GLBT-RT

Congratulations to Nancy Silverrod, our incoming co-chair, and Tracy Netcoux, our incoming secretary!

It's time to vote for new Round Table officers again. This time, there are two vacancies: Co-Chair and Secretary. The two candidates for co-chair are Jennifer Meister, Technology & Reference Librarian, Free Public Library of Williamsport, and Nancy Silverrod, Librarian, San Francisco Public Library. The candidate for Secretary is Tracy Nectoux, Cataloger, Illinois Newspaper Project, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Biographical statements from two of the candidates are below.

Nancy Silverrod: I'm a fifty-one year old Jewish lesbian who came out in the heady early seventies. My career as a librarian has consisted of stints in children's, teen, and adult services, and I dedicate it all to my school librarians, Mrs. Graham and Miss Davis. I live with my bossy bird, Pip, and my sweet dog, Ginny, more books than I have shelves for, and a lot of unfinished knitting projects.

Tracy Nectoux: I received my MLIS degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, where I currently work as a Cataloger for the Illinois Newspaper Project. My title is Visiting Associate Professor (Oh! Maryann!), but I think of myself as a Cataloger/Bibliographer. I am 42 years old, married, bisexual, and stubborn. I plan to fight for full GLBT civil rights until we have them or until my dying breath, whichever comes first.

The polls are open from March 17 to April 24, so start voting now!

March 4, 2008

We had some problems getting set up. Tracy discovered that Digsby doesn't allow chat, but Trillian does. Xima could not receive my chat invitations, and we never found out why. I kept getting a notice that she had declined the invite, but she never saw it. Obviously there are still some kinks to work out in virtual meetings. Maybe we'll do an OfficeZilla meeting next time.

We discussed our 2.0 initiatives. Todd reported we had 125 friends on MySpace, and 110 on FaceBook. He'll be sending a message out to the lists, reminding folks they are there. We asked whether we are using them adequately, or if we need to do something else. Paul mentioned that, with our Second Life kiosk, we can have virtual programs or socials. Discussion of Second Life technology ensued. While we think the idea of getting more people involved without forcing them to come to a conference is a good thing, Second Life might not be the right path forward for our members. We agreed to keep an eye out for technology that would facilitate this goal, while maintaining ease of use.

Nel reported that the Rainbow List has received some excellent press, next year's list is developing, and she expects the bulk of nominations to come over the summer. She doesn't need anything from the rest of membership right now. She did want to remind everyone that suggestions for nominations could be made on the Rainbow List Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/rainbow_list

Xima and Amanada are now state organization liaisons. As we're building this from the ground-up, we can break the country up into whatever pieces we see fit. Paul recommended only have the state group liaisons take on what they can do well, as we don't want people taking on a large geographic chunk, being overwhelmed, and then falling out of communication with the groups. The role of the liaison was discussed. It was agreed that these people would report to the state groups what the RT is doing, and ask them if there's anything with which they would like assistance. It's believed that future programming ideas and project initiatives will develop out of these partnerships.

Basic marketing discussion followed, regarding the role of liaisons within the RT. Paul and Andy both mentioned that the RT has a list of liaisons as long as our arm, but the scope of their duties is ill-defined. Todd suggested approaching EMIERT, NMRT, IFRT, SRRT, ACRL and YALSA as initial targets to beef up our ranks. Matt Ciszek sits on the SC of NMRT, and has been promoting us there. Tracy will work with SRRT, Todd with YALSA, and Andy will talk with Martin from IFRT to do some promoting there. Paul will find out who our liaisons with EMIERT and ACRL are, and ask them to do some P.R. work. Message was discussed, and Paul made the following suggestions, which no one seemed to have problems with:
• Share the demographic report - who are primary members are, and how we're trying to increase diversity in our ranks
• Share how successful our fundraising efforts have been
• Share our future goals, and how we want them to help us meet those goals
• Share the work we've done to develop projects that address member issues
• Demonstrate our use of technology to show we're adaptible in contemporary society

If anyone has other key message components, please share them! Paul will be sending out the demographic report and the list of goals.

A discussion was held on whether a targeted marketing campaign to heterosexuals would be amiss. According to the data we have, straights make up less than 7 % of our total membership. The likelihood of attracting trolls to the group was discussed and weighed against the benefits of promoting our organization to allied straights. We'll be going ahead with what is already in the works for this marketing campaign, but then taking a step back to see if the initial push generates some results. We'll examine those results and make a decision whether to move forward with phase two at that time.

Finally, we discussed the e-list traffic, and ways to get more people involved. Book discussion posts were mentioned. Paul made the comment that the book discussion group he tried on the blog fell flat. Todd stated that something more informal might work better, and he and Tracy will be conspiring to get that up and running.

The GLBTRT ad hoc task force charged to comment on RDA's proposed coding of gender in authority records submitted a response. The text of the response is below.

The members of this task force were Naomi Kietzke Young (chair), Sherman Clarke, Brian Hasenstab, Tracy Nectoux, and Adam Schiff. Congratulations to them on a job well done!

This comment was submitted on behalf of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association.

The current instruction for proposed RDA rule 9.8.0.3.1, "Record the gender with which a person identifies using am appropriate term from the list below.
female
male
other
not known"

does not acknowledge the fluidity and variety of possible gender identity or identities of an individual over time. It also does not address coding of the variety of gender categories related to bibliographic identities, the individuals who create then, and the relationships among them. (How, for example, would we code George Eliot, a woman writing with a male name, or Barbara Michael, a husband and wife writing novels together under one name?) Furthermore, the limited number of possible values, and the language used for those values is offensive to many people.

This Task Force recommends that RDA not prescribe any coding for gender, and that further study be made of the issues of gender in the context of resource identification and relationships between entities.