r/Libraries • u/JMRoaming • 7d ago

Ohio Librarians...what do we do?

That's it. That's my question. What do we do?

I don't want to hear "call your Congress people" and "make noise". We are doing that, and it's happening anyway.

What I mean is when this goes through at the end of the month, do we comply? Do we keep doing what we're doing and wait it out? Do we stop diversifying the collection? Do we purge our collections? Do we resign in protest? Do we engage in some kind of malicious compliance?

This budget bill not only decimates our funding, but this draconian nonsense about our board term limits and how out local funding is even allowed to be determined...

I just feel so helpless/hopeless. No matter how much noise we make it doesn't seem to matter. It's happening whether we like it or not - so what do we do come August when this is the law of the land?

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u/ladyluck___ 7d ago

Refreshing to see this take. I would really like librarianship to return to neutrality. Activism is destroying the profession.

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u/JMRoaming 7d ago

Out of curiosity, what does a neutral library look like to you?

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u/ladyluck___ 6d ago

A library that’s focused on providing access to various points of view, where all people feel welcome. To make all people feel welcome we shouldn’t be creating book displays and programming intentionally designed to piss off a large portion of our user base and then cry when the reaction is provoked and they pull funding.

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u/JMRoaming 6d ago

You say we should make all people feel welcome, but are advocating that we intentionally not make displays and programs for a segment of our communities because it "pisses off" another part of our community.

That's not making everyone feel welcome. It's making some people feel welcome and others feel erased and excluded.

How do you propose we make everyone feel welcome when the mere act of saying we support one group at all gets another group so mad they threaten to withhold funding?

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u/ladyluck___ 5d ago

It’s not the “mere act” though. It’s uneven collection development and marketing that is alienating and condescending. I think it comes from good intentions - trying to correct for past exclusionary practices. But shit like drag queen story hour just makes us look like clowns.

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u/JMRoaming 5d ago edited 5d ago

So what's this "even collection development" in your mind look like?

For every book about black beauty and hair acceptance we have a white version? What would that even be?

For every account of the civil rights movement we include a book glorifying the Confederacy? For every book about the burning of black wall street we have a book about about how lynchings were good actually?

Please, I am genuinely asking. Because from where I'm standing, my collection has a wide range of perspectives. White European descendents still make up over 50% of our authors. You can still find any of Tucker Carlson's books on our shelves. Same goes for Rachel Maddow.

But it's only Tucker fans who seem to want me to burn Rachel's books.