9 Minority professional staff in U.S. ARL university libraries continues to be disproportionately distributed across the country. Using Figure 1, we can compare the number of minority staff with other staff, region by region. These patterns of distribution have been relatively stable for the entire history of ARL’s data-collection experience. Minorities are underrepresented by more than 25% in the New England and West North Central regions (see Table 25 for a definition of the regions). Proportionately to other regions, there are more minorities in the South Atlantic, West South Central, and Pacific regions. Figure 1 MINORITY PROFESSIONALS BY REGION (U.S.) IN ARL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, FY 2005-06 New England Middle Atlantic E North Central W North Central South Atlantic East S Central West S Central Mountain Pacific TOTAL % Race/Ethnicity Category Black 32 60 82 24 110 21 21 10 38 398 35% Hispanic 21 24 22 7 37 4 33 26 33 207 18% Asian 66 81 76 21 66 8 39 24 130 511 45% AI/AN 4 3 3 4 3 5 2 4 24 2% Minority Total 122 168 184 55 218 33 95 64 201 1,140 100% Minority Percent 10.70% 14.74% 16.14% 4.82% 19.12% 2.89% 8.33% 5.61% 17.63% Nonminority Total 1,128 1,197 1,337 514 1,219 373 586 442 764 7,560 100% Nonminority Percent 14.92% 15.83% 17.69% 6.80% 16.12% 4.93% 7.75% 5.85% 10.11% Regional Percent Total staff 14.37% 15.69% 17.48% 6.54% 16.52% 4.67% 7.83% 5.82% 11.09% Proportional Minority Representation -28.28% -6.93% -8.74% -29.04% 18.60% -41.33% 7.51% -3.98% 74.47% ARL recognizes the difficulties that the profession has in attracting a diverse workforce and continues to work actively in the development of workplace climates that embrace diversity. The ARL Diversity Program, through its Leadership and Career Development Program and the Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce, emphasizes ARL and its members’ commitment to creating a diverse academic and research library community to better meet the new challenges of global competition and changing demographics. Further, the Diversity Program focuses on issues surrounding work relationships in libraries while considering the impact of diversity on library services, interactions with library users, and the development of collections, at its homepage, http://www.arl.org/diversity/index.html. Women comprise 70.53% of the four racial/ethnic groups that comprise minority staff, as compared to 62.99% of Caucasian/Other staff in all U.S. ARL university libraries. The overall 4 American Indian/Alaskan Native.