{"id":19012,"date":"2019-05-17T09:48:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T13:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/?p=19012"},"modified":"2019-05-19T17:13:55","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T21:13:55","slug":"library-audit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/library-audit\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottauquechee’s Diversity Detectives in:"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Case of The Library Diversity Audit<\/h1>\n

Whose stories are being told in your library? Whose stories are being left out?<\/h2>\n

Look around your library. It is such a beautiful space. It’s filled with vibrant colors and flexible furniture, student art and encouraging signs and posters. Maybe it has a makerspace. And it’s stocked full of books of all shapes, sizes and colors. Every book imaginable is available somewhere, from a YA-version Hamlet, to Winnie the Pooh<\/em>\u00a0and The Big Friendly Giant<\/em>. Plus of course, Catcher in the Rye<\/em>. You’ve got some new classics as well: Twilight, Hunger Games, City of Bones<\/em>. Your collection is amazing. Why on earth would you need a library audit?<\/p>\n

Except…<\/p>\n

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<\/h2>\n

What’s a library audit?<\/h2>\n

Librarians audit their collections for any number of reasons. Books like to live, they like to find readers. Part of library management is curating which books to add and which to discard.<\/p>\n

But recently, quite a few librarians have noticed that their collections represent only a minority of voices in the communities they serve. Publishing has favored a limited number of narratives. Those narratives feature a large number of protagonists who are white, who are male, who are able-bodied, who are straight. Those characteristics taken together reference a small set of the population. Therefore, many librarians are finding it useful to use lenses of diversity in conducting their audits. As you buy new books, and as you discard older ones, having lenses of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation and economic class — even a subset of those lenses — can make a collection more useful to its community.<\/p>\n

And why did Ottauquechee need one?<\/h2>\n

“I thought about my students. Do they see themselves in the library?”<\/h3>\n

The Ottauquechee School, in Quechee VT, is home to an amazing library space. Work tables cluster under a wall of windows. Beanbags and soft, plush reading chairs beckon invitingly. Laptops sit ready atop a tech bar, and a whiteboard asks students to write questions for an upcoming discussion. And Ottauquechee School librarian Becky Whitney wanted to make sure the collection was just as welcoming as the space itself.<\/p>\n

I was inspired from the Deeper Learning Conference we attended in 2018, and in one session we attended, called Little People have Big Ideas: Implementing a Social Justice Lens in Elementary<\/em>, with Jeffrey Feitelberg, elementary students did a classroom library audit. And I always felt, because I didn’t have my own classroom, that I couldn’t make systemic change. I only see the students for 45 minutes a week\u00a0 — and then sometimes there\u2019s holidays or vacations and field trips and then it\u2019s two weeks until I see them. <\/span>And I thought, \u201cThere\u2019s really no way to make these great PBL projects in library.\u201d It\u2019s just not enough time to make it meaningful.<\/span><\/p>\n

But when I went to that session, and the presenter talked about the kid\u2019s classroom library, I just thought \u201cI could do that with a very small segment of the library,\u201d and then use it as a research project.\u00a0 <\/span>The diversity audit, it kind of takes my responsibility and my passion and melds them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then I thought, there are a few students of color at our school. Where are they reflected in the library?\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Becky knew that conducting a diversity audit of the library would not just improve the range of the collection, but teach students to be more critical readers. It would teach them to think powerfully about empathy and inclusion. So she got to work.<\/p>\n

The Diversity Detectives are on the case<\/h2>\n

#1000Blackgirlbooks<\/h3>\n

Becky began by showing this inspiring video of 11 year old Marley Dias<\/a>, a Black 6th grader who wanted to see herself in more books. Marley noticed the books she was reading in school were mostly about “white boys and dogs”. She wanted more books with characters who look like her.\u00a0 Her mother asked her, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” What Marley did was begin a movement demanding more racial diversity YA books. She went looking for #1000Blackgirlbooks, crowd-sourcing a collection of books with a Black female protagonist. She distributes the books to school libraries. The movement went viral, and kicked off a lot of powerful conversations for librarians around race in YA publishing.<\/p>\n

But for Ottauquechee students, Marley’s activism provided a relatable example. Whose stories would they find in their own library? Whose stories did they want to find? Could everyone see themselves in the collection?<\/p>\n

Dream of a Common Language<\/h3>\n

Becky introduced and unpacked the 4 Agreements of Courageous Conversations<\/strong> (Singleton & Linton<\/a>)\u00a0 to her students:<\/p>\n