There was an interesting article published on Medium the other day about the emotional work that librarians encounter in their day-to-day work.
I really resonated with the subject matter of the article. Many of my friends and colleagues have heard me say multiple times that I feel more like a bar tender or a psychologist when I work the reference desk. The stories and information you learn about the patrons, both regulars and non-regulars alike, is sometimes overwhelming. Often, I've been confronted with information that I don't feel equipped to handle. For example, during my first semester as a community college reference and instruction librarian, I was helping a student find information about men with HIV/AIDS. Being a novice in reference services, I was stumbling through the interview. To get at the type of information the patron really wanted, which was personal narratives of homosexual men with the disease, the person admitted a recent diagnosis of HIV positive. While I felt honored the student felt comfortable enough through our limited interaction to share this information with me, I left the interaction with a sense of failure. It felt a failure on two levels; the first being that the student felt he needed to share that information to communicate his information needs and the second being my reaction to his news, which was to pretty much go "okay, I think I know where to look now". That was probably the most personal information anyone has shared with me at the reference desk. It wasn't the only thing though. I've had people, whose names I don't even know, share their fresh divorce news and financial troubles of house foreclosures. One night I had a "regular" ask if I could feel her forehead to see if she had a fever because she felt sick. Another night I had to call an ambulance for a student that was complaining of chest pain, and the professor and I worked to keep him calm until help arrived. During a terrible rainstorm I had a student come to the library with a scraped and bleeding leg asking for bandages because she knew the medical center was closed and the library was the next place she thought of. Physical ailments are fairly easy to deal with (aside from the drug overdoses that many librarians are encountering). For the most part though, we assist in a limited capacity until medical professionals arrive. Emotional issues are another thing entirely. The number of times I've calmed a student down who was basically sobbing over an assignment at the desk is so high I've lost count. I've seen the fear in students' eyes as they realize they forgot to save properly and have lost most, if not all, of the paper they were working on for the last six hours. Patrons have told me how they connect with the books they're reading because, like the main character, they too were raped and assaulted. For most people, especially the "non-regulars", I'm just a face they can dump their troubles on and walk away from. I exist to help them in that moment of crisis and then be forgotten about. I understand that role. The thing that they don't understand is that it stays with me. I worry when my regulars are having problems and I don't see them come into the library as usual. My mind still thinks back on that student diagnosed HIV+. I kept checking in with the professor of the student I called the ambulance for until I heard he was all right. I don't just forget, and many times I'm left without an answer and to wonder whether that person is okay. Librarians don't just deal with information needs. We also deal with the story surrounding that information need. Is it for an assignment? Is it for personal research? Like a doctor, we need the patient's whole story, not just what they think their symptoms are, to make a better diagnosis. While we learn many skills on the job, I think it would be beneficial for library students to have some introductory coursework in psychology. Not only to feel better equipped to handle the very odd situations that happen consistently at the reference desk, but also to know how to better emotionally stabilize ourselves. I've grown as a person and learnt a lot from my interactions with patrons, but I wish I had been better equipped to handle their problems before starting my job.
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This post topic probably seems a bit on the late side since Banned Books week was back in September this year, but a recent issue has arisen that has my blood boiling.
In case you were unaware, a school board in Florida has decided to place a ban on books that include "profanity, cursing, or inappropriate subject matter." You can read about it in more detail here. This directive is ridiculous and appalling. What is "inappropriate" subject matters? Who gets to decide what is "inappropriate"? What if I find certain topics inappropriate that others don't? The frightening part of this directive is that it will undoubtedly be used to silence the voices of marginalized groups. There have been plenty of studies that examine the connection between empathy and fiction readers. They've even done studies focusing specifically on Harry Potter! If you don't have access to library databases, you can do a quick google scholar search and come across a multitude of results. It might seem an odd notion to some, but students need access to materials that contain profanity, cursing, and inappropriate subject matter. They need to see that some things are just human nature. It also helps students be able to frame and contextualize situations that may seem foreign to them. By not allowing students to access stories and information, we're stunting their growth. One could even make the leap and say we are stunting the growth of our society. We should be encouraging younger generations to be better than us - to be more open, more accepting, more inclusive. Reading is about broadening your horizons, opening yourself up to new experiences in a safe environment. It's about reflection; it's about examining what makes you uncomfortable and why. It's about learning. I read an article published by Inside Higher Ed this morning about Cengage moving into the OER territory. Apparently, they are planning on charging $25 per student to access their OER materials. They are claiming the cost is for the platform.
