Are We Still Transmitting Whiteness? A Case Study of a Southern, Rural Library’s Youth Collections

Wickham, Meredith E.; Sweeney, Miriam E.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/101938 Copy

Description

Title

Are We Still Transmitting Whiteness? A Case Study of a Southern, Rural Library’s Youth Collections

Author(s)

• Wickham, Meredith E.
• Sweeney, Miriam E.

Issue Date

2018

Keyword(s)

• Libraries
• Information science
• Library and information science
• Diversity
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Youth collections

Abstract

This study updates and extends Hand’s (2012) research on the transmission of Whiteness through public library youth collections in the early 1900s. Taking Hand’s study as a departure point, this case study of a southern, rural, public library asks whether and how Whiteness is still transmitted through the library’s youth collections. Analysis of Rural Branch Library’s (RBL) easy reader and juvenile biography collections confirms an overrepresentation of White authors and characters and storylines that privilege White racial frameworks. Analysis of RBL’s collection development policies and practices reveals that color-blind selection policies, lack of weeding, and constraints in resources and staffing create a structure that fosters the transmission of Whiteness in the youth collections over time. This study contributes to understandings of library collections as sites of social power and has implications for the collection development policies and practices of similarly situated small and rural public libraries.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press. The School of Information Sciences at Illinois. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Library Trends 67 (1). Summer 2018

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101938

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2018.0027

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2018 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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