Build a multicultural community in a joint-venture university: Duke Kunshan University library’s initiatives

Abstract

Joint-venture Universities usually have students, faculty and staff from all over the world. To enhance the awareness of the diversity and to establish a multicultural community, Duke Kunshan University Library (DKUL) initiates and collaborates several events in the campus to promote diversity culture. Reading the World and Book from Home are two major events DKUL initiated.

Reading the World is a series of talks co-hosted by library and Academic Resources Center (ARC) at DKU. The first event was started from Spring 2019 and will be held twice a semester. In every event, Library and ARC invite one or two members from DKU community from across the globe to share their favorite books and movies and talk about the intersection of culture, history, life and artistic expression. The first two events were held in March and October in 2019. The first featured speakers were Craig McIntosh, the senior editor from the office of communication and marketing, who came from British originally. The second one was Reika Shimomura, the student from Class of 2023 who came from Japan. The event averagely attracted more than 35 people to attend. The next two events will be held in December 2019 and January 2020, the featured speakers will be students from Guangdong and Morocco.

Book from Home is another yearly initiative by library. In the summer of 2019, library spread out a message to all international students except the students from U.S. Library invites the students to choose one book that reflects the culture, history, or social life of their home country and bring back to DKU in fall semester. The book can be written in their native language (preferred), bilingual or English. DKU Library reimbursed them the amount of the book. In fall of 2019, library received around 30 books from 16 countries. Those books will be part of DKU library’s collection which reflects the multi-lingual and multi-cultural community.

Those two initiatives not only help library build and promote the collection, but also from special perspective help the whole community establish the channels to start up more conversation of diversity. DKUL will keep extending those initiatives to contribute the enhance the multicultural community.