The personal is political is personal

I'm currently reading a book by Frances E. Kendall called Understanding white privilege: creating pathways to authentic relationships across race. In the chapter titled "Understanding white privilege," Kendall tells an anecdote about something that happened in conjunction with one of the diversity-related training sessions she facilitated. During a break on the second day of the workshop, a white woman and a Latina from the class ended up at the same store. The white woman watched how the Latina was treated by the sales clerk from which she was trying to make a purchase--being asked for additional identification when she presented her credit card, being told that the security guard would want to see her receipt when she left--and contrasted that with her own experience. The white woman came back to the training session and told Kendall that she wouldn't have believed how her Latina colleague was treated if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. Kendall writes:

even though Debbie had been listening to employees of color talk about their painful experiences for a day and a half, she had essentially chosen not to believe what they said; she had continued to say that she thought the different experiences were individual, not race based. She used her own privilege of expecting to be educated about race by the people who were most affected--those of color--and then chose not to believe them (61).

I read this passage right around the time that people were starting to express their outrage over the press releases that ALA sent out regarding its desire to work with the newly elected administration and which highlighted a trio of initiatives that it felt aligned with the newly elected administration's stated goals for its administration. People have addressed this situation in smarter, and more nuanced ways that I have. If you're interested in reading other people's points of view, I would suggest checking out #notmyALA on Twitter. A lot of opinions and posts are aggregated there.

There is a piece of this conversation that relates to the passage from Kendall's book that I want to highlight. In its most recent communication on this issue, the ALA President stated "the ALA executive board will discuss these issues and our processes and will use your comments to help guide us in our discussion and planning as we work to earn back the trust of our members and prepare for the work ahead during this new administration."

So, let's talk about trust.

ALA has identified diversity as one of its key action areas, charging a task force and then a subsequent implementation working group with considering how equity, diversity and inclusion could be built both within ALA and in wider library community. You can read the task force's final report here. By charging people at the Association-level to do the work  of identifying and proposing ways to further DEI-related initiatives, the Association has both implicitly and explicitly asked the margainalized people throughout ALA what can be done to make ALA a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive place. The Association has asked people to entrust us with their stories and told people that it is part of our value system that we will hold those stories and respond in an appropriate way. And then we have chosen not to believe them when they tell us that they are afraid that they will be the targets of state-sponsored violence.

In the same week, ALA's President released a statement affirming ALA's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and two statements affirming ALA's commitment to working with the incoming administration. And, yes, one of those statements was taken down and an apology issued. But one can see how people within the Association's membership would be outraged that such an affirmation was issued in the first place. ALA asked people what they needed to trust the Association as a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization and then didn't listen to them as they expressed their loudest fears and their deepest concerns.

In the days following the election, Hugh Acheson posted to Instagram a letter he sent to the staff at each of the restaurants he owns. In the letter he writes "The customer is always right, until they are wrong. And when they are wrong with epithets or cruelty they will be asked to leave. This is not me giving you an aggressive power to wield, but rather making sure you understand the ethos I have in protecting what I believe in, and what I do not have the patience for."

I understand that ALA has a dual responsibility to serve both libraries and the people who staff them. To that end, I believe that our goal in libraries should be to serve the communities in which we find ourselves, even when their beliefs don't align with ours. Libraries should be places that foster conversation and an exchange of ideas, but I believe that in libraries, as in Acheson's restaurants, there is a point past which the patron isn't always right--especially when a member of our user community is wrong with cruelty.

So how does the Association go about the work of rebuilding trust?

First, I think it is incumbent upon Association-level leadership to restore the relationship between the Association and its members by centering the voices and taking seriously the concerns the people among its membership who will be most vulnerable in the coming years.

Second, I think it is incumbent upon the membership to make even more space for people who are traditionally underrepresented in librarianship to take on leadership roles. The includes not only providing increased support for programs like the Spectrum Scholarship Program but also the development of a pipeline for leadership both at the Division-level and Association-level.

