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Freewrite
28 September 2006
What do we call those people in the libraries? No, not the employees, those *other* people. The people who wander in voluntarily just to find stuff, read stuff, or nap on the overstuffed chairs. What do we call them? I stumbled upon just such a discussion in the archives of the jESSE library education listserv for the sake of a class assignment. The thread was called “Customers” and – as you might imagine – many people took issue with calling their people-in-the-libraries “customers” or even “clients”… for some reason, no one argued against “patron” really, but one fellow did bring up the old tradition of calling them “readers” which I found absolutely endearing, however, that was immediately squashed by someone pointing out that people do much more than read in libraries (depends on how you define “read” I say).
All in all, one thing has become very clear to me – not only from this listserv discussion, but also from discussions in classes. The issue is not about what we call the people-in-the-libraries, it’s really about what we call ourselvses. We’re trying to express far too many variables with “librarian” and that’s what keeps getting us into trouble. On the listserv, some people were offended that others were offended by “customer” because, in fact, their libraries were commercial and charged for their services. Therefore, they had customers. Others worked in medical libraries and had seperate issues of their own with using the term “patient” for their … um… visitors.
In my classes, our discussions completely change depending on the student – are we talking about a school context? a public library context? an academic context? And the expectations of each “librarian” are completely different. An academic librarian should have at least two Masters degrees. A school librarian should have teaching certification. A law librarian should have a JD. And then that brings us into library science curriculum. Did you know – in some countries, library science is treated as a vocational degree? Are we trying to lump vocational and professional work together here in the States? Supposedly (I said “supposedly!”) one of the first library schools here was a school of “Library Economy” and thus, women were the students because it was far more “economical” to hire them than men. This was a school for training the library clerks – the true librarians were still academic men who were paid better.
So… I’m having a lot of issues with this whole profession right now. I. Myself. Personally. Really like the whole librarian idea. Especially in today’s world of info technology and social software and possibility, possibility, possibility. History, however, makes me question the … validity? scholarship? clout? of this field. How can we -new library students – take ourselves seriously if no one else does? Even in classes and in the literature I detect… I detect a constant subliminal apology. It really drives me crazy. In fact, it almost makes me not want to be associated with this field, but I’m young enough apparently to be optimistic. I see a lot of cool, smart, savvy people in my classes – my fellow students. I see very capable people teaching some of these classes. Surely, with a population like this, library science can’t stay marginalized forever, right?
I guess my biggest complaint about library science classes so far is just how dated they feel. The role models they’re giving me are all dead and gone. Who are the movers and shakers recently?? They should be in this material now, related to everything else we’re reading. Why haven’t any of my classes even mentioned Web 2.0 or Library 2.0?? Hello – buzzwords!
Perhaps I’m being too impatient. It wouldn’t be the first time. But I just wanted to voice these concerns now, so that I can look back in six months and ask myself, “Well, Self, do you feel better now? “ In the meantime I am still amused and delighted with discussions about “clients” vs. “customers” vs. “patrons” and I still love books and I still think information rules the world.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
Despite my earlier compaints about Illinois weather, I am learning to appreciate the autumn we’re having right now. Three mornings in a row have been fresh-apple-skin crisp and cool, and now… rainbows!
To top it off, the shrugs-like-an-Italian old man on my bus – who rides every morning and has delightful coversations with the bus drivers – was listening to the bus driver du jour talk about a big recent lottery win. The old man simply did his Italian-but-not-Italian shrug and replied, “I always say, when it’s time for your blessing, you’ll get it. But it has to be the time for it.”
As a gay person with a Christian childhood, rainbows carry multiple almost contradictory meanings for me. In the life I’m living now, rainbows mean diversity and celebrating differences and being tolerant. In my childhood, rainbows meant El Dios wouldn’t necessarily drown us again, but fire and brimstone weren’t ruled out. But I seem to remember my mother or grandmother connecting rainbows to blessings somehow. So when the old man on the bus mentioned blessings, he magically tied the whole morning into a pretty bundle for me.
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
What do I see this morning but an honest to goodness rainbow! And the equinox is tomorrow! Yeah, Autumn!
Chrome on all four sides. The Blues Brothers out front. This is America!
Originally uploaded by Librarienne.
And there’s more above the viewable portion of this picture! This is the new library facility at UIUC – all the not-so-frequently-used books come here, vacuum packed, boxed, and barcoded. The room stays at 50 degrees, and a big creepy Jurassic Park style crane ascends and descends the shelves in order to file the books away. It brought to mind the publishing house of Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, or perhaps Borges’ Library of Babel. Think of all those words in all those books… what a defeaning roar of voices this room has quietly tucked away.
