To the Editor

Kathryn L. Harris, "To the Editor" New York Times, March 22, 2020, p. 8SR.

     Because of the coronavirus, two of the most enduring institutions in my life are also closed; the library and the church.  I am a writer. Since the library is closed, I can't check out books, consult with library staff or use the internet.  Without the church, I can't enjoy fellowship with other congregants, listen to heavenly spiritual music, or hear the preacher preach. 

COMMENT

   Loss of access to the library is catastrophic for a writer who relies on its resources.  As people are quarantined for the coronavirus pandemic, those who relied on library internet have been completely cut off.  This writer makes a comparison between  the library and  her spiritual practice as similarly important to living a good life.

Fresh Litter

"Fresh Litter," (Talk of the Town), New Yorker, December 23, 2019, pp. 31-32.

The source material "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," is a collection of poems that T.S. Eliot wrote for his godchildren. "The poems were written in the nonsense tradition," Carolyn Vega, the curator for the Berg Collection, at the New York Public Library, explained recently.  Sara Beth Joren, publicist for the library chimed in: "And that's why when people hate on 'Cats' -- like "Oh there's no plot.' It's just like, 'Yeah, there wasn't supposed to be'. And anyway, there is a plot. There's a cat trying to get to the Heaviside Layer.  That's a plot.
     The two women were waiting for Francesca Hayward, one of the stars of the "Cats" movie.  Hayward, a principal dancer in the Royal Ballet, plays Victoria, a graceful white cat -- her first film role.  Vega was ready to give Hayward a quick Eliot lesson; she had brought out a first edition of "Old Possum" and some photographs of the poet. 

COMMENT

      An actor in need of information about her role consults a librarian.  Sure, there is plenty about T.S. Eliot on the Internet, but it could be quite a slog to discover how we got from Eliot the poet to the musical "Cats."  The librarian helps zero in on the nonsensical origins of what is, after all, a distinctly nonsensical musical.   Hayward reacts appropriately to the first edition, experiencing that spooky sense of history that is connected to physical artifacts.

Barbara Testa dies at 91

Katherine Q. Seelye, “Barbara Testa Dies at 91: A Discovery in Her Attic Rocked the Literary World,” (Obituaries) New York Times, January 3, 2020, p. A21.

    The story began in the 1880s with her grandfather, James Fraser Gluck, a lawyer who was also the curator of the library in Buffalo N.Y., now called the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.  He was a collector, and he aggressively solicited autographs and writings from contemporary authors, all of which he donated to the library.    Over the years, he had collected manuscripts from some of the biggest names in 19th-century letters, among hem Walt Whitman, Henry James and Louisa May Alcott.  He also had snippets from Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe, Keats, Shelley and Dickens.
     Mr. Gluck established a pen-pal relationship with Samuel L. Clemens — better known as Mark Twain — and at one point asked him for the manuscript for “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” a novel that had shaken the rafters of the literary world when it was published in 1884.

COMMENT

    Long story short, Clemens sent Gluck his handwritten manuscript, but half of it was lost until Testa found it in the Attic in 1990.  She was in need of money and wanted to sell it, but the library filed suit, arguing that Clemens gave the manuscript to the library.  Still, the library paid $1 million to settle. 

    This is another collection development story in which a librarian follows a personal obsession rather than following an arbitrary standard of popularity or high circulation.  I believe that libraries should do more to deliberately support this kind of personal collecting which can produce extremely valuable and unusual collections.  One possibility would be to assign each librarian a small personal collection development fund to be spent on whatever they think would be good to have in the collection. 

American Gods

Neil Gaiman, American Gods. Tenth Anniversary Edition. Author's preferred text. 2011.

     "Hinzelmann, have you heard of eagle stones?"
     "Up north of Rhinelander? Nope, that's Eagle River. Can't say I have."
     "How about Thunderbirds?"
     "Well, there was the Thunderbird Framing Gallery up on Fifth Street, but that closed down.  I'm not helping, am I?"
     "Tell you what, why don't you go look at the library.  Good people, although they may be kind of distracted by the library sale on this week. I showed you where the library was, didn't I?"
     Shadow nodded and said so long.  He wished he'd thought of the library himself.  [p.372]

COMMENT

      The entire library episode actually extends from p. 372-377 -- too long for me to type out.  What does Shadow do at the library?  He requests a library card,  has a discussion with a librarian about a man who stole rare library books, researches Native American traditions, talks to a neighbor and purchases weeded library books at the library book sale.  
     Two of these book sale books are probably perfectly appropriate to weed, but one of them should certainly have been kept in the collection unless it was a duplicate-- Minutes of the Lakeside City Council, 1872-1884.  If this was indeed the only copy of local history it was completely irresponsible for librarians to send it to the book sale.  However, the contents of this imaginary book turn out to be a plot point since is contains evidence about children killed by a resident demon.  In real life Gaiman is an outspoken supporter of libraries. As a writer, he had to to betray the librarians and send this particular  book to the book sale in order to give his character  more time to read it.  

