I wrote this email last week Friday and emailed it to Meredith Schwartz, who assumed the position of Library Journal‘s editor-in-chief this past January. I have lightly redacted some references to a specific project we were working on together but left the substantive critique of Library Journal‘s actions around the Library of the Year award intact. 

Updated 2020-06-11 in response to the second message LJ posted. See below the original email.

Dear Meredith,

This isn’t the email I wanted to write this morning. I was hoping to be able to touch base about [project]. Instead, it turns out I need to put my [participation] on pause. I’m sure you know why.

I learned yesterday that the 2020 Gale/LJ Library of the Year award has been given to the Seattle Public Library. As I know you are aware, based on the statement Library Journal issued in response to criticism, the SPL decision to create an unsafe environment for their trans/nonbinary staff and patrons by hosting an anti-trans group in the library this past February makes this award deeply problematic. Even if – as the LJ statement argues – the SPL is taking critique seriously, and working to make institutional change, this award would be (at best) premature.

It’s particularly difficult to stomach such an accolade during Pride month, when we remember the queer and trans youth of color who led the Stonewall uprising. You also made the decision to gloss over the February event during a historical moment when trans/nonbinary people in the United States are being targeted by organized, reactionary forces on the political right who feel emboldened by the Trump administration to pursue an aggressive anti-trans legislative and legal agenda (see for example here, here, and here). Context matters. It is also important to remember that trans and nonbinary people are part of the “vulnerable communities” that you argue in your statement SPL has “radically improved” services for. Trans and nonbinary people of color are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness and poverty, for example, and struggle to access trans-competent mental and medical health services. SPL should not be earning gold stars for “radical” improvements in addressing systemic racism while ignoring the experiences and needs of trans people of color in their community.

Your statement frames the backlash about the award as one that revolves around a harmful, imagined binary between “intellectual freedom” on one side and “equity and inclusion” on the other. Such a framing suggests that for libraries to be champions of intellectual freedom – a notion that makes most white, cisgendered, straight, middle-class, able-bodied liberal-identifying Americans feel warm fuzzy feelings – they must, sadly but necessarily, accept the cost of harm done to marginalized people. Freedom, after all, is supposedly an ultimate good. Where does this leave the freedom (intellectual and otherwise) of trans and nonbinary staff and patrons of libraries like the SPL that allow groups that jeopardize trans lives to convene? Where does that leave the freedom of the trans staff member who must welcome individuals who aggressively misgender them, or patrons unable to access the library’s resources because the presence of the anti-trans group makes the library inaccessible to them? True freedom requires equity and inclusion rather than standing in opposition to it. If an institution argues that maintaining the “freedom” of group A requires the continued unsafety or dehumanization of group B, that is a false freedom.

 My relationship with Library Journal since 2013* has been a long and rewarding one. I value my relationships with my editors, and the staff I work with on professional development courses, deeply. They have all helped me do better work as a librarian and as a human being who cares about justice and strives to do better. It is because of these relationships that I am taking the time to write this email at the end of what has been an exhausting week. 

 I sign this letter in hope that LJ will reconsider their decision and, as this open letter ** requests, chooses to donate the $10,000 award to the Seattle-based Gender Justice League.

Sincerely,
Anna

UPDATE: Library Journal has issued a second response to the criticism it is receiving. They continue to refuse to withdraw the award, arguing the racial equity work of the Seattle Public Library outweighs harm done to the trans community. They plan to, separately, donate $10k to the Gender Justice League and outline a series of things like trainings and special issues and forums they plan to host on queer and trans issues as next steps.

Hmmmmmmm.

First, I want to foreground the activism of both LJ staff who called out this problematic award and members of the broader library community who organized a swift response with clear demands. It is never without risk to stand up to your employer and we should remember those who did and continue to support them. And the $10k to the Gender Justice League is a clear win for those who crafted the open letter and identified concrete reparative action. You didn’t get everything you asked for, but this donation surely would not have happened without you. Organized activism works!

Second, I continue to be deeply frustrated by the way LJ is using racial equity as a shield to deflect criticisms about harm to trans people. This erases the embodied experience of trans people of color who were harmed by SPL actions, and for whom racial equity will not be effective in the absence of trans-inclusive practice. It’s also incredibly tacky and transparent to argue that work on behalf of marginalized group X makes you immune from criticism about, or cancels out harm done to, marginalized group Y. White queer folks don’t get a pass on racism because they’re queer; libraries don’t get a pass on trans harm because they do anti-racism work.

Third, a suspicious number of LJ’s promised “actions” rely on the labor of queer and trans people. While trans people are the experts on their own experience it is not their job to fix this situation. All that I can say at this point is anyone approached to provide labor for these action points should make an informed decision about participation, be clear in writing about what they will be responsible for providing (and make sure the intellectual rights remain with you), and ask for an abundant amount of money. This work should be well compensated, full stop. A company that can find $10k to donate in less than a week can pay queer and trans people well for their labor.

