The following post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by Jay Weitz.
Health information across the digital divide
On May 12, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern, the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) will present the live webinar “Lack of Access 101: How public libraries combat disparities and bridge the digital divide.” Carlette Dennis, formerly a public library worker and currently an Associate Fellow at the National Library of Medicine (OCLC Symbol: NLM), will speak about how public libraries help provide health and medical information to underserved communities. This webinar is part of the NNLM “Bridging the Digital Divide” initiative “to promote technology and digital equity, digital literacy, and telehealth through long-term partnerships and collaborations that will bring access to online health information to communities across the United States.”
A joint Chinese American Librarians Association/Association of Jewish Libraries webinar
In commemoration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month in the United States, as well as Asian Heritage Month and Canadian Jewish Heritage Month in Canada in May, the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA) and the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) will co-present a webinar on May 23, 2023, at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Susan Blumberg-Kason will talk about her book, scheduled for publication in November 2023, Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of Doyenne of Old China. A Jewish resident of Shanghai beginning in 1929, Bernardine Szold Fritz hosted an artistic salon that attracted expatriates and Chinese alike. Blumberg-Kason will present the free “CALA/AJL Webinar: Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon: The Story of Doyenne of Old China – An Author Talk.”
Reducing the harm of LC Subject Headings
Efforts by the University of Denver (DU) to (OCLC Symbol: DVP) “to publicly accept and wrestle with its history” include changing displayed terms for Indigenous populations that come from Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). In the April 2023 issue of Library Resources and Technical Services (Volume 67, Number 2, Pages 4-12) essay “Unsettling the Library Catalog: A Case Study in Reducing the Presence of ‘Indians of North America’ and Similar Subject Headings,” Karl Pettitt, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of DU’s Catalog and Metadata Service, and Erin Elzi, UX Designer at the U.S. Department of the Interior (OCLC Symbol: UDI) Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) write about the project, the obstacles, and the outcomes. The authors acknowledge that this kind of work represents “a small but important step in recognizing the harm of our long-held practices and the need to make changes on our own when the systems we commonly use are not able to pivot so quickly.”
Bullying in Louisiana academic libraries
Unlike many such studies, “Louisiana Academic Library Workers and Workplace Bullying” includes non-librarian workers and attempts a more comprehensive sampling approach. Catherine Baird, Online and Outreach Services Librarian at New Jersey’s Montclair State University (OCLC Symbol: NJM); Andrea Hebert, Research Impact Librarian at Louisiana State University (OCLC Symbol: LUU); and Justin Savage, Research and Reference Librarian at Montclair State University, review the existing literature and try to determine how widespread library workplace bullying is in Louisiana academic libraries. The article in the current issue of Library Leadership and Management (Volume 37, Number 1) hopes to encourage the study of bullying and its prevention.
Archival memory and inclusion
The March/April 2023 issue of Archival Outlook from the Society of American Archivists includes two articles of particular interest. “Centering Community Archives: BIPOC and Queer Solidarity in Community-Driven Archives” (Pages 3, 21), by Kenia Menchaca Lozano, Jessica Salow, Alexander Soto, and Vanessa Jasmine Torrez, all of the Arizona State University Library (OCLC Symbol: AZS), reports on ASU’s Community-Driven Archives (CDA) Initiative. Created in 2017 and permanently funded in 2020, CDA promotes “community-memory keeping over traditional archival methods.” “The Forgotten Voice of Kay Irion: A Pioneer for Disability Awareness and Inclusion in 1940s Cincinnati” (Pages 4-5) by Arabeth Balasko of the Cincinnati Museum Center, remembers the radio trailblazer who may have invented both working from home and podcasting in 1940.
Technology as friend and foe
Suzanne S. LaPierre, Virginiana Specialist Librarian at Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Library (OCLC Symbol: AXH), points out the irony that our technology has facilitated those who challenge books and harass writers, educators, and librarians, but has also enabled the defenders of the freedom to read to band together and thwart efforts to censor. In “Book Bans in the Social Media Age” (Computers in Libraries, April 2023, Volume 43, Number 3, Pages 30-34), LaPierre posits, “Overall, the ideas in books will proliferate faster than attempts to contain them. As technology continues to evolve new tools to facilitate the freedom to read, librarians will be among the first to use them.”
Policy advocacy for libraries
In April 2023, the American Library Association (ALA) Public Policy and Advocacy Office (PPA), partnering with the Office for Intellectual Freedom, announced an expansion of advocacy operations to counter censorship and book bans. “A cadre of the ALA Policy Corps will boost efforts across library types and states to showcase how libraries and library workers provide essential information resources to their communities while increasing awareness about the importance of intellectual freedom and its centrality to American democracy and society,” according to the PPA release “ALA Launches Policy Corps Cadre for Proactive Advocacy on Book Banning.”
