Heidi Johnson

Our Responsibility to Voters: What Librarianship Should Look Like During the 2016 Presidential Election Season

Since the RNC and DNC have taken place, the 2016 general election is at the forefront of everyone’s minds and news feeds. I wanted to use my final FYAL ACRLog post to talk about this topic of great relevance and importance to all of us while considering the role we should play as librarians at this crucial point in our nation’s history. This topic might also appeal to librarians in other countries who are looking to us with great interest and might also have reasons to engage with politics as professionals. As we cannot and should not push partisan politics on our patrons, the best we can do for patrons is to provide as much information and education as possible to voters, and to help encourage people to exercise their right and responsibility to vote. While the act of voting is far from being the epitome of democracy in my mind, it is one small way that people can make a difference for our country’s future (especially, during the general election, in swing states), and, as librarians who seek to help people become informed and empowered, we should be supportive of and encourage democratic processes, including but not limited to voting.

As librarians, we are expected to remain neutral (and presumably, then, also nonpartisan) especially when patrons are researching topics that are controversial or contested. To insert our own political opinions into our research assistance, teaching, or collection development would be a conflict of interest and an infringement upon our students’ and other patrons’ intellectual freedom – the freedom to explore issues autonomously and independently, without any pressure to conform to anyone else’s points of view. Instead, patrons should be able to freely research the facts and evidence, and come to reasonable conclusions on their own. We can guide them during that process, and help them find information and distinguish between information that is good – information that incorporates sound evidence – and information that is bad, oftentimes because it distorts the facts.

However, neutrality is a myth. (As have many before me have done, I have written more extensively about the myth of neutrality, especially as it relates to peer review, elsewhere.) While we should refrain from unduly influencing our patrons’ research, it is hardly possible to refrain from having an opinion on matters of importance. Besides, to not have an opinion is to silently accept things as they are. No matter what we say, our opinions will influence the types of sources that we point patrons to, and the ways in which we evaluate information with patrons. So it is extremely important that we are mindful of our opinions and seek to counterbalance those by presenting patrons with multiple viewpoints, all the while modeling careful, thoughtful evaluation.

We will have opinions, and that is a good thing as long as they are supported by evidence. To refrain from having an opinion, or to withhold it if we are asked to share it, would be tantamount to tacit acceptance of the status quo. By supporting the status quo, neutral librarians, or librarians who remain silent when asked for their opinions, implicitly support structures of power and privilege that are in place, structures that are oftentimes unjust and harmful, since we do live in an imperfect society. Thus, librarians can and should have opinions about history and politics. Obvious examples include having opinions about the atrocities that have defined our nation’s history, such as the genocide of Native Americans and forced removal from their lands, the enslavement of and accompanying atrocities against African-Americans, and other forms of discrimination and injustices committed on the basis on the race, class, gender, or sexual identity, for instance.

It is quite appropriate for librarians to have strong opinions on such matters, for us to be on the side of social justice and denounce some of the actions of our country throughout our nation’s history. Having a social justice orientation aligns with our professional ethics, which require us to make information available to all people regardless of their identity or the ways in which they are privileged or marginalized. Furthermore, knowledge is power, and by facilitating the processes of knowledge and understanding, we are empowering people and contributing to democratic processes. But in order to support these processes for all patrons, some fundamental beliefs and values are implied, many of which are also principles supported by the founding documents of our nation: equality, liberty, and justice for all.

What are our obligations to our patrons given these universal values and beliefs that our profession, too, specifically seeks to uphold? First of all, we can help voters come to informed conclusions and make informed choices. To be political and encourage politics is different from pushing political positions. There are so many things we can do to help educate voters that do not involve telling people who to vote for or who not to vote for. We can provide patrons with the tools with which they can figure things out on their own – figure out which candidates align with their politics and their values. We can point people to the resources containing factual information and evidence that might lead them to similar conclusions that we ourselves would make about candidates’ policy proposals, as professionals who are also political, as professionals whose values align with those values upon which our country was founded.

