Do you suppose this is anything like the female bun scrambles referred to in Librarian’s Job?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4549137.stm

I had so much fun with the last post that I decided to create a new blog all about library history. Check it out… Comments and recommendations wanted. Thanks.

Library Notes

A librarian’s job is no light and sportive task. It requires a capacity such as few men possess. It is a serious occupation, fraught with staggering difficulties. To fill a librarian’s chair adequately means that a man must be built with broad sympathies, leniency, genuine intelligence, and a comprehensive understanding. One’s prejudices must be shored up, bound and gagged. One’s personal tastes must be put on a continuous diet of febrifuges.

A librarian must be temperamentally polyandrous and cut from an unbiased piece of material. He must be the shop girl’s idol, the old lady’s darling, the scientist’s ideal and the friend of the professional pundit. He must have temperamental affinities for all novelists from Hall Caine to Tourgenieff. He must tolerate all poetry from the passionate strophes of Ella Wheeler Wilcox to the metaphysical rumble-bumble of Browning. He must respect all scientists from Cagliostro and Lombroso to Ernest Haeckel and Pasteur. He must admire historians from Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville to Fiske and Ferrero.

Furthermore, he must countenance equally spook-chasing, Christian Science, voodooism, psychotherapy, woman suffrage, New Thought, hell fire, single tax and physical culture. Literature dealing with esoteric fads, quasi-sciences, theologies, Emanuel movements and Yogi doctrines, he must keep impartially on the shelves for the delectation of their various proselytes.

And this is not all. An ideal librarian must be able to mingle with all the varied types of the genus homo. He must please the old ladies who would like to run the library. He must surfacely countenance the ravings of cranks. He must insinuate himself into the good graces of the juvenilia. He must be esoteric with the theosophists and pharmacological with the M.D.’s. He must know how to balance saucers at pale teas, and how to nibble macaroons and analyze the weather at the same time. He should know the wine when it is red and the high-ball when it is high. He must be able to officiate at female bun scrambles, lecture before women’s clubs, write articles on education, converse sympathetically on all themes, and be dexterous in the prestidigitation of statistics, so that he can prove conclusively any contentions or its reverse by a few figures. Also he should have mastered the science of platitudinizing.

And last, a librarian must be non-reformative. He must permit a differentiation in human belief and purpose. He must allow the reader to work out his own destiny. A citizen pays his money for the books he wishes to read, and it is outside the jurisdiction of the librarian and the library board to tell him what he ought to read. Moral superintendents do not make for progress.

In fine: A librarian must please everybody, and at the same time handle intelligently one of the greatest educational institutions in the world.

I am so glad Rory posted Nicholas Carr’s Atlantic Monthly article, “Google is Making Us Stupid,” to Library Juice. There’s no doubt that technology has a huge impact on how we think. I recall painfully shifting from writing out papers by hand to word processing, and now I hate to think of going back to my old ways. I think we’re all in various stages of transition from reading the printed page to reading the computer screen. I’m still adapting, but I feel that there may come a time when I’ll prefer the screen. Some of it has to do with nostalgia, some is simply about liking the feel of a book or article in one’s hand, but a lot has do with the fact that the brain has to work differently to process information presented on a screen.

My just-turned-four-year-old is a computer whiz…the kid can navigate the web like you wouldn’t believe (well, I’m amazed, at least). And he pretty much masters the rules of games and search techniques by playing around on the computer. I have actually taught him almost nothing about using the Internet. He recently bought a Backyardigans album via iTunes, and I don’t think it was an accident. I’d love to have someone study his brain. Seriously.

My question is this: What does this mean for librarianship? Like Google, librarianship in the U.S. is largely founded on principles of scientific management, thanks mostly to Dewey. This all fits so well with the debates about whether or not libraries are complicit with the dumbing down of America. Are we getting more efficient, or are we just getting stupid?

