Racial Justice in Library Practitioner Discourse: Implications for AI

This study presents preliminary results of an action research project exploring racial justice in U.S. southern public library communities and discusses the implications of its findings for AI bias. Two research questions are addressed: “How is racial justice conceptualized by the LIS practitioner community in the American South?” and “What are potential implications of racial justice discourse in race‐related AI bias?” Thematic analysis and interpretative description (ID) were performed on data that was gathered from a strategic action plan created from a survey of southern U.S. public library staff. Public library staff have defined “racial justice” in terms of the constructs of access, equity, participation/inclusion, representation, accountability, and promotion/support. The results of this characterization of racial justice have implications for remediating race‐based bias in artificial intelligence systems by promoting the inclusion of more training and operational data gathered from an emic perspective.