*In the email I mistakenly indicated I had been reviewing since 2014.

**I have signed this open letter (signature #1172) and by doing so indicated that if the award is not rescinded, with the award money going to Gender Justice League, by 30 June 2020 I will voluntarily rescind my 2019 Reviewer of the Year award due to “irreconcilable differences in values” (wording suggested by Fobazi M. Ettarh).

Answering email on the couch, with Teazle as my lap assistant (March 2020).

I’ve worked in frontline reader services at an independent research library since October 2007, serving the public both in person and remotely at the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, Massachusetts) for nearly thirteen years. On Tuesday, March 10th, 2020 we learned that at the close of business that day the library would close to the public until further notice due to the covid-19 (coronavirus) public health emergency in Boston. By noon on Wednesday, March 11th, all staff had retrieved necessary equipment and personal belongings from the building so that they could transition to fully remote operations.

I haven’t set foot in our building at 1154 Boylston St. for over two months.

As a library worker, I’ve rarely been busier.

Across the nation, as pressure increases for libraries to reopen — and for staff to return to their physical spaces — the call #ProtectLibraryWorkers has grown louder. It has become clear that many people don’t understand that the work that library workers do carries on even when the physical library is closed for the health and safety of library staff and the many communities within which we are embedded as both members and service workers.

I want to be clear that it is morally abhorrent to expect library workers, at any level, to risk death to provide library services in the midst of a pandemic. If the choice is fewer — or no — library services, for a time, in exchange for the health and safety — the lives — of library staff (and of patrons who would enter unsafe conditions if visiting an open library) the correct choice is to protect your people and resume services when it is reasonably safe for everyone to do so. Donna Lanclos and Stacy (@DarkLiterata) break down how the push to reopen libraries without regard for the lives of workers fits into the deeply problematic narrative of vocational awe, and I encourage you to read their threads. The are absolutely right.

That said, the choice being presented is a false one because in most cases* no service is not what happens when the library’s physical doors remain closed to the public while infection rates remain high and a vaccine remains under development. So in light of that, I thought it might be helpful to provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what is actually happening in my own research library environment during pandemic times. To that end, between Tuesday, May 26th and Friday, May 29th I’m going to live tweet my work day at the hashtag #WFHLibrarian. At the end of each day, I’ll collate the Tweets and share them in narrative form below. I hope that others will join in as well, since my own experience is specific to my institution and my position within it. Continue reading →

I wrote a longer-than-intended Twitter thread about the Romance Writers of America (RWA) implosion tonight — I got a bit ranty — so here it is as a blog post, tidied up only a bit for blog post format.

I have no idea what percent of my timeline is #romance and romance-adjacent and therefore already tuned in to the RWA implosion. But beyond romancelandia, if you are in the nonprofit / membership organization world this situation concerns you.

Detailed timeline (currently being frequently updated):
The Implosion of RWA by Claire Ryan, Author.

A good summary: “Romance Writers of America cancels annual RITA awards contest amid racism controversy,” Entertainment Weekly (6 January 2020).

If you are on the staff of a nonprofit and/or volunteer on a board of a nonprofit, this cascade of events concerns you. Particularly (I believe) the way that efforts toward justice (diversity, inclusion, equity, access reforms via policies and processes) were used against intent. The labor of marginalized members, particularly women of color within RWA, who were fighting to make concrete changes in their national professional organization, was appropriated and used to destroy their work (and directly used to try and silence them).

This isn’t an isolated incident, either in RWA or in the world of nonprofit cultural institutions and organizations, where underrepresented people are fighting to re-center their own stories and voices in the face of the imperialist, white supremacist ableist cisheteropatriarchy. If you work and/or volunteer in any space of this kind — and you care about fighting for a more just future therein — be on the offensive. Think about how your policies and procedures could be weaponized. Think about who is most likely to weaponize them.

Build defenses, contingency plans.

We can’t stop the work.

We absolutely shouldn’t stop the work.

But be ever aware that there are people for whom the change we are fighting for is something they will literally put their entire career (hell, the very existence of RWA as an organization!) on the line to stop our success, our right to be and thrive, its tracks.

Ask who would rather your organization cease to be than become truly anti-oppression in its orientation and practices. And plan to cut them off at the pass.

One key vulnerability in codes of conduct, codes of ethics, statements of diversity and inclusion, and other policy instruments that we often turn to within organizations to work toward justice is that they too often rely on language of non-discrimination. They rely on the very (white) American belief that the solution to inequality is treating everyone equally. To be “colorblind” … to be proud that you couldn’t tell your colleague was queer … to “not notice” a disability.

