Diversity Audit Project

PLO:

PLO 5- Identify needs and connect individuals and communities with information that engages and empowers them

Additional PLOs

PLO 1- Apply the field’s functional theories, principles, values, ethics and skills to everyday practice

PLO 3- Analyze and engage in the changing cultural, educational, and social roles and responsibilities of librarians/information professionals and the environments they work in within the global society

Professional Standards/Competencies

ALA Core Competences

1A. Employ the ethics, values, and foundational principles of the library profession

1B. Promote democratic principles and intellectual freedom

2B. Apply the concepts, issues, and methods of collection management, which entails the lifecycle of materials from evaluation to long-term preservation and other curative practices

2C. Include emerging formats and genres of information resources and understand how these may intersect with and reflect the diverse and cultural needs of the information communities through the management of collections

6D. Implement principles, concepts, and techniques for understanding and assessing the information needs of a community, and understand the ways the library can assist and collaborate in meeting those needs

8B. Recognize, challenge, and change practices, services, and programs that have traditionally replicated dominant systems and marginalized others

8E. Equitably distribute library staff, collections, and facility resources among all user communities

ALA Code of Ethics

1. Provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources; equitable service policies; equitable access; and accurate, unbiased, and courteous responses to all requests

2. Uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources

7. Distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources

9. Affirm the inherent dignity and rights of every person. Work to recognize and dismantle systemic and individual biases; to confront inequity and oppression; to enhance diversity and inclusion; and to advance racial and social justice in our libraries, communities, profession, and associations through awareness, advocacy, education, collaboration, services, and allocation of resources and spaces

Project Description

This diversity audit project was completed for LIS 60614: Collection Management in Libraries. As part of this project, I had to evaluate part of a library collection using the diversity criteria and statistical analysis techniques that were discussed and described in the class lectures and readings. For my project, I chose to evaluate part of the adult biography collection at the Palmdale City Library, a local library where I used to work. After obtaining a shelf list of 100 randomly selected items in the adult biography collection from the collection development librarian, I used descriptions of the items in the library’s catalog to determine which categories of diversity included on the provided diversity audit chart worksheet each item represented. I then used the diversity information, as well as the age of items, current item status, and item circulation history to compile statistics in order to determine how much of the collection was considered to be diverse, what percentage of the collection represented different categories of diversity, the average age of items in the collection that were considered to be diverse, and the relative use of diverse items. After determining this information and conducting some basic research on the library’s community demographics, I assessed how well the library’s adult biography collection represented diversity and met the needs of the library’s community and discussed how the collection could be improved.

Through this project, I gained hands-on experience in collection management and learned how to evaluate a particular collection based on user needs and statistics such as item age and circulation history. This project also provided me with an opportunity to learn how to identify user needs, compile collection statistics, and promote inclusion by developing a more diverse collection.

Diversity Audit Project.docx

Diversity Audit Project

Diversity Audit Chart.docx

Diversity Audit Chart

Diversity Audit- Age of Collection Worksheet.docx

Diversity Audit Age of Collection Worksheet

Diversity Audit Analysis Worksheet.xlsx

Diversity Audit Analysis Worksheet

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