You can view an archive of the chat on Wakelet.

We do not plan to post any further updates on this blog or on our Twitter account

From the discussion, it was clear that organisations can show their support for LGBTQ+ staff in ways that aren’t demanding, and also serve to show that LGBTQ+ people are valued. A few ideas that were shared included:

• The setting up and facilitation of organisation-wide LGBTQ+ staff networks that allow LGBTQ+ people to discuss issues impacting upon them, in the context of the organisation and also their broader lives.
• Making an active step to positively support and highlight relevant national and international awareness days to all staff in the organisation. eg. Transgender Awareness Week; Lesbian Visibility Day; International Pronouns Day.
• The development of organisational LGBTQ+ policies and guidance, ensuring that staff most impacted by those policies are able to feed into them.
• The development of dedicated diversity and inclusion roles able to champion LGBTQ+ people within the organisation.

Even though our focus is library, knowledge and information work (LKI), and we can take examples from other organisations in this sector, it’s helpful to look further than our own sector when supporting LGBTQ+ people. We can take advantage of policies, guidance, and resources from organisations whose expertise and sole focus is on supporting LGBTQ+ people. For example, take a look at Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, and the Consortium of LGBT Voluntary & Community Organisations.

The discussion also delved into ideas around how library collections and knowledge resources could be developed to overcome bias and further represent LGBTQ+ people. A few ideas that came up included:

• Developing selection policies that aimed to source and include LGBTQ+ material in the collection. This could partially be achieved by purchasing material from publishers and bookshops with an LGBTQ+ focus. Book 28 Library was cited as a useful resource for identifying relevant material in this area. It was felt that the more LGBTQ+ material we purchase, the more publishers are likely to cater for the market by publishing other related books.
• We can build collections beyond buying books and printed materials. There are plenty of free relevant online resources we as librarians, knowledge and information workers can signpost to. For example,  LGBTQ+ websites, podcasts, support and wellbeing groups.
• Organising human library events representing a range of sexual and gender identities to promote an appreciation of identity diversity.
• How to make collection items easily discoverable on the library catalogue and in the library. Suggestions included addressing biases in classification by using tools such as homosaurus.org to add useful tags to catalogue records; producing LGBTQ+ themed reading lists that are visible on library websites and in the library. LGBTQ+ library events would provide an opportunity to promote relevant parts of the collection.

The discussion also acknowledged that sometimes resistance to these ideas can be met. But this resistance can be countered by highlighting positive examples of work that other LKI organisations are doing and the positive feedback they have received as a result. If you are looking for examples, please take a look at the LGBTQIA resources for library workers resource list.

Even though it’s not clear how many LKI organisations are undertaking activities such as these to drive change, it was still welcoming to see from the uklibchat discussion that some organisations are making progress in terms of supporting LGBTQ+ staff, developing inclusive and diverse collections, and positively representing LGBTQ+ people.

~ by Ash Green, CILIP LGBTQ+ Network

Join us on Monday 6 December 7pm UK time.

In the 10 years since our first foray into Twitter chats, the uklibchat project/community/whatever you would like to call it, has evolved and adapted almost continuously. 

uklibchat was initially conceived as a space for new professionals and LIS students, but since then the community has grown far beyond this. We have collaborated with other individuals and organisations, run hybrid conference sessions, and virtually toured libraries and bookshelves (despite Twitter’s rather temperamental video features). The day, time and frequency of the chats may have varied over the years but the aims were always the same, to spark off conversations and connect individuals online.

Scrolling through my phone’s camera roll when looking for photos to illustrate this blog post, I was struck by how many of the captured moments would not have happened if not for my involvement in uklibchat. With the friends I have made I’ve travelled to London, the Norfolk Broads, Folkestone, Cork, and Bruges. We have shared vast quantities of delicious food, sung a great deal of karaoke, and dragged each other round escape rooms, crazy golf courses, haunted houses and performance art installations. With several uklibchat team members having had children, these friendships are now extending to the next generation.

As we are drawing uklibchat to a close, we are hosting one final chat on Monday 6th December to discuss what the future might hold for online discussion platforms in the library and information sector. This will be on Monday 6th December at our usual time of 7pm GMT.

Annie Gleeson (@Annie_Bob)

Still, times move on and all good things must come to an end.  Twitter as a discussion forum is showing its age and limitations and I strongly feel that a more nuanced, ongoing series of conversation threads are needed drawing together the collective wisdom of the profession to deal with the increasingly complex challenges of society, life and libraries.  Search as we might for ‘the next big thing’ to succeed our Twitter chats, we had to admit to feeling tired, distracted, and ultimately unable to conceptualise a formula that would reliably capture so broad an audience and carry the profession forward.  Perhaps the right technology of stimulus has not yet quite arrived or perhaps fresh eyes and renewed enthusiasm is necessary to focus collective attention on the discussion points of the moment.  At times like this, I am reminded that necessity is the mother of invention and therefore be consoled that when such a platform is needed, it may be relied upon to appear.

