McMaster University Libraries, in collaboration with campus and community partners, presented a series of events, collections, resources, and exhibits focused on gender and justice. Transformative Stories: Year of Gender and Justice ran from fall 2023 through summer 2024 for an audience of faculty, students, academic leadership in Humanities and Gender and Social Justice, researchers, community, and existing and prospective donors to the library. Its strategic goals included increased visibility of gender and justice related libraries holdings to build the reputation for our collections among campus and community audiences, highlight the libraries expertise in areas related to gender and justice, connect the libraries to the university’s core research, teaching, and learning missions, create opportunities to connect with faculty of Humanities and Gender and Social Justice, and build relationships and a foundation for future cross-campus collaboration. Across communications, social media, and 27 events, Transformative Stories: Year of Gender and Justice reached so many students, faculty, and community members.
From the Judges
A timely entry, due to the external landscape and its implications for gender and justice. Its variety of programmatic components, both in-person and virtually, offered content that would appeal to a wide variety of audiences and the strong campus partnerships enabled the organizers to successfully thread the theme throughout the year and ensure a robust schedule of opportunities. The committee also felt that this programs' focus on the libraries and collections made this program unique, as these are important aspects of the university that do not always receive the visibility that they deserve, relative to other priorities.
