DAYTON, Ohio — One Ohio university is receiving special recognition for its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

It all starts inside the school library.

Katie Montgomery is a sophomore English major at the University of Dayton, and she spends a lot of time at the Roesch Library on campus.

“Libraries have always been really special to me,” she said. “I have so many memories just growing up at the library.”

She’s an intern with the OhioLINK Luminaries program.

University Libraries are a founding member of the initiative and offer paid, year-long internships for underrepresented students to explore careers in Librarianship and Information studies.

“I’m sorting through these papers, and the collection that we have and deciding what gets digitized and prioritizing the most interesting things in the collection, and then I will be digitizing them,” Montgomery said.

She has a mentor and gets to experience all departments within the library. Right now, the work revolves around files called the “Mary Harden Looram Papers.”

The papers are reviews through the Catholic Legion of Decency dating back to the 1960s.

“They were reviewing film and determining what was considered ‘decent’ in popular culture,” Montgomery said.

By putting in the effort to explore various perspectives, the University of Dayton’s libraries caught the eye of Insight into Diversity magazine and won a national award for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

“We’ve been doing work around inclusive excellence for years,” said Ione Damasco, the associate dean for inclusive excellence and organizational development. “It’s one of our values. The University of Dayton values all people and we value the holistic approach to education, so the whole person.”

A few years ago the library launched the Inclusive Excellence Plan.

“That plan really gave us a road map across all areas of our work so our workforce, how we hire, recruit and retain people,” Damasco said. “Our collections, whose stories are we collecting, whose stories are we highlighting and telling, how are we supporting the efforts around the curriculum?”

In 2019, the library underwent major renovations to make the entire space more accessible and inclusive for different learning styles.

From the types of chairs, to the books, to the artwork on the walls, it’s all about trying to make every student feel welcome and comfortable.

“I think there’s been a lot more effort to make sure our collections are broad and reflect the whole range of human experience,” Damasco said.

As for Montgomery, it’s all a learning experience.

“There’s definitely some things where I’m like ‘woah I don’t agree with that’, but a lot of the writing is very beautiful and there are some vocab words I’ve learned from it, so that’s exciting,” she said. “A lot of the handwriting, I struggled to read, but it’s been very interesting getting to submerse myself into a perspective of like these random Catholic people reviewing films in the 60s.”

Montgomery is able to appreciate the time, place and different ways of thinking, which is exactly the point.

“Libraries just have so much to offer, and I think a lot of those recourses kind of aren’t represented as well as they should be because libraries do have something for everyone,” she said.

The University of Dayton library system will be featured alongside 55 other recipients in the 2024 March issue of “Insight into Diversity.” The magazine is the largest and oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education.

In honor of Black History Month, the library will celebrate and focus on Black Arts through its blog. Students can learn more about Black Art history and where to find new materials inside the library.