The Librarian as “Feminine”

The library profession today is, and has been for over a century, heavily female. When Melvil Dewey inaugurated the new School of Library Economy at Columbia College in 1887, only three out of his twenty students were male. From then on, women formed the majority of students in formal librarian training programs. During the Progressive Era at the turn of the century, as the library system developed and expanded, middle-class women were encouraged to become librarians to bring literacy, education and civic virtue to the masses. This was at a time when many Americans still believed that women were unsuited for professions such as law or medicine and few women trained for them. Being librarians allowed women to “transcend confining stereotypes of womanhood without rejecting traditional gender roles or family responsibilities” (Maack, 1998, p. 55). Rather than challenging traditional gender roles, most librarians “believed that the professional woman should affirm rather than reject her gender identity” (Maack, 1998, p. 56).
By 1920, the year women got the vote, over eighty-eight percent of librarians listed on the census were women (Maack, 1998, p. 52). Why were women so readily accepted as librarians, to the point of quickly becoming the majority of the profession, when there was great resistance to women entering other professions such as law and medicine? I think that the main reason, apart from the fact that it was difficult to recruit male library students, was that women are traditionally seen to be nurturers and caregivers who put others before themselves. Becoming librarians allowed women to fulfill this gender role, unlike, for example, becoming a lawyer or an engineer or a scientist. And unlike those professions, where “feminine” behavior is often an obstacle, being traditionally “feminine,” i.e., considerate and nurturing, can help make one a better librarian, as one of the main roles of many librarians is helping patrons find what they need.
It was not necessarily a bad thing for the library profession to be majority female and associated with feminine gender roles. Not only were many of the new women librarians full of crusading spirit, but the lack of male domination in the profession allowed both female and male librarians to “[create] a new professional paradigm that was fundamentally different from the authoritarian model of the ‘liberal professions’ like law and medicine” (Maack, 1998, p. 59). Librarian Mary Eileen Ahern was the founding editor of the monthly journal Public Libraries, which was inaugurated in 1896 to serve the needs of small libraries. Ahern’s journal emphasized a patron-centered approach “infused with a strong sense of service to the individual reader” (Maack, 1998, p. 54). For example, one article by a woman cataloguer in 1901 said that “‘a catalog to be most useful, must be made for the people who are to use it, and not for some theoretically ideal people contemplated by codes of rules’” (Maack, 1998, p. 54). An 1899 article by Minneapolis librarian Gratia Countryman “[urged] that libraries keep rules and red tape to a minimum…[and] stressed that ‘the books belong to the people’ and the librarian, who is their intermediary, must learn ‘to be of the people, not apart or above them’” (Maack, 1998, p. 54). In her extensive study of female librarians in the American West, Joanne Passet concluded that despite being moderates on the issue of women’s suffrage, ‘“they did blend feminist ideas with rational values and an ethic of caring…Operating within the constraints of time, place and gender, they transcended female stereotypes as they pursued their vision of library service”’ (Maack, 1998, p. 55), as did women librarians in other parts of the United States (Maack, 1998, p. 55). So while woman librarians largely chose to affirm rather than reject traditional women’s roles, they were still imbued with the feminist belief that women should not only be well-educated but also participate in public life. As the role of librarian was largely conceived as a “helping,” and therefore appropriately feminine role, the two were not seen as contradictory.
The library profession’s association with femininity may play a negative role in some ways, however, by discouraging from the library profession both men and women who don’t identify with traditional female roles. I am a woman who does not identify with traditional female roles, and yet I am planning to go into librarianship, one of the most heavily female professions. While I am glad to help patrons, playing the “feminine” role of always putting others’ needs before one’s own, this can lead to burnout. While being a good librarian often means being “feminine,” i.e., caring and nurturing, having too many patrons to “care” for can lead to alienation and disillusionment. A librarian, especially if she is a woman, must learn how to attend to the needs of patrons in a sympathetic manner without feeling like a doormat.
Does the association of the library profession with women and with “feminine” roles deter men from becoming librarians? The relatively low status and pay of the library profession is partly due to the fact that it is majority female and perpetuates the situation by discouraging men from entering the profession. It’s possible that if more men went into the library profession the pay and status would improve; on the other hand, more men might be willing to enter the profession only if the pay and status were improved beforehand. Not only are most librarians women, but most are middle-class white women. Since libraries serve as repositories of knowledge, a more diverse population of librarians would help create richer and more diverse collections at libraries. Attracting more men, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, people of color and other minorities to the library profession would also result in librarians who brought other experiences and viewpoints to the profession. They would not only bring an understanding of those backgrounds to their own work, they would help enlighten middle-class white librarians on the unique challenges faced by low-income people and people of color, who would thus have librarians who were more responsive to their needs.
The majority of librarians are still middle-class white women and have been for over a century. While many of these women have excelled in the library profession by upholding the traditional female roles of helper and nurturer, the association of these roles with librarianship has had some undesirable effects as well. One is the woman librarian as doormat, which can often lead to burnout.

Another is that men are discouraged from entering the profession. The library profession would be better off if it included more people of color and people from disadvantaged backgrounds as these people would bring a richer variety of experiences to the profession and be better at responding to the needs of patrons from those backgrounds.

