DUL Racial Equity Roadmap

This roadmap represents Duke University Libraries’ efforts to plan and prioritize our commitment to live up to our stated guiding principle, “Diversity Strengthens Us.” Roadmapping creates transparency and shared understanding in defining strategic goals and desired outcomes, including the major steps or milestones needed for success. Critical to this also is the inclusion of information on the Libraries’ capacity to fund this work, as well as acknowledged gaps. The roadmap serves as a communication tool, a high-level document that helps articulate strategic thinking—the why—behind both the goal and the plan for getting there. Below are categories of focus and known/suggested activities for the 2020–2021 academic year. The 2021-2022 DivE-In Council affirms these categories of focus, and encourages future DivE-In Councils to update the activities below to reflect current priorities.

Community Reflection

Educating ourselves through information and activities aimed at building cultural competence and creating an anti-racist library.

1. Learn through anti-racist reading lists and/or workshops (e.g. REI Groundwater)
2. Use Book Discussions to Start Dialogues on White Fragility and Other Racisms
3. Participate in open and respectful conversations about race and racism with ground rules that center BIPOC lived experiences
4. Create opportunities for staff to participate in Racial Healing Circles

Recruitment and Retention 

Duke University Libraries must create and sustain workplace diversity and inclusive practices to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse Duke community.

1. Assess inclusiveness of our library workplace culture (connects to “Comprehensive Climate Assessment” in Duke roadmap)
2. Complete outstanding recommendations from Task Force for Diversity in Recruitment Report (connects to “Expanded Diversity Hiring Program” in Duke roadmap).
3. Prioritize funding for HBCU Library Alliance Conservation Internship and other opportunities for underrepresented groups (connects to “Significantly expand internship, training, and apprenticeship programs” in Duke roadmap)
4. LHR Onboarding Task Group report recommendations

Libraries as Inclusive Space

Making library spaces safe, where diversity is recognized, and equitable access is normative.

1. Implement Black Student Study Recommendations 
2. Install new signage welcoming everyone to the Duke Libraries in Perkins and beyond
3. Visually celebrate and affirm racial diversity
4. Develop inclusive service training for all staff and student workers  

Collections and Description

Dismantle white supremacy in DUL collections and practice more inclusive metadata creation.

1. Codify and abide by inclusive description principles
2. Revisit our collection development policies to better center BIPOC history and culture and to engage more diverse vendors, donors, and sources
3. Explore ways to support scholars from a broader range of backgrounds in our scholarly publishing and to pursue more diverse publishing formats 
4. Charge a small task group to increase the diversity of authors and subject matter represented in monographs in Current Lit and New & Noteworthy

Research and Instruction 

Reconsider our role in research and course support through a racial justice lens.

1. Use the Rubenstein Library’s approach to instruction to make library instruction more welcoming and inclusive
2. Use critical pedagogy for library instruction
3. Acknowledge the unequal politics of citation practices and explore alternatives
4. Moving beyond the reproduction of racism in research support

Reckoning with Duke's History

Duke University Libraries holds the University Archives, and library staff have expertise in research, analysis, data visualization, exhibition curation, scholarly communication, and other areas that will support the work of understanding and confronting Duke’s history.

1. Facilitate coursework and projects that explore under-researched aspects of Duke’s history
2. Partner in initiatives to explore and reckon with Duke’s history and engage with University departments and committees that undertake this work 
3. In collaboration with faculty, students, and individuals representing other units on campus, develop exhibitions and public programming to explore and share Duke’s history 
4. Provide staff expertise and University Archives collections to support the Duke Centennial, so that we can “appreciate Duke’s history of innovation, service and leadership while acknowledging the entwinement of that history with slavery, segregation, and white supremacy” (from President Price’s introduction to the Duke roadmap)