and include indigenous people and their culture. Syokau Mutonga and Angela Okune’s chapter discusses post-colonial Kenya’s reckoning with the colonial past, examining the inclination by some to ‘forget and move on’. And Angela Pashia’s chapter discusses the challeng- es of teaching information literacy in Trump-era America with the backdrop of misinformation and disinformation.
JC: Not surprising exactly, but I learned a great deal from the book – from all of the authors. The juxtaposition of case studies from the UK, the historic colonial metro- pole, alongside case studies of libraries in settler-colonial and post-colonial/ neo-colonial contexts is really interesting – revealing how these different contexts have led to both similar and different challenges for libraries. The work being undertaken by staff at the British Library, with its unique history and role, was also new to me. The case studies brought many interesting perspectives – in SOAS Library, a discussion of the issues around provenance of special collections and archives and the pros and cons of digital repatriation.
As we have said, support for decolonising the university and the curriculum is growing, but how do we make sure that the momentum is maintained?
RE: For those of us in HE, our students will hold us to account. They will, and must continue to demand to be seen and heard – to co-create their educa- tion. That challenge to the status quo is how change comes.
Also, it is our job as LIS profession- als to educate our users to critically analyse information, question its origin and challenge its validity. So, we must ensure that they have access to mul- tiple perspectives and sources from which to draw conclusions. Where our collections or services tell one story, we signpost users to other sources to get a rounded view. For me, the core of ‘de- colonisation’ work is accessing stories from different perspectives.
JC: It’s also about who works in our libraries and archives, removing the barriers to entry into the profession, and recognising the negative experience of staff of colour, these experiences are described in the chapter by Ishaq and Hussain, along with recommendations for improvement. Briony Birdi’s chapter advocates the inclusion of content around decolonisation into the LIS curriculum and this is another way of ensuring that it remains on the agenda.
What challenges do you see to keeping this on the agenda and ensure long-lasting change?
RE: A major challenge is leaders having the bandwidth to keep driving change.
April-May 2022
Transitioning out of the pandemic. Rising operating costs. The Augar review. Stu- dent numbers. Global events impacting people, mobility, research and partner- ships. Colleagues liken the balancing of priorities to a game of whack a mole; once you deal with one crisis, another one pops up! We must get to a place where respect, or at least tolerance for others’ culture, history, right to exist is endemic.
JC: The rapid adoption of a decolonis- ing discourse does risk it being seen as a transient cause, and in the Introduction we discuss the risks and tensions of using the term, in summary – of decolonisation being used as a metaphor for various so- cial justice aims as described by Tuck and Yang, and of being reduced to a buzzword. The idea of the library as a neutral space is effectively debunked, and that idea and its implications will persist whether it’s under the framework of critical librarianship, decolonisation, or ongoing institutional anti-racist and EDI initia- tives. Librarians need time to think and unlearn/learn. Some problems seem if not ‘wicked problems’, then certainly logis- tically and philosophically challenging – the inherent bias of legacy classification schemes for example. The case studies describe realistic and strategic inter- ventions for example in cataloguing and classification practices at the Scott Polar Research Institute and African Studies Libraries at Cambridge University. Strat- egies of acknowledgement and Critical Information Literacy are very effective and perhaps a way of understanding library users’ positions and priorities. Libraries are also using their influence and purchasing power with publishers, aggregators, metadata suppliers who are recognising what libraries are trying to achieve3
. Libraries have quite reasona- bly focussed on efficiency, but there is a tension between efficiency (of staff time, money, speed of delivery) and increasing the diversity of collections for example working with smaller suppliers may be more time consuming.
These challenges, of labelling and narra- tive construction, exist across the cultural sector and we can learn from each other. Change can come from clarity of vision and persistence, and the uptake of calls for cultural restitution of looted artefacts in the museum sector is an example of that. Despite the challenges we should be optimistic, and I really like the concept of hopeful practice described by Eades-Miller, Ramejkis and Duncan in their chapter on workshops with students at University of the Arts London.
Where does the university library fit into overcoming those challenges?
RE: We continue to educate our users to question and enable access to infor- mation to provide multiple perspectives. In our institutions, we ensure that our
staff members are representative of the communities that they serve. To achieve this, we need to attract more GEMs into the profession and appoint more GEM leaders. We have been having the con- versations about equity, diversity and inclusion in our institutions for years. Keep the conversations flowing but a bit more action, please.
JC: The Western university is ‘a key site through which colonialism – and colonial knowledge in particular – is produced, con- secrated, institutionalised and naturalised’. (Bhambra, Gebrial and Nisancioglu 2018) Libraries are clearly a part of that function of institutionalisation and naturalisation. They reflect the curriculum and research interests, what it is to study a particular discipline, past and present, but are also a pool of resources, expertise and rela- tionships that enable the construction of new or silenced narratives, knowledge, and voices. Concepts such as epistemic coloniality are really pertinent to the library, and explain many legacy systems, resulting in a shift in understanding and perspective that is evidenced in practice in many ways – librarians working with course teams, with students, looking at reading lists, looking critically at the metadata they use; how the library works as a space. This activity is broader than supporting curriculum change and is happening in many types of library and archive, as evidenced in the book. IP
l Order your copy of Narrative Expan- sions: Interpreting Decolonisation in Academic Libraries at
https://bit.ly/3NbZ7kJ – and don’t forget CILIP members get a 35 per cent discount on Facet titles.
References
Bhambra, G, Gebrial, D. and Nisancioglu, K. (2018) Decolo- nising the university. Pluto Press
Keele University (2018) Keele Manifesto for Decolonising the Curriculum
https://tinyurl.com/2hs8j892
Rhodes Must Fall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_Must_Fall Rhodes Must Fall Oxford
https://rmfoxford.wordpress.com
Tuck & Yang.(2012) Decolonisation is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. Vol 1, no.1 pp1-40
UCL Why is my curriculum white.
www.dtmh.ucl.ac.uk/videos/ curriculum-white/
1. An example being the work of the Centre for the study of the legacies of British slavery.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk
2. An example is LSE Library Collections Policy
www.lse.ac.uk/library/about/library-collections-policy
3. OCLC Reimagine descriptive workflows
https://hangingtogether.org/reimagine-descriptive-workflows-in-librar- ies-and-archives
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