Represent: building diverse library collections in collaboration with library users

Abstract

The ‘Read at Leicester’ leisure reading collection was developed to encourage sustained reading for leisure amongst University of Leicester students. A key challenge in building this collection was not having any funds to develop it. It was important that the collection was representative of the diverse user population. In order to start putting the collection together, books already held in the library that were not on subject reading lists were identified. Throughout this process it became evident that, in order to achieve true representation within the collection, the library would need to work in collaboration with library users to develop it. A fund of £1,000 was secured to launch a campaign to purchase diverse books and build the collection. In October 2019, the Represent campaign was launched as a campaign through which library users could recommend titles from under-represented voices for the library to purchase. The Represent campaign has been live since October 2019 and, as of November 2020, a total of 199 requests have been received.