I am grateful to chair the last formal uklibchat as we bow out with a final collaborative chat with the CILIP LGBTQIA+ Steering Committee, looking at the meaningful impact libraries can have on the more vulnerable in society to better understand themselves and develop an understanding and resilience for the future.  It feels fitting and hopeful also to end with one of the many collaborations that have enriched and increased the input, outreach and impact of uklibchats over the years as well as reminding us that as we draw our little forum to a close that the values and activities we supported carry on.  

I would like to thank you all individually and collectively for turning up and making uklibchat what it was.  From our fabulous feature article writers, often approached with indecent haste at the eleventh hour, to our chats’ regular contributors and habitual lurkers, you have all made uklibchat the lively and often highly informative and instructive forum it was and we could never have achieved what we did without you.  Thank you all, and I will see you somewhere out there in our shared professional future.

Thanks,

David

David Bennett (@forestguard)

I could talk about the excitement of seeing people joining in on discussions and then numbers increasing, and then going global, looking at the map of followers and seeing so many countries light up. I was chuffed whenever I heard how useful it was to people who worked in the field but did not have a local network to plug into. We were connecting people together, and we also inspired other groups to set up their own Twitter chats.

I could talk about specific memories I have: working on discussion write ups in CILIP HQ when they still had a physical library space and stopping for coffee and cake at a cafe on Store Street afterwards; running a live and online session at the Senate House Library (I guess we would be calling that hybrid learning in 2021); receiving in my hands the business cards we designed for uklibchat (the background from a photo I took in Beijing); picnicking at Regent’s Park for one of our anniversary get togethers (we pedalo’d!); visiting and holidaying with our team member from Ireland and unexpectedly talking about uklibchat on a library radio station. 

I could also talk about the effort that we put in to keep it running smoothly. A lot of work goes in the backend to produce the chats, to write up the discussions, to scout for topics and blog post writers, and to make it all happen to a deadline. I look back and wonder in disbelief how we managed to make it all happen on a fortnightly basis at the start. We all put work in to provide a consistent experience and learnt a lot about online tools on the way (suddenly remembering the Twitter Archives Google Spreadsheet).

Eventually team members moved on as life priorities shifted. For some, their career paths took them out of libraries altogether. People left; new people joined in. With fresh ideas, honest discussions, adaptations and changes, uklibchat was able to continue. A few years ago, I also moved on, stepping down from the team after six years, even then it was a difficult decision, I had put so much into it – but it was time.

Now the remaining team is calling time, drawing to an end 10 years of uklibchat, and it really does feel like the end of the era. It was a job well done, even if there was no prestige in it, even if it did not win any awards. It was there and it helped people in the professional. I hope everyone felt it was worth the time spent on it. It was for me.

Ka-Ming (@agentk23)

The tweets from the chat have been saved into a Wakelet for anyone who wasn’t able to join in real time, or if you want to revisit the discussion.

Wakelet archive of LGBTQ+ equity and discrimination chat

As noted in the chat and elsewhere on this blog, this was our final “proper” #uklibchat, and we are ever so grateful to you all for joining us.

We are planning for a final reflective chat at the end of this year to celebrate happy memories, and perhaps bat around some ideas about what the future might hold for online discussion platforms in the library and information sector. This sign off chat will be on Monday 6th December at our usual time of 7pm GMT.

This uklibchat builds on the discussion from last year of how UK libraries have been working to progress LGBTQ+ inclusion to focus on the trends and challenges facing the different library sectors and how librarians can best meet the changing political climate.

Please note the unusual date (Tuesday, 9 November 2021) – We are hosting this final chat at the usual time but on a different day from normal because of the limited availability of #uklibchat and CILIP LGBTQ+ Steering Committee members but we hope that everyone who wants to will still be able to attend. We apologise in advance for any confusion or inconvenience caused.

Feature article

Read the feature article here that reviews the challenges and trends from around the world.

You might also be interested in some of our previous feature articles, including:

Growing up in the shadow of Section 28– an LGBTQ+ person’s perspective growing up with censored libraries

Section 28 – a librarian’s eye view from the time

The fight is far from over

Agenda

Please add your questions to the #uklibchat agenda document here.

Preface

I feel I should warn you upfront that this is a somewhat darker and bleaker feature article than most. While there is much to celebrate in libraries and our uklibchat last year celebrated the many wonderful inclusive library initiatives and activities, focusing in on libraries’ ongoing role in perpetuating discrimination reveals darker international patterns of organisational behaviour and some worrying trends in the USA that risk being exported. While there are initiatives and projects that demonstrate progress, the published evidence of the perceptions and inclusive performance of libraries around the world is not comforting.

There is a distinct US-bias in the scholarly literature, with most of the evidence from the UK being around 8-9 years old, which has forced me to review the international library situation across the US, Canada, Australia and the UK but there feels to be common threads and challenges running through libraries in each country, albeit trends in the US in the post-Trump era are by far the most concerning.

How far, how fast?

Health and safety was a twentieth century success story.  The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 established employer responsibility for all adverse events occurring in the workplace and subsequent case law established a sustained and credible threat to the bottom line of organisations unconcerned with workplace safety coupled with the threat of severe reputational damage sufficient to coerce employers everywhere to invest in maintaining the safety of everyone as an organisational priority.  This combination of powerful forces compels the vast majority of organisations to maintain an effective ‘safety first’ culture.

