Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Definitions and Scope of the Book: When We Talk About ‘Refugees and Other New Arrivals’, Who Exactly Do We Mean?
- 2 What Has Been the Response in the UK?
- 3 What Does Any of This Have to Do with Libraries?
- 4 Libraries’ Responses in the UK – Historical Background
- 5 What Barriers are There to the Take-Up of Library Services by New Arrivals? And How Can We Begin to Dismantle These?
- 6 How Are Libraries Responding Today? And What More Can We Do? Some Practical Ideas …
- 7 And What Can We Learn From Elsewhere?
- 8 Conclusions
- Appendices
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
3 - What Does Any of This Have to Do with Libraries?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Definitions and Scope of the Book: When We Talk About ‘Refugees and Other New Arrivals’, Who Exactly Do We Mean?
- 2 What Has Been the Response in the UK?
- 3 What Does Any of This Have to Do with Libraries?
- 4 Libraries’ Responses in the UK – Historical Background
- 5 What Barriers are There to the Take-Up of Library Services by New Arrivals? And How Can We Begin to Dismantle These?
- 6 How Are Libraries Responding Today? And What More Can We Do? Some Practical Ideas …
- 7 And What Can We Learn From Elsewhere?
- 8 Conclusions
- Appendices
- Endnotes
- References
- Index
Summary
I have worked in libraries long enough to remember angry responses from some library staff when it was suggested that they might go out into the community and meet people! These responses were often accompanied by comments about ‘not being social workers’ or something similar.
Yet, at the same time, other library staff saw the immense opportunities that outreach and other community-based working offered, and grabbed them enthusiastically!
These varied views as to what a library is for can lead to healthy debates about our work – but can also lead to polarisation.
Statements of ethics by library associations
In order to start to pull the different kinds of library and information service together, CILIP agreed an Ethical Framework to define a core element of library work:
As an ethical Information Professional I make a commitment to uphold, promote and defend:
• Human rights, equalities and diversity, and the equitable treatment of users and colleagues
• The public benefit and the advancement of the wider good of our profession to society
• Preservation and continuity of access to knowledge
• Intellectual freedom, including freedom from censorship
• Impartiality and the avoidance of inappropriate bias
• The confidentiality of information provided by clients or users and the right of all individuals to privacy
• The development of information skills and information literacy.
It also published a set of Clarifying Notes, which includes: ‘Library and information professionals should stand for diversity and challenge prejudice wherever it is found in the information, knowledge and library sector. We should uphold, promote and defend the contribution of a diverse workforce across and at all levels of the profession’. (CILIP, 2018, 2)
Following on from this, in 2019, CILIP published Libraries, Information and Knowledge Change Lives, its: ‘… commitment on behalf of librarians, information and knowledge professionals to tackle some of society's most urgent challenges. It outlines our plan to become an ‘activist’ organisation, through proactive advocacy and the promotion of inclusive, participatory and socially-engaged knowledge and information services’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Libraries and SanctuarySupporting Refugees and New Arrivals, pp. 63 - 72Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2022