LGBT 3 - LGBTQ YA Fiction

In a previous post I wrote - Libraries have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure equal access and equal service provision for all community/minority groups under their umbrella, they may not have an obligation to promote the service however there is a duty to provide resources.
The Scottish Library & Information Council (SLIC) established the Public Library Quality Improvement Matrix (PLQIM), a quality assurance tool which states:
“Libraries must promote inclusion, equality and fairness and work positively with partners to facilitate communities of interest and encourage participation”.
The Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (CILIP) begin their 'sexual orientation and libraries' ‘sexual orientation and libraries’ statement with:
“Libraries exist to meet the information, lifelong learning and leisure needs of all sections of the community, whether heterosexual, bisexual, gay or transgender”.

When looking at LGBTQ YA fiction we must ensure we provide access to resources that are representative of LGBTQ youth today, to enable all to have positive experiences when sourcing reading material. It is very likely that LGBTQ youth make up a proportion of YA using both public and school libraries in the UK and further a field. 

The difficulty for librarians is trying to provide appropriate LGBTQ YA material when supplier selection lists aren’t adequate enough. CILIP state that “mainstream suppliers may hold only limited relevant titles, and therefore care should be taken to make use of wider resources available via specialist bookshops/suppliers”. I'll list some bookshops and publishers later in this post. Filters on educational or council servers don’t allow searching on specific words, file types or url’s, then asking to have them unblocked to be able to searc. Librarians may have to source material in their own time, not their employers. Yes, we all probably do this on a daily basis but if you take into account all the resources we have to source due to a lack of work resources, it leaves little time to give each subject a true representation within our libraries.

So, to find a list of LGBTQ YA fiction.

I’ve been amazed by just how much material is actually out there in relation to YA fiction, I’ve found some great book lists, reviews and blogs. Daisy Porter   is a public librarian who reviews LGBTQ YA fiction. Amanda Rudd is a sci-fi writer and crazed academic who has a list of LGBT YA fiction books. The Trevor Project have a great book and film resource which includes both fiction for LGBTQ youth and non-fiction resources on specific topics including mental illness and self harm. The American Library Association has Rainbow Books , a list released every January (since 2008) of LGBTQ books from birth to 18 years.You can even see the 2012 nominees on their blog.

If you're interested in the research side of LGBT provision then Elizabeth L. Chapman and Briony Birdi have written a report on attitudes to LGBT fiction for children and young people. To find a great list of resources on building collections, services to LGBTQ YA and other research, have a look at Teacher Librarian 2.0 for some great links.

I'm not a subject specialst in LGBTQ YA fiction therefore I searched and discovered two comprehensive LGBTQ ficiton lists, one from a librarian/researcher and the other from a LGBTQ YA author.

List 1 - Liz Chapman - Librarian/Researcher

The list can be found on the right hand side under 'downloads' 

List 2 - Alex Sanchez - author

Searching through the lists and reading blogs and reviews some  authors of note:

Malinda Lo

Paul Ruditis

David Levithan

Megan Frazer 

Lauren Bjorkman

If you are looking for publishers and bookshops supplying LGBTQ fiction the links below may help you:

http://freespace.virgin.net/gays.theword/

http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/categories.php?category=Paperback-Books/Young-Adult-Fiction

http://www.bellabooks.com/

http://www.lorillake.com/glbt_pub.html

www.alyson.com

If you are a school or public librarian and are aware of other fiction resources that I've clearly missed then please leave a comment below.
If you are a LGBTQ YA and have a favourite book please leave a comment.

LGBT 2 - 20 lesbian books on a shelf

20 Lesbian books.

How do you decide on a list of 20 lesbian fiction books? [ 20 that you’d like to see in public libraries]

This list is not a definitive guide to lesbian fiction, it has been put together to highlight the diverse collection of lesbian fiction that is available today, and as an aid to stock selection panels.

Firstly, getting the list of titles down to 20 is hard, deciding on a list that takes in all genres of lesbian writing, is hard. I am one librarian, one lesbian; my selection won’t suit all literary tastes or persuasions. I’m looking on bookcases, under tables, in the dusty recesses of my mind to remember all of the authors I have either read or have listed to read.

There are the classics, the books that will be gathering a thin layer of dust on any self-respecting lesbian’s bookcase. Alongside these will probably be the set of contemporary fiction must haves, and finally, the popular lesbian titles, the ones I often refer to as the chick lit* shelf fillers.

