Uncovering Whiteness in Academic Library Collections: a Study of Author Identities in Journalism Monographs

Abstract

Academic library collections have traditionally prioritized and valued white voices, resulting in a lack of representation of authors who have marginalized racial, ethnic, and gender identities. Diversity audits can make the whiteness of collections visible and inform collection development practices that prioritize the work of marginalized scholars to make libraries more inclusive spaces for patrons, workers, students, and scholars. In a diversity audit of author racial, ethnic, and gender identities in an academic library’s journalism monograph collection, the results show that the collection overwhelmingly reflects authors who are white men. Collection development librarians can increase the diversity of authors in their collections by creating a protocol for identifying, purchasing, and marketing works by marginalized authors.

Keywords:

• Academic library collections
• diverse collection development
• diversity audit
• journalism monographs
• whiteness in libraries

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dee Anna Phares for her feedback on my work and Gwen Gregory for supporting diverse collecting efforts.

Disclosure statement

The author has no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Notes

1 Language note: I have chosen “BIPOC and/or Latinx” to describe a wide variety of marginalized racial and ethnic identities. I acknowledge that racial and ethnic categories are imperfect, and that researchers should use the preferred terms of the groups they are writing about. I acknowledge that the terms BIPOC and/or Latinx may be preferred by some members of the groups they are intended to describe, but not by all. I have chosen these terms in an attempt to be widely inclusive of non-white individuals of diverse gender identities, and to be consistent with the demographics collected by the institution. When talking about other studies, I use the language used in the studies.

2 Many of the terms are taken from the Library of Congress Subject Headings, which often to not reflect the preferred terms of the people they describe. Further, while the intent is to collect monographs by BIPOC scholars, titles amassed by keyword searches will include many works by white authors. Additional work was taken to ascertain the racial or ethnic identity of the authors, as described in the method section.