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

Mountains grow from just one stone

One of the things that I talk about over and over (and over and over) again on the blog is the idea of imagining what it would be like to center the lived experiences of our user communities when it comes to creating metadata to describe our collections. I was thrilled when a friend, Anna-Sophia, sent me a link to the transcript for a 2015 talk by Sara Wachter-Boettcher called "Everybody hurts: content for kindness."

The talk centers around this idea:

And what I've come to is there's an opportunity that we have to make every decision an act of kindness. Make sure everything we write, everything that we build, come from a place of kindness at its core.

Wachter-Boettcher goes on to talk about how this mission of centering kindness can be lived in when it comes to better understanding both the needs and the triggers of our user communities. While the audience of this talk wasn't those engaged in the work of libraries or librarianship, I can get behind this premise for librarianship in general and metadata creation more specifically. I spend a lot of time wondering how metadata creation would be different if those of us who create metadata saw it as not just an act of service, but also as an act of care for the user communities that we serve and support. And then I wonder why we don't.

I was struck by something that Wachter-Boettcher referenced early in her talk. She made mention of an address given by Paul Ford, in which he states:

If we are going to ask people in the form of our products, in the form of the things we make, to spend their heartbeats--if we are going to ask them to spend their heartbeats on us, on our ideas, how can we be sure, far more sure than we are now, that they spend those heartbeats wisely?

And I think that this quote is at the center of why we don't always see metadata creation as an act of care, and why we should.

I worry that we take for granted that users will spend their  heartbeats using the collections and services that we offer. I especially worry about this in academic libraries where students and faculty require access to scholarly resources in order to conduct research and create scholarly works. As this applies specifically to metadata creation, I worry that we take for granted that user communities will have to use the library catalog in order to access our collections. As many people wiser than I have pointed out to me when I try to reckon with this mindset, it's a direct holdover from the time when our collections were kept in closed stacks and library workers were the gatekeepers to these collections. It's also a significant conflation of the catalog as both the content and the carrier--a thing that I do all the time and which my wise friend, Kyle, regularly holds me accountable for.

So what would it look like for those of us who create metadata to describe collections to choose to put kindness at the center of our work? First and foremost, I think that we should stop taking our user communities for granted and create software systems and rules for description and encoding that respect the lived experiences of our users. While I don't agree with the idea that people in Technical Services are change averse, I do think our public services colleagues have been quicker to see the ways in which the needs of our user communities are changing and then responding. Second, I think it means evaluating our local policies for metadata creation and remediation and amending them in ways that have the biggest impact on our user communities.

I don't think that evaluating our metadata reuse policies means we have to stop reusing metadata. For some materials, records don't need a significant amount of customization. And for smaller libraries, metadata reuse is the only way that their cataloging operations stay afloat. But I do think it's worth considering which types of material and which subjects are important enough to your users to provide the extra care of customization. Especially if the library for which you are describing collections has made diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority.

I think that many people who create metadata would tell you that the work they do is a public services. I think what is important for us to be explicit about is that we have the choice to treat our work as an act of care for the user communities we serve. I think it's time for us to think more about what it would mean for metadata creators if we thought about making sure that our user communities were using our heartbeats wisely when they accessed the metadata we create.

Stay positive,
Erin

the hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

Erin wrote a love letter to tattooed spunky hipster librarians, in response to some of the comments about whether librarianship is a dying profession in a recent Hiring Librarians post. In the next breath, the respondent goes on to state

We are all replaceable because we have no identity and once the ALA accepts the ridiculous Threshold Concepts- we won’t even be able to hold a conversation in academia without looking like the morons we allowed ourselves to become.

So in both the quote that Erin used about "tattooed spunky hipster librarians" and in this quote, there are ad hominem arguments being presented to support the claim that librarianship is a dying profession. I don't want to fall into a tu quoque by making additional ad hominem statements, indeed, the author of the Hiring Librarians post makes a number of very important points that merit discussion. I want to talk about why almost everyone I know reacted to the tone instead of the content.

The ad hominem arguments in this case serve three purposes, all of them dangerous.  A caveat to add that what I am discussing here is not only true of many folks who agree with the statement above, but many who disagree. As Nanci Griffith puts it, "I am guilty, I am war, I am the root of all evil." We all do it. We should all be watching ourselves if we care for what we do, who we serve, and the future (not of our profession, the future in general, of humanity).

