The ‘Difficult Balance Between Equity and Differentiation’: Developing a Transformative Praxis

‘You would have to do some sort of research on this. We’re always hampered by lack of research’ (Gauntlett & Moraitis, 1976, p. 117).

Talking about diversity … again

When we settled on the principal topics of our (pre-Covid-19) 2020 Symposium, held in Melbourne on the unceded lands of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung people, we could not help but reflect on the recursive sense of familiarity prompted by these themes.¹ As the title of the Symposium and of this Special Issue indicates, our interest rested on how libraries, library professionals and library and information science (LIS) and other academic scholars have addressed the challenges of (multi)cultural representation in all aspects of library research, policy and practice. Further, in our call for papers, we sought contributions that would consider the impact that the work of libraries may have in framing notions of both individual and national or communal identities in multicultural or ‘diverse’ societies such as those found in contemporary Australia. We wanted to raise questions in particular about libraries’ attempts to adequately reflect the plural cultures, faiths, knowledges, values and languages that constitute a singular and cohesive idea of ‘Australia’. Ultimately, we wished to encourage broader cross sectoral and cross disciplinary discussions relating to the place of libraries in the framing of national histories and narratives and the construction of national heritage in multicultural societies.

We understood relatively quickly, however, that the Symposium was not so much raising these questions anew, as returning to them. Despite the significant impacts of technological innovations on matters such as access, the basic task of building libraries and library collections that reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity (CALD) of the Australian nation and its people, has remained as a constant, even if fluctuating, preoccupation for many libraries and librarians at least since the official abandonment of the white Australia policy in the 1970s. And while the pragmatic concerns of practice in the 1970s and 1980s may be less relevant to present day LIS practitioners and academics, and to our 2020 symposium participants, what has remained relevant is the ongoing inquiry into multiculturalism (or diversity and inclusion) and its translation into library services, collections and spaces.

Indeed, it is a common observation in LIS literature that the bulk of studies ‘about diversity, inclusion, and underserved populations of many different types’ are focused on the difficulties in addressing such diversity within libraries, librarianship and LIS (Jaeger, Bertot, & Franklin, 2010, p. 176). These difficulties and broader challenges were the targets of inquiry at the heart of our Symposium, made more pressing with the publication of the Australian Library and Information Association’s (ALIA) Workforce Diversity Trend Report 2019. While the report reiterated the sector’s longstanding aim ‘for the Australian library workforce to be as diverse as the communities we serve’ (ALIA, 2019, p. 4), it also revealed that the cultural diversity of the library workforce lags significantly behind the diversity ‘levels’ in the general Australian workforce (ALIA, 2019, p. 30).

Unhappily, the outcomes reported in ALIA’s Workforce Diversity Trend Report 2019 tally with the findings of the 2019 Diversity Arts Australia report into diversity in the arts and creative sector, Shifting the Balance (Diversity Arts Australia, BYP Group, & Western Sydney University, 2019). This study reveals the persistent underrepresentation of CALD Australians at leadership levels within leading arts, screen and creative sector organisations (Diversity Arts Australia, BYP Group, & Western Sydney University, 2019, p. 2). On these findings, Beverly Wang wrote incredulously that although ‘CALD Australians make up 39% of the population, … according to the report, just over half (51%) of the organisations surveyed had no CALD representation at any leadership level. ZERO’ (Wang, 2019). The unavoidable (and, perhaps, long known) conclusion emerging from these studies is that despite the due perception of libraries as ‘valuable, wonderful, open, accepting places for all sorts of ideas, peoples, and cultures on both sides of the desk and in our collections (Hurley, Kostelecky, & Townsend, 2019, p. 545), the library as an institution is also a product and instrument of historically unequal societies. Two decades ago Hope Olson acknowledged that ‘libraries, like other institutions, reflect the marginalisations and exclusions of the society they serve’ (Olson, 2001, p. 639). Sadly, the findings of the 2019 ALIA report (backed-up by the Diversity Arts Australia report) indicate that libraries and the LIS field harbour marginalisations and exclusions at an even higher rate than the already unacceptable levels of broader Australian society.

Focusing on the Australian context, two key areas of concern, among many, have remained persistently unresolved. The first area relates to the concept of cultural and linguistic expertise as a deficit or skills gap among library personnel. Solutions to this deficit have focused on LIS education and training, policy development, community outreach, recruiting methods, marketing, ethnic informational profiling and the notion of ‘cultural competence’ (Black, 2018; Blackburn, 2015a, 2015b, 2020; Clifton, 2019; Du, Tan, & Xu, 2019; Foster, 2018; Hernandez & Field, 2003; Hill, 2018; Khoir, Du, Davison, & Koronios, 2017; Kumasi & Hill, 2013; Mestre, 2010). The second area of long-standing and ongoing concern is the impasse between the professional standards and practices that form the epistemic and epistemological foundations of LIS knowledge and education and the growing body of critical LIS knowledge and expanding movements of ‘epistemic disobedience’ (Mignolo, 2009, pp. 160–161) within the discipline and in the profession (Roberto, 2008; Tewell, 2020; Trammell, 2019; Vaughan, 2018; Williams & Cox, 2020; Yeo & Jacobs, 2006).

