A Genealogy of Refusal : Walking away from crisis and scarcity narrativesMain MenuCrisis narratives frame our responseBartleby at the WallHow can fiction and popular culture inform the way we promulgate or refuse crisis & scarcity narratives in librarianship?Proud Descendants who "Prefer not to"Some recent gems from Bartleby's lineageA Kinship Diagram of Workplace RefusalSatire is richComedic instances of workplace refusal are especially powerfulDark side of parodyMore SatireWhen Expectations Cross the lineWhy don't librarians "Just say No"?Do we prefer to suffer in silence because its a vocation and not "just a job"Feminized LabourSaying Yes all the TimeSuperhero LibrariansIt’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a librarian!I am not your heroMurderbot: the alternate patron saint for librariansThe invocation of crisis narratives is relentlessNo individual solution to our problemsDebunking myths that hold us back to enable collective ways of moving forwardWhat refusal can we take up?A Cosmic GiftManifest NOBecoming fluent in hearing and saying NoAsset FramingBibliographyWorks cited, featured, mentioned and consulted for Genealogy of Refusal projectGlossary of Key ConceptsMultiple PathsA compendium of paths through the Genealogy of Refusal content: a choose-your-own-adventure approach to this companion piece.Genealogy of Refusal TimelineWe welcome contributionsLearn how to contribute to this projectAbout the AuthorsNatalie K Meyers4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon1459b2fc55591cd9b08a290af468d31b5dfe46a3Mikala Narlockdb843c923469f0dadab98d57ee053b00c88a64b1Kim Stathersb8f352d1ce6eb714d5242702eaa05362c8eae357Multimedia project for the The Canadian Journal of Academic Librarianship Special Issue on Refusing Crisis Narratives
She's not a Paramedic . . . She's just a teen-adult librarian and saved six people
1media/narcanheros_thumb.png2021-01-09T19:12:15-08:00Natalie K Meyers4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22339481Kowalski excerptplain2021-01-09T19:12:17-08:00Natalie K Meyers4b3948ab8901940da5f2eb884c2cc86b3dc6ac22
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12020-12-15T15:08:18-08:00When Expectations Cross the line59plain2021-09-14T17:22:42-07:00During the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk to librarians correlates to a variety of factors, including how frequently trafficked their spaces are, whether all occupants use face masks, how librarians in the space interact with patrons, how long people occupy space in the library, how air circulation functions in the space, and whether those who use the space have access to coronavirus testing and can self-isolate promptly if they test positive for the virus. If these factors aren't controlled for and libraries remain open without necessary mitigations, they put their occupants and broader communities at risk. Academic libraries on campuses large and small advocated for closing their libraries to fight the virus. Librarians recognized and argued that we had been growing online service for more than two decades and could close the doors to our libraries' physical spaces and instead focus on provision of e-content that could be delivered virtually (Flaherty 2020).
The majority of libraries closed, but sometimes libraries remained open even though staff didn't have PPE or even if community infection rates were climbing or already high. In others, even if the library building was closed to patrons, some or all staff were still expected to show up for their position with minimal safety measures in place. They continued to provide access to library materials through digitization and curbside service or simply turned up to work because if they didn't they wouldn't be paid and they needed the income (Moynihan 2020).
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how slippery the slope can get when expectations cross the line. But the tensions librarians navigate have a long history told through stories of sacrifice, heroism, rescue, and saviour behaviour. Before the pandemic library workers, especially in public libraries, were already serving as de facto social workers, daycare providers, and even paramedics. Some clasp the hero's mantle tightly about their shoulders, others wear the title lightly, others don't take it up at all.
Librarians began administering naloxone during the opioid epidemic (Barton 2017, Correal 2018, King et al. 2020, Kowalski 2017, Rosales 2018, Simon 2017, TEDMED Staff 2018) and their stories, like Chera Kowlaski's below exemplify the librarian as hero, underscoring how in a service profession your place of work often becomes a locus of care and intervention for the community you serve.
In a crisis like the opioid epidemic, scarcity can become our fallback position but there is a domino effect every time we go there in the face of need. An under-resourced community battling against opiod-involved deaths needs way more than just two doses of injectable naloxone locked up in the public library.
One person at a time in the bathroom? Get there and find out you need to go back to the desk for a key? What do you do if you're accompanying a child or elder who needs help? Or if you feel nauseous and need to use the bathroom quickly and don't have time to dash for a key and back to the bathroom? Or what if you need to spend more than 3-5 minutes in there because it is the only private place you have to pump breast milk, or change clothes between jobs, or even cry? If you're a patron, forget about it, you'll queue up and politely ask the librarian, because there's nothing they'd rather do than be the keeper of the keys to everything while policing the 3-5 minute rule for the bathroom?