Bring Your Own Story: The Evolution of a Library Program to Celebrate Diverse Voices

A Systematic Narrative Review of Implementation, Processes, and Outcomes of Human Library

“…All publications were focused directly on the HL events, except that two studies respectively reported on the development of a data system for managing HL resources [31] and a content analysis of documents about HL standards [18]. Fourteen (61%) publications were descriptive in nature [12][13][14]16,17,19,22,[25][26][27][30][31][32]34], most of which aimed to "describe", "overview", "review", "reflect on", or "discover" the HL approach and reported on the implementation, process, and experience of HL events. Many of their research methodologies are of questionable quality, as they did not describe the exact research designs, mentioned the use of case study without details, or used generic methods to collect the outcomes or observations after an HL (e.g., only post-event survey, observation, or interview).…”

“…Some of the HLs were organized as a part of some naturalistic contexts, such as library initiatives, university programs, diversity week, and collaboration with mental health agencies. In seven publications, strategies to advertise the HL were noted, such as invitation emails, websites, posters, and word of mouth [14,19,21,22,24,30,34]. All of the reported HL events were conducted in-person, except that three HLs were partially or completely online, some due to the COVID-19 pandemic [30,32,34].…”

Unveiling knowledge structure and research trends in human libraries: A systematic synthesis of bibliometric, thematic, and content analysis

“…Representative keywords are human library; human book, library, metadata, and computer aided instruction. Human library sessions were arranged in various settings, such as university library (Bordonaro, 2020;Gillum & Williams, 2022;Li, 2021;, school library (Schijf et al, 2020), and public library (Gamtso et al, 2017). Referring to infrastructures of human library, Dobreski & Kwaśnik (2019) identified standards for the representation of persons.…”

“…Gamtso et al ( 2017) described a human library project developed in a local public library which aimed at celebrating diversity and promoting inclusivity. Gillum & Williams (2022) described how another human library program evolved to celebrate diverse voices. Through organizing human library sessions aiming at breaking barriers and building bridges, public libraries regained their social relevance by organizing activities that arouse multiple interests (Silva & Sabbag, 2019).…”

“…This strand of research is more or less represented by the themes of human library development (the green cluster), cultural diversity (the purple cluster), and oral history (the yellow cluster), accounting for the earlier initiatives of human library research (Figures 7 and 8). Within this strand, various authors examined different forms of human library sessions (Bordonaro, 2020;Gamtso et al, 2017;Gillum & Williams, 2022;Li, 2021;Schijf et al, 2020;. Human library assisted in preserving the oral history of indigenous tribes (Yap & Barsaga, 2017;, and traditional and religious knowledge (Brenner, 2010;Shannon & Bossaller;2015).…”