References
Niles Maack, M. (1998). “Gender, Culture, and the Transformation of American Librarianship, 1890-1920.” Libraries & Culture 33(1), 51-61

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World Building and the Collections in the Art Museum-Library

Ada Kolganova and Anastasia Guy note in their paper “Heritage received and multiplied: Russian art libraries as collectors and translators” that museum libraries inhabit an interesting space in librarianship. [1. Kolganova, Ada and Guy, Anastasia. “Heritage received and multiplied: Russian art libraries as collectors and translators.” IFLA General Conference and Assembly in Milan, Italy 2009. 23-27 August 2009, Milan. Accessed from: http://conference.ifla.org/past-wlic/2009/201-kolganova-en.pdf] They function as a kind of secondary research department in tandem with their larger museum. They are often part archive, part library, part museum, part classroom.

I did observation at the MoMA and Poets House libraries, both of which I consider to be art museum libraries. I am considering the Poets House library a museum library in the most general way: it functions as archive (storing important founders documents, including personal libraries, and personal correspondences), library (hosting the largest collection of poetry books, chapbooks, collections, and art books on the east coast), museum (by holding exhibitions from artists such as George Schneeman and acting as a performance space for poets), and research center (by providing resources for art and art criticism.). At the very least, the Poets House library is a specialized library dedicated to putting forth a specific view about poetry and its place in the art world.

It’s important to note that museum libraries are not their own entities, but rather appendages of larger institutions interested in carving out their own niche in the art world. These agendas are similar to the ways Derrida talks about the dualities of archive fever. He says:

…Right on what permits and conditions archivization, we will never find anything other than what exposes to destruction, in truth what menaces with destruction introducing, a priori, forgetfulness and the archiviolithic into the heart of the monument…The archive always works, and a priori, against itself (14). [2. Derrida, Jacques. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Diacritics 25.2 (1995):9-63. Web.]

As much as the archive remembers, it also forgets, destroys, and thus, creates new memories and truths. Derrida says this is the character of the archive. Museum libraries function in a similar manner. Their curated collections construct the art world as they wish to define it. These mythologies are something I think Walter Benjamin would understand as political.

What interests me about these two examples is the way they curate their libraries. MoMA and Poets House are both respected institutions in the art world, though I will readily admit that MoMA is probably better known and better funded. That seems to be the case anyway, given how frankly my Poets House guide (and Pratt alum!) Gina Scalise spoke about soliciting donations and new work. Their focus is on amassing a large collection from a number of sources. “The other week I had to catalog a ziplock bag with a cut out slice of pizza and a seed in it,” she told me. [3. Scalise, Gina. Personal interview. 23 October 2014.] I asked to see the conceptual piece, but she said they were still debating where to store it. Scalise says they often receive conceptual material that’s up for debate and they’ve even made a small space for “more fiction-leaning material” in their collection. Poets House gathers its material from prominent presses like Ugly Duckling Presse to smaller one-person operations. Because they accept a large range of material, their organizing system is constantly in flux and, perhaps, not as intuitive as it ought to be. But Poets House aim, at the end of the day, is to amass as much poetry as possible.

MoMA’s library has a more standard fair than Poets House and is split between its Manhattan location and its Queens PS1 location. It includes art history and criticism books, but the Manhattan location also housed books published after the 1940s, catalogs (which it shares with the MoMA Archive) and MoMA publications and special collections. The emphasis of my time at MoMA seemed to be the MoMA publications: art books collaborations between the museum and an artist of the museum’s choice. Several examples were laid out for us upon arrival. Especially impressive was the ten-something foot-long scroll from Yun-Fei Ji, which depicts the chaos instigated by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China. Librarian David Senior said they had to search for a particular printing house in China to realize Ji’s. [4. Senior, David. Personal interview. 14 October 2014.] Their most recent project, soon to be released, is an artist’s book called Tom Tit Tot, which will feature poetry from Susan Howe and artwork from her daughter, R. H. Quaytman.

Along with Senior, several other librarians expressed excitement about MoMA’s publications. The museum was able to fund artist’s works while the library could serve as a place to democratize the sharing of these works. Each work is printed in a limited edition and while the library has a copy or two, most are meant for distribution, with part of the sale funding MoMA’s library and archives. The library and archive are considered separate entities from the museum and thus work within their budget. The artist books produced come in part from donations by The Library Council. The Council is a group of a hundred donors who pay an annual fee of $2,500 dollars and in return receive a copy of the artist book upon completion. “It’s a great way to inspire community and it’s a win-win for everyone,” Senior enthused. [5. Senior, David]

I’m interested in the way Poets House and MoMA cultivate ideas of what the art world is. I thought the comparison between Poets House and MoMA was especially salient given that they both primarily deal with artist books, or genre-bending books having to do with art and art expression. I found that Poets House seemed less formal and more community-based than MoMA’s libary. Or rather, Poets House seeks a wider community base than MoMA. Patrons are encouraged to “let it hang out” as Scalise would say, with assorted couches, desks, and several reading rooms to choose from. Some patrons chose to read on a spiral staircase without interruption. In the summer, the space opens up into a garden, where patrons are encouraged to take their reading material. Poets House seems to build more of a user-based world, designed with a purposeful chaos to allow for exploration.

