Collection Development as Anti-Racism : An Exploratory Analysis of Anti-Racist Statements on Academic Library Websites

Abstract

Social justice issues have received increasing attention in academic libraries in recent decades, and from 2020, were prominent in the messaging of institutions that published anti-racist statements on their websites. Using a content analysis approach, this study explores a sample of these texts to investigate how they envision collection development as a facet of anti-racism. Statements were found to be largely lacking in practical detail, indicating a lack of deep engagement with the issue of racism in collection development practice. The majority of statements invoked "racism" in abstract terms, without explicitly connecting it to specific racialized groups, and focused on diversification of collections as the primary method for countering racial injustice. Smaller numbers of statements named specific social groups, and committed to scrutinizing practices that may contribute to the continued “whiteness” of their collections; these show better alignment with emerging scholarship in this area, and greater promise of efficacy.