The Munger Library
Munger Library Mission
The Harvard-Westlake Munger Library aims to provide diverse and broad library services that meet our academic and personal information needs. Our mission is to ensure that students and staff are effective and ethical users, consumers, and producers of ideas, information, and technology. We hope to empower our learning community to be critical thinkers, enthusiastic readers, and lifelong learners. We strive to make our library a welcoming place for students, teachers, and community members. We want our library to flow with innovation, collaboration, curiosity, adaptability, critical inquiry, and transliteracy. We strive to develop a diverse and inclusive collection that is both educational and affirming, consisting of multiple modalities to support various learning styles and abilities. Librarians can collaborate with teachers to design and implement authentic learning experiences and research projects following the guided inquiry process, including diverse, inclusive, and equitable lesson plans, resources, and instructional support. Harvard-Westlake libraries are committed to deliberately and intentionally pursuing efforts to ensure that Harvard-Westlake is a space where differences are welcomed, different perspectives are respectfully heard and responded to, and everyone feels a sense of belonging and inclusion.
Munger Library Vision
Our vision is that all students from a variety of backgrounds, including, but not limited to, ability, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, and power-differentiated groups, will have access to quality library programs and services that are tailored to the community and that create new opportunities for all students to promote personal growth, academic success, and career development while linking students and staff to resources and learning opportunities. The vision for Harvard-Westlake Munger Library is to be a diverse, inclusive and equitable school which flourishes on the exchange of ideas from different perspectives. We believe the diversity of viewpoints that comes from different life experiences, identities, cultural backgrounds, and more enables the Munger Library to achieve better its mission to support all students and staff, and in putting all students ‒ especially those with the greatest needs ‒ on the path to successful and fulfilling lives. We are committed to working actively to redress institutional inequalities that affect our society, to challenge bias, harassment, and discrimination, and to provide equal opportunity to all of the Harvard-Westlake community.
Munger Librarians believe:
Reading is a window to the world that can be experienced in various formats for pleasure or growth.
Locating, organizing, analyzing, evaluating, synthesizing, and ethically using information is crucial to being a responsible, digital community member.
Creating information and story is just as important as consuming information and story.
Access to information and story across multiple platforms is essential to learning.
Providing multiple modalities and introducing modern technology provides a more accessible library collection and equitable library services for the various learning styles.
Technology is a pathway to a global audience.
Library service is user-centered, including our website's usability, database's usability, and the accessibility of our physical space.
All cultures, identities, and global information communities must be represented in our library acquisitions and collection development.
Online
Read
To borrow HW ebooks and audiobooks, log in with your HW username (astudent1, for example) and password.
Research
Use our encyclopedias and reference books, databases, and academic ebooks for your research — including for primary sources!
When in doubt, ask a librarian.
Request a Title
Need a book that we don't have? Reading a book for DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) that you'd like to keep longer? Let us know here!
Request a Title or extend a dear book loan
Contact a Librarian
You may also contact a specific librarian:
- Ms. Heather Hersey (hhersey@hw.com) or Ms. Jehan Giles (jgiles@hw.com) regarding the Knowledge Integration & Tools for Success course ("KITS");
- Ms. Claudia Posadas (cposadas@hw.com) for student service and programming opportunities;
- Ms. Christina Wagner-Wright (cwagner-wright@hw.com) with general library questions, research project questions, to chat about reading, to ask about adding new titles to the collection, and more.
The Munger Library
Harvard-Westlake Middle School
700 N. Faring Road Los Angeles, CA 90077
Email: library-ms@hw.com
Phone: 310-288-3211