The Collection Equity Award will establish a series of book clubs and programs relating to the needs of underrepresented and marginalized groups. Providing the community with a robust collection of written, audio, and visual resources will create an immersive experience that illustrates the NLM’s mission, while also broadening community awareness of the health information needs of various segments of its members. The award will also be used to provide training to the staff on these issues, ensuring that the community will be well-versed in the nature of these programs and the corresponding texts, as well as creating informational literature, videos, and other multimedia content (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts, etc.) to inform library patrons and the community at large on the various aspects of the programs.

The award enables a considered response to the recently completed EDI (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) audit of a portion of our library’s collection, the focus of which would be purchasing texts written by authors of an underrepresented or marginalized group, and that spotlight the health information needs of those groups. 

Clubs will include a Banned Books teen discussion group (to focus on LGBTQ+IA and BIPOC titles), a Healthy Newtown group (based on the NNLM Reading Club), and an EDI book club that will work with an existing discussion series called Stories of Exile.