Compare this to the culture of tolerance experienced by LGBTQ+ staff and other minority groups, particularly those with intersectional identities in organisations everywhere.  Drawing on the wider national culture, organisations and their employees feel compelled only to refrain from the worst excesses of obvious, demonstrable discrimination and direct hate speech.  There is still frequently little to no protection even in comparatively progressive organisations against microaggressions, malicious remarks designed to emotionally undermine, harass and provoke persist under the guise of humour, while organisational power politics has responded to the increasingly successful claims for equity by certain minority groups, such as homosexual men (though not yet lesbians, bi, trans or nonbinary people, and especially not those who transition to begin to identify as female because of their intersectional oppression from also now being women) by seeking to divide and conquer LGBTQ+ minority groups through tolerating, and in in some cases even offering comparative equity to those individuals both able and willing to conceal their queer identities and/or are able to submerge the one divergent aspect of their identity behind the many other privileged facets, such as white, cis-gendered, ‘straight-acting’ men, while maintaining ubiquitous though unprovable discrimination against others (Wagner & Kitzie, 2021).  

There is evidence that openly LGBTQ+ employees enjoy reduced career development opportunities (Mehra, 2019).  While LGBTQ+ leaders also often feel a duty to come out in order to visibly champion their LGBTQ+ colleagues elsewhere in the organisation and serve as much needed role models (Wagner & Kitzie, 2021) this may conceal the lengths to which they may have had to go to conceal their divergent identities in order to secure promotion to a leadership role.  Even in organisations that are moving towards trans inclusion “these moves rarely attend to how such systems remain racist, classist and ableist” (Wagner & Kitzie, 2021, p. 3). 

Structural barriers to equity  

Criticising public libraries in Tennessee, Movius (2018) highlighted unrepresentative collections, microaggressions from staff, a lack of gender-neutral bathrooms, and circulation policies preventing remote name changes as structural barriers to LGBTQ+ equity.  While a previous uklibchat highlighted the efforts many UK public libraries have made to improve collections and train staff to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion, I could not find a recent appraisal of how well they have overcome structural and technical problems, such as gender-neutral space provision in older buildings designed sometimes before even wheelchair accessible access was considered necessary.  This also raises questions over the extent to which systems of practice surrounding name changes for trans people undergoing gender reassignment are efficient, remote, and guarantee the privacy and dignity of individuals involved and prevent any risk of dead-naming, particularly where multiple systems intersect and interact.

Collection management 

There is a clear need for libraries to offer better information support targeting LGBTQ+ groups.  For example, 56% of respondents to a Stonewall survey identified a lack of information and support on starting a family as a barrier to becoming a parent (Guasp, 2013).  While targeting minority groups with information risks drawing attention to difference, more comprehensive, balanced, and intersectionality representative information provision promoted both across both specialised health library services, and arguably public libraries, has a role to play in ensuring both equity of access to information and normalising LGBTQ+ parenting.  This intersects with the digital divide, which exacerbates information poverty and further debilitates minority groups.  Similar arguments may be made across areas where LGBTQ+ and other minority groups exhibit information poverty and disparately worse health outcomes than wealthy, ‘able’, cis-gendered, heterosexual, white people.

Garofalo (2021) warns that in an age where an increasing proportion of library resources are delivered electronically, eresource diversity is as or more important than the diversity of print collections and potentially even more challenging to assess and enhance.  With such vast collections, even monitoring the visibility and inclusion of LGBTQ+ and intersectional authors across an ever-changing ebook collection is a formidable proposition.  As Conner-Gaten et al. (2017) describe in their article deconstructing racism in library collections, rebalancing library collections to become inclusive of any minority requires considerable effort to expose the full extent of the invisible and often unconscious personal, institutional, and industrial-scale biases operating against minorities.  Librarians must not only identify and accept the breadth and depth of their own unacknowledged prejudices, which is a far from comfortable process, but they must seek to overcome the systematic bias inherent in subjects built around a celebrated canon of works authored almost entirely by cis-gendered, heterosexual, white men, and the influence of a publishing industry that has since its inception systematically excluded LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and women authors, forcing them to explore minority publishers often not available through the main library supplier.  

Information organisation

The organisation of information is also important, a balance being needed between the visibility of LGBTQ+ materials and a need to avoid ghettoising materials about diverse communities and avoid any risk of library users who must conceal their sexual identity for their own safety being identified as LGBTQ+ after being observed browsing the dedicated LGBTQ+ library section (Chapman, 2013).  The lack of visible LGBTQ+ materials remains a systematic problem in many public library collections, Bain & Podmore (2020) concluding that LGBTQ+ patrons of suburban public libraries surrounding Vancouver, Canada, were excluded by the systematic invisibility of LGBTQ+ materials, and that this was a systematic problem across the library service, with the promise of social inclusion being carried forward almost entirely by a handful of LGBTQ+ activists and allies instigating local political change within library systems and specific branches by creating queer-friendly spaces, collections and programmes.  Comparative studies in the UK have sadly proven elusive.

