My Librarian Hero: Ruth Brown

I wanted to start off this week's blog by talking about something I came across in chapter three of the Portable MLIS, "Human Rights, Democracy, and Librarians" by Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Katharine Phenix. Not many people realize that librarians have often had to fight for their community's right to freedom of expression and opinion, right to privacy, and right of equality under the law. During tumultuous times in our nation's history (and undoubtedly in other nations as well) librarians have continually fought for the protection of these fundamental human rights. As the chapter asserts, "a democratic society relies on an informed citenzry" (p. 23) so that those informed citizens can use their best judgement in selecting the legislators and representatives of their democratic government. One of the places in our society that allows for this informed citizenry to develop is at the public library. Public libraries are truly democratic institutions in that anyone and everyone who visits them is allowed access to information, and librarians have fiercly upheld this democratic tradition.

While the chapter mentions several librarians who acted quite bravely and suffered much in acting as human rights advocates for their patrons, one librarian in particular caught my interest. In 1950 Ruth Brown, a librarian of outstanding achievements, was fired from the Bartlesville Public Library in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, after 30 years of service to her community. Brown, a former president of the Oklahoma Library Association and long time civil rights activist, was released from her position by a newly elected library board "ostensibly because the library owned The Nation, The New Republic, and Soviet Russia Today" (p. 29). In reality, Brown was asked to step down due to her involvement with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). For years, Brown had welcomed African American children into the library through segregated story hours, and had eventually worked to integrate the library completely. The fear that McCarthyism engendered coupled with Brown's controversial civil rights advocacy caused those in power to chose to dismiss a comendable library professional at a time when she was most needed.

Being from Oklahoma myself, I was quite pleased to see Ruth Brown's inclusion in the chapter. Though I love my home state, Oklahoma's physical location within the Bible-belt and its nearness to the South have helped the state to garner many cases of civil rights injustices over its history (the persecution and discrimination of Native Americans and the Tulsa Race Riot, to name a few). It is astounding that in a state where many still today hold prejudices, over 50 years ago Ruth Brown was fighting for equality in her small town Oklahoma library. She makes me proud to be both a librarian-in-training and an Okie! 

For more information on Ruth Brown, click here, or see the book above, The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown: Civil Rights, Censorship, and the American Library by Louise S. Robbins.

Maybe not so Specialized Librarians

In yesterday's class we discussed the structure of your typical library, or what my professor referred to as the 'Classical View'. Branched under the Library Adminstrators (directors, board, etc.) you will find a division between the Public Service librarians and Technical Services librarians. Public Service librarians are the librarians you see and talk to when you enter the library, such as the Reference Librarians and those at the Circulation Desk. Technical Services librarians are the librarians you don't see. These librarians work in the Systems, Cataloging, and Acquisitions departments. As Professor Lankes jokingly suggested, they are divided between the librarians we show to the public, and those we hide from the public.

Having worked in an academic library's cataloging department, I have personal experience with technical services librarians. Although many of these cataloging librarians were wonderful people and very committed to their work, they did seem to be a bit more buttoned-down and curmudgeonly compared to the always smiling and helpful reference librarians wandering the shelves. It seems only natural that a library student might choose one of these directions depending on their own personality. For instance, the more outgoing person would rather work in reference or interlibrary loan where they could assist patrons directly, while the more subdued person would prefer a technical services position where they could keep to their own quiet workspace.

The more I think about it, the more it seems that dividing librarians into these two categories seems almost clique-ish and professionally restrictive. While it might be unwise to completely remove this division between library specialties, isn't our MLIS degree supposed to make us capable of being good at both public and technical library services? Professor Lankes suggested that rather than molding ourselves into one of these categories, we should focus on molding ourselves to the community our library serves. The profession of librarianship is shifting as society's needs for information change, and we have to be prepared to change as well. I wonder if those same cataloging librarians, who have been catalogers for 20 years or more, would be able to shift and work in reference services for a day. Or if the reference librarians would remember their OCLC well enough to catalog a few carts of books and other materials if they really had to.

