The Tomlinson Library has been awarded a grant of $10,000 by the American Library Association in conjunction with the National Endowment for Humanities.
The grant was part of an effort to revamp libraries in the United States who suffered due to the global pandemic. There were 200 recipients and Colorado Mesa University (CMU) was one of three awardees in Colorado.All three awards were given to the western slope, with Tomlinson being the only academic library.
A team of library staff worked to submit an application in November of last year to identify ideas and goals that the grant would help accomplish. This meant reflecting on what had already been accomplished and expanding on the ideas.
“Our project was giving voices, expanding minds, strengthening collections and programming to support underrepresented students and the campus community. The idea there is making sure that our students feel represented by our collection,” Head of Access Services and Outreach Laureen Cantwell said.
Cantwell stated that the goal of the purchase of literature was to ensure that students of all backgrounds could find books and authors that reflect their culture, ethnicity and history. It also provides a great opportunity for all students to expand their knowledge of the world around them and see from other perspectives.
This ties into previous projects from Tomlinson such as the Cultural Cafe. The event features specific regions such as Ethiopia, Hawaii and Turkey, and is meant to educate those interested on the culture of a different place. While a presenter with experience in the location talks, attendees get to try food from the region.
Cantwell works with the presenter and Sodexo to create a menu that will reflect the culture. She explained that this was one of her favorite parts of the planning and joked that she was worried students would go abroad and look for McDonald’s.
The next Cultural Cafe will be Monday, Sept. 19 at 12 p.m. The event will feature Dr. Zeynep Ozsoy, a professor of Biology at CMU, presenting on Turkey.
Other events coming up at the library include Identifying Facts or Fallacy, citation workshops, lessons on how to use Google effectively and a media literacy workshop. In previous semesters, Cantwell has worked on visual information literacy and even spatial literacy.
“There’s different information that we need to be critical of to understand what’s being presented to us. Information has a lot of different formats right now. [We are] having conversations with faculty and students about what we need to watch out for and why it’s powerful, why it’s convincing,” Cantwell said.
More events can be found on the CMU calendar or the library’s page on the university website.
