⁷ Upon further development, this may be more closely related to cultural competency skills and attitudes than currently articulated. This possible synergy is one example of the many areas where the profession would benefit from deeper consideration and more published literature on the relationships of cultural competency and archival theory, and cultural competency and practice.

The Archives Profession in Action

Beyond the literature, in practice and in public discussion, archivists are engaging with cultural competency. Practitioners and leaders are reflecting on self, recognizing the role of culture, and acting on such to improve services, relationships, and organizations. The formal national leadership of the Society of American Archivists (particularly Council, complemented by committees and component groups) provides notable and likely the earliest public discussion on cultural competency in the profession. Having for many years designated diversity (and later, diversity and inclusion) as a major issue of and for the profession,⁶⁸ SAA Council first acted on cultural competency within this context. In 2009, it directed a subgroup to “revisit and reword the activities associated with the [Strategic Plan's] Diversity Priority, Outcome #4, which dealt with issues of retention and diversifying the profession.” This subgroup thus produced action (C), to “[d]evelop a cultural competencies framework as it relates to archivists and the archives profession,” and Council approved. The subgroup's support statement for action (C) directed a “series of concrete tools, training, and practical steps . . .” for members.⁶⁹ Rebecca Hankins, then on Council and the subgroup, reflects that some of this activity was a result of many years' discourse on cultural sensitivity and particularly the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials, which itself provided a catalyst to confront the fact that the American profession was not yet making meaningful progress on diversity and inclusion issues. Council thought it wise to break this seemingly behemoth issue of EDI out to smaller areas of action (e.g., the Mosaic scholars, developing programming). As noted by Hankins, “. . . the reality is you have to parse it out and then do something.”⁷⁰

In the decade following, Council member Helen Wong Smith provided key leadership for cultural competency in SAA, likewise recognizing the need to work within a manageably sized area and suggesting a concentration on cultural competency.⁷¹ This initiative then gained momentum, and Wong Smith offered training to SAA Council and staff, developed educational opportunities, and presented to membership. She and colleagues also worked via component groups, such as the Archives and Archivists of Color Roundtable, and affiliated or colleague organizations such as the Midwest Archives Conference and San Jose State Student Chapter.⁷² SAA continued efforts with Wong Smith and provided further resources for membership, namely educational resources on cultural diversity competency,⁷³ and by doing so is meeting Mi's call for sponsored education.

At the national conference level, archivists are likewise very recently discussing cultural competency. SAA Annual Meeting educational sessions reflect the interests, skills, and action areas of members, as members provide proposals and develop the content for them. As measured through use of the phrase (and again, its variation) in the printed preliminary program,⁷⁴ archivists discussed cultural competency at least twice at the 2017 Annual Meeting. Wong Smith presented “Cultural Diversity Competency's Role in Diversity, Inclusion and Community Engagement” at the Research Forum, and four members developed a session “to engage topics of culturally competent archival work” and intentionally referenced the phrase in its title.⁷⁵ The first appearance of the phrase within the preliminary program occurred one year earlier with the description for a session regarding whiteness in the profession: “. . . a collaborative and engaging conversation that complements SAA's ongoing efforts toward cultural competency, diversity, and inclusion” and noting Council's “Initiative for Cultural Diversity Competence.”⁷⁶ And a graduate student project poster in 2015 highlighted the phrase itself and cited Montiel-Overall's influential LIS article.⁷⁷ All these indicate members' engagement with cultural competency.

SAA's formal leaders also provided key annual conference visibility for cultural competency in recent years. The 2016 presidential address by Meissner and companion keynote by Chris Taylor are important as oral presentations at this venue, as they are also important in their later published forms in American Archivist. Wong Smith formally introduced SAA Council's initiative on cultural competency to the membership in 2015 during the Leadership Plenary hosted by president Kathleen Roe. Wong Smith here also illustrated the continuum, introduced skill levels, and invited members “to join Council in adopting the precepts of Cultural Diversity Competency and experience the benefits it brings to you, your collections, and your communities.”⁷⁸

In daily practice archivists are engaging in culturally competent work based in self-cultural awareness and incorporating empathy, humility, care, and support for a variety of cultural norms. Such work can be placed toward the competent end of the continuum should archivists and their organizations apply the cultural competency framework. This practice, appearing within the milieu of the broader movements and intellectual developments discussed above, can be found across the various archival functional areas. In acquisition and collection development, for example, archivists broadened collections in connection with the mid-twentieth-century demand for social, public, local, and identity-based histories, and increasingly archivists support others in community-based archival work, in complement to institutional control and ownership.⁷⁹ Appraisal theory and practice always demanded recognition of context of creation as well as of the creators themselves; a stronger emphasis on culture, a form of context, thus fits well into traditional appraisal. The emphasis on “self” within cultural competency fits squarely into newer concepts, such as archival agency, dominant paradigms, and reflexivity, that are affecting appraisal and other core functions.

