Over the next 2 days, I am hoping to elaborate on a few ideas I bring up in that presentations, ideas that I have not expanded upon here on the blog before. [Some of the posts in which I have expanded upon some of the ideas in the talk are linked in the slides or you can use the tag diversity to pull up everything.]
A lot of the presentation is about me and my journey to understanding how I could do better, how I came to more consciously and intentionally view my RA work through an EDI lens all of the time. One of the reasons I focus so intensely on myself is that I, a binary white lady, am typical of the vast mass of us...librarians. And since I am talking to librarians, I want to make sure everyone participating in this program understands that it is about them, not some other racist person who they know. Nope, them and me, you, and all of us. I don't allow any room for hiding.
I give examples of others who have worked to put EDI values at the forefront and one of the most vocal and fearless in this quest is Book Riot. Many people in libraries have a lot of varied opinions about this resource, but I am on the record as advocating for it's use with our readers for a variety on reasons. Here are but 3. One, because it speaks directly to readers and most of our library resources speak to us, the library worker first and imply the reader will get help from that. Two, because they jump on trends very quickly providing us with lists we can use immediately to help readers.
But it is number 3 for which they have gotten the most flack. And this is the reason I support them and now, use them as a role model in my own work.
Three, Book Riot has in their mission this statement:
Because we value diversity and representation, we set editorial standards on our lists that reflect current census and population data, which illustrate a far more diverse country and world than might be presumed based on publishing numbers and statistics. When we can’t find enough authors from marginalized communities to meet these standards, we take the opportunity to critically examine why this might be.I reached out to a Book Riot editor, Kelly Jensen, and she said [and that I could quote her for the org] their editorial standard for all lists is a minimum of 30% diversity.
This means everything they do considers EDI issues. They understand that we need to fight against the years of microaggressions and a mindset that makes white, heteronormative, abled body books a "norm" and others all else.
As you can imagine, they have gotten a lot of flack for requiring diversity, but I for one love it. Not only do I love it for them, I have also begun using their standard in my own work too. They are taking a stand and sticking to it. Nothing they publish suffers for it; in fact, I would argue that it is because of this commitment to diversity that their lists are better than others that we use to help our patrons. They go out of their way to consider the full breadth of offerings, not just the most common [and probably only white] ones.
Book Riot's staff, also addressed the backlash head on back in 2015 with a 5 part FAQ outlining why it is so important to read diversely. You can click here to begin with Part 1 and then at the end of the piece, there are links to the next 4 parts.
I have included a direct link to this series in my presentation also. Even if you think you are someone who values reading diversely already, take a moment and read this thoughtful piece by an organization that stands behind their word.
Tomorrow, I will continue this conversation with another post about how to improve discoverability of diverse titles without stickering or pulling books by diverse authors out of the main collection.
In my presentation I bring up the discoverability issue as one of the major things we are NOT focusing on when we talk about diverse books and libraries, and I cannot possibly say it all when I present.
No comments:
Post a Comment