Diversity Initiatives

Since its founding in 1865, Cornell University has been committed to a culture of full participation for all, regardless of race, religion, or gender. Programs, offices, and initiatives across Cornell’s campuses are dedicated to ensuring, as well as the cross-cultural exchange of ideas and skills among diverse constituencies. Among these is the University Diversity Council, restructured in 2011 to include the university president, provosts, and other campus leaders, as well as diversity professionals, and which developed an institutional diversity planning initiative, Toward New Destinations.

Likewise, Cornell University Library is constantly working to ensure and enhance a culture providing for the full participation of all individuals, and supporting teaching and learning in diverse fields. In efforts to draw users and support studies across cultures, races, religions, and sexual orientations, the library has added to already diverse collections to support teaching in LGBTQ, African-American, and Latino studies. The Human Sexuality and Hip Hop collections preserve and ensure access to materials critical to the history and culture of underrepresented groups. The library has taken several steps in recent years to diversify its staff, including the establishment of a two-year diversity fellowship in the Law Library, to help build a pipeline of qualified minority applicants when permanent positions arise; and increased recruitment of underrepresented minorities at conferences, which has led to rising numbers of women and minorities in the library’s applicant pools, and will help the library’s workforce continue to reflect the rich diversity of our community.

Service Area

Cornell University Library serves the Cornell community, including undergraduates, graduate students, faculty and academic and non-academic staff, at our main campus in Ithaca, N.Y.; locations in New York, N.Y.; Geneva, N.Y.; Doha, Qatar; Washington D.C.; Rome, Italy; and anywhere Cornellians are based around the world. (Below numbers are as of 2014/2015.)

  • In Ithaca, Cornell University Library serves 14,453 undergraduates, more than 39 percent of whom are foreign nationals, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, African Americans, Asian Americans, or identified themselves in more than one racial/ethnic group. Fifty-one percent of undergraduates are female and 49% are male.
  • There are nearly 7,400 graduate students, more than 19 percent of whom are foreign nationals, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, African Americans, Asian Americans, or identified themselves in more than one racial/ethnic group. Nearly 45 percent of graduate and professional students are female, and 55 percent male.
  • There are 1,600 faculty members on the Ithaca campus, more than 17 percent of whom are from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds, 31 percent of whom are female and 69% male.
  • Cornell’s staff workforce, more than 8,000 strong, is 57 percent female and 43 percent male, with a racial/ethnic minority representation of more than 11 percent.
  • An estimated 8 percent of students and 6 percent of faculty and staff identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

History

In 1872, when the university's early library of 15,400 volumes moved to McGraw Hall, it became one of the first academic libraries in the country to serve undergraduates. In 1885, it became the first academic library to install electricity; lighting allowed it to stay open for more than 12 hours a day, longer than any other library in the country.

Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's co-founder and first president, built a great library with a focus on collections that allowed students to gain hands-on experience with primary sources. He preserved items relating to recent history, like abolitionist pamphlets and scrapbooks documenting the Civil War, which traditionally would not have been taught in university classes.

Today, digital services account for more than 60 percent of the library's $16 million annual expenditures for collections. Five million articles are downloaded from the library's digital subscriptions every year. The "virtual library" – its online presence – saw 10 million visits last year.