At this point, BNC does not provide a specific report or tool for the purposes of auditing diversity collections in LibraryData. That being said, the first step to developing tools like this is to work toward standards in metadata, and from there tools follow, taking advantage of new or improved data fields. Currently there is no reliable source for metadata to use to facilitate a diversity audit of a collection or publisher list - but the current goal is to work towards that! BookNet is involved in several committees related to standards for metadata, including one on how equity and diversity can be communicated in metadata in the book supply chain. 

The below provides a brief outline on the various search fields and filters available in our LibraryData reports that you might find useful in the meantime.

Search Filters

The Canadian titles toggle, found in most LibraryData reports, limits your search results to anything with a contributor designated as Canadian in its ONIX metadata. 

Open

There are also Subject filters in our reports! LibraryData uses BISAC codes for subject categories. While they won’t be a guarantee of an author’s identity, they’ll of course be able to give you a sense of the content. As an example, there are a number of Indigenous subject BISAC codes that would help you identify those types of books in your collection.

Open

If you’re interested in Language specifically, there is also the Language filter, which has hundreds of languages for you to choose from.

LibraryData Reports

To get yourself started, you might want to run a Popular Books report with any of the above filters with your library set as the aggregate and with the Reporting Period set to the range that you’re interested in analyzing. Here you should increase the row limit to 10,000 rows or more, and download the report directly to your computer using the "Download/Email Now" option rather than "Run". This will give you a sense of the number of those types of items you have in your collection, along with info on how those items are circulating. 

If growth is what you’re interested in, you could do a Subject Trend Analysis. For this one, select the BISAC subjects you’re interested in and then set your reporting period to Year Over Year with the type of interval set to Full Year, the last year being 2023. 

Other Resources

If you’re interested in learning more about how to audit your collection, check out our recent Tech Forum session with Laina Kelly, where she discusses her own methods for analyzing the diverse content of each book in her library’s YA collection.

Diversity benchmarking: Improving diversity and inclusion in library collections - Tech Forum 2020