How else are librarians political? I would argue that there may be cases where we might want to be political publicly as a profession, and even partisan if necessary, if our ethics requires it. Censoring or prohibiting access to information, or violating patrons’ privacy, especially on the basis of identity alone, would be examples of cases in which we should publicly denounce candidates’ policy proposals. (Librarians and National Security: An Historical Review, by Joan Starr, provides a thorough history of librarians and our professional organizations standing up for privacy rights and intellectual freedom.) As things stand today, there might not be a reason for librarians to denounce certain policy proposals on the basis of our professional values, because such denunciations are already taking place from broad-ranging sectors of our society and such denunciations do not necessarily fall within our profession’s specific purview of information ethics. Currently, I think helping to reveal the truth about candidates through education is enough.

So, finally, what are our specific obligations to help educate and inform patrons? I believe, at the very least, we should provide education about the issues that are important in this election, and about candidates’ positions and policy proposals. I believe that we should view this as a duty, on the basis of our professional ethics and values, which include access to trustworthy information and the facilitation of democratic practices. We should also encourage people to vote, because this is one little way – though not the only way – that people can make a difference to the future of this country, and because it is a part of our mission to help empower people to make use of the information that they find in ways that support their values and beliefs.

I’ve compiled a list of some practical suggestions and pointers. Not every library will have the resources or the time for some of these, but if you do, please commit yourselves to some of them.

Create a LibGuide, or other type of online guide, for voters. Make sure it is in whatever languages are commonly spoken at your university, besides English! Include resources for local and national issues. Promote it in your instruction sessions.
Create a LibGuide, or other type of online guide, for international students and undocumented students, on understanding the election process and about ways in which they can help educate their peers or participate democratically even though they may not be able to vote. Make sure it is in other languages commonly spoken at your university, including Spanish if you have a significant population of Spanish-speaking students. Promote it in your instruction sections.
Have a voter’s guide or handouts (one for international students and undocumented students as well) available at your reference desk, for those who prefer things in print and who might see it who might not otherwise look at a LibGuide. Make sure it is in whatever languages are commonly spoken at your university, in addition to English.
Help your campus and local communities understand how elections work and what will be the impact of their vote. People can decide for themselves whether they vote based on their ideals or whether they vote strategically, if these two things are competing, but you might be able to help them understand the arguments for voting one way or the other. This can be a part of helping voters to become more educated.
Organize a student panel or expert panel to help educate people about the issues or learn how to vote. We’re doing a student panel at my university as an official Debate event, since UNLV is the site of the final presidential debate. Students who are involved in the political process in some way (student government or local, state, or national politics) will explain their political involvement and discuss the issues and background of ballot initiatives in Nevada.
Incorporate political issues or political information into your lesson plans. You can do this if you’re teaching evaluation, for instance. Have a range of viewpoints presented in scholarly articles or other types of sources, and help students sort out the good, factual and truthful information from information that distorts the truth. Or have your students look at annotated speeches in which the commentators perform fact-checking, as an example of evaluating for accuracy.
Host a debate watch party. Have a panel of experts talk about the debate before or after, to help students unpack what happened and how it is important to their understanding of the issues.
Promote all of these resources heavily, on your website and other marketing materials, and make it clear why this issue is important to the library.

If you’re a librarian, it’s okay to be political. It is good to be political; it contributes to our wellbeing as human beings who desire to make a difference in this world. You don’t have to push your political positions, but through helping to educate and empower voters, you are contributing to democracy and furthering the values of our profession. Our job shouldn’t stop there, though. We should encourage and support other forms of political involvement and other democratic processes as well. Some people may not be able to vote (or may consciously choose not to vote for whatever reason), but this does not mean they cannot participate in our democracy in other ways. Encouraging these processes aligns with our values and our ethics, it also contributes to the value of libraries, and we should see it as a duty.

On “Everything”: Reflections on working in a field that is all-encompassing

Everything is information. Even some physicists and philosophers believe that information might be the basis of reality itself. According to a physicist quoted in a PBS blog post, one can imagine a universe without matter or energy, but one cannot imagine a universe without information. Hegel, the philosopher, also famously stated, “The real is the rational, the rational is the real.” If the rational is what we can know, and information is defined as what we can know, then reality itself is information insofar as it is knowable. (Of course we may able to know more than just information, and I’ll elaborate upon that in Part I of this post.)

