Saturday, April 15, 2017

Week 14 Prompt

I
 would not promote segregating LGBTQ and African American fiction from the rest of the fiction section because I believe the potential negatives outweigh the potential positives of this arrangement. The potential negatives are restricting free discovery of a book or genre you may not typically seek out and promoting safety and privacy of patrons. If these books are segregated away from the collection, many readers may not read great LGBTQ or African American fiction because they do not typically seek them out. If they are integrated into the regular fiction shelves, it greatly improves the chances of random discovery. Specifically with LGBTQ, though in some libraries certainly also African American fiction may be books that patrons could be embarrassed or sensitive about checking out because of the nature and attitude of the town concerning these groups of people. If the collections were segregated, patrons may be more timid about going into the segregated sections for fear of being seen by peers.

The main potential benefit from segregating these sections from the rest of the fiction is making these collections easier to find for people do who seek out these specific genres. Yet, this benefit can still be achieved using different methods rather than segregation such as book lists, reader's advisory, or book displays.

3 comments:

  1. I agree with your stance on this topic. I don't think that they should be separated either. You brought up a good point about patrons being able to randomly pick up a book about LGBTQ characters/topics; they might read it and find out they like it, which would be great! I also liked your ideas of different methods rather than separating the fiction collection, I think book lists would be a great method for readers who like a certain type of fiction book.

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  2. You summed up my response a lot more concisely than I did! :) I agree, we have so many more options for discovery than to resort to segregation. It's a no-brainer to me!

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  3. Sounds like we're on the same page. We all agree that we want to ensure that people can find relevant and useful materials without feeling like they're in a spotlight.

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