Improving Discovery of #OwnVoices Titles Without Segregating Books

Today I want to talk about how we allow diverse titles to be discovered by ALL readers, not just those who are specifically looking for them. This is a tricky issue. Of course we know that we need to buy diverse titles and we are beginning to understand that we have to suggest them [both actively by books talking and passively by putting them in lists and on displays], but we also need to make these titles discoverable by browsers on their own.

This brings up the issue of whether or not we should sticker #ownvoices titles or even pull them out into their own sections in order to make it easier for these titles to be found. I get questions about this all of the time. A few months ago, I got a specific one that the librarian [an Assistant Director in Oklahoma] agreed to let me share. From that email:

I have enjoyed your posts about diversity. My question is about genre stickers. We are working on increasing the level of diversity in our collection. Recently, we purchased some urban fiction. We have Urban Fiction genre stickers. We do not use genre stickers on most of our other items. While they are shelved with everything else, in your opinion, are these stickers a form of segregation?

This is an example of many similar questions that well meaning white librarians have when they are trying to increase the level of diversity in their collection. I get these questions via email and during my presentations all of the time.

The answer, however is tricky. If you are a library that uses a lot of genre stickers already, adding another one to call out a different type of book could be okay, although I would stay away from it personally in favor of an alternative I discuss below. If you do not already use stickers, starting for an #ownvoices or diverse area of books is segregation for sure. And, although it did not come up in this instance, NEVER NEVER NEVER pull out diverse books into their own section.

Why am I so against this? I know many of you are thinking, but if we want people to find these titles and check them out more, shouldn't we be "calling them out?" I also get the very reasonable question about LGBTQ titles since we know that some people want to find those books without asking for help. I will answer all of these concerns in a moment, but first here is why I am against stickering and making "diverse" sections.

When we sticker the #ownvoices books we are doing a few things. One, we are othering them. By placing a LGBTQ or Latinx sticker on a book we are implicitly saying that item is against the "norm." We don't sticker white, heterosexual books? So by sticking those that are not white or heterosexual, we are implicitly saying those are the standard. And by sticking those that are not the "norm" we are performing a microaggression against the items we have "othered." And that is clearly the opposite of what we are trying to do.

Two, these stickers are most often used to differentiate genres. The identity of the author is NOT a genre. Every single book no matter the identity of the author or characters fits into a genre that has nothing what so ever to do with identity. For example, SF or Romance don't have identity standards to their genres. Now in the question above, "Urban Fiction" is a genre, so that's one that could go either way. Again, I fall on the side of if you already sticker genres then add "Urban Fiction," but if you don't use them usually, don't start with a "black" genre. Again, that's a microaggression as I described above.

Third, when we sticker the diverse books or put them somewhere else, we will inevitably not allow the general browser to discover the title through serendipity on the shelf. We have placed them somewhere else, a place people have to go out of their way to find. We really should have books by all types of people shelved either all mixed up, or with their genre [depending on if you pull out genres or not]. This allows the full breadth of the human experience to be browsable in one place.

Okay, that is why I don't recommend stickering or separately shelving the books, but I know I still haven't answered the discoverability part of this equation. How are patrons who want to find these titles going to? And even more importantly, how are we going to get staff to identify appropriate own voices titles for their lists and displays if they can't easily find them too? As I mentioned yesterday, we want to strive toward including 30% diverse titles in every display and list, but if staff can't find those titles easily, will they go out of their way to do this?

Well thankfully it is 2019 and every single library has the perfect tool to solve this problem. And both staff and patrons already know how to use it.....the online catalog!

We need to use our digital catalogs more for RA. We need to add tags and keywords that pull out all of the things we would want to call attention to with a physical sticker in the catalog. Invest your time and energy into adding more of this kind of data into your cataloging so both library workers and patrons can discover titles they are specifically looking for in that manner. And, this means others who are just browsing won't be turned away by a "LGBTQ" sticker even though the blurb on the book looks like they would love it. Solving another complaint I hear from library staff, that patrons won't read books about people different from them. Look that has been proven completely false many times over [just glance at the best seller list today]. But I do know that if a book has a giant sticker saying Latinx, that makes even the most well meaning white readers think the book isn't for them. Without the sticker, there is a high chance it will be read by a wider range of readers with differing identities.

NoveList does a version of this with their tags for "culturally diverse" characters and "own voices" storylines. You can search their database by these terms just like you can search by tone, or pacing, or even genre.

I am a huge advocate of using the catalog for more RA in general. We can put all the stickers on a book digitally without covering the entire spine. And if a book is historical, and fantasy, and "own voices" we can mark all of that in the catalog without having to worry about the book spine looking like a mess. We can show patrons [and staff] how to use any keyword to help them find a good read. If we add more useful data to our catalogs, data that will help readers find their best good read, not just the data the out of touch LoC cataloging system tells us we are "allowed" to use, well then the catalog will become your best discovery tool. And last time I checked, that is the main goal of the catalog [card or digital] in the first place-- allowing people to find the items they were looking for.

[Side note: you can actually use whatever terms you want in YOUR catalog. No one will put you in library jail if you use the wrong word. Use the terms you think will work best in your community. You are not a library of record as the local public library. You are actually just the library of your tax payers. Use natural language words and terms that work for their needs.]