Library Hotline: Los Angeles Public Library Asks, “What’s Your Queery?”

Quoted in full from Library Hotline, Volume 44, No. 28, July 20, 2015 

The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) wants to know, “What’s your queery?” That phrase is the tagline for the library system’s LGBTservices, established a year and a half ago and the subject of a presentation at the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2015 annual conference in San Francisco.

The confluence of the Supreme Court decision in theObergefell v. Hodges case and the annual Gay Pride parade during the conference proved the perfect backdrop for the presentation, in which two LAPL librarians described how they improved LGBT services through grassroots efforts.

“Two of us [are] steering the ship, but we have a wide group of contributors. We try to find the talent,” said Xochitl Oliva, archivist and cochair of the LGBT Services Committee at LAPL, of herself and LGBT services cochair David Hagopian. They  are two of the five librarians who established LGBT services at the library in January 2014 to ensure quality patron services throughout the 72-branch system.

The group’s impetus started from LAPL’s Leading from Any Position initiative, which holds workshops designed to promote grassroots innovation. The LGBT services were founded alongside other affinity groups including multilingual services, veterans’ services, and homeless services.

“We created this LGBT Heritage Month resource packet with adult programs, young adult programs, children’s programs, [and] book lists, and we created this webpage for the self-service patron,” Olivia said. Those resources including blog posts, podcasts, book lists, and even databases of interest.

As a part of the Heritage Month resource project, two children’s librarians created rainbow family story times that could be implemented at any location. Activities included a family mobile-making craft program for all ages and another hands-on opportunity to make Pride buttons.

The library’s LGBT book lists are also notable for their level of specificity, separating out YA books on lesbian and transgender themes from those with gay male characters. Rudy Ruiz, LAPL adult librarian and LGBT services member, also organized an LGBT-themed film program. A filmmaker and former cataloger at the University of Southern California (USC) Cinematic Arts archive, Ruiz knew about USC’s student films whose copyright was held by the university.

Since the program launched, “Our [staff] numbers have really grown,” said Oliva. “Last year we had 70 participating in our outreach.... This year, we had 86.”

“We are trying to create a structure that anyone could look at and re-create,” she added. “We’re going for replicability.”

Image: Rudy Ruiz (l.) and Xochitl Oliva share their work and tagline, “What’s your queery?”

Now that we've celebrated, I have to ask....

...why did we have to go through the argument over state library funding again this year?

Last year, library supporters in Florida were put through the same torment when the legislature in Tallahassee threatened to cancel the $21.2 million state funding for public libraries. It took two months and over 60,000 messages from constituents to persuade the legislators to restore those funds—at midnight on April 26, 2010.

And state funding was threatened in 2009 as well.

Why do Floridians allow their legislators to even consider library funding cuts?

For that matter, why in the world do we allow them to consider education cuts of any sort?

Gov. Rick Scott wants to cut Florida education funding by 15%, $3.3 billion.

In my darkest moments, I've begun to suspect an incidious, subliminal motive on the part of voters here and throughout the nation.

After all, how many Americans actually enjoyed going to school? Show of hands? How many really loved going to the library to do...homework? Just us weirdos, nerds and teacher's pets—or "elitists," as the resentful faux-populists choose to call us.

American anti-intellectualism goes all the way back to colonial times, when only the wealthy aristocrats could afford to educate their kids (their sons, that is). My nightmare is that many citizens have made the unconscious decision to blame teachers and librarians for all the country's problems—just to get back at us.

Let's hope this is just my "aging hippy paranoia" showing.

However, here's another scary story. A coffeehouse acquaintance who teaches second grade recently told me that, during a parent-teacher conference, the parent said very indignantly, "My child doesn't have TIME to do homework!"

No amount of holding teachers and schools accountable for the performance of students can ever overcome this obstacle.

Where are the parents?

In an earlier post, I gave a précis of George Stewart's dystopian novel, Earth Abides. The crux of that story was that post-apocalypse parents could not be convinced to continue teaching their children reading, writing, math or science.

Are we there yet?

Surely not, for tens of thousands have rallied each year to save public libraries.

However, we are wasting our advocacy capital when we wait for politicians to do their dirty work and then rally our allies to try to undo it.

We absolutely must get out into our communities to show them, where they live, the real value of education, of libraries, of social services—of all those publicly funded agencies which do for people what no for-profit entity can do as well: nurture and preserve their families.

We can't wait for the politicians and the new aristocracy to see it our way. We serve the public.