T01: Growing Resilience: Inclusive Library Policies and Strategies for Serving LGBTQ* Minorities
Session Description
Generously Sponsored By: iSchool@UBC: School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
Presentation slides available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxfKY_3FcWoNQVkzeUlJQ0xDZHc/view?pref=2&pli=1
LGBTQ* people are our coworkers, library users and customers, family, and friends. On the principle that library staff in all sectors are catalysts for social change and personal transformation (sometimes directly, often indirectly), this session aims to inform and stimulate dialogue around inclusive library policies and practices for sexual and gender minorities. Session themes include: global perspectives on LGBTQ* minorities and their historic struggles to attain full citizenship; complexities of the rainbow community; library staff awareness of LGBTQ* library policy and strategic issues in a human rights framework; the wide-ranging nature of LGBTQ* library information needs in the context of historical barriers and access challenges for LGBTQ* communities; and key factors in social and physical environments facilitating and fostering inclusive services and spaces.
The context is then set for audience sharing of ideas and experiences that will position libraries as more effective service providers, supporters, and advocates of LGBTQ* communities. The challenge for all is this: What key initiatives will advance library policies, strategies, procedures, practices, and action plans to serve and grow LGBTQ* resilience?
Not well understood is a universal library message inherent in strong, visible library support for LGBTQ* minorities. This is a message of inclusivity for all, because sexual and gender minorities cut across every demographic intersectionality in the larger community – regardless of ethnicity, race, colour, culture, nationality, politics, religion, sex, age, education, class, intelligence, ability and disability, occupation, physical health, mental health, family, urban-rural locality, and so on. Public advocacy for LGBTQ* communities thus sends a powerful symbolic signal to the whole community that libraries honour freedom of expression and access; that they help everybody, without bias, discrimination, fear, or prejudicial judgment; that everybody is welcome and safe; that there’s something for everyone at the library.
Speaker: Alvin M. Schrader, Adjunct Professor, Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, and Professor Emeritus, School of Library and Information Studies, at the University of Alberta
Speakers
Dr Alvin Schrader
Biography
Dr. Alvin M. Schrader, professor emeritus, is a former director of the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alberta, and currently serves as adjunct professor with iSMSS, the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services in the Faculty of Education. Among his constant research and teaching interests are intellectual freedom and censorship, sexual and gender minority library services in all types of libraries, and Internet access and filtering, particularly the “digital closet,” my term for deliberate censorship by many top filtering companies of online LGBTQ* information. Alvin co-authored, with Kris Wells, Challenging Silence, Challenging Censorship: Inclusive Resources, Strategies and Policy Directives for Addressing Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Trans-Identified and Two-Spirited Realities in School and Public Libraries, published in both French and English by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation in 2007. Alvin has been active in the Canadian library community throughout his career, serving as presidents of the Canadian Library Association and the Library Association of Alberta. He was the first Canadian representative to the Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Expression Committee (FAIFE) created in 1998 by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and also a member of the first American Library Association’s Core Values Task Force. Alvin has been convenor of the Canadian Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Advisory Committee since 2009, and in 2012 was appointed to the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Book and Periodical Council. He is chuffed to have recently shepherded through CLA Executive Council a major revision to the core CLA position statement on library freedom of expression, now entitled “Intellectual Freedom and Libraries.”