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Mission and Vision

MISSION

We at Macalester’s DeWitt Wallace Library strive to create an equitable ecosystem of knowledge, ideas, experiences, and expertise that immerses our community in opportunities for inquiry, discovery, delight, and innovation.

VISION

We boldly champion curiosity and learning: about one’s self, each other, and everything around us.

OUR COMMITMENTS

  • Center and further equity awareness and practice.
  • Cultivate sustainable and user-centered collections, services, & spaces.
  • Seek outreach opportunities & promote active collaboration throughout our community to expand and extend our impact.
  • Foster multidirectional learning and ways of knowing, elevating the mutual exchange of experiences, ideas, and knowledge.
  • Enhance communication to highlight our existing expertise as well as expand and extend our impact on campus.
  • Nurture and develop library employees through professional development, building camaraderie, and valuing wellbeing.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Library staff collaborated to develop the following Library Guiding Principles, which inform our decision-making, actions, and responsibilities. We continue to update these principles as our work and the world around us evolve. 

We apply these principles when making decisions, as a framework for analyzing current practices, policies, and beliefs, and as a guide for prioritizing our energy, time, space, and financial resources. We believe that our values, expertise, experience, learning, creativity, ideas, and aspirations all have the potential to better society at large, our local community, and ourselves.

Empower our community by:

  • Teaching critical information and research skills for lifelong learning.
  • Providing and advocating for wide access to information and resources for learning and creating.
  • Directing resources and attention to creating a welcoming and accessible space to support wellbeing, learning, creativity, and connection within the Macalester community.
  • Increasing awareness of the social, political, and economic dimensions of information creation and actively participating in dismantling harmful practices and systems.
  • Actively collecting and providing access to the history of the college to foster continued awareness, understanding, and informed evolution.

Seek justice and equality for all people by:

  • Listening to, elevating, and including diverse voices, prioritizing the voices of people who have been historically and systematically excluded.
  • Working to eliminate biases, inequity, inappropriate use of power, and to decenter-whiteness.
  • Identifying, denouncing, and working to eradicate structures of discrimination and racism that have been built into and affected the work of libraries, higher education, and information systems.
  • Finding joy in and celebrating each other and our diverse cultures, identities, and experiences. 

Communicate by:

  • Providing clear information and insights into decision-making processes at all levels—collaborating and incorporating feedback when called for, while also empowering and trusting individuals to carry out their work to the best of their expertise.
  • Valuing and elevating the unique knowledge and expertise of others and ourselves.
  • Being direct, honest, and relying on truths to reach decisions.
  • Speaking up for ourselves and listening to each other.

Engage with the library, college, and community by:

  • Working diligently toward shared goals.
  • Actively participating in our work, meetings, and conversations.
  • Being a strong collaborator, relationship builder, and partner.

Care for library staff by:

  • Supporting work and professional aspirations, and goals.
  • Being patient, kind, respectful, and supportive, and expecting the best of each other.
  • Valuing and supporting our well-being and work-life balance.
  • Celebrating and appreciating each other.