Alumna Encourages Effective Library Policies for Growing Diverse Collections

Dr. Andrea Jamison is an advocate of the right to read, but also of libraries taking meaningful steps for adding materials reflecting diverse characters to their collections.

Jamison MLIS ’07, PhD ’20 is an assistant professor of school librarianship at Illinois State University. As part of her doctoral studies at Dominican, she researched representation in children’s and young adult books and how library collection development policies “manifested messages of diversity.” She found that few policies actively outlined specific processes for growing a library’s collection to better reflect the patron population and the greater world.

“We have to be more thoughtful about how we are incorporating messages of diversity in our policies,” Jamison explained. “We don’t want statements that are benign and don’t mean anything.”

To assist library leaders, Jamison has written a soon-to-be-published book providing guidance on developing effective policies.

A majority of the book challenges tracked by the American Library Association are aimed at texts depicting marginalized groups, which poses grave concerns for diversity advocates, Jamison noted.

“Given the fact that libraries have had an increased effort to increase diversity, I think this is a potential threat to our being able to truly diversify our libraries and represent everyone,” she said.