LGBTQ+ librarians and library users have long complained about how slowly and unwillingly many classification schemes, particularly Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), have responded to the increased understanding and nuance with which sexuality and race and intersectionality are organised, and therefore discovered and associated.  While many public libraries have abandoned DDC in favour of more modern organisation schemes (Robinson, 2020), ensuring that only modern and fair information about LGBTQ+ people, other minorities and intersectional groups is provided, that older and prejudicial content is weeded or clearly relegated to a classification for outdated historical perspectives on the topic, and organised in ways that make information both easy to find and identity affirming for the groups concerned remains a priority for all libraries.

As George Orwell demonstrated in his novel “1984”, controlling the language and language structures available to people ultimately threatens to control their ability to think.  In light of this, subject heading schemas and other controlled vocabularies are revealed to be important tools determining how individuals and communities are understood, particularly in the US, where subject heading searches are more heavily in research than they are in the UK. Subject heading schemes and other controlled metadata schemas typically use archaic terms and heading structures determined by privileged people from outside of minority groups being described that help perpetuate old prejudices and conceits about the groups being described.  Happily, library cataloguers have a long and proud tradition of sidestepping historical prejudices by introducing innovative local classification schemes and thesauri to better expose materials by and about minority groups (Hardesty & Nolan, 2021).  Following in this tradition, Hardesty & Nolan have introduced a “homosaurus” – a thesaurus of controlled queer indexing terms – to library catalogues in response to the inflexibility and outdated language and structure of existing controlled vocabularies and demonstrated that it could be incorporated into library catalogues as an alternative point of entry to existing indexing terms.  These homosaural tags are variously mapped to Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH) terms where they match or searched as free-text keywords when selected where they diverge from existing LCSH headings.  The system has passed the proof-of-concept stage and demonstrates “the possibility of centering systemically marginalized voices by … making linked data work to connect and update the terminology and search terms available for research” (Hardesty & Nolan, 2021, p. 11).  

Teaching inequality

A social stigma pertains to all experiences to which a person is not exposed, and the lack of accurate information and vicarious experience through reading in schools threatens to maintain a knowledge gap in educational establishments of all levels, from schools (Montague, 2020) to colleges and universities (Mehra, 2019; Wagner & Crowley, 2020).  Montague (2020) argues that school librarians have a critical role to play in countering the climate of misinformation and ‘fake news’, supporting students who seek to form and extend queer-inclusive groups, and taking on opportunities to work with faculty and administration to establish library and school policies that do not discriminate.

It has been well established that university students from minority groups who cannot find themselves reflected in their courses and library materials are at increased risk of experiencing low self-esteem, reduced academic success and drop-out at university (e.g. Waling & Roffee, 2018).  Stewart & Kendrick (2019) reported that LGBTQ+ students, and in particular bi students, found that the lack of information that they felt they could relate to in their university libraries had created a barrier to their engagement.  From personal experience, I can testify that LGBTQ+ content of university collections is often very limited, distributed across obscure subjects, difficult to find, and that the content shelved at the most easily discovered shelfmarks (in DDC encoding Sociology: relationships) often reflect hostile, historical perspectives on sexuality without any additional warnings for the unassuming ‘lay reader’ that the content has been retained to show how attitudes have changed over time.While considerable progress has been made in establishing that LGBTQ+ people and other minority groups have rights in life and the workplace, including the Equality Act 2010 that makes direct and indirect discrimination unlawful, there remains a huge gap in both the effort invested in designing out discrimination and harassment and establishing an equitable lived experience for different and intersectional minority groups in organisations compared to established cultural norms, such as the right to a safe working environment.

Mehra (2019) reflects on their experience as a QTIBIPOC academic in an American library school, where they highlight the difficulties that intersectional minorities face in bringing attention to themselves as entire people while facing alternating invisibility and hypervisibility from each facet of their divergent identity either leads to the value of their work being depreciated or frontlined for political purposes, while they must skillfully navigate microaggressions and discrimination targeted at them because of their various minority characteristics.  Mehra describes how many of these microaggressions are deliberately intended to provoke emotional responses that may subsequently be used to undermine them, from direct insults to suggestions masquerading as humour that they are the ‘manager’s favourite’ because of some minority characteristic they both share, rather than (assuming the suggestion has any basis in objective fact) because of the quality of their work or collegiality, remarks intended perhaps to make the individual feel vulnerable, self-conscious and perhaps to provoke a disruption in the collegiate relationship out of jealousy or spite.  

A review of American academic libraries by Wagner & Crowley (2020) was damning. It found that trans and gender-nonconforming library users found themselves largely invisible outside of being subjects in the research literature.  Absent from library guides, classification schemes, subject labels, and both subject headings and other indexing terms in academic databases were described collectively as “microaggressions”, all serving variously to fetishise, misgender and deadname trans and gender-nonconfirming individuals, shelving transgender identities proximate with other “deviant” forms of sexual expression, sex work and works that focus on surgical gender transition, with the apparent and offensively simplistic implication that switching between binary genders is the logical conclusion of being trans.  The authors warn of a resurgence in conservatism in US universities and libraries that they accuse of not even seeking to establish ideological neutrality in their treatment of different gender identities, let alone supporting and promoting acceptance and understanding of vulnerable minority groups.  At the same time, right-wing pressure groups are launching coordinated attacks on LGBTQ+-affirmative events in US public libraries (Yorio, 2019).  Yorio notes that while such complaints are rarely upheld, they have nonetheless had a chilling effect on the willingness of libraries to host events such as drag queen storytime.  Still other libraries are guilty of “soft censorship”, refusing to stock or promote LGBTQ+ fiction to avoid controversy (Yorio, 2020).  The Second World War showed us the rewards of appeasement quite clearly, so it is sad to see librarians appeasing the far-right once more across America.  

