Within academic libraries, content selectors make choices about what scholarship is acquired and how it is described and made discoverable. Other library workers support their user communities in navigating the peer review process, author rights, copyright, and publishing strategies. Given these activities, librarians play a significant role as both intellectual gatekeepers and scholarly communication advocates within their academic communities.
For more information about inequities in libraries and actions librarians can take, please refer to the following sections:
- Representation in Hiring and Retention
- Descriptive Practices
- Contracts With Publishers
- Library Publishers
- Instruction & Outreach
- What Can You Do?
Representation in Hiring and Retention
Despite longstanding efforts by professional associations to diversify the field, e.g. the ALA Spectrum Scholarship Program, librarianship remains a predominantly white and female profession. Studies suggest that the lack of diversity within this field is a result of the profession’s biased hiring practices and failure to retain BIPOC librarians. Both of these factors can perpetuate a status quo wherein, as some librarians have described it, “homogeneous environments foster homogeneous attitudes and practices” that reverberate in the field (Espinal, Sutherland, & Roh, 2018).
Some programs exist to diversify academic library staff, largely focused on racial diversity and on hiring early career librarians, but there is still more to do to increase racial and other types of diversity among library workers. “If the goals of diversity in librarianship are to enhance services and the profession, then librarianship must move toward a strategically larger view of diversity recruitment and retention that would welcome and acknowledge all dimensions of diversity to avoid these limited hiring practices.”(Kung, Fraser, & Winn, 2020).
Libraries also need to focus on retaining marginalized library workers by investing in explicit efforts to recognize and address the kinds of systemic issues that affect them as both new and established hires (Ewen, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic, book bans, and the U.S. administration’s “anti-wokeness” agenda have hit libraries hard and marginalized library workers even harder. Library leaders are called upon to examine how they benefit from the power structures in place and prioritize the well-being of all members of the library workforce.
Descriptive Practices
Libraries’ descriptive practices (as reflected, for example, in subject headings and metadata) have also been critiqued for their biases. Efforts to address these biases within the language of library classification systems have been slow to evolve, in large part because libraries use these complex and bureaucratic systems to standardize practices that ensure consistency of description and ease of discovery. As one researcher explains, “librarians tend to wait for the approval of larger institutions, governing bodies, or associations before making changes that could be beneficial to local users” (White, 2018).
The efficiency of standardization, the slowness of bureaucratic approval processes, and, in one recent instance, congressional intervention have impeded the profession’s ability to shift toward inclusive language (Ros, 2019). Several library initiatives are underway to update catalog records by replacing biased/racist terms with more inclusive descriptive terminology. This practice is sometimes referred to as “decolonizing” the library catalog’s subject headings, removing the terms that reflect “…the biases of the time periods and places they were created” (White, 2018).
Contracts With Publishers
One of the biggest changes in scholarly communication in recent decades is the development of open access publishing models such as “publish and read” or “transformative” agreements between academic libraries and publishers. These agreements enable authors to publish their research articles openly, waiving or minimizing an author-facing article processing charge (APC), while still providing libraries with access to subscription-based materials.
While these agreements certainly benefit readers in terms of access to published research, the costs associated with APCs can be a financial barrier for authors.. These pay-to-publish models can privilege those scholars who already enjoy the benefits of well-funded research disciplines and institutions; those who are not well resourced are less likely to have the funding to pay APCs (Hudson-Ward, 2021).
Library Publishers
Academic libraries are increasingly assuming the role of scholarly publisher on behalf of their institutions through Diamond OA library publishing programs that eschew author fees. Library publishers focus on open access models that provide equitable access to both knowledge and the means of producing that knowledge. Library publishers are deeply embedded in academic communities and able to partner closely with university presses, scholars, and students at their institutions using non-commercial funding models and values-driven services. See the Scholarly Publishers page for more information.
Instruction & Outreach
Libraries play a crucial role in promoting scholarly communication knowledge through instruction sessions, workshops, and events; one-on-one consultations; and web-based guidance. Librarians are increasingly seeking ways to transform these instructional activities to be more inclusive, relatable, and meaningful (Pho et al., 2022). For librarians to design instruction, outreach, and information resources to be globally and culturally inclusive, they must take into consideration the diverse languages, cultural backgrounds, and learning styles of their communities (Espinosa de los Monteros & Mandernach Longmeier, 2022). Similarly, the introduction of “critical pedagogy” within these trainings can shift the power dynamic to a learner-centered experience, where the beliefs, values, and knowledge of all learners are recognized (Saunders & Wong, 2020). By being intentional about their instructional practices, librarians can help inform their audiences about the biases and inequities within the scholarly publishing system.
View works cited in this resource
What Can You do? How To Effect Change as a Librarian
As experts in how content is curated, reviewed, and published, librarians support their user communities in understanding the peer review process, author rights, copyright, and publishing strategies. Librarians can also be intentional about addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in hiring and retention, descriptive practices, contracts with publishers, and instructional activities.
Suggested Actions:
- State your library’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and include actions your library is taking to meet that commitment.
- University of California Irvine Library statement
- Learn how to be an ally
- Support BIPOC and other underrepresented library professionals through groups like the ALA ethnic affiliates and wehere.space
- Work toward the diversification of all areas of the library profession and support marginalized workers.
- Recruiting for Diversity – The American Library Association Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Service provides an outline of strategies for incorporating practices to make hiring more inclusive.
- Avoid the “culture fit” mindset and create inclusive and equitable interview processes.
- Build intentional retention practices: the Canadian Association of Research Libraries offers specific strategies for creating inclusive organizations.
- Pay attention to and address harmful library description practices.
- Assess and address areas of under-representation in your own collection through established strategies to diversify collections
- Expand your library collection review rubric to include DEI values, e.g. the VIVA Consortium’s “Applying EDI Values to Collection Assessment”.
- Work with vendors and publishers to ensure that the materials you license and purchase are aligned with your institution’s goals for equitable collection development.
- Work to advance support of DEI principles among publishers and vendors.
- Ask how they address author fee waiver requests. See OASPA’s “Examples of Inclusive Practices in Open Access Publishing”.
- Add specific language about expectations regarding accessibility to licenses: Library Accessibility Alliance.
- Request examples of concrete actions taken to increase diversity, equity and inclusion both within their own workforce and within the publishing and/or service models they offer. The Library Partnership Rating initiative uses a values-based rubric to evaluate publishers.
- Incorporate inclusive and anti-racist practices into library instruction, outreach, and research services.
- Incorporate awareness of the “institutionalized racism of scholarly publishing” in publishing and information literacy consultations, presentations, and workshops.
- Advocate for equitable scholarly communication environments and systems in alignment with ACRL’s Open and Equitable Scholarly Communications report.
- Practice inclusive teaching by using multiple methods for participation and inclusive examples; apply critical pedagogy. strategies to challenge bias and center learners in the classroom; contextualize your teaching in the diversity, equity, and inclusion practices of the discipline/field you are addressing.
- Incorporate The Carpentries practical strategies to promote diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility before, during, and after workshops and related events.
- Incorporate anti-racism practices into research services and library guides.
Page updated: July 7, 2025
