 Good morning. Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Anthony Chow, the director of San Jose State's iSchool, and we appreciate you joining us for our celebration and recognition of Pride Month. The theme of our symposium is how LGBTQIA plus librarians shape libraries today, and this is a part of our new EDI series sponsored by the SJSU iSchool. As an Asian-American growing up in the deep south, I was visually and obviously different from everyone, only to APIs in the entire school. As someone who has experienced discrimination throughout my life, and also seeing it occur with my three children as well, I am committed to trying to do something and make a difference. This is done through education and authentic understanding, that is certainly one of the primary ways, and really focusing on the fact that we are much more similar than we are different. As a father of a non-binary child, I have a close connection to the LGBTQIA plus movement and celebrate and I'm proud of our diversity, our differences, our shared dreams and aspirations. It's important for her to know she is not alone, that we respect and accept her journey to be more of who she is meant to be. I'm sincerely grateful to our distinguished guests that are here with us today, and we will start with a keynote address followed by a panel discussion from our impressive panel. So I'd like to introduce first of all our keynote speaker, Dr. Shannon Altman. Dr. Altman is an associate professor in the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky. She obtained her doctorate from Indiana University. Her research interests include information ethics, censorship, intellectual freedom, information policy, public libraries, privacy, and quality qualitative research methods. Dr. Altman is a past editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy, an associate editor of Library Quarterly. She recently published a book, Practicing Intellectual Freedom in Libraries. So join me in welcoming Dr. Shannon Altman. Shannon? Hello, thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm going to start sharing my screen. As I have some slides. And today I'll be talking about LGBTQ plus resources in your library as part of this symposium. As Dr. Chow graciously introduced me, I'm an associate professor in library science at the University of Kentucky. Some of my main areas of focus for teaching and research are intellectual freedom and censorship. And this includes a focus on LGBTQ resources in particular. I've been married to my wife for five and a half years. And this summer we're going to celebrate 10 years since our first date. We also have a dog, Riley, that is on the screen now. He's part Dachshund, part Cocker Spaniel, we think. And he's a mess, but he's a rescue dog and we love him. My pronouns are she and her. And I'll start out the little background about myself. I was one of those kids who went to the library all the time. I would check out a stack of books and then return a week later, sometimes just a few days later and get another stack of books. And this continued through my teenage years. Now until I went to college, I only read one book with a queer character. This was a book from the adult section that I picked up because I had an interesting cover. The main thing I remember is that the lesbian in it died. And my mother was a little uncomfortable with my reading material, but she had a philosophy of sort of an open doors. So she just let me read what I wanted and we discussed if I had any questions. At the same time in my early 20s, the only lesbian that I really knew of was Ellen DeGeneres. And she was fired after she came out on her TV show. So that was not the best role model for me at the time when I was trying to figure out my own identity and coming at myself. Because of these things, I really had some discomfort and shame about being part of the LGBT community throughout my 20s. It was an uncomfortable period for sure. And I have to say, unfortunately, the library was not a great resource to me during that time. But then something happened. I was living in Oklahoma at this time. And this children's book King and King caused a huge controversy. If you're not familiar with this book, it's the story of a prince who was told by his mother, the queen, that he must select a marriage mate. One princess after another comes through and none are really appealing to him until he catches the eye of a brother of a princess. And the two princes fall in love and become King and King. Well, many people thought the public library should not carry this book. They were outraged. In fact, the legislators in Oklahoma proposed that libraries should start having a special roped off section, literally a corner of the library with rope around it for controversial materials such as LVT, TG, Q materials. Sorry about that. And kids would not be allowed in this roped off section. It was for parents only. Thankfully, libraries did not go that route. But they compromised by having a special family talk session that was for adults only. And that's where many of these children's books were relocated. Throughout this controversy, I had a lot of feelings, but I kept coming back to these questions. Is this what libraries do? They create special sections where kids can't go? Is this the best way to handle this sort of material? Is this right? I just wondered why can't LGBTQ plus content be just considered normal and noncontroversial? Why can't it be shelved with everything else? And inevitably, if we start taking things off shelves, we're going to end up with a library like this. The librarian says we had to take out the books that were too religious or not religious enough. And as you can see, the child's left with nothing to read. Down in the corner, a stick figure says, what about my reading skills? And the reply is, those would only get you into trouble. I thought a lot about this, both in context of the book King and King and in context of books in general. And I was really disturbed by this because up till now, my experience of libraries had been one of an open, welcoming space where I was always able to check out whatever books interested me. So I went to graduate school. I learned about libraries and intellectual freedom. I earned my doctorate at Indiana University, as Dr. Chow said. And I continued studying issues of censorship and intellectual freedom and all sorts of situations, but especially in libraries. LGBTQ plus resources have been a special focus of mine. And this is really an intersection of personal and professional interests, as you'll see throughout this presentation. So with that background, let me dive into the meat of my talk. We'll kind of cover three areas here. We'll talk about the significance of having LGBTQ plus resources in your library. We'll talk about ways to incorporate a more inclusive approach to LGBTQ resources. And we'll talk about the occasional challenges of having queer-friendly resources in your library. So one of the most significant aspects of having LGBTQ resources has to do with um, validating and empowering people. So kids and teens who are LGBTQ experience a significantly higher rate of bullying than straight kids do. Some research says it's two and a quarter times more likely that an LGBTQ kid or teen will be bullied. But the research also shows us that people feel more resilient when they have access to LGBTQ plus resources. They also feel safer when they can access these resources when they're in a place that has these resources. And this research isn't specific to libraries, but it's definitely applicable to libraries. I think many of us can relate that it's validating and empowering to see stories or read stories of people like ourselves. This is a picture of the character Alex from Supergirl. She came out in a story arc and many people have been identifying with her and her story has resonated with people. So that's just an example of how it can be empowering to see stories of people like ourselves. Another reason that it's important to have LGBTQ plus resources is because queer individuals live in every part of the United States according to census data. Nearly 6 million people have an LGBT parent in the US. And 21% of Generation Z, that's those 10 to mid 20s. 21% of that generation identifies as part of the LGBTQ plus community. In fact, I just read a statistic that there are more queer individuals in the United States than there are children under the age of 18. So this is a significant part of your population no matter where you live. Finally, it's also worth noting that straight people benefit when LGBTQ plus resources are in a library. When people are able to see something represented, it creates better understanding. And that creates an important shift in the social consciousness and better includes people from a range of different backgrounds. I also want to note that as a foundation of librarianship, libraries should be welcome and open to all. This is sort of a key premise of all types of librarianship. And it's something that we should keep in mind as we work to know our communities. And this sort of has two senses to me. In the first sense, we should know our community in a general way. Is it made up of mostly senior citizens, young folks, people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, what's the socioeconomic status of folks, what's the education range represented in your community? So we should have a deep and thorough understanding of our community on many different aspects. But this phrase is also relevant to the LGBTQ plus community specifically. We need to know the queer community in our local area, what would work for them, what would serve them, what would help them. And to do this, we really need to reach out and make connections with folks. So let's get to some nitty gritty. Let's talk about how to have more inclusive policies in the library. And I'm starting here with policies, because this is really the bedrock upon which other inclusive inclusivity and diversity focuses are built. If you don't have inclusive policies, then the rest of your inclusivity efforts will not be as successful. So the starting place is to respect all people and treat all people with kindness. This includes people who don't look like you, of course, people who don't sound like you, people who may dress a little unusually or seem a little weird. And I use those phrases in quotation marks. But all people, regardless of where they're coming from, should be welcomed with respect and kindness in a library. And this includes, of course, using people's correct pronouns. We also need to think about policies that affect dress, mannerisms, or behavior. A lot of libraries have policies that prohibit certain behaviors, certain types of, or restrict certain types of dress. We need to be really thoughtful here and think about if this negatively affects certain parts of our community. In the case of today's symposium, LGBTQ plus community, for example, if a library has a dress code that says women must wear skirts or men must wear long pants, that could be exclusionary for some folks, both to focus on gender and to focus on gender-specific clothing. So this is just a simple example of how we need to be more thoughtful when it comes to policies around dress, mannerisms, and behavior. Ideally, libraries should offer health insurance that encompasses same-sex partners or spouses. And even better, if it covers medical transitioning