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Navigating any place of employment can be complex for transgender and nonbinary people, but having an informed and supportive supervisor can make things easier.

Libraries and archives nationwide have launched initiatives to diversify their collections, institute antiracist descriptive practices, and conduct outreach to marginalized communities. We knew that our collections lacked all these things, but questioned how we could authentically start this work. What can libraries and archives do when confronted with limited resources, material, and community engagement to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in their work?

On August 11, St. Louis County Library (SLCL), MO, announced the layoffs of 122 part-time workers. All 600 employees, both full- and part-time, had been paid during nearly three months while library buildings were closed. But a number of staff, along with other supporters, feel that the layoffs will impact services once the library reopens. Some workers have also alleged that the layoffs were retaliatory.

The Iowa City Public Library (ICPL) has embedded concrete, quantified steps toward equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) into its three-year strategic plan, released on September 23.

In Maryland, public libraries across the state have developed models for maximizing the impact of social justice–focused virtual programs by copresenting and cross-promoting selected events. Maryland libraries were able to rely on high quality programs from neighboring systems to provide a more robust lineup of virtual events. 

In 2020, the Nashville Public Library (NPL) looked to expand its Civil Right Center with a new Votes For Women room. After 18 months of planning, the grand opening was scheduled to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which cleared the way for women to vote. As the COVID-19 pandemic evolved, the NPL realized that the grand celebrations envisioned would not be possible.

There is a threadrunning through almost all major headlines in our country this year: racial injustice.

Welcome to Trans + Script, a column dedicated to amplifying the voices of transgender, nonbinary (nb), and queer library people and highlighting topics related to their experience in libraries. We’re in big cities, small towns, rural communities, on military bases, in areas of wealth, and in areas of poverty. Why is that reality important enough to be the first topic in this column? Because even though there are a lot of us and we’re everywhere, representation still matters.

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? 

UPDATE: On August 25, the Douglas County Library Board of Trustees voted 3–2 to approve an investigation into Amy Dodson and her staff over the proposed diversity statement. The investigation, to be conducted by an independent firm, would cost an estimated $30,000, although the scope of the investigation was not specified.

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.

Ry Moran is the founding director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, Canada. For the past five years Moran, a member of the Red River Métis, has led the creation of a permanent home of a national archive for all materials gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. LJ caught up with him recently to learn more about what it took to build an archive of such a critical chapter of Canada’s Indigenous history.

Ry Moran, founding director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba, Canada, will become the inaugural Associate University Librarian for Reconciliation at the University of Victoria (UVic), BC, this fall. LJ caught up with him recently to hear more about his plans and thoughts on helping create institutional equity.

Siobhan Reardon, who served as president and director of the Free Library of Philadelphia (FLP) since 2008, has resigned in the wake of accusations of systemic racism throughout the library. The library has been accused of discrimination for several years, including in public discussion during City Council budget hearings in April 2019.

Advancing Racial Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace, a virtual symposium hosted by the Denver Public Library (DPL) on July 8–10, convened academic and public librarians and others who discussed equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) work, the emotional toll it takes, and barriers such as white supremacy culture.

In late June, Macmillan announced the creation of the Trade Management Committee, which will “set the goals and objectives for the publishers, divisions, and departments that comprise U.S. Trade and Shared Services.” However, the question remains whether this committee and other steps taken by the publisher will result in real change or are a temporary measure to placate criticism.

In summer 2016, four librarians—Jessica Anne Bratt, Amita Lonial, Sarah Lawton, and Amy Sonnie—created Libraries 4 Black Lives (L4BL), an online space for libraries to support the Movement for Black Lives and develop a support community for advocates doing racial justice work in libraries. While L4BL is no longer active, Bratt, youth services manager at the Grand Rapids Public Library, MI, has continued her advocacy and social justice work. LJ recently caught up with her to find out more about what she’s been doing.

As calls for accountability are amplified across the country, many institutions are starting by addressing their racist history—many of which involved naming rights for funders or founders. Recently the Board of Supervisors of Louisiana State University (LSU) unanimously voted to remove the name of former university president Troy H. Middleton, whose 1961 correspondence stated his wish to keep the school segregated, from the LSU Library.

