Decolonising DMU:

DMU has a 'decolonising DMU' libguide. It has the following pages:

A home page that includes

• An introduction to decolonising. Working definition. Explanation of ethos.

• Detail setting out how the library fits in to this work:

  • decolonising the library collection: 'Decolonising the Library collection: broadening both printed and virtual resources to reflect the diverse University Community. This will add more voices, narrative and histories to the collections, enabling students to see themselves reflected in reading lists and research. LLS will work with academics to seek out and promote diverse authors and texts. Expanding the leisure reading collection to reflect DMU’s student profile. Promote through events both within Kimberlin and DSU'

  • Decolonising Library spaces: Develop a better understanding of BAME student usage of LLS spaces and services to inform service development and new build: to ensure culturally aware spaces

  • Working with the Library profession to develop a more representative profile of our population through “Workforce Diversity”. Engaging in staff development initiatives and developing a pipeline for new staff and encouraging professional development for existing staff. Optimise student opportunities for student work experience with LLS

  • Teaching and Learning: Look at our teaching practices and resources to ensure cultural inclusion in imagery and examples. Look to clarity of language in communications, signage and guidelines

  A Decolonising group will be created in the Library to guide actions and development. Staff and student voices will be included. A series of workshops, team talks and “Read to debate” sessions will enable discussion, the sharing of good practice and staff development in this area

• Contacts for project & workstream updates [untouched since Jan 2021].

A 'decolonising your reading list' page

• A reading list decolonisation toolkit Decolonising the reading list

• A 'works cited'-esque list of reasons to decolonise

• A list of links to published work and best practice re reading list decolonisation. Refs to UAL, UCL, KENT.

An ebooks page

• Links to various ebook collections, including the Springer Nature Blacks Lives Matter ebook list, and the Decolonising DMU Talis list.

A useful resources page

Decolonisation events

Developed in support of the Liberate our Degrees programme, which was formally developed due to the Equality and Diversity Strategy at the institution, but was a student's union movement initially.

Reading list work: Lists are created in collaboration with academic staff. They are curated as 'responses to the make up of the student body' - the composition of which formed the key statistics which drove the Liberate our Degrees campaign.

Institutional event-

Library participated in the ‘Decolonising Goldsmiths: Mission Impossible?’ institutional event as part of Black History Month, October 2019, where Sofia Akel launched her ‘Insider-Outsider: Examining the Role of Race in Shaping the Experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic Students’ report, and where Dr Nicola Rollock was in conversation with Nels Abbey, author of Think Like a White Man

The Liberate! Zines Collection is an ongoing project and a dedicated space for recognising the lived experience institutionally oppressed groups through listening and including the voices of the most marginalised.

Information literacy workshops - The Subject Librarian team established a series of Resistance Researching workshops ‘designed to help students think more critically about how we find and why we use information from a social justice perspective.’ 

Decolonisation Fund - established for Librarians to develop collections and reading lists utlising student collaboration 

From the Cambridge Library working group

The term “decolonisation” is subject to various definitions, and it embraces a number of different, but related, aims. In the context of the working group, we mean by this term something closer to “decolonial practice”:

• the active identification of and critical engagement with historical and modern power relations that are rooted in colonial views of the world and its peoples, as these are found in our libraries (chiefly in collections and their description), by being transparent about and actively re-contextualising library holdings which are a legacy of colonialism and occupation;

• greater facilitation of access to library collections as a global resource;

• providing support and partnership in the University’s decolonial activities as they affect teaching and learning (eg reading list updates), as well as research and public engagement; and

• a deliberate broadening of collection development, the better to provide a greater variety of voices and grow more representative collections.

Staff wrote and launched a framework for new decolonization work in libraries and archives across the University, which introduced decolonization, gave examples, and suggested ways of starting projects, with an emphasis on working with others to learn from their experience and to try things together. The framework is fairly basic in its contents, but it is the public document where essentially their was a setting out of Cambridge libraries’ stall, committing formally to engaging with and supporting decolonization.