Both of these areas of concern, and seemingly perpetual sites of inquiry and research within LIS, assert in common that genuinely multi-cultural libraries and collections, and an authentically diverse and inclusive discipline and profession, cannot be achieved unless some form of significant change or improvement is achieved, or for others, some measures of transformation realised. For many more, problems or difficulties within the library are matters dealt with by policy change, procedural adaptations, personal and professional development and, significantly, with digital and technological advancements as the answer to matters of access and the cultural diversity of collections. As suggested above, the 2020 symposium was initiated not so much to engage with new questions related to libraries and multiculturalism, especially given that the original questions and problems identified in the earlier workshops and conferences remain mostly unresolved. Instead, the symposium’s principal aim was to bring together LIS practitioners, educators and scholars to share their insights with each other, but also to invite to the discussion other parties from an array of other disciplines with the intention of finding new pathways and approaches to LIS’s long standing ‘problems’ with diversity.

As we hoped, the symposium elicited high quality papers addressing a broad spectrum of issues relating to cultural diversity. And as is evident in the papers selected for this special issue, there is a discernible presence among them of a willingness to engage with and explore, firstly, the implications of the analytical and theoretical approaches encouraged by the critical librarianship movement (#critlib). Secondly, the papers reveal insights gained from a wider engagement with non-traditional LIS-disciplinary methodologies, fostering the development of a richer critical discourse within the disciplinary borders of LIS. It is the intention of this introductory essay to review the papers selected for this special issue of JALIA, and to identify and consider how they draw from and contribute to these broader disciplinary approaches to diversity, multiculturalism and libraries and to consider the possibilities of a genuine praxis within the LIS community, embracing practitioner insight and academic discovery alike.

Diversity as Deficit

As suggested above, our concerns with the place of Australian public libraries, as well as the state and national libraries, in building culturally inclusive institutional and civic spaces, as well as collections and services that adequately reflect the cultural needs of a society now commonly defined by its diversity, are not far distant from the topics raised in a series of workshops and conferences held from the mid 1970s and into the 1990s (Birtley & McQueen, 1989; Rasmussen & Herrera-Keightley, 1989; Whitehead, 1976; Whitehead & Holmes, 1986; Whitehead, Rasmussen, & Holmes, 1981).

The earliest of these meetings, ‘Library Service to Migrants’, (Whitehead, 1976) held at the State Library of Victoria in 1975, revealed the effective ‘starting’ position of the thinking around bringing multiculturalism into the library; unsurprisingly, a narrow and somewhat binary understanding of ‘ethnic culture’ guided the profession’s early response to ‘a very neglected area of service’ at that time (Whitehead, 1976, p. vi). As one of the convenors of this workshop noted, ‘interest in the topic [of “migrant” library services] was known to centre on difficulties experienced in catering for foreign-speaking migrants’ (Whitehead, 1976, p. v). The underlying assumption shaping this response was an equivalence of ‘Australian’ to the ‘host’ culture juxtaposed against the ‘foreign’ culture, alternatively described as ‘migrant’ or ‘ethnic’ culture. As Kieran Hegarty’s article in this Special Issue of JALIA shows, much of the early work by librarians to extend the benefits of library services to ‘migrants’ focused largely on a census-based approach to the allocation of resources and services (Holmes, 1993, pp. 199–202). Emphasis was laid on the purchase of non-English language bookstock (generally for circulation within public library networks) and the development of assistance programs relating to literacy, language skills and the provision of library services in languages other than English (Galbally, 1978).² This workshop and successive meetings over the following decade laid much of the groundwork of a coordinated and standardising response to an area of service perceived as fundamentally new and unknown territory for libraries, and demanding of responses, skills and expertise quite different to ‘traditional’ library services.

At the 1980 ‘Multiculturalism and libraries’ conference, Radha Rasmussen, captured how the difference between ‘traditional’ services and the new work of multicultural library service was understood as part of the larger shift in the understanding of Australian culture that was being demanded by the coming of multicultural policy. She observed that

[t]he majority of institutions, encouraged by a long-standing policy of assimilation, have rarely taken cognizance of the cultural composition of the Australian society and are thus geared to service mainly the needs of the Anglo-Australian population. This comment is also applicable to libraries which even now are perceived by the ethnic communities as being mainly middle-class, Anglo-Saxon institutions (Rasmussen & Kolarik, 1981, p. 25).