“Everything is information” is a predominant maxim in librarianship. Ever since library school, with the antelope-as-a-document example we learned, it is clear: librarians are all about this statement. A simple syllogism can then tell us, then, that librarianship focuses on everything having to do with everything. (If everything is information and librarianship focuses on everything having to do with information, such as the research lifecycle, then librarianship focuses on everything having to do with everything. Or, to be a little less meta, just everything!) Of course it may be more complex than this, depending upon definitions and grammatical nuances, and I am no logician. But the focus of our profession is all-encompassing.

In this post, I would like to run with this idea…see where it leads – a sort of thought experiment. I will do that in Part II of this post, and will ask: what are the implications of working in a field where the focus is everything? Yet, first I would like to address some of the problems with the maxim and present a preliminary critique of it. For Part I of this post, I will ask: Does Everything is Information take into account our lived experience? What place does knowledge have? My first draft of this post left out the distinction between information and knowledge, and some of my colleagues pointed this out to me. Now upon further reflection, I think this distinction is critical, because it throws into question the notion that Everything is Information and does a better job of accounting for lived experience.

Part I

Everything is Information suggests information is all there is, but what place does knowledge have, then, in reality? Does Everything is Information take into account the full range and types of human experience?

Along with Tony Stamatoplos, I am co-chairing the ACRL Anthropology and Sociology Section 2017 Program Planning Committee. We are hoping to propose a panel that will incorporate such a critique. We want to focus on non-textual information, on the lived experiences and physical/material realities of social activists, the kind of non-textual information they produce, and what role libraries can/should play when it comes to this kind of information. So of course the panel will address the distinctions between information, knowledge, and human understanding. We are hoping to invite Richard Gilman-Opalsky, a political philosopher, to be on a panel, along with an archivist with experience in this area and hopefully an activist who is on the ground. Gilman-Opalsky’s forthcoming book, Specters of Revolt – touches on some of these ideas, as well as how revolt is a form of philosophy that takes place from below as compared to philosophy from above, which characterizes the work done by scholars. While I have to wait for the book to be released, I know that Gilman-Opalsky challenges Thesis 11 from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Gilman-Opalsky believes that activities that change the world are already a form of philosophy. Gilman-Opalsky sees activism as a form of philosophy that is better than philosophy from above in many ways, because of its “collective, experimental, creative, and humanist dimensions” (Richard Gilman-Opalsky, personal email). His work points to the inherent rationality of revolt as well as the historical context of different movements, as revolt makes a lot more sense when understood within the context of surrounding events and root causes. Indeed, sometimes the absence of revolt is actually what is irrational, as revolt can be the most sensible response to a particular reality.

All of this is to say that “Everything is Information” is a gross reduction of “everything” that discounts the full range of human experience insofar as it leaves out knowledge and understanding. Certain things – physical, material realities, cannot be reduced to text, or even to bits. To reduce some things – experiences, perhaps – to text or to bits means they will be compromised somehow. Something is lost in the translation. To go with the example of activism, it is an embodiment of rationality, the result of history, a reaction to systemic violence and racism, for example, as well as the expression of various affective states stemming from prior experience. It is oftentimes an expression of anger and desire – desire for a better world free of injustice. None of these things can be reduced to information.

Yet we can have knowledge about activism. We observe it, have an awareness about it, and even participate in it. We understand it. We know it on a deeper level than we know, say, mathematical formulas, because it has to do with human experience, which is very complex.

In spite of this fixation on this maxim, we actually do take knowledge into account in librarianship, as well, as a part of the research lifecycle, which includes a deep understanding of information in order to be able to communicate it to others, and that is necessary for the whole field of scholarly communication. We cannot communicate well what we do not understand ourselves. Yet in librarianship, sometimes it seems that we minimize the importance of knowledge or understanding, valuing information and evidence more highly. With scholarly communication, the focus seems to be on the transmission or dissemination of information, not knowledge or understanding. At this point, I am merely speculating as I haven’t thoroughly examined these ideas in order to make an informed critique of the place of knowledge in librarianship. I wonder what such an examination might reveal?

Part II

Back to Everything is Information, a thought experiment. What does it imply for us? I will also take into account that librarianship covers knowledge and understanding as well, not just information. We do truly cover everything! What are the implications of working in an all-encompassing field?

