Building a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Libguide for the Spatial Sciences
By Jennifer N. Swift, An-Min Wu, and Andrzej Rutkowski
University of Southern California
INTRODUCTION
In today’s higher education, faculty and student research projects often support outcomes that contribute to a more diverse and inclusive society (Stevens et al., 2023). In particular, the research and teaching of Geographic Information (GI) Sciences incorporates spatial thinking and location-based knowledge into a variety of cross-disciplinary real-world spatial studies with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in mind. For example, a spatial science study may investigate historical local knowledge among diverse cultures in the community, or it may be focused on learning the correlation between the development of cities and the socio-economic statuses of neighborhoods. Our goal is to build a comprehensive list of DEI-related project outcomes on the main LibGuide page, viewable by the public and directly accessible to USC faculty, students, and staff for research and teaching purposes.
Such DEI efforts already woven into the fabric of spatial science studies should be part of the entire student experience in academics. A LibGuide is an efficient knowledge sharing platform that supports this purpose. To demonstrate the usefulness of a readily available collection of such studies within the university, a publicly available GI Science LibGuide has been designed to provide students, faculty, and staff with direct access to demonstrate the University of Southern California (USC) Spatial Science Institute’s and USC Library’s commitment to DEI (USC Libraries, 2024a).
Besides providing direct access to existing GI Science DEI resources, this LibGuide can be used to track project outcomes that are contributed, most searched on, frequently accessed, and most utilized by students and faculty. It is anticipated that a contribution to best practices in design of domain-specific LibGuides can be proposed focused on collecting and disseminating DEI materials for research and teaching (Washington State University Libraries, 2024; USC Libraries, 2024b).
DESIGN
Currently, the USC DEI LibGuide for the GI Sciences is designed to provide a convenient portal to collect research and teaching materials that incorporate the fundamental principles of DEI (USC, 2024). This publicly available guide is embedded within the main USC Libraries online Research Guides under the scientific domain for Spatial Sciences & GIS (USC Libraries, 2024c; Figure 1). Examples of DEI-related project contributions to the LibGuide are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The main web page for the USC Diversity, Equity and Inclusion LibGuide for the GI Sciences (USC Libraries, 2024a). Link: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – Spatial Sciences & GIS * – Research Guides at University of Southern California (usc.edu).)
All faculty are encouraged to contribute DEI-related research and teaching outcomes, such as publications and web applications, by clicking on the link “Contribute to the List of DEI Related Project Outcomes”. This link takes the contributor to a USC-authenticated data entry form designed to collect and easily manage details about DEI-related materials (Figure 2). The LibGuide editors review the contributions on a monthly basis and then add those authorized as appropriate content by the Spatial Sciences Institute to the main LibGuide page (Figure 1).
Figure 2: Contribution form for collection of USC Spatial Sciences Institute Projects in Support of DEI. The link is only accessible using USC login authentication.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
The USC DEI LibGuide for the GI Sciences was designed to assist students and faculty to both identify and contribute to GI Science research and teaching resources that incorporate the fundamental principles of DEI throughout the university. This LibGuide will help us to bring awareness to past accomplishments integrating DEI in GI Science studies and also to identify gaps in this critical area of research and teaching.
In addition, user analytics, including tracking faculty contributions to the LibGuide and end-user searches, outbound links, and document downloads, could provide robust user metrics to better understand guide usage, including popular downloads and most searched content. Ideally, such usage data would be automatically collected for the LibGuide editors. Lastly, the utilization of DEI materials reported through end-user targeted surveys could provide significant insights into DEI interests within the spatial sciences community.
In the future, this DEI LibGuide may serve as an initial template for any academic environment to create similarly focused guides within other disciplines, contributing to a growing body of LibGuide design and dissemination best practices for libraries (Vanderbilt University Research Guides, 2024).
REFERENCES
Stevens, Greg, A., Morris, Martin, Parker, Robin, M.N., Fajardo, Francisco, J., Brody, Erica, R., and McLean, Katie, October, 10 2023 Published. LGBTQ+ health research guides: a multi-institutional analysis of usage patterns and user information needs. https://doi.org/10.5195%2Fjmla.2023.1661 (March 6, 2024 accessed).
University of Southern California (USC), 2024 Updated. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. https://diversity.usc.edu/ (March 6, 2024 accessed).
University of Southern California (USC) Libraries, 2024a Updated. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion LibGuide, Spatial Sciences & GIS Research Guides. https://libguides.usc.edu/c.php?g=235195&p=9778621 (March 6, 2024 accessed).
University of Southern California (USC) Libraries, 2024b Updated. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Research Guide. https://libguides.usc.edu/diversityandinclusion#s-lg-box-17430423 (March 6, 2024 accessed).
University of Southern California (USC) Libraries, 2024c Updated. Research Guides. https://libguides.usc.edu/ (March 6, 2024 accessed).
Vanderbilt University Research Guides, February, 29, 2024 Updated. LibGuides Best Practices: The Basics. https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/bestpractices (March 6, 2024 accessed).
Washington State University Libraries, 2024 Updated. LibGuide Design: Best Practices and Guidelines. https://libguides.libraries.wsu.edu/bestpractices (March 6, 2024 accessed).
AUTHORS
Jennifer N. Swift, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Spatial Sciences, Spatial Sciences Institute, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California; jswift@usc.edu
An-Min Wu, Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Spatial Sciences, Spatial Sciences Institute, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California; anminwu@usc.edu
Andrzej Rutkowski, Acting Head, Library for International & Public Affairs (LIPA), Library and Visualization Specialist, USC Libraries Library for International & Public Affairs, University of Southern California; arutkows@usc.edu
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