libraries

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Museums (and maybe libraries?)

How long does a person stay at a museum? A couple of hours? There are people who would want exhibits at a museum to have a whole lesson plan so you can poll people and ask them “What did you learn?” Then you’d judge the success of the exhibit based on how well people do on these exams.

I have a different view. The person is going to spend incalculably more time in a classroom than they ever will in a museum. So a museum shouldn’t be a supplement to a classroom. It should be a force to ignite flames within a person’s soul of curiosity. An exhibit should make a person say “Wow! I’ve got to find out more about this!” and trigger them to explore more advanced accountings of the topic, in books or science videos. Once the flame is lit, the learning becomes self-motivating. — (from “Why The New Cosmos Matters“)

Am I crazy, or does this also apply to libraries, public libraries in particular?

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libraries, personal

With Great Exposure Comes Great Fear

I have been struggling with the amount of attention (and requests for engagement) that have come my way as a result of a couple of blog posts I wrote about intersectionality in librarianship. In an attempt to understand why I felt like I was slowly having the top layers of my skin flayed off, I started reading Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.

You know how you can read a text and find so much that resonates with you that the whole thing glows with highlighter marks and is littered with post it notes? If I were reading a paper copy, this would be one of those books. Alas, it’s an ebook.

Anyway, Brown, if you aren’t familiar with her work, focuses on the ways that shame and a fear of vulnerability keeps us from achievement, whether in personal or professional contexts. Early in the book she relates the story of her journey toward accepting the increased attention she received as a result of her TEDxHouston talk. Her inclination had been to shrink from the spotlight, not because she didn’t believe in her research, but because she was afraid to make herself vulnerable. She writes:

In a culture full of critics and cynics, I have always felt safer in my career flying under the radar.

Seeing this in print had such an effect on me that I couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and hobble over to my computer, I had to immediately peck this entry out on my iPhone.

I am as critical and cynical as the next person. That may be why I was attracted to UX work in the first place, and why I feel so comfortable with my position as the Merry Snarkster in #LibrarianTwitter. But if I’m being honest — and I think it’s time I do that for once — the level of cynicism I’ve seen on Twitter, blogs, and library publications of late is disturbing. It’s disappointing, and disheartening and the idea of opening myself up to these well-honed slings and arrows scares the shit out of me.

It isn’t because I don’t believe in what I have to say, or because I believe it isn’t important. I just don’t want to invite the negativity into my life, especially now when I feel ill-prepared to handle it in a mature and emotionally detached fashion.

I think the cynicism is dangerous, and I think it silences just as many people as the fear of racist, sexist, or homophobic reprisal does.

I don’t have any answers, and obviously, this is something I’ll have to keep working on in my own life, but at the risk of losing an audience who expects snark and sass from me, I’m going to do my best not to contribute to the bitter back channel anymore.

And while I’m at it, I’ll also work on stepping out from behind a persona and allowing you to see who I really am, scars, warts and all.

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libraries

Letters to a Young Minority* Librarian

I’ve been thinking about what advice I’d give to a young librarian or information professional who was just starting out in this career, in part because Jessica Olin of Letters to a Young Librarian asked me to write a guest post. But I’ve also been thinking about it as part of my larger interest in recruitment, retention, and mentorship of minorities* in this profession.

If you are a library who self-identifies as a member of one or more minority or marginalized communities, what sort of advice would you have liked to hear before you attended library school? What advice is useful to you now that you’re working as a librarian? Comments are open below, but you can also respond via Twitter if you’re so inclined.

*I use the term minority not only to indicate racial or ethnic minorities, but also as a way of including LGBTQI-identified people, differently abled people, or any other identity that places you on the margins of the professional or societal centre.

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miscellaneous

If You Skate Upon Thin Ice

brave souls skating on thin ice

click for larger view

It was a chilly 2°C/34°F as I rode around the seawall today; cold, but not that cold. Everywhere I saw water I saw DANGER! THIN ICE signs, except for this little pond just off Georgia Street in Stanley Park.