In effect, Rasmussen was drawing attention to the foundational consequence for libraries of the implementation in Australia of the official policy of multiculturalism: that libraries’ principal organising concepts and assumptions about who its users were, their cultural identity and their informational needs, would not be sufficient for the task of ‘multiculturalising’ libraries. As Rasmussen implied, the ability of libraries to respond to the needs of ‘new’ communities of ‘multicultural’ users, would require new ways of thinking about how libraries can adequately reflect the plural cultures, faiths, knowledges, values and languages within a singular notion of ‘Australian culture’ or ‘Australian nation’.

As suggested above, one of the areas of deficit to which librarians concerned with multicultural library services gave their attention was the problem associated with the acquisition of ‘foreign language’ materials. Buying books printed in the many languages spoken within Australian communities was accepted as the most obvious and straightforward means by which libraries could ‘multiculturalise’. As a contributor to the 1975 workshop noted, buying non-English language materials ‘is ultimately the only way in which a library collection can become representative of its readers’ tastes and needs’ (Gauntlett & Moraitis, 1976, p. 109). At least at this early stage, recasting the library as reflective of Australia’s multicultural society was to be sufficiently accomplished by expanding the type of resources traditionally collected, and adding them to the existing collections.

Legacies

Perhaps surprisingly, Acevedo and Forsyth (2021) point out in their article for this Special Issue, that the library’s ability to provide equally for the ‘tastes and needs’ of all community members is still constrained at the time of writing by a number of factors, particularly with regard to imported non-English language audio-visual material and Australia’s classification laws. As Acevedo and Forsyth demonstrate, Australian libraries and librarians must continue to respond to the profound and continuing structural and cultural legacy of ‘white Australia’. Boese and Phillips (2015) have argued that

multiculturalism today remain[s] constrained by its past, specifically the historical legacy of White Australia and the contested but still entrenched remnants of the pressure to “assimilation”. As a result, new arrivals and existing cultural Others are expected to gradually “blend in” – a euphemism that in effect, veils a form of cultural assimilation (Boese & Phillips, 2015, p. 205).

Acevedo and Forsyth’s account of the struggle for non-English materials and the continuing challenge to create equitable access to library resources is indicative of the ongoing imperative for advocacy on behalf of the library’s diverse users. It is also a reminder that the process of building libraries and collections that reflect and represent the cultural diversity of communities can reveal the continuing and entrenched presence of those structures that work against a meaningfully inclusive institution.

Arguably, the work and achievement of present-day libraries and their commitment to maintaining culturally inclusive and diverse library spaces and collections, is an outcome of the foundation work laid by a core group of committed librarians. In his contribution to this Special Issue, Hegarty traces how this group, the Working Group on Multicultural Library Services (Victoria), implemented a range of cooperative measures, including to obtain and share ‘foreign language’ material, which sought to ‘normalise’ the consideration of the needs of multicultural populations in library acquisition policies. Hegarty also notes, however, the problematic legacy of the early settlement of quantitative standards as a principal measure for the provision of multicultural library services. As Hegarty shows, the

quantitative measurement of discrete linguistic groups through census data to set the benchmarks on the “ideal” make-up of collections’ defined a sectoral response that assumed that culture and identity can be represented as ‘discrete, measurable entities (Hegarty, 2021).

Indeed, the international standards set out in the 1987 publication Multicultural Communities: Guidelines for Library Service, entrenched the measurement of equitable and effective services as a per capita formula (Holmes & Whitehead, 1987, p. 3).

The goal, as stated in the Guidelines, was that library materials should be provided ‘for all groups in their preferred language’ and that this provision should ‘be at the same per capita level as for the population in general’ (Holmes, 1993, p. 200). Using this measure to provide an evaluation of how far libraries had advanced towards ‘achieving equity’ certainly provided a very clear metric by which the ‘multiculturalism’ of library collections could be assessed, and the acquisition of language materials planned and budgeted for. However, while laudable, the upshot of this approach to multiculturalism in the library was the settling of an effective equivalence of ‘multicultural’ with ‘non-English language’ and ‘migrant’. The dominance of this approach throughout the library sector was indicated further in the 1991 Survey of Multicultural Holdings in Australian Libraries (National Library of Australia, 1991). Conducted by the National Library of Australia (NLA), the survey of ‘multicultural holdings’ was ‘carried out … in order to identify non-English language collections which could be made accessible to the nation on the N[ational] B[ibliographic] D[atabase]’ (National Library of Australia, 1991, p. 3). Despite the undoubted benefits of this work, conceptualising ‘multiculturalism’ as something accomplished by adding language delineated resources to existing collections, did little to advance understandings of a shared ‘Australian’ culture.

