Liberating Minds: The Stories and Professional Lives of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Librarians and Their Advocates [Hardcover]

Norman G. Kester (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0786403632 | ISBN-13: 978-0786403639 | Publication Date: April 1997

Over 30 librarians address gay and lesbian issues arising within the profession, some offering personal stories of understanding their sexuality and its impingement on their professional lives. Intellectual freedom, censorship, AIDS material availability, and dealing with homophobia are among the issues addressed.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In naming there is power, and this collection of essays and interviews is a powerful first discourse on the subject. From the anecdotal to the academic, queer librarians from the United States, Canada, and Germany elucidate topics of librarianship about which most straight professionals have probably never thought. Contributors such as Sanford Berman and Martha Cornog relate the difficulties of cataloging and archiving materials on gay history, a subject once considered marginal at best, obscene and worthy of censure and destruction at worst. They also discuss the importance of the public library as the one place where most queer youth first find relevant information about who they are. The rise of the Internet as a vital means of communication linking queer librarians around the country and the world is also covered. Other essays address the importance of and the need to insist on current and factual information about health issues of special concern to the queer community, as well as the need to revise outdated subject headings, which to this day represent the personal prejudices of catalogers from centuries past. The volume includes an appendix of library resources, organizations, web sites, and listservs of special interest to the queer librarian and is completely indexed. This landmark study of a relatively new field is highly recommended for all professional and academic collections.?Jeffery Ingram, Newport P.L., Ore.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"an important book for librarians and for all library science and career development collections" -- Library and Information Science Annual

"conveys important messages about what it means to be a lesbigay library user, college student, and librarian...ought to be read widely. Thumbs up to this book" -- MSRRT Newsletter

"groundbreaking" -- Library Journal

"inspiring and intriguing" -- Feminist Bookstore News

"this landmark study of a relatively new field is highly recommended for all professional and academic collections" -- Library Journal

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786403632
• ISBN-13: 978-0786403639
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,721,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CRUCIAL reading for all librarians and would-be librarians, December 21, 1997

By 

maikul "oheochaidh" (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Liberating Minds: The Stories and Professional Lives of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Librarians and Their Advocates (Hardcover)

These essays provide a summation of various aspects of the modern gay rights movement. They powerfully move a gay reader to feel a history of hardships borne by both his contemporaries and their predecessors, and voice an impassioned, emphatic and empathic plea to become involved, to join the network, to take up the torch of enthusiasm from those who carry it now lest it burn out or drop. The text on the whole is a testimony of the efforts of the keepers of the «flame of the status quo» contrasted with the successes of a silent minority which found voices to resist, to even throw off the yoke of persecution so firmly fitted about their necks by the aforementioned group, who had so long successfully deprived this silent minority of the knowledge and the means to unburden itself. This scholarly work caused me to draw heavily on my own personal life experiences to relate to, sympathize with, and at times empathize with the authors as they described their experiences.