Introduction

This chapter examines the impact of decolonisation upon collection development, both in theory and in practice. It starts with a brief definition of collection development, how this has more recently evolved due to multiple influences and pressures and how it can be affected by bias. After, we reflect upon our analysis of London School of Economics and Political Science's (LSE) collections from a geographical perspective, assessing where our collections derive from. The relationship between collections and reading lists is then observed, particularly in terms of how library collections influence how reading lists are developed and how collections contribute to equity, diversity and inclusion issues. Finally, this chapter recommends some practical collection development steps that academic libraries can take, both individually and collectively, to make their collections more diverse, and also to support wider decolonisation initiatives within their parent institutions.

Collection development: an introduction

Library collections have historically been considered the heart of academic libraries, much as libraries have been said to be the heart of the university (Posner, 2019). Collection development is the work undertaken to build these collections and the decisions that are taken to determine how they evolve. Collection development includes many different activities, such as the selection and deselection of material, the acquisition of material and the evaluation of different access options (IFLA, 2020). Collection development is designed with the specific purpose to provide libraries with resources that meet the appropriate needs of their client populations (Gessesse, 2000) in a timely and economical manner (Evans, 1999).

The concept that collection development should ‘advance scholarship and research’ arguably refers back to Charles Coffin Jewett's tenure as the first full-time professional librarian in the USA, at Brown University in the mid-19th century (Desjarlais-Lueth, 1990). Over a century and a half later, this remains the consensus view (Jensen, 1977; Gonzalez-Kirby, 1991; Linden, Tudesco and Dollar, 2018; Scherlen and McAllister, 2019). Later, we will discuss the biases and inequities within curricula that have encouraged calls for greater change and levels of diversity. Therefore, we may question whether the role of collection development is solely to support teaching, learning and research and whether it should also be proactive in trying to influence it as well.

Collection development has been affected by technology and the promise of making processes more efficient, as well as by local pressures on time, staffing and finances.

Introduction

It has been a challenging time to be concerned about teaching information literacy in the USA. For a while, it felt like librarianship was shifting towards becoming a more justice-focused field. There was a shift towards critical information literacy (CIL), an approach incorporating critical pedagogy and/or critical theory into one's teaching. The Black Lives Matter movement brought the topic of racism into the national discourse. A growing number of librarians were writing articles using critical race theory (CRT) and other theoretical perspectives that used a critical lens to examine structural racism in libraries and librarianship. In addition, librarians were beginning to engage with decolonisation, including explicitly discussing the need for CIL to decolonise the assumptions inherent in most discussions of information literacy (e.g. Langille, 2018).

As those positive shifts were becoming more mainstream within librarianship, a pandemic of anti-intellectualism was spreading through the population. Large portions of the population were taking conspiracy theories as seriously as, or sometimes more seriously than, verifiable facts. The election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States felt like a turning point. These conspiracy theories felt more influential than ever before, because the President of the United States regularly contributed to spreading them.

And then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Conspiracy theories and anti-scientific perspectives continued running rampant, spurred on by the US President. Simple preventive measures, like wearing a mask in public, were politicised, while millions of people repeated the disinformation (Box 6.1 on the next page) claims that this was no worse than the flu. Meanwhile, colleges and universities across the country shifted to fully online education. Some libraries stayed open, while others went fully remote along with the rest of the institutions they operate within. Even at those colleges and universities that returned to in-person classes and reopened libraries early, COVID-19 safety measures influenced the on-campus experience.

In this chapter, I reflect on where we have been, the challenges we faced and some directions that I see as opportunities for working towards more justice in libraries and librarianship going forward.

The origins of Narrative Expansions

Jess Crilly (JC): Narrative Expansions originated with an invitation from Facet Publishing to write something about decolonising libraries and, reflecting on my positionality, I decided not to write something myself but to co-edit a volume, and with someone whom I knew would bring different experiences and perspectives to the work. I had been working with collections and discovery (at University of the Arts London before retiring in September 2020) and concerned for a while to really understand what was meant by decolonisation, and how this was, could or should be interpreted in libraries, so that anything we did was theoretically grounded and we were not jumping on a bandwagon or using a buzzword (Crilly, 2019).

