DEIB at KU Libraries: Advising Equity, Building Strategy, and Library Magic

Libraries are an essential and oft-underfunded institution of universities, and Dean Carol Smith and Mike Broadwell, Executive Director of Administrative Services and Libraries Equity Advisor, spoke with us about recent updates and ongoing work. We discussed how the Libraries’ new strategic plan will infuse DEIB work throughout to make the Libraries as successful and accessible as possible. Their core message to staff at KU: the Libraries belong to everyone.

Equity as Strategy

Since Carol joined the KU community as Dean of Libraries in July 2023, the leadership team has been busy building out the organization’s strategic plan to match Provost Bichelmeyer’s timeline and vision. DEIB-forward thinking has been instrumental to their brainstorming and emergent as a crucial element of each facet of the plan, which is built upon organizational feedback and structured around the 3 priorities of Jayhawks Rising. This effort constitutes one of the Libraries’ DEIB goals: to infuse DEIB work throughout the new strategic plan.

Carol is particularly proud of the contributions the Libraries make towards making a KU education more financially accessible to students. Over 10,000 students save over $1 million every year in Open Educational Resources (OER) offerings, and that number can grow. Increasing access to OER will further benefit all students, no matter their socioeconomic background.

We also spoke about faculty and staff as library users, both those employed by the Libraries and those in other units. Nurturing wellbeing and belonging within the Libraries, whether through refined recruitment strategies or relevant library collections, will support a library team that is better equipped to deliver services to a diverse campus community. Carol also wants to expand the pool of information that our researchers and teachers can access beyond the mainstream, with guides to emergent scholars, opportunities to collaborate with diverse perspectives, and an Institute for Globally Engaged Librarianship. The Libraries’ Collections Strategy and Development team has already been actively working to diversify collections by working with independent booksellers and publishers such as Birchbark, a bookstore focused on Indigenous American authors.

This plan is ambitious; however, each of the above items demonstrates that centering equity builds a strategy that better serves and supports everyone.

Advising on Equity

The Office of DEIB announced the Equity Advisor Program in 2022, with the goal of building a link between the office and each academic and administrative unit at KU. Staff make up 60% of the 25 equity advisors across campus, who provide strategic leadership and accountability to their units. Mike Broadwell was selected as Equity Advisor for the Libraries due to his ongoing involvement in DEIB work and leadership, which follows in the footsteps of many previous efforts at the Libraries to further equity in that space. He highlighted the Libraries’ gender-neutral restrooms, lactation room, reflection room, “You Belong Here” campaign, and pronoun buttons as examples of these successes. Mike’s work as an equity advisor highlights another of the Libraries’ DEIB goals: to broaden our understanding and approach to DEIB to include all intersectionalities.

To round out these efforts and include more voices, the Libraries is investing in its DEIB steering committee, charges forthcoming. Mike noted that part of the committee’s overall charge will be tracking how library efforts tie into the Office of DEIB’s strategic framework, RISE (Realizing Intersectional Standards of Excellence). This committee is not new, but Carol and Mike are rebuilding it due to the departures of several key individuals. They view this as an opportunity to reinvigorate and diversify the group’s membership in the spirit of intersectional DEIB. The committee will rely heavily on library staff participation, who make up 2/3 of library employees.

This focus on staff as fundamental to the function and success of the Libraries is reflected in the unit’s investment in talent development, which includes funding. KU Libraries is sending (and funding!) one staff member and one faculty member to the IDEAL 2024 Conference this summer. Melissa Mayhew, Digitization Coordinator, will be learning about library trends in DEIB and accessibility and reporting back to the Steering Committee and the Libraries as a whole. Such talent development for staff is built into the Libraries strategic plan as another investment in the future.

The Magic of Libraries

Carol has reiterated that every individual at the Libraries has had a voice in the development and creation of the strategic plan. This strategy is at the heart of her work towards greater diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and towards making KU Libraries a sustainable space for research, teaching, and learning. The Libraries know these two things are interlinked: our institutions will only grow stronger when we prioritize and make space for DEIB work.

Much of our conversation repeatedly returned to the idea of “library magic,” which is the very real ability of libraries to bring people together towards common and aspirational goals. Carol sees the Libraries as a space where anything can happen and everything is possible as long as we know it is there for us—and it is.

This balance of both leading and making space may feel familiar from other DEIB work; it is essential for those with privilege to commit and take action, while also stepping back and releasing that privileged position to make room for all voices. One way the Libraries accomplishes this is by highlighting the experience and expertise of an author through the Common Book Program. Carol is working with Provost Bichelmeyer to make this program more integrated with the rest of campus so more students, staff, and faculty are learning from diverse voices and challenging ideas.

The team at KU Libraries knows that centering equity is for everyone.