Purpose and Scope
The purpose of this project is to curate information resources to assist practitioners in academic libraries and archives to incorporate inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) values into collection development and stewardship work.
From theory to case studies, the resources in this bibliography address IDEA values in critical facets of collection stewardship. These resources were drawn from a wide range of sources, including monographs and edited volumes, journals, conference and symposium proceedings, websites, repositories, blogs, and social media sites. The Zotero bibliography reflects the full range of resources, with over 350 entries; this is a living document that will continue to grow as the project team continues its work.
Selected resources span a broad range of sources, including scholarly journal articles, books and book chapters, magazines, white papers, reports, blog posts, and more. Collections-adjacent areas such as scholarly communication, open access, library publishing, and museum curation are out of scope for this bibliography, which focuses on the more established modes of collections work. The vast majority of the selected sources are in English, and most reflect US-based and Western perspectives on IDEA. While comprehensive, this bibliography is not intended to be exhaustive.
Subject Categories
Resources are sorted into five primary categories and three secondary categories, indicated by tags on the website and in the Zotero bibliography. Some resources may address multiple facets; where this occurs, the resource will feature multiple tags.
Primary Categories
- Content: issues of audience, representation, and diversity of perspectives in collections materials;
- Collection Development: how collections are acquired, developed, or built, including advocating for IDEA in working with vendors and donors;
- Collection Management: how collections are maintained and preserved, including centering IDEA values in creation of policies and procedures;
- Description and Discovery: how collections are described and made accessible to the communities that libraries and archives serve;
- Engagement: use of collections in teaching, learning, programming, partnership, and community-building activities, as well as participation by community members in collection development and management.
Secondary Categories
- Access and Accessibility: how access to and use of collections can be maximized for all users, including people with disabilities.
- Collection Assessment: methods and case studies for analyzing and evaluating the extent to which collections align with IDEA principles.
- Resources for Getting Started: collection-related statements and policies that offer starting points on which practitioners can build local policies and practices.
Considerations
The project team reviewed each resource for potential annotation, assessing them for their focus, scope, potential usefulness to practitioners in academic libraries and archives, and circulation in both scholarly literature and public conversations.
Most selected resources are drawn from the literature of the past two decades, though conversations around social justice and IDEA concepts in library and archives literature began to take recognizable contemporary form over six decades ago.
Most selected resources are drawn from the literature of the past two decades, though conversations around social justice and IDEA concepts in library and archives literature began to take recognizable contemporary form over six decades ago. The state of the literature is heavily weighted toward description and discovery; accordingly, the project team sought to select resources for annotation that represented the broad range of collections stewardship activities.
This work reflects our attempts to bring together a range of voices and perspectives on IDEA work with collections. It likewise reflects our biases and limitations in doing this work. It is our hope that the scope and breadth of these resources will enable readers to better understand where these discussions are taking place, to draw meaningful connections between collections practices in parallel fields, and to easily identify resources that can fulfill their institutional and individual information needs.