In the Land of Self Defeat

Monica Potts, "In the Land of Self Defeat,"  New York Times, October 4, 2019.

The fight over the pay for the new head librarian had a larger context: The library moved into a new building, with new services, in 2016. Construction began during the natural gas boom years, and ended after the bust, just as the county budget was being squeezed and services were being cut. During the boom, the new building had seemed necessary, but with the revenue decreases, the county knew it was going to have a hard time paying the 2.1 million still owed on it. (Disclosure: My mother was on the library board when some of the decisions about the new building were made.) The library made its own budget cuts, but the savings weren’t enough to cover the shortfall in paying for the building, and there was a real danger of the library closing, leaving its new, hulking brick building empty. The people who didn’t frequent the library argued that the community didn’t really need it anymore, anyway. After all, if you have internet, you can get whatever you want in a day. 

COMMENT

In this article the public library serves as a synecdoche for community that is undermined by anti-tax zealotry.  The author writes that anti-tax Trump voters "view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain, even if it ultimately helps them, too."  She notes that people who would like to live in a place with better schools and good public libraries have already moved away leaving behind a group of people wedded to an ideology of self-defeat since without community services to fall back on all of them are much poorer.

The library building was built with boom-and-bust resource extraction money.  It's typical that a community would overspend, expecting the boom to go on forever.  It never does.  Politicians like to pretend that fossil fuel extraction is economic development.  In fact, extractive industries is a good way for rich people to make money specifically because it employs relatively few people and isn't permanent in a community and therefore doesn't have to worry about long-term community relationships.  They always go bust in the end and always seem to leave behind damage to the environment and economy.

Chen Wei Guo's Killer Has Been Extradited to Colorado, Charged with Another Murder

Stephany Cortez, "Chen Wei Guo's Killer Has Been Extradited to Colorado, Charged with Another Murder," The Utah Chronicle, V.29 No. 11, 2019 p. 9.

     The next day, Oct. 30, 2017, Austin Boutain was recognized by a librarian at the Salt Lake Public Library, after more than 200 officers and FBI agents conducted a lockdown to find the culprit and assure students were safe on campus.  Boutain pled guilty to two felonies: attempted aggravated murder and aggravated kidnapping, which qualifies for the death penalty in the state of Utah. 

COMMENT

     Vocational awe, anyone?  Though no part of this story is actually surprising.  It's not surprising that a fleeing murderer would go to a perceived safe space in a public library.  It's also not surprising that a librarian there had been following the news and was able to recognize the suspect. 

A Dusty Artifact Shows the Reach of a Social Reformer

Hillary Howard, "A Dusty Artifact Show the Reach of a Social Reformer," New York Times, August 25, 2019, p. Y29.

     The trunk had sat in the library of a midtown Manhattan acting school for decades.
No one seems to have ever fully rifled through its contents save for a researcher her and there, said Whit Waterbury, an archivist and librarian at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the conservatory where Robert Duvall, Jeff Goldblum and Allison January trained.
...
     At first, he didn't think much of the dusty thing, with its fragile binding and fading yellow ribbon on the outside.  He set it aide to focus on documents more clearly related to the school and its founders... But then last spring, he actually flipped thorough its pages.  There was Eleanor Roosevelt's signature. And Amelia Earhart's. The journalist Jacob Riis wrote a nice note. So did Alfred E. Smith, a four term governor of New York.
...
     Last year, for its 125th anniversary, Henry Street Settlement introduced a permanent exhibition, which covers the history of the organization, and of the neighborhood it serves, at its headquarters.
      Officials there have plans to digitize the book and incorporate it into the exhibition. 

COMMENT

   Once again, the tale of hidden treasure in dusty archives,   The word "dust" covering the potential on unnoticed texts, in this case, a guestbook for Henry Street Settlement signed by many notable people and demonstrating the historic importance of the organization.   One person is quoted as saying, "The trunk was something out of Narnia."   Whoever put it in the trunk must have had a sense that it was worth keeping, but since it was in the box they could never have imagined how it would raise that spooky sense of touching history for people in the future.