Principals of decolonisation process:

• discovering and being open about where sources came from and how we acquired them

• making sure that they are accurately and appropriately described

• giving correct and honest context to them, especially in any exhibitions

• improving access to them and the ability to engage with them, especially for the communities they originally came from or that they relate to

For new books and other materials, decolonisation activities might include:

• selecting titles to ensure increasingly diverse collections, especially to provide readers with voices from areas and communities that have traditionally been represented mainly through books by people from outside them

• cataloguing new material and classifying (giving a shelfmark to) print books in non-discriminatory ways

A LibGuide: Introduction - Decolonisation LibGuide - LibGuides at University of Cambridge Subject Libraries

Open purchase requests for customers.

Instructions provided for discovery for readers - encouragement not to limit to simply 'decolonization' when reading about the topic.

Student voice - defined as feedback about the collections - is invited through email only.

Academic staff are invited to read the following to aid them in the design of their reading lists: https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1kas1sp/TN_cdi_gale_infotracmisc_A624350896

The following blog gives advice to Librarians: Decolonising through Critical Librarianship – A platform for Cambridge librarians approaching decolonisation

A LibGuide focussing on inclusion, diversity and belonging:

Home - Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging - LibGuides@Southampton at University of Southampton Library

Students can comment on the staff-generated reading lists within this guide, and make suggestions. They can do so anonymously if they wish. The lists cover a wide range of topics, including the decolonisation of reading lists and general decolonisation practice in HE. Lists are displayed in Talis, and intermingled with relevant academic texts and documentaries. They are Librarian maintained.

Institutional work: The university has a Centre for Imperial and Postcolonial Studies - this funds research projects which explore the varied ways that global empires have functioned, and have been resisted and negotiated over time. There are no current projects ongoing regarding decolonisation at this time, but similar work is supported. Researchers apply for funding to explore relevant areas.

The University houses the Parkes Collections and research centre, an archive dedicated to the Jewish experience, particularly non-Jewish/Jewish relations across time. Decolonisation will form part of this work in some way, but that isn't made explicit on the institutes website.

There is a more general 'antiracism in the academy' libguide, which has a specific 'Decolonizing the Curriculum' Page: Decolonizing the Curriculum - Anti-Racism in Academia - Oxford LibGuides at Oxford University. As with DMU, this includes articles, book chapters, and Ted Talks linked, with a brief explanation of Decolonising.

A separate project ran from Jan 2020 to Dec 20201 called 'Changing the narrative: championing inclusive collection development'. Out of this came a separate libguide, aimed at BME Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, Women's Studies and Disability Studies. Home - Changing the narrative: championing inclusive collection development - Oxford LibGuides at Oxford University. These are the outcomes from that project [qtd from page linked above]:

• Promoted and trialled are range of resources in LGBT History month and Women's History month.  Advocated for purchase of the following resources to enhance our online collections:
  LGBT Magazine archive
  Women and Social Movements, International
  Black Studies Center

• In liaison with the Bodleian Libraries, College Libraries and JCR Welfare reps created and shared a resource list of anti-racist educational resources in response to Black Lives Matter which has had nearly 2000 views since it's launch in June 2020.  This reading list is cited on the Equality and Diversity Unit's resources page.

• Created a resource list of LGBT+ resources for promotion during LGBT+ History month.  The reading list is cited in University promotions for LGBT+ History Month.  

• Advocated for embedding equality within subject collection policies across the Bodleian Libraries to address under-collected areas within the collections.  Added the following statement to the overarching collection policy: The Bodleian Libraries commit to developing collections that reflect a diverse academic community and breadth of scholarship including previously under-represented areas.

• Raised awareness of EDI and the need to diversify collections amongst library staff.

• Advocated for the creation of a ring-fenced fund to purchase EDI texts that do not fall within clear subject boundaries currently used.