MoMA seemed more exclusive in many senses. For one, everything was very sanitary. There was one reading room with rows of desks and chairs lined one after the other, so that librarians could keep an eye on patrons. I was not allowed to take photos unless I signed several forms. Material is highly regulated because the material is often rare, though reproducible.

And of course, there is the difference in collections. Poets House depends on the populous but small, independent presses, while MoMA’s collection usually utilizes one or two specialized printers for their commissioned books. There is an insulation to MoMA’s curatorial process not present at Poets House. MoMA’s collection curates an art world that is exclusive, sophisticated, and highly regulated. Poets House curates one that is inclusive, candid, engaging, and less regulated.

The importance of an institution’s attempts to define the art world can better be understood in terms of Benjamin’s insistence that art be political in one way or another. MoMA’s focus on the exclusive with its Library Council can be seen as a reproduction of the cult value of art where, “what mattered was their existence, not their being on view.”[6.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Schocken/Random House, 1936. Web.] The entire idea of the limited edition underscores the primacy of authenticity and exclusivity; the elitism of bourgeois evaluation of art.

This is not an issue Poets House deals with due to the breadth of its collection. The very nature of their art books is that they are widely available and reproducible. The small publishers they use circulate their books at multiple locations. I would argue that, while MoMA has the ability to reproduce these books, because they tend to circulate material among a select few, they keep artists from engaging a wide audience in the progressive politics of their art. On the other hand, Poets House does not have the means to reproduce its material, but allows the patron more access to the material. Perhaps the ability to take photos of books without the need of forms is a way of returning the power to reproduce back to the patron. This freedom seems to be more in-line with Benjamin’s optimism about the impact of technology on politicizing of art. He says:

One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. [7. Benjamin, Walter]

Here Benjamin is talking about the way reproduction has the power to be political and to make art political by engaging the masses. Even though we’ve already established that the books at Poets House are easily reproduced by their publishers, I think allowing for patron photography is yet another way to harness the power of reproduction Benjamin talks about. It reinforces the idea of a more community-based, inclusive art world, something that seems more progressive in light of Benjamin’s analysis of art reproduction.

At the MoMA library, Senior seemed proud of the Dadaist-influenced, politically-minded art they have been able to fund. He pointed to Yung-Fei Ji’s piece as a radically subversive work criticizing imperialism and the Chinese government, made even more impressive by the use of a traditional Chinese printing house that had been acquired by the government. But if that message is only circulated amongst a few, how can we call the act of possession radical? Ji’s work seems easily tokenized in this manner, its use a strange echo of the Futurists’ aestheticization of violence Benjamin seems so wary of.

 

 

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Aiming for Neutrality in Collections and Archives

In the article “Archives, Records, and Power: the Making of Modern Memory”, authors Shwartz and Cook explore the impact archivists have over power relationships, identity formation, and social memory through the acquisitions and preservations that take place in collections and archives.  The origin of archival use is important to understanding the framework of archives. Schwartz and Cook touch on the history of the archive saying, “Their origins lie in the information needs and social values of the rulers, governments, businesses, associations, and individuals who establish and maintain them.”  The authors go on to say this dynamic has been in place as far back as the Greek empire, and centers on power, specifically the power to shape history through what is preserved and what is omitted from a collection.

Though archives, and the people who work therein, are often positioned as neutral, they are very much a reflection of the needs and views of its founders. This is not a commonly-held or discussed reality of the field, at least to the common layperson.  Truth be told, up until reading these articles I had not questioned this widely accepted ideal of the archivist as being objective and without personal bias.  No matter how high ones professional standards are, it is nearly impossible to expect complete neutrality in a person – each of us has a background and experiences that form our views of society and our values, and it is extremely difficult to set these aside, or to know how our subconscious factors in.

Sometimes these biases are more evident, like which items are deemed worthy for inclusion in an archive,  and sometimes they are more subtle –  such as the way items are labeled and organized in collections.  In terms of the latter there are various factors at play that may hinder neutrality.  On a broad scale, the systems which are often used – Library of Congress Classification System and Dewey Decimal System – are shaped by Western philosophy and Christianity.  Holly Tomren points out in her paper “Classification, Bias, and American Indian Materials”  “the Dewey Decimal System is a top-down classification system … one need look no further than the 200 main class “Religion” to see that it is a biased system, where Christianity occupies numbers 220-289, and “other religions” are relegated to 299.”  Further, there are terms used in classification headings that are greatly biased, and, in some cases, culturally insensitive.  In Tomren’s paper she lists examples of these, one of which included “LIBRARY SERVICES TO THE SOCIALLY HANDICAPPED”, a result found when a Latina patron was searching for Latino access to library services.  Indeed, the manner in which organizational systems are designed can greatly reinforce the way groups of people, often minority groups, are portrayed in society.  As Hope Olson said in [1. Olson, H.1998. Mapping Beyond Dewey’s Boundaries: Constructing Classification Systems for Marginalized Knowledge Domains. Library Trends, 47, (2)] from her 1998 article, “The problem of bias in classification can be linked to the nature of classification as a social construct. It reflects the same biases as the culture that creates it.”

