Diversity Audit

"Diversity in the Stacks"

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ends her insightful Tedtalk titled The Danger of a Single Story by saying, “Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity….When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.” 

I started this initiative along with my Trinity College colleagues and campus partners to diversify our library's collections from a place of recognition: Stories matter. Many stories matter. Representation matters. It is important that members of our campus community see themselves represented in our collections. This is one way in which libraries can contribute to a sense of belonging, and we know from research that belonging is an important ingredient for student success.

I worked with colleagues as well as a student from our library student advisory board to conduct a diversity audit of our very popular leisure reading collection to identify potential gaps or underrepresentation. Of the 450 titles in the collection, only 28 percent featured BIPOC main characters and just 10 percent featured LGBTQ+ main characters. Based on our findings from the audit, we selected new titles that centered the voices, stories, and lived experiences of Asian and Pacific Islanders, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ communities, and Latine communities (especially AfroLatinas) since these were the groups least represented in our existing leisure reading collection.

We also worked to surface and promote existing holdings in our collection that centered historically marginalized voices. Our new BIPOC and LGBTQ+ leisure collection includes existing titles as well as the new titles we added to the collection. We used the new collections feature of PrimoVE to increase the discoverability of titles in the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ leisure reading collection in OneSearch. We also wrote a marketing plan to generate awareness and promote use and engagement with the collection, and to build and leverage partnerships with student groups and faculty to integrate the collection into the curriculum, programming, and events.

Below you will find the diversity audit procedure, the strategic marketing plan, and the collection discovery page made possible by PrimoVE.