Informational practices between reference librarians and libraries' LGBTQIA+ users

an epistemic reflection on the social and collective construction of the gender-sexual information in Libraries

Abstract

Researching epistemologically about the reference librarians’ actions in their habitat is important to understand their informational practices. It understands as informational practices the intersection among the social, cultural and intersubjective dimensions, in which the intersubjective dimensions is the connection of two or more minds and mutually reflect through the information as a vector. In turn, gender-sexuality information as a vector is the set of informational and communicational content that promotes resignification and harmonization of the LGBTQIA+ bodies and minds. This study reflected on the reference process, to which informational practices (actions/practices) to through the flux of the reference process. It was adopted The hermeneutic and qualitative approach, the comprehensive-descriptive-interpretative method, the theoretical thread in the service studies and reference process; the 5 Laws of Ranganathan and informational practices and gender-sexuality information by LGBTQIA+ users. It had interdisciplinary of field as epistemic orientation between Librarianship field and Information Science field, and the use of CorelDRAW software to build epistemic illustrations. The search for and access to gender-sexuality information through the reference service in the relationship between reference librarians and LGBTQIA+ users has the potential for social and collective construction of gender-sexuality information within the library. However, they can only occur when through the conscious actions of the reference librarians.