Bookmobile Bad Girl
1 2021-01-09T16:22:48-08:00 Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22 33948 2 The Bookmobile Bad Girl image is an altered pulp cover (original title: Sin on Wheels) and is from “Professional Literature for Librarians” at simplebooklet.com plain 2021-01-09T16:26:01-08:00 LISAGENIIUS Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22This page has tags:
- 1 media/dctermstimeline.png 2021-04-12T00:11:25-07:00 Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22 DCTerms Driven Timeline Natalie K Meyers 16 timeline 2021-04-17T21:18:21-07:00 Natalie K Meyers 4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22
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1
2021-01-09T16:02:31-08:00
Why don't librarians "Just say No"?
77
Do we prefer to suffer in silence because its a vocation and not "just a job"
plain
2021-04-19T18:24:27-07:00
In this page we begin to explore why the librarian stays silent, why the word "No" never seemed to make its way into the vocabulary of librarians, and why sometimes, it is difficult for librarians even to say: "I prefer not to."
We started this page laughing about anti-drug campaigns (DARE and "Just say No") and then found ourselves returning to a circumstance that will not shock anyone who has ever worked in a library: Libraries [& librarians] are often complicit in their own silence, organizationally so desperate to prove their worth, that refusal is not an option.Morgenstern's Starless Sea takes things quite a bit further. Reviewers describe the book as a beautifully written and compellingly imagined book that introduces a mystical library. These librarians are physically and emotionally inculcated to their vocation, devoting themselves entirely to serving the library.
The librarians will be blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs and then either be branded or de-tongued before they can start work. The mutilations are the critical prerequisites that mark the point at which the librarians in the Starless Sea can be trusted to do their jobs.
Why elinguation? Because, borrowing from Popowich, their role is to be caretakers who can't say "No" ? Not meaning makers? (2019)
Library work, like nursing, cleaning, caregiving, early childhood education, and social work is a profession where efforts tend to be performed by feminised labor. Labor that always says "Yes" when faced with human need.
There's a parodied librarian stereotype evident in the Bookmobile Bad Girl and the Reference Tramp. These caricatures of librarians who enact their role by always answering the call (with a "Yes") They are the ones who "give it away all over town." Along with Morgenstern's acolytes they occupy the far end of the bell curve in our workplace refusal kinship diagram. Men populate the other side of the curve when we look at how workplace refusal is gendered. Men in music, like Todd Rundgren have literally made a fortune celebrating refusal. Male characters like Peter Gibbons in OfficeSpace foment rebellion and bond over it with co-workers. Other male characters like Dante and Randal in Clerks simply revel in turning up but preferring not to work.
When academic librarians seek to prove themselves and create externally recognizable value, whether through the credential of the MLS, or through determining which achievements will be acknowledged by faculty appointment and promotion committees, we similarly distance ourselves from the service/maintainer and feminized side of the profession. We re-define our role to align more with the masculine to prove our worth alongside our other colleagues in the patriarchal world of the ivory tower. As argued by Seale and Mirza (2019):the actual work involved in academic librarianship is frequently invisibilized. This invisibility is only emphasized by the fact that much of that work entails emotional labor or maintenance. ... Academic librarianship’s erasure of feminized forms of labor and the field’s “inherent femaleness” is inextricable from its search for markers of professionalization outside of librarianship, in the form of non-MLS degrees, more appealing domains of knowledge, and nonfeminized types of labor. (258-259)
Why would we do this? "Isn't the academy becoming a more welcming place for women?" you might ask. "Aren't half the students we serve women?" In terms of gender balance in the professorial ranks, particularly in the United States, in the most recent American Association of University Professors' salary survey we find that religious institutions have finally got their gendered salary gaps down to a single digit percentage(AAUP, 2021). That's good news. But the survey data also show there's still an 86.8 percent difference between number or men and women serving as full professors at private-independents(AAUP, 2021).