Item selection and inclusion have a high impact on archives,  as Shwartz and Cook note, “Control of the archive..means control of society and thus control of determining history’s winners and losers. Verne Harris … has shown starkly how this has operated under the apartheid regime in South Africa and its captive national archives, and how this naturalized power may be different under post-apartheid conditions.”   Harris has a very specific vantage point on archives.  In his article “The Archival Sliver:Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa” he sees archives functioning more as a “sliver” of social memory, not a fully encompassing, accurate reflection of periods of history.  While he does acknowledge the experience he had during that time in history was particularly extreme – including the government destroying public records to hide their wrong doings during the apartheid – he goes on to say, “I would argue that in any circumstances…the documentary record provides just a sliver of a window into the event. Even if archivists in a particular country were to preserve every record generated throughout the land, they would still have only a sliver of a window into that country’s experience.”  He continues that the record is: “…substantially reduced through deliberate and inadvertent destruction by records creators and managers, leaving a sliver of a sliver from which archivists select what they will preserve. And they do not preserve much.”  Harris’ take on this directly challenges the notion that archives are neutral spheres that purely reflect the reality of particular time periods.  It also shows that lack of neutrality in an archive can be on an individual level (the personal biases an archivist has), or on an institutional level (such as what records are being provided to archives by their creators, and what is being withheld or destroyed).  This is not to imply that archivists are purposefully engaging in deceitful activity, but to touch on the fact that archivists are human, and as such they operate within their particular, complex societies (and in which socially accepted norms and government agenda factor in) as well as their individual subconscious, which may lend itself to inconsistency in archival practices from one archivist to the next.  While this complicates the notion of neutrality of archives, just as importantly it touches on the fact that the way information is organized has the ability to constrain what can be viewed or accessed by the public.  Regardless of the intention, pieces that are left out of a collection, either purposefully or lost, can have a direct impact on the social memory of a country.

To be aware that archives are a part of  social construct, and that biases exist in archivists, is a strong step in moving forward toward a more balanced approach to archives.  It is important to recognize the limitations individuals and institutions have in presenting information, whether it be in context of classification systems, or attempting to fully encompass the reality of a period of history or a person.  In an assessment of archives and reality, Harris points out, ” if archival records reflect reality….They act through many conduits – the people who created them, the functionaries who managed them, the archivists who selected them for preservation and make them available for use, and the researchers who use them in constructing accounts of the past. Far from enjoying an exteriority in relation to the record, all these conduits participate in the complex processes through which the record feeds into social memory.”

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Bringing (Un)dead Books Back to Life at Reanimation Library

Reanimation Library's Reading Room, via reanimationlibrary.org
Reanimation Library’s Reading Room, via reanimationlibrary.org

The shelves of Brooklyn’s Reanimation Library are lined with bowling manuals, guides to Gregg shorthand, outdated biology textbooks, a tech-savvy fitness book called “computercise,” and even a thick tome containing nothing but random series of numbers. Browsing the collection feels more like inhabiting a vaguely retro-futurist cabinet of curiosities than a library in the traditional sense. But through this hybrid library and conceptual artwork, Reanimation Library founder Andrew Beccone challenges us to rethink systems of knowledge and cultural value.

Located in the Proteus Gowanus complex since 2006, Reanimation Library serves primarily as a visual resource to inspire artists and individuals to create new work. Though the collection does not circulate, visitors are encouraged to scan and reuse images that they find – in Beccone’s words, to “pan for gold in the sediment of visual culture.” Among Reanimation Library’s audience are book artists, animators, collectors, writers and students. Beyond Brooklyn, Reanimation installs “branch libraries,” which are temporary, site-sourced versions of the library, at art and cultural spaces as far afield as Lebanon. Additionally, the library invites writers to critically respond to works from the collection on its Word Processor blog.

Reanimation Library started out as an extension of Beccone’s personal interests. A practicing visual artist, he worked in libraries for years and studied library science at Pratt. The collection’s scope reflects his interest in the print and visual culture of the era spanning from the ‘40s to the ‘70s, eschewing high-art texts for vernacular subjects. He delights in the “popular modernism” of this atomic-age visual culture, which seems to promise everyone the possibility of transforming his or her world, even through mundane pursuits. The books function more as artifacts than as texts, giving us insight into the era’s mode of visual/textual reproduction and embodying its cultural mindset. Reanimation Library allows visitors to perform their own “archaeology of knowledge,” gleaning understanding of the past’s (failed) promises through its detritus – and reclaiming its visual potential for the future.

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, a Reanimation Library book
A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates, a Reanimation Library book

Owing to the project’s focus on generating new work, I asked Beccone how he tracked and displayed the art created in response to the collection. While he originally attempted to include the works in his digital catalog and link them to the books they referenced, this proved to be too much of an administrative burden, even with occasional volunteer help. Also, attempting to meticulously track and record every artwork felt a bit authoritarian – patrons actively share in the project, and once the images enter their hands, they are theirs to transform. The library negotiates an interesting space between private and public collection – in some sense, it’s a portrait of Beccone’s own interests, but he’s offering it up to everyone.

Reanimation Library has drawn an ambivalent reaction from library professionals, perhaps because it calls attention to the materials libraries eliminate through weeding. Collection development policies prioritize currently relevant textual information, often assigning little weight to the visual dimension of the work. In our conversation, Beccone noted that there’s something conservative to the way libraries consider useful information, often de-privileging visual information that’s not easily classified and pushing it away from access. His perspective on the library’s power in determining culturally useful knowledge resonates with Foucault’s definition of the archive:

“[The archive is not] that which collects the dust of statements that have become inert once more, and which may make possible the miracle of their resurrection; it is that which defines the mode of occurrence of the statement-thing, it is the system of its functioning,” (Foucault 129).

