Week 14 Prompt: GBLTQ and AA Fiction

Question to Consider:  Consider yourself part of the collection management committee of your local library. You must decide whether or not to separate GBLTQ fiction and African American Fiction from the general collection to its own special place.

My Thoughts:  Putting myself in the place of a collection manager, I don’t believe that I would be in favor of creating separate shelving locations for either GBLTQ books or African-American fiction.  Each of these categories contains books that may be more effectively classified in one of many different genres.  My basic reasoning would be centered around issues of:

·       Searching -- Would a patron looking for Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower look for the book on shelves labeled Science Fiction or African-American Fiction?  Would John Boyne’s The Absolutist be found on Historical Fiction shelves, General Fiction, or in a separate GLBT location?  These books and thousands more could be sought by patrons who are not necessary focused on the author’s race or a GLBT character in the book.

·       Browsing -- Patrons who are browsing shelves for a desired genre may miss books that have been shelved in separate African-American or GLBT locations.  While surfing the Mystery section, I wouldn’t want to miss Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series because it was shelved separately with African-American books.

·       Stigmatization -- We’ve talked this semester about the fact that some genres or categories of books are unfairly stigmatized as somehow less than desirable.  A library with good intentions of featuring books in categories such as GBLTQ, Erotica, or even Chick Lit, might instead be branding these books in a way that feels more like segregation than promotion.

While genre separation can be used very effectively to make a library’s collection more user friendly, there is also a danger of creating too many subdivisions in shelving.  RUSA’s Barry Trott notes that:

“We may also be creating a library in which readers can simply ignore parts of the collection because they are labeled science fiction, fantasy, or mystery. As readers’ advisors, this should give us pause because our goal is to make connections between readers and books and not to artificially wall off parts of the collection” (Trott, p. 34).

There are other great ways to market a sub-set of books.  Displays are a great promotional tool to feature a subject, genre, or author.  Print or online bibliographies can help readers get an idea of the scope of your collection in a specific area.  I liked the quote from our readings that pointed out, “Finding aids can feature books that directly address the gay/lesbian experience, books by gay and lesbian authors (not always the same thing), and books that include gay and lesbian characters” (Thomas, p. 40).

I can imagine libraries where separation by GBLTQ or African-American fiction would be appropriate and effective.  The question would be best judged by the librarians at each facility.  However, my general feeling would be that these categories are not genres, per se, and their collections should not be shelved separately.

References:

Thomas, D. (2007).  A place on the shelf.  Library Journal, 132(8), p. 40-3.

Trott, B. and Novak, V.  (Winter, 2006).  A house divided? Two views on genre separation.  Reference & User Services Quarterly, 46(2), p. 33-38.