Last Thoughts - My Final Reflection

While completing this assessment, I’ve been surprised at how relevant the activities and topics have been to my current role as a librarian for young adults at a regional public library.

The first task I embarked on was related to digital resources. Although I work as a youth librarian, part of my role is to run programs for a local disability support group. Struggling to find something enjoyable for the higher functioning members of the group, I asked if they were interested in learning 3D modelling given that they had an interest in 3D printing. I learned how to use Tinkercad as one of my professional development activities and just last week, I finally had the opportunity to share my newfound 3D modelling skills. I felt intimidated as I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned, but I took heart in knowing that I need not be an expert at every program I run, it is appropriate to say that you don’t know and assure your participant that you will work it out together (Mitchell et al., 2020, p. 8). In fact, this type of learning by discovery can actually stimulate learning more efficiently as we need to engage and interact with a topic in order to process information (Mitchell et al., 2020, p. 7). I suspect that might actually be the entire point of this particular assessment…

My second professional development task was writing a book review while considering the topic of children’s book awards. Completing this task made me consider what makes a good book and what I should be considering when selecting books for my workplace. Is supposed literary merit the best indicator of what young people want to read? Research indicates that teenagers choose books for a variety of reasons, including peer inclusion, relaxation and escapism (Wilkinson et al., 2020, p. 160). Doing this task has inspired me to find out why the young people in my community read to help guide my selections in future.

The third task became relevant at work as I was asked to participate in a discussion on diversity in the workplace. I was able to use several of the ideas that I got from the webinar that I watched for the topic of diversity on queer affirming programs in the library, such as recommending gender neutral signage for toilets and queer signifiers such as pride flags to indicate that the library and, more broadly, Council is a safe place for queer people (cslpreads, 2022).

The final task I completed related to censorship. While I was undertaking research for the blog post, the news broke of the Cumberland City Council same-sex parent book ban (Cassidy & Rose, 2024). Having started research, I definitely felt better equipped to understand why censorship is harmful, and that in fact, a lack of representation of diverse perspectives leads to a lack of empathy within society (Pickering, 2023, p. 38).

In closing, all of the topics that I’ve considered for this blog and the professional development activities that I have undertaken have had relevance to my role within the timeframe of this unit. This reiterates to me how important continuing my studies is to help me to become a better youth librarian. Onward and upward!

 

References

Cassidy, C., & Rose, T. (2024, May 7). Sydney council bans same-sex parenting books from libraries for ‘safety of our children’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/07/sydney-council-bans-same-sex-parenting-books-from-libraries-for-safety-of-our-children

cslpreads. (2022, December 8). Inclusive and affirming library programs for LGBGTQIA+ youth [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2B8t4imCgI&ab_channel=cslpreads

Mitchell, B., Ratcliffe, C., & LaConte, K. (2020). STEAM learning in public libraries: a “guide on the side” approach for inclusive learning. Children & Libraries, 18(3), 7-10. https://doi.org/10.5860/cal.18.3.7

Pickering, G. (2023). "Harmful to minors": How book bans hurt adolescent development. The Serials Librarian, 84(1-4), 32-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2023.2245843

Wilkinson, K., Andries, V., Howarth, D., Bonsall, J., Sabeti, S., & McGeown, S. (2020). Reading during adolescence: why adolescents choose (or do not choose) books. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(2), 157-166. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1065

 

Reviewing the 'Literary Changes' BTN High Video – Censorship

For the topic of censorship, I chose to review a resource intended for use by young people, which was a Behind the News High (BTN High) video entitled Literary Changes – Sensible or Censorship presented by Cale Matthews (2023).  Upon beginning the task, I realised that my understanding of censorship was somewhat lacking, so I did some research to discover the types of issues relating to censorship that may be relevant to my professional life as a teen librarian. I took to the Charles Sturt University Library to read some articles and make some notes, then I watched the BTN High video again with my newfound knowledge.