As one of the key players in the development of the 1987 Guidelines, Anne Holmes nevertheless was aware that the manner in which libraries staged ‘multiculturalism’ for their publics could have longer-range impacts beyond the composition of library collections. At the 1984 LAA Conference, Holmes wondered ‘ … is it not possible that this singling out of multicultural library services as an area of special needs has been counterproductive? Has it made some libraries see multicultural library service as something separate from “normal” public library service?’ (Holmes, 1985, p. 354). Holmes worried that the specialisation of ‘multicultural library services’ placed an emphasis on cultural differences, keeping ‘multicultural communities’ in perennial binary opposition to a normative ‘Australian community’.

Holmes’ worries were echoed in Ghassan Hage’s observations about the problematic outcomes of official multiculturalism’s demographic categorisation of people according to cultural and linguistic groups. In his assessment, this application of ethnic labels facilitated a kind of benevolent ‘ethnic caging’; a recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity expressed as institutional ‘goodwill towards ethnic otherness’ (Hage, 1998, p. 105). Cultural studies scholar Ien Ang has suggested similarly that the initial institutional practices of identifying and marking the cultural and linguistic distinctions in order to facilitate, measure and report the inclusion and the provision of directed services for ‘multicultural’ people has contributed to a continuing broader problem. She argues that the key issue is ‘that the history of what is generally called “multicultural Australia” is still treated as a mere add-on to the “real” Australia’ (Ang, 2003, pp. 32–33).

Inclusion and Celebration?

Holmes’ assessment in 1984 of the risks of ‘othering’ multicultural services and library users has, in recent years, become a significant focal point for debate within the LIS sector. As Hegarty notes in his contribution to this volume, policy approaches by libraries, including the national and state libraries, to the acknowledgement and inclusion of cultural diversity in collections and in the institution itself, have coalesced around a problematic ‘recognise and celebrate’ model of representation (Hegarty, 2021). In its Diversity and social inclusion action plan 2017–20, for instance, State Library Victoria (SLV) committed itself to ‘continuing to seek out new opportunities to celebrate and promote Victoria’s cultural diversity’ (State Library Victoria, 2017, p. 11). This language, in varying forms, is also employed by other state libraries throughout Australia.

This language of ‘promotion’ and ‘celebration’ of culturally diverse populations is, as Hegarty highlights, rooted in the liberal forms of multiculturalism and recognition that gained traction in the early 1980s. Multiculturalism was reframed from the redistributive reparative model of the 1978 Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services (the ‘Galbally Report’) which projected multiculturalism ‘as a program of services and facilities aimed at assisting migrant settlement regardless of country of origin’ (Anderson, 2013, p. 906), to what has been called the ‘cultural diversity turn’, emphasising the commodification of difference, encompassing food, costume, crafts, performance and heritage, to be promoted and celebrated (Horsti, 2014). Hegarty argues that the ‘recognition of difference under this logic of liberal multiculturalism produces a certain subject position; one framed in terms of deficits or divergences from the norm and limited in its political potential’ (Hegarty, 2021). Ultimately, in seeking the means to increase the diversity of the institution and to include those left out of the institution, the separateness or ‘otherness’ of non-Anglo-Celtic groups is discursively reinforced as is the hegemonic position of those who have the power to include, recognise and celebrate.

Demonstrating Diversity

As Hegarty (2021) suggests, libraries’ employment of the ‘recognise and celebrate’ or ‘diversity and inclusion’ modes of representation are necessarily premised on an understanding of ‘inclusion’ or ‘recognition’ that centres the ‘difference’ of the cultural or ethnic other. One possible explanation for the persistence of this mode of representation, despite a rich and well-known body of critical work on diversity, is the institution’s obligation to report to its governing body its progress and achievements in meeting policy goals relating to ‘diversity and inclusion’ (Ahmed, 2007, 2012; Bennett, 2013; Caidi & Dali, 2015; Chelliah, Brown, & Combes, 2012; Drummond, 2016; Hastings, 2015; Hudson, 2017; Hussey, 2010; Kumasi & Manlove, 2015; Kẏra, 2014; Mason, 2016; Mestre, 2010; Muir, Thompson, & Qayyum, 2020; Swanson et al., 2015). For example, in its Multicultural Plan 2020–24, the State Library of New South Wales (SLNSW), progress towards the fulfilment of the identified goals is to be measured against four specific and quantifiable criteria: service delivery, planning, leadership and engagement (State Library NSW, 2020, p. 6).

Consequently, if the library is to address issues of cultural diversity and if it is to be capable of reporting on its progress and achievements in meeting ‘diversity and inclusion’ goals, then it must frame the subjects of these goals in a specific, bordered and measurable way that enables them to be identifiably spoken of within the terms of the institution and its prescriptive policy framework. Trimboli suggests that deploying an institutional measure which is dependent on the identification of cultural difference works to designate ‘a particular, bordered space of the multicultural person and positions this person outside the white, monocultural centre’, effectively reinscribing ‘whiteness’ or Australians of Anglo-Celtic heritage as the cultural norm (Trimboli, 2016, p. 25).

Given this context, both practitioner and academic considerations of programmes and other activity relating to ‘diversity and inclusion’, especially within the national and state libraries, must recall that these institutions necessarily operate in accordance with the (frequently shifting) policy aims and requirements of their respective governments. Indeed, the sector’s peak body, National and State Libraries Australia (NSLA), has explicitly identified the NLA, alongside State and Territory Libraries as ‘arms of government’ (National and State Libraries Australia, 2019, p. 2). The State Library of South Australia’s (SLSA) Strategic Plan 2018–2020, is clear in its function as ‘active participants in the achievement of State Government priorities’ (State Library of SA, 2018, p. 1). In addition to an obligation to comply with an array of legislative requirements, libraries must also operate in support of (often less static) government policy, including social and cultural policies. Each of these frames necessarily shape the language with which cultural diversity is spoken of in the library, demanding that the defined areas of ‘difference’ are made visible and subject to specific metrics.

Standards and Diversity

One of the principal standards against which the NLA must show progress is to ‘Increase and improve the representation of Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse communities in the collection through consultative approaches to acquisition and description’ (National Library of Australia, 2020a, p. 17). However, in order to demonstrate an increase and an improvement in the representativeness of the collections, the NLA requires a baseline against which useful comparisons can be made. That is, the NLA needs to be able to see and count items in the collection that can demonstrate in quantitative terms the representation of cultural diversity. There is then, a language of representation, and a politics of visibility in LIS discourse shaped by institutional policy requirements which demand differentiation in order to identify ‘diversity’. Consequently, standards intended to promote the growth of collections reflective of a broad spectrum of national cultural diversity can also work to reinforce the core or hegemonic position of an invisible normative population.

In a recent article, Collins (2018) argued that ‘without persistent critical interrogation of language (who is employing it and how), it is exceedingly difficult to define, describe, or discuss oppressive systems like racism in hopes of dismantling them without unintentionally enacting and reinforcing them’ (Collins, 2018, p. 41). The ‘language’ of LIS, constituted by the descriptive standards (e.g. RDA, MARC), controlled vocabularies (e.g. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)) and classification schemes (e.g. Dewey Decimal System (DDC)), has faced a ‘persistent critical interrogation’, as Collins suggests, by innumerable practitioners and academics. Most notably, Olson’s interrogation of LCSH in particular has demonstrated that its use to provide subject access to specific cultural identities is deeply problematic. She suggests that by ‘imposing controlled vocabulary we construct both a limited system for the representation of information and a universality/diversity binary opposition’ (Olson, 2001, p. 640). She points to the irony inherent in the application of uniform subject identifiers as ultimately counter to the library’s intentions in supporting diversity, arguing that the use of controlled vocabularies such as the LCSH will succeed only in setting ‘limits to the representation of diversity and to effective library service for diverse populations’ (Olson & Schlegl, 2001, p. 62).

Harrington’s article in this special issue also addresses the politics and language of visibility in the library, or what Åberg (2020) highlights as the ‘difficult balance between equity and differentiation’ (Åberg, 2020, p. 158). In other words, Harrington’s work raises the question of how is it possible to demonstrate a commitment to diversity in a manner that does not separate, diminish and essentialise culturally and ethnically minoritized groups and communities? Harrington’s inquiry echoes Hackney’s conclusion which asserts that ‘Even as classification systems strive to simply describe discourse, they also play a role in shaping it’ (Hackney et al., 2018, p. 13).

These issues emerged as part of a project Harrington conducted with Michael Piggott at the NLA which had as its goal the intention to devise a methodology to measure and evaluate the cultural and linguistic diversity of the NLA’s collections. As Harrington recognised, any evaluation of a collection necessarily means an evaluation of that collection’s catalogue records and the descriptors of culture and identity held within them. For the most part, catalogues (collections management systems) can generate complex and accurate statistical reports related to matters such as use, budget allocation, weeding etc), and other statistical data demonstrating the value of collection items (Brown & Stowers, 2013, p. 151; Wilde & Level, 2011, p. 221). Concepts such as culture and identity are, however, far less amenable to being crunched into numbers. Data relating to concepts of cultural identity or linguistic groupings, or any other representation of cultural diversity or multicultural group identity, history and heritage can only be evaluated against the NLA performance standard if subject data within the catalogue records enables it.