While these events are taking place in US libraries in the post-Trump era, what starts in the US has a habit of being emulated later in the UK and elsewhere, and so librarians everywhere should be watchful of attacks on diverse identities in their US-developed library systems, their parent institutions, the public at large and, as always, everyone should keep a reflexively watchful eye on their own mindset and practice.

Are we all listening yet? 

A 2013 Stonewall report in the UK found that, at that time, 88% of LGB people had never been asked for their views by their local government service providers (Guasp, 2013).  Whether this included public libraries was unclear but since even eight years ago 67% said they would willingly offer their views and 74% claimed not to be bothered about including their sexual orientation on feedback forms alongside other demographic information such as their age and gender, it seems that opportunities have been missed, at least historically, to build a more nuanced picture of how well LGBTQ+ client needs are being met.  This is only reinforced by a 2015 CILIP blog post attempting to persuade librarians that their target audiences included LGBTQ+ users and that they might not have noticed simply because they failed to meet their needs so completely that they had ceased to visit or because they went unnoticed when they did visit (MacDonald, 2015).  I can only hope that dramatic progress has somehow been made in the six years since.

Examining trans inclusion in public libraries and trans people sampled from across the UK, Waite (2013) was highly critical of the libraries they surveyed, finding that while trans people used public libraries, the collections in these libraries were sadly lacking materials that were representative of trans people, that mainstream publishers failed to publish fiction that represented trans people favourably or equitably and that libraries therefore needed to engage more with smaller, more specialist publishers to source trans-friendly fiction and nonfiction, that health and other information was absent or severely lacking, and that library staff themselves were ignorant of the trans materials in their collections and perceived by their trans clients to be unapproachable and transphobic.  The trans library users surveyed were almost universally unwilling to approach library staff to ask about trans literature collections in public libraries, some because they took the derisory collection of trans-relevant literature in the library to signal a disregard for trans people and others because they knew or feared library staff were transphobic, while those who were not openly trans some feared having their trans identity maliciously or negligently exposed publicly.  

These findings are echoed in Scottish school libraries by Guasp (2012), who found that the lack of recognition of LGBTQ+ people and relationships in schools extended to school libraries, with 35% of LGB pupils reporting that their school had no books or information on LGB people and issues and a further 50% of respondents unsure, as well as to computer use, with 34% of respondents reporting they could not use school computers to access information on LGB issues, with a further 36% unsure.  This echoes an American study that similarly criticised school library collections for “instilling a heteronormative lens” (Fantus & Newman, 2021, p. 13).  Their recommendations included both creating more inclusive library collections to equip young people with the information and vocabulary they need to facilitate open conversations about their sexuality and gender orientation alongside teaching conflict resolution “to mitigate homophobic and transphobic harassment and address the emotional, physical, and social safety concerns of LGBT youth” (Fantus & Newman, 2021, p. 13).

Human libraries

Finishing on a more upbeat note, since 2000, human libraries have augmented print and electronic collections worldwide offering a new way for libraries to close cultural gaps, reflecting innovative new ways that libraries are responding effectively to close the experience gap between enquiring young minds and those with different experiences (Schijf et al., 2020).

Conclusions

While research conducted on UK libraries appears limited, what exists seems to agree with findings from the US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Libraries are failing to live up to the promises they make in their inclusive strategy statements. Libraries in all sectors are too often heteronormative and cis-normative environments. Trans and gender-nonconforming library users are too often afraid of the consequences of approaching library staff and asking for help finding information about their gender identity. Bisexuality and other minority sexual and gender identities are too often erased by libraries, and a hostile wind has started to blow across America that might find fertile ground as right-wing populism becomes increasingly normalised in British politics.  Passionate librarians are working locally to enhance LGBTQ+ inclusion, curate inclusive local collections and drive forward the equity and inclusion agenda but they work against a backdrop of a culture of ambivalence towards LGBTQ+ inclusion and seem increasingly to be fighting increasingly conservative national and organisational cultures to protect progress made in offering LGBTQ+-affirmative events and both ensure and promote libraries and library staff as safe places to seek information about their LGBTQ+ identity and health.

The long shadow cast by Section 28 has taught us that libraries and their users pay for bowing too low before the winds that blow, and that now is the time to anticipate support for the anticipated rise in LGBTQ+ oppression by deliberately mainstreaming all forms of diversity and intersectionality and enshrining their courageous defence in library strategies and activities.  Now more than ever, libraries must seek to normalise diversity and to serve their core purpose to help their audiences learn both about themselves and the experiences of those whose experiences are unlike themselves, thereby fostering the understanding, acceptance and mutual respect that exposes and undermines divisive identity politics and helps the world stand united against both tyranny and misery.