Writ large we can imagine this imbalance if we picture a woman going up for faculty appointment or promotion. When the time comes for her to convince decision makers that what she does is worthwhile, only 16% of those people are likely to identify with her at the most basic level of having experienced gendered labor like she has. Things aren't likely to get better any time soon in the US either, as long as that will cost money. This past year "The survey found that real wages for full-time faculty decreased for the first time since the Great Recession, and average wage growth for all ranks of full-time faculty was the lowest since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. After adjusting for inflation, real wages decreased at over two-thirds of colleges and universities. The number of full-time faculty decreased at over half of institutions(AAUP, 2021)."
This patriarchal organization with its sliding wages and hyper-competitive employment situation is the one in which academic librarians work and are compensated. Another further tension within academic librarianship that can exacerbate pay gendered pay gaps is the one that differentiates between the effort value of those who are seen as innovators (often gendered as: masculine) and those that are seen as maintainers (often gendered as: feminine). Popowhich explores this tension, observing that :
In this situation how do you justify yourself, your cost, your service? How do you hang on to your part of the pie when you're really working in the doughnut hole?Librarianship—like the world itself—is full of contradictions or antinomies, tensions, productive or causal, non-static dichotomies, dialectical “unities of opposites,” such as that between enlightenment and social control, between concrete library work and the more intellectual labor of library science, or between men’s and women’s work, the center and the periphery, etc. (Popowich, 2019)
The situation has improved some since Mary aka The Party Girl got fired from her job at the public library back in '95, but not all that much. Mary's godmother, the librarian, tells her "Melvyl Dewey hired women as librarians because he believed the job didn't require any intelligence. It was a woman's job . . . That means its underpaid and undervalued." (Mayer 1995)
This scarcity scenario is playing out at Universities worldwide, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic situation which can drive counter-intuitive decision making.
For example, some Libraries unnecessarily delayed closing during the COVID-19 pandemic, as other academic libraries closed to protect their patrons and their staff (Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg, 2020). The rationale for those that remained opened was that somehow that the librarians were up for the risk, and that their sacrifice was worth it.- Were library administrators able to just say "No" and Refuse to send their people to work without PPE during a pandemic situation?
- Were librarians able to say "No PPE? Then I'm not coming in to work/I'm not working around [these co-workers who wont practice social distancing or, that maskless patron] ? "
- Were librarians able to refuse to work when they found themselves denied surveillance or diagnostic testing offered to other members of the campus community like students living in dormitories, or professors doing classroom instruction?
- Were librarians able to say "if you want us to "Stay open/Re-open without COVID-19 testing available, I'm not coming in to work?"
Amidst all these decision points, most libraries eventually closed til mitigations were sufficient to provide a modicum of safety. Among closed libraries the majority were circumspect in how they announced it. Hundreds of libraries were closed, yet text mining their closure websites revealed that only eleven actually came right out and said "We are Closed" (Meyers et al, 2020) Instead, libraries and librarians that closed their doors to patrons emphasized what they could still "do" seeming to avoid at all costs using the phrase "We are closed" even thought that's probably what most patrons were coming to their websites to find out.
There is, of course, no single reason librarians (and Libraries), don't "Just say No." But it is worth remembering that even Bartleby in all his mental anguish was able to voice that he "preferred not to"-- surely this is a language we could adopt more? -
1
2020-12-22T11:12:40-08:00
I am not your hero
25
Murderbot: the alternate patron saint for librarians
plain
2021-09-14T13:25:10-07:00
In our genealogy there are stereotypical librarians from the Bookmobile Bad Girl, to the Parks and Recreation "Sssshh!" librarian, to Morgenstern's Acolytes, Keepers, and Guardians in The Starless Sea. Each of these stereotypes help us to recognize the encumbered ways librarians live out saying nothing but "yes" so we can "deliver it all over town," or how we "Ssssh!" in the face of actual crisis, or even offer ourselves up to elinguation so that saying "No" becomes impossible. The burden of these roles make it difficult for library employees to refuse, let alone have the difficult conversations we need to work through if we want to experience greater trust in community, whether during abundance or crisis.
