Connecting, Collaborating, Creating: Advancing Equitable Teaching in the Library (Talk at 2026 Medical Library Association Annual Conference)
Abstract
Background
In 2022 Library staff launched a project to enhance inclusive library teaching practices and foster collaboration among library educators. This project stemmed from a larger theme in the Library’s 2020-2025 strategic plan that aimed to build the reputation of library staff as essential campus educators. The key objectives of the project were to establish a community of practice for library educators, and develop a comprehensive guide to equitable teaching in the Library.
Description
The project team brought together librarians and staff from across the Library, representing diverse teaching expertise and education backgrounds. The team met monthly from late 2022 to the end of 2025 to develop the project goals, plan the Library Educators Community of Practice meetings, and design and launch the Equitable Teaching Guide. The first major milestone was the creation of the Library Educators Community of Practice, a bi-monthly meeting to foster collaboration and solidarity of library staff through structured meet-ups and unstructured discussions. Guided by input from Library staff the project team hosted 13 meetups from 2023-2025 with topics ranging from disability accommodations, to universal design for learning, to how AI is changing our teaching. The second milestone focused on developing an inclusive teaching guide that collects best practices from library staff to create equitable and inclusive learning environments. The team conducted research on existing guides and solicited input from library staff to create a repository of best practices, workflows, templates, and instructional resources. To evaluate their work on the milestones the team solicited iterative feedback on community programming and performed ongoing assessment of guide use.
Conclusions
The response to both of the project initiatives has been strong. The Library Educator meetups generally include 9-16 attendees, representing a substantial percentage of teaching staff. The guide was officially launched in October of 2025, and at the time of abstract submission has received 25 views. To continue the project goals past the end of the project term the team created a sustainability plan. Two new members were selected to coordinate the sessions for the Library educators community of practice, with the intention that these roles rotate each year. One team member took on the role of maintaining and continuing to solicit content for the guide, with the idea that this would also be a rotating role.