Week 14 Prompt

The question: Should the library shelve African American and GBLTQ works seperately?

The library system I work for is a large system with nine branches and it is located 30 minutes from Chicago. The library serves 12 different communities but for the most part they are very diverse. System wide I would not recommend shelving either the African American or GBLTQ seperately. I would not shelve all the African American works together because not all African American writers write urban fiction this was mentioned in "In Urban Grit: a street guide to street lit" (Honig, 2011). You wouldn't shelve Maya Angelou with the Zane books according to the article (Honig, 2011). The reason for seperating a genre is to make browsing easier for the readers who are looking for books written in a similar fashion. Another reason not to shelve the urban fiction seperately is the collection is still small. There are still a few libraians out there who do not even know what Urban fiction is, so that shows you there has not been a huge demand for it. At the main branch in Merrilville, I have been asked if we have a urban fiction section. Usually when I get that question I give them the bookmark we have listing authors of urban fiction. Now that I am at another branch, I have not been asked yet about urban fiction so each community is different. For now I feel like having the bookmark is suffiecent. 

The same thing applies to GBLTQ works the collection is small. So far to my knowledge we do not have a bookmark or anything else listing these works or authors, which maybe we need to create one. Right now we have these works shelved with the regular fiction and I think it is a good spot for them. Seperating them out may be like shelving them in a dark corner where they will get lost. In the article, "A Place on the Shelf" the author suggests if they were shelved seperately people browsing may feel uncomfortable or exposed (Thomas, 2007). When browsing I doubt someone would say "Gee I think I want to read a GBLTQ book today" but if they come across one in the fiction and read the cover they may find they will enjoy it. 

Taking into consideration the community my library serves and our current policies I would not seperate either the African American Fiction on the GBLTQ works at this time. Firstly because not all African American works are urban fiction and seperating them this way would be a disservice to readers who are not looking for works based upon the ethnicity of the writer. The collections size and lack of high demand for urban fiction and GBLTQ works do not justify seperating these collections. Another reason not to seperate these titles is for catalogging purposes. If you decide to shelve them seperately the cataloger would have to decide what constitutes a book to be in either of these genres. Urban fiction would be easy but at what point does a book become GBLTQ. Does having one character qualify it for this section. It just gets a little silly. My recommendation is to ensure that there are adequate tools such as bookmarks and reader's guides that help readers find these works. I would recommend re-evaluating this topic in the future if there is an increased demand for these works.

References
Honig, M. (2011). Introduction. In Urban Grit: A guide to street lit. Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited.

Thomas, D. (2007). A Place On the Shelf. Library Journal (1976), 132(8), 40-3.