or anything along those lines, but inclusive health policies, health insurance should be sought out. Libraries should have bathrooms that are gender-neutral and or single-stall bathrooms. Sometimes this can be promoted as a way to accommodate families as well. Single-stall restrooms can also be more accessible for those with disabilities. So actually, a wide range of your community is served by having single-stall gender-neutral bathrooms. Another simple policy to implement is to avoid asking for gender on forms, like when someone signs up for a new library card or when someone is applying to work at the library. Rarely is gender relevant or necessary in these cases. Finally, as a policy, the library should stand up for LGBTQ resources and programming. And we'll get back to this in a few minutes. So let's move on to inclusive programming. In this sense, libraries should be intentionally inclusive and intersectional from the beginning. So I've heard of libraries that have a storytime focus on dads and daughters. And this may initially sound a policy as a way to connect these demographic groups, get more father figures involved in storytime. But it's also exclusionary language. It's focusing on a male-identified parental figure. And it leaves out a lot of families who might have lesbian parents, who might have gender non-binary or queer parents, who might be single mothers. And it also really focuses on the gender identity of the child as well. So perhaps there's a different way we can rephrase this different approach to be more inclusionary, rather than exclusionary. In addition, using the phrase boys and girls in storytime, for instance, or in other types of programming, that can feel exclusionary to many individuals. Using phrases like, are you all ready for storytime? Or friends, let's settle down and get ready to do the craft. There are a number of ways to approach this in a more inclusionary top sort of way. You just have to be really intentional with your language. It's also really valuable for libraries to partner with LGBTQ organizations and community members. This can involve national organizations, but I'm specifically thinking about one's local organizations and individuals in this case. And there are a couple of benefits here. If you partner with local communities and organizations, you can find out what would be useful and relevant to them, what they would like to see in the library. You can also help invite them to co-host a programming event. It could be something like drag queen storytime, although it doesn't need to be. It could be something like lesbian history month. And speaking of inclusive programming and that sort of celebration of identity, here's a timeline of a number of events and special days that are relevant to the LGBTQ plus community. Whether it's international transgender day of visibility, GLBT book month, national coming out day, you can see there are actually events spread throughout the calendar year. Now, again, this is where it's valuable to know your community, talk to your community to see what they would find valuable and helpful. For example, on national coming out day, would they want a celebration of coming out, celebration of stories, celebration of themselves, or would they think that something like that was more explanatory for the broader community would be useful? Here you don't want to make assumptions, but you really want to talk to your community members. You can also have an inclusive approach to reference services. And this starts by not making assumptions. You don't want to make assumptions about whether a person who is approaching you is part of the LGBTQ plus community. There could be any number of reasons for asking about search and materials. Maybe an individual is in the closet and seeking to come out or thinking about it and wants materials along those lines. Maybe the person is an ally and is seeking information to help a friend or family member. There can be any number of reasons that individuals seek different reading materials. And we shouldn't make assumptions about what those reasons are. Another way to have more inclusive reference is to include LGBTQ plus resources and reference responses. For example, if someone comes to the reference desk and asks about recent thrillers, you could suggest examples that include straight characters and queer characters. This is a simple way to incorporate these resources into the broader library happening. You don't have to wait to reference LGBTQ plus resources only when somebody asks about that specific community, but you can treat it as part of the broader library resources. We also need to think about inclusivity and how we address patrons. This again may mean not calling people sir or ma'am. Maybe we should ask for their names or ask how they identify and then use that information rather than making assumptions about gender. So a lot of this boils down to being intentional and thoughtful. And as a slight said a few minutes ago, treating everybody with respect and kindness. Finally, some ways to be inclusive of LGBTQ resources. One approach is to look at collection development policies. This includes looking at the sources that you use to select your books. Are you looking at only the big three or four publishers? What about small presses, independent presses? Are you relying on the top two or three review journals like Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, etc.? Maybe looking at some alternative sources that might review some lesser known titles would be valuable. There are some presses that are dedicated to just queer literature, queer materials. So those might be worth looking at as well. We should also be really thoughtful about labeling and cataloging in our libraries. By labeling, I mean putting an LGBTQ sticker on the spine of a book or creating a special queer section in the library. This can be inadvertently problematic for many library users. Perhaps someone doesn't want others to know they are reading books with LGBTQ characters or themes. Perhaps someone may not pick up a book that's labeled as queer, even though they would like it if they actually read it. Likewise, creating a separate section for queer resources, queer literature kind of calls back to the roped off section of problematic literature that the Oklahoma legislators were thinking of. Cataloging can also be problematic. Some subject heading terms are pretty outdated, even offensive. And many books with LGBTQ plus characters don't include that information in the subject headings in the record. So we need to be thoughtful about how we go about cataloging these and because that of course affects what will come up in searches and what we might recommend to our readers. I also encourage libraries to buy LGBTQ plus books that have won awards. These days, there are several awards specific to LGBTQ plus books. And this can be a good indicator of quality. And it can also be a butt race in case these materials get challenged. This includes teen books and children's books that have won awards. It's also really valuable to buy health information that's specific to the LGBTQ plus community. The often folks in this community often struggle to find meaningful, accurate, inclusive health information. So having some of that in the library could create a really valuable resource. It can also be really valuable to include, to create inclusive book displays and promotions. I have here a picture that a colleague and a friend sent me. She was very excited about creating a display for Valentine's Day for the month of February about love letters. It's not the best craft picture, but you can see at the top of mailbox with some letters spilling out. And around the bottom inside is our number of books related to the theme of love letters. Now my question here is, are all the books about straight characters? Are there any queer romances included? This is just an easy example of how you can incorporate LGBTQ plus resources into any display, any sort of promotion of books and materials to your library users. You can think about when you show books, you have some of the outward facing books that are LGBTQ plus. Don't relegate these books just to Pride Month, but include them year round in all of your displays. However, I do want to warn you that sometimes doing so can create challenges. In the past year, the American Library Association received reports of 729 challenges to library materials and services. Now up to 90% of challenges go unreported, so the actual number of challenges in 2021 may have been closer to 1400. But this number of 729 in 2021 is the highest number of recorded challenges that the ALA has ever received. It's more than four-fold increase over the previous year. Of the top 10 most challenged books in 2021, half of them were challenged due to queer content. And in addition to books, there have also been challenges to displays, programming, even databases. So there seems to be a rise in challenges to materials. This is something to really be aware of. The most common reasons for challenges in the past few years, according to the ALA, has to do with LGBTQ plus content, characters and authors that are black, indigenous, or people of color, and anti-racism themes. The bottom line is that these are materials that counter traditional narratives about marginalized communities, such as a happy queer black couple. These are not narratives that have been common in the past, and there's more and more work coming out about these characters with these themes, with these authors. This work is being highlighted in new ways. And as a result, some people get really angry. Stories about happy queer individuals and families really anger some people. And having more depictions of this community, having more inclusiveness upsets people. It challenges their worldview. I'm sure some of us can relate to having our worldview challenged. And it can create a lot of feelings of confusion, frustration, uncertainty, anger. People don't like those feelings. They don't like having their worldview challenged. So sometimes they lash out at the library. How to respond is fairly straightforward. First of all, you have to keep your cool. Listen with patience and respect. This is someone, after all, who cares about what's in the library. They have strong feelings about what the library should contain, even if those feelings are very different from you, from your feelings. Maybe it's possible to find some common ground about the importance of a library, the importance of children reading, for example, which should avoid a confrontational reaction responding to the emotions that somebody else brings to the table. If you're not a supervisor or director, you should get your supervisor. They have a little more training oftentimes on how to deal with these sorts of situations. Let the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom know about the challenge. You can email an individual who works in the office or you can go online and there are contacts, information about how to share your challenge with them. And you should offer the patron a reconsideration or a challenge form, which means you need to have a reconsideration or challenge form. A reconsideration form provides a formal mechanism to evaluate challenges to materials. The ALA website has a good example and really useful information about how to craft a reconsideration form. If you have a board of trustees, you should