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.
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