First, these arguments derail conversations about important issues (for instance, about threshold concepts) by bringing moral character judgements into realms where they do not belong. Assessments of the character of others (or, here, ourselves as well?) beg answers from others because they threaten identity. Erin's post gets at how digs at identity weigh on us, make it difficult to engage in discussions, and gnaw at our self-worth. They do not offer grounds to continue discussion of the topic at hand. No arguments or premises offered. We should be talking about the merits of the proposition.

Second, ad hominems and other informal fallacies distract from the issues. Suddenly we find ourselves discussing the straw man of generational divide, not knowing how we got here. We end up treading and retreading discussions that were tired when they started. What do we look like, do people like us, why don't they care about us, all in circles and circles. Without substance because there are not grounds to continue discussion of the original topic. No arguments or premises offered. We should be talking about the merits of the proposition.

Third, ad hominems and other informal fallacies abdicate responsibility and blame. If we allow each other to engage in fallacious arguments, we let it all fall apart. It becomes acceptable to discuss tangential concerns as if they are primary. It becomes acceptable to overgeneralize our peers based on surface differences. It becomes acceptable to not offer grounds to continue discussion of the topic of concern. We need not offer arguments or premises. I start to wonder if we even care about the merits of the proposition. If we even care what we are doing at all.


There is significant damage from these arguments, but even more damage caused by the discussions that we're not having. It is essential that we address content in these discussions. Habits of rhetoric are the danger, but they are habits and we can all work on focusing on the issues. As a profession, we need to engage each other about what we are doing and why. We need to be disagreeing and challenging and working through issues and reaching a balance to move forward. Maybe we're scared and used to discussions moving in this same direction, and we let it slide. Maybe it is hard to be honest with ourselves and our colleagues about how we feel and what we think about some issues. I get it. I'm there.

Discussion that is real, honest, and deep is not easy, but it brings us forward. If we open ourselves, lay out arguments, share honest feelings and concerns, if we then listen, question, listen, disagree, listen, and hear, if we then find a path that works for us all, if we could do just that. We may not all be on board with every single move, but we will understand and know each other.  And we'll be moving.  Creating the future of librarianship, even.

Keep Rockin'
Rachel

Through the storm we reach the shore

Last week, I wrote a blog post that tried to answer the question: Is there a better alternative to the SACO process of LCSH review to ensure that change happens?

After I put the question into context by talking about the SACO proposal process, I wrote about how the Program for Cooperative Cataloging and the ALCTS CaMMS Subject Access Committee could change their process to become more inclusive.

This week, I want to talk about how alternative thesauri could be used instead of, or in conjunction with, LCSH.

Metadata creation using MARC as a content standard allows for a variety of thesauri to be used in the topical subject access field (field 650). If using a thesaurus other than LCSH, a cataloger can enter a term source code in $2 of field 650 to indicate which thesaurus the term comes from. This list is lengthy, though not exhaustive.

MARC also allows catalogers to employ a local subject access field (field 690). This field allows a cataloger to create a local subject term or to choose a term from an existing thesaurus not included on the term source code list. As with field 650, catalogers should document the source of the heading in $2 of field 690.

via GIPHY

HEY! WAKE UP!

Given the freedom that MARC gives catalogers with regard to employing a variety of thesauri, a potential better alternative to the SACO proposal process is to circumvent the use of LCSH entirely. Or, perhaps, to augment the flawed thesaurus with other controlled vocabulary. Using alternative thesauri gives libraries the opportunity to bring language into their catalog that is both more inclusive and more culturally responsive. Alternative thesauri are also a way to negotiate around the fact that LCSH is slow to change when language changes. 

A shift toward using alternative thesauri in MARC records requires buy-in both from the cataloging community as a whole and from individual libraries. As a cataloging community, we need to accept that disciplines and communities often have a better understanding of their organization and of their lexicon. As individual libraries, we need to understand that investing the time in identifying appropriate alternative thesauri for types of material and subject areas is a valuable investment in creating a more inclusive search environment.

If our goal as libraries is to create a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable space for our users, I would argue that metadata is as important as how we change our policies, practices, and spaces.

Stay positive,
Erin

On praxis and practice

There is this funny thing that happens in the cataloging world sometimes. When someone dies or a person has a significant change to their identity, it is not long before that person's name authority record has been updated. When Caitlyn Jenner made her debut on the cover of Vanity Fair, her name authority record was updated pretty quickly.