The urgent need for antiracism work, and fighting anti-Blackness in particular, inside the culture of librarianship as well as in our communities, was an important strand of content throughout the American Library Association (ALA) Virtual Conference last week. It echoed through new Executive Director Tracie Hall’s message to Monday’s Membership Meeting and to Council, ALA president Wanda Brown’s message, and the keynote presented by Fair Fight founder Stacey Abrams, as well as granular programming on how to operationalize antiracism work in libraries.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of [white] women’s suffrage and the 50th anniversary of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Social Responsibilities Round Table Feminist Task Force (FTF). In honor of both milestones, the ALA Virtual Conference panel “Herstory Through Activism: Women, Libraries, and Activism” offered a compelling look at the intersections of feminist activism in libraries, and how the current era of COVID-19 has changed the panelists’ priorities for urgent change. 

A live panel of transgender and nonbinary librarians and allies, held on June 24 at the American Library Association’s (ALA) virtual conference, offered an abundance of useful information and resources for libraries to better serve their transgender communities and ensure that transgender staff are comfortable in the workplace.

The importance of diversity and inclusion in librarianship is a common topic in LIS pedagogy today. Not long ago, that was far from the norm. However, in 1967 the University of Maryland’s School of Library and Information Sciences (SLIS) offered a comprehensive program that focused on topics designed to better serve the disadvantaged. It included an experimental library, High John, created and facilitated by SLIS in a predominately African American community named Fairmount Heights.

As the coronavirus makes internet access even more crucial for schooling, many jobs, and applying for unemployment, library staff have been working on creative solutions to bring access to thousands who would otherwise be without, moving beyond Wi-Fi in parking lots and cultivating external partnerships.

On May 18, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), ALA’s Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services (ODLOS), and the Public Library Association (PLA) announced the formation of the Building Cultural Proficiencies for Racial Equity Framework Task Force.

During the pinnacle of E.J. Josey’s leadership in the American Library Association (ALA), he fought two systems of institutionalized racism through democratizing librarianship: segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa.

On February 3, representatives of Macmillan and its imprint Flatiron Books met with leaders of Latinx advocacy movements #DignidadLiteraria and Presente.org to discuss issues of inequity within the publishing industry that have come to the fore with the publication of American Dirt.

At a Saturday afternoon session at the American Library Association (ALA) 2020 Midwinter meeting, a panel of librarians and community partners offered strategies on voter engagement to a well-attended audience of public, school, academic, and state librarians

Many libraries have established formal or informal policies to ensure the accessibility of licensed and library-created digital content, but libraries also report uncertainty regarding the responsibilities for auditing and enforcing such policies, according to the “LYRASIS 2019 Accessibility Survey Report.”

Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, associate professor and associate librarian at Medford Library, University of South Carolina–Lancaster, is the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2019 Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. Kendrick’s recent research into low morale quantifies the experiences of many academic librarians who are not getting the support that they need for success in this field.

A library director once told us that “the library does not need to be everything to all people, but it should provide something for everyone." Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important considerations when thinking about the composition of your library building.

The Leander Public Library (LPL), TX, has drawn criticism for proposed changes to meeting room and speaker policies—instituted not by the library, but by city government of this suburb north of Austin. LPL has been run by private library administrators Library Systems and Services since it was established as a city department in 2005. In the wake of several recent instances of programming deemed “controversial” by city leadership, amendments to library policy have drawn the attention of residents, city council members, and library and civil rights associations.

LJ’s 2019 Diverse Materials Survey reveals where efforts to build more representative and inclusive library collections are widespread, and where there are gaps.

On June 6, poet, essayist, playwright, and 2016 MacArthur Fellow Claudia Rankine launched the New York premiere of her first published play, a new one-act called The White Card, at the New York Public Library (NYPL) Steven A. Schwarzman building.

In the same way that fitness trackers offer reality checks for sedentary lifestyles, diversity audits cast light on the homogeneity embedded within library collections, providing data that identifies gaps in representations of race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and other traditionally marginalized perspectives.

What does it mean to be an antiracist? How can one strive toward social justice? Learn more with coverage of the first annual Antiracist Book Festival held at American University in Washington, DC, on Saturday, April 27, 2019.

A March 8 conference at Skokie Public Library, IL, “Defeating Bullies and Trolls in the Library: Developing Strategies to Protect our Rights and Personhood,” took on the issue of harassment of scholars doing work around equity and social justice, and the lack of support on the part of their institutions.

The most meaningful library programming comes out of community collaboration. This was certainly the case with Genderful!, a series that kicked off on October 14, 2017, at the Brooklyn Public Library as an event for children and caregivers to explore gender through art and creativity.