Introducing Graham Lavender: message from the OCULA President
Graham Lavender, OCULA President, introduces himself.
Graham Lavender, OCULA President, introduces himself.
There is a strong need to explicitly acknowledge deeply embedded racist thinking in order to move towards systemic change in public libraries.
Acknowledging that colonialism and systemic racism exist and working towards developing more inclusive and welcoming practices doesn’t imply that our work is inherently bad. Public libraries are good places.
Angela Henshilwood, OCULA President, introduces herself and discusses the need for more conversations about white supremacy and the lack of diversity in librarianship.
Chris Cluff is our guest podcaster this month. Host of Chasing Squirrels, his most recent podcast features OSLA president Jennifer Brown. Jennifer also writes…
Because whiteness functions as normative and invisible, it is often very difficult for white people specifically to see whiteness.
White middle class professional library values can create an unlevel playing field for Indigenous organizations and individuals. How? By privileging one world view over another.
It can be easy to say that our school library learning commons is a safe space [but] simply saying something out loud does not make it true.
As for librarians of colour, a focus on whiteness is very beneficial. I found this true for myself and I got a great response from librarians of colour.
We take to heart the responses from Ontario Library Association (OLA) community members to the Open Shelf column Safe Spaces, and specifically the most recent post on race and privilege.
Have a strong feeling about something you read in Open Shelf? What to share your thoughts? Write a letter to the editor.
The Safe spaces column is an attempt to explore today’s persistent socio-cultural debates in light of the alleged values of the librarian profession: intellectual freedom, equity,…