get your reconsideration form approved by them. Should be part of the official policies of the library. Once you have a reconsideration form and you've shared it with the patron, then you need to follow your reconsideration policy, which means you need a reconsideration policy. This basically explains the process, how you, the library, are going to handle challenges or requests for reconsideration. The first step is to form a committee to evaluate the working question. This committee can contain library members, board members. Some libraries include community members. There are pros and cons to that. So the structure of the committee should be outlined in your reconsideration policy. So you have a guideline to follow. This committee should carefully read the book, watch the movie, whatever the material is, whatever the challenge material is, carefully review it. They should also review the library bill of rights, the ALA code of ethics, other professional guidance in the literature. There's a freedom to read statement, a freedom to view statement. There's statement specific about minors access to information, LGBTQ plus content in the library. There's a lot of guidance out there. So we should all be reviewing that when we get a challenge. Then the committee comes together, debates the merits. Oh, they should also be reviewing any professional reviews or evaluations of the material. For example, if the book was reviewed in the professional literature, if the movie was reviewed, if the material made the New York Times best seller list, things like that are also important to take into consideration. And then the committee should meet and make the decision and then share that with the patron in question. It's often useful to have an appeals process. If the patron feels they weren't heard, another step in the process can be useful. And another piece of advice is to set a timeframe for challenges. Maybe you'll review a work once every three years. That way, if somebody is unhappy about a material, a particular book say, you don't get continual challenges to that book every month and have to review it every month for the next two years. But if you say, we're going to review material once and that decision will stand for three years, that gives your committee some breathing room. Throughout this process, the goals are to be fair, respectful, and consistent with all patrons. You want to create a neutral policy that you enact in the same way for every patron regardless of what their concern is. You also want to be respectful. Even if you disagree with this patron, even if they're upset saying unkind things about the library, they are a library patron. So you want to be respectful and consistent with them. You also want to provide relevant feedback and information. Some people, some library directors in their letter to a challenger might tie the library decision to the First Amendment, the freedom to read statement, the library bill of rights, giving relevant information to put a decision in better context. Throughout the reconsideration process, one of the goals should also be to protect the diversity of resources in your library. This helps bolster the diversity of your community and support your community as a whole. Again, remember that LGBTQ plus individuals are found in every community across the United States. No, I haven't come out and said this before in my talk, but I want to make this point really clear. LGBTQ plus individuals, the community in general are not responsible for inclusivity and making these changes in the library. It's responsibility of everyone who works in the library, especially the leaders in the administration. Doing so really goes back to the key values of librarianship. Some of the core values of librarianship according to the American Library Association include access, equity, intellectual freedom and diversity. These are core foundational concepts and they really should be the basis of how we implement inclusivity in our library, how we incorporate the LGBTQ plus community in our libraries. I'll wrap up with a few final points. We need to be really intentional about inclusion. I hope that has come through in my talk today. From policies, programming, reference, resources, all of these aspects of librarianship, we need to be really thoughtful and intentional about how we are including diverse patrons and diverse library staff into our libraries. And inclusion matters. It can be life changing for many folks. It's a valuable, worthwhile goal. It has a lot of importance for your community and for particular individuals in your community. I hope I've also shown that libraries can promote and enhance inclusivity through specific actions. Buying a few LGBTQ books is not going to be not going to be sufficient, but taking specific acts further and really starting at the bedrock of inclusive policies, you can promote and enhance inclusivity, especially for the LGBTQ plus community. Finally, I'll know that sometimes it does take some courage to be a librarian. Sometimes you have to stand up to people who might not want happy, meaningful, relevant information about the LGBTQ plus community. Sometimes you have to stand up for the resources in your library, but that courage is really worth it. You get the joy of knowing that you've made a difference in people's lives. Even if you don't see it, having an inclusive library, having LGBTQ resources and policies, programming and for reference, those can change people's lives. And you get the joy of bringing something new to your community, enhancing their worldview. I've included here my contact information, email and Twitter. I'm also really easy to find online if you just Google my name. And I'm always happy to continue this conversation, answer questions. I've spoken to library board of trustees. I've done training with library administration. I'm happy to do any of that. But I'm also happy to take any questions now and have a discussion. Thank you very much, Shannon. Thank you for your personal stories and perspective around your own journey. Obviously, your expertise libraries truly have the support of LGBTQ plus across the spectrum of what we consider our normal day-to-day. Also, I really appreciate your points about challenging others' worldviews, which is truly, again, a core. And I also like the point that you make about it is really all of our responsibility, especially those of leadership, intentionality. And then finally, courage. So DEI as applied has become a core component of all ALA accreditation standards. And so I think that all of what you said, Shannon, is very timely. Now, we do have some questions for you. Seven questions, but we'll see if we can work through them. So you'll also see them, Shannon, in the Q&A. But let me, I guess, to start at the top here. What are your thoughts on labeling stickering for LGBTQ plus books as a way to help folks find them in the collection? Yeah, I am a little hesitant about labeling, to be honest, for two reasons. One, it can turn some people away. Imagine a straight middle-aged white woman looking for romance books. She might not pick up a book that has an LGBTQ sticker on it, a rainbow sticker on it, because she thinks it's not relevant to her. She assumes she wouldn't enjoy it. However, if it didn't have that sticker, she might pick it up and really like it. So it can act as a deterrent to some folks. The second reason I'm hesitant about it is because it can act as a signal that a particular individual is reading queer books, and that could be problematic for that individual. People might make assumptions about that individual, which could be problematic. So I understand the impulse, but I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it. Great point. And everyone, feel free to use the chat as you want to comment or continue interacting with Janet on the panel. So the second question is from Anonymous. You mentioned avoiding asking for gender, the gender of patrons or job applicants. Should we also avoid asking for pronouns? That's a difficult question. I think asking for pronouns could be useful. That allows the person to explain how they wish to be identified. A lot of times I've seen forms that say check male or female, and that's the sort of thing that I'm particularly opposed to. You could put something like pronouns, optional and parentheses. That way if somebody does not want to identify themselves, they don't have to. But that empowers the individual filling out the form to explain how they are best identified and spoken about. Great point. The next question comes from Braith Birch Hall. I work in, oh I apologize, actually Amanda proper. I work in an archive, so non-active in the public library scene. So I'm curious to know about specific LGBTQ plus programming and how it would differ from traditional programming. Sure, that's a great question. There's a couple of different ways this could go. One could be something like Harvey Milk Day. One could be something that is more explanatory. Who is Harvey Milk? What does he represent? Why did we celebrate Harvey Milk Day? That would be informative for both the LGBTQ plus community, but also members, people who are not members of that community. It might even be a little bit more for straight members of your community so that they can get some insight and perspective on the queer community. Or you could have something that is really targeted and specific for LGBTQ plus individuals and communities. Something that, for example, during LGBTQ history month, maybe they, maybe you invite community members who are LGBTQ plus to come to your library and share stories about their history, share stories about the history of the queer community, and create this bonding experience and a safe place for them. So those are different types of examples. Perhaps the most controversial example right now is Drag Queen Story Time, which many public libraries and other institutions are doing. This is often positioned as sort of a bridge between these two types. It's a very welcoming place for queer families, but it also is a great place for allies and other members of your community to show up and learn about and support the LGBTQ community. Great. Thank you, Shannon. We'll have time for one more question, and then I think what we'll do is maybe have you feel free to interact with those questions through Q&A where you can actually answer them via chat. So the next question in line is from Braitha Virchoff. So do you have any ideas about gender neutral respectful terms like ma'am or sir? I've heard it to be very important to some people to be referred to in these ways, but as a non-binary person myself, I always want to avoid assuming a person's gender. Yeah, this is one that our society I don't think is quite solved yet, unfortunately. My preference is for y'all or to just ask somebody who comes up to the reference desk. Thanks for that question. May I ask your name? Okay, Robert or Tammy or whatever the answer may be, and then use that as a springboard into the conversation that happens at a reference desk. So those are two approaches. I'll agree they're not 100 percent replacements for sir and ma'am, but like I said, I think our society is still working on this puzzle. Yeah, and I can see Shannon and I's southern roots y'all is something that we're used to, so very nice. All right, so what I would recommend, Shannon, if you're okay with it, is I think Alfredo's helping you move