When policies and procedures require treating everyone “the same” they are VERY VERY EASY to weaponize against those who name discrimination. Because it’s not the quiet white supremacist who broke the rules … it’s the mean black woman who called them names. Drawing attention to inequality, in effect, becomes equated with creating the inequality. IF YOU JUST DIDN’T NOTICE the inequality, you marginalized person making a fuss, everyone would be treated the same BUT NOW I (the person expressing bigoted opinions) am being treated badly.

So you get situations like this:

person expressing bigoted opinion

files code of conduct violation complaint

against the person who identified the bigotry

So ask yourself, your committee, your organization … what does your policy require you to do in this instance? If your policy is written as a “neutral” document (there are no neutral documents) then likely your policy encourages you to find fault with the person who used Mean Words against the person who had a Bigoted Opinion because, after all, we must be inclusive. Welcoming to everyone. And look, we haven’t been so welcoming to the person with the Bigoted Opinion have we? Clearly, something must be done to address their complaint. 

So.

Think.

And think DAMN hard.

About when push comes to shove who gets to be welcome in your space, who gets to be included, and who pays the price of that welcome by being excluded.

Because someone ALWAYS pays the price. And I, personally, would rather the shitty white supremacist grifters paid the price than the queer black lesbians writing me good kissing books. And I’d like organizational policy documents to back me up on that one.

I was invited to participate on a panel at the Tufts University Libraries staff development day, 6 June 2018, on the theme of critical librarianship. Before opening the panel to a more discursive question and answer period, each of the panelists — myself, Stacy Collins, and Liz Phipps-Soeiro — were asked to briefly speak about our own practices of critical librarianship. These were my remarks.

I decided to use my brief presentation time here today, before we move into a more conversational mode, to share three questions with you that I use to frame and reflect on the practice critical librarianship at my workplace and in the field more broadly. I want to note here, at the top of our discussion, that I received no formal training in critical theory when I was pursuing my MLS degree at Simmons College, between 2007 and 2011; last night, when I was preparing my remarks, I did a quick search and found that the #critlib Twitter chats go back to 2014, and the DERAIL Forum at Simmons — a student-led forum for “critical discussions of the intersections between social justice issues and our roles as students and information professionals” — began in 2016. Five years after I finished my graduate education.

As someone who entered the field of librarianship because I was seeking a way to put my leftist politics into practice, I am really excited that these discussions are happening — and often happening in ways that are accessible to library workers who are no longer students themselves (on Twitter, at professional conferences, in forums like this). While I love to read and think about critical theory, I want to underscore that you don’t have to be a theory nerd to think and act critically in library spaces. And I hope that these three questions, which I have found helpful in clarifying my role and responsibilities to work for social justice on the job, help you think about what you can do in your own work space to make our practices more inclusive.

Question One: What are my core values?

A key insight of critical theory is that power is distributed unequally in every area of our lives. Critical theory especially highlights the way that systems and structures — cataloging standards, workplace hierarchies, the physical organization of space — presented as objective, neutral, and natural that may appear “neutral” (in part because powerful people present them as such) in fact actively work to produce and reproduce power and privilege whether or not they are ultimately good for human flourishing.

Many of us became librarians because we are passionate about access to information — particularly access that is made available on an equal basis to everyone in the community (however defined) that the library serves. The hard lesson that critical theory teaches us is that the practice of librarianship is not inherently the practice of social justice. We learn that libraries, too, are sites of oppression. Of colonialism, of racism, of anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-fat, ableist, and sexist attitudes and exclusionary practices. And we learn that sometimes these harmful attitudes and actions are not incidental to librarianship but are, in fact, foundational to the history of our field and woven tightly (perhaps inextricably, in some cases) into our daily work.

This is why my first question — for myself, and for all of you — is: “What are my core values?” Current best practices, organizational mission statements, codes of ethics established by professional bodies — these may be useful, but they should not be your only way of holding yourself accountable for socially just practice. Instead, I encourage you to identify (or create) communities of accountability outside of your workplace, perhaps even outside of your field. In the months following the 2016 election, for example, it became clear to me that speaking out against GOP policies required more than the language of professional ethics and best practices. Identify those people and spaces that help you hold on to your deepest sense of justice and joy, and check in with those people, spend time in those spaces, purposefully reflect on how your daily work can better reflect those values you hold dear.

Question Two: Who is missing from this table?

The second question I encourage you to ask — and ask often — is “Who is missing from this table?” Who is missing from your conversations about policy, about access, about inclusion? When you post a job opening, who is applying for those positions, and who is invited for interviews? If those people all come from very similar backgrounds and all fit a very similar profile: Are they all (or almost all) white? Are they all from middle-class backgrounds? Are they all able-bodied?

