Subject/Object

On the day of my elementary school graduation I was given the Library Award in front of the entire class. At the time I felt really insulted. Awards were given to those with the highest marks in each class: French, Gym, Social and Environmental Studies (SES) etc. And my award felt like a default prize to the student who was really good at a lot of subjects but the best at none of them. In retrospect I would love to thank Mrs. Wilson for realizing that I spent every hour of my free time browsing those stacks. Taking out children’s novels while other kids were still struggling through picture books. Pulling down random books of non-fiction (a hobby which follows me to this day). And playing with the newfangled computers.

That was the last time I thought of libraries in relation to my own self-identity. That is, until my abortive attempt to study Philosophy forever and my decision to go to library school.

Attending the recent National Summit on Library Human Resources, when we reached demographics and future recruitment we all discussed the importance of recruiting visible minorities and attracting Aboriginal Canadians to the profession. But, as usual, when it was mentioned that 75% (or whatever) of those working in libraries were women, you could hear the crickets in the room. Even granted that the majority of administrators are still men, people don’t really want to discuss the gender imbalance in front-line and middle management staff.

Discounting immediately the possibility of discrimination, the question then becomes why do men not choose libraries and librarianship as a profession? And how do we focus our recruitment efforts towards men so they see librarianship as the noble profession it is?

So I’ve decided to look into strategies involved in encouraging men to become librarians and library workers. But before I do research into the literature about why men choose professions in general, I would love to hear from people on why they chose to work in the library.

Please feel free to leave a comment to my informal survey. If you don’t feel comfortable making your comments public you can email me at s[here is a single dot]chabot[this is that symbol that you use]gmail[another one]com. And I welcome replies from women too because I would love to look at the different motivations between the two sexes.

And please post this on your own blog if you are so inclined. I would love to have this spread far and wide so I get a really good idea on why people choose librarianship.

Picked up from if:book, a nice manifesto which echos a lot of what I have been thinking about concerning this tension between the new and the old, both new knowledge and new mediums to spread that knowledge.

1. Why add to the population of orphaned works?
2. Don’t presume that new work improves on old
3. Honor our ancestors by recycling their wisdom
4. The ideology of originality is arrogant and wasteful
5. Dregs are the sweetest drink
6. And leftovers were spared for a reason
7. Actors don’t get a fair shake the first time around, let’s give them another
8. The pleasure of recognition warms us on cold nights and cools us in hot summers
9. We approach the future by typically roundabout means
10. We hope the future is listening, and the past hopes we are too
11. What’s gone is irretrievable, but might also predict the future
12. Access to what’s already happened is cheaper than access to what’s happening now
13. Archives are justified by use
14. Make a quilt not an advertisement

I recommend you read the article, each of these points are explained in greater depth.