Library Guides: Liberating CityLibrary: Diversifying your reading lists

Diversifying your reading lists

This guide expands on and engages with the recommendations and best practice on embedding inclusive practice within academic programmes, outlined in the Inclusive Curriculum Development Framework for Addressing Degree-Awarding Gaps, with a focus on evaluating reading lists.

The information below is provided as a starting point for a challenging topic, and is likely to evolve over time.

Library staff are open to new ideas and suggestions to improve the equity, diversity and inclusivity of our collections. Please contact subjectlibrarians@city.ac.uk if you have any feedback.

Diversifying your reading list checklist

Considering the following questions can help you to evaluate your reading list:

What are the dominant voices, narratives and viewpoints in your areas of study?
What voices and narratives and viewpoints are excluded, how can they be identified?
Are the texts Western-centric, or Eurocentric?
Are bodies of knowledge distorted? Can discourse affect the way that we look at groups of people?
Who is the author of the work? Are the majority of the authors the same gender and ethnicity?
What is the relevance of the author’s identity in this context?
Who is talking about whose experience and/ or culture?
What is the place of publication and geographic coverage of the text?
What kinds of sources do we perceive to be of most academic value and why?
Are the authors and works reflective of the students at City? See City's HESA Student Return 2019/20.
Is your reading list accessible in terms of reading list design and formats used?

Adapted from UAL Decolonising reading lists CC BY-NC 4.0

Reading List accessibility

In addition to the reading list content, you must also consider the accessibility of your reading list and the formats you are listing. Please see Inclusive practice checklist, point 1 Accessibility on City's Inclusive Curriculum Development Framework & approaches.

Reading Lists should:

Be well structured and easy to navigate
Clearly identify core and background reading to help students prioritise their reading
Be annotated to give guidance on sections
Consider including a range of formats, such as multi-media resources, to accommodate a range of learning preferences. See the Audio visual resources section below for a selection available through the Library. Ensure that videos and audio have accurate captions or transcripts.
Prioritise online resources which can be accessed by students who use assistive software or who are studying remotely
Be published in good time to enable library staff to prepare material for students with a referral for alternative formats.

For more guidance visit the Reading Lists Online Guide or contact your Subject Librarian.

Collaborate with the City community

Students can suggest new titles for CityLibrary via the Liberating CityLibrary scheme. The scheme aims to improve the diversity of the collections, amplify underrepresented voices, recognise multi-dimensional identities and create a sense of belonging at City, by empowering students to choose books so they can see themselves represented in the collections.

Books chosen by library users can be viewed on the Liberating CityLibrary reading list or can be found on CityLibrary Search using the search term "Liberating City Library" and then filtered by subject area. You may wish to consider adding these titles to your lists.

Please refer back to Inclusive practice checklist, point 2 Reflective of, or meaningful to, the learners you work with? on City's Inclusive Curriculum Development Framework & approaches.

Resources

Below are some examples of resources you can use to expand your reading lists.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity resources

Box of Broadcasts (BoB) curated playlists
You can curate your own playlists. Curated playlists include:
Black British Culture; Windrush; Postcolonial film and geopolitical contestation
Proquest DEI Collection
Proquest's Diversity, Equality and Inclusion package. This material in this collection can be refined by Subject area.
Centre for Law & Social Change (City, University of London)
A hub for connections on the topic of law and social change and a space to generate debate, between scholars, students, practitioners, and policy makers. Projects: includes resources to start decolonising the law school now and resources on specific law topics.
Critically appraising for anti-racism
Identifying racial bias in published research. By Ramona Naicker, a Librarian for healthcare subjects at Monash University in Melbourne.
Critically appraising for antiracism: recognising racial bias in research
An open access module created by Cardiff University Library Service.
Combatting racial discrimination against minority ethnic nurses, midwives and nursing associates
Resource for nursing and midwifery professionals registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Council
Mind the Gap: A handbook of clinical signs in Black and Brown skin
Exact Editions Black Lives Matter collection
A freely available Black Lives Matter learning resource, featuring a rich collection of handpicked articles from the digital archives of over 50 different publications.
The Global South Climate Database
The Global South Climate Database is a publicly available, searchable database of scientists and experts in the fields of climate science, policy and energy.
Racism and Ethnic Inequality in a Time of Crisis
Findings from the Evidence for Equality National Survey
Edited by Nissa Finney, James Nazroo, Laia Bécares, Dharmi Kapadia and Natalie Shlomo.
Open Access book.
Stolen Tools: The anti-racist journal
An anti-racist journal dedicated to centering the voices of racialised minorities within health inequalities research

Audio-visual resources

Consider including a range of formats, such as multi-media resources, to accommodate a range of learning styles.

Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press is the hosting platform for a large selection of streaming scholarly video and audio content, images, books, documents and music scores. Subjects covered include art and design, drama, diversity, film, history, literature and language, music and performing arts, psychology and counselling, science and engineering and the social sciences. You can set up a personal account to create and save your own playlists.
Accessibility information for Alexander Street Press
Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Box of Broadcasts (BOB) lets you view, record, create clips and share broadcast programmes from over 75 TV and radio channels. For educational use only.

Limitation - Full service available only to users located in the UK. BBC Parliament is temporarily available to users located anywhere in the world.
Accessibility information for Box of Broadcasts (BoB)
Kanopy
Is a video streaming service containing documentaries and educational videos in Psychotherapy, Sociology, Media, Performing Arts, Theatre, Dance, International Politics and Criminology.
Accessibility information for Kanopy

Searching databases

Many of City's databases also offer useful filters for finding more diverse sources.

Web of Science
Can be filtered by countries and regions, providing an easy way of finding content published in underrepresented areas such as the Global South.

Ovid: health disparities and minority health
Ovid have created a prepared search on this topic. The link autogenerates into Ovid.

National Theatre Collection
Use the Specialized area of interest filter in the Advanced search to find Black Theater, Asian Theater and Ethnic Theater.
Provides high definition streaming video of productions as well as archival material such as prompt scripts to give insight into theatre and performance studies.