Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians

This book was much more academic than I had anticipated, with most of the contributions sounding exactly like scholarly papers. Unsurprisingly, the essays I liked best were the ones written so as to be interesting to the audience rather than just informative or persuasive. My favorites included “Out of the Frying Pan: Coming out as a Culinary Librarian”, because it was so interesting to learn about a type of library that I never even knew existed, and “The Secret Life of Bis: On Not Quite Being Out and Not Quite Fitting In”, because it brought up the interesting situation of being a bisexual woman who is married to a man - how out do you want to be, do you need to be, when you can “pass” at work?

I also enjoyed the essay “Patricia's Child, Patrick's Penis & the Sex of Reference: A Lesbian Librarian's Log of Perverse Patronage”. The premis of her essay is that as a young, Black-Carib, lesbian she was sexually harassed at the reference desk more than librarians of other demographics. Whether her premise is correct isn't really the point for me, it's the idea that the reference desk is a sexualized space because of the very nature of the work that is done there (service) and how it's done (with a smile and request for more). Harassment by patrons was never addressed in my reference classes, and judging from the information in this article it is a topic that should absolutely be discussed with future librarians.