In 2020, as public protest against anti-Black police brutality surged globally, institutional public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement proliferated. Universities, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions rushed to deplore racist violence and express their commitment to anti-racist and decolonial practice. Rather than release a statement of their own, staff at Senate House Library – the central library for the University of London and the School of Advanced Study – chose instead to pursue and embed a fledgling piece of reparative archival work, the Collections Inclusion Review, alongside their continuing efforts to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of their collections, particularly of literatures in English. This interview is a transcribed and edited version of a conversation with the two Senate House Library staff members leading this work: Richard Espley, now Head of Collections (and formerly Head of Modern Collections), and Leila Kassir, Academic Librarian for British, Irish, USA, Latin American, Caribbean, and Commonwealth Literature. The discussion ranged across issues of provenance, archive description, library layout, and the future of English as a discipline, urging attention to and amelioration of the exclusionary aspects of library practice. While critiquing institutional approaches to the legacies of colonialism, past and present, both interviewees expressed reservations about widespread claims to have ‘achieved’ decolonization, stressing that such calls are contingent on surrounding structures and processes, and suggesting that such radical dismantling remains a long-term aspiration, rather than a quick-fix solution.

中文翻译：

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“说机构正在非殖民化太容易了”：对参议院图书馆的理查德·埃斯普利和莱拉·卡西尔的采访

2020 年，随着针对反黑人警察暴行的公众抗议在全球范围内激增，支持“黑人的命也是命”运动的机构公开声明激增。大学、图书馆、博物馆和其他文化机构纷纷谴责种族主义暴力，并表达他们对反种族主义和非殖民主义实践的承诺。参议院图书馆（伦敦大学和高等研究院的中央图书馆）的工作人员并没有发表他们自己的声明，而是选择追求并嵌入一项羽翼未丰的修复性档案工作，即“馆藏纳入审查”，以及他们不断努力提高其馆藏的包容性和可访问性，尤其是英文文献。本次采访是与领导这项工作的两位参议院图书馆工作人员对话的转录和编辑版本：理查德·埃斯普利，现任馆藏主管（前现代馆藏主管）和莱拉·卡西尔，英国、爱尔兰学术图书馆馆长，美国、拉丁美洲、加勒比和英联邦文学。讨论范围涉及出处、档案描述、图书馆布局和英语作为一门学科的未来，敦促关注和改善图书馆实践的排他性方面。在批评过去和现在的殖民主义遗产的制度方法时，两位受访者对广泛声称已经“实现”非殖民化表示保留，并强调这种呼吁取决于周围的结构和过程，