the questions that being answered. So feel free to work through that list if you like as we begin the panel discussion. And also feel free to drop question and answers into the chat if you like as well. So yes, I was born and raised in Florida, so y'all is definitely part of that. Okay, so let's introduce our prestigious panel here. So we are going to be talking to the panel about how LGBTQIA plus librarian-shaped libraries today. And so with us we have Melinda and Borey, a collection development librarian from the Floyd County Library, good to see you Melinda. We have Martin Garner, a library director at the Robert Frost Library and First College. We have Cassian Rai Lemke, a papillion public library and University of Nebraska at Omaha's Archives and Special Collections. And then finally we have Zoe Ziegler, Louisiana Trans Oral History Project. And if I mispronounce anyone's names, I apologize in advance, but we welcome and we appreciate everybody's time. And let's go ahead and start with the first question. So the first question and it's really open to anyone and everyone. What does Pride Month mean to you? Why is it important to recognize and celebrate? Just feel free to jump right in. Okay, I have an answer for this one. I think that even in today's society that there is a lot of pressure on queer people all over the country to be ashamed of the ways in which they are different, the ways that they exist in the world. And so Pride in that context is an act of resistance, that is an act of community. And it is a way for us to push back against the ways that we're oppressed. Thank you, Melinda. Yeah, and I'll just jump in and build a little bit of what you said, Melinda, which I completely agree with. And I would just also add that it's still very much and Shannon, this goes back to what you were saying with the challenges in the programming. It's still very, very, very important for us to have examples of ourselves in each other. We know, so I work with the Louisiana Transfer History Project and one of the things that we're trying to do is build those examples because we know lack of examples actually kills us. So the importance of pride, especially from a library angle, is that I think. And that's why people get angry about it. They've always been angry when we didn't want to die. Yeah, thank you, Sophie. Yeah, I think really that idea of community and not being alone is so critical to celebrating. And that's being asked for all PDI symposiums and heritage months. Why did we just celebrate it that month? I think that's one of them, right? Is this to stand together for a brief period of time. Any other thoughts from the panel? Yeah, I actually have a bookmark with a quote from the LGBTI archives that's proximity to our histories and powering. And I think that for building community, we can build community contemporary, but I think we also are trying to build community throughout time, which is where I'm excited about our archives folks who are participating. Yeah, that's a great point. Okay, why don't we move on to the second prompt here. So in today's society, what do you feel are the primary challenges being faced by the LGBTQI plus community? I don't mind jump again for this one. So I have a lot of strong feelings about this. I think one of the first thing that I think about, of course, is the state level legislation that's coming through with the majority of the states right now. Again, I'm in Louisiana. Things are not as bad here, believe it or not, as they are in a lot of our southern neighbors, but rights are being taken away at just sort of ridiculous angles, chipping away at everything, seemingly all at once. But we know that anytime one group is attacked, it's always just practiced for the next group. So this is I think the biggest challenge that we face, but also I think the biggest moment for solidarity, not only among the LGBTQ plus community, but we know that this is also racial based and gender based. And I think just a wonderful opportunity for us all to come together. But I feel like this is the biggest challenge that we have right now. We are identified as a group that is still okay to legislate against. That's a great point, Sophie. Mark. To follow up on what Sophie was saying, I think that just the shift in the rhetoric where suddenly we're all groomers has been a really unfortunately effective way to revive the culture war that has never gone away. But now it's another way of calling this pedophiles, which is what they used to say. And then that became unacceptable. And now it's acceptable again. And I think that that's where legislators are getting their sense of political cover for trying to move forward with the laws that you reference. But there's just, you know, we now have to dismantle that concept that no, we're not groomers. We're just trying to make space for people to know that it's okay to be alive as themselves. And so we have to fight the battle around language before we can even start to push back about some of the other issues. So I think that's another aspect that's really troubling to me right now. As Shannon noted, there are LGBTQ plus people in every region and in every region of our country and the world at large, even the most progressive areas, there are families, there are healthcare providers who are not affirming to those queer people. So, you know, we have people in our communities who are not safe in their own homes. We have people who are not able to access the healthcare that they need. And recently with the overturning of Roe v Wade, we're seeing, you know, some glimmers of what precedent might be coming for queer specific legislation down the line. So I mean, the threats are very real and they are pervasive and they're really going to touch on potentially every part of life. Yeah, I just wanted to kind of pivot to, you know, Shannon, your point about over half of the book challenges have to deal with some type of LGBTQI plus content. Can you, do you see this as a potential opportunity as well for libraries to change even more world views? Yeah, I do. I think that is slowly happening. But I think that can continue to happen through how libraries interact with their communities. You know, we often say that parents have the right to decide what their kid reads, but not the right to decide what all kids read. So I think one way we can further advance that, that approach is to say, you know, if your child reads something that makes you uncomfortable, you can always come to the library for more resources. You can always talk to a librarian for more information. And I think, again, I think having these resources, but also incorporating them as part of the broader library picture is really important. So not saving them just for Pride Month, but incorporating them all year round. And everyone, we have plenty of time, so feel free to chime in, if you will. Appreciate, Shannon, for giving us quite a bit of time. So let's talk a little bit more about what role do you feel libraries should play in supporting the members of the LGBTQI plus community. Which really, as I always mentioned at the symposiums, that likely the majority of our attendees are are like the LS professionals, many of which would not, are not part of this community. So how can they best help? What can they best do? How can they, Shannon, be more intentional in their, in their library spaces? This is everyone's. I think a really easy move that people can do is to be advocates just in their everyday interactions. I think that sometimes queer folks and folks of different experiences are forced to be advocates, whether we want to or not. And I've definitely been in that experience in the library. So if you aren't a queer person or trans person, I think you have ample opportunity to learn about how to be a great advocate. And I think that even those really small interactions in the day today make a difference. If anything, it shows your colleagues that you're willing to support them. I think that's something that's really easy. It doesn't take a lot of structural power just to be better armed for those interactions. Great point. I think probably a lot of us are familiar with Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's concept of Windows mirrors and sliding glass doors for anyone who's not. It is an idea that originated specifically in children's literature, but I think that it's more widely applicable to a lot of the products and services that we have available in the modern library, where it can be a window into a life that is different from yours. It can be a mirror to an experience that maybe you didn't realize was not just your experience or a sliding glass door, which is a mirror that could turn into a window that could turn into a door into a new experience that maybe you were unaware was a possibility prior to now. That's a great point. I think that is a critical. I think one thing that I'm seeing in the chat and suggestions about making sure that we've got programming and materials, but I think actually reaching out to and being proactive about contacting different queer groups in the communities that you serve, whether if you're a school library and there's you've got a queer student alliance in the school or if you are an academic library reaching out to the various student groups, the public library reaching out to groups in the community and say, hey, we would like to partner with you on finding the best ways to serve you. What does that look like and invite them into a conversation? Because I think a lot of times programs and outreach that isn't successful for any group is when we decide what they need. So actually asking people what they want and saying how can we best be of service and finding out is a way to build the relationships that then will just inform how we can make sure that we are collectively working together to help them be full parts of the community. That's a really great point, Mark. We're also a vital educational resource in communities. There are a lot of them. I have an intelligent one where comprehensive psychedelics and abstinence first to abstinence only curriculum. We have an opportunity to provide education about healthcare and safety that queer people may not be able to get at school or at home. Yes, that's excellent. And I also wanted to kind of build on I think what has been mentioned a number of times and what Shannon mentioned in particular in our talk, which is something that my children have faced who are biracial, which is tokenism, which is I think it really ties to Shannon's point of it's really all of our responsibility. In fact, arguably the better way to move forward is not to have the LGBTQI person take the lead or rather put it on their shoulders exclusively, which of course for all of us can be exhausting when you are the token and you're always being asked to lead those efforts. I think that's also critical and I appreciate Shannon writing that up because in the end, when we talk about inclusive, we really want embedded EDI and not token EDI. So let's move on to number four, which are how are members of the library LGBTQI plus community shaping libraries today? How are you all doing and what are the roles of the community in taking the lead and shaping how libraries are going to be in the future? I'll take a swing at that. I think it's a great question. I think it's also very complicated because it's very related to I guess trying to disentangle a lot of the