We often think of public libraries as safe havens, quiet places to study, think and retreat from life's hustle and bustle. But for those who work there, especially young women, the risk of sexual harassment by patrons is high, according to professors in the º£½ÇÉçÇø’s School of Library and Information Studies.
After conducting a survey of 500 library workers across Canada, , and project partner and public librarian Angela Lieu found that only seven per cent had never experienced any sexual harassment at all.
Twenty per cent said they’d been harassed somewhere between two and five times, another 35 per cent between six and upwards of 10 times. Most alarming, 33 per cent said it had happened so much they’d lost count. The harassment included a range of experiences from being called sexist pet names to sexual assault.
“Most is what we call everyday harassment — the ‘honeys’ and ‘sweeties’ — but then it moves along a continuum, sometimes escalating to become more severe,” says Allard.
In many ways the behaviour is similar to that happening in other public spaces, easier to recognize and name since the , say Allard and Oliphant. The most common expressions involve comments about bodies or physical appearance, followed by offensive jokes, leering and discussing inappropriate personal or sexual matters.
Interactions often escalate to requesting contact information or following workers around the library.
“Often, harassment starts in the library and moves out of the library (including stalking), especially if it is escalating,” says Allard. “At the far end of the spectrum, there were way more examples than I expected of inappropriate touching, even some of sexual assault.
“There were a number of cases of people following workers into the stacks and brushing up against them or touching their bodies in unwanted ways.”
In some cases, the more egregious chronic offenders move on from one library to haunt others, say the researchers, taking advantage of the physical conditions libraries allow for social interactions, such as the privacy provided by stacks.
The nature of the job itself also comes into play. Library workers are expected to be helpful, friendly and conversational, sometimes acting as mentors guiding patrons through research. The boundaries might seem clear, says Oliphant — a patron has a specific question on a specific topic and needs to find the right information. “But in reality, it can be way more messy than that.
“Once people who have experienced sexual harassment understand it as such, the light bulb goes off — it’s one of those things that’s always been there but hasn’t necessarily been named,” says Oliphant.
Despite the growing recognition of such behaviour, very little research has been done on sexual harassment in libraries until now, she adds, aside from anecdotal reporting from workers themselves. So Allard and Oliphant consulted previous research on occupational fields with a high proportion of female workers, such as nursing, social work, or retail and hospitality — since most library harassment is directed towards women.
“The main challenge is that libraries are feminized or ‘pink collar’ workplaces, where the work is devalued because it’s thought in many ways to be ‘women’s work,’” says Allard. “It’s thought to be caring, service work, sort of like social work, so there’s a relationship established that makes library workers vulnerable and gives patrons power.”
Allard says that when she began teaching at the º£½ÇÉçÇø in 2017, she was shocked to hear that many of her students with some experience in libraries had already been harassed but didn’t feel they had the resources or support to respond.
“I was really distressed by it,” she says. “Some said they didn’t feel it was being taken seriously or understood by their employers or co-workers, or wasn’t getting the attention it deserved.”
Since releasing the results of their survey in 2021, Oliphant and Allard have launched an ongoing research project on library harassment, including a and .
They also give public presentations and teach their own students about what to expect in the profession and how to deal with harassment when it inevitably occurs.
“It’s universal, and it happens all the time. But it’s always unexpected when it does,” says Oliphant. “Calling this what we think it is — gender-based violence — is sometimes difficult for people in the field to accept.”
That’s why it is essential to build solidarity, she adds, forging networks of support with a clear response protocol. The researchers have identified four pillars of resistance — effective policy, training workers, reporting incidents and culture change — to most effectively deal with harassment, and have received a grant from the to pursue strategies to disrupt it.
So far libraries have been “very receptive” to the project, says Oliphant.