The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown

I'll begin at the end.  Upon reading Robbins' epilogue about the process of writing The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown, I saw that Robbins regarded her subject matter very dearly (not unlike author Rebecca Skloot and subject Henrietta Lacks).  Unlike Skloot, Robbins admitted plainly that she was biased toward the anti-racist and anti-feminist perspectives.  I found that this strengthened the reliability of the account. 

That attempt for a balanced hand was evident in the inclusion of both Ruth Brown's positive and negative personality traits and kept me from thinking of Brown as a saint.  For example, when I read that Brown was at times viewed as harsh, strict, and overly frank, I knew that Brown's crusade for racial inequality did not spring from perfection but from a flawed individual trying to do her best.  That said, her lack of concern at the prospect of losing job and reputation was amazingly brave.  As I've researched for my group's project on intellectual freedom, it's been easy to scoff at teachers and librarians who've given into book challenges.  However, I realize that standing up to powerful community members is no easy task.  I wonder what I would do in Brown's position.  I wish I could say I knew I'd do the same as she.

Brown's commitment to free access to materials and to intellectual freedom early on were impressive.  Before the ALA had established a firm stance on intellectual freedom, it seemed to be up to individual librarians to stand up to censorship.  I was actually surprised that so many on the original library board supported Brown's choice to retain controversial materials in the library.  Though that minority may have pointed to the beginnings of intellectual freedom in the library and nationwide, it was disheartening to read of the mistreatment of Brown's supporters.  Many have suffered to bring us the library policies we find so common today.

So, this story was inspiring, but it was also informative.  The book filled in quite a few gaps in my understanding of 20th-century history that I didn't even know existed.  Previously in my mind, World War II, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and McCarthyism were disparate events.  I was interested to observe the interplay of anticommunism, racism, sexism, and classism that surrounded the events of Brown's firing.  One example was the impact that World War II's fight against racism had in encouraging anti-racist sentiment in American citizens.  On the other side of the argument, anticommunists assumed that African American and liberal organizations had communist leanings.  I had not realized that some of these broad associations stemmed from the communists' efforts in combating racism. 

 

image from craftychick1221.blogspot.com

Librarians and Party Girls: Cultural Studies and the Meaning of the Librarian

by Marie L. Radford and Gary P. Radford

It occurred to me that the tenets of cultural studies align nicely with the assertions in the "Traces" article.  For example the idea that "[t]here is no world 'out there' that is free from its representation" demonstrates how the "traces" of our culture are our culture.  According to the Radford article, such "traces" do not have inherent meaning, but instead meaning relies upon the context in which "representations" are placed and are ever-shifting and malleable.  I expect that McKemmish would agree.  I like how the example of the word "tree" points out that language is arbitrary and that meaning does not reside in either the object nor the word, but in the associations with the code of language that we have constructed (57).

Stereotyping tends to be my issue with movies and television in general.  Writers water down each character into one central characteristic from which that character can never depart.  It sounds like "Party Girl" suffers from the same issue.  Whereas I prefer a movie or show in which characters can play both the "good guy" and the "bad guy" at the same time, Parker Posey's character, Mary, in "Party Girl" seems be only able to play one or the other.  Mary is considered "bad" when she is a fun-loving party girl and "good" when she is a rigid, uptight librarian.  What does that tell us about the public's idea of a librarian?  A successful librarian must abandon all personality traits other than "an obsession with order, sexual repression, matronly appearance, dowdy dress, fussiness, dour facial expressions, and monosyllabic speech" (60).  If that list were a requirement for librarianship, I certainly would not be entering the field!  Since most of these librarian stereotypes are also women, the characterization may also shed light on widespread perceptions of female kind as a whole.  It was useful to consider how stereotypes of librarians and others are used.  Stereotypes rarely exist without a purpose: a justification for mistreatment or rationalization for privilege.  It still bothers me that librarians feel they have to work against the stereotypes by using "scandalous" blog titles that include words like "renegade", "lipstick", or "leather".  Not that librarians should not express themselves in such a way, but I wonder: why would one not expect that in any profession a broad spectrum of personality types and interests would exist?

Information Technology and the De-skilling of Librarians
by Roma Harris

Although I understand that feminist issues remain in the workplace, I am not sure that I buy that because some routine tasks are being automated that women's work is necessarily under attack or underappreciated.  Also, at least in education I do not see any evidence to suggest that men in IT positions garner more respect than the women in teaching, paraprofessional, or other support positions--even though we do revere our tech guy.  Perhaps there is that much difference between the cultures of elementary schools and libraries, or maybe the 1986 study quoted to support this claim of inequality is just that out of date.  I would be interested to learn about current perceptions of various library positions.  I also don't appreciate that the article consistently calls clerical, secretary-style work "women's work" while ignoring the contributions that women could make to the new style of library work with its focus on teaching and guidance.
 
Another area where the article seems to date itself is in some of its complaints about the deprofessionalization of cataloging.  Because digital cataloging systems have been the norm for most or all of my conscious library-using life, concerns about the shift from manual to digital catalogs seems distant...and old news. The library survived that change and will weather others.  To me the moral of the story is that libraries and librarians must be ever-transitioning to keep up with technology and user demands.  Not to mention that Sunny's presentation last week demonstrated that with the plethora of sources available, patrons need explicit direction from a trained professional now more than ever. 

The article did resonate with me when it said that "[s]tandardization and routinization make professional activities more comprehensible to outsiders, and consequently subject to their evaluation and control" (p. 2).  It sounds as if libraries encounter the same struggle between accountability and self-determination that is currently facing public education.