When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Commemorating Pride Month with TIE and Choice Content
Highlighting interviews, books, and blog posts on queer studies and LGBTQ+ topics
Posted on June 2, 2026 in Blog Posts
Commemorating Pride Month
This Pride Month, the Toward Inclusive Excellence team gathered TIE content and Choice resources from the past year that spotlight queer studies. 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.
Pride Month originated from a series of Pride marches in 1970 that commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. It highlights the impacts, 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!
TIE Blog
These selections include author interviews, titles for LGBTQ+ History Month, and more. To keep up with upcoming TIE content, subscribe to the TIE newsletter.
The Importance of Gender-Inclusive Survey Data
It is common to survey students in my professional specialty. (The issues I will describe here are not specific to it, and these concerns apply to all data collection.) However, these surveys generally do not provide meaningful information about trans and gender diverse people; some do not collect information about gender at all. I used to be undecided on whether this was better or worse than offering only binary options, but I am now firmly of the opinion that no data is better than information that cannot possibly be correct. This also applies to research where funders or employers ban any questions about gender that include trans and gender diverse options—if some people must misgender themselves to respond, the results will be inaccurate, and there is no point taking them seriously. I am probably not the only person who simply refuses to complete any survey like this. In addition to the offensive nature of the researchers telling me I don’t exist, why would I waste my time participating in a study that has clearly told me the data will be a joke? Read “The Importance of Gender-Inclusive Survey Data.”
Creating Inclusive Metadata Using the Homosaurus
I found the Homosaurus controlled vocabulary six years ago while looking for an authoritative source to establish the naming convention for the Lived Places Publishing Queer and LGBT+ Studies collection. In the years since first discovering Homosaurus, I have followed the growth of this global, community-led resource with much interest. Read “Creating Inclusive Metadata Using the Homosaurus.”
TIE Talks with Jason Ezell
This TIE Talks features a poignant discussion with Jason Ezell, Head of Research and Learning Services at Cornell University’s Olin & Uris Libraries. The interview centers on Jason’s new book For a Spell: Sissie Collectivism and Radical Witchery in the Southeast, which explores themes of queer liberation, intersectionality, and solidarity through a study of radical communal gay households in the 1970s. The conversation highlights how these communities forged strategies for survival and collective resistance to push back against the burgeoning right-wing extremism in the South at the time. Read the interview with Jason Ezell.
15 Titles to Read for LGBTQ+ History Month
“There’s Also an LGBTQ+ Faculty Affinity Group”
In 2022, I was working in a job I really enjoyed—my department was supportive, the majority of us were people of color (a rarity in any department in U.S. libraries), and my supervisor (also a person of color) was not only a great mentor, but a great advocate for her staff. Unfortunately, I nevertheless found myself job hunting due to the rising cost of living where I was, poor public transit in my area, and my state’s politics becoming increasingly hostile toward trans people. Read “‘There’s Also an LGBTQ+ Faculty Affinity Group.'”
Gender Assumptions
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 “Gender Assumptions.”
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, 2026
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 interview spotlights Oregon State University’s (OSU) Queer Archives.
Oregon State University’s Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives
This Ask an Archivist takes a deep dive into two Oregon State University (OSU) archives—the Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) and OSU Queer Archives (OSQA). Curator Natalia Fernández, also an Associate Professor for the Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC), walks through the background of the collections and their aims to center the voices of marginalized communities in Oregon. Fernández notes the value of oral history interviews and summarizes OSU’s myriad outreach efforts. Fernández further shares the benefits of archivist-professor partnerships and details how OSU incorporates anti-racist descriptions and decision-making. Read the Ask an Archivist interview.
Reviews of the Month
Reviews of the Month (formerly Reviews of the Week) highlights reviews that address topical issues, events, or holidays—or simply, reviews we believe deserve more attention. These picks discuss the limitation of the gender binary and applying trans theory to French literature.
Want more content? 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.