What followed was a debate about how (and whether) her gender should be reflected in the record. The record currently has three 375 fields: one with "transgender woman," one with "female" and the dates associated with that identity, and one with "male" and the dates associated with that identity. This debate has lead to people asking larger questions about the appropriateness of recording gender at all and about whether catalogers should be the ones to assign attributes to people that they might not necessarily assign to themselves.

In some ways, I think this 'should we or shouldn't we code gender' debate is a conflict between practice and praxis. Our practice as catalogers is to use the rules outlined for us in the descriptive standard we've chosen in order to describe an item. Praxis, I think, would be describing an item using both the descriptive standard we've chosen and the critical theory through which we see the world.

In the article "What's gender got to do with it: a critique of RDA Rule 9.7," Amber Billey, Emily Drabinski, and K.R. Roberto look at recording gender in name authority records through the lens of queer theory. In this article, they write:

 For queer theorists, gender and sex are always negotiated and socially constituted; fixing them as RDA asks catalogers to do denies the shifting and contextual nature of gender identities.

The authors make a series of well-considered arguments against recording gender in name authority records that all have queer theory as their foundation. And in the end, the application of queer theory and RDA as a descriptive standard leads them to recommend that gender not be coded in name authority records.

I think catalogers do the best we can to describe the resources we're tasked with describing. Sometimes, though, the work we're given to is beyond the scope of what we can understand by the nature of the language the resource is written in or the subject matter the resource covers. And while it's valuable for us, as a profession, to consider the implications of our decisions, I think we should also acknowledge that for some people, our thought exercises are their lives.

For cisgender folks, recording gender in NAR is a thought experiment. For transgender & gender non-conforming folks, it's lived experience.

— Erin Leach (@erinaleach) June 8, 2015

The thing is, while critical cataloging starts with examining the practice of considering why we record gender as an attribute of a person. But it doesn't stop there. We also need to think critically about why we assign subject headings and classification in the ways that we do. Catalogers are not neutral, and to act like we are does a disservice to everyone.

If we want to move toward a more critical theory-based model of cataloging, we have to stop prioritizing cost and quantity over quality when it comes to metadata creation. We have to give catalogers the space to think critically about the work they do and create quality metadata that respects the lived experiences of the people it describes. But we can't do that if we're not given the space and the resources to do this kind of work.

I think a good first step in moving toward critical cataloging would be to think about why you do what you do the next time you create a record. And think about how your bias and your privilege impact the decisions that you make. Knowing what's there, under the surface, is the best first step to changing it.

Stay positive,
Erin

You're pretty good with words

Both Rachel and I have written about the power of words. To be fair, Rachel has written about it more than I have, as you can tell from the links. But the point is, it's something we think about here on The Blog.

I read something yesterday that made me think a lot about what I mean when I say "the user."

In Chapter 2 of The Power To Name, Hope A. Olson writes about classification systems as envisioned by both Melvil Dewey and Charles A. Cutter. In the section about Cutter, Olson points out that Cutter believed that different types of libraries have different purposes. That is, one uses a research library in a different way than a public library. It is for this reason, Cutter asserts, that different words may be used to describe the same topic and the type of library governs which words get used. In Olson's (and Cutter's) example, a public library might choose to organize all of it's material on butterflies under the heading of butterflies while a research library might choose to organize that same material under the heading of lepidoptera.

Olson pushes back against this notion, writing:

In reality, libraries do not have homogeneous users, but the conception of a single public presumes that they do (42)

It is easy for me to accept Olson's assertion that library users aren't a homogeneous group. Our users represent different socioeconomic groups, different races, different sexual orientations, different gender identities and expressions. They have differing levels of ability. As a result of this diversity, library users have both different information needs and different levels of information literacy.

In theory, I recognize this. But I am guilty of writing about "the user" as if there is a single type of person who uses the library. I talk about being user-center and "putting the user first." But what (or, rather, who) do I mean when I talk about "the user."

If, after reflection, I am honest with myself, I probably mean a user who is like me: white, able-bodied, cis gender. I probably mean someone who is middle class. I probably mean someone who is college educated.

I think that we bring our privilege and our baggage to work with us. And as a result, I think it isn't exactly fair to suggest that the library is neutral. But part of building the Unified Library Scene is to acknowledge that and figure out how to at least be more inclusive in a way that respects the experiences of the people who come to our libraries looking for information that has the capacity to transform their lives in radical ways.

