TILT #47 Being something we’re not, being better than we are
Halloween is one of my favorite librarian holidays. The profession has a number of them — Banned Books Week, Library Card Sign Up Month, Argue About “Holiday” Decorations Season — but Halloween shows off the excellent combination of kindness and creativity that typifies the profession. This image, from Invercargill City Libraries and Archives in New Zealand, is not about Halloween per se, but come on!
Separating the performative aspect of what we do — how it looks, how it is perceived, what our intentions for that reception are, the general context — from the work itself is always a challenge. I gave my social justice talk, a particular favorite, at the Wisconsin Library Association conference two weeks back. The conference was held at the Kalahari Resort in the Dells, a completely non-ironically African-themed waterpark.
I added a few sentences my talk at game time.
And I’m going to mention the elephant in the room quite literally and say that the irony of giving this talk in an African-themed waterpark named for a desert is not lost on me.
But as far as pragmatic, constructive ways to address the discomfort I felt being a working part of that environment — one that felt racist and ill-considered — I was less clear how to move forward. I had a lot of thoughtful discussions with WLA organizers. I asked a few people of color who I knew at the event about their feelings. I tried to not let the colonial setting colonize my mind and tried to learn some lessons about our imperfect world.
I also saw some great programs on library services to incarcerated people, how to serve patrons experiencing homelessness in a way that works for them, not just for the library (website), and ways that I can make copyright work for me (link to resources).
Possibly my favorite presentation was about the Dark Web. I know a decent amount about the Dark Web but I was curious what a library conference presentation about it would be like. The woman who gave it was an older reference librarian from Marquette, not an underweb enthusiast like myself. And her talk was great!
On the surface the presentation was factual and straightforward, but what caught my attention was how rapt her audience was. The fact that she had approached it like a research topic — she admitted she’d only been on the Dark Web for about three minutes, but had done a lot of reading — and not as an end user, lent weight to her assertions. She explained why it might be useful, not why everyone should use it. She gave shoutouts to Library Freedom Project and the Kilton Library (near me!). People were frantically taking notes and asked a lot of questions afterwards. Her insider status within this group was a large part of usefully getting her message across.
This past week I gave a talk about a similar topic, online privacy and how libraries can help (Google Doc handout), at the New England Library Association conference right here in Vermont. I do a short five-slide talk at Vermont libraries, mainly talking about current privacy topics. I’d turned it into a meta-talk about how librarians could give a similar talk for interested librarians. It was risky but I think it worked.
Two things I think most librarians in the room didn’t know:
- EILI5 — “explain it like I’m five” useful for finding sensible explanations for complex things on the larger internet when you Google.
- Twitter blocks Nazis in Germany for legal reasons. It could block them in the US but it does not. If you tell Twitter you live in Germany you won’t see Nazis on Twitter anymore.
I went to many good talks at this conference including
- Lydia Willoughby’s presentation on the creation of #PulseOrlandoSyllabus (slides)
- Traci Griffith discussing the nuances between Free Speech and Hate Speech and Hate Crimes and how libraries can constructively and proactively deal with Hate Speech (plus we all took this quiz together — eye-opening!)
- Dartmouth librarians discussing their (ongoing!) struggle to work with the Library of Congress to get “illegal alien” removed as a library of Congress subject heading. The larger issue of cultural bias reflected through metadata is a fascinating aspect of librarianship.
As Lydia said at the culmination of her talk “Your library isn’t neutral, it’s silently white supremacist” which may rankle but is likely true. We have to actively resist in order to do better.
Put another way, in David Foster Wallace’s eternally re-readable essay This is Water “[P]etty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in.” as he also agrees that it’s unimaginably hard, but we have to try. And maybe we can try to be someone else, someone just a little better, in a slightly more conscious world.
Today in Librarian Tabs is written irregularly by Jessamyn West who also maintains librarian.net. It’s also available in your inbox via TinyLetter. Thanks for reading.
