The November discussion focused on diversity audits. The theme of collections continued, as did the vulnerability in our discussions with each other. Diversity audits can feel daunting, especially if you are looking at an entire collection. what is a diversity audit?From the Oregon Librarian Association's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Committee Antiracism Toolkit: "A diversity audit is essentially providing an inventory of a collection to determine the amount of diversity within the collection. It is a way of analyzing collection data to make sure that we include a wide variety of points." When you look at a collection or sample and you analyze an aspect of that question, that’s a diversity audit! We formally tally up our findings. Once you gather your data, you do some digging about what you want to add! Setting a goal is important, but you need to assess what work you as an organization needs to be done. Do you need to do some more research? What does access look like to materials that you’d like to add? Hot Tip! School Library Journal & Library Journal have a class every fall that is 4 weeks long and it’s about $300. Check out the Oregon Library Association’s scholarship page for some funding options. Continuing with questions to ask:
Brainstorm: ideas for audting displays
Brainstorm: things to remember
upcomingWe’re taking a break in December and January! This month we spent a fair amount of time talking about problematic creators, topics, etc. and how that relates to displays and the things that we put into our collections which brings us to…
Some ideas for the Spring season (February – May):
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Recommended reading: Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King and Answers in the Pages by David Levithan. Happy reading! This month's discussion was deeply personal and not easy to capture. That being said, here are some key questions and takeaways we generated as a group: when do we report challenges?Always and forever. Report everything, even if it seems small (like patrons hiding copies of books so others can't find them organically). what happens when we personally disagree with an item in our library?Remember that items in our collections are there for a reason. Maybe it was a popular request. Maybe it was purchased to provide a learning experience or alternative perspective. Maybe it was well reviewed. Regardless, it's important to remember that learning about opposing viewpoints is an important step in understanding the whole. how do we balance intellectual freedom and anti-racism?Honestly, we're not sure yet. But we know that having comprehensive, well-written policies and procedures is the framework we need to support our actions. Additionally, listen to the people who are offering their life experiences and expertise. Support those teachers monetarily, too! but what if an item is harmful?The answer to this question varies wildly on who you ask. However, we'll refer to the response above to "What happens when I personally disagree..." and "How do we balance...". We strongly encourage revisiting your collection development policies. How does your organization prioritize materials? What are your organization's values and mission? How does this item fit into the goals of libraries?
We never aim to have our discussions answer all of our questions, but this month really highlighted how we are all trying to navigate this world of librarianship and boy can it be a bumpy ride.
The topic of September’s discussion was collection development. We discussed collection development policies at our libraries, both past and present, and how those policies not only help to guide us in how we approach purchasing, but how we assess challenges and requests. At least, that's what they're supposed to do. Taylor, one of our co-facilitators, discussed how she appreciates a collection development policy that “has teeth”. A document that clearly outlines how materials will be assessed, staff labor when purchasing materials, physical space, budget, etc. This document would also outline how often the library re-assesses the collection development policy and makes changes as is necessary. For most libraries, the collection development policies had been around for a number of years without any changes to the document. As we were discussing current library collection development policies, we noticed that many of them lacked “teeth” and essentially mimicked the relatively vague language in some of the ALA documents. This is not to bash the ALA, but it did bring up some other talking points around traditional stances of libraries and how the ideals of decades past may not be as applicable to the world we live in today. For example, in the past libraries presented themselves as neutral spaces. However, it cannot be that libraries are both neutral spaces and safe spaces. So libraries and librarians have needed to make a decision and do our best supporting folks, but not to the detriment of a specific group. An example of this was shared by a teen librarian who talked about a writing group that she started for teens that organically morphed into an LGBTQ+ support group, because so many club members were part of that community. There were times when other folks would join, making friends and sticking around, but there were also times when teens who did not support the queer community would join for one session, then leave because queer teens were sharing their lived experiences in the group and this made them uncomfortable. At that point this librarian had to make a decision. Do