At the end of my first year as Library Assistant at my public middle school library, I published an infographic with stats to give stakeholders a sense of how the students used the library that year. Total circulation, which grade used the library most, the year’s most popular book, that sort of thing. You may remember it, as I wrote it up here on Caterpickles (“An end of the year library report and why it matters“).

That report landed on the district superintendent’s desk within 24 hours. I’d like to think that is evidence of my powerful marketing skills, but truly I think it’s evidence of how powerful tying the work in your library directly to the district’s larger goals can be. Our district’s top five goals include a commitment to diversity and equity, and as my infographic included a stat about the percentage of titles circulated that were diverse reads, it naturally caught the attention of folks at the district office who passed it on to the superintendent.

The final stat on my year-end infographic showed the percentage of our checkouts that were diverse reads. (Poster design: Canva, Content: Shala Howell)Compiling that stat took most of my work week

It is easy enough to pull a list of titles circulated through our library catalog software, but at that time I compiled the infographic in May 2022, there was no easy way to discern which of those titles met my criteria to be counted as diverse reads, meaning:

by or about people from traditionally marginalized groups, including BIPOC and LGBTQ+by or about people who are neurodivergentby or about people with physical differencesby or about people from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups

As the person working the circulation desk, I was familiar with the most frequently read titles, but even after sorting those, I was still left with hundreds of titles and authors that I didn’t recognize. I ended up having to research the hundreds of remaining books one by one to assess whether they made the cut.

That took hours. Most of my work week in fact, along with many unpaid hours in the evenings and weekend at home. Which is why, reluctantly, I decided not to do the work to compile the stat for last year’s infographic.

And no, without the direct tie-in to the district’s promise around equity, last year’s infographic did not land on the superintendent’s desk. (As far as I know).

The middle school library as it looked in May 2023, when I did not have time to do that diverse reads stat. (Photo: Shala Howell)Fortunately, there’s a better way to track diverse reads

While doing some background research to support a book review I wrote for last semester’s Reference Services class, I came across a 2020 article by Sarah Jorgenson, EdS and Rene Burress, Ph.D called “Analyzing the Diversity of a High School Collection.” In the article, the authors explain that conducting a diversity audit of an entire collection can actually interfere with the work of increasing the diversity of the existing collection.

As the authors point out, the time a librarian spends doing the grunt work of a comprehensive check-every-title-on-the-stacks diversity audit, is time they aren’t spending evaluating, sourcing, acquiring, and promoting more diverse titles. Jorgenson and Burress argue that it is far better to audit the diversity of just the Top 100 most popular titles, and use that as a snapshot to guide acquisitions, Reader’s Advisory, and other book promotion efforts.

Seems like this might work for that year-end diverse reads stat as well

It occurred to me while reading this article, that limiting the diversity audit to the Top 100 Most Popular Books might be a reasonable approach to compiling that year-end diverse reads stat as well. After all, as long as you were clear in your infographic that you are only including the top 100 titles in your diverse reads stat, and used the same method for collecting the data from year to year, this approach should provide a reasonable snapshot that you can use to track trends over time.

It makes intuitive sense that the list of the 100 most popular titles will gradually become more diverse over time as diverse titles from your new purchases replace older titles in your collection, book talks, Reader’s Advisory, and displays. Kids may be more likely than adults to give themselves the gift of rereading a book they love, but everyone loves a new book with a shiny cover.

Even better, since you are limiting the stat to the most popular titles, you are more likely to be familiar with the diversity representation, if any, within those books. Even if you decided to double-check each of the 100 books individually, you would save time. Looking up 100 titles is relatively quick work.

A thank you note I received from one of my students during the 2022-2023 school year. Just one of many reasons I am looking forward to finishing my MLIS so that I can go back to working with students again. (Photo: Shala Howell. Note: REDACTED)This is all just theoretical for me for now

Sadly, while I’m on leave, I don’t have access to any circulation data to test this theory, but I suspect if we compared the Top 100 Most Popular Titles in our library from 2017-2018 to the Top 100 Most Popular Titles in 2022-2023, we’d find that the more recent list features a higher percentage of diverse reads. After all, 2022-2023’s list was the result of years of focusing on acquiring and marketing diverse books, whereas in 2017-2018 that work had just begun. It would be an interesting thing to track over time, and would probably give us a fair idea of whether we are making progress in not just acquiring diverse reads, but in getting them into the hands of the kids who need them.

Oh well, an idea to tuck away for later, I guess.

Have you tried this in your library? Does it work?

Related Links

Analyzing the Diversity of a High School Collection (Knowledge Quest via ERIC): To download a PDF of the article, look for an option in a grey box that reads “Download full text.”An end of the year library report and why it matters (Caterpickles)A belated year-end report for 2022-2023 (Caterpickles)