Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

The University of Denver Libraries’ leadership, faculty and staff are strongly committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work by diversifying our organization and creating more equitable and inclusive policies, practices, collections, spaces, and services. This commitment reflects a broader dedication by the University and a long-standing pledge within the library profession. The library workers strive toward increased DEI, informed by, but not limited to, the Chancellor's Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the DU DEI Action Plan, and the American Library Association's Diversity Policy.

While we have made progress since formally committing to DEI work in 2007, we recognize more is required of us. The Libraries formed our initial Diversity Advisory Committee in 2007 and made progress in recruiting more diverse candidate pools, creating internal training, and diversifying our collections and exhibits. Our faculty publicly committed itself to “do better” in a 2016 Open Letter, and followed through on this commitment with research, exhibits, and improvements to both services and collections. In 2018 we created a Collection Diversification Task Force, which furthered our collection diversification efforts, and appointed our first Residency Librarian. More recently we have made efforts to institute an inclusive collection development philosophy, indigenize our metadata, and, in 2020, announced our Support of Black Lives Matter.

Now, as we enter a world attempting to recover from the pandemic and embrace the social change that arose from its depths, we recommit ourselves to all these things in addition to increased transparency and community partnership. Our Task Force on the Antiracist Library and our Residency Program, for example, are intended to bring more contemporary systemic approaches to our DEI efforts.