I was bored at work today so I ran some stats (aka searched the catalog) and found that:
- we only have like 50 books in our collection that are MARC tagged or have descriptions with something lgbtq related (lgbtq, queer, “gays”, homosexual, lesbian, etc) that are also meant for young adults
- we had NOTHING under the tag “sapphic”
- we had NOTHING under the tags “asexual,” “aromantic,” or “aromanticism”
- we had one book under “non-binary” but it was an anthology of stories where ONE character was enby
- “gays” was an actual tag that most books had :/ (lib of congress format marc tags wtf)
For comparison we have a “booktok”/“spicy”/romantasy section (which is a point of contention at my work but whatever) and of new books in that section there were 40 books AVAILABLE. not counting things checked out. I counted the non-new (aka older than 6 months) books and there were 85 on the shelf (again, just books physically present not including all books in that section of our collection)
Apparently the one rationale behind this was “well we don’t really have that audience” Clearly the people I work with do NOT understand queer youth/young adults despite being under 30 years old themselves. We have queer staff, even if not every member is saying it explicitly. Just because people aren’t coming in that “look” queer does not mean they aren’t in our community. Maybe they don’t show up to our library BECAUSE we lack the awareness to have a collection of materials they can relate to and enjoy (cough cough, me as a patron at this same library in my teen years).
Idk. Maybe I’m just tired of us having to pretend we don’t have “woke” books or anything in our library because fear of backlash from the local conservatives. I want my library to become a place teens feel safe (because while my area isn’t completely conservative it sure seems like it these days) because I didn’t feel 100% safe or welcomed (or seen!!) as a questioning teen at this same library 8 or so years ago.
I support the old folk that read the amish romance and the romantasy/booktok girlies but we have GOT to even our the playing field and not just cater to the middle aged-older WHITE women in our community.