In case you were unaware, OER stands for Open Educational Resources. The definition that I like best comes from Creative Commons: "Open educational resources (OER) are free and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes." I find it slightly ironic that big publishing giants are moving into OER. Part of the OER movement stems from trying to get away from publishers, their licenses, and the fees they charge. The OER movement is to allow researchers, scholars, academics, and really anyone the ability to access free information. If OER is supposed to be FREE and OPENLY LICENSED then Cengage is not promoting OER. In my opinion, if it has a cost attached to it, then it can't be OER. Cengage is trying to get around that fact, as I previously mentioned, by claiming that the fee is for the platform use. I fear that many other publishing companies will be following in their footsteps in the near future. Just as textbooks and course materials have increased in price, so will these platform fees. It's only a matter of time. Am I being too cynical? Quite possibly. I just think that if you are going to claim that you are providing OER, you should be providing it freely and openly. End Rant. Image taken from Nobelprize.org If you haven't already heard the news, Kazuo Ishiguro is the latest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Congrats to him! If you have not read anything by this British author yet, I would highly recommend checking him out. I've read both Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, which are probably two of his more well known works. I enjoyed both of them. If you are a fan of the current American style of writing (fast paced, action oriented, and superficial), then I would not recommend his books. Ishiguro's pieces are dense, slower paces, and are more character driven. His writing is quite profound, but I wouldn't recommend it for a light beach reading day.
While many people will be focusing on Kazuo Ishiguro in the articles about the Nobel Prize, I thought this would be a fun opportunity to take a look at the history of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It all began on November 25, 1895. It was on this day that Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, through his last will and testament. Nobel is most famously known as the inventor of dynamite, but was a man of many intellectual curiosities. He spoke multiple languages, and left behind a private library with over 1500 volumes. Nobel passed away in 1896, but the first prize was not awarded until 1901. This gap in years was due to the fact that many people, including relatives and non-relatives, contested this latest will. Since Nobel was leaving behind a large fortune, many people wanted a piece of it, or for pieces of it to be reserved for Sweden only. Nobel designated different organizations to select the award winners for different prizes. The Academy in Stockholm, now known as The Swedish Academy was honored with the Literature Prize selection. The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustaf III to advance the Swedish literature and Swedish language. Founded in 1901, The Nobel Library, serves the purpose of aiding the Swedish Academy in evaluating selections for the Prize. So that is a short history of the Nobel Prize in Literature! To learn more about it, check out these resources below. (By the way, in the interest of being a good librarian, this is also serving as my References list.) Resources/References:
The Library of Congress has recently debuted their new online "Labs" website. I decided to check it out to see what all the fuss was about. Library of Congress Labs: https://labs.loc.gov/ The Labs website is a fun place to interact with digitized collections of the Library of Congress. If you have any interest in history, World War I, or contributing to the digitization and usefulness of archival resources, this is the place for you.
I mostly played around with the Experiments section. In this section is a project called "Beyond Words". Here you can help identify pictures located in old newspapers through marking, transcribing, and verifying. If you have no background in history, but still want to play around - I would suggest sticking with the marking portion. You can use online tools to mark on the page where a picture occurs, which someone can then go through later and transcribe. Overall, this new site from Library of Congress is quite fun. I enjoyed marking up a few newspapers, finding it easy and intriguing at the same time. I'm looking forward to how this online "Labs" will expand and grow in the future. It has a lot of potential. |
AuthorI have worked in Education my entire life moving from K-12, to a community college, to my current position at a four year. I am fascinated by weird things and information in general. Archives
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