So I came across this Twitter – I don’t call it X – post and felt some type of way, as the kids say:
Being the librarian that I am, I had to dig a little and find out where this ridiculousness was coming from, and sure enough – here we are, at “SafeLibrariesTM“.
Ridiculous.
I won’t regurgitate the garbage I read there, but you can check it out yourself if you like.
So because I hold an MLIS and because I earned it recently (Rutgers rah-rah!! Class of 2017!), my degree is automatically woke? And my library is woke? Yes, we talked about DEI concepts in various classes, but it was never referred to as DEI. The main idea of a school librarianship degree was, and still is, in my opinion: Your collection should reflect your population. The books should be windows, mirrors and doors for the kids who are reading them. Period.
When I arrived at my library, it was overwhelming old and white in terms of authors and protagonists represented in the collection. Seven years in, the library now represents pretty much everyone. Of course, there’s always room for growth, and I’m planning to continue diversifying the collection over the coming years. There are holidays in need of more representation, outdated nonfiction books about states and countries that need replacing, and new titles by authors of varying colors, backgrounds, and orientations come out every week.
I try to imagine what my library, or any library, would look like without certificated librarians. If you took any regular Joe off the street and put them in charge of my space, what would it look like? How would it change? Would the kids still be as happy to visit? I shudder at the thought. I like to think the work I’ve done over the last seven years is good. Of course, the kids (whom I LOVE) still occasionally complain that I don’t have a specific book they want, either in the physical collection or online either in MackinVia or Epic, but that’s an issue of funding, not one of disinterest in buying what they want. If money were no object, I’d overhaul the whole space and give them and their teachers every title they could possibly want. Unfortunately that’s not the reality, and so I have to do it book by book, piece by piece.
Does that make me woke? And is being woke, in that sense, really a bad thing?
One Miraculous Mama 
As a mom to a child who is a minority, I am so thankful for Media Specialists who have worked to make sure that libraries are inclusive. Representation really matters to students in so many ways. It is important for students to see themselves but also to see others who are different whether that’s in how they look or how they think or how they express themselves.
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