changes in perspective that are happening across librarianship now, as well as archival science and museum studies and related fields. And it's sort of for very smart people sort of guess at this and I don't think I could do any better, but it does seem like we're paying the attention that we're paying might be slightly different, right? So maybe a little bit more in tune to the people represented in our collections, a little bit more in tune to the my the under traditionally underserved communities that might be coming into our institutions more so than previous generations are. And maybe some of that is because more of us are LGBTQ plus identified, maybe because more of us are come from a variety of previously underrepresented communities ourselves. But I think just our presence and in a room that makes decisions, I think makes makes a big change. I think our presence and staff room makes a big change, right? And it's sort of a I don't know if it's a running it's right to say it's a running joke. But you know, if you have one person at a library come out, as you know, whatever I didn't know they're coming out is it's very likely that other people will within the next year, because that just changes the environment and makes it I mean, unless that person has a terrible experience, just really makes it easier for other people to do it. So it's almost, and again, it's not just LGBTQ plus right like this is for any number of communities, but just by having us around just by having more diversity among any sort of given room or group of people, just the presence and self seems to help. I hope that was coherent. That was very good. That's great. That's a great point. I want to give a shout out to the Rainbow Roundtable of the American Library Association, because it's it's one way where collectively we provide both advocacy for ourselves within the association. This is the group that's responsible for having gender inclusive bathrooms at our conferences. And when conference services forgets to get the signs up, then we are the ones reminding them, no, we said this is a commitment that we're going to do. And, you know, we have a counselor who represents us on council is making sure that when we are looking at issues from the association, whether it's making statements on areas that are of importance to us or are looking at policies across the association that our voice is represented in those conversations. And then for the for the general library community, as well as for the general public that we serve, you know, a lot of what we do is are the book awards and book lists, because sometimes it can be hard to find materials if it's not coming up through your nutritional jobbers or vendors. And so to do the work and people say, well, I don't know what to buy, you know, I don't know how to serve this community. Oh, well, here's a list of 75 books that you could buy right now. Or if that's too much, here's the top three, you know, just just trying to get something out there. And, you know, kind of speaking to Cassian's earlier point about connecting over history, then to say, oh, look, let's look at the representation of our community through the Stonewall Book Awards through all this time. And so just by providing resources another way, and there are, you know, there is also a toolkit that's called open to all. I will put the link in for that in the chat as well. That is about how to serve the LGBTQIA plus community in your library. And so providing those kinds of professional tools is a way that we can make sure that we are collectively doing a better job of serving the community. Yeah, Martin, I want to echo that fact that is why we're here today. So when I was looking for keynotes and panelists to discuss this issue, the roundtable was what I was referred to, right? And so kudos to all of you for you being willing to take the leadership to stand to speak on this issue, because it was a little bit hard to find initially folks that were willing to come together for this symposium. So thank you for your leadership and really, again, a perfect example of how the roundtable really serves a purpose and kind of a nexus for this kind of discussion. So any other thoughts on how all of you can change the world? Anthony, Dr. Childers, a few questions in the Q&A that might be interesting for the group? Yeah, yeah, please. Feel free to, if you like, if not, or I can. Do you have a specific one, Shannon, that you might want to speak to? Sure. I was just going to, I think the first one in the Q&A from Anonymous is really interesting. This person writes, we're advocating for the creation of an LGBTQ plus working group to review policies, recommend training, plan programming, etc. And we've gotten support in concept from upper management, but also heard concerns about how big the scope of the group's work would be and how staff are overburdened. Like a lot of systems, we have staffing shortages. Any thoughts on how to best make the case for the need to coordinate planning LGBTQ plus services and support on a system-wide level? I think this would be a great question to hear from a variety of perspectives. Yeah, great point. So to the panel. It's probably pretty important to make sure that before staff volunteer for this job to have some of those questions kind of ironed out and to have someone on more of a managerial level who is going to be the liaison for that group to the management because that may put them in kind of a vulnerable position if they are advocating for their own identity. I do not want for your frontline staff to end up in a situation where on top of all of the challenges that are part of their day-to-day work, they are also sort of fighting their identity on both sides to the public and to the library. I think it is a great idea. We have a pride committee at our library and our original impetus for this was to plan some LGBT plus themed programming to go along with our summer slate of programs. It was very successful. We are going to keep it. However, reviewing policies is kind of a different thing. I would worry about having them get really deep into it and then always be told no, it is not the right time and get very discouraged in a way that maybe they are able to ignore the discouraging aspects of those policies right now, but once they have formulated a plan for how it could be better to be shot down, it might be pretty demoralizing. That is a really great point. Administration definitely has to be in that formula for making sure that it is supported and also institutionalized in many ways. I would just add that yes, everything everybody said, that sounds really, really important and very, very difficult. I wish you the best of luck. The only thing that I would add is whatever work can be done for scoping at the beginning. It is easier to build on early successes. If there is relatively low hanging fruit, I think is what people say. If you can get that and then show the benefit of spending time on this, especially with outside community support. If you have patrons, you are like, oh, wow, this is so much better. You can leverage that to continue the momentum for a project like that. I think potentially that would be helpful. Also throughout it, I think as part of that has to be action. I think that we are addressing this in California with school libraries, as far as what does this actually look like? I think Martin had mentioned a number of different resources and services that are really considered best practices. Arguably, I am a big fan of checklists. It could very well be what does this look like and leadership not only embraces it, but actually uses it as a way to self-assass. As I mentioned at the beginning, ALA accreditation now is very much tied to equity and personal inclusion. Our response back to them is we need a few more metrics as far as what that actually looks like. I think that it is definitely a move in the right direction. I will just chime in one more time if you don't mind before we move on. I just want to say that it was just pointed out to me that low-hanging fruit has potentially uncomfortable racist undertones in history, and I didn't realize that. My apologies, I did not realize that either. So I think the next question now that Shannon has pointed me in the right direction, I also get the chat, but it's the Q&A chat, is this is from Caitlin. So as a queer person, I prefer using the word queer rather than LGBTQ plus in displays and other mentions of the queer community for the library. What should we be using LGBTQ, queer, either way? What is the panel thing? I would just say that we were talking about language before and how language is always, I think this is whether it was, well, do we use folks or y'all or mix is something that I'd also seen as an option, but I don't think it's been widely adopted yet and it's more for written rather than verbal communication. I think the fact that we have so many letters in the current usage reflects the diversity of the community. And so one way for displays at least is to kind of take a world word cloud approach where you can use words in different ways kind of around it and change out the terminology. I think that as time goes by, queer in particular is losing some of its edge that I have some colleagues who are my age, I'm 50, who are still upset by queer. I'm using queer more often have for quite some time. But so I think that that may begin to change. But at this point, I think that the tendency has been let's use more of the acronyms because that is seen as being more inclusive. But I think for displays, you could then make sure that the materials or some of the imagery calls out different parts of our community so that we can try to highlight as many identities as possible. So that's just one idea. I think that this is an incredibly difficult question. And from my perspective is that it, I just read my audience, right, if I'm putting together a library display for the general public, I use LGBTQIA to spirit plus or LGBT or some variation there upon, if I'm in queer space, I use queer. I think that it's like a lot of the questions I've seen in the chat. Very difficult and complicated answer that people have very long conversations about. And I think a lot of it's situational, I will say that I do use the word queer for myself. I would lean against putting it on a library sign. I do not think it is bad to do, but I think there's there's still a lot of divided opinions and probably some confusion from, you know, the people uneducated on these issues about, you know, is that a slur? Is that okay to say and not everyone would want to be called that word? And I try to be sensitive to that. However, I really only put up signs that say LGBTQ plus anything during Pride month or if I'm having like a specific program, we're having one later this year on queer mental health. And then for Pride, it's easy. I just say Pride and it's a rainbow. And then I try to make sure that it is inclusive of all the various identities that could fall underneath that umbrella. And then all the rest of the year, there are going to be in LGBTQ plus inclusive titles on those displays. But it's kind of like I had a babysitter who used to put a cream spinach in the pasta sauce so that you would just get vegetables and not ever have to think about it. We put books with various racial identities and sexual identities and gender identities in the displays all year. And we do not point them out