Seeing Yourself in the Academic Library: Performing a Diversity Audit on a College Fiction Collection

Libraries have an ideological imperative to mirror the diversity of the communities they serve. Through the collaborative work of a student researcher and a librarian, Illinois College’s Schewe Library conducted a diversity audit of our collection of American fiction in English (6,780 items) in the spring and summer of 2023.

This audit sampled 935 books and measured their authors' races, genders, and ethnicities. The data were then compared to student demographics of Illinois College and the U.S. Census. The largest group represented in this collection sample was cisgender white male authors at 59.6%, followed by cisgender white female authors at 25.9%, leading to discussions for future policy development of equitable accessioning and deaccessioning.

In this webinar, you'll gain insights into the techniques for conducting a diversity audit of your collection, understand key takeaways from the findings, explore future steps, and recognize the imperative for academic libraries to assess the diversity of their materials.

For more information about this event, including speaker bio, visit the ILA event page. 

All ILA Noon Network webinars are free. The recordings are available to ILA personal members shortly after the webinars. Registration for all live webinars is limited to Illinois libraries.

Questions? Contact Tamara Jenkins, tjenkins@ila.org