The Kathryn A. Martin Library’s Unit Change Team is a committee charged with identifying and developing practices and strategies to create a welcoming, inclusive, equitable and accessible library on the campus of the University of Minnesota Duluth. During the 2022-2023 academic year, the Unit Change Team worked on the following projects:
- Coordinating and completing an inclusivity scan of the library using the template developed by UMD’s Commission on Disabilities. In this project, we have collaborated with the Academic Writing and Learning Center, the Media Hub, and Facilities Management. The results of the inclusivity scan have helped the library to prioritize changes and updates to our spaces. Changes and updates will include addressing physical accessibility issues in the library and considering how our entire community is represented in library buildings.
- Finalizing the library equity statement.
- Developing training and activities for library staff, including training on implicit bias, a presentation on brave spaces and generous accountability, and a session offering staff the opportunity to connect the library equity statement to their day-to-day work
- Continuing the antiracist policy review process developed in the fall of 2020. Revisions were made to the process in order to make the process more transparent to library staff. The team also presented on the process at the UMD Commission on Equity, Race, and Ethnicity’s 2023 summit.This year the following policies were reviewed by library staff using the review process:
- Participating in the Web Committee’s review of library web content standards and used this experience as a model to offer assistance to other library teams interested in a review of documents through an equity lens.
- Offering feedback on the library’s facilities survey.
The Unit Change Team is always open to questions and feedback. You can email the team at [email protected].