2019 Joint Conference ILA/NLA/NSLA

Inspired by an article from Teen Services Underground, “Diversity Audit: Assessing Your Collection” by Jenni Frencham, the Cedar Rapids Public Library developed and conducted a diversity audit for its young adult collection. As a part of the planning process, library staff took a serious look at what the actual diverse needs of our library community and created an audit that was specifically catered to those needs. Librarians then conducted the audit focusing on the patron perspective; reports were not run to catch specific terms in the catalog. Instead materials were physically handled and assessed for diversity based on the appearance and summary of each item just as the average patron would assess an item.
The collection staff then took this information and created a more thoughtful purchasing plan to intentionally seek out quality, diverse materials to better meet community needs. Library staff handling the audit not only learned from the results of audit, but also from the process of developing the audit. This information and lessons learned would be helpful to libraries considering an audit of their own collections on any criteria. There will also be time to discuss new, diverse young adult titles to add to library collections