I have nothing against having a specialization in one's field. It would be ridiculous to assume that every librarian can do everything in a library (although there are librarians that do do everything when they are the only one!). I simply think that it's probably good for a librarian to actually practice the core value of "education and lifelong learning" that we promote to society, so that we don't end up professionally identifying ourselves by the Fill in Your Libray Specialty Here clique someday.    

Librarianship: a Noble Profession

In my previous post, I discussed the inspirational mission of librarianship as defined by the professor of my introductory course, Dave Lankes. Professor Lankes began our most recent class by continuing to expound upon the mission of librarians and how this mission can be divided into three parts: Conversation, Facilitation, and Values. He noted that of the three divisions, the values of librarians and librarianship tend to be the most important to the profession. The Portable MLIS lists the four key values of libraries and librarianship today as follows:

1. Belief in Intellectual Freedom
2. Belief in Service and the Public Good
3. Belief in Education
4. Belief in the Value of the Past: Preservation

In all honesty, I entered my studies of librarianship without much consideration as to the values of the profession. As my last post implied, I turned to studying library science out of my love of books and literature, and not exactly out of the more noble desire to spread intellectual freedom and knowledge to the masses. Of course, I have always believed that access to knowledge is the key to understanding and creation. This belief particularly hit home during my undergraduate studies, which proved to open up my mind in ways I could never have conceived. While I was never enthusiastic about pursuing an MA and PhD in English Lit. in order to become a professor (and obviously chose not to take that path), I am glad that the profession that I have chosen to study holds many of the same values that a good teacher might possess.

No matter what type of librarian you choose to become (public, academic, school, or special), these values remain at the core of the profession. Again, I find myself inspired by this idea. I know that values can be found in almost any profession, but from what I have read and seen, most librarians seem to take these values to heart. I know that it is naive to assume that every librarian works by these core values, but it's still just refreshing to know that librarianship at its heart is a noble profession.

First Intro LIS Class

I just finished my first week of Library Science school and I am filled with optimism and excitement. In our introduction class, we discussed the various ways to define librarianship. Our professor focused on three different ways to define the profession: by what you do, by where you've been, and by your mission. Librarianship as defined by what librarians do is to define their function: acquiring books and other works and materials for cataloging and distributing them to the general public. The profession as defined by where librarians have been encompasses the traditional view of librarianship. This definition is tied to the historical view of librarianship, as seen in Krummel's "Seven Ages of Librarianship." The third way to define the librarianship is by its mission. Our professor defined the mission of librarians as "to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities."

Personally, I found this third definition of the mission of librarianship to be particularly enlightening. Even though I am pursuing the profession, I often found myself defining librarianship by the first two more narrow-minded definitions. This way of thinking can be very discouraging to a new-comer to the profession. If librarians are defined by what they do currently, and by what they have done in the past, we are failing to define them accurately. For example, if you define a librarian as someone in a building who provides you with books, your definition is fleeting. With the age of Kindles and iPads upon us, the need for physical books is waning. Just as the traditional newspapers are dying, so may the hard cover and paperback books that I love. I must admit that I was one of those who was clinging to the traditional views of the profession. (I would often find myself saying such things as "How could we ever replace books?" or "I need to be able to turn the pages!" or "I hate reading off of a computer screen!") Despite my feelings, the world is moving in the direction of the fast-paced electronic need for information, and librarianship must move to reflect this direction in order to survive.

However, we traditionalists need not be afraid and fear that the loss of books equals the loss of librarianship as a profession. If you define librarianship by its true mission, "to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in communities," then it is easy to see that librarianship will never die. Librarians and libraries are not books, materials, and buildings. Librarians and libraries are knowledge, conversation, and understanding. Your librarian does not merely provide you with the right article to cite in your research paper. Through conversation, your librarian facilitates knowledge by giving you the tools necessary to understand the topic thoroughly and create your masterpiece. Can a Kindle help you do that? Can Google even help you do that? I think not. Who else but librarians can navigate the current influx of information and make it easy for you to get what you want, understand what you want, and create what you want? Who else but librarians wield such power? Take that, e-books and Internet databases. You won't steal my job anytime soon.