Community Building and Outreach Initiative
The Library has created a Community Building and Outreach Fund, the purpose of which is to add depth and dimension to our collection by purchasing books from local bookstores and smaller presses to ensure a diverse range of voices and topics are represented in our collection. The fund is spent annually at an independent bookstore in an effort to support small, local businesses.
In 2019/2020, we worked with Glad Day Bookshop, the world’s oldest queer bookstore, and collaborated with Humber’s LGBTQ+ Resource Centre. See the collection.
In 2022, we worked with A Different Booklist, a multicultural bookstore specializing in books from the African Caribbean Diaspora and the Global South, together with BSSE (Black Student Success and Engagement). The collection is forthcoming.
Humber Libraries Community Building and Outreach label, recognizing partnership with Glad Day bookshop:
Children in the Library
Library and Learning Commons spaces and services are designed primarily for the students, faculty, and staff of Humber College and the University of Guelph-Humber. We also acknowledge another large group that uses our libraries and services – community members and visitors. All of these groups sometimes bring children, and we welcome their supervised presence. The Library provides visiting children with knapsacks containing giveaways such as small games, puzzles, picture books, colouring kits, and crayons.
Child-friendly devices with entertaining and educational preloaded games are also available for loan. By having hospitable services and policies, we try to help this group focus on their studies and achieve their academic goals.
A Humber Libraries branded canvas children’s knapsack for Children in the Library initiative.
Book Clubs
In February 2021, the Library partnered with Black Student Support & Engagement (BSSE) and Seneca College to support The BSSE Page Turners Book Club and a virtual author reading of Eternity Martis’ recent book They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life and Growing Up.
In Spring 2022, the Library partnered with Indigenous Education and Engagement for their annual summer book club, which brought the author to Humber to discuss the book with our community, which brought Drew Hayden Taylor to Humber to discuss their book, Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, with the community.
Equity and Inclusion Dialogues
In Spring 2022, the Library partnered with the Centre for Human Rights and Equity to develop reading lists related to their Equity and Inclusion Dialogues. These talks cover a wide range of important topics related to equity and inclusion; these reading lists, curated by Humber librarians, will enable the Library to build and collect content related to current topics within equity and inclusion, such as anti-racist pedagogy, misgynoir, respect at work, inclusive hiring, and more.
The reading lists for the Equity and Inclusion Dialogues continue to be developed and can be viewed in our Library Spotlight.