As an antidote to the hero narrative and accompanying vocational awe, we propose Martha Wells' Murderbot, an anti-hero, as the new patron saint for librarians.In her novella All Systems Red (2017), author Martha Wells introduces readers to Murderbot, an artificial intelligence designed to serve as a security unit (SecUnit) for profitable ventures. The SecUnit was created for a single purpose: keep the contract alive, even if it means taking damage to itself. Murderbot's feature set ensures that it can do so--but through a first-person perspective, it becomes clear that Murderbot is no gung-ho saviour seeking adulation. In fact, the Murderbot cares about keeping its cohort alive, but only in a self-interested capacity that requires the minimum level of effort and interaction with those it protects.
We learn that Murderbot has hacked its own governor module--the device that is supposed to keep it under the command of the mission leader--and is free to make its own decisions. With this newfound freedom, Murderbot isn't volunteering to take on more work; nor is it attempting to fraternize with its cohort, or ingratiate itself in search of greater acceptance or promotion. Murderbot uses its specialist capabilities to create workplace efficiencies that allow it to spend less time working, and more time doing the things it prefers to do. Self sacrifice is the furthest thing from its mind as it escapes the tedium of work and its workmates by watching episode after episode of Sanctuary Moon re-runs.
This fan-imatic by Mar set to a soundtrack by Canadian duo Tegan and Sara depicts Murderbot, freed from its governing module yet no less expert, no less effective as it [re]-negotiates its relationship with work and team members. -
1
2021-04-17T12:09:30-07:00
About the Authors
24
plain
2021-09-15T11:35:51-07:00
Natalie
has recently stepped away from Librarianship to work in a managerial role at the Lucy Institute for Data and Society. Previously she served as an E-Research Librarian, who helped pioneer and provide research data consulting services, including more in-depth data management services in support of grant-funded research. She is a strong advocate for equality in the workplace, is unafraid to reject the bullshit that comes at her, and is always lending her hand, help, and ear to younger colleagues. She always seems to be working on new grants and initiatives, has impeccable book recommendations, and hosts a somewhat regular art competition for her family members. She greets each day with coffee & The Nib: “rise and shine the world is doomed” then delays sleep with SciFi most nights. 0000-0001-6441-6716
Anna Michelle
is a recovering instructional design super hero librarian capable of teaching back to back library instruction sessions with no end in sight, who now cracks her electric Lucy Lawless whip as a user experience and assessment librarian. In her current role, Anna leads efforts to design user-focused, accessible and data-informed digital services. Anna brings a critical lens to her work -- and inspires everyone around her to be thoughtful in their work. She is a fierce and loyal friend, a staunch ally for student privacy, and a firm believer in a healthy work-life divide. 0000-0003-3487-6302
Mikala
is Product Owner for way too many library systems that need more than just cosmetic work, but for that she’ll need to take them to the medi-spa. She spends probably too much time at work-- both working on her 'real' job, and publishing/presenting research-- and often wakes up at 2am with a solution to the problem that plagued her all day. Like all of us, she is still learning how to say "No," in her professional life and to say "Yes" to more things in her personal life-- like spending more time as an active dog mom. 0000-0002-2730-7542
Kim
is an academic Archibrarian (Archivist / Librarian) who also serves a large regional community. In her role, Kim wears a wide variety of hats-- from archivist to technologist, preserver to maintainer, educator to learner, and other duties as assigned. Kim uses her Librarian superhero powers to blast the GLAM community forward through ESP [& projects like these]. 0000-0002-0781-4571 -
1
2021-04-19T18:27:51-07:00
Feminized Labour
20
Saying Yes all the Time
plain
2021-09-15T13:16:31-07:00
Library work, like nursing, cleaning, caregiving, early childhood education, and social work is a profession where efforts tend to be performed by feminized labour. Labour that always says "Yes" when faced with human need.
