DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Anti-Racist Roadmap
This roadmap represents Duke University Libraries’ efforts to plan and prioritize ourcommitment 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 thiswork, as well as acknowledged gaps. The roadmap serves as a communication tool,a high-level document that helps articulate strategic thinking—the why—behindboth the goal and the plan for getting there. Below are categories of focus andknown/suggested activities for the 2020–2021 academic year.

Community Reflection
Educating ourselves through information and activities aimed at building culturalcompetence 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 forunderrepresented groups (connects to “Significantly expand internship, training, and apprenticeshipprograms” in Duke roadmap)
4. Implement Library Human Resources Onboarding Task Force report recommendations

Libraries as Inclusive Space
Making library spaces safe, where diversity is recognized and equitable accessis 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 Duke University Libraries 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 morediverse vendors, donors, and sources
3. Explore ways to support scholars from a broader range of backgrounds in our scholarly publishing and topursue more diverse publishing formats
4. Charge a small task group to increase the diversity of authors and subject matter represented inmonographs 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 welcomingand inclusive
2. Use critical pedagogy for library instruction
3. Acknowledge the unequal politics of citation practices and explore alternatives
4. Move beyond the reproduction of racism in research support

Reckoning with Duke’s History
Duke University Libraries holds the University Archives, and library staff haveexpertise in research, analysis, data visualization, exhibition curation, scholarly
communication, and other areas that will support the work of understanding andconfronting 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 entwinementof that history with slavery, segregation, and white supremacy” (from President Price’s introduction tothe Duke roadmap)