make even a small contribution to advancing diversity at your university. Informal conversations can lead to big ideas. • Your decisions about a budget request can provide synergy to similar activities in other schools and units. • Your opportunities to speak at administrative meetings are precious. Plan for them and how you can plant the seed of an idea. • You can help persuade others with additional resources in their own units to collaborate. • You can talk to your own provost about the need for campus-wide solutions. • You can ask your staffs and patrons for help in thinking about how to better serve their needs in the future. All of this will take time, effort, and, oftentimes, money. But it’s worth the investment in the people who will benefit. It will make your campus a better place. © 2009 Bernadette Gray-Little This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/. To cite this article: Bernadette Gray-Little. “Diversity in Research Universities.” Research Library Issues: A Bimonthly Report from ARL, CNI, and SPARC, no. 263 (April 2009): 1–8. http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/ rli/archive/rli263.shtml. RLI 263 8 Diversity in Research Universities ( C O N T I N U E D ) APRIL 2009 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC The author presented this essay as the keynote address at the 153rd ARL Membership Meeting in Arlington, Virginia, October 15, 2008.