"Libraries are for everyone"

I've always really enjoyed libraries. I often visit them when I'm on holidays or travelling. Some of my fondest childhood memories involved visits to the local public library. My first library card was a piece of laminated paper with my name written on it in Biro. My mother kept it in her purse for safekeeping until I was older. I progressed from picture books, to young adult novels, to adult fiction as I grew up. I also loved to browse through the non-fiction section, often starting at 001 and working my way through to 999. I taught myself how to make pasta from scratch, create a weekly budget, write in calligraphic text, and I read about the lives of amazing women like Catherine the Great, Teresa of Avila, Louisa Casati, Margaretha Geertruida and many others. At primary school I helped re-shelve returned books in the school library. As I got older I made trips into the nearby city to visit the State Library where I could dip into their collection of old films (the original 1922 Nosferatu was a favourite find). At university the Social Science library quickly became my favourite place on campus. I found a particular row (somewhere between BF and BL in the Library of Congress Classification system used there) where I liked to sit down on the floor and read. I spent late nights there frantically trying to make up for procrastination. Sometimes I visited the biology library, or the small library where the theses were held. My whole world changed when I discovered Inter Library Loans and the new and exciting books they could provide me with.

A photograph of the QLD State Library interior. Kgbo [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

So apart from a few unpleasant experiences during my working life, libraries have always felt like positive and welcome places to me. But I want to point out that my experiences of libraries have been influenced by many layers of privilege. And on the final day of Libraries Week - when prompted to discuss what libraries mean to me - this is something that I want to reflect on. Contrary to popular belief, libraries have not always been inclusive places. For much of history reading, writing, and places of learning were luxuries afforded to the wealthy. In these environments, women, children, and those from different faith traditions were actively excluded.

More recently and in living memory, colonialism, apartheid, and institutionalised racism saw black and minority ethnic (BME) people systematically ostracised from academic and public libraries across the world. Weigand and Weigand recently published The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, which charts segregated libraries until the mid-sixties. While the library provision for Black and white Americans was separate, it was in no way equal. Some separate public libraries were established for people for colour, but they were provisioned with ageing stock, often withdrawals from the white-only public libraries. It took the Civil Rights Act in 1964 for American public libraries to open their doors to BME. More recently, public libraries in America have considered "defensive architecture" to make them less-appealing to homeless communities (Gee, 2017). In the United Kingdom, public libraries can still be characterised as places of institutionalised classism. Muddiman and colleagues undertook an in-depth study of British public libraries in 2000 and found that relative to their percentage of the population, "public libraries are used to a disproportionate extent by the middle class... In the this sense public libraries are not socially inclusive" (p. 13).

Inequality in libraries has not been limited to their users either. While the founder of the American Library Association (ALA) Melvil Dewey was responsible for several advances in the world of librarianship (such as the first library for the blind, and the admittance of women into his University programmes) he is also remembered for his serial harassment of women within the workplace (Beck, 1996; Wiegand, 1996). The low rate of pay for female library staff compared to their male counterparts also made them attractive employees at the time (Garrison, 1972). Recent data shows that in the information professions, women and BME people are still disproportionately underrepresented in the workforce and the phenomenon of the "glass escalator" is still pervasive in libraries (Gohr, 2017). For example, despite women making up nearly 80% of the workforce in the information professions, they occupy significantly fewer senior positions (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals [CILIP] & Archives and Records Association UK and Ireland [ARA], 2015; Department for Professional Employees, 2016; Olin & Millet, 2015; Shute, 2013).

Finally, the practices of libraries themselves are windows into a world of systematic bigotry. Different library classifications systems have at one point or another cast judgement on minority groups. The Dewey Decimal System had decimal headings for "Savages: races divided by practices" "Color in man" and "Monstrosities" grouped together (Adler, 2017). Works on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans topics were shelved under "abnormal sexual relations" or "social problems" adjacent to works on pornography and obscenity. The Library of Congress classification system was not better. The section that I spent so much time in during my Undergraduate degree is heavily skewed in favour of Christianity, and makes little room for classifying works about indigenous religion for example. Context is necessary in classification, but it also takes implicit judgements about the world and makes them real in the experiences of library users.

To say that libraries are places of inclusion is to wilfully ignore the past and present roles that they have played in institutionalised oppression. Libraries have purposefully excluded minority groups from their premises. Minority groups are systematically underrepresented in Library employees. Finally, library systems have further marginalised minority groups through their classification and treatment. Recognising the historic and present injustices in libraries and information professions does not prevent us from improving and overcoming them. In fact, progress towards building truly inclusive libraries cannot happen without confronting this reality. Discussing the lack of diversity and equality training in modern library and information science education, Cooke and Minarik (2016) note that “successfully serving racially and otherwise socially diverse individuals and groups is an issue of fairness and/or social justice, and requires skills of empathy and perspective-taking, as well as the knowledge needed for critically conscious and culturally competent practice,” (p. 187).

To fully contribute to inclusion we must, as information professionals, confront the realities of our own biases and those of the wider profession. So when we say "libraries are for everyone" lets first take a moment to remember how much work it took to be able to make that statement - and how much work we still have to do.

References

Adler, M. (2017). Classification along the color line: Excavating racism in the stacks. Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, 1(1), 1–32. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v1i1.17

Beck, C. (1996). A “private” grievance against Dewey. American Libraries Magazine, 27(1), 62–65. 

Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals [CILIP], & Archives and Records Association UK and Ireland [ARA]. (2015). A study of the UK information workforce: Mapping the library, archives, records, information management and knowledge management and related professions. London. Retrieved from http://www.cilip.org.uk/about/projects-reviews/workforce-mapping

Cooke, A., & Minarik, J. D. (2016). Linking LIS graduate study and social identity as a social justice issues: Preparing students for critically conscious practice. In B. Mehra & K. Rioux (Eds.), Progressive community action: Critical theory and social justice in library and information science (pp. 181–214). Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press.

Department for Professional Employees. (2016). Library workers: Facts and figures. DPE-AFL-CIO Fact Sheet 2016. Retrieved from http://dpeaflcio.org/programs-publications/issue-fact-sheets/library-workers-facts-figures/

Garrison, D. (1972). The tender technicians: The feminization of public librarianship , 1876-1905. Journal of Social History, 6(2), 131–159. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3786606%0D

Gee, Alistair (2017). Homeless people have found safety in a library – but locals want them gone. The Guardian. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/24/libraries-homelessness-deter-landscape-designs-san-francisco

Gohr, M. (2017). Ethnic and racial diversity in libraries. Journal of Radical Librarianship, 3, 42–58. Retrieved from https://journal.radicallibrarianship.org/index.php/journal/article/view/5

Muddiman, D., Durrani, S., Dutch, M., Linley, R., Pateman, J., & Vincent, J. (2000). Open to all? The public library and social exclusion. Retrieved from http://eprints.rclis.org/6283/1/lic084.pdf

Olin, J., & Millet, M. (2015). Gendered expectations for leadership in libraries. In The Library With the Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/libleadgender/

Shute, G. (2013). Gender ratios in library management ('directorship’) roles in New Zealand public and tertiary libraries. (Master’s Thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10063/3055

Wiegand, W. A. (1996). Irrepressible reformer: A biography of Melvil Dewey. Chicago, IL: American Library Association