With a loose grip on a very tight ship

Like many of you, I went to ACRL in Baltimore last week. I was on a panel about gendered expectations for library leaders and I presented a paper that used the Framework as a lens through which to view cataloging policy and practice. I tried to think of a thread that unifies my feelings about my ACRL experience, but I honestly don't have one. So I'm going to give you a few disjointed, half-formed thoughts.

1.) ACRL is not my home within ALA--that's ALCTS, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services. I was really happy with the increased number of collections and technical services programs this year. While I haven't been a supporter of ACRL creating a section specifically to address collections and technical services issues, I think that having a venue within the ACRL conference to talk about these issues is really important. Also, I found that having more collections and technical services-related programming helped make me feel like I wasn't a weird outlier for attending ACRL. I hope that the 2019 installment of the conference will continue this trend. If you're a collections or technical services practitioner, I would encourage you to propose a session. If the content isn't there, there isn't much the program planners can do to raise the visibility of this part of academic librarianship.

2.) I was troubled by the number of programs that were social justice-themed or Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI)-themed that were proposed and lead by white men. I feel like it requires a significant lack of self-awareness to be a white man and think that you're the person uniquely qualified to speak on issues related to social justice and/or EDI. It's especially shameful when you consider that nearly 90% of librarianship is made up of white people. And it does a lot to perpetuate the gross white savior narrative upon which librarianship seems to be built. I know that social justice and EDI are hot topics right now in librarianship, so everyone wants to be on record as saying something. But if we really want to advance these issues in our profession, those of us in positions of privilege would do well to sit down and make space to amplify the voices from marginalized communities. See also: the Roxanne Gay Q&A debacle of Aught Seventeen.

3.) I grow more and more annoyed at the Q&A periods during conference sessions. By the end of the conference, I was getting up and walking out when people finished their presentations. I feel like these Q&A periods do little to advance the work of the presenters and that questioners rarely ask good questions that are generally applicable to all in attendance. Instead, these questions usually fall along one of two lines:

1. The questioner has no question.
2. The questioner has a question that is so specific to their particular situation that the answer to the question is of little value to anyone other than the questioner.

I started to think that the Q&A period should be done away with and the time given back to the presenters. But the more I think about it, I think maybe that the Q&A period, with  some tweaks, could be useful. So don't approach the microphone unless you have a question that is general enough as to be valuable to all who are in attendance. And also, yes, do use the microphone--even if you think you can project.

4.) I had a real love/hate relationship with the social media back channel at this event. I found myself using the back channel to say some things that weren't very kind about situations and programs in which I found myself. I feel like everybody has to decide for themselves how they use social media, so this is more a self-critique than a hot take on the social media back channel writ large. At some point, in wanting to build a brand and cultivate a following, I lost track of my authentic voice in favor of something snarkier. And I don't like how I feel when I do that. I think I need to spend time thinking critically about how I use my voice in online spaces. As someone who wants to be taken seriously and who wants to have their voice heard, I recognize that my words have power and that I bring energy into a space with what I say. Maybe it's all the weird things happening in my life and in the world but at some point, I started putting snark in front of thoughtfulness in the words I express on social media. As someone who wants to build a Unified Library Scene, I can be truthful and say hard things without being...unkind, and I really need to think about how to strike that balance. That being said, I really appreciated the tweets that a lot of you made during the course of ACRL. I appreciate how thoughtfully and thoroughly you documented sessions and how smartly you held us all accountable for the ways in which we forgot to be our better selves during the course of the conference.

Stay positive,
Erin

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