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[This year's December Days are categorized! Specifically: "Things I should have learned in library school, had (I/they) been paying attention. It's been a hoot doing these, and thank you for your suggestions.]
You have probably noticed at this point that a public library is a walking contradiction. It's an entity that has to be both conservative and progressive, the long tail to make sure everyone is able to catch up and far enough on the edge that there's something new and exciting to learn for all of the people that come in. We are bound by taxation laws and able to seek funding from various community organizations and private-sector partnerships (mostly through the foundations that we have or our Friends groups, because those laws and rules are pretty strict about stuff.) Our target market is our community, from the smallest younglings to the wisest of elders, the richest and the poorest alike. Yet we band together, each of us, in associations at county, state, national, and international levels to advocate for ourselves and our communities to those who do not understand them well, if at all, and yet control their fate just as surely. We are the "people's university," with all of the messy socialist liberal ideals that entails, and yet we are increasingly restricted and constrained in our ability to provide knowledge to others by the encroachment of intellectual property and copyright laws bent to serve the moneymaking interests of corporations ad infinitum instead of acknowledging the limited monopoly was meant to drive innovation and that no company should be able to just infinitely iterate on a crap product and have everyone purchase it because while it's not a monopoly legally, they're the ones providing a captive audience for others.
The public library itself is difficult to change, as well, as a whole. There's a certain reluctance to leave the things that we have essentially built our brand on - the availability of print materials to people without cost for their information and education. Print is still generally the biggest footprint in a library. There are certain reasons for that - print is relatively durable and inexpensive to obtain, as opposed to the exorbitant amount of money we will pay for licenses to use ebooks that can be and are revoked after limited uses or at arbitrary times and reasons. Because we have print, and because we still see our target audiences as print-readers, libraries as a whole have been slow to advocate for the ability to actually own materials, instead of just renting them from vendors. We've also been slow about getting things like the First Sale Doctrine to apply to electronic products as well, so that instead of being sold a license to use a piece of software that can come with conditions of use, we actually own the thing and can do what we want with it, including selling it to someone else, letting them borrow it, reverse-engineering it to see if we can use it for something else or to figure out how it ticks, and the like. So long as the Copyright Office is under the jurisdiction of the Librarian of Congress, it's entirely possible that we could petition them to make sensible exceptions, like the ones that allowed you to gain superuser access to a mobile device so that you could put the software of your choice on it, instead of being solely limited to whatever your device carrier's sandbox, if you wanted to take that risk. If we weren't being limited in our choices by what we can do with licensing and DRM, then we would be able to potentially move every library out of a locked-in ecosystem and save ourselves a significant amount of money while increasing choice and freedom. (Isn't that what at least one wing of politics here in the States is theoretically about?)
Things can be difficult to make change even at the organizational level. That program I did with games in my branch? Was because I couldn't really gather enough support in the library system to do it all across the way. At least some part of that was because I was a new person in the library system, coming in with ideas and change thoughts, and I got the normal response to someone coming in with change thoughts to an old institution: "That's nice, child, come back and see us again when you've gotten a few years under your belt." It's a waste of a precious resource to force your newcomers to learn who the actual powerbrokers are in your organization, the process by which things really get done, and that they won't actually be listened to until they've been in the system long enough for anyone to pay attention to them. The reason that I started documenting and then sharing my documentation about how things work in my corner of things was because I got continually frustrated about aspects of my work that should have worked and didn't, or those aspects of my work that were only occasional, slightly convoluted, but would absolutely result in things going wrong or being called to the carpet a bit if they were done incorrectly. That document is laced with as much snark and comedy as I can get away with putting in it because I want to signal to anyone who reads it that the organization they are part of is the kind of organization that will frustrate you if you assume that it functions like any other kind of organization you are familiar with.
