Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2020-06-07 02:00 am
silveradept) wrote2020-06-07 02:00 am
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TISHLILS(HIBPA): Who *shouldn't* be the Library of the Year for 2020
Today, apparently, is the perfect day for me to be salty about the presence of TERFs in places where they don't belong, and oh-my-gods how awful the library profession is about not kicking them out as swiftly and effectively as they can, because they believe other things are more important than their communities.
So, mostly just as a note, the author of the Harry Potter books was back on her TERF bullshit today. No links, because I'm not giving her the eyeballs and because she's got a big enough platform that you can find plenty of people yelling about her TERFy bullshit. So, at least at this point, about the only thing that I'm going to say that's good about the author of the Harry Potter series is that she's going to be the person who a generation of fans and fandom cites as the author they choose to exercise Death of the Author on. As far as I'm concerned, the novels are not particularly good fic about the story of a magical school and its inhabitants.
I doubt, however, that the library system is going to yank the books off the shelves because the author is terrible. They're still very popular, after all, and circulation statistics are one of the easy measures to point to as a way of justifying one's continued relevance in a world of shrinking budgets. We still carry Orson Scott Card, after all, and plenty of other books that have served this purpose for their generations. And if you ask librarians, you'll find that at least some of us have given thought to collection development and management and are weighing the pros and cons of putting popular books in the collection, putting books that represent the great variety of people respectfully (and preferably from people whose own origins are in that culture or community), and the tendency of librarians to want to put books that we think are good quality in front of our communities. Given how much librarians have been an institution for promoting very specific, very white, cis, het, Christian points of view, that instinct sometimes has to be squashed, rather than let out to say hello.
Libraries are also the kind of place that offer places for the community to gather, to do civic work, to meet, to organize, and to access resources that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for each individual to buy themselves. Most libraries have some sort of meeting space that can be reserved or rented by the public, and it is here where my opinion starts to have a lot of saline content.
Back in February (boy, that seems so long ago), the Seattle Public Library allowed a TERF group to use their meeting room (and charge admission to the event), despite a giant protest from the community and the staff of SPL, about what kind of legitimacy SPL would be granting to the group and what kind of harm would be done by letting the program go forward. At the time of the program, SPL chose to worship at the altar of the concept called intellectual freedom, a library idea that could be described scathingly as the Platonic ideal of both sides-ism, but is usually represented by the idea that all points of view are welcome in library spaces. SPL was also likely guided by court decisions and the American Library Association's interpretation of those court decisions that say if the library offers meeting room space, it can't discriminate who gets in and who gets out based on the ideological content of the meeting.
That said, most libraries also have policies that expressly prohibit behavior that would be harmful to library patrons. And, at least with regard to books, the library doesn't have to have all viewpoints on the shelf with each other. So there should certainly be room in the intellectual freedom idea to do things that are responsive to the needs and demands of the community to not feel threatened by the library.
What really makes this thing so further sideways for SPL is that they've been embarking on a multi-year project to be better connected to their communities and to be a more welcoming place on racial matters, to the point where many of the things they've put together are potentially exportable to other libraries.
SPL screwed up and caused a lot of damage between themselves and the local queer and trans community.
Library Journal, usually seen as the one of the flagship publications of the library profession, awarded Seattle Public their Library of the Year award for 2020, based on the work they've been doing for race. The original article, as you can see by the presence of the grey "correction" box, did not mention the TERF event at all while they were singing the praises of SPL. The closest they came to talking about any trans issues was an earlier problem regarding bathrooms and library users, but to read the original article, LJ apparenly didn't even think the TERF event was worth mentioning in their profile of SPL and the work that it's been doing on race and justice.
When confronted with a large outcry about how the publication could award SPL Library of the Year with an obvious stain on its record, the editor of the publication published a statement justifying their decision to award SPL the prize, saying that they believed SPL engaged the community appropriately and at length, and won the award based on the strength of the work they were doing on race along with this. And, although it's framed in the statement as the desire for a debate about intellectual freedom, LJ is very clearly giving SPL at least a pass because maximalist interpretations of intellectual freedom demand that libraries not turn away TERFs and other harmful views from the library because the library must not have an official opinion about any point of view.
