Skip to Main Content

Conducting a Diversity Audit: Future Collection Management

A step-by-step guide on how to conduct a diversity audit of one or more library collections. Included are recommendations on what topics to cover, but these may need to be adjusted depending on the collection.

Future Collection Management

Diversity is something that libraries should strive for constantly and monitor in all applications of collection management.

One diversity audit will not change the overall diversity profile for your library. Collecting information about the whole library will lead to an understanding of the demographic profile of the library at a given time, but materials are updated over time. Collection management processes, from acquisitions to weeding, can now be done with the framework of the diversity audit in mind for applicable collections. Some methods that can be utilized during collection management include:

  1.  Developing an analysis report sheet that discusses trends seen in the data from the diversity audit(s) conducted. This is helpful in understanding the data you collected to be used in future collection management endeavors.
  2. Develop some goals to strive for based on the data collected and the analysis report that are achievable short-term and long-term. What is possible during your next weeding? Your next acquisition order? What is possible over time to fully revitalize a collection?
  3. Plan future audits for other collections and plan to audit the same collections in the future. How often do you want to audit the same collections to check for progress?
  4. Actively monitor collection management activities based around completed audit data and analysis. Check materials that you want to order before adding them to your list and once again before placing the order. Think about if you are losing representation when weeding out materials. *Representation that matches diversity goals is good, but overrepresentation is possible. So is "benevolent stereotyping", where representation is overtly positive to a point of not being realistic. Try to avoid this when adding from and taking away from collections.
  5. Conduct a reverse diversity audit where award winning, diverse materials are found and compared to data collected in audit. Materials are selected if they are seen as fitting with the goals to further diversify collections.

Keep a frame of reference when managing collections in the future after you have data from a diversity audit. Use the information as a framework of where your collection was in the past to compare to in the future when you have a more diverse collection.