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<p>The Commission has not made any assessment of the work the House of Commons Library
has been undertaking to review and increase the diversity of its collection.</p><p>The
Library reports that this work has been underway since August 2020 and involves activities
intended to ensure the collection contains a wide range of perspectives which are
representative of Britain past and present. These include updating acquisition and
deselection policies to include equality, diversity and inclusion considerations;
changing practice to widen the range of publishers and institutions from which material
is selected; acquiring material to increase coverage of issues relating to racism;
modernising the language and concepts used in the Library’s classification scheme;
and providing training for Library and committee staff on increasing the diversity
of the sources used in research.</p><p>The process has involved exchanging experience
with universities engaged in decolonising their curricula and collections. However,
this is not an approach which the House of Commons Library has adopted: the Library
is actively increasing the diversity of its collection rather than decolonising it.</p><p>The
focus of the Library’s collection policy remains to build and maintain a specialist
collection on Parliament and devolved legislatures, the history of UK and Ireland,
and politics and government to support the work of Members, Library research teams
and the House Service. It has developed a clear statement on its commitment to impartiality
and the provision of a wide range of perspectives as part of this.</p><p>The Commission
has no plans to take steps in response to the Library’s work in this area.</p>
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