Week 14 Prompt

Week 14 Prompt

Consider yourself part of the collection management committee of your local library, or a library at which you would like to work. You must decide whether or not to separate GBLTQ fiction and African American Fiction from the general collection to its own special place. Some patrons have requested this, yet many staff are uncomfortable with the idea - saying it promotes segregation and disrupts serendipitous discovery of an author who might be different from the reader. Do you separate them? Do you separate one and not the other? Why or why not? You must provide at least 3 reasons for or against your decision. Feel free to use outside sources - this is a weighty question that is answered differently in a lot of different libraries.

I don't think it is necessary or relevant to separate GBLTQ fiction and African American fiction for the following reasons:

1.      There are too many books and other materials that are multi-genre. I did a book annotation for this class on the novel The Help. That title can possibly fall under a number of genres and themes that I found on different websites: Women's Lives and Relationships, historical fiction, African-American fiction, literary fiction, and books-to- movies. What about the book Loving Her by Ann Allen Shockley? According to GBLTQ, the novel is classified as African-American lesbian or black lesbian literature (2002).GBLTQ also lists The Color Purple as African American lesbian literature (2002). If you had to separate African-American and GBLTQ literature from the rest of the fiction collection, where would you shelve these books? It would cause numerous problems and confusion for librarians, staff, and patrons!
2.       If you separate African-American and GBLTQ books, there may be other patrons who complain that their favorite genres were not separated, too. The patrons who love romance or thrillers may say that their genre needs to "secede from the Union" because other genres have.
3.       Privacy is an important matter for many patrons. Unfortunately, there are some areas of the country where there are still stigmas and prejudice regarding the GBLTQ population. Whether gay or straight, some patrons may not want to be seen browsing in the GBLTQ section for various reasons. I asked my 22 year-old gay son how he would respond if he found the GBLTQ section separated from the fiction area. Although he is secure with his sexuality, he still would not want to draw attention to himself because he was bullied in the past.He has had people preach that he would go to hell if he didn't turn straight and all he would have to do to turn straight was to "pray away the gay". I have had people tell me the same things when they talk about my son. I am a Christian but I disagree with their views!
4.      I went to a library that had separated the western and mystery genres from the rest of the fiction. I thought it was odd to separate those genres from the rest of the fiction and wish I would have asked one of the staff members why they decided to segregate just those two in particular.In my library all fiction genres are grouped together with patrons finding their titles by looking at the first three letters of the author's last name and book titles listed in alphabetical order under each author. There is no need to run from one genre area to another to find books and try to figure out what genre the book falls under.

References

Keating, A. (2002). African-American literature: Lesbian.       GBLTQ. Retrieved from                                      http://www.glbtq.com/literature/african_am_lit_lesbian.html