This page was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Anna Michelle Martinez-Montavon.
Why don't librarians "Just say No"?
connection with Popowich - dichotomy related to feminisation of labor, split personality created with the professionalizing of librarianship ? caretaker/conservator/servant versus canon maker/gatekeeper/guardian? discuss how roles and expectations align, how silence is complicit in feminized labor ?
Discuss False [?] Dichotomies
Servant/Vocation
Canon Maker/Professional
Discuss Sacrifice and vocation :
During the covid pandemic, as libraries closed to protect their patrons and their staff, the rationale for those that remained opened was somehow that the [librarians'] were up for the risk and that the sacrifice was worth it. But how could that be? A life for a video tape? Should a librarian really risk their life to help someone else get something they could buy on Amazon and have delivered to their door for less than $12? Is that what a librarian's life is worth? $12?
Even for libraries that closed the majority didn't come right out and say it, which is weird. Just as librarians are complicit in their own silence Have libraries organizationally removed their own tongues ? Hundreds of libraries were closed, yet only eleven said it on their websites. Instead libraries and librarians that closed their doors to patrons emphasized what they could "do" avoiding at all costs using the phrase "We are closed". Why?
Here cite distant reader and text mining COVID-19 “Distant Reading for Quick Insights,” April. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DTZC8 ) and Hinchliffe, Lisa Janicke, and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg. 2020. “US Academic Library Response to COVID19 Survey.” Public Document of Links - US Academic Library Response to COVID19 Survey. 2020. https://tinyurl.com/covidlibrary.
Discuss images of the "ideal librarian"
Morgenstern's branded and de-tongued librarians - Reviewers describe it as a beautifully written and compellingly imagined book about a mystical library but in that library school at graduation the librarians hands are tied behind their backs, and they are are blinfolded and then branded, or have their tongues torn from their mouths BEFORE they can be trusted to do their jobs . . . why elinguation? because their role is to be caretakers not meaning makers?
Explicate the morgenstern pull quotes here about branding librarians and tearing their tongues out.
Morgenstern, Erin. n.d. The Starless Sea. PenguinRandomHouse. Accessed December 13, 2020. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535366/the-starless-sea-by-erin-morgenstern/.
Because yep, that's beautiful?Startless Sea is a beautifully written imagining for physically manifesting the split personality of librarianship Popowich writes about in Confronting the Democratic Discourse of Librarianship : A Marxist Approach.
How does feminizing labor align with elinguation? The same way it always has?
"As part of vocational awe in libraries, awe manifests in response to the library as both a place and an institution. Because the sacred duties of freedom, information, and service are so momentous, the library worker is easily paralyzed. In the face of grand missions of literacy and freedom, advocating for your full lunch break feels petty. And tasked with the responsibility of sustaining democracy and intellectual freedom, taking a mental health day feels shameful. Awe is easily weaponized against the worker, allowing anyone to deploy a vocational purity test in which the worker can be accused of not being devout or passionate enough to serve without complaint." (Ettarh 2018)
"Awe is easily weaponized against the worker, allowing anyone to deploy a vocational purity test in which the worker can be accused of not being devout or passionate enough to serve without complaint," (Ettarh 2018) - even Bartleby did not say outright no, he refused with "I prefer not to"