While Reanimation Library may aim to make this “miracle” possible once more, it is still, resolutely, a library, with books cataloged according to the Library of Congress system. For Beccone, the choice of Library of Congress was a bit arbitrary – it suited his purposes, and was the classification system he was most familiar with. Still, many librarians have refused to see Reanimation Library as something more than an art project, despite the fact that Beccone embraces the library’s spirit of providing free, democratic access to information.

From Reanimation Library's digital image collection
From Reanimation Library’s digital image collection

The project has received a more enthusiastic response in the art world, where it resonates with recent interests in social practice and relational art. Particularly since the 1960s, the art world has showed a continued interest in questioning hierarchies and breaking down disciplinary boundaries. Artworks such as Marcel Broodthaers’ “Department of Eagles” have emphasized the strangeness of the archive, its gaps and its visual repetitions. Artistically, Reanimation Library has found a community at Proteus Gowanus, a gallery and reading room that hosts residents interested in cross-disciplinary inquiry and collaboration. Its neighbors at the space have included Morbid Anatomy Museum, focusing on art, science, and death, and Observatory, a group of “oddball para-academics” who present lectures and events.

Marcel Broodthaers' fictitious museum, Department of Eagles, 1968
Marcel Broodthaers’ fictitious museum, Department of Eagles, 1968

While Reanimation Library encourages engagement with books as physical and material objects, it also offers a full digital catalog and online collection of thousands of images. For Beccone, print and digital are not mutually exclusive – rather, they offer different modes of understanding and searching for information that can support and mutually reinforce one another. The digital archive allows people outside of New York to access part of the collection, as well as offering a browsing experience that’s distinct from the physical space. However, he has no intent of fully digitizing the collection – because of resource limitations, conceptual intentions, and because this may infringe on fair use.

Beccone finds that many people of the younger generation that has grown up with the Internet have taken a strong interest in the collection, and in book arts more generally. Citing the success of the New York Art Book Fair, he notes that there has been an embrace of print objects and analog technologies, in reaction to the ephemerality and intangibility of the digital. Books have a medium-specific way of conveying information, speaking as much through the feel of their pages and the visual quality of color, ink and image reproduction as they do through their content. While techniques of collage, remix and juxtaposition are nothing new, they are the dominant modes of cultural production in the digital environment.

From 1985 B-horror classic, Reanimator, which you should all watch
From 1985 B-horror classic, Reanimator, which you should all watch

Reanimation Library’s books may be “dead” in one sense, bearers of bunk knowledge and outmoded cultural trends – but they encourage the mad scientist in all of us to give them life, to make their zombie-like moans reverberate through the cracks in the “official” archive’s walls.

Interested in Reanimation Library? Check out these other alternative library projects:

Work Cited:

Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.

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The Great and Powerful…

Do you remember the Wizard of Oz? I hope so, or else this will not make sense to the ones who do not. Dorothy and her friends went on a journey to see the great and powerful Oz to ask a certain request. This process can be translatable to those who go to the archives for answers. The archives, in a way, can be seen as the great and powerful Oz. The people of the town go to Oz for answers; he is all knowing. However, Oz magnificence was an illusion, he was merely a man.

 

Oz, and the archive have very similar purpose and position in society. The archive is a place and idea that holds power in the ways we preserve and shape knowledge and memory. But with this power comes great responsibility (thank you spider-man), in other words, where there is power of selection there is the power to exclude and silence.

 

The archive is a truly powerful and political domain. The archive has the ability to not only persevere, and organize information; this domain essentially shapes our knowledge and memory of the past. Yet, the power of selection can also be countered with omission. “Archives are ‘how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies,’” (Carter, 2006) it helps shape one’s identity. However, amongst all the resources that is collected, how does the archivist determine what shall be preserved or forgotten? This question is closely knitted into the issue of archival alienation and silence. Archivist Rodney G.S. Carter notes, “the power to exclude is a fundamental aspect of the archive. Inevitable, there are distortions, omissions, erasures, and silence in the archive,” (2006) not everyone’s voices are heard, especially the marginalized. If the records of these groups are manipulated and destroyed, or excluded, [their narratives] cannot be transmitted across time, the records about this group may ultimately disappear from history (2006).

 

There are three types of powers that are possessed by the archive: control over collective memory, control of preservation, and specifically to the archivist, the interpretation and meditation between records and users. This amount of power is astounding, and scary. These powers shape what and how we learn. It was interesting that archivist Randall Jimerson, suggested archivist to embrace this power. However, there was a catch. We should embrace the powers, in order to use them for greatness. I believe this can be applied to reference librarians as well. Librarians hold somewhat power in the community, because we provide access to service and information that our residents interests or needs. By embracing this power, we can keep ourselves in check in terms of what to record and materials to exclude, how to intercept and provide access to the user.

