All four of the Library’s key strategic objectives — Academic Integration, Knowledge Generation, Innovative Practice, and Organizational Investment — are responsive to and strengthened by Library-wide goals that act upon the University’s commitment to diversity and inclusion as reflected in the backgrounds and experiences of our people as well as our approaches to the materials, methods, and accessibility of scholarship. Similarly, we want to find new ways for scholarship and practice at the Library to have a positive impact on the wider community in Providence and beyond. Initial operational goals are:
- Make the Library a more welcoming place for users and staff
- Review and reinvigorate the Library DIAP
- Develop and implement a community engagement plan
In addition, important elements of our strategic objectives acknowledge that the Library should not only be responding to the legacies of historic inequity and injustice, but also taking action through its work and expertise to overcome them.
Academic Integration: The information resources that the Library furnishes to support teaching and research at Brown must be fully consistent with the University’s commitment to diversity and inclusion while also serving to advance our institutional goals in this area, including:
- Collections priorities should emphasize, as the DIAP calls for, “scholarly resources to support education and leading-edge research on issues of race, ethnicity, inequality, and justice around the globe.”
- The Library should incorporate and advance new inclusive methods for conceptualizing and describing existing and new resources that bring diverse content to the fore and help repair historic inequities.
- Library study spaces and digital information tools should be accessible and responsive to diverse needs of the campus community.
Knowledge Generation: In conjunction with approaches described above under the Academic Integration objective (e.g., strategic collection-building), enhancing the Library’s role as a center of scholarship through new kinds of affiliations for visitors, faculty, and students can advance Library and University goals for increasing “scholarly resources to support education and leading-edge research on issues of race, ethnicity, inequality, and justice around the globe” (DIAP) — especially if fellowship and research opportunities give priority to those topics. Stronger connection with community partners should include exploration of supporting their research needs, including the possibility of Community Research Fellowships.
Innovative Practice: The research library sector is collectively grappling with effective ways to build greater diversity and stronger community engagement practices. Consistent with Brown’s mission, history, and values, the Library has opportunities to develop novel approaches to promoting greater diversity alongside and in conjunction with enhanced community engagement. This will involve building new capacity and expertise for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the content of the Library’s work and professional profile, including collection acquisitions, description, and curation as well as building diverse professional networks and diversity-focused institutional partnerships. Some of those collections, network, and partnership opportunities will come from more intentional engagement with community organizations (such as those that partner with the Swearer Center and work with our students), local libraries, and regional educational institutions.
Organizational Investment: The Library will become a more diverse and inclusive learning organization through actively recruiting, developing, retaining, and supporting staff with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives that enrich our collective capability to serve the campus as conductors, creators, and caretakers of knowledge. Staff should be more broadly representative of diverse backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences. The Library needs to build more diverse employment pipelines and professional pathways. This includes developing stronger community-facing practices in Providence and the region.
