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This accessible and compelling Special Report introduces cultural humility, a lifelong practice that can guide library workers in their day-to-day interactions by helping them recognize and address structural inequities in library services.  

Cultural humility is emerging as a preferred approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts within librarianship. At a time when library workers are critically examining their professional practices, cultural humility offers a potentially transformative framework of compassionate accountability; it asks us to recognize the limits to our knowledge, reckon with our ongoing fallibility, educate ourselves about the power imbalances in our organizations, and commit to making change. This Special Report introduces the concept and outlines its core tenets. As relevant to those currently studying librarianship as it is to long-time professionals, and applicable across multiple settings including archives and museums, from this book readers will 

• learn why cultural humility offers an ideal approach for navigating the spontaneous interpersonal interactions in libraries, whether between patrons and staff or amongst staff members themselves;
• understand how it intersects with cultural competence models and critical race theory;
• see the ways in which cultural humility’s awareness of and commitment to challenging inequitable structures of power can act as a powerful catalyst for community engagement;
• come to recognize how a culturally humble approach supports DEI work by acknowledging the need for mindfulness in day-to-day interactions;
• reflect upon cultural humility’s limitations and the criticisms that some have leveled against it; and
• take away concrete tools for undertaking and continuing such work with patience and hope.

Cultural humility offers a renewing and transformative framework for navigating interpersonal interactions in libraries, whether between patrons and staff or staff members with one another. It foregrounds a practice of critical self-reflection and commitment to recognizing and redressing structural inequities and problematic power imbalances. This collection, the first book-length treatment of this approach in libraries, gathers contributors from across the field to demonstrate how cultural humility can change the way we work and make lasting impacts on diversity, equity, and inclusion in libraries. This book's chapters explore such topics as

• how Indigenous adages can be tools for reflection and guidance in developing cultural humility;
• the experiences of two Black librarians who are using cultural humility to change the profession;
• new perspectives on core concepts of customer service;
• rethinking policies and practices in libraries both large and small;
• using cultural humility in approaching collection development and creating resource guides;
• what cultural humility can look like for a tribal librarian working in a tribal college library; and
• reflecting on cultural humility itself and where it is going.

Humility is a virtue that can be difficult to describe because of its paradoxical nature: claiming authority about humility and claiming that one is humble both suggest a lack of humility. In Humility, Everett L.Worthington Jr. seeks a way around this paradox by looking to people who are considered by others to be humble. He suggests people as examples: Jesus, Siddhartha, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr. He looks, too, at people whom he admires. He examines the characteristics of humility they share, and, in doing so, formulates a working understanding of humility.

Science has made few attempts to measure humility, Worthington points out, but those few studies do give a different, but complementary, perspective on humility than the wisdom of the ages. Humility may not be a skill we can learn, but people can be inspired to be humble. "Great people—and ordinary people acting nobly—can inspire us," Worthington writes. "When we catch the spirit, we can transfer that spirit from ourselves to others." Quotations interspersed throughout the book reinforce the message that the unassuming virtue of humility transforms lives.

Reimagining humanities scholarship with humility and inclusive attention

How might foregrounding the writings of colonized peoples transform the ways we work in the humanities? In an era dominated by loud political rhetoric, Suzanne Bost advocates for quieter modes of scholarship: intellectual humility rather than ego, collaboration and conversation rather than singular argumentation, continual reflection and revision rather than defensiveness, and a willingness to believe in different ways of being and knowing rather than adhering to academic norms. With Quiet Methodologies, she demonstrates practical decolonial scholarship and proposes alternative approaches for fostering meaningful engagement.

Turning to feminist, queer, and decolonial writings from Gloria Anzaldúa, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Audre Lorde, and many others, Bost reflects on what we do when we work with literature, culture, and ideas. She weaves together multiple voices, methods of writing, and culturally diverse epistemologies and uses creative devices such as collage, her own original poetry, revision, lists, images, and conversation to disengage academic thought and writing from colonial theories and archives that have passed as neutral. Eschewing conventional monograph formats, her work embraces a reciprocal and heterogeneous learning process with profound ethical implications.

Part of a movement of reimagining research and education through care, Quiet Methodologies is a powerful exploration of the possibilities of criticism during crises. It encourages readers to be visionary and pragmatic, challenging current conditions and offering alternative ideas for the future of the humanities.

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A professor of communication and strategy reveals deep lessons from life in the African bush.

Sitting with Elephants is a heartfelt memoir that follows a middle-aged American professor and his wife as they trade suburban life for a remote bush house in South Africa. What begins as a spontaneous decision becomes a life-changing experience—one shaped by lions at the backdoor, baboons in the rafters, and above all, a herd of elephants who frequent their yard like neighbors.

Told through a series of emails to their adult children and brought to life by vivid illustrations from Abbey Ndlovu, Ronald Dulek’s narrative explores the profound lessons nature teaches: patience, humility, and deep respect for the wild. As the couple learns to communicate with elephants and navigate the rhythms of bush life, they also reflect on the unexpected beauty of slowing down and embracing the unknown.

Blending lighthearted anecdotes with moments of quiet insight, Sitting with Elephants invites readers into a story of transformation—both personal and environmental. This second edition includes expanded content with new stories and reflections, offering a deeper look into the couple’s unforgettable time in the African bush.

For Augustine, that the Word became flesh transformed a merely human understanding of the virtues and grounds all virtue in humility. The Way of Humility: Augustine’s Theology of Preaching explores how this truth became a new paradigm for understanding the scriptures and thus, how Augustine embodied the virtue in the preaching of the scriptures. One of Augustine’s most devoted students, Possidius, said that anyone can learn from reading Augustine, but “those were able to profit still more who could hear him speak in church and see him with their own eyes. Truly, he was indeed one of those of whom it is written, ‘speak this way and act the same way.’” The Way of Humility searches for evidence of the virtue of humility in action through the preaching of the humble Word in the sermons of Augustine. Many know of Augustine through his more famous treatises but few have encountered the Doctor of Grace where he had his most immediate impact, preaching. The Way of Humility follows the sermons through several traditional theological loci, ecclesiology, Christology, soteriology to uncover what can be learned about Augustine’s theology through the way he preached to a mixed audience of urbanites and rustics, many of whom did not have the benefit of a formal education. Throughout the book, we see the interplay between Augustine’s action in speech and Augustine’s more direct statements on his theology of Preaching. Through handing over Christ in his sermons, he became himself an example of humility for the congregation on their journey toward the final end for all people, the Beatific Vision.