CILIP Cymru Wales' response to the Welsh Government's LGBTQ+ Action Plan

We were pleased to have had this opportunity to respond to the consultation on the Welsh Government's LGBTQ+ Action Plan in October 2021 . Our response is submitted on behalf of the librarian and information professional workforce in Wales drawing on a round-table policy event convened by us on the 30 September 2021.

Please download our full response for more details.

We would be glad to provide any further information or context in support of this submission.

Key recommendations

For ease of reference, we have pulled our key recommendations to Welsh Government into the following brief summary:

Recommendation 1:

To add the word and concept ‘library’ to the action plan alongside archives and museums. Libraries (public, health, commercial, and at all levels of education) are trusted community hubs that deliver a wide range of bilingual services to their user communities. These range from offering non-commercial welcoming spaces to providing print and electronic access to up-to-date information published by experts. This offer is vital to the success of the LGBTQ+ Action Plan.

Recommendation 2:

To begin a move away from celebratory stop start activities and towards an embedding of LGBTQ+ inclusion and representation in public services. This will require investment in staff training for collection management and acquisition policies and support for the development of long term good practice.

Recommendation 3:

To identify and make accessible LGBTQ+ information, resources and historical collections and to commission research into the information-seeking behaviour of LGBTQ+ communities. We suggest that the Expert Panel, in consultation with library leaders, establishes a dynamic and inclusively constructed LGBTQ+ resource list for Wales.

Recommendation 4:

To invest in and extend successful projects such as the Reading Well Scheme. The Reading Well scheme has successfully raised awareness of and delivered information on health and wellbeing issues to all corners of Wales. We recommend that the model is adopted by the LGBTQ+ Action Plan to deliver expert recommended bilingual resources to users across the country, via all library sectors.

Recommendation 5:

To invest in and exend successful platforms such as People’s Collection Wales. People’s Collection Wales provides bilingual access to Wales’ cultural history digitally. These collections can be browsed, used in research, or developed into packages; for the Welsh School curriculum, via Hwb, for example. We recommend that the LGBTQ+ Action Plan embeds this platform in its work to engage and represent LGBTQ+ identities and communities.

Recommendation 6:

To establish a framework for organisations to audit the impact that their information systems and supplier relationships have upon LGBTQ+ communities. It is important that the LGBTQ+ Action Plan is not built upon everyday technologies that turn out to embed harm in our services and resist our professional attempts to change them. A framework to assess our automated processes will help public services and other organisations to proactively identify both problematic practice and potential solutions.