Celebrating Heritage Months in Higher Education Libraries with Libby and Kanopy

Heritage months like Black History Month, Native American Heritage Month, Pride Month, and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month offer higher education librarians powerful opportunities to spotlight diverse voices, foster dialogue, and celebrate identity. By leveraging your Libby and Kanopy collections, you can create meaningful, accessible programming that brings underrepresented perspectives into focus.

Curate Digital Displays for Heritage Months

Just as physical book displays highlight important works, digital collections can serve as dynamic “front doors” to diverse scholarship. With Libby and Kanopy, you can build curated displays around each heritage month. Examples include:

• Black History Month: Scholarly works on the Civil Rights Movement, memoirs from Black leaders, and contemporary novels by emerging Black authors.
• Native American Heritage Month: Indigenous-authored fiction, oral histories, and policy texts on sovereignty and environmental justice.
• Pride Month: LGBTQ+ memoirs, queer theory, and contemporary works that center intersectional identities.

These collections allow students to engage with a mix of voices—both historical and contemporary—that deepen understanding and spark classroom connections.

Go Beyond Books: Audio and Other Sources

Don’t limit your offerings to just text. Audiobooks can offer students the chance to hear an author’s voice directly, which can be especially powerful with memoirs, poetry, or speeches. You can also spotlight:

• Recordings of landmark speeches (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., Audre Lorde, Vine Deloria Jr.).
• News and magazine archives that show how events were covered at the time they unfolded.
• Contemporary journalism from diverse publications that expand perspectives often underrepresented in mainstream media.

By weaving these materials into heritage month programming, you provide students with a more layered, multimedia experience of history and culture.

Let Them See Themselves on Screen

Film is one of the most engaging ways to celebrate heritage months, and Kanopy makes it easy to highlight diverse stories. With more than 30,000 titles—including documentaries, indie films, and classic cinema—Kanopy ensures that students and faculty have access to content not always available on commercial platforms.

Kanopy is deliberate about amplifying underrepresented voices. Its curated collections for heritage months include films by and about Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ communities. For students, this representation matters: seeing themselves reflected on screen fosters a sense of belonging, while for others, it broadens cultural awareness and empathy.

Develop Cross-Campus Partnerships

Maximize impact by collaborating with cultural centers, academic departments, and student organizations. For example:

• Partner with the Black Student Union to host a virtual watch party and discussion using a Kanopy documentary.
• Work with Native Studies faculty to build a reading list in Libby and Kanopy that complements coursework.
• Co-host a Pride Month storytelling night where students share personal narratives alongside readings from Libby and Kanopy’s LGBTQ+ collection.

These partnerships ensure that heritage month celebrations feel authentic, student-centered, and academically connected.

Promote Access and Awareness

Even the most thoughtfully curated collection has limited impact if students don’t know it exists. Promote heritage month resources by:

• Featuring those collections on your library homepage.
• Using social media to spotlight daily or weekly recommendations.
• Creating QR codes for digital collections and placing them around campus.
• Embedding links to eBooks, audiobooks, and films in course guides and syllabi.

Bringing It All Together

Don’t look at heritage months in higher education as boxes to be checked—they are about building inclusive communities of learning. These celebrations provide opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to engage with diverse voices and histories that may otherwise remain at the margins of the curriculum. By using Libby and Kanopy to thoughtfully integrate heritage months into campus life, you can create spaces where all students feel seen and valued, while also encouraging dialogue that broadens perspectives and deepens cultural understanding. The result: students gain richer perspectives, faculty find valuable teaching tools, and the library becomes a central stage for celebrating identity and culture year-round.