First, there is this idea that as our focus is information, we gather, process, comprehend, understand, and create information that is about information. This is very meta, and I think as human beings who are rational, sensing, thinking creatures we have a need for this meta aspect to thought that is provided by our field. We have a need to think about and ask questions about what information, knowledge, and understanding are – in order to fully engage with them, experience them, and create new knowledge (although Plato would disagree with that last bit – there is no new knowledge!). Speaking of Plato, just as philosophers point to the human need to think about reality, so we, as librarians, point to the human need to think about information and knowledge. Insofar as we facilitate these processes, our field – and thinking about everything – will never go out of style.

I also think this means as librarians, we really have opportunities to be creative and think outside the box. There are many different ways to think about information and knowledge, and thus many different ways to think about our field. Especially with information literacy instruction, there are all kinds of ways we can rethink the meaning and practices within information literacy. For example, information literacy also includes literacy – reading and comprehending information. This type of skill certainly crosses the distinction between information and knowledge, as to read deeply and comprehend a text is to have knowledge of the content or topic of the text. On this basis, I developed a critical reading workshop to help undergraduates learn skills in reading dense theoretical texts. These are skills that are important, yet often left to classroom instructors who in most cases probably can rarely take the time to teach such skills. As experts in information literacy and literacy, we are perfectly positioned to do so. This example, too, points to this idea that as information professionals and librarians, we need to challenge ourselves to think more deeply about the information/knowledge distinction, and what constitutes knowledge, because students learn from us, as well, how to arrive at a place where they actually know something. We don’t just look at the evidence when we teach information literacy. Even evaluation and formulating a research question require some degree of knowledge, and we assist with these activities.

Finally, the fact that librarianship is very meta also means that the library means different things to different people, and serves different roles for different people. The library isn’t everything to everybody, but it is something to everyone. That is a good thing, but it also can be a point of confusion and contention, especially between librarians and those outside the profession. The broadness and narrowness of our field (as etymologically, it is simply a place for books) sometimes means that the importance of the librarianship is minimized or discounted, but librarians will always be tasked with providing a space where “everything” can be explored, a space where the mind grows – where the real is the rational – a space where we can gather the evidence or information, contemplate it, and experience knowledge and understanding. This is profound.

A Tip of the Hat to Tenure: Realizations in my First Year

Recently, I’m discovering more and more that there are certain advantages to being tenure-track, and this affects my professional identity in multiple ways. It is causing me to take on responsibilities that I wouldn’t normally volunteer for, and allowing me to do research that is challenging and significant. I’m realizing that my decision to apply for a tenure-track position was really a great decision for me personally.

One thing I’ll note before diving in is that I realize tenure is not for everybody, and non-tenure-track positions have their own advantages. For more on the advantages and disadvantages of being tenure-track, read Meredith Farkas’s blog post on the topic. I just hope that this particular post will prompt others to consider how their roles and responsibilities are unique and exciting, whether or not they are tenure-track. I also hope that this might add something to LIS students’ and early or mid-career librarians’ discussions and decision-making processes when it comes to applying for tenure-track jobs or switching from a non-tenure-track position to a tenure-track position. There is such a vast range of opportunities and types of positions in librarianship, and tenure is one factor that one must seriously consider when choosing what types of academic positions for which to apply. I realize not everyone may share my perspective.

So, to begin, there’s that adage that if you’re tenure-track, you say yes to everything. Now some might perceive this to be a disadvantage of being tenure-track, as you can get roped into things you wouldn’t otherwise do or might not like. However, I see it as a positive thing, because I am forced to do work outside of my comfort zone – work that my supervisors and other more senior librarians believe might benefit me and help me grow as a professional, work that also is suited to my specific liaison role and my unique skill sets and areas of interest and expertise. For example, I recently began the planning process for a couple political events for the fall. Along with a Political Science faculty member, I’m going to be co-moderating a student panel in the fall called “Your Vote, Your Voice” on what (and who) is on the ballot in Nevada, as well as how the students themselves are involved in the political process. The context for this event is that UNLV will be the site of the final presidential debate, which will be a monumental event for the campus, bringing in millions of dollars of free advertising and putting us in the national spotlight. This student panel will be a campus Debate event, attracting the attention of national media.

