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Cathy Troupos, Assistant Professor of Library Science
The CACE seminar posed three central questions: Who has the authority to represent others’ experiences? How do we navigate the ethical complexities of inhabiting narratives not our own? What responsibilities do we bear when engaging with diverse perspectives and identities? Through a mix of essays, discussion, and plays, faculty grappled with these questions from their own disciplinary and personal perspectives. While no tidy answers emerged—and likely none exist—the conversation revealed just how necessary it is to keep wrestling with these tensions. While librarians often engage these questions through collection development and teaching, the seminar invited a fuller reflection.
Libraries have a responsibility to cultivate collections that include a wide range of narratives and perspectives. This ideal is foundational and enshrined in the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights, which calls for the inclusion of materials representing all points of view.1 While most librarians are committed to this value, the work can be uneven and challenging. Libraries have caused harm not only through omission of material from collections but also through the very systems we use to collect and organize materials. Consider subject headings. Subject terms are a literal way narratives are framed, but they are not neutral. A Black author is far more likely to have their racial identity marked than a white author, positioning one identity as interpretive and the other as the norm. These terms may help a professor diversify a syllabus but can also reduce an author to a single identity category or shape how his or her work is read. Classification, even when thoughtful, carries weight.
This intersects with long-standing debates in librarianship about neutrality—a contested and often politicized concept.2 Neutrality is sometimes described as a professional commitment to providing space for all ideas. But that framing too easily ignores the politics of power. Decisions about what to acquire, how to describe it, and what to highlight are not, and cannot be, apolitical. In institutions like the academy, where some voices have long been elevated and others marginalized, the language of neutrality can serve to preserve the status quo. For librarians committed to intellectual freedom, this raises a tension: how do we defend a plurality of views while also answering the ethical call to expand representation? How do academic librarians build and promote collections that both recognize traditional markers of scholarly authority and intentionally broaden the scope to include diverse narratives and alternative ways of knowing?
Instruction and reference work make these questions more personal. As a librarian, I teach students to find and identify credible sources based on disciplinary markers of authority. But those same markers have often excluded certain narratives. I can name those gaps, suggest alternative sources, and help students seek out richer, more inclusive perspectives, but I cannot control what “counts” in a given assignment or within a disciplinary canon. At times, librarians may feel ill-equipped to advocate for voices and experiences we ourselves do not share. Yet, as we discussed, taking no action is not a satisfactory solution. Librarians should model the kind of ethical engagement we hope students will practice: one marked by intellectual humility and honesty about limitations and openness to critique.
In the seminar, no one claimed to have resolved the tensions we explored; even the texts we read offered conflicting comment. Yet, the theme of humility emerged as part of the solution, however imperfect those attempts at solutions may be. Colleagues expressed a desire to be ethical storytellers by trying to honor storytellers, preserve narrative integrity, and equip students for engagement that is both intellectually honest and socially aware. Our discussions and readings made clear that ethical storytelling is not merely about good intentions; it is about labor. It takes work to understand context. It takes work to curate collections thoughtfully. It takes work and humility to stay open to correction, even when your efforts are sincere.
I left the seminar not with certainty, but with a better understanding as to how the library can support our community’s efforts to tell stories: to continue cultivating a diverse collection; to equip students to seek perspectives ethically while honoring academic freedom; and to remain honest about the political and professional limits of my role. Fear of doing the wrong thing can easily become an excuse for doing nothing. The questions we asked may never have definitive answers, but in the spirit of loving our neighbor, they are worth returning to again and again.
1 “Library Bill of Rights | ALA,” accessed May 28, 2025, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill.
2 Dani Scott and Laura Saunders, “Neutrality in Public Libraries: How Are We Defining One of Our Core Values?,” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 53, no. 1 (2021): 153–66, https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000620935501.