Response to an opinion piece by column editor Eric Jennings in Volume 23, Issue 1 in College & Undergraduate Libraries entitled,  The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession

DeFrain, Erica

Hathcock, April

Masland, Turner

Pagowsky, Nicole

Pho, Annie

Rigby, Miriam

Roberto, K. R.

English

PDXScholar (Portland State University)

Portland State University PDXScholar Library Faculty Publications and Presentations University Library 7-2016 Reader Response [to Eric Jennings, “The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession" C&UL 23:1, 93-100] Erica DeFrain University of Nebraska - Lincoln April Hathcock New York University Turner Masland Portland State University, masland@pdx.edu Nicole Pagowsky University of Arizona Annie Pho University of California, Los Angeles See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/ulib_fac  Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits you. Citation Details Erica DeFrain , April Hathcock , Turner Masland , Nicole Pagowsky , Annie Pho , Miriam Rigby & K. R. Roberto (2016). Reader response, College & Undergraduate Libraries, 23:2, 217-220. This Response or Comment is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Library Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. For more information, please contact pdxscholar@pdx.edu. Authors Erica DeFrain, April Hathcock, Turner Masland, Nicole Pagowsky, Annie Pho, Miriam Rigby, and K. R. Roberto This response or comment is available at PDXScholar: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/ulib_fac/191 COLLEGE & UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARIES, VOL. , NO. , –http://dx.doi.org/./..LETTERS TO THE EDITORReader responseVolume 23, Issue 1 contains the final column of Eric Jennings, who has served the journaland its readers well for a number of years. The column is entitled “The librarian stereotype:How librarians are damaging their image and profession.” As one would expect, a columnwith this topic should generate reader interest. I am pleased to publish a letter from a numberof readers together with Mr. Jennings’s response.It is always my pleasure to hear from the journal’s readers.Christopher Millson-MartulaEditorThe first issue of this year’s College & Undergraduate Libraries (Volume 23, Issue 1) includesan opinion piece by column editor Eric Jennings (Jennings 2016) that oversimplifies anddismisses a rich and important body of research regarding occupational stereotyping andits effect on inclusion and diversity within the library profession. Since its publication inMarch, frustrationwith this article has appeared onTwitter andother socialmedia platforms,including an excellent critique in the American Indians in Children’s Literature blog by Dr.Debbie Reese (Reese 2016). The responses via these open channels are essential in that theyreach the widest audience possible; however, a published rebuttal residing within the samepeer-reviewed journal as Mr. Jennings’s editorial is also necessary to honor the many voicesof dissent that would be otherwise ignored by the scholarly record. As some of the authorswhose work was cited byMr. Jennings, and ultimately accused of “damaging the profession,”we feel compelled to correct his inaccurate understanding of our work and underscore thecontinued importance of critically evaluating our profession, the image it conveys, and thevery real effects these perceptions have on the working populationsmost likely to be targetedby them.Stereotypes are not just problematic because of their truthfulness or lack thereof and willnot simply go away if we “start acting like professionals by focusing on our jobs first andwor-rying about our image later” (Jennings 2016, 96). They are problematic because they pointto lack of understanding and adequate representation for the group involved. They are prob-lematic because they signal deeper issues of power and oppression that must be addressed ifwe are to move forward as a society. Willful ignorance of issues of racism, classism, sexism,heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, and other modes of oppression does not make them goaway. On the contrary, that kind of ignorance only serves to make themworse. And in a pro-fession that is about providing reliable and useful information, we cannot afford to encourageor even engage in that kind of ignorance.Jennings fails to adequately summarize the research findings in his brief exploration intothe literature. For example, when citing Bonnet and McAlexander’s study on reference ser-vice, he ignores that their baseline images of reference librarians with neutral expressionswere already deemed “relatively approachable” by study participants (Bonnet andMcAlexan-der 2013). Then he uses the modest gains in favorability of smiling persons to infer thatRoantree’s outdated and absurd musings—“a light in the eye, a lilt in the voice, a becom-ing color can mean more to the library profession than all the professional mish-mash puttogether” (Roantree 1953)—are somehow appropriate. This comes across as ahistorical andgrossly out of touch and disregards the cautionary remarks in Bonnet and McAlexander’sconclusion: 218 E. DEFRAIN ET AL.However, we do not feel that the outcomes of this study necessarily merit policy changesfor a couple of reasons. Firstly, in certain cases, there is the potential for discriminatory prac-tice (for example, by asking librarians to wear specific types of clothes based on their genderor age). We find this practice inappropriate, particularly considering the important role thatthe library plays in empowering diverse populations. Secondly, not only do the actions wetake affect patrons’ perceptions of us, but they can affect our own opinions of ourselves (Bon-net and McAlexander 2013).Our job duties as academics and professionals extend far beyond that of the referencedesk. Jennings has missed the point Pagowsky and DeFrain (2014) and others made regard-ing feminized employment, service work, and warmth. Rather, he is content to tell a profes-sion of more than 80% women that they should essentially smile more, despite the evidencethat, as Hess et al. (2009) so succinctly state, “[W]omen generally have less power or statusthan men … smiling in women is therefore a form of appeasement behaviour that is adap-tive for a low power/status individual.” And as Pagowsky and Rigby (2014) have said, “In thecase of information work, we are dealing with asserting our value in a profession, which, onthe face of it, is devalued due to stereotypes of subservience and caring. And this is how ourworth is defined to the public.”When considering our impact outside of the profession, Jennings’s opinion about librar-ianship