Maybe instead of talking about being "putting the user first," we (well, I) should talk about "putting users first." It won't solve the problem entirely, but I feel like acknowledging that there is no such thing as a typical user is a good start.

Stay positive,
Erin

They didn't name her for a Saint

The notion of controlled vocabulary is interesting. In the book Introduction to Controlled Vocabulary, Patricia Harping described controlled vocabulary this way:

A controlled vocabulary is an organized arrangement of words and phrases used to index content and/or to retrieve content through browsing or searching. It typically includes preferred and variant terms and has a defined scope or describes a specific domain.

There are a variety of thesauri with which to describe material. Library of Congress subject headings and the Getty vocabularies are probably the best known, but there are a variety of thesauri with which one could do subject analysis.

Organizing and labeling the world for the sake of information description and retrieval is not, on its face, a terrible thing. It seems advisable to be able to find all of the books on a particular topic by doing a single search, and controlled vocabulary allows you to do that.

Controlled vocabulary often falls short. An innocuous example: Until June 2010, the subject heading you would need to know to find a cookbook was "cookery." This post does a great job of showing how the subject headings were structured when the change from "cookery" to "cookbooks" took place. Before that time, if you typed in "cookbooks," the catalog would redirect your search to "cookery" and you would be dropped into a results screen. It was annoying for catalogers and for users.

One of the more damaging examples of controlled vocabulary falling short happens when we attempt to describe people. One of my favorite articles is from Amber Billey, Emily Drabinski, and K.R. Roberto. In "What's gender got to do with it: a critique of RDA 9.7," they argue against coding gender in authority records. The argument is best summed up this way by Billey et. al:

When RDA requires catalogers to select from only two gender categories—male or female—the rules affirm ideas about gender as a binary and innate characteristic, something it is always possible to know, and know completely, about an individual. Indeed, “unknown” is listed as the only possible third option. The rule fails to account for those who know their gender, but experience it as outside the bounds of simply male or female (417).

Basically, it's problematic to ask someone to make assumptions about someone else's humanity. And it's even more problematic to ask someone to codify these assumptions in authoritative sources.

Let's take a brief detour to talk about faceted search. Facets allow users to narrow down a set of search results based on a set of criteria extracted from elements in the records. Among other things, users can narrow by date of publication, format type, and subjects. Let's go back to our cookbook example. If you search for cookbooks, you could use the "publication date" facet to narrow down your search results to cookbooks published last year.

The Library of Congress is piloting a project called Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms, or LCDGT. The rationale for the project is that including these demographic terms in records allows users to find material for, or by, a particular group of people. The examples they use in the description of the program are "novels by lawyers" and "handbooks for nurses."

Seen through the lens of the Billey, Drabinski, and Roberto article, one can see how this project might be problematic--especially when it comes to assigning demographic information like gender or sexual orientation.

The pilot documentation states that:

In order for a demographic group to be proposed, a creator or contributor of a resource must self-identify with the group, or a resource must clearly indicate that the group is the intended audience. Furthermore, research in standard reference sources should be carried out and documented.  

I think that the self-identification piece embedded in the LCDGT project is the place where it has the potential to diverge from the problematic practice of recording gender in authority records. If a person self-identifies with a group, catalogers are not foisting an identity upon someone based on contextual clues. And multiple terms can be put together to describe demographic groups. But I do think that a set of controlled terms, no matter how broad, will not be able to keep pace with the spectrum of terms a group of people uses to identify itself. And, while the terms in this particular thesaurus "should reflect current usage, and pejorative terminology should be avoided," LCSH has been notoriously bad at keeping up with the current usage of terminology.

I think it's important to weigh the value of being able to find material by, and for, certain demographic groups against the dangerous act of describing demographic groups based on contextual clues. Would it be great for users to find information related to the demographic groups to which they belong? Probably. Is doing so worth the possible mis-identification of people and resources? Probably not.

The arguments for, and against, LCDGT are nuanced. And despite my best efforts, I am sure I've fallen short. The comment period for the pilot of LCDGT is open through June 5th. I will be curious to hear the reaction of the cataloging community and to see the progress of the pilot.

The Dangers of Vocation

I've talked before about how words matter, and I want to talk today about a trope not specific to library work, but one that is used heavily in library work, library education, and professional discourse. This is the talk of our work as a calling and as a vocation. This language is dangerous.