 

However, the power to exclude materials can, and often leads to archival silence. Archival silence is gaps of information that are not present in a collection. These gaps are often records that connect or represent marginalized groups. Archival silence are gaps in preserved texts such as written, visual, audio-visual, and electronic which are “currency of archives” (2006) These text are often not representable of society. Oftentimes, the history accounted for are from the viewpoint of those in power or privileged, this act can leave a void in the collective memory because it excludes the viewpoints of the minorities or underprivileged. This silence can lead to a lack of identity. Most importantly, these gaps can lead to a history being forgotten or distorted.

 

The duty to be mindful of the gaps within the archive should be accepted by librarians and archivists. There are several tactics that were suggested by numerous archivists that will be helpful in the profession. The first is using a feminist critique to listen to the silences. This is done by listening to the omissions and interrogating the powerful (Carter, 2006). Secondly, archivist Randall Jimerson suggests embracing the power of the archive. By doing so, we can use the power for good, to use our power of knowledge preservations and memory formation to protect the public interest (2005). In addition, it is best, I believe, for anyone in the research profession, to eliminate as much bias in our process mainly neutrality. The act to not take a stance is a loose form of indifference. In addition, by acknowledging bias we avoid using power indiscriminately, or accidentally (Carter, 2006). Lastly, acquiring a social responsibility will help foster awareness and activism to address this type of archival discourse. These tactics will not solve this issue but will hinder the possibility of future gaps.

 

For those who wish to pursue the life of an archivist, or a librarian for the matter, be aware of this issue. Be conscious of your selection of material and look for ways in which you can be inclusive. It is a part of our social responsibility in a democratic society to notice alienation in our collection whether it is the library or archives. This awareness can enable information professionals to vocalize those who are misrepresented; this inclusion can lead to proper representation, positive formation of memory and identity.

 

 

 

Carter, R. (2006). Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in       Silence. Archivaria, 61(61). Retrieved October 22, 2014,             fromhttp://journals.sfu.ca/archivar/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12541/13687

 

Jimerson R. C. (2005). Embracing the Power of Archives. Society of American        Archivist. Retrieved October 20, 2014, from             http://www.archivists.org/governance/presidential/jimerson.asp

 

Jimerson, R. C. (2009). Archive Power: Memory, accountability, and social justice.            Chicago: The Society of American Archivist.

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The ‘Transformative Community Based Library’ in School Librarianship

It is almost taken for granted that the goal of Librarianship is to serve the needs of the communities that utilize the library. However, that concept raises the question of how exactly librarians should serve those needs. Do librarians decide what is best for their communities? Do they select books and materials that they specifically deem valuable? Or does the community get a say in what exactly will satisfy its needs? Rather than separate the librarian and the patron, we should instead look at them as part of the same community, where both the opinion of the library and the opinion of community come together to create a space where both views have equal weight.

In their article “Transformative Library Pedagogy and Community Based Libraries: A Freirean Perspective,” Martina Rielder and Mustafa Yunus propose the idea of the “Transformative Community Based Library (TCBL)”.[1. Rielder, M and Yunus, M. (2010). Transformative library pedagogy and community based libraries: a freirean perspective. In G. J. Leckie, L. M. Given and J. E. Buschman (Eds). Critical theory for library and information science. (pp. 89-99). Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.] They write:

The TCBL model identifies libraries as democratic and educational sites for a community of learners who construct library practices as an interactive process between the present and the future of the community. It therefore encourages library visitors to reflect critically on the information provided, not simply as individual learners but as politically aware members of a community. (201o, p.93)

The TCBL is based on the Paulo Freire’s model of education, presented in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which bucks against the traditional “banking” model of education where teachers communicate set knowledge and students memorize that information in order to repeat it back.[2. Freire, P. (1968). The pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. Reprinted in 2000.] The Freirean model of education proposes that teacher and student work together in the learning process, that the student has a base of existing knowledge that can be expanded on by the teacher, and that the teacher is capable of learning from the student. For example, a traditional classroom might be solely lecture-based, but a Freirean classroom would be seminar/discussion based, putting student voices on the same level as that of their instructor.

While Freire was specifically talking about the classroom, it is easy to see how the banking model vs. the Freirean model applies to libraries. A banking approach to Librarianship would be a library where all decisions are made by the library, and the community is merely presented with materials that has been deemed worthwhile for said community. The community uses only those materials, and little growth occurs. Meanwhile, the Feirean approach to Librarianship would be the TCBL, a library where there is a constant dialogue between the library and the community, resulting in a library that fully serves its community and provides community enhancement. The TCBL recognizes that the patrons and the community are integral parts of the process of library development, and that libraries have the ability to be centers of community empowerment and transformation.

Rielder and Yunus seem to speak more about the TCBL as a library that serves a larger community, such as a neighborhood. However, the TCBL model can be applied to many different fields of librarianship and many different kind of communities. One such field that would greatly benefit from the TCBL model is the field of School Librarianship, particularly school libraries that serve primary and secondary schools.

School libraries are supposed to be spaces that not only enhance the curriculum and provide guidance on the appropriate use of information, but also spaces that foster a real love of learning and reading. Three of the nine Information Literacy Standards set by the American Association of School Librarians refer to this goal, stating that the students up to standard should: “pursue information related to personal interests”, “appreciate literature and other creative expressions of information”, and “strive for excellence in information and knowledge generation” (1998, p. 8-9).[3. The American Association of School Librarians and The Association for Educational Communications and Technology. (1998). Information power: building partnerships for learning. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.] Yet, many libraries, particularly secondary libraries, are not always utilized in ways that would help students to meet these standards. In fact, many students see the library as a place to spend a free period or avoid rather than a space they can use to enhance their education, let alone find material to be used outside of the classroom.