Regina Everitt (RE): When Jess asked me to be part of this project, I accepted without hesitation, though I had reservations about the term ‘decolonisation’. As an African American with 400 years of history in the United States – admittedly many of them violent and painful – the term ‘decolonisation’ did not immediately resonate with me. The issue for me was simply racism to reinforce the notion of White superiority. I grew up learning that if you are White you are alright, if you are Brown stick around, and if you are Black step back. So, I wanted the movement to be called what it is and not be dressed up in what I felt was a term to attract popular support – a fad! However, working on this project and learning more about the experiences of those who grew up in Africa and the Caribbean before and after their independence from Europe, ‘decolonisation of the mind’ certainly resonated. I had read parts of Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks during my early undergraduate studies, but did not fully appreciate its impact, as my world was confined to the New York–South Carolina corridor in the north-east of the United States. Although I grew up in a predominantly Black community, colourism and the aspiration towards the media's interpretation of ‘Whiteness’ (e.g. skin tone, speech, possessions) were pervasive.

Voice

RE: Like the range of authors in this book, Jess and I have differing approaches to writing, which has been a strength for this project. Jess takes a more theoretical approach, which will resonate with those who best consume information from ‘academic-style’ writing.

Editors (Eds): Firstly, what do you understand by decolonisation as a term?

Hillary Gyebi-Ababio (HG): The term ‘decolonisation’ is now being used very widely – its definition is often disputed and misinterpreted. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth is one of the earliest texts where we see decolonisation defined clearly. Fanon speaks of decolonisation as ‘the need to thoroughly challenge the colonial situation’ (Fanon, 2004, 2).

In more recent interpretations, decolonisation has been defined as ‘a political process and vital internalization of the rejection of colonialist mindsets and “norms”’ (Ghillar, 2016).

Mbembe describes decolonisation much more tangibly as being about ‘reshaping, turning human beings once again into craftsmen and craftswomen who, in reshaping matters and forms, need not to look at the pre-existing models and need not use them as paradigms’ (Mbembe, 2018, 9). The Decolonising LSE Collective refer to ‘recognizing, making visible and working to address the legacies that colonialism, empire, racism and patriarchy continue to have and envisioning a world beyond these repressive structures’ (Decolonising LSE Collective, n.d.).

Ultimately, as Behari-Leak et al. articulate well, decolonisation is ‘a nuanced, layered concept’, and we should focus ‘more in its detail than its definition’ (Behari-Leak et al., 2017). We must ensure that we don't get caught up in lengthy academic discussion over the definition of decolonisation that results in cyclical inaction, and ensure there is focus on how to make this work authentic, wholescale and transformative.

The decolonisation movement is alive and growing – and has been for years and years. So much progress has been made, and a firm foundation has been built for the work that is starting to emerge. Therefore, before speaking about how decolonising the library can come to life, we must pay homage to and, in our work, honour those that have been doing this work before us, especially in times where the work of decolonisation has been criticised, misconstrued and outright rejected. A final point on defining decolonisation: many have tried to misconstrue it to be about the ‘erasure of history’. It must be made clear that decolonisation comes to life when there is a real understanding about the justice it seeks to bring to those who have been erased, invisibilised and excluded from the narrative for so long; this comes through rebuilding and reimagining knowledge, the purpose of education, and truly building a world without white supremacy.

Introduction

‘What are you going to do with the lion's head?’ I, Angela Okune (AO) asked Syokau Mutonga (SM), teasingly but genuinely curious. I was referring to a stuffed lion's head which seemed to have become somewhat of an infamous McMillan Library mascot among those who visited. The lion's head (Figure 13.1 on the next page) caught my eye during my first visit to the McMillan Library in February 2019; left atop a dusty table outside the second-floor Africana library, it looked as if someone had tossed it there years ago and had not bothered to move it since. The clear lack of regard for it – as if the librarians and library staff didn't know what to do with it – was perhaps what struck me as much as the very materiality of a decaying lion's head just laid out for anyone to touch. But a few weeks later, when I returned on a sleepy Saturday with my four-year-old son in tow, having enticed him to come with me by telling him he would get to see a real lion's head at the library, it wasn't there. It had been moved. Needless to say, my son was mad at me for making false promises. But the removal of the lion's head from public view also flagged for me its paradox. The lion's head was illustrative of a double bind that the staff at McMillan Library, not to mention others working on reviving and establishing libraries in diverse postcolonial and settler-colonial sites around the world, are grappling with – what to remember and what to forget in attempts to decolonise. What to do with the massive ivory tusks of some poor elephant who happened to be living at the wrong period of time, when Kenya was a colonial site of hunting expeditions for White foreigners, like Sir William Northrup McMillan (Box 13.1)? What to do with a decaying lion's head? These charismatic items are a strange delight for tourists to the library – Kenyans and non-Kenyans alike – although for regular library users they are quickly normalised as part of the Library's environment. Such artefacts give the Library ‘character’ and are material reminders of Kenya's colonial and imperial past and present.

