Examines the contribution of the library to Old Dominion University's five-year strategic plan, which targeted cultural diversity as one of its eight objectives and included specific statements about library support of this goal. To meet its part, the library created a three-pronged action plan for the selection of videos, development of guides to the collection, and an evaluation of the multicultural collection, the most extensive portion of the project. Explains the choice of university minority and international student populations to assist in prioritizing collection efforts. The actual assessment project was collection-centered; project coordinators identified a series of appropriate bibliographies to compare against the collection as the most practical way to meet defined objectives. The resulting retrospective desiderata list identified resources (once funding became available) to improve both the depth and scope of the library multicultural collections with very little impact on staffing.Building a retrospective multicultural collection: a practical approach