I will also be the representative librarian co-moderating a presidential election event – an expert panel gathered by Brookings Mountain West, a partnership between UNLV and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The event, “Why Las Vegas Matters in National Elections,” will reflect our metro region’s significance in a swing state. Las Vegas is the largest metropolitan area in Nevada, and is ranked 29th in the U.S. Issues important to Las Vegas are relevant to other large, diverse metros in the region and the nation. The 2 million people in the Las Vegas metro area includes a diverse population, and UNLV is the second most diverse public university in the nation. Panelists will address local and national issues important to Las Vegas, with consideration of their national implications.

How did my involvement in these events come to be? Well, essentially I got roped into it. My direct supervisor had the idea that the Libraries should be involved in some political events for the fall, which aligns with our mission of empowering students and other campus community members, encouraging them to vote and providing access to knowledge they need in order to be educated voters. As political science liaison, naturally I should be involved. So I went to an expert on campaigns and elections in the Political Science department on campus and got some ideas from him, then ran with them. One outcome of this is that it has allowed me the opportunity to collaborate with faculty in one of my departments, as well faculty from Brookings Mountain West on campus and experts from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

Normally, I would probably never volunteer for such events. I’m not really political – at least when it comes to the electoral process – and I’m really intimidated by the body of knowledge of experts in this area. My justification and rationale for my disinterestedness in politics was based on my belief that electoral politics is a poor substitute for direct democracy, which interests me more, in addition to political theory. However, now I’m developing an interest in practical politics and seeing more intersections between political theory and practical politics. I have a Twitter feed of political scientists and political news sources that I’m keeping up with. I’m reading the books and articles by the experts who will be on the expert panel. I’m showing an interest, because I have to, and because now I live in a swing state which makes the process a lot more interesting, too. What I’m learning is proving to be quite fascinating, and it is stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise cared too much to learn about. And this is all because of tenure.

There are other things I couldn’t say no to, that I’m now very passionate and excited about. For instance, I’m curating an exhibit for the Libraries on student activism on campus, especially through the media – specifically the Rebel Yell, the campus newspaper (which is incidentally undergoing a name change presently – a student decision). For this exhibit, I’m doing extensive research through which a very interesting narrative about UNLV students is emerging. I’m getting to exercise my creativity and innovativeness in giving voice to this narrative. I’m learning a lot about current students and am making connections with current and former students, senior faculty on campus, and community members to acquire memorabilia and learn about student experiences. Normally I wouldn’t seek out such opportunities. I’m not an archivist. I’ve never done anything like this before; I’ve never even done research with archives or special collections. This particular project was initially intimidating to me, and I knew it would be extremely time consuming. I might not have said yes quite so immediately and eagerly had I not felt a sense of obligation because of tenure. Yet this is a real opportunity – to do research for the first time in special collections and archives, contributing to my professional growth; to have my own research featured in an exhibit; and to highlight the amazing work of student activists here, both current and historical – All because of tenure.

Then, of course, there’s the research requirement for tenure. This means I’m supported to do research that challenges me and makes me learn, as a scholar and a librarian. I definitely wouldn’t do research if there wasn’t this kind of support for it – I’m too much in favor of work-life balance to even do much of any reading when I’m not working, so I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be motivated to do research if this 20 percent of my time on the job wasn’t devoted to it. And I’m so excited about these opportunities. My exhibit will count as a creative activity in my tenure case. I’m also collaborating with a Sociology faculty member long-term doing research on teaching, providing library support, and assessing student learning in a course with a heavy critical service learning component. The students’ library research for this course is really impactful. They are using library sources to support advocacy work and things like providing trainings and annotated bibliographies for refugee women representing themselves in their own asylum cases. The students are all using different types of library resources and legal resources for this work. They are also learning first-hand about information privilege, with licensing agreements oftentimes prohibiting them from giving resources directly to community members, considered to be third parties unaffiliated with the university. Anna (Dr. Anna C. Smedley-López) – the Sociology professor and I – are going to do some writing about this aspect of the students’ education for this course. Our first project will be to write a book chapter for a new ACRL-published book called: Disciplinary Applications of Information Literacy Threshold Concepts (edited by Samantha Godbey, Sue Wainscott, and Xan Goodman of UNLV). Our chapter, the proposal for which was recently accepted for this publication, is called “Serving Up Library Resources?: Information Privilege in the Context of Community Engagement in Sociology.” What an opportunity this is for me – to be a research partner with a faculty member in one of my disciplines and to be essentially embedded in this service learning program and course in which students are doing truly significant, social-justice oriented library research. Again, all because of tenure.