If you know me, you might assume that my major opposition is based on the religious connotations of this language. It is, but not because of the christian-centric world that created this language, although using language steeped in religious tradition is something that we should avoid. While the religious background of the language has faded, it remains quite strong.

What actually bothers me about the language of "vocation" or "calling" is the way that it impacts how we view our work, its value, and our own value.  While there isn't anything particularly wrong with feeling specifically drawn to a field that matches your demeanor and particular expertise, the sense of vocation that we use in relation to library work or education and some other fields is overlaid with a sense of service for the sake of service.

Vocation in this sense indicates that people are called to certain types of work not only based on their skills but based on a call to service. The call to service is even more specifically christian, implying a kind of drive toward good works that are valuable as good things, not necessarily having other types of value to society. Indeed, the history of library work in the United States looks a lot like mission work. I want us to push against language that has connotations that our work isn't essential to society, and I believe that our work has become more and more valuable over time.

Language that frames library work as a call to service also opens a door wide open to devalue the labor of library work. If we are called to do service in the sense of a vocation, and that work is good work, the calling is one that pulls us apart from general life, from business life. Why then would one called to this work demand to be appropriately compensated for labor? Think of the fields other than library work where this language of vocation is used. Notice anything?

Let's talk more about how this language frames our understanding of our own work and our profession. Let's be more careful about the words that we use because the impact of how we speak is far more broad than we imagine.

Keep Rockin'
Rachel

On Actions and Perceptions

On Wednesday, Erin's wrote that Words Can Get Weird while friend of the blog @winelibrarian wrote a post that is not so unrelated, It's My Library and I'll Cry If I Want To. Taken together, we get a conversation about effective leadership and perceptions, which seems to be impossible to divorce from a conversation about gender. It's true that especially in positions of leadership, perceptions of actions are highly colored by conceptions of gender. It's also true that the entire profession has been in a highly gendered position in regards to the nature of our work and professionalism. I want to complicate a tiny bit more with my thoughts on pragmatic actions.

Now, on a personal level, I operate along these lines where in my head I am also navigating space as a queer queer (as opposed to a queer man or a queer woman.) I say in my head, because it I can't speak to how people perceive me negotiating the space. I can make some assumptions about how people see me and I can try to influence how people view me as a person and a professional, but, frankly, I don't have the time or energy to engage in what is often a fruitless and frustrating effort. So I operate on the premise that we have very little control about how people perceive us.

What we do control are our actions. Now, surely we modulate our actions depending on the environment and people we are interacting with. For instance, I am wearing a sweatshirt today, because I have no meetings. This is something I might not do if I had a different job or for any number of other reasons. My perceptions of my role as well as my understanding of how others may be perceiving me plays a key role in my choices in what I wear (and in everything else).

So the question is "how willing am I to modulate my behavior in order to alter perceptions of me?" and the answer is "exactly the minimum amount necessary in order to accomplish my goals." The question of how I am perceived in a highly gendered culture and what I do to alter that culture is a separate (often concurrent, but separate) struggle. What determines the minimum amount is a consideration of whether some kind of behavior would actually change perceptions of me in a way that makes it easier for me to accomplish my goals. It is harmful and pointless to change my behavior, probably in ways that affect my self-perception, if the end result does not create a changed environment. However, if changed perceptions do help accomplish personal and organizational goals, we have a different story. This is a path much narrower for women and other marginalized groups.


I think we'll leave it at that for a Friday Musing.

Keep rockin'
Rachel

You Never Know Who Is In The Room

I was required to go to a training last week as part of a wonderful campus initiative to improve awareness and response to sexual assault and sexual violence. The training was conducted by the fantastically amazingly awesome Juliette Grimmett, who I cannot say enough good things about. Since I've written on being the only one, I want to talk to you today about how it feels to be seen and heard. How powerful it is, especially when you're not expecting it.

And we don't expect it. That's the nature of being in a marginalized group. You get used to not being accounted for, you expect it, you develop strategies for dealing with it.  So when Juliette conducted an entire training session with attention to using gender neutral terms and being inclusive of gender non-conforming folks throughout our three-hour session, without making any kind of deal, just as her way of being, I was blown away. I really was. At first I thought "oh that's nice, nice to hear these things," but as the session went on, I started to feel... safe.  This was all on the acts of one person, nobody else in the room (to my knowledge) had made any kind of special commitment to being gender inclusive. Nobody else was being forced or even asked to be gender inclusive. Having one person speak in an inclusive way without being asked and without making a huge deal about it in a room of dozens of people told me that at least this one person, I could trust. It made me think: maybe there is a world where this is the norm, maybe we can get there.

