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Diversifying library collections toolkit
- 1. Toolkit for change: diversifying library collections SarahField & Emma Mires Richards, LiaisonLibrarians
- 2. Background • Student Success Project 2015 – 2020 • Kent Union – ‘Diversify my curriculum’ Decolonise UKC manifesto • OPERA Project using reading lists • Collaborative approach “The University should aim to diversify the content of its curriculum and make it more inclusive, starting with reviewing curricula to ensure that a range of ideas and academic thoughts are represented.” BME Student Voices Report, Kent Union 2017
- 3. Rationale – students want diverse resources! “I’d take so much pride in my studies and be so happy. I’d just be soaked in my studies. And because everyone on the course is doing it you can have a proper conversation… let’s talk about it.” (Black stage 3 student, focus group Feb 2019)
- 5. Looking at the evidence Pilot Project with SECL Led by Dr Laura Bailey with student researchers: Miriam Jeyasingh & Wayne Laviniere
- 6. “I was surprised that my list was as white and male as it turned out to be, and I did make a point of mentioning it to students on that module and on another, final year module that I teach. Some shrugged their shoulders and said that sometimes it's only white men who have written the good books (!); others responded much more enthusiastically about the idea of an audit, and it led to a good discussion about decolonising the university.” “I was surprised that my list was as white and male as it turned out to be, and I did make a point of mentioning it to students on that module and on another, final year module that I teach. Some shrugged their shoulders and said that sometimes it's only white men who have written the good books (!); others responded much more enthusiastically about the idea of an audit, and it led to a good discussion about decolonising the university.” (Module convenor, Feb 2019) discussion about decolonising the university.”
- 7. Engaging with students “There was a general consensus that students weren’t aware that contributing or changing the reading list was an option. There was also an assumption that the reading list was white British male-oriented and that’s just the way it is. The view was expressed that more representation could encourage more engagement given they know where the sources were coming from in the first place.” (Evangeline Agyeman, Social Sciences student) “I believe without diversity; our perspectives will as a consequence be limited to a Eurocentric outlook, which does not display the critical thinking that we are so often encouraged to do at university level” (Collins Konadu-Mensah, Social Sciences student) https://talis.wistia.com/medias/o0cvulqa6s (Talis presentation)
- 8. Criteria: • that the reading list has had diverse and inclusive resources added to it following a review. This will be demonstrated in the published reading list. • that student feedback has informed the process. • This might include, but is not limited to, student focus-groups, module evaluations or formative assessment where students consider or create a diverse resource list. • a commitment to diversify your teaching and learning resources in future. For example, through goal-setting and/or reporting to your Schools Education Committee. Diversity Mark Award
- 9. Diversity Toolkit https://www.kent.ac.uk/library/readinglists/help/diversify.html Toolkit includes: Links to our Liberation History reading lists Padlet of niche and independent publishers, relevant diversity networks Highlights from existing collections, alternative formats and open access resources Recommend a book to the library Coming soon… more detail on our own collections A student webpage on diversifying their reading
- 10. Developing networks Internal Sharing knowledge and practice to inform our guidance and collection development. Developing a range of methods of reaching the same goal External LIS-DECOLONISE@jiscmail.ac.uk Decolonizing Alliance DECOLONIZING-ALLIANCE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK HE Race action group HERAG@jiscmail.ac.uk Diversity in libraries conference Monday 20 April 2020 #InfoFestKent20
- 11. • Develop toolkit • Interrogate process for acquisitions work with suppliers • Critical literacy skills to support staff and students i.e workshops, CPD, extra curricular events • Technical development to promote and help discovery Moodle and Talis Next Steps ?
- 12. Feedback and thoughts Join the discussion - https://padlet.com/sf434/bimlav1awch
- 13. References & further information • Gurminder K. Bhambra, Dalia Gebrial, Kerem Nişancıoğlu (eds) (2019)Decolonising the University. Pluto Press: London • Ferguson, R et al (2019). Innovating Pedagogy 2019: Open University Innovation Report 7. Milton Keynes: The Open University. [https://iet.open.ac.uk/file/innovating-pedagogy-2019.pdf] • Schucan Bird, K. and Pitman, L. (2019). How diverse is your reading list? Exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the UK https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-019-00446-9 • Universities UK (2019) Black, Asian and minority ethnic student attainment at UK universities: #ClosingtheGap‘ [https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2019/bame-student-attainment-uk-universities-closing-the- gap.pdf] • The white elephant in the room: ideas for reducing racial inequalities in higher education https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/09/HEPI_The-white-elephant-in-the-room_Report-120-FINAL-EMBAROED-19.09.19.pdf Contacts: Sarah Field S.L.Field@kent.ac.uk Emma Mires Richards E.L.Mires-Richards@kent.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
- Intros
- Talk about background at Kent and then in terms of the library involvement Decolonise UKC Kent Law School project Decolonise the Curriculum, led by Dr Suhraiya Jivraj (Senior Lecturer) and Sheree Palmer (Student Success Project Officer). It launched in October 2018, and is encouraging students to be a stakeholders in their own education, and shape the choice of texts they study. Students are undertaking research, with academic support, on diversity in Law, engaging in focus groups and writing up their findings to help inform future changes to the Law curriculum. We included some library focused/reading list questions as part of this work. OPERA (Opportunity, Productivity, Engagement, Reducing barriers, Achievement) is a University-wide accessibility project supported by advice and guidance from the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc). The project seeks to implement a range of accessibility initiatives to raise awareness of the potential for inclusive design and assistive technologies to improve access to learning for all. The project is primarily about mainstreaming accessibility by catalysing a shift in culture from individual adjustments via Inclusive Learning Plans (ILP) towards anticipatory reasonable adjustments and inclusive practice by design as the preferred means to tackle accessibility barriers at source. Could not do this in isolation - From a personal perspective, working within a collaborative framework has provided the support, expertise and means to develop processes and understanding that would have been harder to achieve as a service in isolation. The mix of humanities and social sciences disciplines has also provided different lenses and practices to think about, which has been helpful in highlighting different approaches and methods for addressing lack of diversity and dominance of other perspectives in reading lists.
