College Librarians in Florida Are Hoping for the Best, But Preparing for the Worst

School

Your job is at a university library, and Ron DeSantis happens. Now what?

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Public and K–12 librarians have become some of the most recognizable voices of the culture wars in recent years for speaking out against coordinated efforts to restrict or remove access to materials concerning sex, gender, and race. In Florida, however, the fallout from the political takeover of a small public liberal arts college coupled with uncertainty around how public higher education institutions will implement a series of new laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis have another type of librarian wondering if they’re next.

Academic librarians in the state were alarmed to learn that the series of abrupt firings that ensued this past spring after DeSantis appointed six conservative board members to the New College of Florida’s board of trustees included the termination of Helene Gold. Gold, who was an associate dean at the New College’s Jane Bancroft Cook Library, was fired during what most college students would consider “crunch time.”

Academic librarians wear a lot of different hats. They consult with students and faculty on research projects, often bringing a certain level of subject-matter expertise that’s useful when navigating databases and suggesting source material. They also instruct on information literacy and citation management, purchase and catalog books and periodicals, and maintain electronic databases and service websites.

“They fired her a week before thesis deadlines, as final exams are starting, and a lot of students were still working with her on their research projects,” recalls Madi Markham, a recent graduate of New College. Gold was her go-to librarian for her senior thesis project. “Even if they were restructuring the library, you’d think they’d wait until the end of May, and also give her notice so she would help people transfer their work to other librarians or staff members.”

Gold believes administrators had identified her as a “troublemaker.” In the months leading up to her firing, Gold said, she and her boss were disagreeing on how to communicate and work with the DeSantis-installed New College of Florida president Richard Corcoran (the Republican former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives) and other members of the new administration.

New College of Florida did not return a request for comment on Gold’s firing in time for publication.

“I [was] incredibly outspoken and visible and very out on campus, so my firing really didn’t surprise me,” Gold, who is a lesbian, told Slate. “The timing of it really surprised me.”

Adding insult to injury for graduating seniors like Markham, who lost a librarian familiar with their work and had graduation deadlines to meet, was DeSantis’ May campus visit to sign SB 266—nicknamed the College Culture War Bill—into law. Civil rights organizations have condemned the bill for a number of reasons, one being that it explicitly prohibits expenditure of federal or state funds that “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or promote or engage in political or social activism.” Opponents point out that, similar to other legislation that has targeted education in the state, there’s still a lot of vagueness in how public colleges and universities should interpret the law, let alone academic librarians.

“There is no definition in the bill regarding university programs or activities, and it is unclear at this time what impact this may have on university libraries, especially with regard to subjects and topics that are prohibited under this unconstitutional law,” Kara Gross, legislative director for the ACLU of Florida, told Slate. “What we do know is that every student deserves to learn in an environment free from government censorship, and this law infringes on these basic rights.”

But this hasn’t kept librarians in higher ed from wondering. Gold’s concerns include how libraries will be able to promote recurring events like Pride month. But she also wonders how SB 266 will impact consortium purchasing through the Florida Virtual Campus, which oversees library services for dozens of public universities and colleges in the state system by providing centralized licensing services for electronic resources, like databases that house academic journals, e-book collections, newspaper archives, video streaming services, and other content. According to FLVC’s website, access to these resources is state-funded. Gold fears some of the items in these collections, particularly those that are dealing with sex, gender, and race, would violate the new law.

“When you purchase licensing to aggregate database collections through big companies like EBSCO and Gale, you can’t cherry-pick out, at the item level, what you want and what you don’t want and what you can have access to or not,” Gold said. Avoiding the state-funded purchase of access to databases that include social justice–focused materials, like the Black Life in America digital news media archive, or Gale’s Archives of Sexuality and Gender, “would mean not having access to the entire collection.”

