Diversity Audits of Author Visits
Has your school or library done a diversity audit of your author visits ? I was recently reading an ALA discussion thread about diversity audits of collections . (It’s been many years since I’ve worked as a librarian, but I’ve maintained my ALA membership and ran across the topic on a discussion board.) Though not a new thing in the world of libraries, the term "diversity audit" was new to me, so I did a little reading on the topic. (The term is used in other settings as well, but my reading was just about schools and public libraries.) What I learned is that a diversity audit of a collection is a systematic assessment of the diversity of the books (either the entire collection or a sample) to better understand what’s in the collection (content as well as authorship) and to identify gaps in the collection. There are many helpful articles about how these audits can be conducted, including Karen Jensen’s “ Diversity Auditing 101 ” in the Oct. 22, 2018 School Library Journal ,...