DeFrain, Erica

Hathcock, April

Masland, Turner

Pagowsky, Nicole

Pho, Annie

Rigby, Miriam

Roberto, K R

English

UNL | Libraries

University of Nebraska - Lincoln
DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Faculty Publications, UNL Libraries Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
7-6-2016
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, edefrain2@unl.edu
April Hathcock
New York University
Turner Masland
Portland State University
Nicole Pagowsky
University of Arizona, nfp@email.arizona.edu
Annie Pho
University of California Los Angeles
See next page for additional authors
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DeFrain, Erica; Hathcock, April; Masland, Turner; Pagowsky, Nicole; Pho, Annie; Rigby, Miriam; and Roberto, K R., "Reader
Response [to Eric Jennings, “The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession" C&UL 23:1, 93-100]"
(2016). Faculty Publications, UNL Libraries. 339.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/339
Authors
Erica DeFrain, April Hathcock, Turner Masland, Nicole Pagowsky, Annie Pho, Miriam Rigby, and K R.
Roberto
This article is available at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/339
The current issue of this year’s College & Undergraduate Libraries (Volume 23, Issue 1) 
includes an opinion piece by column editor Eric Jennings1 that oversimplifies and 
dismisses a rich and important body of research regarding occupational stereotyping 
and its effect on inclusion and diversity within the library profession. Since its publication 
in March, frustration with this article has appeared on Twitter and other social media 
platforms, including an excellent critique in the American Indians in Children’s Literature 
blog by Dr. Debbie Reese.2 The responses via these open channels are essential in that 
they reach the widest audience possible; however, a published rebuttal residing within 
the same peer reviewed journal as Mr. Jennings's editorial is also necessary to honor 
the many voices of dissent that would be otherwise ignored by the scholarly record. As 
some of the authors whose work was cited by Mr. Jennings, and ultimately accused of 
"damaging the profession," we feel compelled to correct his inaccurate understanding of 
our work and underscore the continued importance of critically evaluating our 
profession, the image it conveys, and the very real effects these perceptions have on 
the working populations most likely to be targeted by them.  
 
Stereotypes are not just problematic because of their truthfulness or lack thereof, and 
will not simply go away if we “start acting like professionals by focusing on our jobs first 
and worrying about our image later.”3 They are problematic because they point to lack 
of understanding and adequate representation for the group involved. They are 
problematic because they signal deeper issues of power and oppression that must be 
addressed if we 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 go away. On the contrary, that kind of ignorance only serves to 
make them worse. And in a profession that is about providing reliable and useful 
information, we cannot afford to encourage or even engage in that kind of ignorance. 
 
Jennings fails to adequately summarize the research findings in his brief exploration into 
the literature. For example, when citing Bonnet and McAlexander’s study on reference 
service, he ignores that their baseline images of reference librarians with neutral 
expressions were already deemed “relatively approachable” by study participants.4 
Then he uses the modest gains in favorability of smiling persons to infer that Roantree’s 
outdated and absurd musings—“a light in the eye, a lilt in the voice, a becoming color 
                                                
1 Eric Jennings, “The Librarian Stereotype: How Librarians are Damaging Their Image and Profession,” 
College & Undergraduate Libraries 23, no. 1 (2016): 93-100. 
2 Debbie Reese, “Eric Jennings, Sherman Alexie, and Damaging Perceptions about Alcohol Use Amongst 
Native Peoples,” American Indians in Children’s Literature, March 23, 2016, 
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2016/03/eric-jennings-sherman-alexie-and.html  
3 Jennings, 96. 
4 Jennifer Bonnet & Ben McAlexander, “First Impressions and the Reference Encounter: The Influence of 
Affect and Clothing on Librarian Approachability,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 39, no. 4 (2013): 
335-346. http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/lib_staffpub/16/.  
can mean more to the library profession than all the professional mish-mash put 
together”5—are somehow appropriate. This comes across as ahistorical and grossly out 
of touch, and disregards the cautionary remarks in Bonnet and McAlexander’s 
conclusion: 
 
