St. Norbert College Presents “Human Library” Event

Facebook / Tweet

From St. Norbert College, February 18, 2016
by Erich Wegenke, erich.wegenke@snc.edu, 920-403-3089

St. Norbert College will present its second "Human Library" event on Thursday, Feb. 25. The event will take place on the third floor of the Miriam B. and James J. Mulva Library on the college campus, in two sessions from 6-7 p.m. and 7-8 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

The "books" in a Human Library are volunteers who share their life stories in informal conversation with visitors. These volunteers hail from a diverse variety of backgrounds, and have many different stories to share, often involving prejudice, discrimination or being part of a marginalized group. The aim of the project is to invite visitors to re-examine their prejudices and expand their horizons--to learn, in other words, not to judge a book by its cover.

The first Human Library was founded in 2000 by activists in Copenhagen, Denmark. It has since become an international organization, and institutions in more than 70 countries--St. Norbert College included--have developed their own local Human Library programs based on the original model. This is St. Norbert College's second year hosting a Human Library; the first occasion, in 2015, was the first of its kind in Wisconsin.
The Human Library project is sponsored by the Mulva Library and the Cassandra Voss Center. A list of the human "books" volunteering for the event is available at http://www.snc.edu/library/events/humanlibrary/. For more information, contact Anthony Sigismondi at 920-403-3291 or anthony.sigismondi@snc.edu.