Or, sometimes, that it functions at all. In ten years of being with the organization, the only method that officially exists of getting communication between front-line staff and higher management is to go through one's branch supervisor, who then gets to decide whether to send it on to the people above them and in what form it goes there. If you have a supervisor that's actively working against you, though, or who is a problem that needs to be fixed or routed around, there's no way of flagging this up to the people above you. HR is a crapshoot at best, an active collaborator in making the problem worse at worst. The union can take action on your behalf in specific circumstances, but it's usually going to require exhaustive documentation. There's no channel for direct communication with upper management short of having the courage to go directly to them and tell them about what's going on, which is a no-go if you're not completely sure something good will come out of it and there won't be any retaliation, subtle or otherwise, for having had the temerity to go around your supervisor.
We have had people quit the organization over persistent deadnaming and misgendering by a supervisor, as well as comments that clearly made that place unsafe to work at. But the organization as a whole is having trouble with adapting to this new reality - suggestions to add pronoun spaces on name tags have to be suggested to exactly the right person, who gets to decide whether or not they get implemented because that's their fiefdom and the uniformity of branding and communication might be more important than allowing people to signal what kind of space the library is. I sat a committee this year that was specifically commissioned to find out why library employees had only okay morale, as reported by an outside study group that talked to us. We gathered lots of information about why people had low morale - how we treat substitutes was one of the big ones. A disconnection between staff that work in the administrative center and staff that work on the front lines was also a big one - front-line staff had the general opinion that the people working in the administrative building didn't have enough of a clue about how branch operations went to be able to create effective policy, when designing procedures on how to handle materials, or to provide the necessary backup for branch staff when they had to use their judgment calls when "in charge." We recommended more and more visible visits by the upper management to the branches so the front-line staff would feel like their managers were actually present in their lives.
We recommended the library train all staff, including the substitutes, on the realities of our new world, beyond just "you're serving a diverse population and your personal prejudices or thoughts on the matter aren't allowed to come into play." Because for a lot of people with marginalized identities, if we're not affirmatively signaling we're good people and then backing it up by being good people when nobody appears to be looking, we're not going to be the place they go for support and help, even if we have the resources that could help them a lot. We did a lot of recommending things that we thought were powerful but achievable changes in the organization, the kinds of things that could be implemented yesterday.
We asked for formal direct communication channels that we could use if we had suggestions or issues with the library and its operations, the kind that would guarantee a response from the people in upper management if they were used and had names attached to them.
We got blown off, to put it kindly. The upper management gave back about two pages worth of response to our presentation and data, all of which had the same tune to it. "We're glad to have heard from you on these matters. We're already doing the things that you're suggesting, so we don't feel like we have to expend any extra effort to address your concerns." If the organization were doing enough to address those concerns, they would not still be concerns and we wouldn't be bringing them before you. There's still only one official way of getting something to get put before someone in upper management. There are lots of unofficial ways, often the kind that include being in the same place and having a hallway conversation, something that a person who travels to the administrative center on the regular might be able to do, but that the people who don't will be denied the opportunity to become more visible and more personally able to talk. This is another reason why I have The Agreement - I have the ability to place issues and suggestions in the laps of people higher-up because I can see them more often and in more informal settings than anyone at a lower classification than me. I can put words in ears and see what happens. I shouldn't have to use this power this way, because everyone should have a way of making suggestions that get listened to.
Library school does not teach you about playing politics in your own organization. It can't help you figure out how to spot the people who actually get things done and to route suggestions through them, or get them on your side if you want a decision to go your way. It doesn't teach you the ways of asking for redress, of pointing out flaws in such a way that someone takes them seriously, or of getting your organization to move, however slowly, in the right direction to position them to be in a good space when the future you can see coming arrives. Library school wants you to believe that good ideas find their way to the right people by virtue of being good ideas - a very Gryffindor sentiment, but organizations are full of people, and people require Slytherins and Hufflepuffs to make things happen. I want to tell you so very badly that the public library is an institution that is well-positioned to adapt to changes in the world and can move swiftly to meet the challenges of the future, but if I did, I would be lying to you in at least some degree. How big or small that lie is depends on the organization that's being talked about in the specific, but most organizations don't have the structures, programs, and ideas in place that make them able to grapple with fast-moving issues, trends, or ideas, and have the ability to discern which among them is going to be ones to pay more attention to. Branches and locations can get away with some things at their local levels, but systematic change is difficult if it's not initiated at the highest levels and given the full backing of those levels to get implemented. We often waste our most precious resources by telling them they have to learn how the organization actually functions before we'll listen to them, or by discounting that they could have any sort of good idea for the system by virtue of being new to it. Or that they're just substitutes.