Understanding the issue of censorship and how to discuss it with young people is important to my professional practice as I may have young people asking about book bannings and why some people challenge certain books. This particular video was quite a soft entry into the topic of censorship, focusing on changes made to older books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to bring them more in line with our modern values.

Literary Changes – Sensible or Censorship echoed many of the sentiments that I found throughout my research on the topic, particularly the view that we need not ‘protect’ children through their reading materials, because they are not passive and unthinking in their reading. They have the ability to understand that values have changed over time.

When looking at the topic of censorship as it relates to book bannings, the most commonly challenged books are those written by Black authors addressing racism, along with those that affirm the experiences and lives of queer individuals and families (Pickering, 2023, p. 34; Sokol, 2022, p. 34). Many of these challenges are in the interests of ‘protecting’ children however, a lack of exposure to reading materials from a variety of perspectives prohibits young people from developing an awareness of the experience of others (Rumberger, 2019, p. para. 25). Clark-Hunt and Creel (2024, p. 193) assert that while not every book is for every child, some children may be going through a tough time or experiencing something new and reading to explore and understand their own lives and feelings may be the safest and healthiest thing for them.

One of the gaps I have discovered in my knowledge is how my workplace deals with challenges to items in the library. A collection development policy is a great tool to use when defending what materials we have as part of our collection (Clark-Hunt & Creel, 2024, p. 192) and ours at Cessnock City Library is freely available online. However, I don’t know what to do if we receive a request to remove an item from our collection, so I will be exploring that at work. I didn’t think that would be something we would face in Australia but the recent news of Cumberland City Council banning books featuring same-sex parents (Cassidy & Rose, 2024) shows that we, as librarians, need to be ready to protect not only our right to freedom of information, but to protect the rights of our library users to see themselves represented in the library.

 

References

Cassidy, C., & Rose, T. (2024, May 7). Sydney council bans same-sex parenting books from libraries for ‘safety of our children’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/07/sydney-council-bans-same-sex-parenting-books-from-libraries-for-safety-of-our-children

Clark-Hunt, L. K., & Creel, S. (2024). Interviews with public librarians on their experiences in cases of censorship. Public Library Quarterly (New York, N.Y.), 43(2), 179-201. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2023.2243201

Matthews, C. (2023, March 7). Literary changes - sensible or censorship? [Video]. ABC btn. https://www.abc.net.au/btn/high/literary-changes/102064324

Pickering, G. (2023). "Harmful to minors": How book bans hurt adolescent development. The Serials Librarian, 84(1-4), 32-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2023.2245843

Rumberger, A. (2019). The elementary school library: Tensions between access and censorship. Contemporary issues in early childhood, 20(4), 409-421. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949119888491

Sokol, M. (2022). The power of story: Using personal anecdotes to counter challenges. Children & Libraries, 20(2), 34-35. https://doi.org/10.5860/cal.20.2.34

 

A Review of 'Literary Changes', a BTN High Video Discussing the Concept of Censorship

https://www.abc.net.au/btn/high/literary-changes/102064324

In order to see how the topic of censorship is being introduced to and discussed with young people, I watched a Behind the News (BTN) High video entitled ‘Literary Changes’, which discusses aspects of the censorship debate as it relates to the changing of some words and phrases in popular, but ageing books including James Bond novels and titles by Roald Dahl.

The focus of this video were the changes made to certain books including the use of negative racial stereotypes in Ian Fleming’s Live and Let Die, along with the removal of some negative physical descriptors of characters in some of Roald Dahl’s works, for example, the words ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’, however, other descriptive terms such as ‘beastly’ were left in. The other change to the Roald Dahl works outlined was to use gender neutral terms, with the example given of ‘cloud men’ being changed to ‘cloud people’.

The debate, of course, is whether this is a series of sensible changes that better reflect who we are as a society considering our general growth in acceptance and inclusion, or whether these changes are a form of censorship.

Dr Michelle Smith of Monash University is featured throughout the video to give some opinions on the changes and speak about the issue, stating that the desire for making these edits to older books comes from wanting to ensure that children don’t read the books and assume that the morals and values espoused within are accurate since these values are no longer the standard.