This week in a library science class, the subject of librarian respect came up… or rather, respect-for-librarians-NOT. A lot of us have the same stories – we tell family we’re going into library school and they scoff… we tell friends and they say “You have to go to school for that?”… we tell our undergrad professors and they look – sad.
Where is the R E S P E C T? Why are we so bad at self-promotion? What gives?
Uh, well, let’s see. We’re bookworms, for the most part. We tend to be kinda anti-social, actually, or at least introverted. We don’t have the sexiest stereotype going for us here.
Which is exactly what we need to play up! Nerdy is the new sexy – look at Macs! We need a movie made about us. Something between Police Academy and Breakfast Club — a screwball comedy about goofy, quirky, smart rebellious (oh yes. we have rebels.) young library students trying to get through school with their goofy, eccentric professors and mentors there to guide them or provide more comedic elements or both. And, of course, these crazy library students will have crazy library jobs at various places involving porn-addicted patrons, bomb threats, false fire alarms, group therapy book clubs, and frequest requests for dates by total strangers.
And at the end… they all team up to battle… a censorship initiative! No. They all get hired by Google! No. They all have one more semester to go!
For some reason, the thought of students still changing their class schedules two weeks into the term brings out a bit of rolling eyes and “tsk, tsk” from some people, but I say phooey on that. Why shouldn’t students change their schedules when they realize particular classes won’t work for them?
Yes, it is two weeks into the term, and I have just changed my schedule.
And I do believe it is all for the best. I dropped an on-line class, in which we’re expected to learn something while listening to the professor over our headphones / computer speakers, pay attention to the students chatting in the “classroom” (would this be tolerated during a lecture in a real classroom?) and also follow the links to the “slides” provided by instructor or students. I know I’ll have to give on-line classes another try at some point, but I wanted to keep my “I’m in graduate school!” high for at least the first term. That high is renewed a little bit each time I have my Global Perspectives class, for example. Good discussions, informative material, very knowledgeable instructor. I know the instructor for the on-line class is also very knowledgeable, and I’m sure taking the same class on-campus would give me a very different impression. It really was just the interface that I did not like… ironic, as the class was on Interface Design.
My new wonderful class is … (trumpets!) Sociolinguistics! You see, I’ve been trying to figure out what my ideal degree would be… I thought about English, Linguistics, Comparative Literature… but it seems like my ideal degree would be called simply “Modern Languages” and I would simply learn all sorts of languages and sit around a simple dinner with great wine with all my Modern Languages colleagues and we would talk about all the strange differences along the Indo-European language tree and what is Basque, anyway? Someone would say something in Italian, which sounds like a bad pun in German, and we would all laugh.
Barring that, though, this Sociolinguistics subject is getting me much closer to my ideal than anything else has. This all came about after talking with my adviser (why did I wait? I don’t know.), who asked me, quite simply, what do I want to do with a library degree? I answered that I wanted to study libraries *and* languages. That my dream research topic would be looking at which languages were heavily populating the internet vs. populating the Earth, and projecting about where those on-line language numbers are leading us. (Surprise: English is only 35% of the internet now. Don’t think you need to learn other languages? Think again.) He suggested I really look at customizing my degree to fit my interests, reminded me of the electives from other departments that I can take to complement the library classes. And it’s working out perfectly this term – Sociolinguistics on one hand, Global Perspectives of Libraries on the other. I love this stuff. I don’t know what kind of job I could get with this… I just hope it’s a job with accents and umlauts.
As a very, very dear, new blogger, shall-remain-anonymous friend at Detention has so eloquently put it, what does one*DO* on Labor Day? Blogos featured a guest speaker to muse about this same question, which reminded me of the Labor Day I saw in Germany – a wholly different affair from our quiet non-descript holiday. In Germany, Labor Day is full of union speeches, parades, and various demonstrations calling for more workers’ rights… Let’s look… well, here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
In Germany, Labour Day was established as an official holiday in 1933 after the Nazi Party, or NSDAP, rose to power. It was supposed to symbolise the new-found unity between the state and the German people. Ironically, just one day later, on May 2, 1933, all free unions were outlawed and destroyed. But since the holiday had been celebrated by German workers for many decades before the official state endorsement, the NSDAP’s attempt to appropriate it left no long-term resentment.
On the other hand, Germany’s Unity Day (October 3rd) – which I guess we could equate to our Independence Day, sort of – is treated the same as our Labor Day: quiet, uneventful, just a day off. So we seem to have switched the way we embrace our Labor Days and Patriotic Country Days. For Germany, there are fireworks for the people. For the US, there are fireworks for the country. Is this indicative of how we define ourselves? I dunno. I don’t really celebrate either day, but after reading JM’s post, I’m thinking May Day would be a good place to start. And with Detention’s questions still in my mind, I know I want to find something to really *DO*.