* Not intended to offend any author. The majority of these titles are constantly on  bestseller lists.

In no particular order -

The 20:

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Dykes To Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Curious Wine by Katherine V. Forrester

Landing by Emma Donoghue

Mind Games by Nancy M Griffis

Talon by J P Mercer

The Devil Inside by Ali Vali

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Lonely Hearts Club by Radclyffe

Tristian Book 1 –The Clinic by Cate Culpepper

Hunters Way by Gerri Hill

Stir Fry – Emma Donoghue

Safe Harbor by Radclyffe

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterston

Patience & Sarah by Isabel Miller

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg

Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

Amongst the books I’ve selected you’ll find crime, sci-fi, fantasy, graphic novel, drama and romance.

If you have a favourite lesbian novel that’s not mentioned then add a comment.

LIBRARIANS - take the challenge: how many of these are available in your area?

Next Blog Post- LGBT 3 - junior/teen/ya fiction -

LGBT 1 - the dormant research proposal

It's been a few years since I wrote my research proposal but I believe some of the references may still be relevant  when looking at LGBT fiction in public libraries. Libraries have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure equal access and equal service provision for all community/minority groups under their umbrella, they may not have an obligation to promote the service however there is a duty to provide resources.

“Public library services in Scotland are entirely the responsibility of local authorities which have a statutory duty to secure the provision of adequate library facilities for all persons resident in their area” ¹

Scottish Libraries also have the Scottish Library & Information Council (SLIC) an independent advisory body whose members include all local authority‘s in Scotland. They established the Public Library Quality Improvement Matrix (PLQIM) ² a quality assurance tool specially developed to support policies in areas such as health and regeneration. Within the document it recommends that public libraries;

• Libraries must promote inclusion, equality and fairness and work positively with partners to facilitate communities of interest and encourage participation

This list is part of the bibliography I put together when I first started looking at LGBT provision in public libraries, something on the list might be of use:

Cook. J., 2005. Gay and Lesbian Librarians and the ‘need’ for GLBT Library Organizations: Ethical Questions, Professional Challenges, and Personal Dilemmas In and ‘Out’ of the workplace. Journal of Information Ethics 14 (2) pp32-49

Curry. A., 2005. If I ask will they answer? Evaluating public library reference services to gay and lesbian youth. Reference & User Services Quarterly 45 (1) pp65-75

Curry. A., 2000. Collection Management of gay/lesbian materials in the UK and Canada . LIBRI 50 (1) pp14-25

Goldthorp. J., 2007. Can Scottish public library services claim they are socially inclusive of all minority groups when lesbian fiction is still so inaccessible? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 39 (4) pp 234-248

Greenblatt. E., 2003. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Library Users: Overcoming the Myths. Colorado Libraries v29 (4) pp21-25

Joyce. S,L., 2000. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual library services: a review of the literature. Public Libraries 39 (5) pp 270-279

Norman. M.,1999. Out on Loan: a survey of the use and information needs of users of the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Collection of Brighton and Hove Libraries. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 31 (4) pp188-196

O'Leary. M., 2005. Pink perceptions: the information needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender library users as perceived by public librarians and by the LGBT communities within Sheffield UK and Denver CO, USA [Online]. MA, University of Sheffield. Available online: http://dagda.shef.ac.uk/dissertations/2004-05/External/Oleary_Meagan_MALib.pdf

Potts. H., 2003. Searching the Database. A quick look at Amazon and two other online catalogues. Journal of homosexuality 45 (1) pp161-170

 Seborg. L., 2005. Sharing the Stories of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community: Providing Library Services to the GLBT Patron. PNLA Quarterly 70 (1) pp15-17

Thomas.D., 2007. A Place on the Shelf. Library Journal 132 (8) pp40-43

Van Buskirk. J., 2005. Out of the Closet? Library Journal v130 p62

Day 3 - retail therapy?

