The mission of Lake County Public Library is to be a partner in building community, fostering life-long learning, providing equal access to information and promoting diversity of ideas.

We are committed to:

• Meeting the needs of our diverse community
• Supporting the intellectual growth of our community
• Protecting patrons’ privacy and freedom to read
• Providing a space for the community to come together

Diversity Statement

Lake County Public Library is committed to continually addressing the needs of our diverse community, considering all patrons in library planning, programming, and services.

What do we mean by diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Diversity expresses deliberate representation and inclusion of varied perspectives, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences among library staff, collections, programs, and services. 

Equity is providing a space that prioritizes fairness and where patrons can receive unbiased access to library resources.

Inclusion creates intentional efforts to actively engage with differences and foster environments where everyone feels valued and respected.
 

How will we achieve this?

• Offering services and resources to every member of our community. Embracing diversity as well as prohibiting discrimination and harassment across races, genders, sexual orientations, religions, abilities, ages, national or ethnic backgrounds, languages, citizenship statuses, socioeconomic statuses, and political affiliations.
• Auditing our policies annually through a DEI lens to ensure they do not create barriers or ​​reinforce the marginalization of any group, are inclusive to all and foster a sense of belonging.
• Becoming an actively anti-racist organization by recognizing our shortfalls and holding ourselves accountable to creating improvement by doing the work needed.
• Working to develop a procedure for regularly completing diversity audits on our collections and creating quantifiable diversity objectives for our collection development staff to pursue.

Lake County Public Library will review this statement annually; the next review is expected in October, 2025.