Practical Tips for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries

Increasing diversity and inclusion can help libraries to fit their collections and services to those who need them and to bring in skilled staff who may have previously been overlooked, both of which are key to serving their communities. This book, written by a librarian with a decade of experience in diversity and inclusion issues, gives clear examples of steps to take and case studies of current initiatives.

Topics covered include:

• creating a diversity and inclusion policy and ensuring the associated actions are carried out
• ensuring the library space is accessible and welcoming to all
• assessing collections to ensure they are diverse and catalogued using modern, inclusive language.

Readers will be equipped to assess their own library, talk about challenges with more confidence, and make concrete changes to improve diversity and inclusion.

Dr Beth Montague-Hellen started off academic life as a Molecular Biologist studying at Manchester University. The next 14 years were spent as a computational biologist, accruing an MSc and a Phd on the way. Following this, Beth has retrained as a Librarian which is a much smaller move for a computational biologist than most people think. Currently a Senior Research Librarian at the University of Nottingham, Beth supports D&I initiatives as well as researchers. Beth has initiated several projects to help increase the visibility, confidence, and well-being of LGBT+ individuals working in STEM subjects. The most successful of these project are the LGBTSTEM blog (https://lgbtstem.wordpress.com/) and the LGBTQ+ STEMinar which has now been run successfully for 6 years. In 2020 Beth won the Royal Society Athena Prize for her work in this space, and has previously been shortlisted for the Gay Times Barbara Burford Award for Excellence in STEM. She has also supported CILIPs initiative to improve diversity within the organisation as the D&I Officer for Yorkshire & Humberside members network, as a member if LGBTQ+ CILIP and the BAME CILIP Allies network.