Library Liberating the Collections

On these pages you can find out what we are doing within UCL Library Services in relation to our Liberating the Collections activities.

Within Library Services the group overseeing this area of work is known as the Library Liberating the Collections group (LLTC) which was formed in July 2020. Its purpose is to oversee the numerous strands of activity being taken to address inherent bias within our library collections. Our intention is to capture and communicate the breadth of the library’s commitment to diversifying and improving inclusiveness, progressed by actions to highlight and promote under-represented voices relating to race and racism, gender, sexuality, disability. Our ambition is to reflect a fully inclusive range of voices and perspectives across the whole collection lifecycle. We work to an Action Plan which the group meets regularly to monitor and review.

The LCCOS Strategy 2024-27 includes a commitment to taking this work forward in the context of Accessible Collections and our activities feed into the strategy Implementation Plan.

Our name was originally derived from UCL’s work around Liberating the Curriculum, to demonstrate alignment and have currency within the UCL community. 

Although we are using the term 'Liberating' to encompass the diverse range of work being undertaken, a wide variety of terms and definitions are used by other libraries engaged in related initiatives and we recognise this can be problematic. The use of terminology is also complex in other aspects of our work, and you can read more about this in the Describing our Collections section.

This is a long-term commitment and involves reviewing (and where necessary changing) how we do things. Activities will be prioritised according to the resources available and we will be actively seeking new internal and external funding to support initiatives.

We are keen to partner with our UCL community (staff and students) and will also play an active part in national and international efforts to advocate for solutions to wider issues relating to the acquisition, cataloguing and classification of our collections.

For further information, or if you wish to get in touch, please contact us via library@ucl.ac.uk

What we’ve been doing within Library Services

Collection Policy

• Agreed an LLTC Group Statement of Intent;
• Reviewed our Acquisitions policies to ensure they are fully aligned with our LLTC agenda including continuing to address challenges with purchase of material from the Global South;
• Allocated funding for specific LLTC purchases including items suggested by the UCL community in connection with diversity-themed annual calendar events.

Description and visibility of our collections

• Improved access to our Jewish archives including a new project to catalogue the archives of Rabbi Dr Moses Gaster and the cataloguing of the Trades Advisory Council archive;
• Run a very successful Liberating the Curriculum volunteer project.
• Created a Liberating the Curriculum guide to support teaching staff in developing more inclusive reading lists;
• Completed discrete projects relating to reclassification of library materials, such as the reclassification of non-Western art, global literature in the English language, and creating separate collections for countries of the former USSR at SSEES;
• Re-prioritised retrospective cataloguing activities.

Communication and engagement

• Created an exhibition in the Main Library, Hidden in Plain Sight: Liberating our Library Collections, featuring items identified by the Liberating the Curriculum volunteer project and accompanied by a programme of curator tours;
• Launched a Black Studies subject guide, created and maintained by our Subject Liaison Librarians to enable discovery of black scholarship within our collections. 

Read our 2022 Annual Review for more about the wide range of activities we have been engaged in.