Somehow a system that has apparently invested so much in doing work on race managed not to come to the conclusion that neutrality is not neutral and instead favors oppressors. And then take that conclusion and apply it to the same situation when it wasn't a racial lens things were being viewed through.
It's pretty clear that the low bar of trans people existing as full and complex humans wasn't cleared by SPL and LJ dug a hole to make sure they could get under it themselves, as Stephen G. Kreuger points out.
SPL has been doing a lot of good work on race. But they also really screwed up when it came to trans inclusion and being an organization that is responsive to their communities, and for that reason, some other library should have received the award for Library of the Year. Because the message being sent, even though I'm sure it's not intended, is that failing the trans community isn't a big deal, as if there aren't swaths of intersections and they would be surprised to find there are BIPOC who are also trans and who are also way more likely to be hurt for being BIPOC and trans.
Library and related professionals that would like to sign on to a petition demanding LJ revoke the award and give the prize money to the Gender Justice League of Washington may do so at https://tinyurl.com/LOTY2020sign. The editor of the publication also invited people to contact her and to write opinion pieces against the decision. The petition managers would especially like peopple who have been named as Movers and Shakers to join this demand, and to further demand that LJ revoke their Mover and Shaker awards if they're not going to revoke Seattle's Library of the Year Award.
As Fobazi Ettarh points out, though, it's worth leaving on your resume / CV, asterisked, because even if you won't claim it, the Mover and Shaker carries weight and authority with it, and for people who are already at a disadvantage at getting to the library world or being taken seriously in it, putting additional voluntary barriers in the way doesn't help.
I can't say that my organization would have done anything differently by ideology on this matter. I can say that when I put this question to them, the managers said they wouldn't find any reason to tell the TERF group to get lost, either, because of the way that intellectual freedom is interpreted. (And because no library wants to get sued again for a case they probably feel they would lose on First Amendment grounds.) I happen to feel taht my organization is lucky in that many of our policies about meeting rooms keep us protected from having our rooms used in such a way, because our rooms say that people can't charge money for their programs and that all programs in the library have to be open to the public. A hate group wouldn't be able to guarantee a friendly audience for their program, and if things got too rowdy, the staff is entirely authorized to shut the whole thing down and throw everybody out. So we might not get too many large and well-publicized groups using our rooms.
All of this is poking at the larger question that I'm trying to get my own organization to see - we can't be both an organization that wants to be deeply invested in the community and responsive to their needs and an organization that prioritizes abstract Platonic forms of concepts that help perpetuate structural problems. And if the American Library Association were any kind of organization that actually gave a good goddamn about library workers and users and were committed to doing the work of examining and undoing the history of oppression shot through the entire profession, then librarians might be able to push harder to get their own organizations to do the same and pivot away from being the people who believe themselves the enlightened bringing the culture and resources to the masses to being a community organization that helps the people around them achieve their goals.
Initially, I got in to this profession because it's one of the few spaces where I can be silly in front of small children and get paid for it. And then I stayed in because children and teens deserve straight answers to the questions they're asking, with resources that will tell them what they want to know, without bullshit or interference. And then I stayed in because there's real value in seeing a library worker who doesn't look like a Nice White Lady, even if it's only that they look like a Nice White Dude instead.
And now I'm staying in because holy fuck do we have a lot of work to do. Because I know there are going to be people, and probably even some in my own library system, that think LJ didn't do anything wrong with their award. That, bless their hearts, still probably don't understand why a group of Black teenagers would have their phones recording for any interaction they might have with the mostly white staff and think the teens don't have a point when they complain about all the scrutiny and consequences they suffer in the library space.
That still can't fucking get my pronouns right and have told me to my face that they don't intend to try.
The best that I can hope for myself is that when I screw it up, that I will not get defensive, that I will learn and I will process away from the people who do not need to have me demand their additional labor to making me feel better.
And that when others screw it up and genuinely want to learn and to avoid screwing it up again, that I can help them come to a better understanding, so that they are also not making demands of time and energy from the people they hurt to comfort and reassure them.
If I can manage to take some of that burden off, and to not contribute extra burden through my own faults, then that, at least, will be a start.