I have a friend who recently told me that he’s deliberately writing an article that’s difficult to read. He wants people to either read it closely or not at all, and he feels that making it tough will weed out the skimmers. I’m not sure I agree with him, although I see where he’s coming from. The people pleaser in me is more likely to write for an audience, rather than make the audience work for me. Granted, this is academia, but I’m conflicted as a practicing cataloger, too. Should librarians meet the demands of the public or insist on deeper thinking and techniques from users. To what extent is change in cognitive and/or behavioral patterns good or bad or simply change. 

Today’s post is more personal than my others, but I expect there to be a connection to archives somewhere in it.

My most recent break-up has resulted in a deposit of my crap in my small apartment that is already crammed with my kids’ toys and my own clutter. I’m forced to go through all this stuff and decide what to do with it. Unfortunately, I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff from deaths…. I inherited a ton of my grandmother’s furniture, a fair amount of my mom’s clothes and jewelry, and mostly nostalgic stuff like records and photos and old work tapes from my dad’s jobs in radio. Today I found my dad’s diary form the year I turned seven, which, up till now, I had left unopened. I had actually forgotten about it, and finding it was definitely a HOLY SHIT moment. From it I learned that my dad was just as square as I remember him, and as devoted to me as I thought he was…and actually really pretty depressed and lonely. In one entry he describes his terrible guilt about yelling at me when I was crying about swallowing a lifesaver and deciding to never do that again. Throughout, he obsessed about money but seemed to eat out every day…hmm. It was rather strange to see it all written down, confirming what I remember from my childhood and bringing him back to life in a sense. In a way, it’s like I’m having the conversations that I’ve felt like I’ve missed. I wish I had diaries from more years.

So, what is the point, other than revealing to the world a bit of my personal life? To me this drives home a few archives-related points…1) This kind of stuff is important; I definitely have a clearer sense of my own history and where I come from. It makes me want to write more down so that my kids can have their own HOLY SHIT moments someday. 2) Fear is powerful; I’ve come across this diary a few times over the past 20 years, but hadn’t even glanced at it for fear of discovering something painful about my past. 3) It’s easy to lose sight of the importance of history. I don’t ever want to forget this experience.

When the super fabulous Jim Carmichael talked to us SLISers, he asked the question, Why do we need an LGBT history? It seems like a question that just requires the answer, “well, duh.” But sometimes getting hit hard with your own history makes it all the more concrete.

On a much lighter note, I just finished a run from my apartment in Eagle Heights to the Union and back along the Lakeshore Path. Awesome. Not all that big of a feat considering the Mad City Marathon was going on today, but still. I passed a friendly lesbian couple, followed by a handsome hetero-looking pair of men. I’m pretty sure they were all checking me out…ha! Dare to dream, right?

I went to the CIPR conference this week. I was only able to attend 2 out of 3 days, but what I saw was truly inspiring. It was the perfect venue for me to present my first paper and attend my first conference. They’re podcasting the conference…not sure when it’ll be up, though. Here’s a rundown of what I learned/perceived/felt.

• This is a great time to be a doc student. I’m getting the sense that critical thinking is still a marginal activity in library schools, but people are doing it, and now they are banding together and communicating with one another. It looks like the field is ready for a transformation, and I am so ready to play a part in that change. I’m having a lot of fun fantasizing about teaching and mentoring students in the future, discussing big ideas in LIS, and working with brilliant thinkers.

• I have some pretty strong thoughts on feminist deconstructions of classifications, but I think I’ll save those for another post, or maybe an article. It comes down to this: I don’t think the best/only alternative to a patriarchal system is a feminine/feminist one. I think that by confining the discussion to a binary of patriarchy/feminist way of organizing, we lose sight of the greater objective. Why do we have to attach gender to ways of knowing?

• Nat Enright’s paper on Lefebvre and everyday life was possibly life-changing. It really validated some of my feelings and opinions I’ve held since I started the doc program…primarily, looking at the big picture, rather than operationalization of everything for the purpose of empirical research. Nat heads one section of his paper, “Against a Philosophy of the Obvious: The Operationalization of Everyday,” and his conclusion reads, “In adopting a Lefebvrian gaze, we have seen how the “commodification” and “colonization” of everyday life effectively collapses the distinctions between “work” and “nonwork,” suggesting that alienation, exploitation, and domination are the primary modes of experience in contemporary society” (Enright, 2008, p. 52). Great stuff. It felt like the room changed after he presented. And this kind of framework helps me to think about LC…and potentially anything else I might be interested in.

