Two Years in the Making: Library Resources for Transgender Topics

• Main Authors: Wanda Marsolek, Katie Barrick, Sarah Jane Brown, Kristi Bergland, Caitlin Bakker, Shanda Hunt
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Massachusetts Medical School, Lamar Soutter Library 2021-01-01
• Series: Journal of eScience Librarianship
• Subjects: transgender research; information-seeking; libguide; research data; iterative design
• Online Access: https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/jeslib/vol10/iss1/2/
• ISSN: 2161-3974

Inspired by Reid Boehm’s presentation “Beyond Pronouns: Caring for Transgender Medical Research Data to Benefit All People,” at the Research Data Access and Preservation Summit (RDAP) in March 2018, four librarians from the University of Minnesota (UMN) set out to create a LibGuide to support research on transgender topics as a response to Boehm’s identification of insufficient traditional mechanisms for describing, securing, and accessing data on transgender people and topics. This commentary describes the process used to craft the LibGuide, "Library Resources for Transgender Topics," including assembling a team of interested library staff, defining the scope of the project, interacting with stakeholders and community partners, establishing a workflow, and designing an ongoing process to incorporate user feedback.