When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Commemorating Pride Month with TIE and Choice Content
Book reviews, resource lists, and webinars that highlight queer studies and LGBTQ topics
Posted on June 4, 2025 in Blog Posts
Commemorating Pride Month
To commemorate Pride Month, the Toward Inclusive Excellence team gathered TIE content and Choice resources from the past year that highlight queer studies and LGBTQ issues. 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.
Originating as a series of pride marches in 1970—a year after the Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan—Pride Month celebrates the impact, contributions, and activism of the LGBTQ community. Make sure to revisit this page throughout June for more resources. We hope you find this collection helpful to explore during Pride Month and throughout the year. Happy Pride!
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 work of writer Sandra Cisneros, cultural humility in the library, and more.
TIE Blog
These selections include resource lists on queer studies, trans and gender diverse people, and intersectionality. To keep up with upcoming TIE content, subscribe to the TIE newsletter.
Gender Assumptions (Added 6/18/25)
While taking a course on web accessibility recently, I was jarred by the way the audio description and alt text examples assumed gender: the people in the videos and images were described as women or men—or once, for no apparent reason apart from perhaps the presence of a corduroy blazer, as “a gentleman”—with “she” or “he” pronouns, seemingly chosen based on to appearance. (It’s possible they asked every person in every video or image to self-identify before creating the descriptions, but I rather doubt it.) I am not an expert on that topic, though others are, and it is a compelling rabbit hole—I am currently resisting the urge to stay up too late reading a gender studies thesis and an academic article on TV show audio descriptions and gender instead of writing this blog post. The accessibility course is simply one example of what I want to highlight: the ways assumptions about gender show up in library work. Read the blog post.
TIE Preview of Upcoming Reads in Queer Studies, 2025
Resources for Learning about Trans and Gender Diverse People
Ignorance is not a moral failing, especially regarding a topic that has been intentionally and systematically erased from the US education system. But ignorance about marginalized groups does mean that people can and do cause harm unintentionally—in general, but particularly in a field like library work where our job is to support people of all identities. It is everyone’s responsibility to amend their own lack of knowledge once they realize the gap. This blog post is one attempt to raise the baseline understanding that library workers hold about trans and gender diverse people. The resources below approach the topic from a variety of angles; readers are encouraged to pick and choose what is most relevant based on their knowledge level and interests. And, of course, the books and journals are all excellent additions to any library collection. Read the resource list.
A Selection of Titles to Commemorate Intersectionality Awareness Month
TIE has teamed up with Resources for College Libraries (RCL)—a great resource for libraries looking to diversify their collections—to share with our readers important titles on intersectionality. The term, coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, denotes how different social markers, such as race, gender, and class, overlap and intersect to yield unique challenges and manifestations of discrimination for those encompassed by these different categories. We all strive for inclusive excellence within our institutions and social circles, and these important resources can help readers better attain that goal. Read the selection of titles.
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 & Gender Studies, 2025
Webinars
Choice-ACRL Webinars feature presentations on library trends by industry experts, covering topics like collection development, library technology, and scholarly communication. This session looks at inclusive publishing practices.
Inclusive publishing in the Nature Reviews journals: Championing diversity and equity in publishing practice
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.