Introduction

The theme of this book is timely, given the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the USA. Although originating in America, the movement has struck a chord with Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities in other Anglophone countries such as the UK. While the BLM movement was initially a response to police brutality and racial violence against Black people, it has helped to generate a wider debate about the need to advance racial diversity and fight racial inequalities faced by BAME people. More pertinently, in the context of this book, the movement has placed the experience of BAME employees under greater scrutiny and initiated difficult but necessary conversations in organisations and workplaces about what employers are doing or should be doing to advance the rights of BAME workers.

This chapter's particular contribution is to focus on the academic library sector, which has been under-researched in relation to race equality. The authors argue that if successful decolonisation of libraries is to be achieved, then it is important to understand and reflect on the ‘lived’ experience of BAME staff currently working in academic and research libraries across the UK. The research reported in this chapter represents part of a wider project established to investigate aspects of developing the workforce and fostering diversity across the library sector (Ishaq and Hussain, 2019). It is hoped that the outcomes from the research will allow the leadership and management of academic libraries to take stock of where they are in relation to their race equality agenda and where they need to be to ensure that they demonstrate their commitment to the effective decolonising of libraries.

Summarising BAME employees’ work experience in UK organisations: evidence from the literature

Literature documenting the work experience of BAME staff in the academic and nonacademic library sectors is virtually non-existent. The closest is research conducted in the USA which centred on the issue of racial microaggression in academic libraries (Alabi, 2015) and on the existence of racism and a culture of Whiteness in US academic libraries (Brook, Ellenwood and Lazzaro, 2015). In the context of the UK, there is a small-scale qualitative study exploring the low representation of BAME staff in the library and information science (LIS) profession in London (Williams and Nicholas, 2009).

Decolonisation is not about deleting or re-writing history, it's about telling stories from different perspectives or that have never been told. It is also about challenging the narrative of the storyteller. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED talk about the ‘Danger of a Single Story’ (Adichie, 2009) she speaks about her experience at an American university where her room-mate was confused when she learned that English was the official language of Nigeria and that Adichie's favorite music was that of Mariah Carey. The room-mate had a single story about Africa and its people – that of poverty, famine and war. It was unfathomable that Adichie, a middle-class Nigerian, would have so much in common with an average American student. In fact, Adichie grew up in a household with live-in domestic help. And just as her American room-mate knew a single story about Africans, so did Adichie have a single story about the boy who worked for her family. Adichie could see only his poverty until she visited his village and learned more about his life and family. If we hear only the single story, we do a disservice to the protagonist by flattening them to one dimension. And we rob ourselves of the richness and complexity of the full picture often blindly leading us to incorrect conclusions. As stewards of information, it is the role of librarians to encourage users to look beyond, even question, the veracity of that single story. Moreover, librarians should encourage users to write new stories.

A standard storytelling technique is to have a hero and a villain. In old western films, the hero normally wore a white hat and the villain the black hat. Familiar imagery? The simplicity of the story makes it easy for the audience to follow. The audience cheers on the guy in the white hat because the narrative is shaped to reinforce that he is the hero. The audience sees the story from that single perspective and, in the absence of any other evidence, believes it. And that is the danger of library collections if they tell stories from a single perspective. Even if the stories tell the students that they are not clever enough, not pretty enough, or paint them as villains – there is the danger that students will believe it. This negative self-image impacts students’ outcomes and lives.

Preamble

A lot of thought has gone into how to write this book chapter – partly in terms of content, but primarily in relation to the awareness that, as three collaborating authors, we are all different in terms of how we approach what we do. We acknowledge that, while our aims and motivations in doing what we do connect and are similar, one of the greatest strengths (and, at least potentially, challenges) lies in the different perspectives and knowledges we bring to planning, developing and delivering workshops. This in itself is not a challenge, our co-operation developing organically and synergistically to take full advantage of what we each bring to the work we do. The challenge presents itself when considering how to share our practice(s) with others in the form of a co-written book chapter! There is a tendency for co-written texts to be presented as a singular, unified voice. When discussing how to write this chapter we realised this was not how we wanted to proceed. Instead, we recognised the need to write in a way that mirrored how we work together: disparate voices and perspectives that complement each other.