I feel exhausted just writing this. I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me. These opportunities will challenge me and make me grow as a professional, as a librarian and scholar. And I have tenure to thank.

The Sexy Librarian is (Un)Dead. OR I’m a rock star (and so are you).

gorgeous librarians — “Neon Librarian” by Karla Irwin is licensed under CC BY-SA. (Photo taken in Las Vegas, NV.)

For this blog post, I decided to take a break from my previous pattern of expressing librarian existentialist angst (i.e. professional identity issues) and instead focus on what makes us so awesome. Through this, I’ll be indirectly addressing those professional identity issues. I’ll also come to my eventual conclusions via a discussion of the infamous Librarian Stereotype. Again, like some of my other ACRLog post topics, these topics are discussed commonly already. That is the case for a reason – these topics are so important, and fun. Hopefully I can offer a fresh angle on them.

So, librarian stereotypes. I just watched an episode of iZombie on Hulu (spoiler alert) that flaunted some pretty scandalous librarian stereotypes. The show is about a functional zombie – a former medical student, Liv, who works in a morgue and has easy access to brains, which she needs to eat to stay functional, pass as a living person, and not transform into the grotesque, blood curdling version of “zombie.” When she eats the brains of a person, she acquires some of their memories and personality, and she uses those memories to help solve murder cases.

In this episode I just watched, “Fifty Shades of Grey Matter,” Liv eats the brains of a public librarian. Much to the chagrin of my librarian friends and I who watch this show, this particular personality was typecast as the “sexy librarian” – Yes, even an author of erotica literature who was constantly fantasizing about sex and had very little control over her sexual urges. So that’s great. Hyper-sexual librarians with little to no self-control? Again, just great. (Of course there are other stereotypes here that will go unnamed, mostly because they are NSFW (not suitable for work) and because they would necessitate a lengthier, more complex conversation about stereotypes going both ways.

The toned-down, broader version of “sexy librarian” is still damaging to the profession because it devalues and minimizes the hard, important professional work that we do. We want to be taken seriously, and we should be taken seriously! And the “sexy librarian” is an objectification and fetishization of our profession and of our embodied experience. For those who are perceived to fit that particular image of the sexy female librarian, it says that we are objects that serve to gratify the sexual and emotional needs of men, tantalized by our intellectual and physical charms and convinced of our maternal or feminine roles and functions. The sexy librarian serves as a placeholder – it is the one professional image that many people have of us, obscuring what we actually do; as others have suggested in works such as The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing Perceptions and Presentations of Information Work (ed. Nicole Pagowsky & Miriam Rigby, 2014), people largely don’t know what librarians do precisely because of these stereotypes. (See, for example, p. 5.)

The Librarian Stereotype might even limit others’ openness and receptiveness to persons who are librarians who do not fit the stereotype, to librarians who do not match the following characteristics: perfectly female-bodied, young, thin, sexy, usually white, conservatively yet fashionably dressed, with glasses, maybe a little rebellious or devious beneath the playfully conservative appearance – a tease. You know them all. And when librarians do not match those characteristics, we also might be judged or discriminated against. (“You’re a librarian? You don’t look like one!”) It’s a lose-lose situation for librarians. If we fit the stereotype, we’re not taken seriously because we are objectified and sexualized and our work is consequently devalued. If we do not fit the stereotype, we are judged and thus not taken as seriously because we do not look like the professional we are purported to be.

In fact, could it be possible that this limiting stereotype serves to keep some people out of the profession who do not fit the image, and perhaps attracts people to the profession who do (although there are infinite examples of librarians who defy the Librarian Stereotype, who “do not look like librarians.”)?

The other stereotypes – some of which, such as being punitive, may or may not accompany the aforementioned stereotype – and that we read all the time and shush people…these don’t have to be sexualized necessarily, and sometimes people have a stereotype of librarians in which we are desexualized – the frumpy, old, and stern librarian who wears long skirts, blouses buttoned all the way up, with a bun to boot. These stereotypes are also negative. They imply that we have nothing better to do but to enforce rules, judge others, and experience intellectual gratification or escapism, remaining alone and stubborn all the while. The old, stern, frumpy librarian lives in a bubble and is guarded and unapproachable.

