Diverse population, diverse collection? Youth collections in the United States

Kimura, Camden

Williams, V. K., & Deyoe, N. (2014). Diverse population, diverse collection? Youth collections in the United States. Technical Services Quarterly, 31, 97-121. doi:10.1080/07317131.2014.875373

Summary: In this article, Williams and Deyoe present a study of diverse titles in youth literature (ages 0-18) in 5,002 public, academic, and school libraries. Their research consisted of building three lists of books with ethnic/racial minority characters, characters with disabilities, and LGBTQ characters. All the books on the lists were published between 2000 and 2009, had positive reviews or been recommended, and had been vetted for “cultural authenticity and avoidance of stereotypes” (Williams & Deyoe, 2014, p. 104). They then searched OCLC for libraries’ collections that contained books from the checklists.  Among other findings, they found that more than one-third of libraries spending over $100,000 per year on materials did not meet Williams and Deyoe’s minimum level for titles on the racial/ethnic minority and disability checklists and half did not meet the minimum level for LGBTQ titles (in fact, 15% of all libraries surveyed did not have any titles from the LGBTQ checklist.) Williams and Deyoe recommend that librarians assess their youth literature collections for diverse representation, paying particular attention to books with LGBTQ characters as these books seem to be the most under-represented.

Evaluation: Williams and Deyoe present an important study of diverse literature in youth collections. However, it is only a beginning; I think that this study serves as a very good starting point for further research into the area of diverse youth literature in libraries. The data are interesting and it is disheartening to read that there are so many libraries with materials budgets of over $100,000 that don’t meet the minimum level Williams and Deyoe set for good representation. I take issue, however, with their decision to only include books that had good reviews or were on recommendation lists. While I absolutely think that including books that have been vetted for cultural authenticity is necessary, I do wonder how many books did not make the cut simply because they had not been reviewed well. Their checklists of books were not terribly long, all things considered; the race/ethnicity checklist had 964 titles, the disability checklist had 334, and the LGBTQ checklist had 116 titles. Surely there were, for example, more than 116 titles with LGBTQ characters with suitable cultural authenticity published between 2000-2009, including books that hadn’t been reviewed well or recommended. I assume that Williams and Deyoe did not have the page space to fully detail their selection process but I am curious to know why they chose to use books that had only been reviewed well or recommended. (I know that there is probably a lot of overlap between well-reviewed books and books that have vetted for good portrayals of minority characters and this could be the reason why they only chose well-reviewed books.)

In sum, this is a good article with interesting data, but it is only the beginning of what is possible for studies on diverse youth literature in libraries.

Edited to Add: I've just discovered that a review of this article has already been posted on the blog. I'm going to leave my review up for anyone who is interested, but I won't count the article as part of my 300 pages. My apologies for double-posting and I am very sorry that I did not see this article had already been reviewed before submitting my own.