To some extent, we want our text to illustrate the overarching objective of decolonising – that of questioning the validity of a universally relevant and approved theory or system, by recognising and truly valuing different voices. We are all too aware of the ‘conventions’ of academic writing, but equally, if not more, aware that this is exactly the kind of thing we are challenging when we talk about the need to decolonise. Decolonisation is not only about diversifying library collections, reading lists and course curricula (although this is absolutely necessary), and it's also not only about highlighting how limited and limiting canons of knowledge are (again, this is much needed). It's about recognising and decrying how the very fabric of our system of education, and of society as a whole, not only values one way above others but also presents this as the way, with other ways disregarded or ignored – excluded.

The way we approach our practices, and the workshops detailed below, is shaped by this belief in inclusivity and the need to engage with different knowledges. They come from a place of curiosity and interest, a belief in social justice as a key tenet of our roles and in response to conversations with peers and students.

Introduction

This chapter outlines the ongoing process of decolonising the library at SOAS, University of London (otherwise known as the School of Oriental and African Studies). It deals firstly with the history of SOAS and its library, highlighting its deep colonial roots, and secondly gives a narrative of decolonisation activities undertaken in the Library since late 2019.

Decolonisation, which has been discussed and defined in great detail in other chapters of this book, is often conflated with diversification (compare Makhubela, 2018; Blackwood, 2020). Let us first assume that this conflation is correct. SOAS Library, since its inception, is fortunate enough to hold a vast array of Indigenous material from around the globe (particularly Asia, Africa and the Middle East). One can therefore say that SOAS Library is extremely diverse, and that its material represents a wide range of languages, communities and cultures from across a vast swathe of the globe, particularly those of developing countries in the Global South (for want of a better term). Diversification is hardly necessary when it comes to SOAS's collections; many of our staff are non-White/Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME), and we already have a large network of overseas contacts from whom we purchase our acquisitions – valuable knowledge which has been built up over decades. In light of this, some may be puzzled to learn that decolonisation is on the Library's agenda at all. Some might consider SOAS Library fortunate – does this not all imply that half the legwork of decolonisation is already done?

Of course, we know that diversification and decolonisation are not synonymous; and that, while diversification may be part of the decolonisation process, simply having a diverse collection, filled with Indigenous voices, is only a fraction of that process. SOAS Library is not exempt from the need for decolonisation – far from it, in fact.

We possess many of the tools of decolonisation – but as far as our everyday ingrained practice at SOAS Library is concerned, it is not generally informed by a knowledge or a critical appreciation of decolonisation. While the goal of decolonisation is certainly to have it embedded within our everyday practice, such that it is no longer noticeable, the practices within SOAS Library that might be considered hallmarks of a decolonisation process are most certainly not so.

Introduction

As an undergraduate I had an internship at an agency writing recruitment advertisements. The ads ranged from the small ‘want’ ads for salespeople or programmers to the full-page spreads in newspapers and magazines for directors and executives. I was no Don Draper from Madmen. I didn't particularly enjoy the job, but it taught me to know my audience. And I learned that I enjoyed pitching ads for some audiences more than others.

Now, I am the Director of Library, Archives and Learning Services at the University of East London (UEL). The university is located in the Borough of Newham, one of the poorest in London, with an ethnically diverse population that was one of the most adversely impacted by COVID-19. The University has a 70% Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) student population and a staff population of almost 70% White. So, many students do not see themselves in the staff population. Most of the students are the first in their families to attend university. According to UEL internal data, the degree-awarding gap (percentage difference between groups receiving a 1st/2:1 or A/B grade) between BAME and White students was about 13% in 2019/20, down from 21% the previous year. However, the gap between Black and White students was just over 17%, down from roughly 25% the previous year.

The University has undertaken a range of measures to close the degree-awarding gap. It has created an Office of Institutional Equity (OIE), the first of its kind in the UK, to lead on the delivery of an ambitious action plan to achieve the Race Equality Charter (REC). The REC is a framework created by Advance HE to aid institutions in identifying and challenging the barriers that block the progression of BAME students and staff (Advance HE, 2020). The UEL action plan includes staff training on inclusive teaching practices and anti-racism as well as reviews of such institutional policies and procedures as recruitment, performance management and disciplinaries. The OIE also monitors the equality, diversity and inclusion data for trends, sector benchmarking and achievement of targets.

Key to the success of narrowing the degree-awarding gap is staff knowing their audience. We must see the whole student – their lived experiences, academic needs, caring responsibilities, work demands – so that we can provide the right level of support to lead to successful outcomes for the students.

