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4.5/5⭐ An excellent book on feminist leadership theory in libraries that says a lot of things that need to be said. I do wish it included more concrete ideas. #bookspinbingo

The library of yesterday can‘t serve the university of today. Continuing to insist on the primacy of collections and the importance of cataloging at the expense, say, of digitization projects, digital scholarship centers, makerspaces, open data initiatives, or high-speed computing facilities may well translate into decreased interest on the part of our communities in what we have to offer. ⬇

In my experience, libraries are open to diverse populations as long as that diversity does not extend to how we behave, speak, or think.

Baharak Yousefi, On the Disparity Between What We Say and What We Do in Libraries

This pursuit of neutrality in libraries has, in the past, provided an effective strategy to silence dissent and to secure consent from marginalized groups. [...] And if the norm in North American librarianship is forged by decades of racism, sexism, white privilege, colonization, and institutional oppression, then preserving the norm is an act of injustice.

Baharak Yousefi, On the Disparity Between What We Say and What We Do in Libraries

When users recognize or fear that their privacy or confidentiality is compromised, true freedom of inquiry no longer exists.

American Library Association, Privacy
quoted in Shana Higgins, Embracing the Feminization of Librarianship

To the extent that librarians, whether they have faculty status at their institutions or not, view themselves or are viewed by others primarily as service providers, the implication is that the work done by librarians is ancillary to, in the service of, the real work of the university rather than one expression of that real work.

Lisa Richmond, A Feminist Critique of Servant Leadership

When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

Toni Morrison, The Truest Eye
quoted in Shirley Lew, Creating a Path to Feminist Leadership

We espouse diversity but the profession remains overwhelmingly white. We purport to care about privacy and stewardship of our data, yet we turn our information over to closed proprietary systems, thereby forfeiting control without fully understanding the technology behind it. ⬇