• Liaised with Divisional EDI representatives to seek input in to the project and suggestions for resources to support their work.

Widening curricula listed among the Education strategic priorites:

Our Work | Equality and Diversity Unit

The Library have made a LibGuide called 'Diversifying and Decolonising the Curriculum: 'Create, Curate, Captivate'.

This works primarily as a guide for staff, to help them to diversify their reading lists as they create them. The LibGuide links to the following useful information:

This 2020 paper on decolonising curricula from the HE Policy Institute:

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/07/23/miseducation-decolonising-curricula-culture-and-pedagogy-in-uk-universities/

A toolkit for decolonising the curriculum in environmental sciences:

https://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/ld.php?content_id=34285477

A checklist for how to decolonise lecture content in environmental sciences:

https://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/ld.php?content_id=34285480

How to review a module to see if it had decolonised content and practice embedded within it (again, for environmental sciences):

https://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/ld.php?content_id=34285485

An 'EDI reading list' was also included from the Modern Languages dept.

The Guide then includes a step-by-step guide to creating a decolonised reading list. This includes the steps: 'how to select a diverse range of materials'; 'How to identify useful publishers'; 'How to find new subject content'.

A carousel of books on curriculum diversity is included.

There is no visible Library led work ongoing, but assumedly the embedded institutional practices will be facilitated/complimented by the way the Library functions.

The institution did host the following talk, originated by the English department:

Decolonisation in libraries, archives and museums: Action, inaction, redaction - Department of English and Related Literature, University of York

The University do also have a Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre, which facilitates cross-institutional discussion on the subject. Currently they produce a podcast which reflects institutional actions and wider HE work, and hosts a blog.

Decolonisation - Durham University

The Library did complete the following publisher audit, which Warwick could replicate:

Wider issues - Decolonisation - LibGuides at University of Derby

This Library also produced a guide on how to audit a reading list to ensure diverse voices are included.

There is also a list of alternative publishers available, which is presented in this Padlet for use by academic staff planning module reading:

Alternative and International Publishers

Current activities

To support schools, students and staff in developing decolonial practice, BILT is: 

• Funding some education development projects focused on developing a framework to evaluate the impacts of decolonial practices within schools. 

• Developing resources on decolonisation within specific disciplines to decolonial activity within schools and curriculum development. 

• Supporting a BILT student fellow working on decolonisation 

• Running a reading group on decolonisation 

• Running a seminar series on decolonisation together with the Centre for Black Humanities and the Conversations in Education initiative in the School of Education. 

In the Library - A Subject Heading Review is ongoing, as detailed here:

'A cross-team working group of Library staff have begun to identify and research areas of concern.

Some headings have already been discussed in wider communities, and we will reference this work when making decisions. We recognise, however, that establishing preferred headings in other areas may also require discussion with subject matter experts and other stakeholders.

We welcome any suggestions of changes to existing subject terms in our library catalogue. If you would like to suggest a change, please use the form below.'

Then a Library LibGuide dedicated to decolonisation includes:

A basic book suggestion form for all to use.

Digital access to a student made zine - overseen by the Library - which defines decolonisation.

A carousel of academic books on decolonisation as a general subject.

Some subjects (including STEM subjects) have created Sway guides to their departmental work on decolonising the curriculum. These include information drawn from the literature around decolonisation on the colonial pasts of the subjects discussed.

A link to an events page, which details co-creation workshops on decolonising the curriculum.

Every subject is tabbed in the Guide. Lists of reccommded reading on decolonisation in that field are then provided. These are titles on the process of decolonisation as it has been undertaken in HE departments: Engineering - Decolonising your reading list - LibGuides at University of Exeter

It includes the following sections:

Why does representation matter?

How diverse is your reading list?

