Our Commitment
Dartmouth Libraries commit to diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and belonging in all levels of our work. While learning from the past, we act to help shape a more just society now and for the future. Driven by our values—trust, respect, service, curiosity, and community—our commitment becomes manifest in our work through:
- widening access to local and global research information to advance new knowledge creation and dissemination.
- addressing collection and content gaps to better represent diverse voices and scholarship.
- creating environments that strengthen belonging through individuals’ exploration, discovery, and respectful engagement with differing views.
- critically examining and improving our legacy systems, professional tools, and processes.
- producing and supporting research projects that explore Dartmouth’s history to understand changing perspectives on its responsibilities for fair treatment of its communities.
This commitment aligns with Dartmouth’s goal of valuing our diverse community’s unique contributions, experiences, and perspectives and is supported by Dartmouth Libraries’ Dean’s Council for Equity and Inclusion.
Dean's Council for Equity and Inclusion
DCEI is an advisory body and working group with representatives from across our Libraries' departments. As an advising body to the Libraries Leadership Team, we make recommendations related to the Libraries' physical spaces, collections, policies, processes, and programs. Our projects align with the Libraries’ Commitment outlined above and include:
- providing education and training opportunities;
- facilitating conversations with library staff and community;
- developing ongoing and ad hoc initiatives to make the Libraries more accessible, inclusive, and welcoming.
Initiatives
Initiatives
Historical Accountability Student Research Program
This program exists to aid Dartmouth in confronting and learning from its past. The program, based at Rauner Special Collections Library, offers several research opportunities to assist Dartmouth students in exploring our collections and creating original content based upon primary sources.
Advancing Pathways
The Mellon Foundation awarded a major three-year grant to the Dartmouth Libraries and the Hood Museum of Art to advance significant cross-institutional and community-centered collaboration grounded in Dartmouth’s Native American and Indigenous Arctic collections.
Change the Subject
Change the Subject
Change the Subject (2019) is a 54-minute documentary film about a group of Dartmouth students who challenged anti-immigrant language in the Library of Congress subject headings.
Dartmouth and Slavery Project
Dartmouth and Slavery Project
One of nine colonial colleges, Dartmouth was founded in 1769. Its mission was to assimilate Indigenous communities into Anglo-settler society, and to disseminate New Light Christian beliefs through education. The Dartmouth and Slavery Project provides a critical examination of Dartmouth's historical connections to the transatlantic slave trade, and examines the notion of a free North versus a slave South.
"Northern Hospitality - New-York nine months' law" from The American Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The Occom Circle
The Occom Circle
The Occom Circle provides free access to handwritten documents by and about Samson Occom (Mohegan, 1723-1792), intertribal leader, Presbyterian minister, and public intellectual, who helped raise the funds that eventually established Dartmouth College. The Occom Circle does not merely replicate a conventionally printed edition of Occom’s collected works in digital form. Rather, employing textual markup standards, it offers users an expansive view of his world by including works written by Occom, but also about him and his activities by the members of his extensive and international circle of associates.
SpeakOut
SpeakOut
SpeakOut is an oral history project dedicated to recording and preserving the history of Dartmouth’s LGBTQIA+ community. SpeakOut collects the stories of the Dartmouth community broadly defined: former students, administrators, faculty, and staff with memories that document an aspect of LGBTQIA+ history at Dartmouth. The project is a collaboration between the Dartmouth Libraries and DGALA, the Dartmouth LGBTQIA+ alumni association.
