Week Fourteen Prompt

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

If the decision to separate these collections were up to me, I would not choose to do so.  I like the idea of keeping both the African American fiction and the GBLTQ fiction within the general collection.  First of all, I think having these books in the general collection would provide the opportunity for someone to "happen upon" them.  This could lead to the patron discovering a new author, or a great title that they otherwise might not come in contact with.

The second reason that I would keep these books within the general collection goes along with the first.  As the prompt states, I would not want these two collections to seem segregated from the rest.  Having the books separated might keep some from browsing the collections, as they might not be comfortable looking through the separated collection. I live in a very conservative community and having the GBLTQ collection separate from the rest would insure that it would get very little attention.  I think people in our community would think it was separate for the wrong reasons.  Not that the collection is being highlighted or promoted,  but being separate might be seen as a warning - "be careful about the content in these books".

Finally, I would not consider separating them, because they are not a different genre from the general collection.  I believe keeping these collections among the rest is the accurate and correct thing to do.  Once we start separating the collection into various topics, issues, etc. it could be difficult to discern what would remain in the general collection. 

With all this being said, I believe that this is all appropriate for my small conservative community.  If I were considering this issue for a large urban public library, my thoughts might be very different.  The decision being made would need to reflect the relevance to the community in which the library serves.  That is what libraries are all about, serving the community it is a part of and meeting the needs of its patrons.