Young adult Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) non-fiction collections and countywide anti-discrimination policies.

Kimura, Camden

Stringer-Stanback, K. (2011). Young adult Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) non-fiction collections and countywide anti-discrimination policies. Urban Library Journal, 17 (1), 1-27.

Summary: In this article, Stringer-Stanback described her study of LGBTQ non-fiction collections in Southeastern states in the USA (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia) and whether there was a correlation between amount of non-fiction books on LGBTQ topics in the public library system and anti-discrimination policies in the counties in which the public libraries resided. She had two hypotheses: 1) that counties with LGBTQ anti-discrimination ordinances would be more likely to have a Young Adult LGBTQ non-fiction materials in public libraries; 2) that counties without LGBTQ anti-discrimination ordinances would be less likely to have Young Adult LGBTQ non-fiction materials.

Stringer-Stanback ultimate found that the statistics she found were not significant to prove her hypotheses. Only 25% of the counties she looked at had 50% or more of the titles on her 23 item non-fiction materials list. What she did find evidence of was counties with that were more demographically diverse had more items on her list.  She recommends further studies into the relationship on demographically diverse counties and Young Adult LGBTQ non-fiction collections.

Evaluation: This was an interesting article; I expected to see some correlation between anti-discrimination policies and library collections and was surprised that Stringer-Stanback found so little evidence to prove that. That her hypotheses were not proven suggests that there are more factors at work in the creation of collections than county policy. Of course, this is going to be true of any collection, but I did expect that county policy would have some influence on library collections. I did wonder if Stringer-Stanback’s list was maybe too short: she only had 23 items on her list and the items either came from awards lists (LAMBDA Literary Foundation Awards, Stonewall Awards) or from the ALA GLBT Roundtable bibliography. If there are only 23 LGBTQ non-fiction materials for young adults, then I find that extremely disheartening. Otherwise, she might want to look at expanding her list.

One fact she had that I found especially interesting is that all libraries she examined had What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir by E. Lynn Harris. This memoir is about Harris’ life as an African-American man and a gay man in the South. I wondered if this suggests that libraries are more likely to have LGBTQ non-fiction that is geographically relevant. However, I have no other evidence to back that thought up and it might be another idea worth studying.