By Joseph Jeffery
Sometimes a pebble starts an avalanche, and sometimes a simple question begins a journey. School District 57 in BC has been trying to transform itself as it works to acknowledge systemic racism and decolonize and Indigenize practice district wide. This has been a long-term, ongoing work. As our District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian I have been trying to address this in our libraries, continuing the work started by Monica Berra, Leona Prince and Cathy Drew. Together with Cathy Drew, our lead cataloguer, we took a long, hard look at our cataloguing practices and how we could begin decolonizing it. We had already begun with subject headings, changing outdated ones such as Native Americans to Indigenous Peoples, but there was more work to be done. Our next idea was to begin to address the positionality of the authors. That’s a fancy word that just means to examine who the author is and how who they are relates to what they’ve written. On social media this was being referred to as #OwnVoices.
Then, in June 2021, We Need Diverse Books (Lavoie, 2021) made the decision to retire the term “#OwnVoices” from its website. So this, coming in the middle of work we had been doing to better identify voice in our catalogue, was a system shock. We had already decided to use the term ‘authentic voice’ to differentiate it from a term that was increasingly murky and publisher driven, but it still made us stop and think: what were others around Canada doing about decolonization, Indigenizing and diversifying collections?
The question went out to Canadian School Libraries. What’s happening around Canada? We were well-versed in BC on diversity audits thanks to the wonderful Rebeca Rubio, and we had heard of work going on in Peel school district and Toronto, but was there some national work that we could look to, some guidelines to help us?
“No.” Came the answer from Canadian School Libraries. Disappointment in that first word of the email, “But there should be. Let’s put a team together.”
Introducing the Team
Rabia Khokhar is a Long Term Occasional Teacher with the Toronto District School Board, Ontario and an education and equity consultant at Rabia Teaches. She is also a PhD student at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education. Rabia believes that the school library plays a key role in helping all students feel reflected, represented and seen through an asset based lens. She is interested in bringing equity theory to practice and enjoys sharing her teaching and learning on her social media platforms @Rabia_Khokhar1, and www.rabiakhokhar.com. Rabia is the recipient of the Elementary Teacher’s Federation of Ontario’s 2021 Anti-Racist and Equity Activism Award.
Jonelle St. Aubyn is a teacher-librarian at Louise Arbour Secondary School in the Peel District School Board, Ontario. She has been teaching for 21 years with the last 7 being in the library learning commons. Passionate about social justice, equity and human rights, Jonelle has been curating resources for staff, students and community members to move this work forward at Louise Arbour Secondary School and beyond. Jonelle was one of the team members that revised the Teacher-Librarianship Additional Qualification course guidelines for the Ontario College of Teachers. She is also the recent recipient of the OSSTF District 19 Inspiring Moments Campaign and the Teachers Life Exceptional Educator Award.
Toni Duval is a teacher with the Peel District School Board in Brampton, Ontario. She has worked as an elementary teacher in various roles for 18 years. She is currently a teacher-librarian and support teacher in a middle school. Toni is a passionate advocate for the importance of school libraries and providing children with diverse Canadian literature. She is a FOLD Kids Planning Team Member and encourages everyone to check out thefoldcanada.org.
Rebeca Rubio is the Coordinator for Libraries and Information Services in SD38 Richmond, BC. She supports Teacher Librarians in developing programs, redesigning flexible spaces and developing equitable and responsive Library Learning Commons. She supports teachers and schools with resource acquisition, database navigation, digital literacy and other literacy initiatives. She also manages and maintains the District Resource Centre, acquiring and circulating valuable resources for all educators.
Joseph Jeffery is the District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian for SD57 Prince George, BC. He has been a TL since 2013 at both elementary and high school. He is an immigrant to Canada and is Bangladeshi/English on his mother’s side and Ukrainian/English on his fathers’. He supports teachers and teacher-librarian’s throughout the district in resource selection and acquisitions, e-resources, and all types of literacy.
Anita Brooks Kirkland is the Chair of Canadian School Libraries and co-editor of CSL Journal. She is a past president of the Ontario Library Association and the Ontario School Library Association. Professional interests focus on information literacy, the virtual library, action research, and the role of the library learning commons. Anita draws on her extensive experience as a teacher-librarian and as a teacher educator, both in her previous roles as the library consultant for the Waterloo Region DSB and as an instructor in teacher-librarianship for the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
Carol Koechlin is Vice-Chair of Canadian School Libraries and co-editor of CSL Journal. Carol is an experienced educator who has contributed to the field of information literacy and school librarianship writing professional books, articles for professional journals, facilitating on-line courses, and presenting workshops in Canada, the United States and Australia. Carol is a co-founder of Treasure Mountain Canada (TMC) and has co-chaired TMC Symposiums since 2010. Carol was a contributing writer for Together for Learning: School Libraries and the Emergence of the Learning Commons and writing coordinator for Leading Learning: Standards Of Practice For School Library Learning Commons In Canada (Canadian Library Association, 2014). Carol’s favourite saying, “Empower students to own the question.”
Why
As library professionals, our collection is something we have cared for and loved. We never intend it to get out of date or to be less than perfect, but the reality is that no collection is perfect. The reason this toolkit exists is to help you find the resources you need to create a responsive and equity-informed collection.