So no, SPL isn't the Library of the Year. Some other library that is doing the work and achieving good results without throwing their community to the WOLFs is. Whomever they are, wherever they are, congratulations to them. Keep it up.
So, mostly just as a note, the author of the Harry Potter books was back on her TERF bullshit today. No links, because I'm not giving her the eyeballs and because she's got a big enough platform that you can find plenty of people yelling about her TERFy bullshit. So, at least at this point, about the only thing that I'm going to say that's good about the author of the Harry Potter series is that she's going to be the person who a generation of fans and fandom cites as the author they choose to exercise Death of the Author on. As far as I'm concerned, the novels are not particularly good fic about the story of a magical school and its inhabitants.
I doubt, however, that the library system is going to yank the books off the shelves because the author is terrible. They're still very popular, after all, and circulation statistics are one of the easy measures to point to as a way of justifying one's continued relevance in a world of shrinking budgets. We still carry Orson Scott Card, after all, and plenty of other books that have served this purpose for their generations. And if you ask librarians, you'll find that at least some of us have given thought to collection development and management and are weighing the pros and cons of putting popular books in the collection, putting books that represent the great variety of people respectfully (and preferably from people whose own origins are in that culture or community), and the tendency of librarians to want to put books that we think are good quality in front of our communities. Given how much librarians have been an institution for promoting very specific, very white, cis, het, Christian points of view, that instinct sometimes has to be squashed, rather than let out to say hello.
Libraries are also the kind of place that offer places for the community to gather, to do civic work, to meet, to organize, and to access resources that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for each individual to buy themselves. Most libraries have some sort of meeting space that can be reserved or rented by the public, and it is here where my opinion starts to have a lot of saline content.
Back in February (boy, that seems so long ago), the Seattle Public Library allowed a TERF group to use their meeting room (and charge admission to the event), despite a giant protest from the community and the staff of SPL, about what kind of legitimacy SPL would be granting to the group and what kind of harm would be done by letting the program go forward. At the time of the program, SPL chose to worship at the altar of the concept called intellectual freedom, a library idea that could be described scathingly as the Platonic ideal of both sides-ism, but is usually represented by the idea that all points of view are welcome in library spaces. SPL was also likely guided by court decisions and the American Library Association's interpretation of those court decisions that say if the library offers meeting room space, it can't discriminate who gets in and who gets out based on the ideological content of the meeting.
That said, most libraries also have policies that expressly prohibit behavior that would be harmful to library patrons. And, at least with regard to books, the library doesn't have to have all viewpoints on the shelf with each other. So there should certainly be room in the intellectual freedom idea to do things that are responsive to the needs and demands of the community to not feel threatened by the library.
What really makes this thing so further sideways for SPL is that they've been embarking on a multi-year project to be better connected to their communities and to be a more welcoming place on racial matters, to the point where many of the things they've put together are potentially exportable to other libraries.
SPL screwed up and caused a lot of damage between themselves and the local queer and trans community.
Library Journal, usually seen as the one of the flagship publications of the library profession, awarded Seattle Public their Library of the Year award for 2020, based on the work they've been doing for race. The original article, as you can see by the presence of the grey "correction" box, did not mention the TERF event at all while they were singing the praises of SPL. The closest they came to talking about any trans issues was an earlier problem regarding bathrooms and library users, but to read the original article, LJ apparenly didn't even think the TERF event was worth mentioning in their profile of SPL and the work that it's been doing on race and justice.
When confronted with a large outcry about how the publication could award SPL Library of the Year with an obvious stain on its record, the editor of the publication published a statement justifying their decision to award SPL the prize, saying that they believed SPL engaged the community appropriately and at length, and won the award based on the strength of the work they were doing on race along with this. And, although it's framed in the statement as the desire for a debate about intellectual freedom, LJ is very clearly giving SPL at least a pass because maximalist interpretations of intellectual freedom demand that libraries not turn away TERFs and other harmful views from the library because the library must not have an official opinion about any point of view.
Somehow a system that has apparently invested so much in doing work on race managed not to come to the conclusion that neutrality is not neutral and instead favors oppressors. And then take that conclusion and apply it to the same situation when it wasn't a racial lens things were being viewed through.
