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 African American 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.


I would ultimately decide against separating these works from the rest of the fiction section.

The first reason is the simplest, non-controversial reason--we do not have the available shelf space to do so.  The branch library I work at serves a small, rural community.  The Main library, while much larger, still could not be called "large."  Shelving has been arranged in a way that maxes out our available space while remaining aesthetically pleasing.  All fiction titles are interfiled with each other, and no genre gets its own unit.  There is simply no space to arrange specialized shelving, or at least not in a way that would make sense and seem appealing.

I also agree that separating out the GBLTQ and African American fiction borders on segregation.  One of our articles this week, "Urban Grit," hits on this--why would we shelve a Toni Morrison next to a Relentless Aaron?  Purely on the basis that both authors are black?  That seems ridiculous to me, and I'm sure many others.  Pulling authors' works and grouping them together based solely on their minority status may send the signal that their work is not considered equal.  To group them separately would be ignoring all other appeal factors within the novel and saying "it's just about homosexuality" or "it's just about the Black experience."  If the novels were to remain interfiled with the rest of the fiction, they may be found and judged (hopefully) on the appeal factors of the story.

The third reason is similar to the second reason.  Not only could the authors of these works receive the wrong message of how their writing is valued, it can send the wrong message to the readers as well.  We serve a rather uniform community that is beginning to grow in its diversity, yet there are still pockets of extreme conservatism.  One of my fears is that separation of GBLTQ and street lit would send the message of "only gays or African Americans would be interested in this," and the other fear is that it would also say "only gays or African Americans should read this."  In the first case, I think that would be a shame, if a reader ignored a title because they think it wasn't for them or wouldn't appeal to them as it's not their life.  That's one of the main points of reading!  Vicariously experiencing another's life and gaining a new perspective or even empathy.  In the second case, it could be bad for the reader's actual well-being.  A lot of my work is focused on our little teen area, and I do make a concentrated effort to have an inclusive collection in our branch.  It wasn't all that long ago I was in high school either and I can remember how kids who either were gay or were suspected of being gay were downright bullied.  I can't imagine a questioning teen browsing a section of GBLTQ literature; it'd be putting a spotlight on their back!  However, were titles by gay authors, or with gay characters, interfiled with the rest of the fiction...a patron could search with discretion.

I would absolutely support creating displays that highlight GBLTQ and African American authors, because every patron needs to know that the library supports having a diversity of voices in its collection.  However, I do not think separating out those titles permanently from the rest of the collection sends the right messages to our patrons.