Chapter 9: Check Yo’self Before You Wreck Yo’self: Diversity Residents’ Experiences Expanding CRT and Antiracism Practices in Collection Development

As library diversity residents turned faculty librarians given diverse collections management roles without training, providing resources for accessible, equitable, and various collections through an anti-racist and critical race theory (CRT) lens proved challenging. In truth, most colleges and university libraries need more budgetary needs and an understanding of the value of diverse scholarship in the academy beyond performative statements. It is necessary to develop and retain strategies starting with anti-racism in collection development policy and continuing across the board to all library policies incorporating anti-racism, including programming, outreach, and instruction. A firm anti-racist and CRT-based collection development policy could be a starting point for other policies that lead to broader anti-racist practices throughout the library. Supporting student retention, success, and scholarship cannot only be achieved by developing inclusive and anti-racist collection policies alone. This process has required collaborative approaches on the parts of the co-authors across two campuses to improve student engagement and access to both collections and events. This chapter will examine collaborative relationships between libraries from different institutions, provide strategies for creating inclusive collection development policies as public living documents, and best practices for supporting these initiatives on a larger scale for widespread policy change. This chapter also provides language to help librarians, especially those emphasizing collection development, navigate different forms of library approval plans, and find ways to incorporate CRT into their collection development policies.