Examining our collection: How do we respond when professional library publications fall short?
As your iSchool Collections Librarian, I received a request to reconsider our subscriptions to two influential trade publications, Library Journal (LJ) and School Library Journal (SLJ), in response to recent editorial decisions. I want to provide some context on these controversies, explain how I’ve approached this request to reconsider, and share my thoughts as they stand today.
Last month, School Library Journal published a cover story, “Why white children need diverse books,” that centered the needs of white children during Black History Month. The accompanying illustration features a white child, holding in front of their face a book illustration of a black child’s face. As Nicole Cardoza and others have argued, the illustration is a form of blackface and it implies that white children can “try on” or adopt BIPOC identities and lived experiences as their own. Last summer, Library Journal (LJ) awarded its Library of the Year award to Seattle Public Library, which had recently made headlines for its innovative, community-led racial equity and justice initiative and for its decision to allow a known transphobic group to hold public meetings in their space, despite calls from transgender community members and library staff to cancel the event. In each instance, the response from the editorial board did little to address the harm done by their decisions.
Before I get into specifics, I want to disentangle this discussion from the idea of neutrality. It isn’t a question of neutrality–there’s nothing neutral about a magazine cover that centers white children during Black History Month or an award honoring a library without acknowledging that it hid behind intellectual freedom in the face of transphobic hate. Statements from executive leadership that suggest otherwise are hollow. Moreover, no response I take as your Collections Librarian is neutral.
With that in mind, I began by investigating our existing subscriptions to each magazine, both print and electronic. Institutional subscriptions are a complicated mess of budget lines. I learned that UW-Madison has access to these publications through a few different publication and database subscriptions. The iSchool Library is responsible for only a few points of access. If I cancel the iSchool’s subscriptions, UW-Madison Libraries is still paying for access through other subscriptions and package deals. Beyond the question of whether I can stop our subscriptions, I struggle with whether I should. My mind isn’t firmly made up, but here are my thoughts.
In each case, I thought first about the material itself, both the specific content under scrutiny and the broader publication. What was published? Whose voices do I need to attend to in this space? What impacts do I need to acknowledge? Despite objectionable editorial decisions, LJ and SLJ have also served as important, widely read platforms for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ librarians who are doing anti-oppression work. Pieces such as Cicely Lewis’s Read Woke series in SLJ and others come to mind. But this assumes that BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors will continue to contribute to these publications–an assumption I’m not comfortable making without further evidence. Prominent librarians and LIS scholars, such as Dr. Nicole A. Cooke, have withdrawn from upcoming SLJ events and commitments, suggesting folks in the profession may wish to sever ties.
I also thought about the role of the iSchool Library and the place of its serials collection. What is our collection? Why do we collect these things in the first place? What is their role in the curriculum of the iSchool and its broader educational mission? How does the collection reflect the LIS profession’s relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
Our collection is one of few nationally that takes librarianship and library and information science as its scope. We have complete print runs of over 150 research and professional periodicals in the field of library and information studies. We collect these materials to support the teaching, learning, and research missions of our department, which means that they exist both to inform our professional practice and to serve as materials of study, inquiry, and, most importantly, criticism.
Librarianship is a field that is just beginning to come to terms with its prevailing culture of whiteness, oppression, and exclusion. Not everyone contributing to LIS discourse is at the same place in this process. The iSchool Library collection represents very public conversations in our field and many of the views expressed in this exchange, past and present, are biased and dehumanizing. That these ideas continue to hold weight in the LIS profession is shameful; it calls on those with privilege(s) available to them to respond. Within collections like ours, materials such as the February 2021 issue of SLJ serve as evidence of the biases and oppression that persist.
Speaking for library staff, we recognize that our collection includes materials that do not represent our own personal or professional beliefs. Though it is nearly impossible for library staff to identify each and every item in our collection that could cause harm, we can commit to the following:
- Acknowledge the various privileges with which we approach our work and remain responsive and engaged in these conversations.
- Develop a process to contextualize historical and contemporary examples of oppression and white supremacy as they are discovered in our collection.
- Monitor how publications address issues of bias and take responsibility when they cause harm.
I want to continue this conversation. This note is a start, but it’s not the end. If you have any thoughts you’d like to share, please contribute to the ongoing iSchool Library Padlet or submit comments anonymously to this Google Form.