While many aspects of the library’s physical presence at the heart of downtown Princeton only rarely change, such as the building itself or the fixed rows of walls and shelving within the space, others are in a near constant state of revolution, subject to the dynamic fluidity of our programming calendar and ongoing efforts to spotlight collections or titles for their timeliness and currency.
About a year ago, to recognize Native American Heritage Month, a small team at the library introduced one such special display to the second floor’s “At a Glance” area (the shelves facing onto the Information Desk at the top of the stairs). In addition to nonfiction titles written by or responsibly treating Native American and Indigenous peoples’ culture and history and books of poetry by Indigenous artists, there was also a small selection of books recently added to the library’s collections and gathered on a book list titled “Lenape History, Art and Culture: A Living Land Acknowledgement.” That display stayed in place through the month of November and then the space was given over to its more regular cycle of updates. The titles belonging to the poetry and nonfiction collections then went back to their normal shelf locations, but those included on the Living Land Acknowledgement list were set aside for special consideration by library staff.
The books on this list were acquired (and continue to be acquired) to provide the community with resources especially valuable for interpreting and understanding the history and culture of Indigenous groups who have a claim to the perennial stewardship of the land on which the library and the town of Princeton now sit: above all, State-recognized tribes in New Jersey, including the Ramapough Munsee Lenape Nation, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation and the Powhatan Renape Nation; but also, the Munsee Delaware Nation (Muncey, Ontario); as well as the Delaware Nation at Moraviantown (Moraviantown, Ontario), the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians (Bowler, Wisconsin), the Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma), and the Delaware Nation of Lenni Lenape (Anadarko, Oklahoma). It is in keeping with the library’s mission to provide opportunities for those who enjoy the library to deepen their knowledge of these Indigenous communities’ history and culture.
The decision to bring these books together as a Living Land Acknowledgement built upon the work of library staff and faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study, where their own Living Land Acknowledgement display in the Historical Studies-Social Sciences Library and the dedicated webpage on their website “support the intellectual inquiry of the Lunaape community, as well as that of the Institute for Advanced Study community.” The library’s Living Land Acknowledgement, by contrast, is reflective of a commitment on the part of the library staff to devoting resources and taking meaningful, mission-aligned action, in order to create opportunities for the public to become more informed about Indigenous history and culture and for Indigenous communities concerns’ to be better reflected in the library itself.
The ongoing work to develop this collection is a good example of the kind of effort entailed by that first introduction of the display and its attendant living land acknowledgement. In the winter and spring of this year, these titles were provided with new catalog numbers and situated as a “Living Land Acknowledgement” topic within the Princeton Room’s Local History neighborhood. A sign was placed along with it, to explain the purpose of the collection, and the titles were once again made available for the public to borrow. Though they had circulated quite well during that first introduction of the collection in November last year, the relative inaccessibility of the Princeton Room with its lateral position on the second floor and its often closed door limited the visibility of the collection and its circulation suffered for most of this year. Last year, in November and December alone, the 12 titles on the list went out a total of 31 times, but these same titles had only been borrowed nine times between January and October of 2024 and many had not been borrowed at all.
Earlier in the fall, a somewhat larger team met to determine how we might improve the accessibility and impact of this collection. Following the advice of a valued partner, the team ultimately concluded that a display outside of the Princeton Room should be set up on a more longterm basis, so that these titles would have greater visibility within the physical space of the library. The Round Display behind the Welcome Desk on the first floor was finally chosen as the most suitable location for the purpose we had in mind. Staff in the Access Department developed new catalog descriptions for each of the items in the collection, the IT Department reconfigured stack maps, and by the beginning of November the titles were collected and placed in their new location. Some of the titles on the Living Land Acknowledgement book list were borrowed for the first time in November and others doubled their circulation, so that the 2024 circulation for the entire list of titles has also doubled in the one month since they were relocated. All of the data collected shows what is intuitive: that where library staff place and display books within the space of the library is consequential both for the visibility of certain titles within our collection and for the stories we aim to prioritize within the library for their educational and cultural value.
There are real limitations on the degree to which a public library such as ours can practice Indigenous Librarianship, and there are areas where we can improve in spite of these limitations. But we can also do ourselves and the community a lot of good just by making the most of what we have, learning from our partners, and following the lead of Indigenous communities and experts in this area, proceeding with humility, a desire to learn and a commitment to continuing to improve.