The video’s presenter, Cale Matthews, goes on to state that the James Bond titles were changed very little, with sexist and homophobic language remaining in and only the racial stereotypes removed. Cale states that this is because of the presumed need to protect children as stated previously by Dr Smith, whereas content for adults is seen to be less of a threat.

Dr Smith expresses that we should give children credit as readers, however, to evaluate materials and understand different time periods and how things were different then to how they are today. Dr Smith also states that it can be difficult to teach children about issues such as misogyny and racism if they can’t explore it in a safe way through reading books and understanding what those things actually looked like in the past.

As a resource intended for a teenage audience, this video is quite a successful look at censorship. Obviously, the issues surrounding this go much deeper than making changes to ageing children’s reading materials, but this is a good starting point to get young people looking at censorship from a different perspective. This video introduces the idea that society doesn’t need to protect children and that exposing them to the ways in which society differed in the past, can open a dialogue to better understand these issues.

The video uses language which is easy to understand and discusses the topic while giving both sides of the debate as to whether these changes should be considered ‘sensible or censorship’. The presenter seems knowledgeable on the topic and introduces an expert in literary studies to speak and give their opinion. Also features are some opinions from teens, which is always nice to see in a resource intended for teens. The video is also set out in a similar way to many YouTube videos, with background music, voiceover elements, whiteboard style editing and even clips taken from Netflix’s adaptation of Matilda at one point. This is attention catching and seems to target the teen audience by using a format that they’re likely familiar with.

This resource is a great introduction to the theme of censorship, giving teens a shallow dive into some of the main concepts, which can lead to understanding the bigger issues when these arise. The language is calm and while the video suggests that these changes are probably not the wisest choice, it does not outright condemn the actions take and does attempt to make the perspectives of those who argue for the changes to be seen and understood to some degree. This resource would work as a great conversation starter to the broader issues of censorship.

Watching and Making Notes on Inclusive and Affirming Library Programs for LGBTQIA+ Youth Webinar – Diversity

One of the main minority groups that I serve as a youth librarian are queer* teens. One of my regular programs (which is not a queer specific program) draws a crowd where at least half of the participants are part of the queer community. For this reason, I decided to watch a webinar entitled Inclusive and Affirming Library Programs for LGBTQIA+ Youth (cslpreads, 2022) and make some notes to improve my knowledge of creating safe spaces for queer teens. I have also been asked to attend a meeting with some other Council employees to provide any ideas for improving our workplace diversity practices so I thought it would be helpful to take the notes I make from the webinar to my upcoming meeting.

The webinar covered basics such as explaining many of the sexual identities and gender identities but the main focus was on how to create a safe and inclusive space for queer youth in the library (cslpreads, 2022). One of the things that has interested me as a youth librarian when thinking about representations of diversity is whether we should be labelling our queer Young Adult materials so that they are more easily identifiable. The webinar’s presenter, Amanda Erickson, expressed the opinion that while labelling is a nice idea for findability, it would be better to create booklists so that queer books can be found by those who are interested in them, since young people are often less likely to borrow a book that has a queer identifier on it (cslpreads, 2022). Knapp (2022, p. 848) agrees, stating that having labels on items often serves to ‘out’ or ‘other’ queer youth. This sentiment is echoed by Walters (2022, p. 5) who states that labelling queer items is an outdated practice and serves to ‘other’ both the materials and the people making use of them.

One of the main things that I took away from this webinar was what to do if I accidentally misgender someone. Amanda explained that often when we apologise, we do so from a selfish place where we hope that we will feel better afterwards and that we will be forgiven for our mistake (cslpreads, 2022). Therefore, when we apologise for misgendering someone, the best course of action is to thank the person for correcting us, apologise briefly and then directly move on with the intention of doing better in the future instead of focusing on the apology since it serves us more than it serves the person that we have misgendered. We don’t have the right to expect for them to forgive us or make us feel better when we have caused them offence.

