UPDATE: This exhibit has been extended to November 18, 2024.

We invite all our users to come and view our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Asia display, located on the upper floor of the Asian Library.

The display underscores how EDI challenges and developments are not universal. Asia is home to a vast plethora of countries and therefore diverse cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, and more. Asia faces different challenges and enacts different approaches, not only compared to Canada but within the region itself. Gender (in)equality and LGBTQIA+ rights are quite prominent in the Asian EDI discourse, but themes such as disability, age, immigration, and religion are just as present.

The display highlights just a selection of the EDI-related resources in the Asian Library’s collection that touch on these topics, including titles from our Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu collections. Our librarians and team can assist you in finding more according to your needs. The display was made possible through the efforts of our student librarians Fin Bartels, Nobu Kawaguchi, Iori Khuhro and Grace Park with the support of the entire Asian Library team.

EDI is an acronym that stands for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Equity is the recognition that not everyone is starting from the same place or history [1] and opportunities that “obtain justice, fairness, and equality without impartiality or barriers,” [2] must be created. The term diversity describes the differences in people’s lived experience and perspectives [3] and how these differences will shape experiences and actions. “Diversity includes race, sexuality, gender, physical disability, mental abilities and disabilities, economic reality, class in society, etc.” [4] Lastly, inclusion is the “active, intentional, and continuous process to address inequities in power and privilege and build a respectful and diverse community that ensures welcoming spaces and opportunities to flourish for all.” [5] In general, EDI in practice aims to eliminate barriers that people from different social, cultural, religious, or ethnic backgrounds face in their lives.

We urge our patrons to note that racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, and otherwise offensive or discriminatory images and language are present in the collection. Inclusion of these materials in the Asian Library holdings is not an endorsement of their contents. UBC Library rejects these offensive, discriminatory, and harmful viewpoints, while also understanding the importance of fostering access to our collections in a responsible and transparent way that preserves historical evidence of social conditions and attitudes.[6]

The exhibit will be on from now until August 31, 2024.

[1] https://redi.med.ubc.ca/policies-resources/key-concepts-and-terms/

[2] Bussmann, Jeffra, Isabel Altamirano, Samuel Hansen, Nastasha Johnson, and Gr Keer. “Science Librarianship and Social Justice: Part One Foundational Concepts.” Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship no. 94 (2020).

[3] https://redi.med.ubc.ca/policies-resources/key-concepts-and-terms/

[4] Bussmann, Jeffra, Isabel Altamirano, Samuel Hansen, Nastasha Johnson, and Gr Keer. “Science Librarianship and Social Justice: Part One Foundational Concepts.” Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship no. 94 (2020).

[5] https://redi.med.ubc.ca/policies-resources/key-concepts-and-terms/

[6] Adapted from the RBSC Harmful Content Warning Policy. https://rbsc.library.ubc.ca/harmful-content-warning/.