Critical Race Theory in libraries
“Critical Pedagogy Symposium: A Focus On Critical Race Theory,” a free virtual webinar, May 17-19, 2023, 12 noon-4 p.m. Eastern, will focus on CRT in libraries. “Our working definition of critical pedagogy includes: teaching and learning in the library that interrogates power structures, distributions of labor, histories, queer, racial inequities, environmental and social justices, and other forms of anti-oppression frameworks,” according to the announcement. The symposium is collaboratively sponsored by the Greater New York Metropolitan Area Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL/NY), CUNY LILAC (OCLC Symbol: ZCY), Barnard College of Columbia University (OCLC Symbol: ZCU), METRO: The Metropolitan New York Library Council (OCLC Symbol: YME), Library Juice Press and Library Juice Academy, New York University (OCLC Symbol: ZYU), and the CRT Collective.
Prejudicial Materials Working Group
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) Controlled Vocabularies Editorial Group (CVEG) Prejudicial Materials Working Group will hold a free ninety-minute public forum on May 10, 2023, 3:00 p.m. Eastern on the group’s thesaurus project. The hierarchical list is intended to enable the indexing of works that are themselves prejudicial or are related to systems of oppression. The “Public Forum for RBMS CVRMC Prejudicial Works Terminology” will include a brief history of the project, a review of the terms that have been proposed, and lots of time for questions.
Students defending their freedoms
We hear — and to stay informed, must continue to hear — a lot about attempts to censor materials and restrict information. We hear less about those citizens who stand up to oppose those efforts. The May 2023 issue of American Libraries (Volume 54, Number 5) includes a lot of heartening reassurance that librarians are not alone in our resistance. In “Meeting The Challenge: Teens take a stand in the intellectual freedom fight” (Pages 32-36), Emily Udell chronicles student activists from Walla Walla High School (OCLC Symbol: XVK) in Washington, to Lexington Public Library (OCLC Symbol: KYL) in Kentucky, to Brooklyn Public Library (OCLC Symbol: BKL) in New York, to Austin Public Library (OCLC Symbol: TXG) in Texas, to Chicago Public Library (OCLC Symbol: CGP) in Illinois, to Boise School District in Idaho, to Katy Independent School District in Texas, and elsewhere, often with help from librarians and authors, who have attended school board meetings, raised money, created banned book clubs, run for office, and otherwise defended the freedoms to read and be factually informed.
School library perspectives
In advance of the June 2023 publication of The Fight Against Book Bans: Perspectives from the Field, edited by Shannon M. Oltmann of the University of Kentucky School of Information Science (OCLC Symbol: LSK) in Lexington, the publisher ABC-CLIO will present a free webinar “The Fight Against Book Bans: Perspectives from the School Library” on May 18, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Dr. Oltmann will moderate the discussion among three contributors to the book: Jamie M. Gregory, Upper School librarian and journalism/newspaper teacher at Christ Church Episcopal School in Greenville, South Carolina; Kelly Mayfield, who works in Collection Services at Columbus Metropolitan Library (OCLC Symbol: OCO) in Ohio; and Kristin Pekoll, former YA librarian from Wisconsin and currently assistant director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Strategies for responding to challenges and the importance of intellectual freedom in school libraries, all in the context of the current political climate, will be among topics raised.
Prior to his retirement in 2023, Jay was a Senior Consulting Database Specialist in the Membership and Research Division of OCLC, Jay has long been involved in WorldCat bibliographic quality control and record matching, OCLC-MARC validation, the Member Merge Project, the Virtual AskQC Office Hours, and the maintenance of OCLC’s Bibliographic Formats and Standards. He created the seven-session “Cataloging Defensively” series of presentations. For many years, he coordinated OCLC’s Enhance Program. He serves as OCLC liaison to numerous organizations, including the Music OCLC Users Group (MOUG), Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC), the Cataloging and Metadata Committee (CMC) of the Music Library Association (MLA), the MARC Advisory Committee (MAC), and the Standing Committee on Standards of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC). He also sits on the Bibliography Standing Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), represents the IFLA Cataloguing Standing Committee on the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) of the American Library Association (ALA), and is Secretary of IFLA’s Permanent UNIMARC Committee.
Before coming to OCLC in 1982, Jay was a cataloger at Capital University in Bexley, Ohio. He is the author of Cataloger’s Judgment (2004), both editions of Music Coding and Tagging (1990 and 2001), and the cataloging Q&A columns of the MOUG Newsletter and the OLAC Newsletter. Since 1992, catalogers throughout North America and Japan have been subjected to dozens of his workshops. He was the recipient of the MOUG Distinguished Service Award in 2004, OLAC’s Nancy B. Olson Award in 2005, and the Music Library Association’s lifetime achievement award and highest honor, the MLA Citation in 2019.