Finally, I think it is incumbent upon both Association-level leadership and Association membership to ensure the safety of our most vulnerable members through both our words and our actions.

I'm sure that the path toward a restored relationship between the Association and its membership will not be without bumps and will probably look different than what I've suggested here. But I do hope that it happens. And I'll continue to attend ALA Council meetings and ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual in the hopes of seeing signs of the Association working toward that restoration.

Stay positive,
Erin

No firm ground, but we ain't sliding

The Policy and Standards Division of the Library of Congress decided for a second time to reject white privilege as a subject heading. You can read their decision here. The part of their argument that is most salient to this blog post is: Numerous works about white privilege have been assigned the headings Race discrimination and Whites--Race identity, and the meeting wishes to continue that practise.

It is both completely understandable and completely perplexing that the PSD would reject this heading despite the fact that literary warrant exists. On the one hand, if the PSD believes that a combination of existing subject headings is sufficiently describes a concept they can make the argument against adding another subject heading to the thesaurus. On the other, it seems like the combination of subject headings that the PSD points to in their decision misses the mark.

When reading this decision, it seems like the PSD fundamentally misunderstands the concept of white privilege by deferring to the headings already being used. The idea of white privilege implicitly touches on discrimination and race identity to the extent that the privileges extended to white people as a result of their identity further margainalizes people who aren't white. But white privilege is not explicitly about either of those things. April Hathcock wrote a really great blog post about this which I think it well worth your time. In her post she writes " Privilege isn't about discrimination; it's about the automatic benefits and advantages that come from living in a system set up to value the lives, ideas, and expressions of one group over all others. You may be a staunch antiracist, but if you are white, you are steeped in WHITE PRIVILEGE. It is a reality of living in the systemic bias of our society."

Thematically related to this discussion of white privilege and systemic bias is Jarrett Drake's keynote address at the Digital Library Federation Liberal Arts Pre-Conference titled "Documenting Dissent in the Contemporary College Archive: Finding our Function within the Liberal Arts." In this address, Drake states

I doubt many of you here know about this history of black college and universities in this country, and I have that doubt for many reasons. The first is that most of you are white and can afford to be ignorant of blackness. The second is that many of our library and archive consortia--this one included--excludes our librarians, libraries, archivists, and archives at black colleges and universities, so even when you think you are immersing yourself within the field of librarianship, you remain blissfully unaware that there is a whole different world out there to which you are functionally illiterate. This unawareness is both a product and a reification of systemic racism, and it doesn't require racists whatsoever.

Both Drake and Hathcock point out that even those of us who believe that we are antiracist still benefit from our whiteness and that white privilege affords us the luxury of being able to be ignorant about aspects of blackness. Further, Hathcock argues that the decision not to name white privilege explicitly and add it to the thesaurus perpetuates systemic racism both in libraries that utilize the thesaurus and in the larger arena of subject cataloging.

Working both inside and outside of a system is important when thinking about how to create a more equitable and inclusive library catalog. While asking the Library of Congress to both change its most problematic subject headings and to add new headings to address issues of importance to our users is a key component of pushing back against the systemic racism inherent in our metadata creation standards, I would also argue that we can work outside of/around the system to add subject headings to records which both reflect the lived experiences of our users and the values to which we claim to adhere.  There are a lot of existing subject thesauri and the MARC standards allows you add a term from a thesaurus other than LCSH in field 650. Library of Congress publishes a list of source codes and has at the bottom of the document an example of how to construct a 650 field using one of these alternative thesauri. Additionally, the MARC standard allows you to utilize fields 69x for locally constructed thesauri that aren't on the source code list. So while LCSH is the (seemingly) most widely used thesaurus for published material, it doesn't have to be the only thesaurus a library uses to describe the about-ness of a resource. A particular community of practise could create its own thesaurus and use that to provide access to headings that the Library of Congress has chosen not to address.

I should note that this isn't a new idea. There's a reason that cataloger's love Sanford Berman.