     Now the guestbook will be digitized, which is to say, it will become an online representation of official history.  Digitization is an odd paradox.  The electronic version will be easier for more people to see, but it won't inspire comparisons with Narnia.  It's inevitable that some of the magic will be lost in translation. Digitization also means selecting the most interesting artifact out of the box, but better access for this single object paradoxically makes it less likely that someone will find something amazing and wonderful than sorting through paper objects stored in a dusty box.

Work Friend

Megan Greenwell, “Work Friend: A Closed Mind Amid Open Books,” New York Times, August 11, 2019, p. BU3.

The library recently hired a new children’s department head who has told me that she doesn’t believe in evolution and doesn’t think public schools are good and that “Mexicans don’t read.” She talks about religion constantly and has added several creationist “science” books and DVDs to our library collection.

COMMENT

     This library problem comes from the work-related advice column. The library profession generates “vocational awe” but some librarians are nonetheless incompetent.  Other library stories relate encounters with racist librarians and it’s clear that a librarian with this kind of attitude has potential to cause actual harm.  It's especially hard to get rid of people who have been given administrative positions.  No matter how bad they are, administrators somehow make themselves immune from accountability.

     A professional standard of neutrality is meant to keep personal bias from bubbling to the surface, but it can’t stop someone who won’t accept the standard.  I once got into a debate at a library conference with a librarian who wanted to preach anti-abortion from the reference desk. My point of view is that the best way to approach controversial topics is to get students to identify the stakeholders— the right answer is not to take sides but to encourage patrons to determine who cares about the issue and why. This librarian wanted to use the platform of the reference desk to “guide” patrons towards her own preferred political position. In any case, stocking the shelves with science-denial is not objectivity but just false equivalency.  There are not two sides when one side is simply wrong.   Academic libraries might have creationist propaganda for research reasons, but even so it's problematic because cataloging rules can make fake information look legitimate.  If we want to combat ignorance librarians shouldn’t be spreading fake news, even if there are people out there who want to read it. 

Chuck Kosterman (By the Book)

Chuck Klosterman (By the Book) New York Times Book Review, July 21, 2019, p,. 7

Whose opinion on books to you most trust? 

Part-time bookstore employee and research librarians. They have no agenda and plenty of free time. The research librarians are especially good, because they don’t even care if their suggestions make them seem cool. 

COMMENT

    Klosterman is repeating a stereotype that librarians have a lot of free time to read.  In fact, the life of research librarians follows the academic year, incredibly busy at some times and in the summer more relaxed since many students and researchers are away. Despite his misconception, he values the service of readers’ advisory. 

      As for myself, I’m constantly recommending books, and I appreciate his vote of confidence.  It makes me realize, though, how often I’m enthusiastic about books that probably do sound fairly un-cool. I keep thinking that it would change people's lives if only they would read William Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces  or Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking it would change their lives.  Lately, I've been using Eric Klinenberg's Palaces for the People which basically says that libraries are going to save the world. 

Vivian Perlis Dies at 91

Anthony Tommasini, "Vivian Perlis Dies at 91: Oral History Project Captured Music's Giants," New York Times, (Obituaries) July 15, 2019, p. B7

     Ms. Perlis came to run the project accidentally, after taking a job as a research librarian at the Yale School of Music in 1967.  She had become involved there with the library's extensive Charles Ives collection and one day she made a visit to New York City to pick up some additional materials donated by Julian Myrick, who had been a pattern with Ives in an insurance business.
     Thinking that he might have some recollections to share, Ms. Perlis brought along a portable tape recorder
...
     She became a harpist with the New Haven Symphony while working the library job at Yale that led to her founding the oral history project.
     For years Ms. Perlis essentially had to secure funding for the project on her own. The Yale School of Music provided office space and work-study students to assist with the endless task of transcribing interviews. But she often felt "like and orphan," she said, as she labored in her basement headquarters.
...
From the start Ms. Perlis buttressed the collection with existing recorded interviews acquired from radio stations and historians, building it into one of the most extensive oral history archives in America. 

COMMENT

     This obituary makes me happy and sad at the same time.  In the 1960's Ms. Perlis wanted to do a Ph.D in musicology but Columbia University refused to give her the flexibility to take care of her kids.  Instead she became a pink-collar academic librarian and  got to do the project of her dreams collecting oral history from famous musicians, albeit with no professional recognition and almost no institutional support. The the library gave her space in the basement with no air conditioning while PhD musicologists derided her collection as "pipsqueak stuff."  I can only imagine how much her librarian colleagues must have resented her getting to spend time on her pet project that nobody cared about.  Until somebody did care, that is. 

