Assessment of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Initiatives in Public Libraries: Perspectives From a Public Library in a Developing Country

Introduction

Justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) initiatives are ideas, strategies, and/or techniques that are adopted to ensure that all people of social strata in a society get their required recognition and acceptance in the provision of service. In this context, this means the inclusion of all members of the society regardless of their socioeconomic standings, gender, age, ethnicities, religions, level of education, and other factors in the provision of library and information services. Public libraries are established to ensure that all members of the society are adequately provided with relevant information services that will help combat the different challenges faced by a community (Forsyth, 2005). These information services require meeting the diverse and varying information needs of the community and have been entrenched with the advent of the Internet (Bertot et al., 2009).

With the diversity in the information needs of the community of patrons, public libraries are saddled with the responsibilities of implementing initiatives that will enhance or propagate justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI). With the paradigm shift over time in information service provision, it becomes markedly important to ensure that marginalized communities are catered for by the contemporary library systems, structures, and staff (Brimhall-Vargas, 2015). For instance, it is assumed that the increasing shift from paper to electronic resources may leave out the less educated strata of the society since they cannot make use of the computer systems to access e-resources available. Moreover, the physically challenged society may have challenges in accessing such resources when there is no provision of assistive technologies or access tools that will facilitate their information use.

Recently, Yusuf et al. (2022) made an effort to provide a possible solution in pedagogical approaches and library utilization in the Nigerian society, but there was no evidence provided on the status quo with respect to JEDI initiatives in Nigerian libraries. The authors discussed the challenges of the vulnerable library users without evidence on the nature of inequality in the library workforce, information resources, and information services. Having knowledge of these would entrench JEDI in Nigerian public libraries. In a study on excluding the visually impaired in Nigerian academic libraries’ webpages, Zaid (2017) concluded that none of the ten (10) Nigerian academic libraries that were studied provided core services for persons with visual impairment. The author recommended that libraries should work with the full intent of integrating library users that are visually impaired into the mainstream library services. This call motivates this chapter to explore the reality of JEDI initiatives in Nigerian public library, using the Kwara State Library Board as a case study.

There have been several studies conducted on the information services provision in public libraries in developing countries, particularly Nigeria. Since the public libraries in Nigeria are funded by state and local governments, it has been observed that the issue of funding is a major challenge to meeting the information needs of their users. This is corroborated by the findings of Iwhiwhu and Okorodudu (2012) that users are not satisfied with the information resources and services provided at Edo State public libraries and they were satisfied with the facilities. This users’ unsatisfactory report indicates that the information resources are inadequate and the information services provided in the library are not all-inclusive. Naturally, leaving out a category of prospective library users in information service provision will make the users unsatisfied with the information provided.