#librarish

I wrote a guest blog for Gay YA, which posted today:

I’m not a young adult librarian, but I’m a longtime reader of young adult fiction, particularly stories that feature lesbian characters. As a reader, I can confirm that we’ve come a long way since the days of having to (as recently described by Mary at Queer Books Please) scour mainstream books for some hint of queer content. My coming of age and coming out was largely done in pre-internet days, when often the best you could do was manufacture your own subtext. Although it’s still inconsistent and problematic, YA fiction is increasingly diverse. According to the book Serving Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens, five to six percent of American teens identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and eighty percent of teens know someone who does. For questioning teens, the public library should be a safe space in which they can to find stories and resources to help them articulate their identities.

Unfortunately, librarians have not always made it easy to find information. Censorship–in the form of simply not purchasing materials that might be considered “controversial”–has always been a problem. People often take it upon themselves to challenge books with any queer content in the name of protecting “the children,” which can bring negative publicity to a library. In addition, catalogers have the option to make items more or less discoverable in a library catalog, depending on the subject headings they choose to add to an item’s record. For teens, who are among the least likely to approach a librarian, being able to find books for themselves is extremely important. Items having to do with sex and sexuality are often among those that are used (not to mention stolen) anonymously at the library–read clandestinely and not necessarily checked out.

I don’t mean to sound as if the situation is dire and there are no LGBTQ resources to be found in most libraries. However, I do believe that there is more that librarians AND library patrons can do to improve the quantity and visibility of these materials in library collections.

For everyone:

Use your local library!

Request materials. Let your librarians know–through purchase requests, in-person recommendations, or even through the items that you are getting via interlibrary loan–that there is a demand for these materials.

Donate your old, unwanted, and duplicate copies of LGBTQ fiction and other materials.

Give someone a gift by donating a book to the library in their name. A friend of mine donated a copy of Leah Petersen’s book Fighting Gravity to my library to thank me for something I had helped her with. You can support both the library and worthy authors this way.

Participate in library events, such as the summer reading program.

Support your library if and when it becomes involved in a public book challenge. Write an editorial to your local newspaper, if you have to!

  For librarians: 

Order those materials! There are plenty of well-reviewed, award-winning books that you can purchase for the library. Purchase items to meet a variety of needs and interests, even if you haven’t seen any evidence of them. These teens may not speak up, but they exist in your community, and the materials should be there when they look for them.

Create displays that showcase the items in your collection, making it clear that the library is a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQ teens. Actively solicit suggestions for purchases of new materials.

Read some of these books! If you don’t have the time to read, check out reviews here at Gay YA or at other sites like I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell do I Read?, Queer YA, and Rainbow Books. Be prepared to offer recommendations.

Have your policies and your Request for Reconsideration form ready to meet any challenges. Train your staff on how to respond to complaints. Preparation and justification is the best defense in a challenge situation.

Giving readers what they want is complicated:

Following my own advice from yesterday’s post on collection maintenance, I checked in and organized all the young adult graphic novels (with the blessing of the YA librarian). Leaving aside the manga for another day, I estimate that we have over 400 YA graphic novels. Upon checking them in, I found:

- 19 items marked “missing” - 3 items marked “lost” - 4 items with holds - 2 items with notes/cataloging problems - 2 graphic novels from the adult collection - 1 YA paperback - 1 item marked “display”

I also pulled out several items to potentially move to another part of the library (e.g., a Garfield collection that could go live with the other Garfield collections). The process took less than three hours, for which I was also on desk.

So, you've ordered the books, and they're on the shelves! And you weed them occasionally. Maybe you even weed them on a set schedule, instead of when the shelves are overflowing and the pages start pleading with you to do something about them! Aside from weeding, here are some steps I recommend doing as frequently as possible to make sure that your collection looks presentable and is represented accurately in the catalog. As always, I recommend approaching your collection in manageable chunks, which for this exercise should be 1,000 items or less. If you're low on time, run a list of the items in one part of the collection that have "trouble" or out of the ordinary statuses:

missing

lost or lost and paid

billed

claims returned

in process

repair

in transit

Go through (or send a minion, if you are lucky enough to have minions) and look for these trouble items. You'd be surprised how many of these items are actually sitting on the shelf where they're supposed to be. While you're browsing for these items, pull anything off the shelf that looks like it's in serious need of repair, and also anything that is incorrectly shelved. Before reshelving them in the right place, make sure to check those items in, following one of my favorite rules of thumb:

If you're touching it anyway, you might as well check it in to make sure all is well.

  This rule applies to picking books up off of tables (internal use), books coming off displays and going back to the shelves, books that you found shoved at an awkward angle on top of other books in a back corner of the library...

If you have more time, or are focusing on a relatively small part of the collection, I recommend checking in every book. I know! This sounds like a lot of work, especially if you have to haul the books back and forth between the shelf and the scanner. I'll give you my example, and then you can tell me that I'm crazy. 

I'm about to do one of my twice-yearly graphic novel orders for the adult collection. I order 30-40 items at a time, and the collection currently includes about 700 items (including some Spanish-language items). Over the course of three to four hours (some off-desk and some on), I put them all in order, checked them all in, and shifted them to make room for new items. I touched all the books. I got a good idea of what series I needed to check on for new titles, I repaired several items, and I checked the circulation of a few I had been tentative about to see whether they were going out (they weren't). Handling the books jogged my memory in a few cases, and I made some notes on what to order (and what not to order again).

In addition to the items I repaired, I also found:

Four items marked "lost" or "lost/paid"

One item marked "claims returned"

Four items with holds on them

Twenty-one items marked "missing"

Three Spanish language graphic novels without "Español" stickers

One item missing a digit in its record, causing it to come up as "mis-cataloged"

Several items that needed to be reclassified or relabeled

Now, tidying the status of 34+ items may not seem that exciting, but that's almost 5% of my collection, and now I don't have to think about repurchasing those not-really-missing items when I place my order. It took some time, but I believe it will be worthwhile in the long run, and for once the section is actually in order (until the library opens).

I was listening to the radio, which had a little spot with an excited person (or "person," who knows) saying something along the lines of "I just love the radio, that's how I discover new music!"

Libraries are the radio of books.* Except with better stations.