This is the weight of it: I felt that I should thank Juliette because I have NEVER seen that before, and I went to tell her, and when I did, I cried. That surprised me. I don't know that it surprised her, but it probably reinforced what she told me, which is that she does it because it is important to her.

I'm telling you this story because it is an example of the kind of profound impact we all can have, every day, by being careful about and attentive to our language. You can create a space where someone feels safe, feels heard, feels at home.  It is so easy, especially as we live busy lives, to use lazy and dangerous language. You, me, we might think, I will be careful to use inclusive language when it is appropriate.  But look, you never know who is in the room. You don't know their entire story. When you are careful all of the time, you will surely happen upon a staff member, a student, a teen, a colleague, someone who will be changed. Someone who will be open to working with you because they know you care about language and you care about them because you use careful language.

It isn't just that it's the right thing to do, it is that the biggest impact is going to happen when you least expect it. So let's be open by being careful. Let's make the world that I didn't dare hope existed. Let's go.

Keep rockin',
Rachel

Rock(star) problems

I am tired of arguing about Rockstar Librarians. See?

I am so tired of arguing about Rockstar Librarians.
— Erin Leach (@erinaleach) September 6, 2014

Rachel wrote this great post a couple of weeks ago about how using shorthand is both lazy and dangerous. In it, Rachel suggests that we should "take the time and energy to be clear about who we mean when we're speaking."

So, here goes:
I think that Rockstar Librarian is shorthand for someone who has become someone that we, as a profession, have put in a position of influence. Often, when used as a pejorative phrase, we mean that we think that the person didn't really do anything to earn that influence.

Librarians spend a lot of time worrying about how other people see us. And we have opinions about every article written by the mainstream media about the future of our profession. Remember this 2007 article from the New York Times that called us hipsters? Or how about this 2011 blog post from Seth Godin about the future of libraries? Or this recent piece in the Wall Street Journal calling librarianship a "shrinking profession" that was in danger of having a shortage of workers? I would bet that for each of these articles, you could find dozens of indignant blog post rebuttals.

I think part of the reason we spend so much time arguing about who gets put in positions of influence in librarianship is related to this desire to refute every argument about how libraries are becoming an outdated, unnecessary relic of an analog age.

Here's what I believe: arguments about Rockstar Librarians and who should be given influence in librarianship distract us from our real work: serving the people in our communities who use our collections and services.

We, as a profession, should acknowledge people for doing the work to transform librarianship. I think we should continue to have programs that prepare people with leadership potential for service in the profession. And I think we should give awards to people who have done extraordinary work.

But I also think we should look critically at why we have elevated our peers to positions of relative power. I think that we should ask ourselves at the end of every Libraryland award season: have we given influence to people who have shown they deserve it through their words and actions?

Look, I know it's not easy to reframe the discussion when you feel like your Libraryland Affinity Group is overlooked when the accolades are being distributed. I'm as guilty of throwing around Rockstar Librarian as anyone reading this blog post. I know how easy it is to be snarky as you lash out when you feel overlooked or left behind. But let's do the hard work of nominating our heroes for awards--even if it means submitting a nomination for many years--instead of the easy work of tearing down our colleagues who win awards for doing things we don't necessarily consider noteworthy.

I challenge all of us to agree to stop arguing about who deserves to be called a Rockstar Librarian and, instead, focus on the people who deserve accolades for demanding that we be our better selves.

Stay positive,
Erin

Lazy and Dangerous

At the time, it really annoyed me how persnickety Professor J. Pablo Silva was about having clear antecedents. There was to be no "this" or "that" or "it" in your paper. As a reader, the text should be clear as to what it is referring. As a writer, you need to know what you're actually talking about. Clear referents make for a clearer argument. Now, more than ten years out of college, "you have to say what you're talking about" is one of the things I am happiest that I had driven into the depths of my psyche. You can't just talk about stuff. You have to be clear.

It's human nature to want to classify things together and establish some shorthands, but there is a danger implicit in simplifying our world. Some twitter conversations from last week come to mind.