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Patron‐perpetrated sexual harassment (PPSH) is a form of gender‐based violence and a pervasive problem in libraries. However, contending with PPSH requires the performance of emotional labour by library workers because of workplace cultures and professional values that prioritize patron and institutional comfort. To better understand library workers' emotional labour as they respond to PPSH, we analyzed 510 survey responses where participants shared their experiences of, their responses to, and feelings about, PPSH. Three responsive strategies emerged: acceptance, indirect refusal, or direct refusal. Overwhelmingly, library workers reported negative emotions about the incidents. Despite these negative feelings, library workers consistently responded to PPSH by performing emotional labour that upheld "polite and professional" values. Our findings raise concerning questions for the field of library and information studies about the implicit and explicit expectations placed on library workers to perform emotional labour in response to PPSH, particularly within the context of a feminized profession and with the knowledge that PPSH harms library workers. Our goal is to support library workers and their institutions to "find a way to say 'no'" to gender‐based violence in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This panel argues a paradigm shift is needed in library and information science (LIS) to move the field toward information equity, inclusion, relevance, diversity, and justice. LIS has undermined knowledge systems falling outside of Western traditions. While the foundations of LIS are based on epistemological concerns, the field has neglected to treat people as epistemic agents who are embedded in cultures, social relations and identities, and knowledge systems that inform and shape their interactions with data, information, and knowledge as well as our perceptions of each other as knowers. To achieve this shift we examine epistemicide—the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a knowledge system, epistemic injustice and a critique of the user‐centered paradigm. We present alternative epistemologies for LIS: critical consciousness, Black feminism, and design epistemology and discuss these in practice: community generated knowledges as sites of resistance and Indigenous data sovereignty and the "right to know". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]