At the end of the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, the DePaul Art Museum and the DePaul University Library began an initiative to take a hard look at our work, ourselves, our past through the lenses of inclusion, diversity, equity and access (IDEA) to see what we have done before, what we are doing now, and how we can do better now and in the future.
We began by instituting the Library/Museum IDEA Committee to examine our past patterns and practices, and to help guide the library to a more accessible, equitable, inclusive and diverse future. We then established these pages as a framework for the Library and Museum to examine and address issues of equality and equity, exclusion and inclusion, and promote antiracism throughout our organizations, and to account for current and past actions, and to transform our organizations for the future.
All students, faculty, and staff will know they belong in physical and virtual library and museum spaces. They will see themselves represented in our workforce, our collections and services, our programs and events, and in our boards and advisory groups. We will discontinue harmful practices and policies—regardless of the discomfort that doing so may cause.
These pages were inspired by and somewhat structured after the Reckoning Framework produced by the University of North Carolina Libraries, at
https://library.unc.edu/reckoning/, with their gracious permission and consent.