Librarian stereotypes are so prevalent in popular culture that the library profession has playfully and/or sardonically adopted them. Examples of these exaggerated feminized stereotypes are depicted book cover parodies, such as the Bookmobile Bad Girl and the Reference Tramp. These caricatures of librarians enact their role by always answering the call (with a "Yes!"). They are the ones who "give it away all over town." Along with Morgenstern's acolytes they occupy the far end of the bell curve in our workplace refusal kinship diagram.
Men populate the other side of the curve when we look at how workplace refusal is gendered. Men in music like Todd Rundgren and Johnny Paycheck have literally made a fortune celebrating refusal. Male characters like Peter Gibbons in Office Space foment rebellion and bond over it with co-workers. Other male characters like Dante and Randal in Clerks simply revel in turning up but preferring not to work.
When academic librarians seek to prove themselves and create externally recognizable value, whether through the credential of the MLS, or through determining which achievements will be acknowledged by faculty appointment and promotion committees, we distance ourselves from the service/maintainer and feminized side of the profession. We re-define our role to align more with the masculine to prove our worth alongside our other colleagues in the patriarchal world of the ivory tower.
As argued by Seale and Mirza (2019). 258-259:
Why would we do this? Though we may seek prestige, our efforts rarely lead to increased influence or power within the academy. The truth is that many of the collective benefits depicted in the 9 to 5 film back in 1980 are still among those most valued by today's workers: on-site daycare, job-sharing, flexible hours. One of the most hoped for benefits imagined in the 9 to 5 film hasn't materialized, though: equal pay.the actual work involved in academic librarianship is frequently invisibilized. This invisibility is only emphasized by the fact that much of that work entails emotional labor or maintenance. ...Academic librarianship’s erasure of feminized forms of labor and the field’s “inherent femaleness” is inextricable from its search for markers of professionalization outside of librarianship, in the form of non-MLS degrees, more appealing domains of knowledge, and nonfeminized types of labor.
"Isn't the academy becoming a more welcoming place for women?" you might ask. "Aren't half the students we serve women?" In terms of gender balance in the professorial ranks, particularly in the United States, in the most recent American Association of University Professors' salary survey we find that religious institutions have finally got their gendered salary gaps down to a single digit percentage (AAUP 2021). That's good news. But the survey data also show there's still an 86.8 percent difference between number or men and women serving as full professors at private-independents (AAUP 2021).
Picture a woman going up for faculty appointment or promotion. When the time comes for her to convince decision makers that what she does is worthwhile, only 16% of those people are likely to identify with her at the most basic level of having experienced gendered labour like she has. Things aren't likely to get better soon in the US, because the outlook for the academic job market and compensation is pretty bleak. This past year "real wages for full-time faculty decreased for the first time since the Great Recession, and average wage growth for all ranks of full-time faculty was the lowest since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. After adjusting for inflation, real wages decreased at over two-thirds of colleges and universities. The number of full-time faculty decreased at over half of institutions" (AAUP 2021).
The patriarchal organization of the academy with its sliding wages and hyper-competitive employment situation is where academic librarians work and are compensated. Further complicating the compensation outlook within academic librarianship are pay gaps between innovators (often gendered as masculine) and maintainers (often gendered as feminine) and how they are comparatively compensated. Popowich explores this tension and more, observing that:
In this situation how do you justify yourself, your cost, your service? How do you hang on to your part of the pie if you're really working in the empty middle of the doughnut hole?Librarianship—like the world itself—is full of contradictions or antinomies, tensions, productive or causal, non-static dichotomies, dialectical “unities of opposites,” such as that between enlightenment and social control, between concrete library work and the more intellectual labor of library science, or between men’s and women’s work, the center and the periphery, etc. (Popowich 2019)