Where Are We Now? iCurate® inCremental Diversity Audit Follow-Up

January 4, 2023
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Where Are We Now? iCurate® inCremental Diversity Audit Follow-Up

By Ann Lehue, MSIS, Senior Manager, Collection Development

In April 2021, Ingram introduced iCurate inClusive, a quick and easy diversity audit that provides libraries with a slideshow breaking down the inclusiveness of their collection, along with shopping lists of diverse titles with the inclusive categories and their holdings marked, to help libraries purchase titles to fill their diversity gaps and quickly improve the inclusiveness of their collection to appeal to marginalized community members.  

Now that iCurate inClusive has more than a year’s worth of results and reporting, libraries can purchase iCurate inCremental, the follow-up service that measures their progress. iCurate inCremental compares a library’s new holdings with both their previous holdings and the average public library or school library for context.

When Ingram first started selling inCremental, we were concerned that the impact of these inclusive title shopping lists might not show up after only a year of book-buying, especially in large collections.

When the first public library ordered inCremental only 10 months after receiving their first report, we were extra concerned. Happily, we were thrilled that this library had increased their results from the 5th percentile up to the 50th percentile—an impressive improvement for an urban library with such a large collection. Moreover, every library has shown marked improvement. A recent inCremental customer moved from the 30th percentile to the 90th percentile in a year—60 percentiles.  

Because we build our services to improve library collections while streamlining the workflow of librarians, these stories of helping move the needle in libraries across the country highlight the real success. The inClusive and inCremental services provably help libraries create more inclusive collections to provide windows and mirrors for their communities.

Kimberly Rein, a high school librarian in the South, beta tested inClusive for Schools and inCremental for Schools. Ms. Rein has long focused on creating an inclusive collection for her diverse student body in a state that scores toward the bottom on inclusive laws and quality of life for marginalized people. Her focus on diversity and inclusion showed up in her first report, where she scored two percent higher than the high school average in overall diversity, putting her in the top percentile. She exceeded average in every inClusive category except one.

Just as it is more difficult for top-scoring students to show a full year’s growth on standardized tests, we reasoned that it would be more difficult for a library already in the top percentile to improve significantly. However, using diversity-focused grants for materials, her library inCremental scores show that she grew from 25% inClusive to 31% inClusive in less than a year—significantly higher than the high school average of 23%.

Ms. Rein has moved on to a different state and started a job at a new high school, where she will be working to develop a balanced and inclusive collection, and she is proud of the work she did at her previous school. “Ingram’s diversity audit helped us see where our strengths and weaknesses were,” she said. “We were able to center our orders based on our areas of need to help create a more diverse collection.”

Want to get more details about our suite of diversity audit services? Contact your sales rep or iCurate@ingramcontent.com.  

Looking for diverse titles now? Check out our Asian Interest, Black Interest, Indigenous Peoples Interest, Latinx Interest, LGBTQIA+ Interest, Middle Eastern Interest, Social Awareness, and Spanish Language Books in all age groups on our Curated Lists page.

Where Are We Now? iCurate® inCremental Diversity Audit Follow-Up

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