I know I write a lot about how I think we should think about how much we rely on repurposed metadata and on how we should localize our cataloging practises to better meet the needs of our users. And I think that the use of alternative thesauri is a good place for us to do some thinking. As luck would have it, there are a lot of people in technical services librarianship already thinking hard about these issues. As April notes, Jenna Freedman and Netanel Ganin stand out as people whose efforts in this arena should be acknowledged. I am so, so grateful all of the people who speak so bravely and so boldly about the lived experiences of our users and who hold us accountable for the ways in which we fall short of doing right by them.

Stay positive,
Erin

I am king of all I see, my kingdom for a voice

I'm in the midst of writing a book chapter--which sounds like the world's worst humblebrag,I realize. While it's been a real challenge for me to write long form, it's been nice to have the space to expand my thoughts beyond the length of a blog post and explore my ideas a little more.

I'm not sure that this will make it past the cutting room floor, but yesterday I wrote:

Metadata creation has both a privilege problem and an image problem and we have to wrestle and reckon with both in order to find a place where metadata creators are both valued for the work we do and empathetic in the words we use.

This isn't a particularly novel idea, nor it is particularly inflammatory. But it's not a place I came to easily and without struggle.

The LIS program I attended didn't have a lot in the way of theoretical grounding as as a English major with a creative writing focus, I wasn't exposed to much beyond literary theory as an undergraduate. So being exposed to critical theory and ideas was something that has only happened in the last few years.

When I turn over new ideas, I am almost never walking through new territory. There are people who came well before me and people whose work is more recent. And I am both aware of, and grateful for, their work.

I appreciate how Emily Drabinski has challenged me to think about how impossible it is to fix (in any sense) language that describes people.

I appreciate how April Hathcock has challenged me to understand my privilege and my complicity in the maintenance of oppressive systems within the LIS community.

I appreciate how Maria Accardi has taught me to bring my whole self into my work and to value the worth of all of the users I serve.

I appreciate how Derrick Jefferson has challenged me to think about intersectionality in the LIS community.

I appreciate how Netanel Ganin has challenged me to think in literal terms about the construction and application of LCSH.

All of this is to say that I understand that when I think and when I write, I'm standing on the shoulders of the kindest, most thoughtful giants I can imagine.

Stay positive,
Erin

In Your Own Back Yard

As I mentioned, I have just recently bought a house and put all of my stuff in the house or adjacent to the house. People keep asking me about the house. I'm always tempted to respond, "it's gonna be great... once I change everything." It's not that the house is bad. The house is entirely serviceable and serves its housely functions admirably for the house it is. I'm telling you, though, I have plans for this place. It's gonna be so great and so amazing and so perfect. When I'm done replacing everything. I mean, everything is possible.

Thing about my grand goals is that there is no way that I can make them all happen at once. I don't have the time or the money or the will to make it all happen right this moment. What I can do is plan, do what I can right now, set the stage for the future. For instance, after I paint and put out the room-sized carpet, I'll feel a lot better and be able to move in. Even that, though, is a temporary solution, because I'm going to have to move everything out to put in the wood floors later. I'm getting new appliances, but I might have to get different things when I remodel the kitchen. Each step, though, each step, even if it seems slightly off direction, is a step toward the goal, toward the Great House which I've got my target on.

The same happens in our organizations. We have great plans for our programs, our institutions, even our organizational culture. It's impossible to take it all out and put in a new one. We work with what we've got, and there are always limitations. But one step at a time we make changes to ourselves, our plans, and the circumstances. I see three main things that I, personally, have to focus on to keep my heart happy and my eyes on the prize.

1) know your capacity
Part of what we have to do to live with what we've got right now is what Erin talked about, knowing what we can and can't do and setting the stage for success where we're able. I (probably) can't fix everything in my house. I really don't want to spend a week in my crawlspace changing the plumbing. But I can make my goals clear to a plumber. I can also talk to the strategic planning committee about what I think would work best for our organization, and let them do the rest.

