Reading between the Lines: An Environmental Scan of Writing about Third-Party Sexual Harassment in the LIS Literature and Beyond

Third-party or patron-perpetrated sexual harassment is often experienced by frontline public library workers by the very patrons they endeavor to support. This article reports on the results of an interdisciplinary environmental scan designed to identify and understand third-party sexual harassment across a variety of disciplinary fields and perspectives including library and information studies. This work makes visible a confluence of intersecting social structure (patriarchy and white supremacy), social identity (gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc.), and library workplace factors (workplace precarity, feminized work, service work and care work, values of universal access, and whiteness in libraries) that contribute to the perpetuation of third-party sexual harassment in libraries. It proposes a research agenda for future study in this area, arguing that future research, practice, and education about sexual harassment within libraries must intersect with ongoing LIS and feminist intersectional scholarship and praxis that opposes and undermines gendered power structures that endanger women workers and make them vulnerable to gender-based violence.