if they are just there for people to take and learn about. Yes, really go at it. So I think Melinda's point is great. I was just going to say too, along with everyone else, I have mixed feelings about terminology. It's incredibly complex. When I've spoken about intellectual freedom to librarians, I talk a lot about context and nuance. And one of the examples I use is the word queer. For me, it's a self-identifier. It helps me feel like part of a bigger community. So it's also been used as a threatening slur against me. So context really matters. And I think Melinda's explanation is a great illustration of how context matters. Pride plus rainbow, most people are familiar with what that means and the context of what that means. So I think we can give a nuance to this question. Yeah, so really great points. And I think building on those from a BIPOC perspective, so as an Asian-American male, it's my opinion that you define yourself as you want to define yourself because there's always going to be someone else that's going to have a problem with you or what you have to say. So I think coupled with what Belinda and Cassie had said, of course, reading the room and being respectful at the same time. But I'm a big believer in define who you are and label yourself as you want to label yourself. And then, of course, read the room as far as making sure it's respectful with those that you're around. Because I think ultimately, seeking anybody's approval is a zero-sum game because ultimately someone's going to have a problem with you. And again, being someone that is racially easy to identify, I found that to be the case. There's not a thing I could do if someone is racist towards me. It's not my problem. It's theirs. I just want to quickly add on that with the rainbow round table, that's a new name for us because we had been the GLBT round table, which reflects a lot of institutional history. And it took us years, literal years, to come up with a new name. And it was down to actually LGBT round table or rainbow round table. And the vote went to rainbow people who I talked with about it were like, we just want to pick something that could be a little bit more stable because quite honestly, the acronym keeps changing as our evolving understanding improves and gets better. And they didn't want to keep changing the name of the round table. And we still have some folks who are upset about it. So I wanted to go for Friends of Dorothy, but no one, that way we could have been Fodor, because there's also a government documents brand thing called Fodor. And I thought Fodor would be great, but I was voted down. I think that was my, but that's, that's fun. I like that. Let me, let me paste a question that Liz had. So I think this will be for the panel. So Liz says, my hometown public library system has said they will no longer allow black history or pride month displays. Is there a way to challenge that other than grassroots community groups? There is one group against it, but they don't have much traction. So what does the panel think? What can they do? I'm going to put my hat on as most, as of yesterday, I was chair of the intellectual creative committee for the American Library Association. And this is something that's been coming up. Part of the answer to this specific question is what your policies say about what sort of programming is allowed. If this is an internal policy, that is what library sponsored program can be. If they do not have, I mean, well, if they have specific things against being able to have programming related to Black History Month or, or pride months, then this is likely not constitutional. And then it would have to be, and there would be legal action that could be taken about that. And I say that knowing that that's expensive. But that could be something to talk to the ECLU about and talk to your state chapter, the ECLU about. If this is a decision that they've made, that's for outside groups, not being able to do anything, that's almost definitely going to be unconstitutional. And again, so my answer again would probably be ECLU in terms of that. I would recommend that you contact the Office for Intellectual Freedom. That's something that Shannon mentioned before, because we have had, we see a number of libraries around the country who are making, I will characterize them as knee-jerk reactions to concerns about this. And some of them are either overriding existing policy or they're adopting new policy that is questionable, if not unconstitutional. And OIF has been really good about being a provide advice as a way to use some pressure. I'm aware of a library in my former home state of Colorado that changed its policy. And one, and to my personal opinion, not to the better in terms of seeing that they were going to avoid controversial programming. Well, who defines what controversial is and anything you just don't want to deal with. And that includes us. And one way that they've gotten some traction is that they talk to the local independent paper and they start to mix the noise about it. And I would say if you want to go that route, then you can do that. I will also note that someone in the library workers involved no longer works for the library. And so it can be at risk to your own financial well-being to make a fuss. And I mentioned it in the chat earlier, but there is something called the Merit Humanitarian Fund that does provide direct financial assistance to library workers who are either standing up for an official freedom or because they're being discriminated against for who they are. And so that would be, and they can provide a short-term assistance. So that's just one thought. But the policy thing is tricky. If an organization has a policy that they're not following, they are opening themselves up to lawsuits. And that's a good thing to bring up to the board of trustees because the boards don't like lawsuits. So that's something else to just keep in mind. That's a great point, Martin. Thank you. Other thoughts on the panel? I guess I wonder, and the question asked or did not specify do they work for this library? I would be interested to know if there is a feeling from the other staff that they are against this because it is possible that by banding together they could have more power than any one of them is going to have on their own without a coalition of like-minded people who believe that federally recognized Black History Month is something that we should be participating in. I do not know how far you're going to get, sadly. Yeah, Liz responded, says, I do not work there, but I work in another city in the same state. And so it's a great point, Liz. Yeah, sometimes if there are community members who are objecting to this change in policy, you know, having them speak to the library and say, look, I heard you're getting rid of Black History Month displays. And actually, I find those really valuable, especially if the library is doing it out of a knee jerk anticipatory sort of pose, having patrons come in and say, no, wait, this is actually really useful, that might change, go some direction towards changing the library's mind. I also wonder, did they announce this policy change or is it something that they are quietly doing? Because it may also be valuable to draw more attention to it. If what they want is to avoid negative attention, maybe call some negative attention to this decision. Cassie, did you have a comment? Yeah, I was going to echo what Melinda and Shannon were both saying is that I love a good grassroots movement. I think that it sounds like there's opportunity to get more collective support for diversity and inclusion in the library. I think that you can start to reach out to different organizations. And I think a really helpful thing that some groups in my city do is that they will write an outline for a letter or an email that you can send to certain people to basically threaten them with public embarrassment over this. So I do think that there's just a lot of opportunity to just reach out to people and kind of get other people to support. There's other people who share that opinion and if you can engage in some sort of collective action, even from a grassroots level, I think that that's valuable. Great point. Thanks everyone. Let me pace another question here. So this is from Grace Huffman. So she says, as a newly graduated MLS student in LGBTQ plus identifying librarian, has there been any discussion about how librarians who are being persecuted at times even prosecuted for abacating inclusion of these materials and these programs stay safe, especially as legislation gets worse? Yeah, I did put an answer to the chat in this one in the merit fund. I'll just repeat again because it's always worth repeating. And then I'll defer to Shannon. I was just going to say, notice we all pause for a moment because this is a tough question without a really resoundingly great answer. Unfortunately, you do have to protect yourself first and you have to protect your livelihood. You know, if you've got kids in the mortgage and the car payment, you've got tough decisions probably. I understand and I respect that. And I also know some people who've had to walk away from the library world because it wasn't inclusive and safe. And I respect and understand that too. I think the merit fund is a great solution. Talking to the Office for Intellectual Freedom is a great solution. Melinda earlier mentioned banning together with coworkers. So you're not one person standing alone, but there's three or four or 10 of you. That can make a difference. And speaking from a professorial point of view, I've had students reach out to me and say, hey, I'm encountering this problem in my library. What do you think? What should I do? And I'm always happy to give feedback and guidance. Not that I always have the best solution, but reach out to your mentors, your allies, your professors, if you're still in touch with them and seek some guidance and support. And I'll say from a leadership standpoint, oftentimes we talk to people about job satisfaction. So another thing to look at is if in fact you are not supported, the question you do have to ask yourself is if it's a good fit. In other words, how much longer do you want to work in an environment that is so restricting? And then the other thought is, I think just making the attempt, even if it's shouted down, may draw enough attention to the issue to have one anyway. And the reason why I bring that up is because I think outside of outwardly and explicitly supporting a particular type of person or people, I think it also sends a message to those people that you care. And I think that oftentimes libraries serve, most importantly, that intimate relationship between people in the community that want resources and it's almost a one-to-one quiet interaction. So I think that in some ways, I would definitely always say raise a fuss, even if you're shouted down, we could still have an article written about it. And I think that alone sends a message out to the community that you're there for them. And I think that's my personal experience with my son who's transitioning to my daughter is that in her K through 12 experience, she didn't know what was happening. We didn't know what was happening in the library is one of the really only places in which maybe there could have been more support because of that content, of that availability of content when she needed it. So there's a question in the Q&A that we should address. Yes, please. Let's talk by pop. Let's talk intersections. LIS is still struggling to find folks who are not white heterosists. How can we as an organization be open to having more diverse people join our ranks? This is a super important question. This is really goes to the heart of serving your community, representing your community. I think one controversial answer that I'll give is maybe we need to not always be requiring an MLS degree to start. Maybe we hire folks who don't have the degree. And if they want to be invested in this as a career, then we help fund the degree. Tons of programs let you go part time, one or two classes a semester, so it doesn't have to be an exorbitant cost. That's a little controversial, especially coming from somebody who teaches the degree. But I think that's one step we can take. I'm very excited to hear what other folks have to say. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Be very intentional about the amount of education that you're requiring. If you do not actually need someone to have that level of education before they start, requiring it is just keeping people from applying who might otherwise do well. I think being intentional about how much and what kind of experience you want people to have, because an unpaid internship is something that a relatively small portion of the population is able to afford to do, to work for free for six months or a year. We're talking about you need to have a sense for how people can move up. I know a lot of libraries will hire just about anybody to be their frontline customer service workers, but then there is no opportunity for even the very, very talented, very, very skilled among that staff to move into more respected, more prestigious, higher paying roles. I have another controversial answer, which is that we need to pay people more. I interviewed for a library that was paying $13 an hour for a degree librarian for 37 and a half hours a week. The only way someone could afford to work at that library is if they have family money or they are married to somebody who makes a lot of money, there is just no way for someone without any of those advantages to break into the field. We need to look at our hiring practices and our work practices first, and then there are certainly a lot of cultural changes that I'm sure a lot of places have to make in order to be more accepting of people who are different from the people who they have historically hired, but there are very practical barriers preventing people from getting in. I just finished my doctorate last year, and my dissertation was on understanding the experiences of academic librarians of color. You can read my positionality statement about what it was like for a cis white gay man to be writing about the experiences of people of color. It's trying to use my positionality and my privilege to center the voices of others. Using critical race theory before it became controversial, but now I'm excited it was controversial. It's available open access, I just put the link in the chat, but some of the recommendations I want to just echo what has been said about in the chat, someone talked about mentoring is something that's really important. I think that we also need, one of the recommendations that came from my participants was hire more people of color. That sounds simple, but it's also hard because it's not just about, what I found in my discussions with my participants, it wasn't so much that it wasn't an welcoming place from the outside, but they just didn't want to stay. And so it's having to change the climate. And one way that we change the climate is to talk about issues, to talk about race. We talk about equity and inclusion and diversity, but actually let's talk about justice, let's talk about anti-racism, let's talk about actually making changes, instead of saying, we have to talk about the correct work that we need to do, instead of just saying, if we just open the doors and bring everybody in, everything will be okay. No, there is systemic issues that we need to address. Another recommendation was to change how we do LIS education. And part of that is to equip all of our folks who are going through our programs with things like critical race theory, or other critical theory that allows us to examine what we do and how we operate as a profession through the lenses of race, of gender, of orientation, so that people have the skills to see where the issues are and to start to work to dismantle those problems. And I also, I just figured I might as well aim high. I think we also need to look at the core values of librarianship and see that they actually reflect what we're doing now. So I think that in order to have people want to be here, we need to look at what is making our profession a place where folks who are not the majority don't feel comfortable staying. And some of that is doing some of that work to talk, to find out what those issues are. So I'm hoping that that's something that we can be changing. I feel, but we've also been trying to work on this for decades without a lot of success. And so we need to look at the fundamentals. I'll just pop in to say Martin talked about intentionality and you mentioned it briefly and that's something that everybody can do. For example, I've made a pledge now that I have tenure and I have some seniority, I will only do collaborative work if it includes a junior scholar and or a personal color. And so I'm very intentional about seeking out those relationships and offering to mentor people rather than waiting for somebody to say, Hey, I need to mentor, would you do it? Boy, that's that's hard to do, right? So offering mentorship, offering informal guidance, just being a voice that people can turn to someone that people can turn to. And this isn't meant to my own horn at all. I was helped by tons of people along the way. I'm just trying to pay it forward. But just to say that those of us who are in more senior positions can be really intentional about trying to break patterns that are not healthy for our profession. I've got a lot of thoughts, but any thoughts to the panel? I would just jump in just to say something real fast. And this is maybe to look at it from a different angle. So I'll just bring up the question again to be sure. So Monica, I appreciate the question. I appreciate the way that you worded it, right? So we're talking about struggles to find folks who are not white heterosis. So I'm white. And so this this is this is coming from my positionality as a white trans individual. And I know it'd be compounded if I wasn't white. I don't think I would I didn't come out until several years until librarianship. And I think I would have left if I had entered at all, if I were out as trans. I don't think that the mentorship, Shannon, to go back to what you were saying a little bit, I don't think the mentorship that I did get would have been as forthcoming. And I kind of I'm just sort of hesitant to think about libraries being a place where we ended Monica, this isn't about you or your question, but sort of more about conversations that I see out the field about that makes me a little uncomfortable sometimes to think about libraries being a place where we ask ourselves, like, how do we get more people of color? How do we get more LGBTQ plus folks? Because I just don't feel like we're really we've done the work yet. And I feel like we're putting a lot of people in really unfortunate positions and situations. And ultimately, I think I will leave librarianship because of my positionality. Yes, it's a really unfortunate thing to be true. And it's an unfortunate thing to say out loud, especially in a setting like this. But I mean, it's just I know it depends on where you are, both in your institution and your leadership role, and in your region, et cetera. But it's just such a tough question. And I just wonder to what right we have to be encouraging people to join us. Thank you. If I may follow on Sophie, you know, what I when I started my study, it was trying to look at both current and former academic librarians of color to see if there was something that shifted because there have been previous studies that look at current experiences. And a lot of things that were named as these are things that could help with retention like mentoring and changing, you know, in a more aspect on having more trying to change the culture. All of those things in large part happened for the folks who ultimately left all they did is it let them stay a little longer. So it wasn't it didn't it didn't change it enough to make it to fix it. It just let them endure a little bit longer before then they were tapped out. So your your experience resonates with theirs. And it's and that's something that we need to know. And that all of us need to know that this is what when when when if we are in a minority, then this is what we're this is the experience that that we're just going to turn through people. And that is not for a profession that's supposed to be all about helping each other. That doesn't seem like the right way we should be going about it. So that's why that's a great point. And I think that like a lot of organizations, you know, put diversity in their values, but are not willing to square with the fact that if you legitimately value diversity, you are going to have to do a lot of uncomfortable searching. And also, you might have to really significantly change things structurally. I think that for a lot of organizations, you know, they think that diversity can be something that's passive, or it's its own department that they kind of sequester off, and they don't want it to touch other areas. And if you like truly value diversity and inclusion and justice, then you will fundamentally have to change the structure of your organization, because there's no one simple answer or one simple easy thing that you can do that will make people join your organization and want to stay in your organization at great personal cost. Yeah, so I think it's very uncomfortable, and I think it's definitely worth doing in the long term. Well, excellent. So I'm going to approach it from a slightly different way, which is going to the fact that we are more similar than we are different. And the reason why I bring that up is because when we think about diversifying the field, having a lot of discussions both at the librarian level and also at the education level, one of the things that we must remember is that minority means there are not that many in the numbers are hard to accomplish, right? So when we think about the Black and African American community, there are so few Black and African American librarians. First and foremost, it's hard to get a Black and African American librarian. And we should not just rely on that to be our litmus for supporting the Black and African American community, right? Certainly, we want to focus on like a lot of libraries are doing a lot of large, our urban libraries are focusing on embedding both certification and also scholarships within their workforce, right? And so that's happening certainly in the Bay Area, where the requirement of the online degree is questioned because obviously there are a lot of per professionals that do mark and would be represented of the community. So I do know in talks with ALA in discussions with education and diversity and inclusion, one of the things that they have, they, as in the people that were working