2) do what you can; track progress
Just because you can't do everything now doesn't mean you can't do anything. It is essential to keep moving forward with intent. Even if you keep running (sometimes literally) into walls. Take small steps. When things go exactly like you'd planned they'd go in the ideal library, shout for joy and tell the world. When I finish the new deck you know I'm having a big big party. Look at what we've done, how far we've come. More to go, but much has been done.

3) be patient
Things. Take. Time.
You can't do everything. You are one person. You have to sleep.
I remind myself constantly to be patient with, well, everything.
People take time, thinking takes time, changing takes time. Figure out how to work on it in a way that builds, but also builds capacity for more change. Figure out how to reward yourself or your organization for the progress you've made. Know that you can only do so much, and that that is okay. Because if you fail trying to do too much, you're further behind than when you started and heartbroken too. So do what you can. And take a deep breath.

I found myself staring at the piles of things in my garage for who knows how long the other day. I have almost no idea how I'm going to get to the house I see in my mind from what exists in reality. I know that I will get there, though, because I mean to. It will take a while, but it is starting now, and I get to be here to watch it happen.

Keep Rockin'
Rachel

Communities of Being Awesome

I came home from ACRL with a huge reading list. I have a huge reading list in my twitter favs. I engage in discussions about all kinds of things knowing I don't have the appropriate technical or theoretical background to have really solid positions. I worry about what to do to address all of this reading. If I just try to tackle it on my own, I know I don't get the fullest measure of learning out of my reading -- I have no one to challenge me. If I try to tackle it on my own, it stacks up in the upper left hand corner of my desks -- at home and at work.

What we go on and on about here at the Unified Library Scene is that (1) everything is about relationships and (2) we're not alone. So the solution to taking knowledge and integrating it into my work life and personal life is... people. together.

Anthropologists who like to study that kind of thing are already on it. The idea of a community of practice introduced by Lave & Wegner in 1991 and has spread broadly because it is such a helpful framework. You know it's our jam because Erin's list of exciting sessions at ALA Annual is a good set of examples of communities of practice. So is your technical services happy hour or your weekly lunch with instruction colleagues. These groups share expertise and provide social and professional support to new professionals. Another type of community of practice that I'm a part of is a recently formed reading group formed by some folks who attended the session Sustainable organizational change: It's about the people at ACRL15, and based on the presenters' reading list provided. We'll read together and apply together within our organization.

A related idea is a Learning Community, which focuses on a more academic setting, setting up a course-like structure but operating in a similar way to a community of practice, with an express goal of praxis. I'm into the idea of reflective practice in all kinds of learning environments, so these ideas really resonate with me.

What happened was that the very excellent and wonderful Derrick mentioned learning about queer theory, race, and identity as it relates to librarianship. You and me both! With that reading list I brought home, with all of the times I feel like I should already know about some theorist a #critlib poster is talking about, with all of that, we need a team to get ourselves up on it! Then the very excellent and wonderful Emily Drabinski mentioned the Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies Colloquium in April 2016, and I thought this is amazing. See, especially with a focus, we can learn together, drive some real ideas for application, and then party together with our awesome ideas. IN VANCOUVER! After the Colloquium, we'll have an opportunity to pick a new focus and new target.

So, I put a little form together to see if folks are interested and I named the group the Librarianship and Critical Theory Learning Community. Fill out the form if you're interested in joining us. There's already a lot of interest and I've got a million thoughts on how to make LCTLC a space that is safe and welcoming and just exactly what each person in it needs at that moment.

We'll build a reading list together, choose focus together, and generally be a Community of Awesome Librarians. A Community of Awesome Librarians is interested in Becoming More Awesome, and Building the Unified Library Scene.

Keep Rockin!
Rachel

Making Space for...

