Public Libraries Seminar Discussion #2: Equity
4 September 2024
Option 1: Reflect back on the readings about equity in the public library from this week. Now, let’s think about how you can work toward a culture of inclusion in your (hypothetical) public library.
Craft two distinct messages and support your messages with citations from the text (look to Core Values, for example), and supplemental readings (at least two references need to listed - I won't deduct for APA but try your best!). You may approach this from a general inclusion standpoint, or with one specific population in mind (autism, for example). Your choice!
• Message one should be an internal document directed to library staff, explaining how and why your library is committed to inclusion. This one should be a bit lengthier.
• Message two should be an external document that is posted in the library or another outward facing place (online?) for the public to read. This should be easy for a library patron to quickly digest, and a bit shorter. Comment on where you would post this statement.
Option 2: Please discuss how you feel the field of librarianship is doing in terms of inclusion. Support your work with outside sources.
So, for anyone wondering who the mysterious student who brought their concerns to Dr. Carmack that warranted the sudden addition of another option could be—it was me! *dramatic gasp* (I wouldn't be surprised if anyone else wasn't surprised this is the case, though.) I thought about rewriting the initial email I sent to Dr. C specifically for the board, but it reads good enough on its own—so here's the meat of that email, lightly edited:
For this second discussion board, we're tasked with taking everything we've learned from our reading on librarianship's established values, specifically on equity and inclusion, and alchemize them into a hypothetical IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) statement. Normally this or most other kinds of writing wouldn't be much of a problem—but this specific discussion is made a lot more difficult because of the fact that I don't like diversity statements.
There's an enormous, seemingly contradictory elephant in the room that's very obvious from my profile photo. And while being Black is downstream from things, it's ultimately secondary to the foremost reason: I can't read or even attempt to write more than a few words of a diversity statement without thinking to myself "I don't believe a single word of what I'm writing." A well-meaning colleague's immediate question would probably be "you mean you don't want to see your chosen field represent the diversity of the communities we serve, JW!?"; of which my answer would be "well, yeah. of course we need to see that." The institutional track record, though, does not give me any hope of this happening with any urgency, at least from the top/admin down.
For the most part, there's a gut feeling fueling this reluctance, one that comes from a lot of writing that critiques, well, every institution under the sun, but there are a few things specifically concerning libraries I can point to. There's the issue of how the diversification of librarianship is still moving at a snail's pace (Hulbert & Kendrick, 2023), how book publishers' pledges to diversify their numbers ring hollow now that the events of 2020 have been memory holed (Alter & Harris, 2024), how even when diverse librarians are hired they're left to do diversity work that's given barely any support structure for little credit (Brown, Cline, & Méndez-Brady, 2021). And on a personal, perhaps cynical level, I think of my system's supposed commitment to hiring inclusion as laid out in their strategic plan (Central Rappahannock Regional Library, 2022, p. 9), and how pale what new employee photos are taken continue to be since I was hired two years ago. There's lots of words thrown about how this system or that publisher are committed to inclusion and diversity to beautify their images—but when it comes to following through and sustaining those efforts, there's even more shrugs, if there's even an acknowledgement in the first place.
References
Alter, A., & Harris, E. (2024, August 21). ‘A lot of us are gone’: How the push to diversify publishing fell short. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/books/publishing-diversity-lisa-lucas.html
Brown, J., Cline, N., & Méndez-Brady, M. (2021). Leaning on our labor: Whiteness and hierarchies of power in LIS work. In S. Y. Leung & J. R. López-McKnight (Eds.), Knowledge Justice: Disrupting library and information studies through Critical Race Theory (pp. 95–110). The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11969.003.0007
Central Rappahannock Regional Library. (2022). Strategic plan 2022-2027. https://www.librarypoint.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/60/2023/03/Strategic-Plan-1.pdf.
Hulbert, I. G. & Kendrick, C. (2023, April 18). Assessing the racial diversity of librarians. Ithaka S+R. https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/assessing-the-racial-diversity-of-librarians/