Collection Diversity Analysis Projects

Scope: Specific Collection Diversity Analysis Projects

Contact: @Sarah Holsapple

Unit: Collection Strategy & Development Department

Date last reviewed: 06/23/2025

Date of next review: 06/23/2026

Collection Strategy & Development manages a library collection that seeks to meets the research and teaching needs of the university, one of our goals is to build and maintain a diverse collection that represents the greatest possible array of cultures and perspectives across all disciplines. To accomplish this goal, we seek ways to measure the diversity in the collection, and then to take action based in this data to increase the diversity of materials in our collection.

The Collection Strategy & Development department is participating in the Ithaka S+R cohort project on assessing the diversity of library collections. We work with Ithaka S+R and a cohort of other academic libraries to identify institutional priorities and collection development strategies regarding diversity in the library collection, and develop a tool for collection diversity assessment.

The Collection Diversity Analysis Practicum Project is an exploration of ways to identify the diversity of materials in the academic library collection through data analysis.

A large-scale diversity audit of the whole collection is challenging because each subject area has different ways to be diverse - different measures, context, and metadata. This project seeks to conduct smaller, deeper audits of tightly scoped parts of the collection.

The student in this practicum/field experience project will research diversity in the library collection and then choose a section of the collection, research what diversity looks like in that subject specifically, do an analysis of our resources in that section (print and electronic resources), and make recommendations of how we can increase the diversity in that section.