    This tale is all too familiar in the world of academic libraries.  Administration actively discourages librarians from "niche" work that seems out of line with organizational priorities.  Yet that often turns out to produce the most unique and most valuable collections.  In this case the librarian built a collection worthy of an obituary in the New York Times.  I will bet the the people who tried to shut her down never accomplished anything even half as notable. 

     

Woman of the River

Richard E. Westwood, Woman of the River: Georgie White Clark, White-Water Pioneer, Utah State University Press, 1997.

I have had the generous help and cooperation of many people in getting this book together.  Karen Underhill and the staff at Cline Library, Arizona University, got me started and helped along the way by guiding me through the Georgie Clark collection and putting me in touch with Rosalyn J. (Roz) Jirge. This book would have been incomplete without the input and help from Roz.  She not only told me of her own experiences, but collected others' diaries, did interviews, transcribed taps of my interviews and supplied me with names and address of passengers and boatmen that were invaluable in my research. 

COMMENT

It's not uncommon to find a librarian listed in the acknowledgments of a book. This one has a nice description of a research strategy as well,  that includes tracking down people for interviews.  Sometimes the answer to a research question is not in the library collection but in knowing the right person to ask. This librarian happened to know that Roz Jirge was the right person. This kind of reference help is only possible when librarians have local knowledge.  Librarian training is focused on generic strategies to find published or archived information, but researchers are often focused on information gaps-- the biography that has not yet been written, the history that has not yet been told.  A recurring library story is about finding hidden treasure in dusty stacks or archival boxes -- the material that nobody has noticed and nobody has thought to use.

Thanks to this researcher, the historical memory of Roz Jirge has been written in a book that is now available in the library collection, and anyone can read the story of a river running pioneer.  Not so long ago, I took a river trip through Westwater Canyon at high water (30,000 cfs).  The river guides lashed the rafts together in "double rigging" that they said was invented by Georgie White Clark to run the big rapids in the Grand Canyon.  I'm glad those guides knew their river history!

Once Upon a River

Diane Setterfield. Once Upon a River: A Novel. 2018.

     The character of Henry Daunt is inspired by the magnificent real-life photographer of the Thames Henry Taunt. Like my Henry, he had a houseboat kitted out as a darkroom. In the course of a lifetime he took some 53,000 photographs using the wet collodion process His work came close to being destroyed when, after his death, his house was sold and his garden workshop dismantled.  On learning that many thousands of he glass plates stored there had already been smashed or wiped clean for use as greenhouse glass, a local historian, Harry Paintin, alerted E. E. Skuse, the city librarian in Oxford. Skuse was able to stop the work and arrange real of the surviving plates for safekeeping. I note their names here out of gratitude for their swift actions. It is thanks to them that I have even able to explore the Victorian Thames visually and weave this story around Taunt’s images.  [p.461]

COMMENT

  This anecdote describes the preservation function of the library.  It's not just a “book museum,” but a multi-media museum as well. As is often the case, the librarian stepped in to rescue a valuable history collection only after part of it had already been destroyed. While librarians are sometimes criticized as "gatekeepers," it is also true that outside of bookish professions people may not recognize the value of media artifacts. 

The heroic librarian is specifically mentioned by name since the rescued photographs were the basis for a novel. Unlike Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, this novel doesn't reproduce any of the  historic images that inspired it.  The but the images are only represented in the writing. This kind of output from library materials is so much more imaginative than the carefully documented scholarly communication and undergraduate term papers we tend to associate with library research.  

   There are a number of books about Henry Taunt and his photographs.  In his day, he even wrote a river guide-- A New Map of the River Thames (1872), which inspired interest in recreational boating including what is possibly the best river-trip book ever written, Three Men in a Boat (1889).  

  

Student of the Game Aced Final

Julia Jacobs, "Student of the Game Aced Final: Emma Boettche, a Librarian from Chicago, wrote a mater's paper on 'Jeopardy!' Clues, New York Times, June 4, 2019, p. C6.

     Before Emma Boettcher arrived at the "Jeopardy!" studio in California on a Tuesday in Mach she hadn't heard of James Hozhauer.
     Boettcher, a 27-year old librarian at the University of Chicago, did not know that the contestant she would soon face had already won 32 games, amasses $2.46 million and established himself as one of the game sho's greatest players of all time.  Games are prerecorded, usually five in one day; Holzhauer's first win would not air until April 4.
...
     As a book and theater lover growing up outside Philadelphia, Boettcher first tried out for "Jeopardy!" in high school.  As she continued to chase her goal, her father, Kevin Boettcher, bought her books on topics that she needed to bone up on, such as sports.
After finishing college at Princeton, she went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where she studied information science.  While there, Boettcher decided to write her master's paper on her longtime obsession with a certain game show.
     In her 70-page final paper, Boettcher explored whether certain characteristics of a "Jeopardy!" clue could predict its difficulty level.  She said she wanted to determine if a computer could predict whether a clue was easy or difficulty based on the words it was using or the length of the clue.  In essence, she was asking if there was a material difference between a $200 clue and a $1,000 clue. 

