This past December, Augustana College’s Thomas Tredway Library received the 2025 Library Excellence in Access and Diversity (LEAD) award from Insight to Diversity magazine. This is the first time the Tredway Library has achieved this honor, and it will be featured in this year’s March issue.
The Insight to Diversity magazine highlights institutions that take initiatives for accessibility and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on campus. This includes being compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Many Augustana students frequent the library for both a quiet place to study and to relax with friends after a long day of classes. Instruction Librarian and Assistant Professor Garrett Traylor said with these varying needs in mind, the library aims to create a welcoming environment for all students that wander in with its many resources available.
“The informal tagline of the library is that we’re the ‘living room’ of the campus,” Traylor said.
The Tredway Library features a variety of games available for students to rent, a LEGO board and frequent events throughout the year to engage with the student body. Research and Instruction Librarian for the Humanities Division Kaitlyn Goss-Peirce said activities such as these are crucial for students to feel a better sense of belonging within their campus community as well as to better connect them with library resources.
“By creating and fostering more of this home-like environment and centering the student[s], it then helps decrease potential library anxiety,” Goss-Peirce said.
Traylor said the library also offers wellness kits containing helpful study devices such as fidget toys and white noise machines for students to utilize.
Senior Castra Pierre works at the Tredway Library and is involved with library student outreach. Pierre helps organize and plan events for the student body.
“[When] you’re helping others that maybe don’t feel as included as you, it bring[s] a sense [that] you’re doing something right,” Pierre said.
The library has also served as a museum for different cultural artworks throughout the years, showcasing various pieces on its floors. Library Director Stefanie Bluemle said the second floor currently features work made by students from Augustana’s Prison Education Program (APEP) that they created to curate a collection of Indigenous artworks owned by the college.
“It’s a way of bringing their work onto the main campus, so it’s a different form of inclusivity in some ways,” Bluemle said.
However, Traylor said the Tredway Library is always striving to be more accessible to students. In an effort to further increase student accessibility, Goss-Peirce said the library collaborated with ‘24 Augustana Alumni Bailey Hacker and the Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders Dr. Catherine Webb, who helped provide recommendations for next steps.
“We try to make [the library] accessible to students, whatever their background is, [but] we’re not perfect,” Traylor said. “We always try and take feedback.”
This spring, Goss Peirce said the Tredway Library staff will be focusing on electronic resources and how to make them more accessible to students. Examples of these modifications include screen readers, fonts and the colors on the screen, Bluemle said.
Despite DEI threats at the national level, both Bluemle and Goss-Peirce said the Treadway Library will not be impacted by any federal changes, since Augustana is a private institution.
“Even if the federal government implements certain regulations that might otherwise change what other institutions are doing, we might have to put [things] under different titles,” Goss-Peirce said. “We’re not going to stop what we’re doing.”