Month: August 2023

IFLA’s LGBTQ+ Users SIG Speaks Out for ALA and the LGBTQ+ Community

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The IFLA’s LGBTQ+ Users Special Interest Group deplore a worrying backlash around the world these days with regard to LGBTQ+ audiences and staff.
 
The LGBTQ+ collections are challenged, with certain titles such as Gender Queer: A Memoir and All Boys Aren’t Blue (see more at https://www.nypl.org/blog/2023/06/23/lgbtq-titles-targeted-censorship-stand-against-book-banning) subject to censorship in several organizations at the demand of groups that promote hatred and division. The services that we offer to meet the informational needs of the LGBTQ+ community and to promote a society that honors and celebrates its diversity are just as much the object of criticism and prohibition, and even face direct attacks from small factions striving to ban and cancel them. Drag Queen Story Time, which has no other purpose than to create connections in a friendly and festive atmosphere, is the first victim of this. Information professionals and librarians who strive to increase support and knowledge related to these issues are subject to pressure or even expulsion, some losing their jobs for simply wanting to meet the needs of the communities they serve.

ALA has been under attack, with state libraries such as Montana’s (https://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2023/07/american-library-association-responds-montana-state-library-commission-s) withdrawing from their ALA membership because of intolerance and disinformation based on one statement from the current ALA president. This is not acceptable. We, as an IFLA working group, would like to reaffirm here firmly that we do support ALA and its representatives, including its current president, in this fight and firmly reject any backlash.

All of these events underscore the need for information and education that promotes a harmonious society. These attacks once again underline the role and place of the library in society. It is the role of libraries to inform each community they serve. It is the role of libraries to promote living together respectfully by allowing encounters in free common spaces, by maintaining the pluralism of collections, by organizing the collection and mediation of history, by recontextualizing events, by recreating spaces for dialogue and speaking out where the debate of ideas and diverging points of view can be expressed. It is the role of libraries to design a positive space that is more than necessary today in our societies.

It is the role of libraries to address LGBTQ+ issues in a positive way and it is the role of library associations to support all information professionals in this commitment. ALA responds to each of these commitments and its involvement in favor of our core values of democracy and intellectual freedom is well established. We thank ALA for following its own core values such as having an “open, inclusive, and collaborative environment” at all times. Recent events regarding next year’s 2024 IFLA WLIC show that we can’t take this for granted and the LGBTQ+ Users SIG is highly sensitized regarding its own association’s questioned core value “commitment to promote and value diversity and inclusion“. We place ourselves on ALA’s side as long and as many times as it takes.