Introduction

The Decolonise campaign at Cambridge University included an open letter from the FLY network, for women and non-binary people of colour, to the English Faculty, requesting that the Library ‘move postcolonial books out of the basement and integrate them in the library cataloguing order’ (FLY, 2017). Students were quick to recognise the importance of library systems in the preservation and organisation of knowledge, and they demanded a professional collaboration to address a transformation of the curriculum from within the library system. The student-led Cambridge Decolonise Network first began in 2015, and organised with the call for the University to ‘Decolonise Disarm Divest’ in 2018. Students organised protests and revised reading lists via Facebook groups and Google documents. The Network led to the creation of subject-focused working groups, such as Decolonise Sociology, Decolonise Law and Decolonise Anthropology. They collaborated with groups such as Black Cantabs Research Society, a ‘counter-history project’ designed to ‘place Black students in the institution's past, present, and future’, which in turn collaborated with the University Library on a ‘Black Cantabs: History Makers’ exhibition in 2018 (Cambridge University Library, 2018; Black Cantabs, n.d.). In its specific mention of library space and cataloguing, the FLY letter encouraged library staff to reflect on the flaws in the Library's cataloguing processes and to come up with a practical plan of how to learn differently.

Cambridge University Libraries

Cambridge is a collegiate university comprising 31 autonomous colleges, each with its own library, alongside more than 30 faculty and departmental libraries and numerous museums and special collections, all working with the legal deposit University Library. The federated nature of libraries in Cambridge creates obstacles as well as possibilities. Unlike universities with a single, centralised library, we are unable to instigate total and uniform updates. However, this multilayered library ‘ecosystem’ also meant that we could implement swifter changes at a local level. Several libraries were able to respond quickly: the English Library reclassified over 2,000 books under a new subject of Contemporary Global Literature in English; and the Modern Languages Library launched a programme of consultation on changes to the curriculum, reading lists and book recommendations with students and academics.

Advisory: this chapter contains an offensive term to identify a historical book title.

Introduction

Our concern in this chapter is to develop our thinking through our personal history of racialisation, learning and working in White educational spaces in order to explore the call to decolonise academic libraries. Toni Morrison posits that higher education is an ‘unabashedly theological and consciously value-ridden and value-seeking moral project’ (cited in Law, Phillips and Turney, 2004, 7). Much of Western archival methodology is embedded in colonialism and imperialism with a cultural bias towards Eurocentricity, Christian values and the Enlightenment, and therefore libraries are not inherently neutral spaces. We argue that libraries, as collectors and producers of White heteropatriarchal knowledge, are culpable in legitimising and reproducing colonialist and racist ideologies. As Nina de Jesus (2014) suggests,

As Black educators in a post-1992 London institution (University of East London, UEL) we are committed to the decoloniality of education and the dismantling of institutional Whiteness. In the same way that there have been calls to decolonise the university curriculum, the university library must be considered along the same lines. It is not appropriate to attempt to decolonise one part of an institution but leave all others steeped in Whiteness.

Introduction

This chapter considers the contribution of library and information science (LIS) education to the ‘decolonising’ of our university curricula, and how students on LIS degree programmes can be supported to explore the concept of decolonising as students both in a higher education environment and in the workplace as LIS professionals.

There has been a growing agenda – shaped by both protest movements and intellectual debate – to ‘decolonise the university’, to draw attention to the colonial history of the campus and how higher education remains in the shadow of that colonialism. This process has included much reflection on what it might mean to ‘decolonise’ both the university (Bhambra, Gebrial and Nişancıoğlu, 2018) and its library collections (Dali and Caidi, 2021). However, our understanding of where LIS education fits into this discussion is arguably less advanced. This seems a little surprising, as LIS education is the academic discipline which bridges the gap between higher education and the LIS professions. This chapter is informed both by the author's experience as an LIS academic and by her involvement in a 2020 study, ‘Decolonising the Curriculum in the Faculty of Social Sciences’ by Williams et al., as part of her role as Co-Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Sheffield.

LIS as delivered in higher education tends to be situated within a broader social sciences school or faculty, and the reach of colonialism across the social sciences is widely acknowledged in the literature. As Williams et al. (2020) state, ‘The division of labour among the disciplines of the social sciences, for example, follows the distinction between the “modern” world of colonisers (Sociology, Political Science, Economics) and the “traditional” formerly colonised world (Development Studies, Anthropology).’ Although they observe that ‘much has been done to blur these geographical boundaries, which made sense in the age of empires’, Williams et al. argue that we are nonetheless still working with ‘these dichotomies (First World/Third World, Global North/Global South, Developed/Developing, etc.) in how we understand the disciplinary division of labour within the Social Sciences today’ (Williams et al., 2020, 7).