we force the LGBTQ+ folks to stop talking about their experiences for the comfort of these other teens? Or do you allow those conversations to happen and acknowledge that some folks will feel uncomfortable and potentially unsafe and not come back. Ultimately, this librarian decided that, if your feeling of safety depends on diminishing another group’s safety (and very existence) then that’s something that she cannot support. It’s an issue that librarians all over the country are wrestling with, especially as our country becomes strongly divided on issues of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, bodily autonomy, just to name a few things. Neutrality is a comforting thought in theory, but in practice it can be detrimental to vulnerable populations. So if neutrality isn’t really obtainable, what about intellectual freedom? This is again where the collection development policy becomes important, because these documents shouldn’t be reactionary. It’s our responsibility as librarians to purchase materials that reflect our communities and their interests, even if we don’t share their interests. The book series The Tuttle Twins came up as an example from one library. These children’s books are very much sharing the political and social ideology of one particular group of people, but it’s also spreading misinformation because the books are marketed as non-fiction, but they don’t include facts, only propaganda. In cases such as these, it’s obvious that some of the ideas or information that we purchase by request from our patrons are saying really harmful things about other groups of people. Ultimately we were left with some big questions that frankly we weren’t able to answer: Where does anti-racism and intellectual freedom connect? Where does it conflict? Are they mutually exclusive? Can they work in harmony? How is this reflected in our policy, procedure, and practice? Sometimes our jobs are amazing and sometimes they're really, REALLY hard. We don't have all the answers, but through conversation, awareness, compassion, and really solid collection development policies, hopefully we can continue to bring up these issues and work towards answering some of these complicated questions. Discussion recapContent: racism, bigotry, bias, religion The August discussion focused on personal and implicit bias in library collections. This is the first discussion in the new format of Unpacking, the theme for the Fall season being collections. A link to implicit bias tests was sent out prior to the discussion meeting time. While most attendees did not have the opportunity to take further tests, at least half had taken one in the past. The tests taken had been race-based, age-based, and gender-based tests. In reflecting on test results, the consensus was that the tests revealed bias we did not realize we had and brought greater self-awareness. Many attendees mentioned that, when approaching collections, they recognized that they specifically held biases towards religious collection materials, more specifically Christian materials. As a group this experience was validated, and we returned the conversation back to bias pertaining to Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) collections. In attendance were library staff who worked in public, academic, special, and school libraries. Discussion moved to how we keep a balanced collection. Question posed: How do we assess materials to be sure that they are authentic representations? Striking a balance between:
A resource list to help libraries develop balanced collections that represent BIPOC was started and will be shared to the blog and resources page on the Unpacking website. Discussion then moved to how cataloging can be a boundary for buying materials. Questions asked:
Question posed: If you were a supervisor and knew that one of your employees was self-censoring due to personal biases, how would you handle that? Some suggestions were:
The discussion moved to the question of what if the issue is with your supervisor not allowing certain programs or materials:
With these discussions, it was suggested that we do some calling in/calling out practices during discussions to get more comfortable and be prepared. upcomingReferring to a library's collection development policy came up during our discussion this month about collections and bias. Our September 1st, 2022, discussion will focus on collection development policies. If you are not already familiar with your library's collection development policy, see if you can get a copy of it to have handy at the next meeting.
Thank you and we look forward to doing more of this work with you! We're excited to introduce an updated schedule and the next four months of topics for the Unpacking discussion series!
Moving forward, we will be running Unpacking in two "seasons" each year. Fall season will be Aug., Sept., Oct., and Nov. Spring season will be Feb., Mar., Apr., and May. This allows for both organizers and participants to have breaks in critical times of year and provides a structure in which to focus our discussion topics. For Fall 2022, we're focusing on collections and how personal bias, systemic racism, organizational practices, and more affect our work and how we can make progress in these areas. We're so pleased with how our discussions have been going so far, and continue to improve with feedback and experience. Thanks so much for reading and we'll chat with you again soon. We had a wonderful discussion this past Thursday about the challenges of overcoming fear and doubt when calling in and calling out other folks' bigoted behavior.