~ David E Bennett

References

Bain, A. L., & Podmore, J. A. (2020). Scavenging for LGBTQ2S public library visibility on Vancouver’s periphery. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 111(4), 601-615. https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12396

Chapman, E. L. (2013). No more controversial than a gardening display? Provision of LGBT-related fiction to children and young people in U.K. public libraries. Library Trends , 61(3), 542–568. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/18618866.pdf

Conner-Gaten, A., Caragher, K., Drake, T. (2017, November 3). Collections decoded: Reflections and strategies for anti-racist collection development. [Paper presentation]. Brick & click 2017: An academic library conference, Maryville, Missouri, USA. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED578189.pdf

Fantus, S., & Newman, P. A. (2021). Promoting a positive school climate for sexual and gender minority youth through a systems approach: A theory-informed qualitative study. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 91(1), 9-19. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ort0000513

Garofalo, D. A. (2021). Tips from the trenches. Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 33(3), 212-214. https://doi.org/10.1080/1941126X.2021.1949160

Guasp, A. (2012). The school report: The experiences of gay young people in Scotland’s schools. Stonewall Scotland. https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/scottish_school_report_cornerstone_2012.pdf

Guasp, A. (2013). Gay in Britain: Lesbian, gay and bisexual people’s experiences and expectations of discrimination. Stonewall.

Hardesty, J. L., & Nolan, A. (2021). Mitigating bias in metadata: A case using Homosaurus linked data. Information Technology and Libraries, 40(3), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v40i3.13053

MacDonald, G. (2015, August 25). Improving LGBTQ* provision in your library: why and how to do it. CILIP News & Press: News. https://www.cilip.org.uk/news/475690/Improving-LGBTQ-provision-in-your-library-why-and-how-to-do-it.htm

Mehra, B. (2019). The non-white man’s burden in LIS education: Critical constructive nudges. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 60(3), 198-207.  https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.2019-0012

Montague, R.-A. (2020, June 1). Accepting queer realities: Establish inclusive policies in your school. American Libraries. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2020/06/01/accepting-queer-realities-school-libraries/

Movius, L. (2018). An exploratory case study of transgender and gender nonconforming inclusion at a metropolitan library  in the Southeastern U.S. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 2(4), 37-51. https://publish.lib.umd.edu/?journal=scifi&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=63&path%5B%5D=120

Robinson, A. (2020, February 20). Silence in the library: Finding LGBT stories in the library catalogue. Stonewall. https://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/silence-library-finding-lgbt-stories-library-catalogue

Schijf, C. M. N., Olivar, J. F., Bundalian, J. B., & Ramos-Eclevia, M. (2020). Conversations with human books: Promoting respectful dialogue, diversity, and empathy among grade and high school students. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 69(3), 390-408. https://doi.org/10.1080/24750158.2020.1799701

Stewart, B., & Kendrick, K. D. (2019). “Hard to find”: Information barriers among LGBT college students. Aslib Journal of Information Management, 71(5), 601-617. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-02-2019-0040

Wagner, T. L., & Crowley, A. (2020). Why are bathrooms inclusive if the stacks exclude? Systemic exclusion of trans and gender nonconforming persons in post-Trump academic librarianship. Reference Services Review, 48(1), 159-181. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-10-2019-0072

Wagner, T. L., & Kitzie, V. L., (2021). ‘Access necessitates being seen’: Queer visibility and intersectional embodiment within the health information practices of queer community leaders. Journal of Information Science. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515211040658

Waite, J. (2013). To what extent do public libraries in the UK provide adequate resources for trans people? [Masters dissertation, University of Sheffield]. Department of Information Studies Intranet. https://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dispub/dissertations/2012-13/External/Waite_J_Y74.pdf

Waling, A., & Roffee, J. A. (2018). Supporting LGBTIQ+ students in higher education in Australia: Diversity, inclusion and visibility. Health Education Journal, 77(6), 667-679. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896918762233

Yorio, K. (2019). Libraries see anti-LGBTQIA+ trend: “State of America’s Libraries 2019” reveals “extreme tactics” by organized groups. School Library Journal, 65(4), 10. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=136192014&site=eds-live

Yorio, K. (2020). Not quite banned: Soft censorship that makes LGBTQIA+ stories disappear. School Library Journal, 66(2). https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=not-quite-banned-soft-censorship-makes-LGBTQIA-stories-disappear-libraries

This article brings together all that we learned over the years about setting up and managing a community space and facilitating online collaboration, made as practical, generalisable and transferrable as possible for the benefit of anyone thinking about making a splash in this broad arena. As post author, I have tried to generalise the advice as much as possible and focus on the human side of organisational and community management that is comparatively slow to change, in the hope that the advice we offer here will remain useful long after the technologies that mediate human relations have changed beyond all recognition.

Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.

