LibGuides Home: GELS: Growing Equitable Library Services: LGBTQ+ Community

CT Libraries and the LGBTQ+ Community

In March of 2023, the American Library Association (ALA) reported that there were the highest number of books challenged since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. "Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color." As groups throughout the country continue to challenge the LGBTQ+ community, for public libraries to act as a safe space and community hub, it's vital we educate ourselves on language, statistics, identity, community and more.

The goal of these workshops is to educate the CT library community about LGBTQ+ identities, the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ youth and adults, and how they can best support and affirm LGBTQ+ individuals as patrons and employees in the library setting.

Rebecca Degnan is the founder, owner and manager of Prism Counseling and Support LLC, and currently the sole clinician. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor and has a passion for working with LGBTQ+ youth and their families. She received her Master of Science degree in counseling at CCSU in 2012. She has worked as a school counselor at the middle school level for over 6 years. She is proud to have started her school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance while working there and provided professional development trainings for staff at other middle and high schools about how to support LGBTQ+ youth in our schools. She is the very proud mother of two kids, her 13-year-old daughter and her 15-year old son who is transgender.

Find Rebecca at Prism Counseling and Support LLC

Pronoun Resources

LGBTQIA+ Label Stickers

ALA Rainbow Roundtable Toolkit- Open to All
Labeling
The ALA’s Labeling and Rating Systems: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights (2015) cautions against labeling. Identifying books with a LGBTQIA+ label may prevent library users from accessing them for fear
of being outed. Interfiling LGBTQIA+ materials can be a positive move for libraries; when these materials are placed alongside other books and materials, LGBTQIA+ users feel welcomed and not ostracized.
Labeling Systems: An Interpretation of the Library Bill of Rights
Viewpoint-neutral directional labels are a convenience designed to save time. These are different in intent from attempts to prejudice, discourage, or encourage users to access particular library resources or to restrict access to library resources. Labeling as an attempt to prejudice attitudes is a censor’s tool. The American Library Association opposes labeling as a means of predisposing people’s attitudes toward library resources.

Prejudicial labels are designed to restrict access, based on a value judgment that the content, language, or themes of the resource, or the background or views of the creator(s) of the resource, render it inappropriate or offensive for all or certain groups of users. The prejudicial label is used to warn, discourage, or prohibit users or certain groups of users from accessing the resource.
Unite Against Book Bans
It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous.

The ideal of labeling presupposes the existence of individuals or groups with wisdom to determine by authority what is good or bad for others. It presupposes that individuals must be directed in making up their minds about the ideas they examine. But Americans do not need others to do their thinking for them.

Book List

Ho'onani: hula Warrior by Heather Gale Illustrated by Mika Song
Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson illustrated by Daniel Sousa
What are Your Words?: a book about pronouns by Katherine Locke and illustrated by Anne Passchier
My Shadow is Purple by Scott Stuart
Riley Rae’s Pronouns
I have a question- Andrew Arnold
A quick and Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni