-
Access Is Not Problem Solving: Disability Justice and Libraries
- Library Trends
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 64, Number 3, Winter 2016
- pp. 468-491
- 10.1353/lib.2016.0004
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
In this paper we advocate for an understanding of access that both responds to the pragmatic needs of the American Library Association’s “Core Values of Librarianship” (to guide professional practice and education) and helps librarians and library workers imagine how we might transform the systems, beliefs, and practices that make libraries and the profession inaccessible and inequitable. We are interested in expanding our shared understanding of access so that it includes a professional ethic of accessibility, justice, and collaboration. We bring to this argument a set of knowledges, experiences, beliefs, and politics that inform our understanding of what access is and what it could be. Specifically, our understanding of access and accessibility is shaped by our participation in disability justice activism, disability studies communities, and our personal experience. We suggest that thinking in solidarity with disability justice movements can be beneficial to all of us: librarians, library workers, and our communities of users; those of us with disabilities; those of us who are living without illnesses or disabilities; and those of us who move between disabled, ill and not.