Or even just by saying that this kind of person can become a librarian. Requiring graduate school to become a fully-fledged librarian, even if you have plenty of experience doing the library things, is a barrier to allowing more people to become librarians. Which limits your pool of people in the library field who can speak up and say "you're not serving people like me because you don't have people like me in your profession." As a whole, the library profession took its time figuring out that -isms are bad and that the best way to ensure survival and relevance is to be able to serve all the people in the community. We're on track to be making that mistake again, just with some additional -isms thrown in for good measure.
Library school did teach me a lot of things, but it's only with experience that I realize what library school taught were foundations - beginning blocks to build upon, techniques to use, the parts of the profession you need to have as a bare minimum to do the job. The parts that make me effective at my work are all things that I've had to learn on the job, and a lot of them are specific to the place where I work. What kind of lovely world would it be where people just coming out of library school had the tools to be maximally effective wherever they were posted, and where people who have already gained the insight into their communities could then be given the tools to do the rest of the work to build programming and collections that would serve those communities well? What kind of place would we have if it were a rule, instead of an exception, that there were clear lines of communication, with guarantees of reply, so that everyone in the organization felt like they had a voice in its running? What kind of place would we have where the library gave as much thought to what was going outside of the buildings as what went inside them?
Creating change doesn't have to be as hard as we're making it. Here's hoping that in the next year, we can start moving faster in the direction that makes the public library indispensable to everyone, by being relevant, welcoming, and active in our communities.
You have probably noticed at this point that a public library is a walking contradiction. It's an entity that has to be both conservative and progressive, the long tail to make sure everyone is able to catch up and far enough on the edge that there's something new and exciting to learn for all of the people that come in. We are bound by taxation laws and able to seek funding from various community organizations and private-sector partnerships (mostly through the foundations that we have or our Friends groups, because those laws and rules are pretty strict about stuff.) Our target market is our community, from the smallest younglings to the wisest of elders, the richest and the poorest alike. Yet we band together, each of us, in associations at county, state, national, and international levels to advocate for ourselves and our communities to those who do not understand them well, if at all, and yet control their fate just as surely. We are the "people's university," with all of the messy socialist liberal ideals that entails, and yet we are increasingly restricted and constrained in our ability to provide knowledge to others by the encroachment of intellectual property and copyright laws bent to serve the moneymaking interests of corporations ad infinitum instead of acknowledging the limited monopoly was meant to drive innovation and that no company should be able to just infinitely iterate on a crap product and have everyone purchase it because while it's not a monopoly legally, they're the ones providing a captive audience for others.
The public library itself is difficult to change, as well, as a whole. There's a certain reluctance to leave the things that we have essentially built our brand on - the availability of print materials to people without cost for their information and education. Print is still generally the biggest footprint in a library. There are certain reasons for that - print is relatively durable and inexpensive to obtain, as opposed to the exorbitant amount of money we will pay for licenses to use ebooks that can be and are revoked after limited uses or at arbitrary times and reasons. Because we have print, and because we still see our target audiences as print-readers, libraries as a whole have been slow to advocate for the ability to actually own materials, instead of just renting them from vendors. We've also been slow about getting things like the First Sale Doctrine to apply to electronic products as well, so that instead of being sold a license to use a piece of software that can come with conditions of use, we actually own the thing and can do what we want with it, including selling it to someone else, letting them borrow it, reverse-engineering it to see if we can use it for something else or to figure out how it ticks, and the like. So long as the Copyright Office is under the jurisdiction of the Librarian of Congress, it's entirely possible that we could petition them to make sensible exceptions, like the ones that allowed you to gain superuser access to a mobile device so that you could put the software of your choice on it, instead of being solely limited to whatever your device carrier's sandbox, if you wanted to take that risk. If we weren't being limited in our choices by what we can do with licensing and DRM, then we would be able to potentially move every library out of a locked-in ecosystem and save ourselves a significant amount of money while increasing choice and freedom. (Isn't that what at least one wing of politics here in the States is theoretically about?)
