The following LibGuides have been created providing a collection of information focused on the central theme of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The collaborators are continuously looking to expand and update these guides with more information and resources to increase DEI awareness across the Libraries, MSU Campus, and the general public.

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in the U.S., colleagues from the Library's Diversity Advisory Committee created a LibGuide compiling MSU Libraries’ and broader online resources to facilitate learning about the long path to voting equality. The guide outlines strategies for research, highlights sources specific to suffrage in Michigan, and explores how black women shaped the U.S. suffrage movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a critical force for change. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/19thAmendment

A LibGuide was created through collaboration between MSU Surplus Store and Recycling Center and the Libraries that is related to waste management, zero waste principles, and the connections to environmental racism/justice. This guide includes information and resources on waste management, consumerism, and the environmental justice impacts of disposing the products we buy. Promotion of the guide to other campus units has generated interest in additional collaboration with the library. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/environmentaljustice

A LibGuide was created to provide MSU Libraries' staff with information on DEI and related topics. The information presented in this guide can act as an introduction or users can familiarize themselves more intimately with DEI education. Resources and tools will be periodically reviewed and continuously added to the guide in hopes of increasing awareness, improving intercultural understanding, and providing staff with the tools they need and desire to advance their DEI education. https://libguides.lib.msu.edu/staffdevelopment_dei

The exhibit “Women at MSU: 150 Groundbreaking Years” in the Special Collections Gallery celebrates 150 years since the first women were admitted to what is now Michigan State University. The project brings together colleagues and materials from the MSU Museum, the University Archives and Historical Collections, and the Main Library as well as Special Collections. Spanning from the admission of the first women in 1870 to the Women’s Rights Hearings in 1972 called by President Wharton, the exhibit includes pamphlets, textbooks, women’s handbooks, photographs, student notebooks and scrapbooks, and an audio recording from the 1972 Women’s Rights Hearing. There will be a companion online exhibit for those who are not able to visit the gallery in person.

This exhibit has provided a unique opportunity for colleagues across the libraries, archives, and museum to collaborate and connect to increase our visibility in the MSU community. This collaboration is especially important considering the relatively new reorganization of the University Archives and the MSU Museum under the leadership of the Dean of the Libraries. The exhibit offers a chance to connect the community to the history of women at MSU and to reframe our history from their perspective through the collection items that will be displayed. It will also surely be a way to bring awareness of our collections to Alumni. Since this exhibit is a collaborative effort across departments, it will also expose the community to the different resources and services available at the Main Library, the Murray and Hong Special Collections, the University Archives and Historical Collection, and the MSU Museum.

This new collection was built to support teacher education classes during the 2020-2021 academic year which took place entirely online due to the pandemic. The books chosen were award-winning, genre-specific, and/or curriculum-specific books that were also available as e-books for our academic library to buy. Though children's and young adult book are available in e-book format as evidenced by collections at public libraries, the selection available for our library to purchase through Gobi was more limited than expected.

The project began with a title list from Gobi with award-winning children’s and young adult books from 2015 to 2020. From that list, specific awards were chosen. Within that selection, books were selected based on genre, age, use for the curriculum, and user license. The goal was breadth, not depth, of coverage. Initially, fifty-six books were purchased for Fall 2020 with another twenty-three added for Spring 2021.

Since the students using this collection were accustomed to a physical collection in a specific space and e-books can be difficult to find in our catalog, a guide with links to the e-books was created. It included brief summaries of the plots, awards won, and the number of simultaneous users. This made sharing of the collection simple in a year where ease and barrier removal was particularly important.