having a tradition of neutrality is incorrect. Libraries, particularly in the UnitedStates, have always been sites of “Americanization” or Whiteness-teaching for citizens frommarginalized communities, as noted by Wiegand (2015) in his historical survey of the pub-lic library, Part of Our Lives. Immigrants, people of color, people from the lower classes—allwere directed to the library to learn how to best fit into the dominant White, middle-classculture in the way expected of them. Libraries have never been, are not now, and, in manyways, will never be neutral. Neutrality is a codeword for the status quo, which is a stasis ofracism, sexism, classism, ableism, and all the other -isms.This issue of work being devalued due to stereotypes is not solely in regards to gender, butalso race, class, sexuality, ability, and other factors that should be discussed. Being an “other”as defined by society means having to deal with inherent bias against inherent aspects ofone’s identity. For example, it is much more difficult to be seen as competent or in a positionof authority if you are a woman of color working in a library (or almost anywhere). Doinga good job is not enough. We can see this plainly in collected LIS Microaggressions blogposts (http://lismicroaggressions.tumblr.com/); Dr. Nicole Cooke’s (2014) article, “PushingBack from the Table,” on her experience of being a woman faculty member of color in LIS;and through numerous projects, research, and association work (e.g., ACRLDiversityMem-bers Initiative Group, https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/index) on diversifyingthe profession and promoting inclusion throughout ALA and ACRL. We are far away frombeing able to assume everyone within librarianship is perceived fairly and treated equally byour colleagues and our users, and Jennings’s call for shrugging it off shows how his columnand this general attitude contribute to the problem. It is a position of luxury and privilegeif one does not need to personally consider these issues and examine how one is perceived.But regardless of whether it affects an individual personally, these issues resonate with manyin the field and are a systemic issue.The flaws in Jennings’s piece can serve as a clarion call to all of us in the profession to takemore active roles in critically examining our work, our images, and our biases. We agreewith Jennings that “we should stop banging our head against the wall and do somethingdifferently” (Jennings 2016, 99) but to a large degree, we see this happening already. AsMauro has so aptly noted on Twitter, “We don’t need neutrality, we need to be critical. Ofourselves, of our collections, of our profession, of our institutions.” Jennings may be contentto sacrifice this vitally important step of taking a critical approach to whowe are andwhat wedo as information professionals, but many of the rest of us are not. We build communities of READER RESPONSE 219critical reflection on social media through #critlib (http://twitter.com/hashtag/critlib) and#libleadgender (http://twitter.com/hashtag/libleadgender). We build these communitieswithin our professional organizations through groups such as the previously mentionedALA Diversity Member Interest Group; the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender RoundTable (GLBTRT, http://www.ala.org/glbtrt/glbtrt); and the racial and ethnic minoritygroups—the BCALA (http://bcala.org/), REFORMA (http://www.reforma.org/), andAPALA (http://www.apalaweb.org/). We also build these communities through carefullyconsidered and deeply reflective research—research that moves us forward by welcomingothers to join and shape the conversation, not silence it. Let us continue to build thesecommunities and create more in order to reshape the stereotypes and form a more inclusiveprofession for us all.Erica DeFrainAssistant ProfessorUniversity of Nebraska–Lincoln LibrariesApril HathcockScholarly Communications LibrarianNew York UniversityTurner MaslandAsst. Manager Access ServicesPortland State UniversityNicole PagowskyResearch & Learning Librarian, Instruction CoordinatorUniversity of Arizonanfp@email.arizona.eduAnnie PhoInquiry and Instruction Librarian for Peer-to-Peer Service and Public ProgramsUniversity of California Los AngelesMiriam RigbyAssociate Social Sciences LibrarianUniversity of OregonK. R. RobertoPhD CandidateUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignPublished with license by Taylor & Francis © 2016 Erica DeFrain, April Hathcock, Turner Masland, NicolePagowsky, Annie Pho, Miriam Rigby, and K.R. Robertohttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2016.1188609ReferencesBonnet, J., and B. McAlexander. 2013. “First Impressions and the Reference Encounter: The Influ-ence of Affect and Clothing on Librarian Approachability.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 39(4):335–46. 220 E. DEFRAIN ET AL.Cooke, N. 2014. “Pushing Back from the Table: Fighting to Maintain my Voice as a Pre-TenureMinority Female in the White Academy.” Polymath 4(2):39–49. https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/article/view/2934/1000.Hess, U., R. B. Adams, K. Grammer, andR. E. Kleck. 2009. “FaceGender and Emotion Expression: AreAngryWomen More Like Men?” Journal of Vision 9(12):1–8.Jennings, E. 2016.“The Librarian Stereotype: How Librarians are Damaging Their Image and Profession.”College & Undergraduate Libraries 23(1):93–100. doi:10.1080/10691316.2016.1134241.Pagowsky, N., and E. DeFrain. 2014. “Ice Ice Baby: Are Librarian Stereotypes FreezingUs out of Instruction?”In the Library with the Lead Pipe. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/ice-ice-baby-2/.Pagowsky, N., and M. Rigby. 2014. The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing Perceptions and Presentations ofInformation Work. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries.Reese, D. 2016. “Eric Jennings, Sherman Alexie, and Damaging Perceptions about Alcohol UseAmongst Native Peoples.” American Indians in Children’s Literature (blog), March 23, http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2016/03/eric-jennings-sherman-alexie-and.html.Roantree, D. 1953. “Should Librarians Be Glamour Girls?”Wilson Library Bulletin, March, 521.Wiegand, W. A. 2015. Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library. Oxford/New York:Oxford University Press. 

Reader Response [to Eric Jennings, “The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession  C&UL 23:1, 93-100]

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Reader Response [to Eric Jennings, “The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession C&UL 23:1, 93-100]

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