Opinion

How can librarians determine when their implicit bias has guided them into viewing Black patron behavior as dangerous, and hence guided them to call 911, and when a situation is actually dangerous and requires a police response? 

While exact demographics are hard to come by, the informal consensus seems to be that members of most public libraries’ board of trustees or directors are largely white, well-off, and older. Meanwhile, the communities they represent are often far more diverse.

When the university moved to virtual instruction in March, Cornell University Library's Virtual Reference Response Team focused on building capacity in the ways we already connected with our remote users. Leveraging our Ask a Librarian suite of email, chat, and in-depth research consultations options became our primary concern.

Linked Data is only as useful as the metadata on which it depends, and poor quality metadata ultimately causes the challenges many librarians hope to address with Linked Data.

Black Lives Matter. Indigenous people should be honored and recognized. Xenophobia is not acceptable. This movement across our country is a call to action, and libraries are redefining what the scope of this work entails and how we need to take the appropriate action to create a safe space for everyone.

Libraries can and should continue to apply creative problem-solving to mitigate the worst impacts of this pandemic on staff and users. There is a limit to what even the most nimble, inventive, and dedicated libraries—or even consortia or associations—can fix. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do. We need to think bigger and to throw the collective power of our profession toward advocacy for large-scale solutions.

In many towns across the United States, seeing members of the police in the public library is common-place. Off-duty officers moonlight as library security guards. Library programs like “Coffee with a Cop” aim to help the police develop closer bonds of trust with the community. And police are often called to deal with behavioral issues or threats to patron or staff safety. But as the past weeks of protest after the police killing of George Floyd, among others, make plain, for a substantial portion of patrons and staff, the presence of the police is itself a threat.

The massive change in life circumstances over the weeks since my last column have been strange, terrible, and beautiful—often all at once.

We need a National Library Workers Organization. The COVID-19 crisis has brought home to American workers their individual vulnerability—and their collective power.