Without access to licensing agreements that the FLVC can negotiate with large publishing companies that aggregate collections of databases for academic journal articles like Gale, EBSCO, or ProQuest, public universities risk losing their accreditation status from federal and state accreditors which require institutions to provide a certain level of support to students, faculty, and staff—to “support all educational, research, and public service programs.” GOP presidential contenders DeSantis and Donald Trump have each taken aim at accreditation agencies recently, claiming that if elected, they would replace them with a new breed of anti-DEI accreditors.

Gale, ProQuest, and EBSCO declined opportunities to comment about whether publishing companies are considering a market adjustment to assist academic librarians in states with anti-CRT and anti-DEI laws in maintaining their ability to provide resources.

“SB 266 banned institutions from using federal, state, or private dollars to promote or provide access to programming for students, and these large databases are going to have those kinds of ideas,” Andrew Gothard, president of the United Faculty of Florida, the higher education branch of the Florida Education Association, told Slate. “If students and faculty don’t have access to major research archives as part of their education and as part of their work, we have no doubt that this is going to cause a conflict with the accreditation standards which require academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the ability of students and faculty to explore all ideas free from undue political influence.”

In light of the unknowns, academic librarians are taking steps to protect their jobs. To get a better sense of what it’s like to be an academic librarian in Florida these days, Slate spoke with a handful who are currently employed by public and private institutions across the state, all under the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from their employers, the DeSantis administration, or both.

“Lots of librarians have wasted a ton of time deleting and cleaning up files in their [Microsoft file-hosting service] OneDrives; removing their names from projects, committees; taking down libguides [resource guides made by librarians] and associated documents related to DEI or anything that is related to diversity and inclusion on any level,” one librarian from a public college told Slate.

This librarian also said that out of an abundance of caution, they are removing metadata like “diversity” and “decolonization” from publications they’d uploaded to their institution’s repository, saying that they’ve done this because they don’t want what happened to Gold to also happen to them. But other academic librarians at public institutions call this kind of self-censorship an overreaction, in part because Gold’s status as an administrator made her ineligible for union protections that faculty can typically enjoy.

“I’ve encouraged [my colleagues across the state] to be a little bit bolder and act through their associations and use that as cover so they can engage in advocacy,” a different academic librarian from another public institution told Slate. “There’s a lot of hesitation because people feel like it’s not in our job descriptions to do this, but I feel like it is. I feel like it’s in our purview to protect our collections and the people who work for us and the people who are marginalized in the professional community, professional librarians as well.”

Neither the Florida Board of Education nor the state university system’s board of governors have offered institutions guidance on how to navigate the law. Gothard tells Slate that elements of this strategy look similar to those surrounding other bills recently signed by DeSantis, including Florida’s book ban law, which had school districts threatening teachers and librarians with third-degree felonies for giving students access to books with topics on race, sex, and gender, when the onus was really on the district. A similar theme can be deduced from the so-called Don’t Say Gay law that was recently expanded in coverage from third grade to eighth grade in public schools.

“They want to do unconstitutional things, but they don’t want to be held accountable for it, so they try to offload the accountability to somebody else,” Gothard added. “They’re trying to be cagey about who is actually going to do the punishing and who’s going to do the reporting.”

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, affirmed for Slate in a statement that SB 266 places in jeopardy any college or university librarian who makes available certain books and resources. “By threatening academic librarians’ tenure and unconstitutionally banning consideration of entire topics related to race, gender, and history, we know that implementation of SB 266 will chill academic librarians’ ability to serve the information and research needs of students and faculty alike and diminish the education of students in Florida’s universities,” Caldwell-Stone told Slate.

While academic librarians weigh their options, including what it would take to apply for jobs out of state, they also note that getting involved in their institutions’ respective unions has been beneficial. Another piece of legislation recently signed by DeSantis, SB 256, eliminated public employees’ ability to have union dues deducted from their paychecks, and requires at least 60 percent of eligible employees to pay union dues in order for a union to be certified as such. But according to the academic librarians we spoke to for this story, many are seeing their respective unions reach or surpass that 60 percent limit.

“ ‘Wait and see’ is definitely the state of play at the institutional level,” said one librarian employed by a public university. “But behind the scenes, at an individual level, people are getting ready.”

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