Day three of the CILIPS annual conference began for me with a presentation by Fiona Edwards of Opening the Book. The theme for the presentation ‘Turning Browsers into Borrowers: adapting retail techniques for the library’. As you can imagine it was a packed session in the Blythswood Room of the Mitchell Library. Fiona gave us cause for thought with her presentation on improving the browsing/choosing experience of our library patrons, customers, users, visitors. The retail aspect of the presentation focused on bookshops in particular Waterstones, which to be fair still have a hold on the UK High Street book market. Fiona briefed us on where bookshops get it right, mostly through their promotions such as multi buys, bestsellers, top ten and book of the month displays. As library services we don’t have the stock budgets to produce these large scale displays or keep these displays adequately stocked. So, how do we improve our services and turn browsers into borrowers? Fiona gives us some tips:

• Quick Choice – tempts the borrower, makes choice easier
• Recommendations – whether it be reader to reader or staff recommends  
• Face-on Displays – in fiction and non-fiction areas, helps to brand non-fiction areas

As mentioned Fiona is from Opening the Book, who provide online library training ‘frontline’ for library staff. The enthusiasm of staff that have completed the course was evident today listening to Elizabeth Farr and Liz Moffat from Stirling Libraries. Their session ‘Marketing Books to readers in Stirling’ described their approach to reader development and marketing after completing the frontline training course. They explained how rewriting their policies on reader development and marketing came from re-evaluating after the training. Through identifying their strengths and weaknesses they have several new initiatives, one being ensuring they have 2 new promotions each month. They have also taken the approach of branding their libraries, having not only a marketing team but a design team who work in conjunction with Stirling Councils corporate communication team, which I thought was an excellent idea.Tips from Liz & Elizabeth:

• Talk to your borrowers
• Just do it! Try things, if it doesn't work drop it
• Remember your 'loss leaders'
• Evaluate constantly
• Keep information positive 
• Look outside your comfort zone for stock promotions

I enjoyed the session however as a past employee of Waterstones and a current public librarian I also felt exasperated by it. Only over the past couple of years it seems are public libraries looking at retail techniques that have been about for decades, longer even (I can remember one Scottish authority visiting Waterstones in the late 90’s to discuss with us how to promote stock to both adult and junior borrowers). Although comments heard after the presentation concentrated on the realisation that the majority of us use or have used the techniques mentioned above. So, have we become complacent in our approach to continuous best practice in developing the reading experience and marketing of books? We provide excellent services; we have large diverse ranges of stock, we have fantastic initiatives – too many to mention SO are we just really bad at marketing book stock? Do we need to be making more regular visits to the High St for inspiration? Should I be calling Mary Portas for advice? Have we spent far too much time over the past few years concentrating on our learning provision and lifelong learning initiatives and not enough time on stock promotions and reader experience? As librarians we should not underestimate what we can learn from the retail sector, after all Waterstones is still fighting and winning its retail battle. Many will argue that the retail bookshops learned from librarians, maybe so and it’s a large maybe, but they manage to keep selling books, our issues are dipping. At the end of the day bookshops need to make money and we need borrowers and issues, its cold hard profit which ever way you dress it. If the retail sector holds the key to falling issues and active borrower statistics then I’m all for getting a copy of the key.

Move

I've moved. I haven't moved far, but the views are different and the air is fresh. I've taken five days to move fifty feet, its been a slow process and I'm still not finished. I started the move on Tuesday at 9.01am, I didn't even have my morning coffee.  I had a plan, a visual one in my head, I could tweak and adjust as I went along. I piled books on and under tables, the bookcases being easier to move empty! I even had a dedicated removals volunteer who helped me move cases and place books back on shelves. By 11am I had moved the bookcases and identified some new map tables. Coffee. Placed the remainder of the books back on the bookcases, taking a little longer than necessary when two piles fell over, scattering dewey all over the floor. The afternoon meant moving the heavy equipment, a 2 person job. We moved the microfiche and microfilm machines form one room to another and rejoiced that they fit in their allocated spot. First day of move complete.
Wednesday, day off. So, Thursday morning, time to move the desks and navigate the stairs from the basement. It looked really easy, wrong!  We got stuck twice, jammed fingers once, swore several times. It's amazing how many positions the human body can achieve when trying to squeeze a desk up through a narrowing turning stairwell. Desks done. Publications group meeting, short. Friday, my mantra for the day was, 'email Irene', should have worn an elastic band or wrote it on my hand, forgot to email. So, not sure when my PC can be moved. Saturday, managed to enjoy the view from the window. Oh, my view, a roundabout, the sheriff court and some lovely green trees. After working in a basement with artifical light and no air, I'm enjoying the change.

Find of the Week (9)

This ‘find of the week’ deals with the library itself, well the 1922 catalogue. I had spent an afternoon looking for some old photographs and came across a set of the library interior from the 1950’s. The first photograph that caught my eye was one of the large indicator panels. The panels were located where our learning suite and reference sections are now situated. The large panels held records for each book in the library, they had blue and red indicators to inform customers which books were in stock or on loan. The boards made it look more like a ticket office than a library, due to the fact that all of the stock was located behind the counter on stacks.