Things can be difficult to make change even at the organizational level. That program I did with games in my branch? Was because I couldn't really gather enough support in the library system to do it all across the way. At least some part of that was because I was a new person in the library system, coming in with ideas and change thoughts, and I got the normal response to someone coming in with change thoughts to an old institution: "That's nice, child, come back and see us again when you've gotten a few years under your belt." It's a waste of a precious resource to force your newcomers to learn who the actual powerbrokers are in your organization, the process by which things really get done, and that they won't actually be listened to until they've been in the system long enough for anyone to pay attention to them. The reason that I started documenting and then sharing my documentation about how things work in my corner of things was because I got continually frustrated about aspects of my work that should have worked and didn't, or those aspects of my work that were only occasional, slightly convoluted, but would absolutely result in things going wrong or being called to the carpet a bit if they were done incorrectly. That document is laced with as much snark and comedy as I can get away with putting in it because I want to signal to anyone who reads it that the organization they are part of is the kind of organization that will frustrate you if you assume that it functions like any other kind of organization you are familiar with.
Or, sometimes, that it functions at all. In ten years of being with the organization, the only method that officially exists of getting communication between front-line staff and higher management is to go through one's branch supervisor, who then gets to decide whether to send it on to the people above them and in what form it goes there. If you have a supervisor that's actively working against you, though, or who is a problem that needs to be fixed or routed around, there's no way of flagging this up to the people above you. HR is a crapshoot at best, an active collaborator in making the problem worse at worst. The union can take action on your behalf in specific circumstances, but it's usually going to require exhaustive documentation. There's no channel for direct communication with upper management short of having the courage to go directly to them and tell them about what's going on, which is a no-go if you're not completely sure something good will come out of it and there won't be any retaliation, subtle or otherwise, for having had the temerity to go around your supervisor.
We have had people quit the organization over persistent deadnaming and misgendering by a supervisor, as well as comments that clearly made that place unsafe to work at. But the organization as a whole is having trouble with adapting to this new reality - suggestions to add pronoun spaces on name tags have to be suggested to exactly the right person, who gets to decide whether or not they get implemented because that's their fiefdom and the uniformity of branding and communication might be more important than allowing people to signal what kind of space the library is. I sat a committee this year that was specifically commissioned to find out why library employees had only okay morale, as reported by an outside study group that talked to us. We gathered lots of information about why people had low morale - how we treat substitutes was one of the big ones. A disconnection between staff that work in the administrative center and staff that work on the front lines was also a big one - front-line staff had the general opinion that the people working in the administrative building didn't have enough of a clue about how branch operations went to be able to create effective policy, when designing procedures on how to handle materials, or to provide the necessary backup for branch staff when they had to use their judgment calls when "in charge." We recommended more and more visible visits by the upper management to the branches so the front-line staff would feel like their managers were actually present in their lives.
We recommended the library train all staff, including the substitutes, on the realities of our new world, beyond just "you're serving a diverse population and your personal prejudices or thoughts on the matter aren't allowed to come into play." Because for a lot of people with marginalized identities, if we're not affirmatively signaling we're good people and then backing it up by being good people when nobody appears to be looking, we're not going to be the place they go for support and help, even if we have the resources that could help them a lot. We did a lot of recommending things that we thought were powerful but achievable changes in the organization, the kinds of things that could be implemented yesterday.
