March 14, 2024
Your Voice, Your Books: The Return of Recommended Reads for Equity
UW Libraries is excited to re-launch Recommended Reads for Equity – a crowd-sourced book recommendation forum that directly influences a dedicated book collection in Odegaard Library for books about equity, diversity, and inclusion. This collection brings together over 170 unique voices and perspectives — students, staff, faculty and alumni have joined together to share what they think is important about equity. Anyone can submit a recommendation, and every recommendation creates an opportunity for connection through shared conversation and reflection. We had a chance to talk with UW Libraries Undergraduate Experience Librarian, Emilie Vrbancic, about the history of the program and how it has evolved over time.
HOW DID IT START?
Recommended Reads for Equity display table at Odegaard Library
My former colleague, Steve Weber and I wanted to create a space where people could come together to define a community-driven expression of what equity means to us, as a unique campus community. The program was first funded by a Diversity Seed Grant in 2018, and the initial collection resulted in 138 book recommendations and 120 books in the collection ranging in topics from the environment to identity to social (in)equality to law. In addition to the Odegaard team, many graduate students were also essential to maintaining the project, organizing and publishing the online guide, especially Riko Fluchel, Caitlin Stewart, and Sydney Krueger.
My favorite aspect of this project is reading the nuanced and often personal recommendations folks submit. There is genuine curiosity and care in sharing what they’ve read with others. People are sharing a part of themselves through this project- it’s priceless.
EVOLVING OVER TIME
The collection now totals over 175 titles and provides insight into books that have captured our collective attention on campus – like Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi or The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.
Click to share a reccomendation!
What’s great about this collection is that it’s unique to the UW community. It’s also up to us to continue to grow the collection as our understanding of equity changes and we react to national conversations like Black Lives Matter and the ongoing conflict in Palestine and Israel.
While the project was on a pandemic-related hiatus over the past two years, with this relaunch, we hope to continue to grow the collection with more recommendations from the UW community, especially books that are socially and culturally relevant in this current moment.
HOW DO PEOPLE LEARN ABOUT IT?
This project involves several components: outreach to the campus community, book displays and new book acquisition, an online collection guide, and programming. Prior to the pandemic, we held in-person events and created additional ways to engage through video book talks during spring quarter 2020. The online guide continues to be used by the UW community and we hope to have more in-person events in the next academic year.
FOR QUESTIONS AND TO GET INVOLVED:
Contact Emilie Vrbancic, vrbancic@uw.edu
Go to the Guide: https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/recommendedreadsequity/home
Submit a recommendation today: https://tinyurl.com/reads4equity
