Online Service Equality in Public Libraries

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the American Library Association revised its Code of Ethics to increase awareness of and recommend actions to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Still, given that past research into library service equality shows mixed findings, there is a need today more than ever before to examine if public libraries provide equitable online reference services. Based on an analysis of over one thousand email responses, we found that public libraries provided equal service to all users regardless of their gender and race most of the time; however, females received significantly more and friendlier responses than male users, and White users received more emails than Black users. White female users also received the most emails while Black male users received the least.