2018 Charleston Library Conference

Providing diverse collections is a long-standing commitment of libraries. Today, more than ever, there is a greater sense of urgency about and increased scrutiny of this commitment. Are academic libraries making a concerted effort to collect diverse topics and viewpoints? Are they providing the necessary tools to advocate for social justice? Our panel will discuss different approaches to evaluating current collections and methods for creating collections that promote diversity and social justice.

We present four perspectives:
1. Michelle Baildon, MIT: Michelle describe the impact of a 2017 academic library’s task force report on diversity, inclusion, and social justice in collections-related work. Michelle will iinclude a discussion of specific collections strategy projects designed to manifest these values in monograph acquisitions and print storage projects.
2. Rachel Finn, Vassar College – Rachel will speak specifically to early stage efforts to integrate the values of social justice into the day-to-day work of technical services. She will discuss the process, the short-term goals, and talk more about their aspirations for bringing real change to existing department workflows.
3. Becky Imamoto, UC Irvine - Becky will discuss her library’s experience in evaluating their current collection for diversity using different data points. This project highlighted gaps in the collection and led to additional purchasing strategies. The library also created a new way to display these recent titles to the user population.
4. Jenny Hudson, GOBI Library Solutions: Jenny will explore how vendors can help libraries both in reviewing their current profiles/collections and in building a more diverse collection moving forward. She will also speak to how library projects can help to influence vendors to integrate diversity, inclusion and social justice into their services.