COMMENT

   OK, maybe librarians deserve a little of that vocational awe.  A Master's theses on Jeopardy! clues sounds like a candidate for an Ig Noble Prize, but it seems to have been a useful piece of scholarship. Hozhaur is a professional sports bettor who was using a sophisticated statistical strategy to successfully beat the TV trivia game. He was zeroing in on Ken Jenning's record when the librarian beat him.

     This is the first story I've encountered that contains any description of professional education for librarianship. Although the reporter seems dubious that anyone would bother to study the difficulty of questions, in fact, I have co-authored such a paper myself. [1]  Unfortunately, librarians have spent a fair amount of ink trying to prove that most reference questions aren't all that hard.  The goal is to replace trained reference librarians with cheaper part-time student help. In most such studies, shabby research methodology is based on circular logic that pre-defines certain types of questions as "easy/directional" without ever evaluating whether such questions are actually easy to answer. 

  In any case, if I wanted information help, I'd far rather ask someone like Emma Boettcher with a passion for information than an under-paid part-timer.
 
[1] LeMire, Sarah, Lorelei Rutledge, and Amy Brunvand. "Taking a Fresh Look: Reviewing and Classifying Reference Statistics for Data-Driven Decision Making." Reference & User Services Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2016): 230-238.

Shelf Life

Meryl Gordon, "Shelf Life: The Story of One of the Rarest Books in the World." New York Times Book Review, May 5, 2019, p.18.

     The Gutenberg Bible, purchased n 1950, was the jewel of her collection which she left to St. John's Seminary upon her death in 1958.
     In her bequest, she insisted the nothing be sold for 25 years, in the belief that future librarians should have flexibility but would keep the collection intact.  It was a tragic mistake.  The Los Angeles Archdiocese, unable to resist monetizing the valuable assets, put the entire Doheny book collection on sale in 1987.  The Maruzen Co. Ltd of Tokyo snapped up the Gutenberg for $4.4 million.  It is now the property of Keio University, where it has been digitized and locked away from public view. 

 COMMENT

    The quote comes from a book review about a biography of a rare Gutenberg Bible[1]. The collector, as in other library stories, [2] imagines that her rare book collection has enough value to be guarded intact by librarians.  In fact, the librarians sell the collection for money.

     What's most interesting to me is the comment that the digitized book is "locked away."  Librarians like to imagine that digitization makes rare and valuable things more available, not less available.  But an online picture of a Gutenberg Bible is not really the same thing as a Gutenberg Bible even though the text is the same. The spooky sense of history is lost in the format transition.

[1] Margaret Leslie Davis, The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey, Tarcher Perigee, 2019. 
[2] Can't. Just. Stop. 

He Didn't Just Like Her Profile Photo. He Understood It.

Tammy La Gorce, "He didn't Just Like Her Profile Photo. He Understood It," New York Times, April 14, 2019, ST11.

     In posting the Tifa shot, she had unwittingly sent up a smoke signal to a kindred spirit: "I wanted to show that I was actually a real-live nerd," said Ms. Nastasi, who is the associate manager of book conservation at the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
...
    Ms Nastasi, by contrast, was not sure what she wanted her professional life to look like, but she knew it would have to satisfy her appetite for frequent and meaningful change. "I like to try new things and I like to go big," she said.  That explains her shift from AmeriCorps to her stint as an event manger for Saucy by Nature, a catering company in Brooklyn, and eventually to the Thomas J. Watson Library.  There she acts as a sort of air traffic controller for rare and damaged books, ensuring they are properly tagged an labeled after being repaired and recirculated.

COMMENT

   This librarian's OKCupid profile had a photo of her in the costume of an obscure anime character.  When a man complimented her cosplay and not the sexiness of her costume, reader, she married him.

  The  librarian's occupation is interesting enough to that the writer that it is described twice in the profile.  It is taken as representing her commitment to social justice,  her appetite for meaningful change and her cultural involvement -- in  short,  evidence of her desirability as a partner for a smart, nerdy man.

"Fandom," incidentally has been identified as a trend by the Center for the Future of Libraries.

Like This or Die

Christian Lorentzen, "Like This or Die: The Fate of the Book Review in the Age of the Algorithm," Harper's, April 2019, p 25-33.

