Decolonisation: Decolonising Library Resources

This guide has information on how to decolonising resources.

Students looking at books on a Library bookshelf

This page explores decolonising resources and suggests different ways to decolonise resources by using alternative publishers, using grey literature, examples of decolonised databases and open access

Why decolonise resources?

Academic publishing is dominated by Western Europe and North America or the Global North, leading to a disparity in representation and access to research from other regions, particularly low-income and middle-income countries or the Global South.

(How to address the geographical bias in academic publishing | BMJ Global Health)

 

Our focus in this guide is to provide signposting to sources of literature published or generated in the Global South.

 

Below are links to publishers, bookstores & databases resources which will enable you to discover material authored by researchers and academics from the Global South:

Publishers / book stores

Here are some links to publishers and book shops for you to explore to discover books which could be purchased by the library:

Grey Literature

Grey literature is a term used to describe a range of different information that is produced outside of traditional publishing and distribution sources and is not always indexed in library databases. 

For more information and links to sources of grey literature, visit this page:

Grey Literature

Open Access

Open Access is scholarly publications such as journals, articles, books and theses that are free for all to access.

Some regions in the world have a strong tradition of publishing academic output as open access and it is an important way to search for decolonised resources.  

For more information on open access go to:
 

Open Access

Databases with global majority coverage

Below we have started to collate a list of databases, some we subscribe to and some are open access, to help you discover literature from diverse global voices. (With recognition and thanks to Sally Dalton, University of Leeds Library, for collating and sharing many of these resources).

If you are unable to access full text in any of the resources below, ask a BCU librarian via the 24/7 live Chat.