When I was in high school and college I worked at the same company as my mom. Technically, I worked for my mother. I did various things, which we may discuss at some other time if we ever get into our origin stories. What I learned from that job, other than a passing knowledge of microbiology (which isn't really helpful in any way, surprisingly), I learned from watching my mom go about her business.

One of the things she did was have a very tidy workspace. Surely this came from her many years running a research lab -- you can't just leave mouse spleens laying around at the end of the day.  One of the labs that my mother ran was a dirty lab, dirty in that they worked with live human pathogens that could kill you. Put everything away, clean everything, check again, check again. When working in an office, she cleaned and organized her workspace.  Daily neatening, the last hour of her week cleaning her area thoroughly.  Monday morning met with a neat clean ready-to-go workspace.

I managed to pick up some of these habits and carry them to both my kitchen and my shop, but I struggle with them at work. When the end of the work day comes I tend to pack everything into my bag and take it home. Things get more and more disorganized throughout the week, until I need to take a half-day to sort it all out. Random things get spread across my desk and I know that my calculator doesn't go there but I'm "too busy" to take three seconds to put it where it does go.

In this time between class sessions, though, I have enough time to get to inbox zero, so it is a good time to try to reinstate a habit of orderliness. It is important for me because this orderliness has a huge impact on my efficiency and clarity of mind. So I will take tomorrow to organize my office. I will book off the last hour of Friday on my calendar every week to make time for neatening the office. I will resolve once again to take the first and last 20 minutes of the day setting priorities and organizing my tasks.

We let some things slide because they are fundamental. Because we don't appreciate fully how other things are built on them. What core practices help you be your best self? How do you value these in your work day? Let me know in the comments!

Keep Rockin'
Rachel

On Desire

While we're building our better world, we're keen on thinking about what it will look like. Once we know what we want, we have to build it. So I've been thinking about desires. I even read up on the subject (I recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for some cozy reading on a snowy night).  The functional question we want to address is: if we really want something, what is stopping us from achieving that goal? Let's start with the first half of that question: "if we really want something" and follow up on the second half in a later post.


There is a quote from the Simpsons where Bart says to Lisa, "I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try."  In library life, we try to try quite a bit. When we try to try and we end up not trying it's a failure that seems acceptable. I mean we didn't try, but we did TRY to try.  Second order desires, such as my desire to care more about improving the instruction program, or wanting to want to read more library blogs and journals, are a kind of instrumental desire, a means to an end. I want to want to read more library journals because I want you to think I'm smart and know what is going on. Wanting something for its own sake or at least partially for its own sake is intrinsic desire.  As my father has told me, "if you really wanted to, you'd already be doing it."

Two questions arise about our work building the unified library scene. First: are our desires intrinsic or instrumental? Which is which? I want a library community focused on the library users because I believe this is good. I want a library community where all kinds of work are valued by all workers because I want to be valued, because I think this is good, because I believe that will result in the most productive environment. We could go on. In fact, I think it would be a fun twitter experiment to look at our desires about our field and take them one or two steps deeper.

The second question is how directly do our desires drive our actions? Is our desire to build the unified library scene always occurrent, always at hand and having some influence on our actions whether we are aware of it or not? Or is our desire to build the unified library scene a standing desire, more like our desire to pay off our student loans, there but not really having a huge impact on our daily life?

What can we gain by reflecting on our desires in life or in our professional environment?  As I mentioned in my post on personal vision, when we are clear on our opinions and our reasons, we are better able to argue for our side. When we examine our beliefs and our desires, we can add another layer to our understanding. We can bring more people along. We can build this.

Let us know what your desires are for the profession, and what you think drives those desires. In fact, answer all of these questions! I'm dying to know the answers!

Hey keep rockin'
Rachel

Introverts and Introspection

One of the first things that Erin and I connected over was "introverts and leadership." As we move along in our explorations here at Constructive Summer, the ways that we (us introverts) want to make change is all about relationships and caring about people, about dreaming big and making a path to get there. Introverts and introversion have become a real popular topic recently, and there is a lot of research that I haven't read on the subject of introverts and leadership, and relationships, etc etc etc.

