The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship

The Collector and the Collected: Decolonizing Area Studies Librarianship explores the paradigm of “area studies” — a way of supporting regionally-focused collecting, processing, and liaison work — in the academic library through an explicitly anti-colonial lens. By centering debates on the politics and problems of area studies in libraries, we consider how libraries are rethinking their approaches to collecting global resources and serving our constituencies in a contemporary and progressive manner. While libraries need to address the problematic nature of area studies, we see a larger academic trend in the push for “global” initiatives which ignore historically, linguistically, and culturally significant sites of difference, inequity, and asymmetrical power relations.
What does it mean to break down the artificial divide between “collectors” of knowledge and those of us who have these knowledges “collected” for use? What work is required to decolonize collections, collecting practices, and practices of access originally designed to help Euro-American scholars study “the other?” Chapters examine questions of identity among library users and librarians, the historical and contemporary violence of collecting, and structural critiques of area studies and global studies in academic libraries. Author contributions include a wide variety of area studies “regions” and the book is organized to develop conversation cross-regionally.