Posts Tagged ‘rants’

Library Receptionist?

So this is a quote from my Field Experience Blog, which I am treating way more like a blog and less like the academic assignment it actually is. Hopefully my advisor won’t regret his choice of formats because of my rambling nature. It is normally not that exciting–I mostly just report what non-fiction questions I answer and collection maintenance I do–but this happened today and I couldn’t not write about it:

“Then close to my time to leave, something small happened that I’ve been thinking about almost constantly since. This woman was asking me if anyone had turned in her thumb drive, which she had apparently lost at the library at some point. She seemed really annoyed that I didn’t immediately understand the situation from the statement “Has anyone seen my USB?” She complained that, “A librarian assured me that she would send an email around to all of you library receptionists!” As an intern, I don’t have a Wake County email address, so sometimes I am out of the loop on these things. I checked the lost and found for her, but no one had turned in her thumb drive. She left, and I thought about the phrase “library receptionist” for the rest of the night.

Most people assume that if you’re sitting behind a desk in the library, you’re a librarian, which is totally fair. How are they supposed to know the actual professional requirements of the term “librarian”? To them, a librarian is someone who sits at a desk at the library and can help them find books. And any library assistant or unpaid intern can do that, master’s degree in progress or no. I’ve never had anyone assume that, because I’m sitting behind a desk at the front of the library, I’m a receptionist. I guess it makes sense; at plenty of offices or businesses that’s what it would mean. Plus, I am awesome at typing and answering the phone. But I’m not a receptionist. I’m not going to grad school to be a receptionist. I don’t spend almost all of my free time reading children’s books to be a better receptionist. But is that how people see us? No wonder we are always explaining that Yes, you DO need a master’s degree for that. No wonder we’re so defensive as a profession, sometimes to our detriment. It used to really bother me when librarians I worked with would make their master’s degree such a big deal or try to pull rank with it, when I’ve known amazing library assistants with years of experience who could do anything they could, a lot of times better. I still think, even after almost earning mine, that the master’s degree is overrated; experience is still the best teacher. But I’m beginning to see why people defend it so much: because we do so much work that people consistently undervalue or don’t notice, and a master’s degree is at least an outward sign of that.

But, like a good writer, we need to show rather than tell. I think we need to stop whining in class or on our field experience blogs that we’re professionals, that we deserve to be recognized for being more than just receptionists, and show people that we are. We need to stop insisting to each other that we’re relevant and do something to make other people believe it. I don’t know what that something is yet–it’s probably more than one thing–but I’ll get back to you.”

Challenging Books: Not my BFF but not my arch nemesis

Banned Books Week has got me thinking a lot about the process of challenging books, and I thought I should probably clarify something.

Challenging books does not make me angry by itself. Even when they’re challenged for what I perceive as silly reasons. When books actually get banned, especially for what I perceive as silly reasons… that’s when I get a little upset.

In library school, we’re often told that “you should welcome challenges because it begins a meaningful dialog about the collection, collection development, and the purpose of a library”. I think my professors are envisioning me giving an offended patron a meaningful short-course in the basic tenants of library science and Freedom to Read1 and they will walk away more enlightened and ready to donate money to the exciting and dynamic field of library science. In my imagination, the conversation would probably go more like this:

Patron: This book is going to turn our children into RAPISTS!
Me: I’m so sorry; why do you feel that way?
Patron: The back of the book says it’s about GAY PEOPLE
Me: Well, if you’d like to formally challenge it for removal or reclassification, we have a process and these forms you can fill out, although you will have to actually read the book
Patron: (throws book at me)
Me: Let me explain our collection development policy…
Patron: (bites me)
Me: (turns into a homophobe-pire)

I don’t know which of us is more delusional, but I do know that a healthy discussion about collection development is not going to sway most people from their angry rants against the dictionary or whatever.

I actually do agree with my professors that challenges aren’t all bad. For instance, I like the fact that someone cares so much about the library and what we do there to get really mad about it. That’s way better than the passive indifference we get from a good percentage of the population. I also think anything that gets people to read books more, and talk about books more is cool, and challenging a book will certainly do that. Also, sometimes books really do need to be challenged. Here is an illustrative example, this time from real life:

Once upon a time, I was working at a library which shall remain nameless. While shelving children’s nonfiction one Sunday before we opened, I came across this in the poetry section:

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton

Immediately I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know Tim Burton had written a book of poetry for children”. Since it looked kind of like Edward Gorey, I took it back to the desk with me to glance through. The first thing I noticed was the titular poem “The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy“, ends with the father eating his own son to cure his impotence. I was really unsure if this should be shelved next to Shel Silverstein, and personally did not ever want to have to explain impotence to a six-year-old. A glance at other libraries nearby confirmed that most of them had shelved it in the teen or adult sections; probably it was only mistakenly placed in children’s because it had illustrations and the poem titles seemed unoffensively juvenile.

Librarians aren’t perfect. It’s not like we know all there is to know about books, or that we don’t make mistakes sometimes. Usually when I ask librarians about problems with challenged books, their few stories are similar to this one, more about reclassification than outright banning, and most of the time the concerns are entirely justified.

So challenges themselves, I don’t really view negatively. It’s more when one person or a group of people think they should be able to set morality standards for everyone that I get slightly miffed.


1 People in library school and beyond are always citing their Freedom to Read as a constitutional right, but I remember 10th grade Civics, and it’s really not. I think usually they try to squish it in there with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but that is only the same thing if you squint, you guys.

Banned Books: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

Title: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Author: Alan Moore; illustrated by Kevin O’Neill
Not to be Confused With: the movie spin off
Challenged At: Jessamine County Public Library, Nicolasville, Kentucky
Along with four other works for: “offend[ing] me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion”

I saved this one for Banned Book Week because it definitely has the most dramatic challenging of any this year as evidenced by the fact that I knew all about it before I started this project. The ALA 2010 Banned Book List has this to say about it:

A petition with 950 signatures was presented to the board to overturn its collection policy. The petition specifically asked for the removal of four works on the grounds that “they offended me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion” of what should be in a public, taxpayer-supported collection. The petition concluded the works constituted a public safety issue in that they encourage sexual predators… the graphic novel eventually got two employees fired for breaching library policies, the library director was threatened with physical harm, and the book was recataloged, along with other graphic novels with mature trends, to a separate but unrestricted graphic novels section of the library.

But the best part of the story, the part I knew about previously is that, “got two employees fired” part. Basically, about two years ago Sharon Cook, a library assistant, found League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier on the shelves and freaked out because there are drawings of naked ladies in it plus some strange 1984-propaganda-pornography that is supposed to be taken as a joke. After having her challenge denied, she decided to check it out and never return it for about six months, renewing it over and over so that it would never be on the shelves. Then someone put it on hold and, looking up the patron, Cook discovered it was an 11-year-old girl! After consulting with two colleagues, Beth Boisvert and Cook decided to cancel the girl’s hold and continue what they were doing. Nice. You can read a detailed article about the incident here and elsewhere, but here are my favorite parts of the Lexington Herald-Leader piece:
Read the rest of this entry »

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