That all puts me in mind of personality tests as management tools. When the myriad of different personality tests are administered as some sort of management tactic or team building effort, the real goal of such an effort isn't so much to have people reflect on themselves. The real goal (which I have not ever seen fully implemented) is to provide a framework for understanding ourselves in relation to our coworkers. The goal is to facilitate a discussion of our work dynamics.

Attention to others is, for me, the foundation of what exhausts me about being around other people. I spend a great deal of energy trying to figure out where people are coming from, what their likely moves are, that I am truly understanding what they are saying, and so forth. Additionally, I spend a lot of energy considering the interactions I have had specifically, in addition to just generally doing a great deal of reflection, which I will discuss later.

I don't think that being introverted is the root of what I feel I am good at, but I do think that my introversion is deeply connected with the way I am in the world and the practices that do make me good at what I do. I'd love to hear from you (especially extroverts) if you have the same experience. The tools that make me good at what I do, the ones that make me a good leader and effective professional are: attention to detail with an ability to scope out to a systems view; the ability, desire and openness to understand other perspectives and the assumptions underlying those views; and the sum of the two -- an attention to how I and the messages I am sending will be received by different audiences.

It seems all very Machiavellian when I lay it out like that, and maybe it is. For me, operating in a social world has always been about trying to figure out the rules and, because I operate fueled entirely by the approval of others, follow them very carefully for the advancement of my chosen causes. I don't think I'm all that different from a lot of people. Which all goes to say the kind of reflection that management may try to get at through team building personality tests may already be baked in to how many library employees operate. Tapping into that may be more efficient than trying to recreate it from scratch.

The kind of understanding we build when we reflect on ourselves and our relationships with our work colleagues is the first building block of a successful............. strategic plan. Tune in next week for building block number two!


Keep Rockin'
Rachel

Five Books

I had a whole bunch of things happen this morning before I could even finish my coffee, so I'm going to take a break and think about five books that have shaped my life. Foundational texts, if you will. This is where I am coming from.

1) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. I read this book in my first semester of college and several times again. Kuhn's work is of the sort that gets diluted and misapplied constantly, which itself is a topic of conversation. The work itself is seminal and I believe that it needs to be read and understood if we are to live in the world we live in today.  I think this book probably shaped me in ways I don't even realize and I am glad for it. I am glad I was forced to read this book before I encountered the things it influenced.

2) Murdering McKinley by Eric Rauchway. This 2004 book takes my favorite period of American history and uses it to ask the most important questions about contemporary societies. I will buy you a copy you must read it. This book does an excellent job at history, and at posing challenging and prescient questions for today. I would use it for both of those things and as an model for why history and how history and what is the point of doing history. I love this book very deeply and I am serious I will buy you a copy please read it.

3) Technopoly by Neil Postman. Also, if you like, The End of Education. Really you can just put all of Postman in here. The books are so small, so concise. I adore them for that alone. I think that I was also introduced to these in college as well. The questions that Postman raises in Technopoly are so essential in society broadly, but also specific to libraries. This is a book we should all read again.

4) An Essay On Typography by Eric Gill. This was given to me as a gift, and is another small and wonderful book. Written in 1931, it addresses itself to typography (which, come on, you know you love it) but also to the issue at hand in the field at the time: industrialization and craftsmanship. Philosophical discussion is woven between practical advice about the page. I would recommend this in the same breath as The Shape of Content by Ben Shahn and What The Twilight Says by Derek Walcott, which are similarly delightful in their mixture of criticism, philosophy, and advice, and offer a more diverse background of philosophy. I adore all of those books. Beautiful sentences in there.

5) ....... I'm all out.

I guess that's technically six books. I'm a little sad to see that there aren't any women there. I will take a look at my bookshelves when I get home and see if we can address that.

Well, what books shaped the way you look at the world? What would you have people read to help them understand you? I really want to know.

Keep Rockin',
Rachel