As you can imagine, this was a heavy conversation. While we don't have many answers, we do have a list of resources and ideas to help us. Luvvie Ajayi Jones, "Professional Troublemaker" Ibram X. Kendi, author, scholar, MacArthur Fellow The Feedback Fallacy, article Major takeaways from our discussion include:
Questions posed:
Tangible takeaways:
We hope these notes help your own reflections. Thank you! DISCUSSION RECAP
Content: Bigotry, language, racism Our June discussion was all about "dog whistles". What they are, resources to help us identify them, and how context often plays a huge role in recognizing a dog whistle. As a quick recap, according to Merriam-Webster, a dog whistle is a "coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others." Many groups can use dog whistles to communicate, including hate-groups. During our meeting, we discussed the following questions: 1. What dog whistles are you aware of? 2. What dog whistles surprise you? Confuse you? 3. Looking back to calling in vs calling out, how might you approach a situation involving a dog whistle? Online? In-person? 4. Are dog whistles protected by free speech? 5. How would you handle hearing/seeing/finding a dog whistle in the library? 6. What is the importance of context in regard to dog whistles? How can we educate ourselves to understand the context? What are dead giveaways for a dog whistle? Jewitches, the Anti-Defamation League, Rainbow Cafe and a few other resources (now listed on our website Resources page) were referred to to discuss specific dog whistles, especially those that were antisemitic in nature. Many folks in this month's discussion were unfamiliar with many of the dog whistles presented in these resources, however we also discussed the fact that groups will often switch over to a new set of dog whistles once a common dog whistle is identified. This allows the coded messages to continue to be coded, which can make it difficult to keep track of current circulating dog whistles, especially online. Context also plays a huge role because some groups use the same or similar symbols/iconography. For example, the punk scene shares many fashion aesthetics as Neo-Nazi groups, some religious/spiritual iconography (ex. Thor's hammer) has also been co-opted by Neo-Nazi groups. Even the Thai flag emoji has been turned into an antisemitic dog whistle by hate groups. A major take-away from this discussion was that it is a luxury and a privilege to be surprised and appalled by dog whistles (and other forms of bigotry and racism). Groups on the receiving end of this must not only remain constantly vigilant of dog whistles and other hate speech for their own safety, but potentially have the added emotional and mental burden of our surprise, disgust, and learning process (ex. asking questions, recounting experiences that are potentially traumatic for the marginalized person/group). We wanted to acknowledge that that is likely an exhausting experience for marginalized groups. We also wanted to note that dog whistles are often used as a way to "test the waters" in interactions with white folks specifically. Most attendees had stories of being approached, presented with a dog whistle, then gauged to see how we would respond. Dog whistles are used to identify other members of a certain group and if we don't recognize those dog whistles and respond to them appropriately, we may be inadvertently supporting the beliefs of those groups through our own inaction. White silence is dangerous. Next month's discussion will be on dealing with fear when calling in and calling out. See you in July! Hey folks!
This pre-meeting blog post will give you a list of resources that we will be discussing during our meeting this week. It's not required that you preview this content before Thursday, but if you're curious, feel free to take a look! These websites will also be listed under our "Resource" page. www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/dog-whistle-political-meaning www.jewitches.com/antisemitism-education www.rainbowcafe.org/neo-nazi-prevention-and-dog-whistles learningspy.co.uk/featured/educational-dog-whistles-and-how-to-blow-them/ www.ajc.org/translatehateglossary www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbols/search DisCussion RecaPContent: racism, bigotry, fear, confrontation The May discussion focused on “calling in” vs.“calling out.” What do these terms mean? In short, they are both ways to address individuals when you encounter racism (and other equity or boundary issues too!). Check out this handout from the presentation “Facilitating EDI Conversations in Professional Settings and Public Programming” by Priya Charry, Leah Larson, and Nicole Rawlinson at the 2022 Public Library Association conference for a more in-depth explanation and examples. Below are the questions used to guide the discussion:
Our primary takeaways from the discussion were:
How to respond to being called in or called out:
UPCOMINGOur June 2nd, 2022 discussion will be about dog-whistling. More soon.
Thank you so much for a wonderful and vulnerable discussion! Agenda:
5 Minutes - Housekeeping 5-10 Minutes - Introduction/Overview 2 Minutes - Transition to breakout rooms 20 Minutes - Breakout group discussion 1 Minute - Transition back to large group 5 Minutes - Quick break 20 Minutes - Large group discussion Remaining time - Open discussion Feature topic starts at 7:30 p.m. Feature topic ends at 8:30 p.m. Open discussion ends at 9 p.m. Information duplicated below in image. |
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