As Harrington reports, he found that attempts to extract quantitative data regarding culture and identity is, in the first place, productive only of unreliable, inconsistent and misleading outcomes (Harrington, 2021). In the second place, even if accurate data was produced about representations of Australian diversity within the catalogue, it would likely defeat the library’s goal of promoting a sense of inclusion and belonging among the communities it serves, by embedding within the catalogue essentialist and bounded constructions of non-Anglo-Celtic culture. In a significant way, Harrington’s discussion highlights the fundamental dilemma libraries appear to be caught in. Despite an honest and enthusiastic desire to embrace a broad, complex and changing understanding of community, culture and identity, they are compelled to make their resources accessible via a language which presents identity and culture as fixed. Indeed, a recent meta-analyses of LIS literature and the ‘problem’ of diversity, indicates a widespread acceptance among researchers that ‘the naming of categories used to describe identity groups is […] reductive, reflecting the biases of the hegemonic notions of identity at a given moment in time’ (Hackney et al., 2018, p. 13).

Praxis or Problem

In the 1980s Rasmussen called for libraries to take ‘cognizance of the cultural composition of the Australian society’ in their services to local communities, and in the building of collections to meet the needs of users who, she said, could no longer be assumed to be middle-class and Anglo-Saxon (Rasmussen & Kolarik, 1981, p. 25). In the decades since then, the conceptual and operational ideas of ‘multicultural library services’ have progressed along two divergent paths. In one direction, the library spaces and collections have endeavoured to take their form and expression from the community in which they operate. These show an understanding, often based on lived experience and engagement with the critical scholarship of the complexity and fluidity of national and cultural identity, composed in a perpetual process, as Stratton and Ang say ‘of continual reinvention through the interaction of a plurality of ethnically defined imagined communities’ (Stratton & Ang, 1994, p. 148).

On the other path, technological advancement and the digital age have enabled libraries to provide access to innumerable resources catering to the ‘tastes’ of diverse cultural and linguistic groups. The increasing complexity and interconnectedness of libraries has, however, produced institutional conditions that work against a genuinely comprehended embrace of (multi)cultural identity as fluid and as ‘us’. The basis of this contradictory condition is implied in a recent statement by ALIA. It reads ‘Librarianship in Australia is part of the global infrastructure of library and information work, through international standards, for example resource description’ (ALIA, 2020, p. 9). The NLA similarly states that the ‘library community in Australia will generally not diverge from LCSH except for specifically Australian requirements’ (National Library of Australia, 2020b).

Without disputing the obvious need for standards and other systems of organisation, classification and management, the problematic nature of these in the context of cultural diversity is relatively well-known. There is a consensus within a large body of critical literature that systems such as LCSH and DDC are deeply bound to culturally specific viewpoints which, as Wiegand notes, has ‘had the effect of framing and cementing a world view and knowledge structure’ which privileges a white patriarchal, Christian, middle-class, Anglo-American construction of the world and, of course, its people and their cultures (Wiegand, 1998, p. 188). Restated, this divergence in paths can be understood (simplistically) as a kind of disciplinary and professional schism between problem focused practice on the one hand and critical inquiry on the other.

Blackburn has argued recently that a high proportion of practitioner contributions to LIS literature places an ‘[e]mphasis on technology and practical solutions’ (Blackburn, 2020, p. 239). Practitioner discourse, she suggests, is focused on the achievement of improvements and greater efficiencies in the fulfilment of the institution’s policy intentions. And while there are enormous achievements to acknowledge, in particular the success that libraries have had in connecting an unprecedented number and diversity of users to library resources and collections and to their local and national heritage, she suggests that this focus ‘is effectively a micro-perspective, from which consideration of macro-level phenomena like race and power is invisible’ (Blackburn, 2020, p. 239).

A perceived ‘gap’ between the supposedly ‘theoretical’ work of LIS and allied academics and the problem focused ‘applied research’ supposedly favoured by practitioners has been the subject of a number of publications and research reports. ALIA’s 2017 Relevance 2020: LIS research in Australia report (Nguyen, 2017) supports the perception that practitioners ‘assume that research belongs to an ivory tower and is not relevant to practice’ (Nguyen, 2017, p. 7). Indeed, the report concludes that ‘[a]cademics and practitioners have different perspectives and expectations (one tends to focus on theoretical aspects while the other wants practical solutions)’ (Nguyen, 2017, p. 20). Supporting this finding, Jamali (2018) observed that

research done by academics seems to have some problems that hinder its use by practitioners. One is that it lacks relevance to the issues, problems and concerns of practitioners. The other problem is that practitioners find academic research aspirational and not applicable to their situation (Jamali, 2018, p. 6).