Why is this? Perhaps it is because many school libraries do not necessarily feel like community spaces to students. The library’s collection may only contain books that pertain to the curriculum, or may only have books that the librarian deems appropriate for the students without student input. The Library Media Specialist may barely interact with the students. I recall in my own high school library that while I spent a lot of time there doing homework, I don’t think I ever exchanged more than a few words with my high school LMS. She was completely separate from her students. This kind of library, like the banking model of education, may be adequate for providing set knowledge to the community (coming from the school district, state standards, curriculum needs, etc.), but it does nothing to really help its core community (the students) learn and thrive. It attempts to serve a community that it is disconnected from, and so it fails.

However, a library that follows the TCBL model, and really partners with its students, has the ability to actually succeed in its goals to promote information literacy and passion for reading and learning. If students feel that they have a voice in the development and management of the library, it stops being a space that they can be in and becomes a space that they take ownership of. Rielder and Yunus write “If learning involves the ability to negotiate new meanings and become a new person, it requires a space, a community, a counter public within which learners can engage with others in joint practice” (2010, p.95). In the context of the school library, the students have to feel like their library truly represents their needs and their interests, not just the needs and interests that the school district says they’re supposed to have. This type of library is what really drives learning outside of the classroom and strengthens a students education.

There are Library Media Specialists who are developing libraries that really do represent their communities needs and interests, with strong results. For example, the School Library Journal recently reported on the LMS at Chicago’s Wendell Phillips Academy High School: K.C. Boyd. When Boyd first started teaching as the LMS at Wendell Phillips, the school library was underutilized by the student body. Boyd had to “drag kids” into the library, but now the students come willingly and the library is one of the most popular spaces in the school.[4. Daz, M. (2014). Chicago hope: high school librarian k.c. boyd. School library journal, October vol. Retrieved from http://www.slj.com/2014/10/librarians/chicago-hope-high-school-librarian-k-c-boyd/] How did Boyd accomplish this? By paying attentions to what her community, her students, needed from the library and shaping the library around those needs.

K.C. Boyd working with students in the Wendell Phillips library. Taken from School Library Journal.

Boyd began to purchase manga, poetry, supernatural stories, and street lit for her library because it was what her students wanted.[5. Ibid.] School Library Journal’s Mahnaz Dar notes that many educators may shy away from the street lit genre, but Boyd has proved that it has an important place in her library. Dar writes:

Boyd’s willingness to purchase these titles shows a deep understanding and perception of her community. Many of her students come from neighborhoods where violence or crime is common. She can warn them against risky or dangerous behavior, she says, but “if they read a story with characters in similar situations, that story sits with them much more than what I would ever say. Street lit feeds into the social and emotional issues my students are dealing with.”[6. Ibid.]

Boyd, as an LMS, has created a library where the students are active participants in how their library runs, how collections development works, and how they learn and engage with information. Like a teacher might work with a student in the Freirean model of education, Boyd recognizes that she must help her students shape their own education process rather than tell them what their education process will be. Boyd’s library, which matches the description of the TCBL, has proved to be very effective. The school’s ranking has improved, ACT scores are higher, and the Class of 2014 collectively earned $2.3 million in scholarship funds.[7. Ibid.] While, of course, there are other factors in play, and Boyd is not solely responsible for these changes, she certainly plays an important role in her school’s improvement by managing a library that represents and incorporates the student community.

The Transformative Community Based Library model is extremely beneficial to school librarianship, especially since the model has its roots in education theory. If the field of classroom education wants to move away from the banking model, why shouldn’t the school library follow suit? Library Media Specialists, like Boyd, have shown that the TCBL model is effective, and better helps students achieve information literacy standards. There will be barriers like budgeting, district regulations, and administrative support, but overall, if schools adopt the TCBL model, they will better serve their community and provide real enrichment for their students.

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Serving Patrons with Different Views