©West Dunbartonshire Libraries

I don’t have the actual catalogues from the 1950’s but I do have the 1922 edition where the arrangement of the catalogue was known as the ‘dictionary catalogue’. This edition of the catalogue had 7,987 entries. Each book was entered in alphabetical sequence under the author’s name, its subject, and, where distinctive its title. Fiction however was only added under the author.

An example from the catalogue;

Austen (Jane) – Persuasion …….E.W……F2277
Australia. Hill (R. and F.) What we saw in Australia, 1875……B1979
The E.W. after the Austen title is an abbreviation for Eminent Women Series and the number before each book number is one of the seven main classes;


A – Philosophy and Theology
B – History, Travel and Biography
C – Law, Politics and Economics
D – Science and Art
E – Poetry & Drama
F – Prose Fiction
G- Language and Literary Miscellany

The catalogue also had 25 abbreviations listed and a separate section at the back for the local collection. The actual book itself is bound in hardback and fits the hand, a little like a modern e-reader, nice size. The interest for me though isn’t the actual arrangement of the catalogue but the ‘local studies’ collection mentioned within. I’m sure some of the local studies books I use as reference tools, are the ones mentioned in this catalogue. Thankfully due to these titles being closed access they have been preserved well.

e-readers

Thanks to scotlibraries on Twitter, I read the article by Tom Peters on the changing form of reading,that we must listen to what our customers are saying and purchasing around the topic of e-books. Are our customers whether it be in libraries, bookshops or online stores now gravitating more towards e-readers such as the Kindle and the Sony Reader for their reading adventures or are they reading chapters a day on their phones,like reading a daily horoscope?

I work on the front line with my tin hat and billy can every day and as yet I’ve never had a customer ask whether they can access e-books within the libraries. I am asked daily whether our wifi connection is working but never to my knowledge on supply of e-books. Is this due to the age demographic of library users? When predominantly the age of adult library users is above the age of 40 (estimate from a visual perspective not a user survey) and that many of these customers have little or no PC knowledge let alone the ability to use an e-reader, would we then suggest e-readers and downloads.


I have several ways of reading my favourite fiction; I can pick up a book, my iPhone, my palm tungsten T3 or my PC. However the book is the only one I can rely on not to need charged after a couple of hours and the least expensive to replace if I loose it. I’m not against the advent of more ways to increase my reading power or that of customers but what do we do with the problem of file formats? Will I consistently be worried that I have to upgrade my systems? I own a Tungsten T3 which I predominantly use to read online fiction however its not compatible with Vista so I’m lucky to still have xp on one PC at home that I can use to download all my files. I love the fact that I can read it in bed with its little back light and feel like a kid with a torch under the covers,that is until the battery dies. I prefer the size of my T3 to the Kindle or the Sony reader but I don’t want to upgrade just yet.


What about cost, is it seen as a luxury item to purchase,a big kids toy? If someone done the math would it be cheaper over a year to buy the reader then buy your fiction online or do bookshops still offer enough discounts to make buying the print edition cheaper? How would you parcel an e-book under the tree? Ultimately the cheapest option is always use your library card it costs nothing (well minimal charges). For libraries would we supply the e-books or the reader and could you borrow it as you do a CD or DVD?

Mark Twain once said that a classic was a book that people praised but didn’t read, Peters mentions that we live in a society where we skim rather than read due to technology such as phones and computers, so without the printed book would all reading material become classic as we would learn to skim and praise rather than fully appreciate the content.


I work surrounded by both books and technology every day and I see the benefits of both and as technology grows libraries need to grow, not only in how we share information sources but how we ultimately share books. I use both but even within my workplace very few people use e-readers, I could probably count them on one hand.

Geek Love

Geek-love, I was asked why I decided on geeklove-sam, the answer is two fold, I read a book at university many years ago and the story and the characters have stayed with me ever since, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. From Arturo the aqua boy to the Siamese twins and the albino dwarf they make up an unforgettable family all thanks to Mrs Binewski taking a wide assortment of drugs and pesticides during her pregnancies. This book is about love in differing forms, it’s funny and at times disgusting, and it’s the adult version of the Cirque Du Freak with a true assortment of geeks and freaks (oh minus the vampires!)

The flip side of coin is geeklove-sam came about from the words Geek – express an interest in and Love – deep affection for and in my case that’s for libraries and especially public libraries and the Sam that’s easy, my name.