How to Do a Collection Diversity Audit

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Diversity audits for your children's and teen collections are a great way to get a snapshot of how diverse your collection in and where you need to strengthen your collection. 

Recently Karen Jensen, who blogs at Teen Librarian Toolbox in SLJ, wrote "In a nutshell: A collection diversity audit is kind of like doing an inventory and using the data that you get to determine how diverse your library collections are. The goal is to get some baseline data to help those who need to know what the collection looks like and what collection development librarians can do differently to curate the most diverse and inclusive collections possible."

Two great resources to help you conduct an audit of your collection are:

Collection Diversity Audits - This five post Teen Librarian Tool Box blog series is a detailed framework and explanation on how and why we do these audits. Authored by Karen Jensen, a YA and collection development librarian, this series has details and answers to a host of questions. While aimed at young adult collections, the information is worthwhile for materials for any age.

From Diversity to inclusion: How to audit your collection and why. This is an hour long webinar from Kimberlee Powe, the Children's?YA Consultant from the Connecticut State Library. Slides and all accompanying materials can be found on the Inclusive Collections page which is a gold mine of information on creating inclusive collections. Thanks to DPI's Tessa Michaelson Schmidt for this link!