The library ecosystem encompasses the life cycles of both our users (to provide representation and touchstones at each stage of a person’s life) and library workers (to assist at each stage of our careers). Seasons come and go, but libraries are always present: creating community, ensuring representation, and upholding our values. Here are some roles … Continue reading Representation Matters
The state climate can be openly hostile to queer people: The nonprofit Movement Advancement Project has ranked Texas “low” when it comes to policies relating to sexual orientation and “negative” on policies related to gender identity. How, then, has the lived experience of queer librarians and library workers compared with expectations? Arro Smith, technical services … Continue reading How to Be Queer in Texas
Access language—subject headings, naming terms, and search terms—reflect the values, priorities, and assumptions of their creators, and often demean or pathologize marginalized groups. The complexity of solving these issues—if they are solvable—was explored in “What’s in a name?: LGBTQ+ and Latinx perspectives on access terminology—challenges and solutions,” on Saturday, June 26, as part of the … Continue reading What’s in a Naming Term?
Her longstanding commitment to equal rights and making LGBTQ material more available to educators, students, and researchers led to Johnston herself becoming part of an archive a few years ago. She shared experiences about her involvement with the Rainbow Round Table with members of the ALA Emerging Leaders Program for their oral history of the … Continue reading Promoting LGBTQ Resources
In “Serving the Transgender Community: It’s More Than Just Bathrooms!,” an American Library Association (ALA) Virtual program sponsored by the ALA Rainbow Round Table and moderated by Deb Sica, deputy county librarian at Alameda County, panelists discussed things libraries can do to serve the needs of the transgender community. Transgender and nonbinary members of the … Continue reading Serving the Transgender Community
The American Library Association (ALA), and particularly its Rainbow Round Table, unequivocally and emphatically stands in solidarity with its transgender staff and members, transgender library workers, transgender library users, transgender authors, and the transgender members of the communities we serve. As an organization committed to social justice, ALA seeks to support all transgender people, and … Continue reading ALA Affirms the Rights of Transgender People
In the decades that followed, the group’s name changed periodically to reflect the evolving times, finally becoming known in 2019 as the Rainbow Round Table. But its mission—to serve the information needs of LGBTQIA+ library professionals as well as the information and access needs of the LGBTQIA+ community at large—has never faltered. LGBTQIA+ youth have … Continue reading The Rainbow’s Arc
1970 Year the Rainbow Round Table (RRT) of the American Library Association (ALA)—the nation’s first LGBT professional organization—was founded as the Task Force on Gay Liberation. (For more on the RRT and its 50th anniversary, see our story “The Rainbow’s Arc.”) 49 Number of years ALA’s Stonewall Book Awards have been recognizing literature related to the … Continue reading By the Numbers: Pride Month
As our schools and communities grapple with fostering a broader recognition of sexual orientation and gender identity diversity, school librarians play crucial roles in building a welcoming environment and providing access to inclusive resources and services. Social stigma of non-mainstream experiences in schools, particularly among LGBTQ+ students, is reinforced by a lack of accurate information … Continue reading Accepting Queer Realities
