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Library Unlimited: Diversity in reading lists

Finding resources in our collections

We are currently creating a Library unlimited reading list which will lead you to resources focusing on how to diversify the content and reading list of your modules.

Library and Learning Services devoted £30,000 to this equality and inclusion project. £10,000 is to be spent in each of the academic years 2020/21,  2021/22 and 2022/23. 

If you find resources that you think would be beneficial to be included please contact us on libraryunlimited@staffs.ac.uk

Requesting new items

There are several ways in which you can request new resources to support more diverse reading lists.

If there is a new book you wish to add to a module reading list then this can be done in the normal way through the Reading Lists Online system.  See further guidance on ordering books on the Academic Staff guide.

If you have identified a book which would be useful for you and colleagues to use to help you understand diversifying reading and the curriculum in your subject area please email us on libraryunlimited@staffs.ac.uk with the details of the book.  As for new purchases under the reading lists system we would need:  author(s), title, year of publication, edition, publisher and ISBN.

 

Resources to support Library Unlimited

New Resources - African Diaspora and Black Thought and Culture

We have recently purchased two new collections to support Library Unlimited:

  • African Diaspora allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
     
  • Black Thought and Culture is a landmark electronic collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders—teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures—covering 250 years of history. In addition to the most familiar works, Black Thought and Culture presents a great deal of previously inaccessible material, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.

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, climate policy and energy.

"The goal of the project, set up by Carbon Brief with the support of the Reuters Institute's Oxford Climate Journalism Network, is to ensure that journalists from all over the world can contact scientists from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific. (…) The database lists each person’s area of expertise, institutional affiliation, contact details and other relevant information. The experts cover many different languages from around the world, but all speak English too.“ 

Access The Global South Climate Database
(https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-south-climate-database)

First steps

Introducing more diverse resources into your reading list is not going to be a simple process. One way to make a start is to search publishers’ websites for topics you want to cover and check the ethnicity of authors using resources such as social media, their institution’s web page and profiles on Scopus or Google Scholar.

Another idea is to try searching the catalogues of universities which have international collections, including those in Africa, Asia or South America.  Here are a few you may want to use: