Community Engagement
The Libraries prioritizes Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in its programs to engage students, faculty and community members across campuses by creating opportunities for connection, understanding and dialogue through shared experience.
Reading/Discussion Groups
- RealLit with UW Tacoma Library and the Center for Equity and Inclusion is an award-winning social justice book club that seeks to create a greater awareness and discussion of the experiences that are being had by our students, staff, and community members. By interacting with young adult narratives that reflect different experiences, it has provided opportunities to dialogue with peers about shared and disparate experiences.
- Staff Reads: a non-fiction based book club for anyone employed at UW Tacoma in any capacity (including student workers). It has allowed staff across UW Tacoma to break down silos, focusing on issues that student, faculty, and staff experience, such as mental health, racism, ableism, and hyper documentation.
UW Bothell and Cascadia College Campus Library’s Community Reads events aim to inspire dialog about important issues facing our diverse campus communities. When people attend a Community Reads event, they join large and small group discussions and activities related to both the reading itself as well as to larger issues that the reading discusses. We try to end each event with an opportunity to think about actionable ways to incorporate what was discussed into our everyday lives.
Recommended Reads for Equity is a collection of equity, diversity, and inclusion-focused books curated by members of the University of Washington community and housed in Odegaard Library; however many books have been made available online. The collection provides a platform to share the diverse voices of the University of Washington community -- to reflect ideas and personal reflections through literature and one’s personal connection to it. Contributors come from all backgrounds including undergraduate and graduate students, staff and faculty, alumni and everyone affiliated with the UW across its three campuses and global community.
Featured Projects and Events:
- Critical Cataloging and Archival Description (8/2/21): UW Libraries statement on harmful language in catalog records and archival finding aids
- MLK Digital Display 2021
- Participatory Design w/ First Generation Students
- Insights from Going Public 2020
- Improving Accessibility During COVID
- An Intersectional Lens: Towards Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPOC) Film Canon