with that work at ALA, they have come to the conclusion, or at least one of the focal points being that we must also embrace the fact that largely DEI is going to be talked in a white context, right? The other white librarians serving mostly white patrons. And there's nothing wrong with that in terms of the demographics of that library situation. So I think it's a very important point. In other words, it goes back to what Shannon said. It's all of our responsibility to be teaching DEI. And so regardless of whether you look like me or not, I think we have many more similarities than we have differences. And also it is our responsibility to understand what those differences are from an authentic view. So if I cannot have a Native American librarian, then what I need to do is make sure that I have Native American members of the community and librarians speak to the authentic view of what they are dealing with and what I can do to help them, right? And so I think that's also very important. The other thing is that like all complex problems, we must have multiple solutions. So I think everything we're saying here is correct. We should pursue all of the different avenues. And I think that ultimately I do see progress as difficult as it is. Sophie, to be selfish as an LS educator, I hope that you will stay in the field because one of the metaphors that we've created here at the ISchool is called the I-Warrior, which is basically librarians and the need to be information warriors is more important than ever, right? As far as all the things that are happening and all of the reasons why librarians must change people's worldviews, be controversial and be supportive across the board, which is sadly controversial to some people in our communities and so. But I think that's a good thing. And I think that ultimately, like when you look at school libraries, oftentimes the library is the only place in which say lower socioeconomic children can have access to the same material that middle class have, right? So I wanted to say that. And then lastly, let me leave you with a really, I think a transformational conversation I had with Crosby Kemper, who is the director of IMLS. So I asked him this question just a couple of days ago. What do you think we need to be doing to be more responsive to DEI? He said something that I think was pretty phenomenal. He said the first thing he thinks we should do is always remember the people and communities that we serve and to also look at it as a holistic perspective. So when I talk about the Black and African-American community, Latinx community, I must also talk about them in the holistic view of, let's say, Kansas City or San Jose. In other words, it's not just talking about that community, but talking about the fabric of all of the different perspectives and cultures and races that are in that specific area. I really like that point because I think that also avoids tokenism, right? Which is that, you know, I'm Asian, so I must speak for all Asians? No. And to be honest, I don't even know what that means, right? So I grew, I was born and raised in the deep South. My wife is Dutch Irish. My kids are mixed race. What does that even mean exactly, right? And so I think that's one of the reasons why I'm such a proponent of focusing on our similarities. And obviously we do have cultural value, value traits, but I think it's a mistake to say that's ubiquitous across all Asian Americans or it's ubiquitous across any particular type of community. So anyway, I think this is a great conversation. And certainly DEI should be across the threshold. And I think going back to the person who asked the question, and I'm sorry, Monica, you I think will be happy to know that again, ALA accreditation has challenged all of LS education to say it needs to be across the board. It needs to be across the workforce, across the curriculum, it needs to be across the metrics, it needs to be across. And I think that is exactly the right way to approach it, as long as we start to at least come up with some operational definitions. And by the way, that was the response of all LS education programs where we said, okay, we need to put some metrics behind this, right? Because otherwise we're going to interpret it maybe to two different things. But anyway, with that being said, I want to leave some time so anyone feel free to ask additional questions. But I want to leave time for every one on the panel to have maybe some final thoughts. So as we kind of move into the turn of the hour, I'd love everyone just to have a few thoughts. So I'm just going to go with maybe the popcorn method. So I'm going to start with Melinda and then Melinda feel free to hand it off to wherever you would like afterwards. So Melinda, go ahead and share your final thoughts. Okay. I'd like to start by saying, I think we all came with a lot of questions about how to support queer communities. And I think that those are really good questions to be thinking about and to continue thinking about after you leave today, because I have really never met a queer person who had too much support. I don't think that person exists. We are not there yet. So anything that we can be doing to add on to that, whether that is education of our allies in community, providing good and accurate and affirming health information to people, providing them fluffy romance novels that show that someone like them can have a happy ending too. We really, I like that we are making progress across all of those things. There is still a lot of work to be done and I'm glad everyone is working on that. Okay. Thanks Melinda. Martin or Sophie, go ahead. Oh, it's okay. I thought you said Sophie, Melinda. If not, I apologize. Oh, okay. So yeah, fantastic. Well, thank you for letting me part of this. I think for closing thoughts, I would like to wrap it back up to something that we almost maybe started with, maybe at the very beginning, which was building on, Shannon, your your emphasis on examples and being able to see ourselves in the collection. And thank you again for your presentation, which I very much enjoyed. And I think like a setting like this, especially if we were actually able to see each other, I think it's wonderful to have the example of people who care about these type of topics and are really coming together, because now it's just a very challenging time. I think to be a librarian at all. But then, you know, on top of that, you pile on all the different identities and then the different challenges, legislative and proud boy related, etc. And it just gets really bad. So I do appreciate being here. And I think that's what I wanted to leave with, is that every chance for community building and every chance for finding more examples is just really powerful. I'm going to popcorn it over to Martin. You know, when I was first asked to be on this panel, my response was, but I don't like this isn't my area of work. You know, it's I can speak as as a gay man who works in libraries, but I will say that my the one citation of mine that has the most or the one piece of scholarship I've done that has the most citations is actually something that was from my library school days about meeting the information services needs or the information seeking behavior of the gay and lesbian community of Denver, Colorado in the 90s. Boy, it has not aged well. And I certainly learned how to be a better researcher since then. And so, you know, so part of it was recognizing that while it's not that serving the queer community in libraries is not the focus of my work, it is something that I care about deeply as a member of the queer community. And so trying to think about ways that that I can represent wherever I am. And and weave it in so it's we're not just relegated to a prime of display, but to be able to surface those questions and to raise the issues whenever I'm in the room. I think that's something that so for you said before about, you know, it's important for us just to be there. And so so I would just encourage everybody for all the groups that you represent to be there because you are in the room now. And so when you're in the room to use that space to speak up, and I will pass it to Cassie. I also want to thank everybody for letting me be a part of this and also having some really wonderful insight that is valuable. And I guess my closing comment is that sometimes, you know, like being queer at work can feel very vulnerable, but also like I'm very honored and privileged that I've been able to be in workspaces that are as safe as they can be, I think sometimes. And then I've had some confused but trying their best colleagues. And also I am just just think that we should also be very excited and share sharing this space and knowing that there's, you know, a few hundred people who are willing to have this conversation with us. It kind of makes being like a rural queer person in a library a little bit less lonely sometimes. So thank you. I'll just add that. I think you're going past it to me since I think of the last one. I just want to again, like others, thank everyone for this opportunity. Thank you, Dr. Cha for this opportunity and thank you to all the participants for sitting through the symposium and participating, asking great questions and being a part of this. It's been really fantastic. I'll just reiterate the final point from my presentation, which I think will be, we can share with registrants. I'm happy to do that. But it was being intentional about being inclusive and incorporating LGBTQ community, communities and individuals in your space, in your library. Remember, the inclusivity can be life changing for folks, even life saving for some people. And then that sometimes it takes some courage to be a librarian, but there's also a lot of joy in doing the library work and bringing new things to your community and representing the people of your community. And there's joy in being a queer librarian too. Well, I just want to thank everyone on the panel. I want to thank all of the attendees. We're going to have a full transcript of these proceedings, as well as the recording and also a summary. So look forward to that. The slides will be available. We're going to put it on our website. So also special thanks to Alfredo, Yori and the entire staff for their tireless work, as always, to making this event possible. And I just wanted to say, as a new administrator being pulled from the ranks, Shannon, of being a FACTI member, something that my former chancellor told me, frankly, he was African-American when we worked together during the George Floyd murder, if you will, and he was born in North Carolina. So when we looked at each other, I was the chair of the faculty senate then, he told me and urged all of the campus to just do something. So whatever it is, just take some action. So I challenge all of you all and certainly you leaders out there to do something. And to certainly, I think, apply agri-diversity inclusion across the board. That, in fact, it's the majority of people that are not in the particular minority group that must stand for those that are otherwise being victimized or treated poorly. So again, thank you very much for joining us. Our next symposium will be Hispanic Heritage Month in September. And have a wonderful day, rest of your day, regardless of time zone. And again, the full recording proceedings and slides and transcript will be made available shortly. So have a great day. Thank you so much.