However, we do not feel that the outcomes of this study necessarily merit policy 
changes for a couple of reasons. Firstly, in certain cases, there is the potential for 
discriminatory practice (for example, by asking librarians to wear specific types of 
clothes based on their gender or age). We find this practice inappropriate, 
particularly considering the important role that the library plays in empowering 
diverse populations. Secondly, not only do the actions we take affect patrons’ 
perceptions of us, but they can affect our own opinions of ourselves.6  
 
Our job duties as academics and professionals extend far beyond that of the reference 
desk. Jennings has missed the point Pagowsky and DeFrain7 and others made 
regarding feminized employment, service work, and warmth. Rather, he is content to tell 
a profession of more than 80% women that they should essentially smile more, despite 
the evidence that, as Hess, Adams, and Kleck so succinctly state, “[W]omen generally 
have less power or status than men . . .smiling in women is therefore a form of 
appeasement behaviour that is adaptive for a low power/status individual.”8 And as 
Pagowsky and Rigby have said, “In the case of information work, we are dealing with 
asserting our value in a profession, which, on the face of it, is devalued due to 
stereotypes of subservience and caring. And this is how our worth is defined to the 
public.”9  
 
When considering our impact outside of the profession, Jennings’s opinion about 
librarianship having a tradition of neutrality is incorrect. Libraries, particularly in the U.S., 
have always been sites of “Americanization” or whiteness-teaching for citizens from 
marginalized communities as noted by Wiegand in his historical survey of the public 
library, Part of Our Lives.10 Immigrants, people of color, people from the lower classes—
                                                
5 Dorothy Roantree, “Should Librarians Be Glamour Girls?” Wilson Library Bulletin, March 1953, 521. 
6 Jennifer Bonnet and Ben McAlexander, “First Impressions and the Reference Encounter: The Influence 
of Affect and Clothing on Librarian Approachability.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 39, no. 4 (2013): 
268. 
7 Nicole Pagowsky and Erica DeFrain, “Ice Ice Baby: Are Librarian Stereotypes Freezing Us out of 
Instruction?” In the Library with the Lead Pipe (2014), http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/ice-
ice-baby-2/.  
8 Ursula Hess, et al., “Face Gender and Emotion Expression: Are Angry Women more Like Men?” Journal 
of Vision 9, no. 12 (2009): 516. 
9 Nicole Pagowsky and Miriam Rigby, The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing Perceptions and 
Presentations of Information Work (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2014), 10. 
10 Wayne A. Wiegand, Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public Library (Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 2015). 
all were directed to the library to learn how to best fit into the dominant white, middle-
class culture in the way expected of them. Libraries have never been, are not now, and 
in many ways will never be neutral. Neutrality is a codeword for the status quo, which is 
a stasis of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and all the other -isms.  
 
This issue of work being devalued due to stereotypes is not solely in regards to gender, 
but also 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 of one’s identity. For example, it is much more difficult to be seen as 
competent or in a position of authority if you are a woman of color working in a library 
(or almost anywhere). Doing a good job is not enough. We can see this plainly in 
collected LIS Microaggressions;11 Dr. Nicole Cooke’s article, Pushing Back from the 
Table, on her experience of being a woman faculty member of color in LIS;12 and 
through numerous projects, research, and association work (e.g., ACRL Diversity 
Members Initiative Group13) on diversifying the profession and promoting inclusion 
throughout ALA and ACRL. We are far away from being able to assume everyone within 
librarianship is perceived fairly and treated equally by our colleagues and our users, and 
Jennings’s call for shrugging it off shows how his column and this general attitude 
contribute to the problem. It is a position of luxury and privilege if 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 many in 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 
take more active roles in critically examining our work, our images, and our biases. We 
agree with Jennings that "we should stop banging our head against the wall and do 
something differently,"14 but to a large degree, we see this happening already. As Mauro 
has so aptly noted on Twitter, “We don’t need neutrality, we need to be critical. Of 
ourselves, of our collections, of our profession, of our institutions.” Jennings may be 
content to sacrifice this vitally important step of taking a critical approach to who we are 
and what we do as information professionals, but many of the rest of us are not. We 
build communities of critical reflection on social media through #critlib and 
#libleadgender.15 We build these communities within our professional organizations 
through groups such as the previously mentioned ALA Diversity Member Interest 
Group, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Round Table, and the racial and ethnic 
                                                