I’m proud to say that I was already familiar with most of the content of the webinar, but I am aware that I need to keep my knowledge up to date and continue to check in with best practices in future. There are a few things I would like to put into practice in my workplace, such as creating queer booklists, having some visible queer signifiers such as Pride Flags and campaigning to update our public restrooms to gender neutral facilities as some young transgender people refrain from eating or drinking throughout the day so as to avoid using the bathrooms if they don’t feel safe using them (cslpreads, 2022). Given that I have several transgender teenagers attending programs and using our space on a regular basis, it’s important that I do my best to ensure they feel safe and welcome in my library.

 

* Please note that I use the term ‘queer’ throughout this blog post and the accompanying webinar notes instead of LGBTQIA+ as my understanding is that some people within the community dislike the LGBTQIA+ tag since it labels some identifiers but not others, such as pansexual and non binary, instead relying on the plus symbol to signify all those who have been left out.

References 

cslpreads. (2022, December 8). Inclusive and affirming library programs for LGBGTQIA+ youth [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2B8t4imCgI&ab_channel=cslpreads

Knapp, C. (2022). Creating safe and inclusive spacing for LGBT2Q+ Youth in public and school libraries. Journal of Library Administration, 62(6), 847-855. https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2022.2102385

Walters, J. (2022). Out of many, one: Practicing defensive librarianship. Children & Libraries, 20(4), 5.

Notes from Inclusive and Affirming Library Programs for LGBTQIA+ Youth

 A webinar from cslpreads on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2B8t4imCgI&ab_channel=cslpreads

·        Collaborative Summer Library Programs (CSLP) Special Inclusion webinar

·        Cathy Lancaster – Library of Michigan also president elect of Collaborative Summer Library Program

·        CSLP empowers libraries to foster community, provide inclusive literacy based programming, share resources and provide education and information for library professionals

·        Jen Taggart – Youth services head at Bloomfield township public library plus inclusion chair for CSLP

·        Jen introduces Amanda Erickson has worked for Kaleidoscope Youth Centre since 2017 focusing on advocating for LGBTQIA+ Youth

·        Webinar is on inclusive and affirming programs for LGBTQIA+ Youth in programs

·        Jen

o   Context for why this is important is due to the history of inequality of sexual rights for queer people and history of mental health treatment – queer identities were previously seen as something that needed to be ‘fixed’ or ‘cured’ – this is still occurring even now particularly for transgender people in the US as many states still have anti trans legislation

o   All of the discrimination mentioned above plus more has a huge effect on the mental health of queer people and racism, sexism etc is still rampant in systems and institutions

o   ‘adultism’ – americans believe adults know more than young people, young people are rebellious etc but Kaleidoscope believes that young people are experts on themselves and deserve to be listened to and to have a say in their own lives

o   Outcomes of the webinar is that we will learn about implicit bias, complexity and depth of gender, info on acronyms, and be given strategies to make the library and library’s programs a safe and inclusive space for queer youth

o   gender identity is how a person understands their gender internally

o   sex assigned at birth does what it says on the label

o   gender expression is how we use clothing, styling or general appearance to show their idea of gender

o   sexual orientation is who and what we are attracted to

o   queer encompasses both gender identity and sexual orientation but is a reclaimed term so some people may be uncomfortable with it

o   biases are pervasive, they don’t always align with our declared beliefs, they are related to our explicit bias, we favour our own in-group, our biases can be unlearned

o   there are different levels of bias

o   there is both individual and organisational bias as well as systemic bias like libraries being targeted by anti-queer groups

o   our role as librarian is to be a disruptor of bias. When we recognise bias we should

§  pause to think before going on when we see bias

§  engage in conversation with our selves and others and talk about what it means to challenge that bias

§  be an ally in the moment by reacting to other people’s prejudice pr discrimination and stand up for ur community

§  create safer spaces proactively sdo bias has less of a chance to resar its head