Sara Sheer LIS-651-03
How should librarians serve patrons with varying beliefs and views, especially when they are different from the librarian’s own? According to Cosette (2009) the philosophy, as opposed to the science, of librarianship necessitates value judgments (p. 8), and the authors featured in Questioning Library Neutrality agree. Cosette (2009) also says that librarianship means “assuring a maximum of information access for the human community” (p. 33). I agree with this sentiment, but it begs the questions as to how one should go about doing so. Cosette’s (2009) belief that it is the role of the library to inform and help the public so as to make it “a knowledgeable and rational electorate” (p. 42) does not deal with the issue that a belief, especially a political one, that one person finds rational another will find irrational. Indeed, some thinkers like philosopher Michael Oakeshott believe that “rationalism” in the form of social engineering and radical reform is bound to fail.
Cosette (2009) holds that libraries “should be democratic in their methods and processes” (p. 56) and that “Librarians working in democratic libraries are professionally neutral in facing political, moral, and religious problems that divide readers” (p. 56). If a patron asks for information on one of these problems, the librarian should refer him to sources from multiple and conflicting viewpoints, for, as Cosette (2009) says, “what is important is not to impose a certain idea, but to provide [an] additional opening to the world that allows for informed choices…” (p. 56-57) by “[providing] free access to all to a collection that contains controversial texts and ideas” (p. 57). By doing so “libraries give each individual the means of critiquing power,” (p. 60-61), which in turn allows people to work toward human progress (Cosette, 2009, p. 61).
The contributors in Questioning Library Neutrality not only disagree that librarians should be neutral but maintain that what is generally referred to as “neutrality” in the context of libraries is in fact nothing of the sort, but rather an active affirmation of the status quo and hegemonic discourse. In their opinion, accepting ideals of neutrality and objectivity can make librarians into uncritical servants of the knowledge elites (Lewis, 2008, p. 25). Rejecting the ideals of neutrality and objectivity raises the question of what a librarian should do instead. Steven Joyce’s answer is that while librarians shouldn’t throw out material with mainstream or traditional viewpoints, they should add alternative and progressive viewpoints alongside them (Lewis, 2008, p. 52). I think that this is the right approach, as it exposes patrons to a broad spectrum of views on various topics without shutting out either the “mainstream” or the “radical.”
Not all of the contributors to Questioning Library Neutrality agree with Joyce on this, however. Sandy Iverson points out that while South Africa was under an apartheid regime, many libraries still obtained their information on South Africa from the South African consulate and neglected to include pamphlet files critical of apartheid. Iverson’s conclusion is that “Librarians must be challenged to treat racist materials as racist materials,” (Lewis, 2008, p. 27) without defining what “racist” actually means. This seems problematic to me. I agree that while South Africa was under apartheid libraries should not have used “information” from the South African consulate (nor, in my opinion, should they have used materials from the consulates of Communist dictatorships like Cuba, China, Vietnam, the USSR, etc.). But the explicitly racist apartheid regime has been gone for two decades now, and what is or is not “racist” is often a contentious subject. For example, anti-Zionists often claim that Zionism is a form of racism against Palestinians, while many Zionists believe that anti-Zionism is a form of racism against Jews. My personal opinion is that both Zionism and anti-Zionism are both sometimes racist and sometimes not. Joseph Good goes even further than Iverson by saying, “Neutral responses to the vital issues of gay marriage, African-American reparations, and affirmative action continually jeopardize the library’s relevance in contemporary society” (Lewis, 2008, p. 144). I think this is flat-out wrong. Good apparently assumes that anyone who opposes affirmative action is at best in denial of the persistence of racism in American society and at worst actively in favor of racism. This leaves no room for people such as myself who believe that racism is a huge and persistent problem in this country but do not think that affirmative action is the right way to remedy that. As for gay marriage, I am strongly in favor of it myself, but it must be kept in mind that practically no one was in favor of gay marriage until a quarter of a century ago and many people are still opposed to it, not all of them for bigoted reasons. The Bible condemns homosexuality, as does Islam, and until quite recently most Westerners agreed. Does that mean that libraries shouldn’t have copies of the Old Testament or the Koran? Again, I am strongly in favor or gay rights myself, but I agree with Cosette (2009) that librarians should be “professionally neutral in facing political, moral and religious problems that divide readers” (p. 56) and should “not [force] users to sympathize with any aims that might be imposed by an institution” (p. 59). Suppose a librarian is opposed to gay marriage, for whatever reasons. Should she have the right to stock only materials that support her position?
While I believe that libraries should stock materials from opposing viewpoints on controversial issues such as gay marriage or affirmative action, I do think that certain viewpoints should be considered beyond the pale. I don’t think libraries should stock books advocating creationism or Holocaust denial because, like Alison M. Lewis (2008), I believe that “creationism and Holocaust denial have been discredited by the vast majority of the scientists and historians, respectively,” (p. 2) and therefore “don’t hold equal weight in the marketplace of ideas, and they are not deserving of an equal share of limited library resources” (p. 2) I do believe, however, that libraries should have copies of Mein Kampf available as it can provide valuable insight into Hitler’s beliefs and way of thinking, which are crucial for understanding the Holocaust. I also would not stock books that denied man-caused climate change because this view goes against the overwhelming scientific consensus.
In conclusion, I think that libraries should stock materials representing a broad spectrum of viewpoints (though excluding disproven beliefs like creationism and Holocaust denial), including viewpoints often viewed in America as “radical” and thus beyond-the-pale, such as socialism and anarchism. However, I think that librarians should be careful not to impose their views on either the collection or the patrons. If a patron comes to a librarian asking for information on a controversial topic, the librarian should provide her with material representing a broad variety of viewpoints, even some the librarian may consider incorrect.

References
Cosette, A. (2009). Humanism and libraries. (R. Litwin, Trans.). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press. (Original work published 1976).
Good, J. (2008). The hottest place in hell; The crisis of neutrality in contemporary librarianship. In A. Lewis (Ed.), Questioning library neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian (pp. 141-145). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.
Iverson, S. (2008). Librarianship and resistance. In A. Lewis (Ed.), Questioning library neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian (pp. 25-31). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.
Joyce, S. (2008). A few gates redux: An examination of the social responsibilities debate in the early 1970s and 1990s. In A. Lewis (Ed.), Questioning library neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian (pp. 33-65). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.
Lewis, A. (2008). Introduction. In A. Lewis (Ed.), Questioning library neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian (pp. 1-4). Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press.

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