11 LIS Microaggressions blog, http://lismicroaggressions.tumblr.com/ 
12 Nicole Cooke, “Pushing Back from the Table,” Polymath 4, no. 2 (2014): 39-49, 
https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/index 
13 ACRL Diversity Members Initiative Group, https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/index. 
14 Jennings, 99. 
15 #critlib, http://twitter.com/hashtag/critlib; #libleadgender, http://twitter.com/hashtag/libleadgender.  
minority groups—the BCALA, REFORMA, and APALA.16 We also build these 
communities through carefully considered and deeply reflective research. Research that 
moves us forward by welcoming others to join and shape the conversation, not silence 
it. Let us continue to build these communities and create more in order to reshape the 
stereotypes and form a more inclusive profession for us all. 
 
Signed, 
Erica DeFrain, Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries 
April Hathcock, Scholarly Communications Librarian, New York University 
Turner Masland, Asst. Manager Access Services, Portland State University 
Nicole Pagowsky, Research & Learning Librarian, Instruction Coordinator, University 
of Arizona 
Annie Pho, Inquiry and Instruction Librarian for Peer-to-Peer Service and Public 
Programs, University of California Los Angeles 
Miriam Rigby, Associate Social Sciences Librarian, University of Oregon 
K.R. Roberto, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
 
 
Bibliography 
 
Bonnet, Jennifer & Ben McAlexander. “First Impressions and the Reference Encounter: 
The Influence of Affect and Clothing on Librarian Approachability.” Journal of Academic 
Librarianship 39, no. 4 (2013): 335-346. 
http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/lib_staffpub/16/.  
 
Cooke, Nicole. “Pushing Back from the Table: Fighting to Maintain my Voice as a Pre-
Tenure Minority Female in the White Academy.” Polymath 4, no. 2 (2014): 39-49. 
https://ojcs.siue.edu/ojs/index.php/polymath/article/view/2934/1000.  
 
Hess, Ursula, Reginald B. Adams, Karl Grammer, and Robert. E. Kleck. “Face Gender 
and Emotion Expression: Are Angry Women more Like Men?” Journal of Vision 9, no. 
12 (2009): 1-8. 
Jennings, Eric. “The Librarian Stereotype: How Librarians are Damaging Their Image 
and Profession.” College & Undergraduate Libraries 23, no. 1 (2016): 93-100, doi: 
10.1080/10691316.2016.1134241.  
 
Pagowsky, Nicole, and Erica DeFrain. “Ice Ice Baby: Are Librarian Stereotypes Freezing 
Us out of Instruction?” In the Library with the Lead Pipe (2014). 
http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2014/ice-ice-baby-2/.  
 
                                                
16 GLBTRT, http://www.ala.org/glbtrt/glbtrt; BCALA, http://bcala.org/; REFORMA, http://www.reforma.org/; 
APALA, http://www.apalaweb.org/ 
Pagowsky, Nicole, and Miriam Rigby. The Librarian Stereotype: Deconstructing 
Perceptions and Presentations of Information Work. Chicago: Association of College 
and Research Libraries, 2014.  
 
Reese, Debbie. “Eric Jennings, Sherman Alexie, and Damaging Perceptions about 
Alcohol Use Amongst Native Peoples,” American Indians in Children’s Literature (blog), 
March 23, 2016, http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2016/03/eric-
jennings-sherman-alexie-and.html.  
 
Roantree, Dorothy. “Should Librarians Be Glamour Girls?” Wilson Library Bulletin, 
March 1953, 521. 
 
Wiegand, Wayne A. Part of Our Lives: A People’s History of the American Public 
Library. Oxford University Press, 2015. 
 
 
 
 


Reader Response [to Eric Jennings, “The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession  \u3ci\u3eC&UL\u3c/i\u3e 23:1, 93-100]

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Reader Response [to Eric Jennings, “The librarian stereotype: How librarians are damaging their image and profession \u3ci\u3eC&UL\u3c/i\u3e 23:1, 93-100]

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