Nicholas Bentley

Conceptualisation and strategy

• Be very clear about what it is you are setting out to do, what value it brings and to which audience.  All other activity flows from this clarity or lack of it.  
• Capture the essence of what you are about in a concise mission statement.  Recent research suggests effective mission statements should be less than 35 words long to help ensure they are focused and don’t drift into describing a vision.  Less is more.  Be clear and precise.  Spend the time at this inaugural moment and get this right because it is the shared values and purpose that attracts volunteers, bonds a team together and ‘makes the magic happen’.
• Expand on your mission and demonstrate your values clearly in a short vision statement – what you want your organisation to look like and why everyone is going to love it when it is all grown up.  The important words here are short and clear. 

Organisation

• Remain focused on your core activities – what you can always ensure you are able to do each month.  Better to reliably deliver with a known, if modest, offering, than to promise the world and deliver different bits of it at different times.
• Make clear all roles, responsibilities, and (if your group is truly huge) lines of reporting.  This is fundamental to accountability and ensuring everyone knows what is expected of them.  
• Role clarity is a vital hygiene factor that reduces stress caused by role ambiguity.  People do more and feel better about it when they know precisely what they need to do, when and with what support.  This is achieved by induction, socialisation, clear pragmatic documentation, and a culture of accountability (e.g.shared record keeping).
• Include overviews of project life cycles (what needs to be done and by when/how far in advance of the live event) for all cyclical events, linking to shared recording spreadsheets in your documentation.
• Make clear how to ask for help and encourage everyone to voice concerns and to ask for help early!
• Make your expectations clear, including that all members have a duty of self-care and should always feel able to step back, take time out and ask for help, including asking others to take over tasks, as necessary.  
• Empathy, compassion, self-compassion and collective assertiveness are always necessary to keep everyone safe and well are essential to the sustainable functioning of any group.  Always keep these in the forefront of your mind.
• Stay in touch informally, meet as and when required – this is often better than fixed meeting schedules because it allows meetings to be arranged for when they are needed and the info for them is available, although semi-regular meetings may still be needed to agree on future schedules, rotas, etc. 
• Plan your topics far ahead.  They come around fast.  Also, feature article writers, guest speakers and special events require many more weeks/months for planning than you might expect, and you should always expect the unexpected.
• Always have a fallback in case your best-laid plans fall through, particularly if you are working with others.
• Remain transparent in all your dealings.  If you decide it is necessary to censor or cancel something, agree among yourselves, then publish your decision and give your reasons.  For example, if a question for a uklibchat was deemed inappropriate, we would move it to the end of the respective agenda document, mark it as deemed inappropriate for discussion and outline the reason(s) why.  It was not discussed but anyone could see why it was not raised.  
• If a decision was hotly debated and won by a majority rather than being a unanimous decision, make this clear and outline the major arguments of both sides and what tipped the balance in favour of the decision taken.  
• We would ordinarily reproduce the offending content alongside the reasoning for not including it in a discussion for context but only if the offending material did not threaten anyone’s safety or dignity.  People respect the bravery of such complete honesty, perhaps because it is so rarely seen.

Building a team

• You cannot have too many volunteers.  While everyone needs to do things regularly in order to keep their functional memory of how things work fresh, good documentation that describes stepwise how to do everything can guide the most clueless volunteer through the processes required each month – and such documentation is mandatory and must be kept completely up to date.  What you cannot afford is to not have anyone available to step up in a particular month.  
• Volunteers are rare.  Treasure them and look after them. Accept that they are likely to disappear for periods with mental ill health or other life difficulties.  Keep in touch and make them feel valued and missed but let them come back in their own good time.  Pressing them for work before they are ready to give may well drive them to resigning just to escape the pressure.
• On-boarding new members is like taking on a new employee.  They need induction, socialisation, to shadow existing members, coaching, supervision and support.  
• Redundancy is life – Build in slack, establish redundancy, and never assume that because you have not checked in on folk that everything is going to plan.  Always have a backup chair, speaker, etc. and (in the nicest possible way), hold everyone accountable to the rest of the committee – if folk have stopped coping, the rest of the group need to know asap so they can step in or alter plans.  People are fallible and prone to illness, disaster, etc.
• Bureaucratic efficiency is vital – keep rolling schedules of when people are available, when they are doing things, what external people/organisations are to be involved, and to have standard checklists of actions that get ticked off by certain deadlines prior to an event.  All docs should be evidence-based (i.e. informed by exp.) and shared with the whole group – this is vital for accountability and letting others step in and take over, as necessary.
• Collaboration is king – wider audience and networking across organisations; synergies abound, and it is often inspiring to hear from energised people leading their fields.

Creating a stir around events

• Give yourself more time than you think you need.
• Advertise heavily in advance.
• Advertise the next event at the end of the previous one.  
• Promote the event and include a link to further details in the bio of your Twitter/Instagram feed.  Pinned posts also work well to spread the word on many platforms.
• Advertise widely – cross-posting (with appropriate apologies) to selected JiscMail accounts is often surprisingly successful at raising awareness within library circles.
• Schedule your promotional social media posts in advance.  
• Give your audience more time and more reminders than they could reasonably want to ensure they remember where to turn up, when, and why.
• Maintain a consistent schedule so that it is harder for people to forget or confuse the time.  Remember that this is a double-edged sword because not everyone will be able to make the particular time you choose.  For online events, this is a perennial compromise.

