Under the guidance of the University Libraries’ Climate Committee, library faculty and staff spent the 2020-2021 academic year reading and discussing So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. Conducted over four Zoom meetings, these events comprised the committee’s inaugural One Read campaign.

After the concluding discussion in May, members of the Climate Committee accepted donations of gently-used copies of So You Want to Talk About Race. In August, they brought them to Grassroots Givers, a nonprofit organization in Albany. The group plans to forward the copies to the Schenectady County Correctional Facility for their own One Read program.

“From the beginning, it was important to the Climate Committee to make every part of our programming related to our group read of So You Want to Talk About Race meaningful during the 2020-2021 academic year,” said Jodi Boyle, Supervisory Archivist co-organizer of the One Read program. “Being able to donate some of the books to Grassroots Givers so another organization may have its own successful group read was wonderful and a perfect ending for this book. We look forward to reading our next book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, in fall 2021!”

The University Libraries thank the Climate Committee for facilitating a successful program, as well as for paying it forward with their generosity.