INTERVIEW ‘‘
Rob Mackinlay is a journalist for Information Professional.
Often social justice work is hard and lonely... If you burn out, you cannot help anyone. – Beth Montague-Hellen
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly ”
There are no perfect ways to improve EDI. Beth Montague-Hellen, author of Practical Tips for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries discusses the fine lines and red lines.
EDI was high on the agenda for many organi- sations when Beth Montague-Hellen, Head of Library & Information Service, at The Francis Crick Institute, agreed to write the recently published Practical Tips for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries.
“The tide was rising at that point,” Beth said, “pow- ered by COVID and Black Lives Matter and it was like ‘yes, let’s do this’. But since then EDI has faded into the background, which in many ways makes this more important.”
Stamina
High profile pushbacks against EDI, particularly in the US, add weight to Beth’s final thoughts in the book. “Often social justice work is hard and lonely,” she wrote, adding that “If you burn out, you cannot help anyone.” Speaking to Information Professional after the book was published, she said: “You’ve got to look after yourself. It’s very easy to burn out when you’re doing this kind of work and I’ve done that lots of times myself – I’ve felt like I don’t care at all anymore.” But there’s no long-term respite because “the problems are usually innate in people’s lives. People who aren’t personally involved can say ‘it’s too much I can’t do anymore’ but for the rest the issue is still there every day.”
The book
To counter the pressure, Beth’s book aims mainly for smaller, incremental wins.
“I really wanted it to be practical,” she says, “I 36 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
wasn’t going to write a deep theory-bound book. I wanted to say ‘here’s some practical stuff to help’.” Beth also wanted to make sure it was easy to read despite covering a broad range of topics from the physical space to decolonisation. “In libraries people come from all different backgrounds and subjects, not that everyone has experience of social policy language. I’m a biologist by training and deep social theory is not my area at all. And so, I can’t assume that other people have it either. If you have that knowledge you might think everybody else has it… and understands what phe- nomenology means.
“The theory is important for helping people look at what needs to be done and the bigger picture stuff. But everyone can look around and see if some people are getting opportunities and others aren’t without having to read lots of theory.”
Direction not destination
The book aims to give step-by-step help for some of what could be a long journey. As an example Beth says that inclusion is a direction of travel, not a des- tination. “Including someone is saying ‘I am already at this table, look, you can come and sit’. It is not the same as belonging to a group of friends who you just sit with because you belong in that group. You don’t have to be invited to join.”
For an example she uses her own EDI activity with LGBTQ+ Stem, a project that helps LGBTQ+ researchers to find their place within science – in 2020 it won the Royal Society Athena Prize award for Beth and her co-organiser, Alex Bond.
Spring 2025
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