On the other hand, there may be a positive side to the existence of strong librarian stereotypes.

We are also rock stars! I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, “Whoa, you’re a librarian? That is so cool! I wanted to be a librarian when I grew up…” etc. etc. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences. People venerate and idolize librarians! Because our job is awesome! We have *all* the things…everything that contains information! – the books, the journals, the ephemera, the manuscripts, the papers of famous and important people…etc., etc.!

And that really simply means we are responsible for preserving the scholarly record. People do know what librarians do, they just aren’t familiar with our day-to-day tasks.

What do we actually do on a day to day basis? Preserving the scholarly record means a whole lot of things.

My Dean, Patty Iannuzzi, recently held a workshop for library faculty and some staff on the scholarly record. (I had to be late due to teaching a class; it was probably better that way because I hear she talked about me and our previous conversations on professional identity before I got there.) The workshop was a planning workshop for future services that the Libraries may offer to the campus community. There were spreadsheets – lots of spreadsheets – of possible services, and we were to decide which ones we should be offering. They included everything from author’s rights and copyright consultation and assistance, piloting ORCID IDs, generating citation reports and advising on bibliometrics and altmetrics, and publishing Open Access journals to research data management and storage services. In our discussions, everyone thought we should offer services in virtually every area. The disagreements were really over wording that made it sound like librarians would be doing things for campus community members instead of consulting or collaborating with them.

This is so exciting to me – that so many of these important services do fall within the realm of what librarians do, that faculty and students trust that we will have expertise in these areas, because, in many of the areas, liaisons, especially, are already the point persons for exploring and providing such services. At UNLV, librarians are actually leading the way towards our campus’s Top Tier goal, and it is because we are responsible for the scholarly record and all the duties and objectives associated with it. We truly are rock stars!

I could continue to rant and whine about how people don’t know what it means to be a librarian – how I especially don’t know what it means to be a librarian, at least right now in my first year. But really, there are reasons why it is so hard to pinpoint what our professional identity is. It is because it is so simple, that it is easy to devalue or minimize (preserving the scholarly record=having all the books=reading all day and shushing people, all the while being a sexy young female-bodied person). It is also because it is so complex at the same time, it encompasses so many different types of activities. As a liaison, I know this…I help with anything and everything that faculty and students might need surrounding sources of information. That’s a lot! And those who have narrower focuses – their jobs are super important as well, just more focused on particular aspects of librarianship, such as the institutional repository and Open Access, or other technical services such as cataloging – these services are so important, so people can actually find the perfect materials that suit their scholarly needs. I’ll also mention public librarians here, to bring in the iZombie episode once again; they play an incredibly important role, especially through providing information access to communities who might not be able to access that information through other means.

Finally, as technology, culture and society change, so too our job descriptions and responsibilities are always changing. And that’s exciting! People are trusting us to lead the way!

So, I am a rock star, and so are you.

The Sexy Librarian is a zombie, after all. Long live the Smart & Savvy, Nonconformist Rock Star Librarian who has it all (…all the information, that is)!

The Born Librarian: My Professional Identity in Librarianship

creation — Michelangelo Buonarroti [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

You may have noticed from my last post that lately I have been grappling with questions of my professional identity. For example, I tried to understand or argue for the importance of libraries, and my best answer was that libraries’ most important role is their role as a public space and gatekeeper of information. I have been using writing as a means to work through these important questions; my professional identity is very important to me, and I want to develop it deliberately and carefully.

I recently had a draft for this current post, only to decide that I was too negative about librarianship in it, that I questioned my professional role too much and had no sense of assuredness or confidence about the “fit” of the profession for me. The blog post was about being a generalist, how librarians are generalists, and how, essentially, I don’t want to be a generalist. My biggest fear is that to be a generalist means that I didn’t really know anything, that I have nothing in which to anchor my intellectual pursuits. Librarianship is very “meta” – all about access, discovery, evaluation, interpretation, use, creation, dissemination…but I want to know the substance and depth of this information that we are providing!