In description, archivists are working to evolve or disrupt current systems and norms by way of crowdsourced, iterative, multilingual, or culturally conscious descriptive practice.⁸⁰ Participatory and restorative archival description reveals that archivists are listening critically to their—and their predecessors'—agency within descriptive tools, and they are giving space to and amplifying plural voices/cultures within materials described. One example is the conscious description articulated by archivist Dominique Luster in the Teenie Harris Archive. This work is, in part, an effort to “elevate humanity back into our archival records through description.”⁸¹ Furthermore, the management of the whole project surrounding the Teenie Harris photograph collection “was shaped by an advisory committee . . . who insisted on the African American community's ownership of the history represented in Harris images. Consequently, the archive catalog is based on first-person accounts by Harris's subjects and contemporaries. . . .” The photograph collection description thus includes content contributed by the public or contemporary news publications.⁸² Luster's work acknowledges the power and control inherent in archival description and provides an almost arithmetic formula for description including elements of cultural competence attitudes: kind, compassionate, mindful, empowering, respectful, and inclusive description = “conscious.”⁸³

In an example from my own experience with outreach and professional development, the Immigration History Research Center Archives—where staff and institutional identity in many ways fit the field's dominant demographic and culture, and which seeks to work reciprocally with community—accepted an offer from Abdi Roble, a Somali American documentary photographer and community archivist, to work with him on community-based archiving. Throughout a resulting yearlong residency that benefited all parties, our organization reflected on archives in relation to cultures and lived realities of individuals and various communities, including Somali American. I became acutely aware of how some potential users and donors react to the archival use of the verb “document” and the noun “documentation,” and we discussed what collection management tool works for indigenous knowledge systems. Roble stressed to us the importance of recognizing how records creators, or people who can be located within archival records, view such records of themselves.⁸⁴

The year also provided ample opportunity for me to apply the framework of cultural competency to both myself and to my organization. For example, we were invited to contribute to a community discussion on archives. The location of the event and the role for the archives were unusual for us, as typically we invite community groups onto our campus and into our archives, and we provide expertise. In this case, we accepted an invitation to play a different role, that of supporter, and off-campus. With this event, I applied KSAs. Knowledge included self-reflection through which I recognized a personal value that intersected with a cultural bias; skills included empathy and listening closely while communicating; attitude included comfort with ambiguity. I approached the event recognizing community as expert and asset in regard to archival work. The archives supported existing information providers and locations, as called for by Press and Diggs-Hobson.⁸⁵ This experience was simply part of a process; more (and continual) work is needed to be culturally competent. Applying the continuum to my experience, I place myself in some aspects moving from cultural blindness to awareness, and in others from awareness to competence. This movement is illustrated by the curved arrows in Figure 1. Figure 1 depicts the continuum developed by Cross et al., later adapted by Montiel-Overall et al. and incorporates Cooke's concept of the possibility of progression and regression, illustrated here by the bidirectional arrows.

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These practices, and others like them, provide useful models of cultural competency within archival work and will help to develop cultural competency as a framework for LIS.

Conclusion

Thus, archivists can contribute to LIS development of cultural competency. As introduced in this article, archival theory and practice in many ways work well with the framework. Archival perspectives on access and outreach, collection development and appraisal, description, and more can help build a varied and thus useful LIS-centered framework. Further research and analysis are needed to realize the full contribution, as well as to help the archival profession mature in its work with cultural competency.

This article posits that cultural competency is one framework available to all archivists to advance equity and inclusion within the profession. The frame-work is accessible and easily applied. Based in self- or organizational awareness, and complemented by building wider cultural knowledge, it can be particularly constructive for dominant-culture archivists and librarians. The archival profession, comprised largely of members of a dominant majority,⁸⁷ is well suited to and in need of cultural competency because of this starting point of self-reflection and analysis. As articulated by the many authors summarized in this article, the framework offers many benefits. And it is nonthreatening, supportive of each person's incremental movement regardless of location along the continuum or work environment. The inward-out dimension encourages action from ourselves rather than from others, and I found it empowering for moving beyond discussion to action and leveraging human difference. In Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice, Randall Jimerson reminds readers of the strength that comes from the great variety within the archival profession and the fact that archivists have many valid options for “responding to the call of justice,”⁸⁸ a comment that shares with cultural competency a spirit of openness and recognition of individual work. This study of emerging cultural competency reveals archivists thinking and practicing with humility and self-reflection, and strategically managing across difference. In doing so, they are developing “next practice” out of “best practice”⁸⁹ and responding to the call.

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