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Thanks for this posting. Surely it's a matter of stepping away from marketing segmentation needs of your parent organisations and to seriously consider section 3... 3. Consider whether you need to ask someone’s gender I don't think it's normal practice to ask for sexual orientation nor for a tile Mr., Ms etc here in Australia. I may be wrong but perhaps you could simply avoid this issue by talking to your organisation's marketing people about not being involved in collecting marketing data at this crucial time of joining a service. The experience needs to positive and welcoming. Interested in other points of view, Fi Fiona Emberton Embervision > On 12 Feb 2016, at 6:47 am, "Apryl Hammett, Face to Face Service Development Officer" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > As you may remember I have been looking at the document below about providing the best service for our transgender customers. > > https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/providing-services-for-transgender-customers-a-guide > > In Essex, on our joining form we do not have currently Mx, Msr, Per. Also, under gender we have male /female but not gender neutral. > > How do other library authorities cater for transgender customers? I’m particularly interested in procedures around updating the records of existing customers and how a lack of suitable ID is dealt with. > > I had a huge variety of responses, from our library system can’t manage anything but male/female to a library service that allows the customer to fill in whatever they want to. > > One response was from the Surrey History Centre who commented, > > ‘We've just tweaked our Registration and Booking System database to ensure that it includes Mx, Msr, Per and No title in the drop down box for registering a customer's preferred form of address. I'm only sorry that we did not think to do this before. We most certainly do have transgender customers and hope that this tiny change to our booking system will ensure that they feel as welcome as everybody else. I'm also going to arrange for a training session in this area for all of our public services staff’ > > One authority had a done an Equality Impact Assessment with the introduction of a new LMS system and the advice they received from our Corporate Equalities Officer was that it was sufficient to allow a transgender customer to self-identify as male or female based on the gender they identified as when joining the library or re-registering. They didn’t think it needed to be any more complex than this and felt it would be inappropriate to create a separate category on the LMS for transgender. > . > The one area that nobody commented on was about ID, or lack of. If someone is transitioning then they are unlikely to have a lot of ID and I wondered how that was dealt with by staff in libraries? > > I also had several responses asking me to feedback what we in Essex are going to do as they had not thought about this before. We will J > > Have a great weekend > > Apryl > Apryl Hammett > Face to Face Development Officer > Library Services Team > Essex Libraries > Essex County Council > Telephone: 01245 492758.Mobile 07880180001 or 03330136527 > Email: [log in to unmask] | www.essex.gov.uk/libraries > > <image001.png> <image003.png> <image005.png> <image007.jpg> > > > > This email (including any attachments) is intended only for the recipient(s) named above. It may contain confidential or privileged information and should not be read, copied or otherwise used by any other person unless express permission is given. If you are not a named recipient, please contact the sender and delete the email from your system. It is the recipient's responsibility to ensure that appropriate measures are in place to check for software viruses.