Augustana College library awarded for diversity efforts

Students study together at Augustana College, where the Tredway Library recently was honored with the 2025 Library Excellence in Access and Diversity (LEAD) award from Insight Into Diversity magazine.  CREDIT AUGUSTANA COLLEGE 

Augustana College’s Tredway Library received the 2025 Library Excellence in Access and Diversity (LEAD) award from Insight Into Diversity magazine. 

This is Tredway Library’s first time to earn the national recognition, which honors academic libraries that encourage and support inclusive excellence and belonging. 

Tredway Library will be featured along with 35 other recipients in Insight’s March 2025 issue. Library Director Stefanie Bluemle said it is an honor for the library and Augustana to receive this recognition.

“In my time as the library’s director, I have seen the highest dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility from our librarians and staff,” Ms. Bluemle said in a news release. “Everyone at Tredway Library is committed to student success and well-being, and to making the library a welcoming and inclusive space for the campus community.”

Ms. Bluemle said Tredway Library engages in many inclusive-focused initiatives, including a new collection development policy adopted in February 2024 that aims to increase the diverse voices, identities, perspectives and geographic locations represented in the collection.

The policy was adopted following the spring 2021 diversity audit of Tredway’s main circulating  collection. Given Augustana’s history as a predominantly white institution, Ms. Bluemle said the audit showed white authors, authors using he/him pronouns, and authors in opposite-sex relationships were overrepresented in the collection, compared to both Augustana’s current student body and the U.S. population.

“We’ll use the results of the audit, as well as input from students, faculty and Augustana’s Office of Student Inclusion and Diversity, to continue diversifying the voices and identities represented in our collection,” Ms. Bluemle said in the release. “The audit has already made us more mindful of our collection development practices. Every year since 2021, our new purchases have been significantly more diverse than the collection as a whole.”

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