It's pretty clear that the low bar of trans people existing as full and complex humans wasn't cleared by SPL and LJ dug a hole to make sure they could get under it themselves, as Stephen G. Kreuger points out.
SPL has been doing a lot of good work on race. But they also really screwed up when it came to trans inclusion and being an organization that is responsive to their communities, and for that reason, some other library should have received the award for Library of the Year. Because the message being sent, even though I'm sure it's not intended, is that failing the trans community isn't a big deal, as if there aren't swaths of intersections and they would be surprised to find there are BIPOC who are also trans and who are also way more likely to be hurt for being BIPOC and trans.
Library and related professionals that would like to sign on to a petition demanding LJ revoke the award and give the prize money to the Gender Justice League of Washington may do so at https://tinyurl.com/LOTY2020sign. The editor of the publication also invited people to contact her and to write opinion pieces against the decision. The petition managers would especially like peopple who have been named as Movers and Shakers to join this demand, and to further demand that LJ revoke their Mover and Shaker awards if they're not going to revoke Seattle's Library of the Year Award.
As Fobazi Ettarh points out, though, it's worth leaving on your resume / CV, asterisked, because even if you won't claim it, the Mover and Shaker carries weight and authority with it, and for people who are already at a disadvantage at getting to the library world or being taken seriously in it, putting additional voluntary barriers in the way doesn't help.
I can't say that my organization would have done anything differently by ideology on this matter. I can say that when I put this question to them, the managers said they wouldn't find any reason to tell the TERF group to get lost, either, because of the way that intellectual freedom is interpreted. (And because no library wants to get sued again for a case they probably feel they would lose on First Amendment grounds.) I happen to feel taht my organization is lucky in that many of our policies about meeting rooms keep us protected from having our rooms used in such a way, because our rooms say that people can't charge money for their programs and that all programs in the library have to be open to the public. A hate group wouldn't be able to guarantee a friendly audience for their program, and if things got too rowdy, the staff is entirely authorized to shut the whole thing down and throw everybody out. So we might not get too many large and well-publicized groups using our rooms.
All of this is poking at the larger question that I'm trying to get my own organization to see - we can't be both an organization that wants to be deeply invested in the community and responsive to their needs and an organization that prioritizes abstract Platonic forms of concepts that help perpetuate structural problems. And if the American Library Association were any kind of organization that actually gave a good goddamn about library workers and users and were committed to doing the work of examining and undoing the history of oppression shot through the entire profession, then librarians might be able to push harder to get their own organizations to do the same and pivot away from being the people who believe themselves the enlightened bringing the culture and resources to the masses to being a community organization that helps the people around them achieve their goals.
Initially, I got in to this profession because it's one of the few spaces where I can be silly in front of small children and get paid for it. And then I stayed in because children and teens deserve straight answers to the questions they're asking, with resources that will tell them what they want to know, without bullshit or interference. And then I stayed in because there's real value in seeing a library worker who doesn't look like a Nice White Lady, even if it's only that they look like a Nice White Dude instead.
And now I'm staying in because holy fuck do we have a lot of work to do. Because I know there are going to be people, and probably even some in my own library system, that think LJ didn't do anything wrong with their award. That, bless their hearts, still probably don't understand why a group of Black teenagers would have their phones recording for any interaction they might have with the mostly white staff and think the teens don't have a point when they complain about all the scrutiny and consequences they suffer in the library space.
That still can't fucking get my pronouns right and have told me to my face that they don't intend to try.
The best that I can hope for myself is that when I screw it up, that I will not get defensive, that I will learn and I will process away from the people who do not need to have me demand their additional labor to making me feel better.
And that when others screw it up and genuinely want to learn and to avoid screwing it up again, that I can help them come to a better understanding, so that they are also not making demands of time and energy from the people they hurt to comfort and reassure them.
If I can manage to take some of that burden off, and to not contribute extra burden through my own faults, then that, at least, will be a start.
So no, SPL isn't the Library of the Year. Some other library that is doing the work and achieving good results without throwing their community to the WOLFs is. Whomever they are, wherever they are, congratulations to them. Keep it up.