§  as a librarian for youth, be a safe person. Many schools will out students to their parents and families but we have no need to do that

o   to be a safe space/person for queer youth

§  understand diversity within the queer community – not just within the queer identifiers but within sex, race etc

§  don’t make assumptions on pronouns, gender just like we wouldn’t assume name or age

§  use inclusive non gendered language like partner or spouse instead of boyfriend/girlfriend

§  look at how we use gender in all contexts eg boys vs girls or boys space/girls space

§  support young people that are coming out – do they need anything, is it confidential etc

§  respond to negative behaviours as soon as you hear it – call out bad behaviour towards queer people immediately, every time

§  being queer isn’t taboo and it doesn’t need to be sexualised – family structures, respect, love etc are all a apert of sexual identity but aren’t necessarily sexual

§  normalise pronoun use – assuming someone’s pronouns based on how they look is an example of gender bias

§  we shouldn’t be assuming pronouns

§  offering your own pronouns is normalising it and we need to give them space to give theirs

§  using the correct pronouns is showing acceptance and support to the person

§  if you mess up somebody’s pronouns it’s ok, if they correct you then thank them for the correction, apologise quickly and move on, do better next time

§  try to gloss over your apology – we shoulnd’t expect to get told it’s ok. We’re not focusing on our own feelings, we need to acknowledge that their feelings are more important in this situation

§  if the person stops correcting you on hgetting their pronouns wrong it means they no longer hope that you’ll get it right, so you’ve really stuffed it up

§  ensure we’re using inclusive materials – have items about queer historical fictions, materials about human biology, have book lists for queer books etc

§  visibly affirming staff – have training for all staff and educate yourself more

§  ensure to have comprehensive anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies that can be referred to so it’s clear what behaviour and language is and isn’t ok for the entire community to see

§  gender neutral bathrooms should be available – this could be a family bathroom that’s available for individuals

§  consider having gender neutral bathrooms – make the signage have a let on one and a toilet plus urinal on the other rather than mens and ladies signs

§  this is actually a health issue for some trans people since they don’t eat or drink all day to avoid having to use the wrong bathroom or get abused for using a bathroom that others think they shouldn’t be using

§  representation should be in marketing/promotional materials such as pictures of families advertising storytime should include queer families too

§  have info ready for queer kids eg queer support resources that are local -0 might take some digging since queer people are used to operating on the downlow

§  consider for booklists that some books have queer characters but may not be considered as ‘queer’ books – this might be safer for some kids as they’re not obviously ‘queer’ for if they’re not publicly out

§  ensure to weed out old materials that aren’t affirming towards the queer community  eg. self help books for parents wanting to affirm queer kids – a 10 year old book might not longer be relevant on that topic

§  creating queer programs – we could use the space for training/education and affirmation on queer identities etc, queer clubs, book clubs, movie screenings, read alouds of queer inclusive books, storytimes (drag queen, rainbow families etc)

§  however, ALL programs should be queer inclusive – not just in pride month etc

§  drag queen storytime doesn’t solve not having gender neutral bathrooms – we should be looking at everything

§  QUESTIONS

§  if someone tells you they use a pronoun that you’re not familiar with (neo pronouns), tell them that’s cool, ask how to spell it and tell them you’ll do your best to get that right since you’ve not used it before

§  Progress Flag is a great one to signal inclusivity but maybe look at awareness days for each specific identity but any of the pride flags are great to have around

§  When speaking to supervisors, council etc and experiencing pushback, remind them that the library is a public institution so it is our responsibility to provide services to our whole community by removing barriers to spaces and making them feel accessible – just remind them that if you’re not serving the public, then what are you doing? Get them to explain to you what their concerns are and why they don’t want us to put up rainbow flags, celebrate pride month, etc. if you have your policy on anti discrimination and anti bukllying then that can support you as well

§  Queer labels on books – young people are less likely to take books home if they’re queer labelled – youth are more likely to be closeted than adults. We want youth to find queer books but we don’t want people to feel judged – a happy medium is having a really accessible queer book list