Tips for running a great discussion forum or event

• You do you.  Different forums have different normative values, expectations, cultures and memberships.  Keep things informal but be clear about what the group is about and what is expected of attendees.  
• Topics chosen need to seize the zeitgeist and energise debate long ahead of the event. There is little point in discussing something of importance if no one holds an informed opinion on it and is hoping for others to tell them what is happening or what to think.  
• Few people have time to engage in extensive pre-reading – in my experience, even academics sometimes arrive at discussion forums unprepared!- so while supplying links to interesting short blog posts and lay articles to seed discussions leading up to the chat is useful, choosing a topic where people have things to share from experience or which divide opinion are usually more fruitful.
• Experts are golden. Invite them in to share their wisdom, comment, share resources and contribute.  Just don’t expect them all to be vocal.  Some experts are introverted and turn into retreating wallflowers on finding themselves in a busy discussion forum.
• Have a method that enforces structure but is flexible enough for cross-question/transtheoretical answers because these are often the most useful.
• Expect discussions to start slowly and gather momentum.
• Embrace the chaos as people reflect on earlier topics.
• The facilitator/group account should be used only for facilitation and remain completely neutral in discussions.  
• If the facilitator has something to add to the discussion, that’s fine but they should add it using their own personal account, as just another participant, without lending their views the authority of the facilitator account and threatening to compromise its perceived neutrality.
• Be compassionate but assertive as a facilitator, and maintain clear boundaries.  If someone is upset by something that takes place inside your mediated forum, act on it.  If a fight has clearly been taken outside, advise that this is outside your held space and that the offended party should report the alleged abuse directly to the platform provider.  

Advice for when discussions go sour

Inevitably some discussions are going to go sour.  The disinhibiting effect of a remote digital interface, particularly when someone cannot see live footage of the other people means that sooner or later, wherever people come together online there will be disagreements, anger, frustration and all manner of hostilities.  Swift and effective action from the facilitator is necessary at this point.

If possible, moderate questions to avoid unnecessarily offensive or off-topic questions making it into the open.  That just leaves herding cats, sidelining violence, stimulating conversation, contributing from a personal account so that the forum account can remain a neutral facilitator.   

If the group intends to be a permanent one that grows together, clear procedures for mediation, reconciliation and restorative justice.  If the discussion group is expected to change over time, feel free to warn and then exclude or silence anyone who is persistently disruptive but ensure you have a transparent and fair appeal system if you do this and try to avoid permanent bans wherever possible because everyone has the capacity to change eventually.

uklibchat conflict handling policies

The policy that was drawn up for uklibchat chairs included the following:

In case of friction between attendees

Don’t feed the fire.  Steer the discussion away from friction point as naturally and calmly as possible. Report the incident and the usernames of those involved to your colleagues and seek support.  

In case of personal attacks

Do not tolerate personal attacks or threats: warn offenders once and then report to the platform provider using their reporting mechanism.  Report serious offences immediately and make it clear to the group you have done so and why.

In case of criticism of questions or discussion topics

Stay detached and professional but assertive – remember you are not your works.

If questions/topics are generated by the community, state this and make your organisational values clear, for example, tell them if you hold that all questions have equal value.

In case of controversial questions

Feel free to preface controversial questions with a gentle lead-in warning to prepare people, such as “This next question may stimulate quite a bit of a debate.”  If necessary, provide sufficient context before introducing the question/topic.

In case of emotive, irrelevant or borderline inappropriate questions/topic suggestions

Rephrase anything emotive in a more neutral style.  Discuss and agree with colleagues whether something is appropriate or not, and whether it requires contextualisation before it can be safely introduced into a discussion.  Make it clear what content was censored and your reasons why.  Make your decision-making process transparent.

Presenting your archives

If you can capture the fruits of your labours and archive them online in an attractive and accessible format, it will help those who cannot attend live events to catch up, serves to promote the activity of your organisation, and may even be of interest to social historians in years to come!  Archiving content to a storage solution with a blog front end worked well for uklibchat.  Changing technologies are likely to present new tools and choices.  Compare solutions carefully and opt for a platform that is affordable (free is best), offers all the features you consider to be essential, and (importantly) is well supported.

People will want to be able to sift through past agendas, articles, event reports, annotated transcripts, and all the other content types you have brought together by topic, type, and by searching for specific keywords.  Consistent use of post categories, perhaps assisted by the use of recurring visual motifs that allow different post types to be recognised at a glance, extensive but authentic tagging/indexing and a powerful site search engine are therefore all important to help people looking for different types of information find what they need quickly, reliably and without frustration.

Over to you

Well, that’s the concept-to-archiving whistle-stop tour of what we found worked well.  I hope that all those embarking on the exciting adventure of organising collaborations, discussion forums, and other community spaces will find the following useful.  Everything changes all the time, and nothing moves faster than the technologies mediating human interaction, but I trust that the general principles of organisation and group management will remain useful and relevant for some time at least.  

Please feel free to add your own tips or links to guidance you believe to be particularly useful in the comments below.  

All the best,

David and the rest of the uklibchat team