We asked for formal direct communication channels that we could use if we had suggestions or issues with the library and its operations, the kind that would guarantee a response from the people in upper management if they were used and had names attached to them.
We got blown off, to put it kindly. The upper management gave back about two pages worth of response to our presentation and data, all of which had the same tune to it. "We're glad to have heard from you on these matters. We're already doing the things that you're suggesting, so we don't feel like we have to expend any extra effort to address your concerns." If the organization were doing enough to address those concerns, they would not still be concerns and we wouldn't be bringing them before you. There's still only one official way of getting something to get put before someone in upper management. There are lots of unofficial ways, often the kind that include being in the same place and having a hallway conversation, something that a person who travels to the administrative center on the regular might be able to do, but that the people who don't will be denied the opportunity to become more visible and more personally able to talk. This is another reason why I have The Agreement - I have the ability to place issues and suggestions in the laps of people higher-up because I can see them more often and in more informal settings than anyone at a lower classification than me. I can put words in ears and see what happens. I shouldn't have to use this power this way, because everyone should have a way of making suggestions that get listened to.
Library school does not teach you about playing politics in your own organization. It can't help you figure out how to spot the people who actually get things done and to route suggestions through them, or get them on your side if you want a decision to go your way. It doesn't teach you the ways of asking for redress, of pointing out flaws in such a way that someone takes them seriously, or of getting your organization to move, however slowly, in the right direction to position them to be in a good space when the future you can see coming arrives. Library school wants you to believe that good ideas find their way to the right people by virtue of being good ideas - a very Gryffindor sentiment, but organizations are full of people, and people require Slytherins and Hufflepuffs to make things happen. I want to tell you so very badly that the public library is an institution that is well-positioned to adapt to changes in the world and can move swiftly to meet the challenges of the future, but if I did, I would be lying to you in at least some degree. How big or small that lie is depends on the organization that's being talked about in the specific, but most organizations don't have the structures, programs, and ideas in place that make them able to grapple with fast-moving issues, trends, or ideas, and have the ability to discern which among them is going to be ones to pay more attention to. Branches and locations can get away with some things at their local levels, but systematic change is difficult if it's not initiated at the highest levels and given the full backing of those levels to get implemented. We often waste our most precious resources by telling them they have to learn how the organization actually functions before we'll listen to them, or by discounting that they could have any sort of good idea for the system by virtue of being new to it. Or that they're just substitutes.
Or even just by saying that this kind of person can become a librarian. Requiring graduate school to become a fully-fledged librarian, even if you have plenty of experience doing the library things, is a barrier to allowing more people to become librarians. Which limits your pool of people in the library field who can speak up and say "you're not serving people like me because you don't have people like me in your profession." As a whole, the library profession took its time figuring out that -isms are bad and that the best way to ensure survival and relevance is to be able to serve all the people in the community. We're on track to be making that mistake again, just with some additional -isms thrown in for good measure.
Library school did teach me a lot of things, but it's only with experience that I realize what library school taught were foundations - beginning blocks to build upon, techniques to use, the parts of the profession you need to have as a bare minimum to do the job. The parts that make me effective at my work are all things that I've had to learn on the job, and a lot of them are specific to the place where I work. What kind of lovely world would it be where people just coming out of library school had the tools to be maximally effective wherever they were posted, and where people who have already gained the insight into their communities could then be given the tools to do the rest of the work to build programming and collections that would serve those communities well? What kind of place would we have if it were a rule, instead of an exception, that there were clear lines of communication, with guarantees of reply, so that everyone in the organization felt like they had a voice in its running? What kind of place would we have where the library gave as much thought to what was going outside of the buildings as what went inside them?
Creating change doesn't have to be as hard as we're making it. Here's hoping that in the next year, we can start moving faster in the direction that makes the public library indispensable to everyone, by being relevant, welcoming, and active in our communities.
