Last month I agreed to write the regular LGBTQ+ Network column for Information Professional. I had planned to write a nice little round up of the last year in place of an AGM – tell you all about those events we put on which you may or may not have been to. But that is the wrong tone for the world at the moment.

The network puts on events every year for Pride month and for LGBTQ+ history month, we try to educate people about the present and the history of our community. Over the last year we’ve had events on misinformation around the LGBTQ+ community, training for allies and a brilliant talk by Professor Jana Funke about The Well of Loneliness and how it brings up themes of alienation and censorship both from within and without the LGBTQ+ community. With the world in the state that it is, this doesn’t feel enough, but to make a change we need allies to stand up and work with us.

This week I have once again spotted newspaper reports of censorship of LGBTQ+ books in our public and school libraries. In the UK we might not have as serious a situation regarding the attempted censorship of books depicting LGBTQ+ people as they do in the USA, but as soon as we give in to censorship, we have failed as librarians. There are people out there who desperately need to see themselves reflected in books, even more so when we’re talking about school libraries, and our duty as library workers is to help that happen. I read a wonderful quote this week in a book by Mark Lawrence (The Book That Held Her Heart) which I keep coming back to “I don’t burn or ban books. […] the most I would do is unfavourably shelve the offending volume. And, even that, I would consider a failing of character”.

The USA has moved on from trying to censor books to trying to censor the world. Library of Congress agreed to change subject headings from Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America in record time. A feat which seems particularly amazing to those of us who know the history of LGBTQ+ subject classifications. Cataloguing systems always seem to be lagging decades behind society, using offensive and outdated language, and until recently, classifying LGBTQ+ people right next to and in the same overall section as paedophiles. However, we now discover that it wasn’t just the wheels of bureaucracy having to move slowly – when they want to, they can move rapidly.

I look at the USA and know that it is currently closed to me as a Queer activist with a strong social media platform. That Charleston conference I’ve always wanted to go to will have to be pushed further back, Open Repositories? – I guess not. However, we can’t look at the USA and feel smug. Whilst things may be better in the UK for many sections of our communities, the UK is once again pushing trans people out of public life. A few hours before writing this the UK Supreme Court has ruled that trans women are not protected as women under the sex characteristic of the Equality Act, although they are protected under the gender reassignment category. Now is the time to ensure that your library policies are explicit – if you have a women’s writing group, who is this for? Are trans women included? If so, you might need to change the name. If you only have male and female toilets, what are your plans for supporting trans people if they need to use the facilities and someone else complains?

Many people say they are allies to the LGBTQ+ community. I hope, if you’re still reading, you would class yourself in that group, but how many of us are really standing up for those who need us? How many of us are actively fighting to protect members of our community who need it? If you count yourself as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and are safe to do so, then stand up and be counted. If you’re an ally, stand with them.

This article will be published in CILIP’s Information Professional magazine, which is due out next month. To read more from Information Professional you can subscribe here here.