To be interested in literature all you need is a library card. Literature is any writing that rewards critical attention.  It's writing that you want to read and read about. It's something different from entertainment. It involves aesthetic and political judgments and it's not easily quantifiable.  Negativity is part of this equation because without it positivity is meaningless. 

... 

The past two decades have been a phase of upheaval, panic, and collapse.  The crisis of closures that has struck America's regional newspapers hit their books pages first.... But as these losses piled up, it was difficult to feel that something wonderful had been lost, even if it had real value in swaths of the country that were losing many things all at once.  What mattered most were the big city papers, especially the New York Times and, as [Elizabeth] Hardwick wrote, "All those high school English Teachers, those faithful librarians and booksellers, those trusting suburbanites, those bright young men and women in the provinces, all those who believe in the judgment of the Times and who need its direction."

COMMENT

      This view of libraries is contradictory.  All you need is a library card, and yet the librarians are lumped in with those poor provincial souls dependent on Times reviews to know what to read.  The writer, a book critic, wants people to read and appreciate capital "L" Literature and engage with some national community of readers and writers. He pooh-poohs the idea that regional writing matters compared to the 750 or so books reviewed annually in the New York Times Book Review. 

  And yet he knows what's going on in publishing-- "An ever consolidating set of big houses in New York and an ever expanding array of small presses across the country."  Personally,  I find myself  gravitating increasingly towards small publishers such as Milkweed Editions or Torrey House Press, and spending more time with literary journals (I especially like Bicycle Almanac, Dark Mountain,  Orion, saltfront, Sugarhouse Review, and Terrain.org).

     I am a librarian who also writes book reviews but reading this essay I get a sense that I am probably the type of "anti-intellectual" reviewer that Mr. Lorentzen despises.  I got my start writing capsule reviews for Library Journal -- 100 words to let you know whether or not to buy the book.  Nowadays my interests have shifted to poetry and more broadly, environmental humanities.  I read reviews to decide what to read.  I write them becasue I'm convinced that they are an essential part building of a local literary culture, supporting writers and poets whom you can hear at readings and meet at book signing events.  Since small press publications are unlikely to appear in the Times, it's up to us regional  librarians to nurture regional literature.

     Lorentzen sneers a the new Match Book column in the NYTBR that is essentially a readers' advisory -- "The world is full of desperate people." he writes. "Who know they were so desperate for book recommendations? Aren't those easy to come by in any bookstore or on Amazon?"  Well, sure.  Or at the library for that matter. But if people are going to discover literature at the library then the library has to collect literature, and approval plans are not very helpful.  There is a need for librarians to become acquainted with the expanding array of small presses across the country and someone (librarians?) needs to review the books published by them.  Lorentzen is right that the model of a few fancy critics writing for the NYTBR no longer works, but I think he's dead wrong about the irrelevancy of regional and local book reviews.  All those faithful librarians have a gap to fill reviewing, purchasing and collecting literature that's not covered by the NYTBR. 

     

   

Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture

Jenifer Senior, “Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture,” New York Times, March 10, 2019, p. SF5.

     If the book-buying public had found “A Place for Wolves” as criminally distasteful and insensitive as Twitter did, it would have sunk the novel in slower, more deliberate ways. Librarians would have read it and taken a pass. Bookstore owners would have decided it wasn’t worth the space. Book critics would have savaged it— or worse, ignored it.
     It should have failed or succeeded in the marketplace of ideas. But it was never giver the chance. The mob got to it first.

COMMENT

     The librarian role in this editorial is somewhere between censor and anti-censor— a type of objective reader able to judge the book by literary standards and/or market potential, not a knee-jerk reaction to identity politics. The proposed  antidote to rabid crowd-sourced Internet mobs is a professional class of critics to help sort out literary dross. As a librarian and book reviewer I appreciate the vote of confidence!

     The editorial describes a Twitter mob attack on a YA novel by Kosoko Jackson by people who had never read the book but who objected to the way a particular ethnic group was portrayed. Ironically, Jackson had seen himself as a defender against cultural appropriation, even developing “rules” for writers that claimed fiction must, for some reason, reflect the identity of its author (isn’t that autobiographical non-fiction?):“Stories about the civil rights movement should be written by black people. Stories of suffrage should be written by women. Ergo, stories about boys during life-changing times, like the AIDS epidemic, should be written by gay men. Why is this so hard to get?”

     It’s so hard to get because it is not just wrong but absurdly wrong. Who has authority to declare which contemporary identity groups own which parts of history? Not only does the idea of identity censorship undermine the artistic possibilities of fiction, striving to avoid stereotypes at any cost has the unfortunate side effect of erasing authentic diversity.[1]  If authors were only allowed to write autobiographical fiction about people just like  themselves, we’d just get nothing but segregated books.

