The recent struggles over who has access to library meeting room spaces clearly marks a great divide in thinking about libraries as safe spaces and librarianship’s role in championing values of intellectual freedom. There are many thoughts on both sides of this issue, including Alvin Schraeder’s stance articulated in his piece with the Centre for Free Expression and Sam Popowich’s rebuttal. Community members, like Jane Schmidt, various authors, and the pride community have taken action in ways that illustrate the extremely complicated nature of protecting intellectual freedom when doing so has immediate and harmful consequences for marginalized people.

The fracture lines are incredibly visible to anyone followingthe issue. Pilar Martinez, Chair of the Canadian Urban Libraries Council (CULC), issued a letter supporting TPL’s decision to provide meeting space to a well-known TERF advocate (guised as a feminist), Meghan Murphy. Another letter of support was issued from the Canadian Federation of Library Association’s(CFLA/FCAB) Intellectual Freedom Committee. Yet the British Columbia LibraryAssociation, a member of the CFLA/FCAB immediately followed with its own statementin a tweet[1]that CFLA/FCAB did not act in a manner that represented an open dialogue with its member associations. In fact this had been raised in a letter earlier in the year over a very similar issue when Meghan Murphy presented in space at the Vancouver Public Library.

The division among library folks that is playing out in the online sphere is about a lot more than this one issue. Associations like CFLA/FCAB and CULC are built around the voice of those who occupy significant positions of power in Canadian library institutions. Practicing library folks, working directly with communities who face marginalization in their everyday life, are generally not represented in such organizations. Ironic when you consider that librarianship espouses simplistic and rather “wholesome” values of democracy. Power structures in library organizations largely limit democratic decision-making among the very people who work in libraries (just think “hierarchies”). Thus, the voices representing the interests/views of Canadian libraries are those of the most powerful, not the most representative.

In the face of broader social divisiveness, fueled by deeply problematic popular media, we are seeing the power structures within the library community tested, exposing librarianship’s internal discord around views of social justice. Becoming a resistant library worker is about taking positions – taking sides – despite many of us “older” librarians having participated in an education that assumed we could be neutral. Yet, taking sides is tricky when you have a library that needs funding and library workers who need to eat. The first step, though, is having an open dialogue about the fact there are, in fact, sides at all.

As I wrestle with the meeting space issues, I am actually thinking about how it may be possible to find ways of coming to terms with what I must do by turning to other ways of knowing. In fact, I had a bit of on “aha” moment while listening to a brilliant podcast hosted by two indigenous women called All My Relations who “discuss our relationships as Native peoples– relationships to land, to ancestors, and to each other.” Through the lens that everything we must do must be framed in an effort to look after each other and to the land, for me, means that I must act in ways that will conflict with certain values I hold in an effort to care for those who need it the most.  Librarianship must evolve to explore and understand the principles of access, intellectual freedom, social responsibility, etc. while also developing skills and knowledge that empowers us to act in ways that attend to the needs of people negatively impacted by relations of power. Librarianship is rooted in colonialism and this legacy (and the legacy of the patriarchy) has led us to a growing professional dissonance that can only be overcome when we see that these fractures are the product of white heteronormative power. Dismantling this power requires debate but it also requires us to question who has a voice in our field and how they get it.

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[1] TheTweet Reads:

“BCLA (@bclaconnect)

2019-10-24, 9:28 AM

BCLA supports inclusive dialogue, discussion anddebate. BCLA voted “no” to sending ⁦‪@CFLAFCAB⁩letter of support for the TPL. The decision to vote “no”keeps with BCLA’s position, articulated in an earlier letter, which can befound on our website: bit.ly/2MMxaTD”