Building and Maintaining Inclusive Library Spaces Online
A virtual presentation by Laura March and Dr. Amelia Gibson for The Exchange: An ALCTS/LITA/LLAMA Collaboration conference
Online library services often exclude people with disabilities. Purposeful design and use of digital resources (including websites, databases, and social media) can improve inclusion. This session includes some basic technical considerations as well as institutional actions that can be taken to create more inclusive online spaces.
View transcript (PDF)
Prior research shows inclusive social media practices is one way cultural institutions can diversify their audiences, and the novel adaptations described by my dissertation’s participants can be mapped to Kletchka’s (2018) continuum of institutional practices.
Social media managers need a way to translate and distill the influences on their work into content that satisfies both their organizations and their users. As a whole, the participants in my dissertation identified a way to accomplish this – design thinking (Doorley et al., 2018; Clarke, 2020)– although none specifically named this approach, nor did any describe following all its phases in their entirety. The figure above illustrates how design thinking can be contextualized within the social media management role and how practitioners can apply it to their cultural intermediation. Social media communicators can use this framework to develop more relevant and creative content as well as identify factors that may impede their work.
A table of in vivo descriptions from my interviews with social media practitioners and their alignment to steps in the design thinking process is provided below. This process begins with communicators “plugging in” to online culture and conversations. Next, practitioners translate their organizational – and community – priorities by identifying and defining what they wish to tackle through their work. Participants then reported brainstorming potential solutions, often with other team members. After brainstorming, they select one idea and produce it. Production aligns with design thinking’s creation phase, but differs slightly as practitioners both create original content as well as coordinate assets managed by other colleagues (e.g., request photographs, edit text, select images from a database). Finally, interviewees described assessing their own work – albeit in a limited way – through quantitative engagement metrics (e.g., likes, shares, views), before beginning the process again.
| Content Creation Step | Design Thinking Phase | In Vivo Description |
| Plug In | Empathetic Discovery | I’m definitely plugged into all the conversation [on social media] so I can react to stuff really quickly.” (Eleanor, 20) |
| Translate | Problem Definition | “Seeing how I can translate, how can I show by example that we are living our framework and make that attractive to each of our audiences.” (Kay, 20) |
| Brainstorm | Idea Generation | “We brainstorm…I don’t have to own every idea. It’s really nice to have ideas coming from other places, and especially from people who are in the profession.” (Gwen, 21) |
| Produce | Creation | “I’m still working…five or 10 hours more a week just because of how much content we’ve been producing.” (Elle, 20) |
| Assess | Evaluation | “I feel like [analytics] is something that is not as great on my part, just because I’m so focused and trying to do the content creation and the content scheduling…I am doing some assessment in terms of what are our most successful posts and what are our impression numbers and engagement numbers within a quarterly basis.” (Kay, 21) |
Discourse analysis of visual culture provides “ways of seeing brought to particular images by specific audiences, or to the social institutions and practices through which images are made, circulated and displayed” (Rose, 2016, p. 188). I created this checklist by adapting Rose’s strategies for interpreting images. View the checklist as a printable PDF.
My dissertation uses IPA (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis). Like Grounded Theory, IPA is “Bottom-up,” or moves from exploratory and emergent themes to broader patterns (VanScoy & Evenstad, 2015, p. 345; Smith et al., 2009, p. 80). But unlike Grounded Theory, IPA usually connects findings to existing theory (VanScoy & Evenstad, 2015, p. 341).
My interview responses alluded to concepts from role theory, vocational awe and feminization, memory and impacts of stress, crisis communication and rapid response programming, cultural intermediation, and potentially other critical theories. Feel free to check out my review of related topics: Social Media Communication at Cultural Institutions: A Comprehensive Review
Cultural Institutions, Social Media, and Perpetuating Cultural Hegemony Online
Presented by Laura March at the DCDC21 Conference
Social media became one of the few ways cultural institutions were able to engage with their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, some online content reproduces – and amplifies – inequalities already present in libraries, museums, and archives. This presentation analyzes examples of viral posts by prominent institutions to reveal how power and privilege can manifest digitally. Attendees will learn how to assess virtual content through Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony to determine whether their organization perpetuates or adequately addresses social inequality through their online presence.
The social media manager role, the design thinking process, and the continuum of institutional practices can be combined and synthesized with the dramaturgical themes outlined in my dissertation
| Design Thinking Phase | Feminist Design Thinking Heuristic | Social Responsiveness | Content Creation Process & Themes | Practitioner Considerations |
| Empathize | Who is (silently) affected by a problem and how can social norms of exclusion or injustice be mitigated by amplifying marginalized voices? | What issues are important to your community? | Plug In
Method Acting: Living Inside Social Media; Audience & Their Influence |
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| Define | Whose experience should be highlighted and how can problematic issues be corrected through inclusive design? | How can your institution foster inclusive public participation and dialogue online? | Translate
Method Acting: Practitioner/Institutional Values & Influences |
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| Ideate | Who is invited and able to voice their opinions and decide creative directions? Are minority representations empowered to challenge unjust designs? | In what ways can content position users as partners in the ongoing processes of curatorial, interpretive, and knowledge exchange? | Brainstorm
Method Acting: Meaningful Engagement |
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| Prototype | How does form/function work against exclusion and promote critical reflection? | How does content challenge hegemony and promote community-based knowledge and reflection? | Produce
Method Acting: Creation Process |
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| Test | Does the design perpetuate social justice and counter marginalization? | Did content reach, respond to, and resonate with community members? | Assess
Everyone’s a Critic |
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My study’s emergent themes identified how eight practitioners carried out cultural intermediation by defining their professional success, describing the process of creating social media, evaluating their work, and reflecting upon the influences of COVID-19. Aligning these findings to established frameworks allows the experiences and problems of social media work at cultural institutions to be expressed and understood using a common vocabulary already being taught and used in organizational, management, LIS, and creative fields (Clarke, 2020). This translation and synthesis between (feminist) design thinking (Clarke, 2020; Doorley et al., 2018; Tham, 2019), social responsiveness (Kletchka, 2018), and my study’s findings can help practitioners, their supervisors, and their organizations reckon with current issues, develop strategies to improve social media work, and ultimately improve the outreach capabilities of cultural institutions.
Social Media & Makerspaces