When I conducted my initial search using the term “homosexuality”, I was only able to find a small number of titles due to how texts were marked with key words. I then searched using the terms “gay” and “lesbian” as well as “LGBT”, “LGBTQ”, “Queer” and “Transgender” which yielded even more results. It was interesting looking at how different texts had been marked with different subject terms/phrases for when patrons are searching for specific topics.

My library has a physical display for Project Lit books, and it also has various quick pick stations that rotate on a regular basis to feature different genres, cultures, topics, themes, and more. One of my goals for the upcoming school year is to curate and promote more digital collections through our library Instagram that address multiculturalism through authors and characters that can be found in our library as well as through our local public library.

The mission statement of my library does address the importance of including patrons in diverse literary experiences and to foster a culture of learning through globally relevant instruction. It does not explicitly state serving a diverse population, so this is something I will be looking at in order to revise my library mission statement because it is important to explicitly address the importance of serving a diverse population.

It is important to keep a diverse collection because through literary experiences is one incredibly important way we can support the development of empathy and understanding of individuals from culturals, home lives, experiences, and situations different from our own. In my school and community specifically, we are an extremely diverse, almost anomaly, student body since we are a signature school within our district, which means we have students from every far reaching corner of the KCPS school district. Keeping a diverse collection is vital for me in my building because it reflects the diversity of the student body. Students need to be able to see themselves in authors and characters. Without diversity, they are getting one story and one perspective. And that’s just not what our world is.

When I was curating my list of titles for my Showcase the Collection project, I chose to highlight fiction inspired by mythology, legends, and folklore, but I specifically focused on a variety of cultures as I wanted to showcase fiction outside of the Roman and Greek Mythology typical of this type of collection. My showcase did feature books with both main characters and minor characters of different races and sexual orientation, however, I did not find titles that represented characters of varying ability. The book covers that feature images of characters do accurately reflect the color of the characters in the book. The diversity of my student population was part of my primary focus when I was searching for and selecting titles for my showcase, so my collection does provide a variety of both mirrors and windows for my students.