The library literature documents a long history of marginalizing non-white voices and institutionalizing white knowledge as the norm. To identify ways in which Whiteness manifests in our collections, we position collection building within the White Institutional Presence (WIP) conceptual framework developed by Diane Gusa. This framework identifies four ways that whiteness functions in academic institutions, we find that academic libraries and our systems are necessarily shaped by WIP as well as contribute to it. For each component of the WIP framework, Monoculturalism, White Ascendancy & Entitlement, White Evasiveness, and White Estrangement, we discuss how academic libraries are enmeshed in that aspect WIP and provide reflection questions to spark ideas about how collections work is part of WIP as well as how it might resist WIP.