     Jackson seems to have fallen into the identity politics trap by assuming that cis-gendered white people are value-neutral regardless of ethnic, national or religious identity. Perhaps that false idea led him all unawares to write about the complicated and violent identity politics of the Balkans, seemingly without po0ndering the meaning of the word “Balkanization.”

[1] See: Autism as Metaphor.  Which is worse? To find people like you in books reduced to caricature or metaphor? or not to find people like you in books at all? 

A Seat at the Head of the Table

Emily Bazelon, “A Seat at the Head of the Table,” (The Future of Work), New York Times Magazine, Feb 24, 2019, pl. 38-.

BAZELON: Kathy, [Katherine W. Phillips] can we talk about another study you did, showing that black women may be less subject than white women to traditional expectations about femininity. 

PHILLIPS: In this study, we asked people taking an online survey to rate Asian, black and white men and women for their hireability for two jobs: security guard, a traditionally masculine position, and librarian, a traditionally feminine one.  Among other things, we found that black men and women, like white men, were perceived to be good fits for the security-guard position because they’re seen as more traditionally masculine.

COMMENT

      Here a stereotype of librarianship is employed in psychological research. This passage raised so many questions in my mind that I had to look up the article to see what Phillips’ research methodology really was. [1] Why would a highly intellectual (albeit feminized) profession like librarianship be presented as a gender equivalent of being a security guard? Did respondents really view black women as more masculine? Or did they actually stereotype black women as less educated?

    The original article says "We selected positions that exemplified femininity or masculinity, but that steered clear of strong stereotypes that are associated with the stereotypes geared to Asians (e.g., mathematical) and Blacks (e.g., athletic)." The researchers used a Princeton-Trilogy-based scale to identify traits associated with the two professions but there's no list of what those traits were for librarians. The study does acknowledge that "the librarian position may be perceived to be a higher-status position than the security patrol position. Thus, it is plausible that Asians were matched to the higher-status position due to their relatively high socioeconomic status in society."

     This is the job description the study invented for librarians: 

"Librarian. The librarian will work in the campus library. He or she will assist students in finding books and strive to maintain a quiet and serene atmosphere for the comfort of the student body."

     Good grief!

      The notion that librarians enforce silence is especially ironic. Back in the 1980s, librarianship was sold to me as a refuge for smart women who had been shut out of other options due to gender discrimination. For a time, I had wanted to be a scientist or a mathematician, and I was not surprised to find reference in this article to another study that found women with prominent math credentials on their resume are actually less likely to get a job interview.  One might expect that a pink-collar profession would be more female-friendly but I have not found that to be the case in librarianship.  Rather men are disproportionately promoted, and women are criticized for being "uncollegial" if they are assertive.  In librarianship I have encountered mommy-tracking, glass ceilings, sexual harassment, gender bias and policies that actively discourage diversity.  Questions are shut down with calls for "civility."  It's clear that I'm not the only person who has encountered this. After an incident of racist harassment at the 2019 Midwinter meeting of the American Library Association, April Hathcock wrote in her blog,

I know there are members of our profession—mostly white, though not all—who do not like me, do not like that I write and talk about race, do not like the direct and unapologetic way in which I call out systems of racial oppression. They find my work “divisive,” “uncivil,” and “unprofessional.” Some of them are leaders in our profession. Some of them were there sitting quietly as I was being harassed. When they talk about having conversations about “civility and professionalism,” they’re not talking about the inexcusable behavior that happened to me; they’re talking about tone-policing and silencing me.

     The traditional shushing isn't just an intimidation tactic used against noisy patrons.  Librarians use shushing against each other to enforce female stereotypes.

[1]Hall, Erika V., Adam D. Galinsky, and Katherine W. Phillips. "Gender profiling: A gendered race perspective on person–position fit." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 41.6 (2015): 853-868.

Taking Notes on How Bibliophiles Flirt

Karla Marie-Rose Derus, “Taking Notes on How Bibliophiles Flirt” (Modern Love), New York Times, February 24, 2019, pl. ST6.

During six years of singlehood in my 20s, I became a person I did not know. Before, I had always been a reader. I walked to the library several times a week as a child and stayed up late into the night reading under my blankets with a flashlight. I checked out so many books and returned them so quickly the librarian once snapped, “Don’t take home so many books if you’re not going to read them all.” “But I did read them all,” I said, unloading them into her arms. I was an English major in college and went on t get a master’s in literature. But shortly after the spiral-bound thesis took its place on my shelf next to the degree, I stopped reading. It happened gradually, the way one heals or dies.

