When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Commemorating Pride Month with TIE and Choice Content
Posted on June 13, 2024 in Blog Posts
Commemorating Pride Month
In honor of Pride Month, the Toward Inclusive Excellence team gathered TIE content and Choice resources from the past year that spotlight queer studies and LGBTQ history, activism, and archives. These picks feature topics like normalizing nonconforming gender identities, intersectional feminist movements, the intersection of trans activism and the internet, and more. Choice, the publisher of TIE and a publishing unit at the Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, provides book reviews to help librarians identify academic sources and professional development tools like webinars, podcasts, and white papers.
New content will be added throughout June, so make sure to revisit this page for new book reviews, blog posts, and more. We hope you find these selections helpful to examine during Pride Month and throughout the year. Happy Pride!
Forthcoming Academic Titles
Forthcoming Titles gathers the latest and soon-to-be-released publications in select disciplines. This list centers on upcoming titles in women’s and gender studies.
Forthcoming Titles in Women’s and Gender Studies, 2024
In 2024, TIE launched the new feature TIE Preview of Upcoming Reads. Like Choice’s Forthcoming Titles feature, it highlights soon-to-be-released books, but specifically focused on topics pertaining to social and racial justice. The first iteration compiles books on queer and LGBTQ+ studies.
TIE Preview of Upcoming Reads in Queer Studies, 2024
TIE Blog
These selections include several TIE blog posts and resource lists on topics like how the library can help destigmatize nonconforming gender identities. To keep up with upcoming TIE content, subscribe to the TIE newsletter.
Fashioning Nonbinary Normalcy
While each person’s identity exists at the intersection of many truths about themselves, the inescapable reality is that we live in a society obsessed with binaries: straight/gay, white/Black, able-bodied/disabled. People in customer service gender people by sight or ear. Having one’s assigned gender hammered into them as a child preps them for the overt and subtle ways it will be reinforced in our gendered world later on: Pink or blue? Sports or baking? Whiskey or wine? This division and its hallmarks are woven into cultural messaging from TV shows to K–12 curricula. So, too, are the consequences of divergence from these established norms. Despite this, the unforgiving spotlight on gender roles and gendered expectation is waning. As eyes adjust, players previously circumscribed by memorized lines and the sudden, stark drop off the stage’s edge have come to realize the vast, open space that has been there to explore all along. Read the TIE blog post.
Gearing up for Pride
For the past several weeks, I have been leading an undergraduate course titled “Critical Museum Interpretation and Storytelling,” and it has been delightful. Through the class we explore how educators, curators, interpreters, and other museum practitioners can be more mindful and inclusive when analyzing and sharing the narratives of marginalized communities. Now that it’s Pride Month, I would like to share a few ideas we have explored, along with a selection of fantastic resources for anyone keen on delving into or writing about LGBTQ+ history and culture. Read the TIE blog post.
Featured Reviews
Featured Reviews consider how a title exposes racist systems and inequities or proposes means of dismantling them. These important works from valuable perspectives are of use to undergraduates, faculty, and anyone interested in learning more about racism and racial inequalities. This work investigates intersectional feminism.
Power in Numbers: Liza Taylor Explores the Potential of Intersectional Feminist Movements
Libraries that boast copies of such books as bell hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990), and Sara Ahmed’s Living a Feminist Life (2017) should most certainly add Liza Taylor’s new book to their collections. Taylor (California State Polytechnic Univ., Pomona) is a feminist political theorist who offers sophisticated arguments about philosophical principles and feminist practices together with an accessible discussion of core texts from women of color. She writes for multidisciplinary feminist readers already familiar with classics such as position papers from the Combahee River Collective and essays by Audre Lorde but does so with sufficient attention to explaining these and other arguments from the rich field of feminist theorizing. Read the full review of Feminism in Coalition.
LibTech Insights
LibTech Insights (LTI) is a content vertical that examines the day-to-day impact of library and education technology on the higher education community. The channels provide practical guidance on technology trends and products as they relate to opportunities and challenges involving issues such as productivity, accessibility, discovery, operations, and content management. These picks highlight online tools to support heritage and identity month digital displays and digital repatriation for LGBTQ communities.
Online Tools to Leverage for Heritage and Identity Month Digital Displays
Service models and strategic plans of academic libraries across the US are incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). As part of this work, library collections are usually evaluated and updated to better align with DEI goals. However, once the work is done, it can be challenging to showcase the results. An obvious way to highlight collections is through physical displays—but these often have limited engagement. So, the alternative is to use the library’s virtual front door (i.e., its website) to host and exhibit diverse content. Read the LTI blog post.
Considering Digital Repatriation for LGBTQ Communities in the US South
Tennessee’s collecting institutions only recently started engaging local LGBTQ communities to preserve its history; thus, much of Nashville’s queer past ended up in other states, far removed from the people who need access. Other items stayed within private homes due to mistrust of institutions. Nashville Queer History, which I founded in 2021, began digitizing privately-held material for online access and mediating donations to local archives. Lack of access to items held outside of Tennessee continues to greatly hinder Nashville Queer History’s research initiatives; the all-volunteer community organization is forced to travel for research or buy digital reproductions of their own history, which add up to thousands of dollars. Read the LTI blog post.
Review of the Week
Each week Choice highlights a review that addresses a topical issue, event, or holiday—or simply, a review we believe deserves more attention. These picks discuss the experiences of trans and gender-diverse library professionals, Indigenous women’s transborder activism related to gender hierarchies, mental health practices with LGBTQ+ youth, and more.
Ask an Archivist
Ask an Archivist is a monthly feature that explores the research and production behind compelling special collections through interviews with their curators, archivists, and directors. This archive delves into the development of the LGBTQ Video Game Archive.
The LGBTQ Video Game Archive
Adrienne Shaw, founder of the LGBTQ Video Game Archive and Associate Professor at Temple University, provides background on the development and categorization of the collection and its mission to show that LGBTQ+ people have always been involved in gaming. Adrienne further underscores the importance of including queerly-read games and explains the difficulty of running a community-based archive. Read the interview with Adrienne Shaw.
Outstanding Academic Titles
Outstanding Academic Titles is Choice’s premier editorial franchise of the best titles of the year. Published each December, the list is separated into unique categories and previewed for collection development purposes or personal reading pleasure. These selections pertain to the intersection of racism and the development of gay rights, LGBTQ digital culture, and trans experiences.
Outstanding Academic Titles 2023: LGBTQ+ Studies
Webinars
Choice-ACRL Webinars feature presentations on library trends by industry experts, covering topics like collection development, library technology, and scholarly communication.
Inclusive publishing in the Nature Reviews journals: Championing diversity and equity in publishing practice (Added 6/18/24)
This webinar explores championing diversity and equity in publishing practice, publishing experience as an author with Nature Reviews journals, and inclusive publishing—breaking the silence in the medical literature by destigmatizing taboo topics. Watch the webinar recording.
Subscribe to the TIE newsletter and check out last year’s Pride Month round-up.
Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.