Particularly when it comes to questions of power and agency in our institutions, getting into the habit of noticing who is and isn’t at the table when decisions are being made, when resources are being allocated, is a crucial step in taking action for change. Think critically about who serves (and who is asked to serve) on committees. Who has the financial resources to participate in professional development. Whose needs are framed as central in your workplace and whose comfort is considered as a postscript in event planning? And task yourself with documenting the exclusions you notice, and speaking up. To take one example, the Massachusetts Historical Society recently established a lactation space for staff and researchers, and when an email went out to staff announcing this the email referred to the space as a “Mother’s Room.” Not all parents who provide milk for their children identify as mothers, or as women — so I asked the facilities staff to consider more inclusive language for any signs or information text on our website.  In another case, a staff member noticed that our registration form offered no gender-neutral alternative to Mr. and Ms. — a careless oversight that was easily remedied once he brought it to our attention. While sometimes true ideological differences exist, and need to be dealt with, in many cases change can be made with minimal fuss institutionally and make a HUGE difference in how welcome staff and patrons feel.

Question Three: Where, and how do I have agency?

Once you start thinking about the (mal)distribution of power in your library, and once you start noticing who’s being excluded, and how, it’s time to think about where and how you have agency to make change. All of us carry complex identities that mean we have institutional and social power in some contexts and may be marginalized in others. It’s important to do the work of discerning where you, specifically, can bring insight to bear and where you have the power to act. When it comes to social privilege, for example, I am a white woman, I am able-bodied, I hold advanced degrees, English is my first language, I have birthright citizenship. Institutionally, I have the advantage of ten years’ tenure, a supervisor who supports me, and I’m salaried with benefits. On the other hand, I am queer and a woman; I’m not a department head, and in many cases am not at the table when institutional policy discussions take place. I am young compared to many of my senior colleagues. But that doesn’t mean I lack agency. In the comedy world, they talk about jokes that “punch up” rather than “punch down”: Jokes that punch down — fat “jokes” or rape “jokes,” for example — reinforce existing prejudice and police already-marginalized people further. Jokes that “punch up” work in the opposite way, naming and ridiculing those policing practices in a way that exposes their violence and hopefully helps turn the cultural tide. In a similar way, I have come to think about practicing critical librarianship “from the middle” of an institution as an exercise in sheltering down and amplifying up. Assess where you are in your organization, who your allies are, and who among those allies has more structural power and who has less. It’s your job to amplify the voices of those with less structural power. Remember those people not at the table? If you are at the table, do everything you can to bring those people to the table. And if they can’t be there in person, bring their concerns forward yourself. And in the other direction, identify the harmful ways power is being used against the vulnerable in your workplace — and do what you can to mitigate those harms, even if you are not in a position to unilaterally change policies or practices.

Critical race theorists assert (and here I am quoting from Richard Delgado’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction) that society should “ ‘Look to the bottom’ in judging new laws [and] if they would not relieve the distress of the poorest group — or worse, if they compound it — we should reject them.” I argue that the practice of critical librarianship is the continual process of checking in with our most vulnerable, our most marginalized community members and challenging ourselves and our organizations to make their experiences, perspectives, and needs central to our policies and practices.

In 2016, while I was serving as New England Archivists’ Inclusion and Diversity Coordinator, we conducted a survey on contingent employment in the archives/library field. I was asked to present the findings of this survey at NEA’s annual business meeting. Because of some time constraints, we ended up deferring the presentation from spring 2017 to spring 2018. I will be presenting a ten minute snapshot of finding at the business meeting held on Saturday, March 23, 2018 in New Haven, Connecticut during the New England Archivists/Archives Roundtable of Metropolitan New York Spring 2018 Joint Meeting (22-24 March 2018).

Because the presentation will be a brief ten minutes, I am making the slides available here for anyone who wishes to review them at their leisure.

You may also download a PDF of the presentation slides here.

The full data set (stripped of identifying information) will eventually be made available for researchers in some to-be-determined format through New England Archivists. I will update links when that transpires! In the meantime, I am happy to discuss these findings with anyone who has a further interest in this area. Contact me here or @feministlib!

UPDATE ONE: 2018-03-26.
At the request of a couple of folks who wanted the survey questions for possible reuse in their own region, I have made two Google Documents available:

Appendix 1: Survey Questions (Doc.)
Appendix 2: Semi-Structured Interview Questions (Doc.)

UPDATE TWO: 2018-08-18
I have finally completed cleaning up the footnotes on the final report (January 2017). Here is the report in PDF (via Google Documents), a folder of anonymized interview transcripts:

NEA Contingent Employment Study Final Report 2018-08 (PDF)
Anonymized transcripts of the qualitative interviews (PDF)

UPDATE THREE: 2018-TBD

Anonymized survey responses may be found here (Google Sheets) [Link to come]