While strongly held, Couchman’s (2021) reflections in this issue on her work as curator at the Chinese Museum in Melbourne, offers an alternative perspective on the value of academic or theoretical approaches to the work of libraries and other collecting organisations. For Couchman ‘the politics of representation [are] not just an academic debate’ (Saha, 2020, p. 2358) but a central, if not essential, consideration in her practice. In particular, matters of national identity, participation and voice in the articulation of the Australian Chinese community’s own diverse cultural narratives, required an engagement with an informed cross-cultural and inter-cultural ethic. As Couchman writes, an ongoing point of consideration was, indeed, the politics of Australian ‘diversity and inclusion’: did the existence of the museum function to exclude Chinese Australian history from the broader national narrative, or was it a response to the realities of the cultural marginalisation and narrative constrictions of ‘multicultural histories? As Ang observed of ‘multicultural’ inclusions in narratives of Australian history,

[t]hey are supposed to “fit in” but are not allowed to have their own agency in the ongoing production of national history. Instead, the place and role of migrants in Australian history and culture are generally cordoned-off as a separate world of “ethnic history” or “migrant heritage,” as if it is irrelevant, even antithetical to the nation as a whole (Ang, 2003, pp. 32–33).

Indeed, it could be argued that the dismissal of ‘theory’ as impractical or irrelevant to the work of library practitioners leaves unexamined and unquestioned one of the most significant tasks placed on the national and state libraries in particular. As NSLA recently affirmed, national and state libraries play ‘a vital role in building social cohesion and fostering civic participation across Australia’ (National and State Libraries Australia, 2019, p. 2). It is an observation that, like many of the other issues raised at the Symposium, was also made by the early pioneers of multicultural library (and museum) services.

Pre-empting NSLA by three decades, Viv Szekeres argued that in addition to practical matters, it was the business of practitioners to give due significance to the part they play ‘in the construction of cultural meaning in our society’ (Szekeres, 1989, p. 79). Similarly, Anne Holmes noted at the 1984 LAA/NZLA Conference, that the ‘provision of multicultural library services … does not just mean buying books in other languages’ (Holmes, 1985, p. 348). Petro Georgiou, in his opening address to the 1980 Conference on Multiculturalism and Libraries as Director of the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, also emphasised that ‘“Multiculturalism and Libraries” goes well beyond providing services to non-English speaking individuals and groups’. Indeed, he sought to emphasise the centrality of libraries to bringing about new understandings of Australian national identity. ‘Libraries’, Georgiou noted, ‘have a key role in educating the community about the forces that shape our society, and our attitudes towards cultural and social differences’ and urged library professionals to strengthen understanding of this role through focused research (Georgiou, 1981, p. 3).

Transformation?

Participants in the early workshops and conferences took the position that existing services, staff and skills were insufficient to meet the challenge of accommodating ‘new’ ‘multicultural’ library users. In 1980, it was proposed that the consideration of ‘paramount importance for meeting the needs of ethnic communities effectively’ was ‘[t]he employment of people from various ethnic backgrounds’ (Rasmussen & Kolarik, 1981, p. 32). Early thinking about multicultural library services prioritised as essential the ‘ethnic’ diversification of library staff in ‘[p]arallel with the gradual development of library services to ethnic communities’ (Rasmussen & Kolarik, 1981, pp. 32–33). In addition to the desirability of creating specialised positions of ‘ethnic service librarian’ or ‘multicultural services librarian’, there was also a view that libraries should recruit ‘bi-cultural’ staff, preferably with ‘multi-lingual expertise’ (Rasmussen & Kolarik, 1981, p. 35).

The contrast between these early aspirations and present day ‘problems’ with diversity among library staff has been considered by Muir et al. (2020). Noting that ‘[d]iversity, equity and inclusion are core values in librarianship’ (Muir et al., 2020, p. 473), they remain perplexed that ‘this commitment has not translated into a diverse profession’ (Muir et al., 2020, p. 474). Further, they note broader comments about the LIS profession in general which suggest that the workplace experience of many in the library workforce in Australia is akin to ‘living in a “bubble”; where the library and information sector may see diversity around it but itself exist in a mostly homogenous space’ (Muir et al., 2020, p. 474). This situation is mirrored in the United States (US), where, according to Hurley et al. (2019), successive studies by the American Library Association (ALA) paint ‘a grim picture of representation in librarianship’. In parallel with the Australian experience, the LIS sector in the US has engaged in ‘decades of efforts’, including scholarship programmes, residency positions and other initiatives aimed at diversifying the profession. Regardless, the most recent ALA update on (‘racial’) diversity in the profession reported that ‘over 85 per cent of the profession identifies as white’ (Hurley et al., 2019, p. 545).

