More-Inclusive Practices for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Library Collection Management

Susan Wainscott

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Engineering Libraries Division Poster Session
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--40945
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/40945
Download Count: 220

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Paper Authors

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Susan Wainscott University of Nevada - Las Vegas

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Susan Wainscott is Associate Professor & Engineering Librarian for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries. She holds a MLIS from San Jose State University and a MS in Biological Sciences from Illinois State University. As liaison librarian to several departments at UNLV, she teaches information literacy, provides reference assistance to the campus and community, and maintains the collection in assigned subject areas. Her research interests include information literacy instruction and assessment, the notion of threshold concepts, and improving access to technical literature.

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Abstract

Our university serves a diverse student population, and our library is committed to ensuring that historically underrepresented groups are represented in the library collection. Our university library contracts with one of the major book distributors to provide the bulk of our books via an approval plan. Approval plans use library-defined parameters to automatically ship newly published books that meet the library's criteria. These criteria typically include subject area, format, cost, publisher. Approval plans may also include an option to send notifications of additional books within a second set of parameters. Notably, approval plans may exclude all books within a third set of parameters. Other approval plan parameters may include additional bibliographic data, including subject or topic areas applied by a bibliographer. Common approval plan parameters do not include author data, particularly information about the author such as gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. How then can an academic library achieve a goal to include representation of historically underrepresented authors within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) library collections? This paper provides a case study of one STEM librarian's attempt to augment traditional acquisition methods using social media mentions and improvements in use of existing tools to increase historically underrepresented groups' representation within the university's library collection for STEM. User accounts on two social media platforms (Twitter and LinkedIn) were used to curate a set of accounts that represent or regularly discuss works of non-fiction in the STEM areas or about the career progression of STEM professionals that are written by or about persons historically underrepresented in STEM. Data sources included: ● social media mentions of books or lists of books ● author self-identifications and book promotions on social media, ● the current availability of those books by those authors via a major book distributor, and ● the presence or absence of those books within the current university collection. Books mentioned and considered suitable for the collection by the librarian, but not selected by the approval plan, were considered for hand selection. Patterns within that set of books are described, and recommendations made to amend the approval plan. Some books were not available from the book distributor. Suggestions are provided on how to use social media mentions to increase library worker awareness of historically underrepresented authors' books.

Citation
Format

Wainscott, S. (2022, August), More-Inclusive Practices for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Library Collection Management Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40945

TY - CPAPER
AB - Our university serves a diverse student population, and our library is committed to ensuring that historically underrepresented groups are represented in the library collection. Our university library contracts with one of the major book distributors to provide the bulk of our books via an approval plan. Approval plans use library-defined parameters to automatically ship newly published books that meet the library's criteria. These criteria typically include subject area, format, cost, publisher. Approval plans may also include an option to send notifications of additional books within a second set of parameters. Notably, approval plans may exclude all books within a third set of parameters. Other approval plan parameters may include additional bibliographic data, including subject or topic areas applied by a bibliographer. Common approval plan parameters do not include author data, particularly information about the author such as gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. How then can an academic library achieve a goal to include representation of historically underrepresented authors within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) library collections? This paper provides a case study of one STEM librarian's attempt to augment traditional acquisition methods using social media mentions and improvements in use of existing tools to increase historically underrepresented groups' representation within the university's library collection for STEM.

User accounts on two social media platforms (Twitter and LinkedIn) were used to curate a set of accounts that represent or regularly discuss works of non-fiction in the STEM areas or about the career progression of STEM professionals that are written by or about persons historically underrepresented in STEM. Data sources included:
● social media mentions of books or lists of books
● author self-identifications and book promotions on social media,
● the current availability of those books by those authors via a major book distributor, and
● the presence or absence of those books within the current university collection.
Books mentioned and considered suitable for the collection by the librarian, but not selected by the approval plan, were considered for hand selection. Patterns within that set of books are described, and recommendations made to amend the approval plan. Some books were not available from the book distributor. Suggestions are provided on how to use social media mentions to increase library worker awareness of historically underrepresented authors' books.
AU - Susan Wainscott
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - More-Inclusive Practices for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Library Collection Management
UR - https://peer.asee.org/40945
DO - 10.18260/1-2--40945
ER -