Week 14 Prompt
Consider yourself part of the collection management committee of your local library, or a library at which you would like to work. You must decide whether or not to separate LGBTQ fiction and Urban Fiction from the general collection to its own special place. Some patrons have requested this, yet many staff are uncomfortable with the idea - saying it promotes segregation and disrupts serendipitous discovery of an author who might be different from the reader. Do you separate them? Do you separate one and not the other? Why or why not? You must provide at least 3 reasons for or against your decision. Feel free to use outside sources - this is a weighty question that is answered differently in a lot of different libraries.
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I would advocate not separating the collections from the fiction collections shelves. "Kim Parker, assistant director of teacher training at Shady Hill School, a private K–8 school in Cambridge, MA, says librarians need to find a better way [than separating the collections].“I wonder why they can’t be in both places?” Parker says. “If we’re segregating in libraries, we’re saying you can be here, but you can’t be there (Yorio & Ishizuka, 2018).” She goes on to suggest that diversity needs to be everywhere. "Another middle school librarian noted that she doesn’t separate the LGBTQIA books so that she can “do my best to provide a non-judgmental environment for ALL of our students to find a book of their liking, without getting sideways glances from their peers (Yorio & Ishizuka, 2018).” This suggests that a library keep their books interfiles as a means to provide comfort for their patrons that are interested in these books. Lastly, for a purely practical reason, separating genres and types of books requires more space than we have. We do not have the space to separate out diverse books.
The library where I work at one time had Urban Fiction as its own separate section and at some point decided to interfile the category into the fiction sections at large. We still often get questions about where that section is, but the reality of the matter is that we had to interfile the collection due to space concerns. We do denote when a book is considered Urban Fiction by placing an Urban Fiction Sticker on the spine.
I think that by interfiling the books there allows the discovery of books while the stickers allow for the distinction of the books apart from general fiction. We currently don't do this for LGBTQ+ books but I think that stickers on the spine would be a good way to distinguish them.
References:
Yorio, K. & Ishizuka, K. (2018). Shelving debate: to separate or integrate?. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/shelving-debate-separate-or-integrate
Hi Dany! I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this week's prompt. I've heard a lot of people bring up the idea of stickers on LGBTQIA+ books, but the reality is, it could prove to be a safety concern -- if a kid brings home a book secretly, but a parent spots the LGBT sticker, they could be in big trouble if the parent is homophobic/transphobic. My boss pointed this out to me recently when it was brought up during an Adult Librarian meeting.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that it has to be an LGBTQ sticker it could be a star or a smiley face. I just like the idea that there is some distinction.
DeleteHi Dany,
ReplyDeleteI didn’t feel like separation would be a super great idea either. I also thought your point about physical space restraints was a great one to consider. I think different processes might work better in different contexts depending on the unique factors therein—but thinking about the space requirements of separate categories is definitely something smaller institutions would have to grapple with, and an interesting point to consider.
It was almost the first thought on my mind! We had a water main break, and during the aftermath I had my hands on most of the adult collection and the entirety of the teen collection. I had to shift and move and reconfigure so many books that it made my head spin. So the idea of having to separate the fiction collection after boxing and unboxing it was abhorrent to me.
DeleteI feel like generally when you mix books together that are alike in some away in will cause more people to check out the books and read more of them compared to what the generally read.
ReplyDeleteI agree! I love looking at books in that manner and stumbling onto a book that I may not have picked up in the first place but found and ended up really enjoying.
DeleteI noticed a few people mention using stickers. I think that if the library already does that for other genres, then it’s totally fine. I mentioned in my post that ultimately, I’d want to know how the library handles shelving and genre separation in general. In the case of stickers, it may even seem like the library is being somewhat more inclusive by acknowledging these themes (though there will definitely be some who don’t see it this way).
DeleteExcellent response - full points!
ReplyDelete