Amanda Melilli wants libraries to reflect the lives of their readers.
An academic librarian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), Melilli is the head of UNLV’s Teacher Development and Resources Library (TDRL), which supports the university’s College of Education as well as educators in the Las Vegas community. In the past decade, the library’s focus has particularly shifted to helping educators find and use inclusive materials.
“The mission of the TDRL has definitely evolved over time and it continues to evolve as we better understand the needs of our community,” says Melilli, who joined the library in 2013. “… While we were trying to reimagine ourselves as an academic library, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement was gaining momentum, and it really solidified for us what it was we were trying to accomplish: to get teachers to use materials that their students will want to be engaged with in the classroom so that they will be empowered in their own learning.”
The #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement took root in 2014 as a response to the mostly White world of youth publishing at the time, during which just a tiny percentage of newly published books featured non-White characters. Though the situation has significantly improved since then, characters from minority backgrounds still lag far behind White characters and even non-human characters (such as animals or monsters), according to a 2019 report from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center.
For Melilli, those numbers are significant because books can have ramifications in how children and teenagers understand themselves and their peers.
“We know that all young people do better when they are exposed to a wide range of perspectives and experiences,” says Melilli, who described books as “windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors” in the lives of children — an analogy originally created by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop.
“They need materials that reflect who they are and allow them to see the lived experiences of others,” explains Melilli. “This helps students value themselves and others while also learning more about the world that they live in.”