Anastasia Collins (2018) has also pointed to the failure of the ‘diversity’ visibility paradigm within libraries and LIS professional discourse to actually challenge or transform an institution which continues to privilege majority cultural perspectives. She argues that policy goals of equality, diversity and inclusion within the library, (encompassing personnel, services, collections and physical and digital spaces) cannot be accomplished with the tools, rules and standards that LIS scholarship has long recognised as the product of and reproducer of hegemonic systems of knowledge and hierarchies of culture. The ‘historical discrimination against diversity that the LIS profession seeks to address’, she argues, ‘was written into existence via laws and policies and reinforced everyday via naturalised institutional language practices.’ Despite the clear recognition within the LIS profession of the political and cultural embeddedness of many of its tools and processes, she claims that the ‘language, power, and the hegemonic control they deploy and reproduce are rarely part of the conversations’ around diversity and the library (Collins, 2018, pp. 5–6).

The lesson repeated over the decades then is that giving attention to diversity and making space for a genuine reflection on belonging for all of Australia’s complex peoples and communities, actually means that an inquiring and questioning gaze must be turned towards the ‘invisible’ unchallenged structures that have remained entrenched. In their contribution to this special issue White and Woods (2021) offers such an analysis. Drawing on data gathered by means of the familiar staff survey, White and Woods sought an understanding of just how public libraries in Western Australia (WA) made space for Asia and Asian Australians in their collections. They examined their survey data through the analytic lens offered by cultural studies and applied to a pragmatic although important question about the quality of the cultural diversity and representation achieved in the collections. In particular, employing a cultural studies approach enabled White and Woods to develop an understanding of the way in which public library collections in WA supported the construction of Asian identities and cultures. Far from producing ‘impractical’ or ‘ivory tower’ conclusions, White and Woods demonstrate the productive benefit of a genuine praxis. Broadly defined as ‘an iterative process of applying theory to practice and applying lessons from practice to shape the development of theory’ (Hackney et al., 2018, p. 12), White’s and Woods’ article found that representations of Asia and Asian Australians in public libraries were not reflective of a diverse and included community. Rather, their findings demonstrated an effective, even if unintended representation of Asia and Asian culture as a subject presented according to the needs and interests of a dominant non-Asian community (travel books, cookery books etc).

Conclusion

The contributions in this issue confirm the views of participants in predecessor events that a critical approach is a proper, useful and essential part of the role of library practitioners if they are interested in social equity and cultural representation. This critical approach must be informed by an interest in the way cultural identity is formed and the role of institutional power in the shaping of that identity. In 1988, Szekeres had a clear message that is as relevant today:

Australia is a multicultural society. It seems to me that our collecting institutions have a responsibility not only to recognise this, but to change their policies and practices beyond the token gesture, and to change them fundamentally in order to reflect this reality (Szekeres, 1989, p. 79).

Yeo and Jacobs argued that ‘diversity means little if there is no understanding of how the dominant culture and ideas are articulated within our institutions and our daily library practices’ (Yeo & Jacobs, 2006, p. 5). And, as has been suggested in this essay, libraries have demonstrated capacities to be responsive to shifts in definitions of multiculturalism in the social-political contexts in which the libraries operate.

However, the question that can be raised in response to this special issue is in relation to how well the library is receptive to, and adaptive to the growth in knowledge, insights and understanding facilitated by academic research, analysis and methodological approaches. Fundamentally, the question is, how will libraries and library professionals respond to research findings which show that the concepts such as multiculturalism and inclusion, on which the libraries’ have developed representative paradigms of visibility, contribution and performativity (or celebration), are working against the library’s representative goals. In other words, how can (or how does) the library respond to evidence based findings that the concept of multiculturalism and its enactment in practice may work to reinforce ‘whiteness’ as normative: Casting the ‘multicultural’ as the eternal ‘other’, even within a paradigm of celebration and ‘inclusion’.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Symposium, Libraries and the Community: Representing and Reflecting Cultural Diversity in Library Research, Policy and Practice, was held at RMIT University, Melbourne on 27–28 February 2020 as part of the ARC Linkage Project Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries (LP170100222), supported by the National Library of Australia, State Library New South Wales, State Library South Australia and State Library Victoria.

2. The major impetus for the development of services to ‘migrants’ came from the 1978 Review of Post-Arrival Programs and Services (‘Galbally Report’) which determined that migrants have the right to ‘have equal access to programs and services’, and an expectation that ‘migrants’ needs [should] be met by mainstream services’. As mainstream, state and locally funded services, public libraries were obliged to look to their own service practices and resources and consider how well these fulfilled the imperatives to equality and access.