• Nate did really well. It was good to finally see him in action. I’d say he’s going places.

• It was cool to find that my paper is in conversation with the ones that preceded me. I was glad to find people doing queer theory, and LCSH stuff…and to meet them. Yay!

• I really liked most of the people there. It felt kinda homey and cozy.

• I’m impressed by UW-M….their drive, their research program, the fact that they hosted this conference.

• I was told my delivery was a bit weak…too girly and distracting. I can easily imagine that, given the fact that I was terrified, and this was a whole new experience…and I have self-esteem issues. I need to work on appearing to be confident, even if I feel like my heart is going to explode and I just want to run away. At least the first one is over, and I got good feedback on my paper. It should be easier next time, right?

Douglas Galbi has a great post on Jefferson’s library on his purple motes blog. Jefferson’s library is in LibraryThing. Cool.

Is it really possible to say this? The more I look into it, the more I believe it’s true. Looking to Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Linnaeus, and LC/Dewey, I have to say that yes, sex and power (which are inextricable) are deeply embedded in our classification systems. I’m reading LCSH to find explicit and implicit representations of sex and empire to show how LCSH reflects and contributes to the discourses about those subjects, reinforcing the mainstream and silencing or speaking for groups on the margins. I’m particularly interested in the idea of literary warrant, what was in print in the mainstream medical literature and in popular literature in the early 20th century, and how ideas of sexuality have shifted from the dawn of history.

What I’m reading: Londa Schiebinger and Anne Stoler and Thomas Laqueur

I’ve been a bad blogger. Sorry about that.

I am now a month into the doc program at UW, and I’m having the time of my life. I particularly love my history of science course: Historiography and Methods. It’s basically a history of the history of science. Perhaps the most significant/practical thing that I’m learning is the role that minority voices play in shaping and reframing a dominant mode of thinking. The shifts and revolutions in science are directly related to cultural shifts and seem to depend on the work of a few in a field. This reinforces my natural inclination to gravitate toward “radical” movements and minority positions. It also inspires me to stick to my guns and pursue critical theory in LIS…something that seems to be something that LIS academics do on the side in their free time. I hope that in my lifetime I see a shift that encourages and welcomes critical theory in LIS.

If we look at LCSH as a text or a narrative, we can analyze it in a way that is similar to Edward Said’s criticism of 19th and 20th century novels in Culture and Imperialism.

A crucial aspect of Said’s premise is that the novel as we know it couldn’t exist without imperialism and that when we read Conrad, Austen, and Dickens, we need to be conscious of the ways that empire permeates daily life and is expressed through literature.  The “hegemony of imperial ideology” cultivated a discourse of domination which in turn validated and supported nations’ imperialism and colonialism (12). Degrading essentialism of others, grandiose self-definitions, and incidental, marginal appearances of the colonized are frequent in 19th and early 20th century novels from England and France and continue to pervade American media today.  We must also examine the ways in which voices of resistance are shaped by imperialism.  He refers to a “structure of attitude and reference” to describe the systematization of imperialism in cultural practices.

There are many points to be taken from Said’s work…too many to go into detail here. What I want to take note of is the way that prejudices and attitudes can be so pervasive in a culture that they may be taken for granted or may be unrecognizable. Beliefs, practices, and ideology of powerful groups directly shape culture and its productions. LCSH was created at a time when white men were privileged and other races and civilizations were inferior, and although the language has changed dramatically, the structure of LCSH remains largely patriarchal and hierarchical. We can apply Said’s “structure of attitude and reference” to thinking about the cultural influences on the creation of LCSH and analyzing the ways the structure of LCSH reinforces and contributes to culture.

Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. New York: Knopf.