White and animal protagonists accounted for over 75% of the children’s books published in the US in 2018 (Cooperative Children’s Book Centre). This highlights a major issue as we seek to use an equity lens to examine our collection development. Even as the number of diverse works inch up, not every book published by an author from a marginalized group or background is going to be the same quality. In recent years there has been a surge of new material as the publishing industry begins to adapt, but just like previous trends, some works are rushed out the gate to meet the publisher’s timeline. As with the YA dystopia trend of the late 2000s/early 2010s, for every Hunger Games there’s a whole load of forgettable YA dystopia novel cranked out. All of this, and we haven’t even got to the problem of authors claiming ancestry they aren’t entitled to, like Joseph Boyden.
Therefore we have to look at what there is from a critical lens. A bad book with a white protagonist isn’t going to break anything when there’s thousands more to choose from, but a stinker starring an Indigenous protagonist when there’s only around 20 books being published is much more noticeable and can warp the conversation dramatically. Right or wrong, much more attention is placed on each diverse work than book number 44,000 starring a white girl from the suburbs. It’s a lot like how excited Canadian librarians get about Canadian fiction. Compared to US or UK based stories, there’s a lot less; thus we hope for more from our books.
While work to create a collection that speaks to our patrons is nothing new, after all “every reader their book” is one of the five rules of libraries from Ranganathan, equity-informed practice is about understanding the role systemic racism can play in our collections and how we can address it in concrete and understandable steps. Thus we must examine the collection through a critical lens and re-evaluate core assumptions about what we have and why.
This is not a call to be cavalier and throw out everything not written by an author with lived experience, nor to go out and buy only books with lived experience. It is, though, a call to start questioning who is and isn’t in the collection and what we can do to address that, and do so in ways that go beyond lip-service.
Leading Learning
This toolkit does not exist within a vacuum. It is deeply connected to both Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada and CSL resources for Culturally Relevant and Responsive School Library Learning Commons. Like much in education this fits within the spiral style of curriculum. The standards at the heart of Leading Learning are built on and revisited, this time with more specificity to a single area: collection diversity. This toolkit does not preclude a solid library program. It is, in fact, a necessity. While once upon a time the collection itself was the heart of the library program, the standards direct us instead to put the community of learners first. This is why it is so crucial that learners see themselves reflected in what they learn from. Doing this in a collaborative manner, by listening and responding to the needs of the students and curating a selection that they will enjoy is a vital part of our role in empowering a community of learners.
Your Collection Development Guide
The toolkit’s sections provide an in-depth overview of the facets of collection development and techniques for helping you master the art of doing it through an equity lens:
Introduction: An overview of the toolkit including common definitions and key ideas. While sometimes introductions can be missed for brevity, this one provides key information that sets the scene for what this toolkit is about, and how we defined common terms as part of it.
Equity-informed Selection: Starting from what equity-informed selection is and how it fits into our mandate as libraries and public institutions, this section then goes on to explain how equity-informed selection works and some critical considerations for how to implement it.
Equity-informed Weeding: Begins with the basics of weeding and its role in collection development before expanding on how an equity lens can be used to help decolonize the library collection and catalogue. This includes concrete examples of what taking an equity-lens weeding approach would look like in different Dewey Decimal sections, picture books and literature.
Guidelines & Procedures: It’s critically important to understand where the mandate for selection guidelines come from, and what it is they are designed to do. Components of strong policies are examined alongside examples of the policies and procedures that govern selection and reconsideration challenges.
Diversity Audits: This section is about understanding what a diversity audit is, what it will do (and not do) for your collection, how you undertake one and where to go next once it’s done.
Leading Learning Connections: At the centre of the work that we do as school library professionals in Canada is Leading Learning. It is the seed from which every other endeavour is grown. This section explicitly lays out the links between this toolkit and Leading Learning with guiding questions for each standard, and a planning document to help you get started.
Recommended Booklists & Review Sites: This section takes a look at a variety of sources for finding excellent diverse literature and includes links to a small number of highly specialized vendors dealing with diverse books. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it meant to say that this is all that exists. It is simply a tool to help source material and sift the good from the bad.
We encourage you to take that first step and consider how you can begin the important work of fitting equity-informed collection development into your practice.
Please explore the CSL Collection Diversity Toolkit for inspiration!
References
Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Data on books by and about Black, Indigenous and People of Color published for children and teens. Accessed at: https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-about-poc-fnn/
Huyck, David and Sarah Park Dahlen (2019). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018 Infographic. Accessed at: https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/
Lavoie, A. (2021). Why we need diverse books is no longer using the term own voices. We Need Diverse Books. Accessed at: https://diversebooks.org/why-we-need-diverse-books-is-no-longer-using-the-term-ownvoices/
Joseph Jeffery is the District Learning Commons Teacher-Librarian for SD57 Prince George, BC. He has been a TL since 2013 at both elementary and high school. He is an immigrant to Canada and is Bangladeshi/English on his mother’s side and Ukrainian/English on his fathers’. He supports teachers and teacher-librarian’s throughout the district in resource selection and acquisitions, e-resources, and all types of literacy.