ANTI-RACIST LIBRARIES WITHIN THE SCOPE OF PARFOR AND QUILOMBOLA SCHOOL EDUCATION: ETHNIC-RACIAL INFORMATION, COLLECTIONS, AND MEDIATION

Abstract

This article analyzes the possibilities for libraries to operate from an anti-racist perspective, articulating Ranganathan’s Five Laws with demands for ethnic-racial information, teacher education, and Quilombola School Education within Parfor Equidade. The study assumes that libraries are not neutral spaces for organizing and circulating knowledge, since their policies of selection, organization, representation, mediation, and dissemination may reproduce invisibilities or promote the recognition of historically marginalized subjects, forms of knowledge, and epistemologies. This qualitative, bibliographic, and documentary research study is guided by critical hermeneutics. The corpus includes academic publications on Library and Information Science, Ranganathan’s Five Laws, ethnic-racial information, anti-racism, and Quilombola School Education, as well as normative and institutional documents related to teacher education and Parfor Equidade. The analysis was organized into three categories: racism and librarianship; ethnic-racial information, mediation, and access; and diversification of collections and appreciation of different subjects and forms of knowledge. The results indicate that Ranganathan’s Five Laws can be reinterpreted as references for practices of access, representation, mediation, dissemination, and collection diversification. Thus, anti-racist libraries should actively promote the visibility of Black, Quilombola, and Indigenous scholarly productions and recognize local communities as producers of knowledge.