Then I asked my Dean and mentor, Patty Iannuzzi, to read the post, as it had been a direct response to learning that she values librarians’ being generalists, because it results in more balanced collections and services. The conversation was stimulating and a little unsettling, perhaps for both of us – for her because I have professional identity issues, and I’m not the only librarian who has them, for me because I realized, through attempting to answer her questions of me, just how shaky the ground is upon which I am standing in terms of my professional identity. Patty is the biggest champion of libraries that I know, and I felt badly revealing these doubts and insecurities to her. But I knew that if anyone could help me solve those issues, she could. Patty had several challenging questions for me, one of which was about why I do what I do, and what role librarians have. My answers for her felt grossly inadequate. They amounted to “helping people do research,” or “helping people access information.” My answers felt so simple, even shallow, and I wondered: what makes these activities unique to libraries anyway? The truth is, I am not sure that librarians are indispensable. After all, I went through all of my academic programs, up until library school, without ever having to really rely upon library services or sources even. I was required to purchase all my course texts, which were core readings in the disciplines.

Oh my! Have I chosen the wrong profession? I will admit, this was my second pick, an alternative to my original plan and dream for life. Certainly I would fall into the category of “failed academics,” (if such a category should even exist, but it sounds so negative)! I attempted to complete two PhD programs prior to entering the field. I finished a different master’s program with the intention of completing a PhD and going on to teach in a specific discipline. In all honesty, I chose librarianship because of its convenience, and chose to leave the program I was enrolled in to attend library school because I needed to move towards financial independence at a faster rate than I was currently. I needed something stable, and I needed something that would be more likely to land me an actual job.

I acted very quickly (deciding and then immediately applying in April, and receiving an acceptance letter a few weeks later for fall enrollment). As a consequence, I didn’t think too much about what it means to be a librarian, or the crises or growing pains that librarianship is experiencing as a profession. Maybe in the back of my mind I was aware of the clichés that librarianship was dying, but at the time, it seemed like a very good, practical career option; I knew there were still jobs out there. I believe that I made the right choice given my situation, because librarianship has provided me with a good, stable job and that was my top priority. I also happen to like what I do on a day-to-day basis, and when I tell others that I am a librarian, I say it with a sense of pride, because people respect and revere librarians. I simply have yet to figure out its significance for me as a profession – as a vocation or a calling. I am like Jason Bourne – I have an identity as a librarian, and I am trying to find out the truth about what that means. I don’t yet experience recollection in this role – it doesn’t feel familiar. It’s as if I have this new identity that comes with a past, a history, that is totally foreign to me.

I have faith that it will happen in time. In fact, I don’t think that attaining a sense of professional identity has to happen before one actually enters the profession and develops as a professional. That is because there are all sorts of factors we can’t predict before starting a career, and we can never really know what a particular career is like until we actually gain experience in it. Library school doesn’t teach you what librarianship is really like, only skills and some theory to help you work through or think about particular issues. Library school doesn’t take you to the essence, or the heart, of what it means to be a librarian. Library school doesn’t make you ask those important questions about professional identity. Now, library schools are becoming even more far-removed from actual libraries, becoming Schools of Information Science (including my alma mater). Does this mean they don’t even care about the physical spaces and services of actual libraries anymore? You can read more about that in Scott Walter and Carol Tilley’s College & Research Libraries editorial.

In response to my doubts and questions, Patty didn’t really have clear-cut answers for me, because I do not think there are clear-cut answers to such doubts. Those doubts are very real, and very personal. However, she did help me come to some realizations. She helped me to realize that it is okay to have doubts, that it is pretty normal at this point in my career – that is pretty normal for librarians in general – that I am not alone. She helped me understand that it is okay for me not to have a strong sense of professional identity right away, because that is something that I can develop over time, as I become more confident in the services that I provide, as I innovate more, and as I realize that my services are indispensable and beneficial to a large number of people. I can forge a path and make this profession my own. I know that this is possible because Patty, and many others, model it for me. I will simply develop my professional identity after-the-fact.

I once had a mentor who told me, “I want to help you become who you are.” I may not have been born a librarian; this hasn’t always been who I am, and I don’t quite yet own this identity. I have the potential to become who I am, though, and I am committed to this process. It may take patience. I’m not sure yet how it will happen. I just have to keep plowing forward, with openness to change, the willingness to innovate and create, and a lot of dedication to discovering out exactly what this means for my life, in this particular geographic location, and how I fit into the bigger picture of the profession. As I chase after this identity, this identity may actually chase after me too, and I’m sure there will be plenty of people, like Patty, to provide clues along the way.