Co-creating interventions with students

Examining information and knowledge sources

Subject reccomendations

Database resources

We want to hear from you

The following actions are recommended for the co-creation of reading lists with students:

Suggested activities 

1) Arrange a staff-Student discussion on the disciplinary canon, areas of exclusion, and alternative narratives.

2) Ask students to critique the reading list and suggest new content from their own research and experience.

Content in the Guide was referenced in almost it's entirety to the materials by UAL - the URL provided is no longer there, but it's notable that Exeter took their lead from another place almost wholesale.

An online form can be completed. This takes academics through the process of assessing their reading lists, and is submitted to the Library on completion for their records.

To examine the potential bias found within reading lists, a static snapshot was taken of 18 reading lists between August and September 2019 from the faculties. We found: 

• BAME authors made up little over 10% of the reading list content. 

• 71% of the material on the lists came from established and mainstream publishers or suppliers. 

• 65% of the authors listed were male, compared to 24% authored by females only, and 11% mixed authorship. 

To support staff to diversify their reading lists, there is a step by step breakdown provided which shows staff how to audit their reading lists to ensure they are diversified. They then have the option to submit them to the Library if they wish, for advice or simply to make the Library aware of the list.

Decolonisation of the curriculum project - The University of Nottingham

In the Library, the diversification of the lesiure reading collection is the only visible work ongoing:

DiversifyU - help us to diversify our leisure reading collection

This page was notable - You said We did: You Said, We Did - The University of Nottingham

Students have provided feedback on all aspects of the Library services, and the Library publish their associated actions on their website. Perhaps a good approach for decolonising lists?

By decolonising the curriculum, we aim to cultivate an environment which would expand our existing curriculum, by way of embracing intellectual contributions of all authors, white and non-white alike. It aims to create an academic space in which all students can feel that they belong to, and identify with; a space where stereotypes, prejudice and patronising views are broken down to encourage intellectual stimulation for all. This commitment to capture the richness of knowledge in both the global North and South will not compromise academic standards or freedom as the aim is not to replace ‘white’ books by ‘black’ ones. On the contrary, the aim is to offer educational resources which reflect the plurality of views in the production of knowledge for the benefit of both white and minority ethnic students as it will help everyone question what is taught and how it is taught, opening the possibility to question and challenge any knowledge. This in turn will ensure that we provide equal opportunities to, and guarantee the success of, all our students. 

The Library outputs on decolonisation centre around the practice of 'citation justice', which the Library have replicated from their partnership with Maastricht University Library. The practice is detailed here:

Citation Justice – what it is and how you can practice it. - University of Birmingham

This guide, produced by Maastricht, is available: FEM/UM Citation Guide - Maastricht University Library

The Library host the following Race and Decolonial Studies Guide:

Decolonising the Curriculum - Race and Decolonial Studies - Subject guides at The University of Edinburgh

This should be viewed in the context of the following:

UncoverEd was a collaborative and decolonising research project, funded by Edinburgh Global, which aimed to situate the ‘global’ status of the University of Edinburgh in its rightful imperial and colonial context.

Led by PhD candidates Henry Dee and Tom Cunningham, the team of eight student researchers created a database of students from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and the Americas from as early as 1700, and writing social histories of the marginalised student experience. The aim was to produce at least one biography each of a ‘notable’ alumnus, leading up to a website and exhibition in January 2019.

The Centre for Research Collections (CRC) is the main space for anyone using the University of Edinburgh's historic and special collections, including rare books and manuscripts, University of Edinburgh archives, personal and institutional archives, Lothian Health Services Archives, University of Edinburgh PhD theses, art collection, musical instrument collection and more. It holds a Race Relations Collection.

The Library promotes ConveRACEions - this initiative involves a series of monthly talks, where guest speakers are invited to give one-hour-long talks on their research and/or experiences with racial and equality issues within (and outside) academia.

Reference works on race relations are shown on the Guide, and a video explaining the full range of institutional initiatives.

Student groups who promote positive community and relations are also advertised.