Week 14 Prompt

Consider yourself part of the collection management committee of your local library, or a library at which you would like to work. You must decide whether or not to separate GBLTQ fiction and Urban Fiction from the general collection to its own special place. Some patrons have requested this, yet many staff are uncomfortable with the idea - saying it promotes segregation and disrupts serendipitous discovery of an author who might be different from the reader. Do you separate them? Do you separate one and not the other? Why or why not? You must provide at least 3 reasons for or against your decision. Feel free to use outside sources - this is a weighty question that is answered differently in a lot of different libraries. Also, it's been in the news recently. These articles (and the comments) can help you get a feel for the issue:

In our library, we don’t have a lot of space, even with the upcoming expansion.  Up until now, we have had westerns, mystery, and sci-fi set up in their own areas.  Also, Youth Mature as well as Youth Mature graphic novels also have their own space.  What we have noticed, and per our cataloging staff-member, it is sometimes difficult to catalog a series.  Within the series, a book may lean more towards sci-fi, or mystery, and if she goes by what World Cat classifies it as, the series may end up split between different genres.  So, after a lot of discussion at staff meetings, we have decided to blend the entire collection into fiction.  There will be spine labels that identify a book as a specific genre, but this way, all books by the same author will be housed together.  If a patron is interested in a specific author, they will no longer have to hunt and peck through 3 and possibly 4 different sections.  (We are retaining the Youth Mature section since that is the blend of High School and New Adult materials; but all genres are blended together in that section as well.)

So, this brings me to the GBLTQ fiction and Urban Fiction.  I would blend this into the fiction as well, and include spine labels that identify them as such.  On top of that, I would ask the cataloguer to include the proper Library of Congress Subject Headings to help patrons when searching for the materials:  Urban fiction, American and Sexual Minorities.  It would be helpful to identify those categories when doing a catalog search.   

I am using personal experience as my primary source.  I live in a small, rural, conservative town.  No one really cares about a person’s sexuality; we have prominent positions held by people in the LGBTQ community and no one harasses them or otherwise; flower shop owners, tourism bureau director, church deacons, politicians… no one really cares.  Since we are a conservative community, no one really cares but we also do not have community members out “pushing agendas” that are conservative OR liberal in nature either.  We are a tight knit community that genuinely cares about people more than what a person may be labeled.  In a world where we are trying to get rid of labels, we sure do seem to be all about labels. 

My three primary reasons for integrating:

1.      Inclusivity

Even though we are in a small town and no one really cares about what people do, we prefer to have patrons comfortable in the library looking at whatever material they choose.  It might be awkward for a person to shop around in a LGBTQ section when all of our other genres are integrated.  Instead of treating the material as being inclusive in our collection, it would seem that we were singling it out…and it would be up to a person’s personal interest whether the singling out was positive or negative.

2.      Visibility

With it being included in the general collection with the rest of the fiction, we would make sure to include spine labels to help guide the patrons who just browse the shelves.  Right now we have: Christian fiction, Amish, Sci-Fi, Horror, Romance, Mystery, and Westerns spine labels.  It would be very easy to include LGBTQ and Urban Fic on a spine label as well.  If a person is turned on to an author, it is great to have ALL of an author’s works together rather than hunting around the library.  It would help the shelf browser patron easily identify subject matter.

3.      Searchability

Since we are integrating our collection, it would be a great time for our cataloguer to include the subject headings I stated earlier in my prompt post.  On top of that, we could include in our promotional material Subject Headings that patrons may use to search and find separate genres: Sexual Minorities and Urban Fiction, America.  It would be very easy to post those near the OPACs, make bookmarks, newsletters, calendars, posters… a little bit of signage and promotional materials goes a long way with educating patrons.