- As well as comments from Decolonise UKC focus groups and subsequent manifesto, students had been raising comments at other pilot focus groups as well. Context to quote - An important point here is that they were saying that white students are scared to talk about race, because they think they’ll get it wrong, and black students feel like they ought to know this stuff but how could they if they never get taught it? They go on to say lots more about that but the main thing is that if it’s on the reading list, it’s up for discussion and opens up that conversation.
- ALS a team of 17 library staff of that work closely with our academic schools managing and developing collections for T&l as well as research in liaison with our academic schoolsWe also support students and staff use of these collections. Library collections reflect institutional culture, so define the ethos and core values at the heart of the University of Kent. A manifestation of the body of knowledge and the whole University. It is important to recognise that Reading Lists shape our library collections, and diverse reading lists will mean students recognise themselves within the collections. So we meet with KU and SSP and conceived the notion of a ‘diversity mark’ that could be applied to reading lists to encourage and identify the progress in diversifying our library collections. What is this idea? How could the library work in partnership with academic colleagues to develop diverse collections through reading lists? We theorized around our role and the potential benefit The process map is a circle that reads clockwise and starts with the Library: 1) We work with academics to provide data as well as support on selecting more diverse resources. 2) Academic Process to reflect on the data and discuss with their students leading to the review their reading lists with more diverse content 3) This activity leads to curriculum change as more diverse content is included that in turn engages students improves their overall experience and develops graduate attrubtes. The benefits are that we are able to provide our expertise to support academics in providing resources Academics are engaging with reading lists and understanding their integral role in shaping our collections and diversifying resources.
- EMR Wider Dm work had included a pilot at our Medway campus led by Dave Thomas and Barbara Adewumi (Collins and Evangeline), we learnt a lot from this project and an earlier stage of our work where we reviewed a smaller sample of lists – that ealier stage had been missing the student voice so we employed 2 students (Miriam and Wayne) to carry out the review research. Metrics were a mix of author identity and items and list format – in later discussions we have also considered looking at geographical biases in terms of place or publication and publishers. 1642 authors, 1295 items were reviewed this was across 30+ modules Date – a few modules had older texts that were not included here – modernity of texts is more spread than other metrics, important to consider in terms of whether new texts were introduced or just the “best book” inherited from previous academics lists and lenses. Ethnicity - ‘Other’ might be Hispanic/Latinx, Jewish, etc. Nationality of authors by continent - Oceania is nearly always Australian. This is independent of ethnicity, so for example African includes a white South African author. Asian is under-represented because of the way the data was input, so some of the Asian authors on the previous slide are quite likely to be Asian here as well as normally if they were, say, Asian American, that was recorded. Note that some of these modules are about Asian religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, so you’d really hope for much more than this! Gender
- EMR Module convenors in the pilot reported that it sparked classroom discussion and reading list review They were surprised at the results, particularly those who teach e.g. post-colonial theory, or with a feminist perspective But we also shocked the stereotypical white male convenor! Indicates that this research needs to raise awareness before change can result Visualising data – at analysis stage we decided that a visual representation would be a powerful way to share findings Provided a ‘snapshot’ via infographics (used the free version of Piktochart) of the list, used broad indicators to show metrics in an impactful way to academics and begin conversation on the subject of diversifying. Broad coverage - i.e. accessibility – format so available regardless of environment location or individual learning need, diverse perspectives considered via measures such as (ethnicity, gender, identity) illustrated via looking at author, content and date range of materials presented – place of publication is something that we are also currently considering in an extended project. Engagement - overall useful feedback comments shared from convenors perspective in that it helped to highlight areas for focus potentially and Encouraging dialogue between students, convenors and professional services staff
- EMR In addition to Humanities pilot other schools identified with attainment/awarding gaps – student interns have been working with a number of schools to go through a similar process. These visuals were produced by Jade Sanderson working with School of politics: Following a discussion at their School Executive Group they have agreed to go ahead with adding a ‘diversity mark’ note/kitemark to module Moodle folders. It will also include an invitation to students to submit/nominate additional or alternative titles for reading lists. Will be for the 2020/21 academic year, i.e. for a September 2020 start.
- EMR The various ways we have been working with students/ diversity mark research officers interns and involving students more in what our collections look like “Read Grow Thrive” #seeyourselfontheshelf (book groups and using the space as a learning community for all)
- This is a mock up of what the mark will look like in Moodle – also fits in with BB Allay (accessibility block/app) This is not about a one size fits all – it is hopefully an agile enough approach to allow academics to try something and get started. We have recently been having conversations with a Humanities school who would like students to work on creating their own lists of resources that are missing with outcomes to include displays and additions being included in library subject guides and wikithon (adding entries)
- Also looking to develop current toolkit for staff to include different resource types such video clips of staff and students and guest speakers as well as potentially more padlets from discipline perspective
- Retruning to importance of networks and recognising work that has gone before and generous sharing across sectors
- Screen shot RL Tags – possible to develop?
- Open padlet Ask people to join discussion on padlet using prompts and adding in additional content Spend 10 mins with 5 for feedback and questions