On Monday, June 27, the “Out of the Closet and Into the Library: LGBTQ Programming” panel discussed how to develop and implement LGBTQ programming in your library.
The panelists were from both public and academic libraries and approached the topic of incorporating the programming from the perspective of the institutions they served. Bleue Benton, collection development manager at the Oak Park (Ill.) Public Library, felt that programming in her library began at the collection development level.
“We had a good collection of gay and lesbian literature, but nothing in the bisexual or transsexual category. It was an oversight on my part. I mean it’s in the LGBTQ initials, so I don’t know how I overlooked that part of our collection.”
But when Benton applied for and received an LSTA mini-grant from the state of Illinois, she used the money to beef up the collection.
“We received federal money, funneled through the state government, and used by a public library. This was three levels of government that endorsed this collection and decided that it was important.”
After enhancing the nonfiction collection, Benton’s library provided LGBTQ workshops for library staff and made changes to library policies that had previously required a patron to choose either male or female as a gender. Since then, Oak Park Public Library has teamed up with the Chicago Gender Society and Illinois Gender Advocates to begin implementing LGBTQ programming in the community.
The other panelists were Jim Patterson, previous director for the Jacob Edwards Library in Southbridge, Massachusetts, who implemented programming in his library to celebrate Gay Pride Month despite negative feedback from some of his community members—although most were very supportive, and Lise Dyckman, library director at the California Institute of Integral Studies, who was a key advocate in bringing LGBTQ awareness and acceptance back to her campus.
Dyckman summarized her thoughts on the library’s responsibility to the LGBTQ community in this way: “We have an absolute responsibility to represent diverse viewpoints. This is liberal education and we are an obvious arena for these discussions to happen because we belong to the students, the faculty, the staff, and the community.”
Patterson put it even more simply: “The library should be a safe place for everyone.”