Collections Decoded: Reflections and Strategies for Anti-Racist Collection Development (Brick & Click Libraries Conference Proceedings)

How are collections processed and presented regarding race and ethnicity? What is not collected and why? Who gets to say what is worth collecting? Operating from three distinct but interlocking perspectives, the authors will discuss their experiences navigating collection development and collection development policies as a Black woman archivist, a White woman anti-racist public librarian, and a Black woman academic librarian. The authors will look at the ways in which Black women as collections professionals face invisibility, coded language, and increased mental and emotional labor while operating in a profession that is majority White.

The authors will offer practical strategies for developing an anti-racist agenda at your institution, specifically how to be an agent of change at the administrative level. The authors will also discuss how anti-racist accomplices can both support and follow the lead of Black women librarians and archivists as well as strategies for developing anti-racist collection development practices.

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