… 

On our seventh date, David and I visited the Central Library downtown.,
“I have a game,” he said, pulling two pens and pads of sticky notes out of his bag. “Let’s find books we’ve read and leave reviews in them for he next person.”
We wandered through the aisles for over an hour. In the end, we say on the floor among the poetry, and I read him some of Linda Pastan’s verse. 

… 

The Japanese language has a word for this: tsundoku. The act of acquiring books that go unread.

COMMENT


     Shame on the librarian. The writer describes herself as “a 5-foot-3-inch black woman born to a Caribbean mother.” It troubles me to think that the librarian was judging her appearance, not her borrowing habits. What’s more, the librarian is deeply wrong to think that taking out unread books is somehow wrong. A library is an antidote to tshundoku. Unlike the bookstore which clutters your home shelves, you can take a chance with a library book that may not turn out to be worth reading.  (See: What to Do With all the Stuff That's Cluttering your Home; Can't. Just. Stop).

     As other library stories relate, the books that people read and/or buy become deeply personal markers of who they are. Even after Karla stops reading, she considers the books she has read essential to her self perception. Her online dating profile is listed under the screen name “missbibliophile” and her taste in literature speaks for her personality. David, the boyfriend reads history and nonfiction; Karla prefers writers of color and immigrant narratives (writers on her list like  Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy and Edward P. Jones indicate the importance of diversity to her self-image) Can they overcome their differences to combine their bookshelves?

Like the writer, I experienced a period of non-reading, but I don’t think it was related to romantic disappointment or intellectual fatigue. I believe I lost my ability to concentrate due to too much screen time. I decided it was a big problem that I had stopped reading books and I cured myself by sitting down with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace until I had read it all the way through. A distraction-free long distance Amtrak trip was helpful to the project of becoming re-literate.

The library game the two lovers play is charming. It reminds me of students who leave paper money in their dissertation to reward anyone who bothers to read their work. Other library stories feature ephemera found in books (See: Lee Israel) or marginalia (See: When Puccini Came, Saw and Conquered). In academic libraries one sometimes finds texts marked up with notes or highlighting from previous readers. Sometimes this seems like annoying defacement, but it’s also an insight into what impressed another reader. I shouldn't admit it, but I don't always mind if library books are marked up if it's done in pencil and not fluorescent-yellow ink.

The library in this story is also a meaningful place.  The two lovers go there on a date.  When David proposes he does it by tucking a note into the pages of a book.

Nebraska Governor Won't Honor Book by 'Political Activist' who has Criticized Trump

Lisa Gutierrez. Nebraska Governor Won't Honor Book by 'Political Activist' who has Criticized Trump. Kansas City Star, Jan. 8, 2019.

     Nebraska’s Republican governor Pete Ricketts has refused to sign a proclamation honoring a book about a farm family in the state, calling the author a “political activist” and suggesting the book is divisive.
...
     “This Blessed Earth,” written by Nebraska writer and journalist Ted Genoways, is the 2019 “One Book One Nebraska” selection chosen by The Nebraska Center for the Book. The nonprofit, affiliated with the Library of Congress, “supports programs to celebrate and stimulate public interest in books, reading, and the written word,” according to its website.
...
     “It’s an award-winning book,” Rod Wagner, director of the Nebraska Library Commission, told the World-Herald. “It’s received national attention. Of course there are ideas in the book that people will not agree to, but I think that’s also a reason why it makes for a good one to consider and discuss. “It’s a contrast of the modern farm with that of 40 years ago. It’s one that’s a subject of interest across Nebraska. People who have disagreements with ideas in the book will be able to talk about those.”

COMMENT 

    The governor has failed to understand that some aspects of his job are purely ceremonial.  It makes him look like a book-burner to reject a book award because of his own politics. After all, he does not represent the organization that gives the award and he doesn't get to veto the award the way he could veto a bill.  The book also won a 2018n Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and was selected for state reading programs in Iowa. What's more, the book is about  issues facing family farmers-- the kind of thing that the governor of Nebraska should probably care about.

   I haven't read the book (yet) either, but apparently in it Big Agriculture doesn't play well with others and farmers are worried that leaks from the  Keystone XL pipeline will contaminate the aquifer that supports irrigated farming throughout the region.  Does the governor think that suppressing knowledge of these problems will somehow cause them to disappear?

     One hopes that the governor's petty behavior draws more readers to the book.  The danger is, if politicians think the librarians who are advocating freedom to read are advocating partisan political positions they might try to cut off public funding for libraries.