I asked one of the guys how he knew where not to skate. “Pretty much anywhere I see water,” he replied. He said he and his friend had been out on the pond for the past four days. You can tell by looking at the etches in the ice from their skate blades.

I said it would probably be the last day they’d be able to skate, as the weather forecast indicated a warm-up later in the week. I waved goodbye and shouted “Enjoy it!” as I pedaled away.

Sometimes you have to go against conventional wisdom and think the unthinkable, to do something utterly ill-advised, naysayers be damned, to find your own moment of bliss.

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cycling

Scenes in the Bike Lane

It’s a gorgeous sunny day, and I’m pedalling up the Hornby bike lane. I’m on my way to get blood work done, but I’m feeling quite happy because the sky is a fantastic shade of blue, my knees don’t hurt, and the streets are teeming with people for me to gawk at. I’ve stopped at the light at Georgia/Hornby intersection, and a rangy white guy who looks to have seen better days makes eye contact as he crosses the street. A mile-wide smile spreads across his face as he draws nearer.

“Happy Black History Month!” he calls out loudly, pausing on the median to have a chat with me. Some pedestrians smirk at his exuberant greeting, some give us the side-eye, but mostly we’re ignored. I smile and thank him, but I tell him he’s a day early.

“Well, shit”, he chuckles, “I missed Martin Luther King Day completely, so I’m just happy I remembered at all!” We share a laugh and I raise my fist for a fist bump, which he heartily returns. The bike signal turns green, and I ride away, happier for this small moment of shared humanity.

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libraries

Moving the #Libtechgender Conversation Forward

I’ll flesh these out later, but I wanted to quickly share some notes I made this morning as I prepared for the Challenges of Gender Issues in Library Technology panel at ALA Midwinter. Maybe they’ll help others to understand where I’m coming from.

EDITED TO ADD: a credit to Race Forward and their paper “Moving the Race Conversation Forward” and Jay Smooth for articulating these concepts in such an accessible way.

  • We need to move the conversation forward and talk about not only internalized and interpersonal failings, but systemic barriers to equality and advancement.
  • We tend to focus on individuals instead of systems. The ALA CoC covers interpersonal actions. It’s important to address these intentional actions when they arise, but they’re the simplest to focus on and easiest to solve.
  • What are we doing on an institutional level to dismantle discriminatory practices that promote inequality in library technology?
  • How do we move this conversation forward?
  • Expand our understanding of sexism beyond personal prejudice and actions to systemic barriers
  • Focus on actions and impacts rather than attitudes and intentions – the ALA CoC does this to a degree
  • View through an intersectional lens; add conversations about race, class, sexual orientation, gender presentation when talking about gender in library technology
  • Examine the unfair policies that occur within your institutions that produce inequitable outcomes for people on the margins.

The problem of a panel that focuses solely on gender means that by focusing only on the most privileged group – white women – those who are “multiply-burdened” (Crenshaw – PDF) are marginalized.

For white women, discussions about the role of gender in library technology gives the impression that but for their gender, they would not be disadvantaged. Their race is never a factor in their discrimination, and therefore it becomes the standard sex discrimination claim.

Things are more complex for women of colour or for lesbian, bisexual, or transgender women, because we can receive protection only to the extent that their experiences are similar to those whose experiences tend to be reflected in anti-discrimination rhetoric.

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personal

Further Tales (on Armistead Maupin)

I personally have gone from being both a crime and a mental illness to someone whose homosexuality is now my strongest value. — Armistead Maupin

I honestly don’t know if queer folks who didn’t come of age during the time when AIDS was a death sentence, when Queer Nation, ACT-UP, and the Lesbian Avenbers were out in the streets fighting, dying, kissing, and fucking for revolution, can really understand how drastically things have changed in such a short period of time.

I’m reminded in large ways, like when marriage equality passes in a red state, but I’m also reminded in small, very personal ways, like when my boss talks about her (female) partner in staff meetings and nobody blinks an eye.

My mom used to say “Keep on livin’” whenever I made a crack about her advanced age, but now I know she wasn’t only talking about age. She was talking about lived experience and the wisdom you gain through survival.

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