Collection Development: Diversifying UW Library's Graphic Novel Collection
For my LIS 522 Collection Development project, I did a diversity audit of the UW Libraries Graphic Novels collection, and assessed for up to date, notable, and award-winning graphic novels in our Odegaard collection. This was identified as a need by subject librarians at the Odegaard library. See below for more details on the process and guidance on navigating my process and outcomes spreadsheet.
Diversity Audit
In order to assess for diversity, I compiled lists of graphic novel written by authors of different identities (Black, Asian Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, Latinx, and Indigenous). There are a variety of sources that publish lists like this, including libraries, Image Comics, and Dark Horse. Marist College has a superb resource on their Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga LibGuide which lists these items by author identity, topics, and more. After compiling all the recommended graphic novels from these lists, I cross compared our collection using Ex Libris and Excel. I found that there was a lot of improvement to be made, particularly in our collection of diverse authors of graphic novels where we only held 7% of the 218 graphic novels I compiled. You can see my analysis on Stats and Key sheet, and the list of diverse graphic novels on the Undated Diversity List sheet of this document.
Updating the Collection
In addition to my diversity audit, I assessed our collection for up to date, notable, and award-winning graphic novels. I compiled the graphic novels from five annual lists of top graphic novels (Forbes, ALA Graphic Novels & Comics Round Table, The Beat, New York Times, and Library Journal) for the years 2019-2023. I noted which were listed on multiple lists per year, as well as making a full list of all the recommended graphic novels. I then cross compared this list with our collection using Ex Libris and Excel, finding that we also were lacking up to date graphic novels. I found that we only held 16.28% of these graphic novels that were voted for on multiple lists.
Acquisitions Recommendations
As a final component for this project, I reviewed these findings with the subject librarian in charge of graphic novels collection and purchasing. After reviewing the categories, we decided to prioritize the diverse graphic novels and graphics novels from annual lists with multiple votes for purchase. I added these graphics novels to a GOBI purchasing list, and acquisitions are in progress!