Week of 7

Occupational Outlook Handbook

I read a slightly older version of this when I first started thinking about library school in 2003. It strikes me as mostly good news, especially the part about how 3 in 5 current librarians are over age 45. I also learned a few interesting things I hadn’t known or thought about, such as union statistics. The high percentage of part-time librarians is also nice—it’s a field with flexibility and with standards already in place for those who want to cut back on hours. I don’t have a sense of how big the profession is. 159,000 doesn’t mean all that much to me without other numbers. How many police officers are there? Doctors, social workers, politicians?

Klaus Musmann, The Ugly Side of Librarianship: Segregation in Library Services From 1900-1950.

It’s all pretty sad and ridiculous, but not surprising. I’d be curious to hear how other marginalized groups have been treated by libraries throughout history. The Japanese during World War II, for example. It’s a little scary how powerful libraries can be in enforcing cultural prejudices… or, I like to think, in counteracting them.

I was thinking about the following situation, described as happening in the East and Midwest: “....special services turned out to be merely the establishment of additional school deposits or the location of an extra branch in an African-American residential section while allowing black readers full access to other libraries within the same system” (87). My first thought was that this wasn’t so bad. If St. Paul were to open a Hmong library in a predominantly Hmong neighborhood, but keep allowing Hmong people access to all libraries, would that be so terrible? I’m not sure, but my instinct is no. The difference, though, is that recent Hmong immigrants might have very different and highly specialized information needs, while presumably black Americans do not. Musmann states further on the page that libraries claimed to have large “Negroid” collections without explaining what that meant. What were the perceived information needs of black people between 1900 and 1950?

Roma Harris, Information Technology and the De-Skilling of Librarians; Or the Erosion of a Woman’s Profession.

Well, this was depressing. I think Harris presents things as a “no-win” situation that’s a little too bleak and pessimistic. I hope. She says, for example, on page 5 that “both [consulting and teaching] are inherently short-term in nature.” At the rate that technology changes? Absolutely not! I can’t foresee a time when we won’t need intermediaries of some sort to help us learn about and manage technology, or at least to use it more efficiently. Still, I see some truth behind what she says. Some traditionally female jobs in librarianship are threatened, and how will that change things? How will it change things as non-librarian information engineers take over key library roles? As a woman, I sometimes feel almost obligated to pursue management or technology-heavy positions. I feel almost guilty that I’d rather work with children or disadvantaged people. I’m not sure how children’s librarians fit into Harris’s picture. She mentions them in the beginning with catalogers but then not again. I think as long as our public libraries are intact, children’s librarians are not a segment that can be disposed of in the same way as catalogers (“ignored and undervalued”, yes). I can’t picture a storytelling machine that could make a real person obsolete. At least not yet.

Marie L. Radford and Gary P. Radford, Librarians and Party Girls: Cultural Studies and the Meaning of the Librarian.

I wonder what Wayne Wiegand thinks about this article. I see the connection they’re making about how using a cultural studies perspective is one example of widening our tunnel vision, but the relationship between the two articles seems pretty tangential. I haven’t seen Party Girl, but I heard about it my second week in the program from some second-years and the Radfords did a good job summarizing in an engaging way. How did we come to have a stereotype that’s more fixed than many other professions? Is it because not enough people know a real librarian? In preparation for the website review assignment for this class, I’ve been looking at dozens of librarian-related websites, including all of the ones mentioned in the article. In the end, I’m not so bothered by the stereotyping. I think it’s almost flattering that librarians have gotten so much attention. Maybe I’m just in the right circles, but I don’t feel like people really think librarians are the stereotype, possibly because it’s so over-exaggerated. I think harm is done when people see librarians as intimidating or only rule-enforcers, and that’s something to work on changing through Hall’s three methods (and, honestly, mostly through our own conduct as librarians), but as for the bun-and-glasses routine, let’s all have a laugh.