Conducting a Diversity Audit on a Popular Reading Collection

Abstract

Conducting a diversity audit of a popular reading (POP) collection has many challenges. Since the collection is a mix of fiction and non-fiction, a different approach had to be taken so that the audit could capture not only the identities of the author but also the characters in the books across all genres. I along with my committee consisting of a librarian and a technical services staff member, with the support of our libraries assessment committee, designed a form using Google Forms and workflow to train workers to conduct data entry about the books so the collection could be assessed. The analysis of the data helped us find gaps in our collection which we could then fill to have a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive collection. This was a pilot of the rest of the library's collection which will be audited in the near future using the same workflow.