Library Mission Statement

Cuesta Library supports the mission of Cuesta College by fostering the success of its students and providing outreach to the broader communities while promoting a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We fulfill this mission by facilitating collaboration, innovation, critical thinking, acquisition of information literacy skills, and lifelong learning. The library supports students, faculty, and staff in safe, welcoming settings with high-quality, dynamic collections and resources, technology-enhanced learning environments, and rich educational and cultural experiences.

Student Learning Outcomes

A Cuesta College information literate student is one who should know or be able to do the following:

  • Conceptualize and communicate a research topic or information need, and know when expert assistance is necessary.
  • Synthesize material and evaluate whether information need has been successfully satisfied.
  • Locate, use, and evaluate library and information resources relevant to class assignments and personal information needs.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism Plan (IDEA)

Cuesta College’s Equity and Student Success Committee has established a Call to Action for racial equity and social justice. In step with and support of the Call to Action’s established priorities, Cuesta College Library has implemented and commits to the following Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-racism (IDEA) Plan and strives to weave this plan into our policies, collections, events, exhibits, procedures, and experiences. Although primarily for our students and campus community, this plan includes the San Luis Obispo County community at-large, including local Indigenous peoples. 

 
Build Spaces for Open Dialogue: intentional messaging and spaces for meaningful and open dialogue on a continuous, ongoing basis.
  • Create safe, welcoming, accessible, and accommodating environments in our physical and virtual locations. 
  • Afford equitable student access to dialogue with librarians and staff.
  • Use the library’s social media accounts to connect with and engage students, staff, faculty, and community visitors.
  • Host workshops, events, and other outreach programs that foster communication and community-building.
  • Provide makerspaces to promote and facilitate learning by doing.
  • Provide technology and group study areas for groups to meet and collaborate.
  • Design intentional, meaningful, and inclusive marketing and communication materials that reflect our commitment to diversity and equity. These materials include but are not limited to signage, flyers, and posts.
  • Collaborate with communities to create respectful and informed cultural exhibits that engage students, employees, and visitors.
  • Communicate and collaborate with faculty, staff, tutors, and other key personnel to ensure awareness of specific assignments in all areas of study for which we can provide support to students and instructors.
  • Encourage students to voice feedback, concerns, and questions about library programs, services, and spaces. 
  • Consult with student groups on a regular basis to discuss this IDEA plan and establish goals.
 
Commit to Learning, Self-Reflection, and Institutional Reflection: Individual and collective inquiry and reflection and learning about race, racism, and developing equity-minded practices.
  • Discuss, reflect, and learn about diversity, race, racism, anti-racism, inclusion, and accessibility in regards to interactions with students and the roles we play in education and society.
  • Discuss, reflect, and learn about how we can embody and cultivate a more inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist library, college, and society at-large.
  • Collaborate with local Indigenous experts and communities to create an online and printed research guide on local Indigenous peoples, leaders, scholars, artists, history, culture, scholarship, and issues, including settler-colonialism, de-colonization, and resistance efforts. 
  • Encourage and compensate employee participation in professional development, trainings, committees, policy revisions, professional inquiry, meetings, and professional organizations with attention to matters of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism.
  • Actively listen to students, instructors, administration, staff, and community members and communicate with all respectfully and openly.
  • Encourage and facilitate feedback and suggestions from students, faculty, and staff regarding equity issues, policies, procedures, purchase requests, and improvements to services and facilities. 
 
Change the Student Experience: Assess and make changes from an equity and social justice perspective in both the instructional and student service experience.
  • Greet each library user, signaling a welcoming, inclusive atmosphere and our readiness to assist.
  • Be responsive to the diverse needs of our users by incorporating inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism values in our library practices and day-to-day job responsibilities.
  • Assist all library users equitably and to the best of our abilities, being mindful and respectful of the diversity of our patrons, including considerations such as race, English language fluency, country of origin, physical abilities, learning styles, cultural backgrounds, perspectives, level of scholarship, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, and socio-economic status.
  • Create makerspaces for learn-by-doing approaches to assignments, collaboration, and personal enrichment.
  • Offer resources in diverse and accessible media formats. 
  • Offer free check-out of hotspots, tablets, laptops, headphones, chargers, graphing calculators, and other devices.
  • Prioritize providing translations of communications and services in Spanish and other languages spoken by our students.
  • Foster diversity by offering outreach programs that focus on various cultures, sub-cultures, and perspectives.
  • Create course-specific research guides that direct students to resources, facilitate access to those resources, and aid learning.
  • Develop a collection of physical and digital resources that reflects the diversity of our local and global communities, and increase the discoverability and accessibility of those resources.

  • Prioritize student interests by minimizing fines, fees, food and drink restrictions.

  • Foster diversity, inclusivity, and equity during on-campus daycare story hours by featuring diverse characters, experiences, and perspectives.
  • Provide voter registration forms, citizenship applications, and citizenship test preparation materials.
 
Commit to Structural Changes: Identify policies and procedures that remove inequities and promote equity.
  • Review departmental policies and procedures to identify and remove inequities and/or elements that do not align with our mission and values.
  • Recruit, hire, and retain diverse and inclusive library personnel.
  • Incorporate diversity and equity goals in the new employee orientation process.
  • Provide opportunities for employees to participate in sensitivity, diversity, equity, and anti-racism discussions and training.
  • Use inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism as core values in collection development and cataloging.
  • Strive to mitigate derogatory, inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete language in our metadata and provide a process for reporting such problematic language.