library of primitive art

Re-education through blogging

I'd like to thank Annoyed Librarian for the thoughtful and comprehensive response given to my rather off-the-cuff (and perhaps even impetuous) observation on anger and loathing in the librarian community. As my eyes were opened by my initial 'discovery', so much the wider are they opened by AL's reply. (And by the follow-up comments to that post, but more of that perhaps at a later time.) She has devoted more thought and more bytes to the issue than I, and in doing so I hope clarified some of the questions raised by my more scatter-shot effort.

To respond to the easier points first, the politics of a blogger are either a matter of record or not, at the discretion of the blogger. In most instances I'm happy inferring them from the blog itself or, if there's no indication, not worrying about it. For me they're not usually an issue: I don't often preselect sources with a particular political bent in mind, although discovering them certainly may color how I respond to the blog, favorably or unfavorably. It's only human. Whether the blogger is also a librarian would seem immaterial.

Even as a neophyte blogger it's clear to me: If you see something blogworthy, whether a post or an entire blog, blog it. I did not intend to conflate AL with some of the views in her blogroll -- say, how ALA may be going astray doctrinally -- but if she shares some of the points of view there, so be it. (What I can make out of AL's political philosophy suggests we might actually enjoy a lively conversation with no few points of correspondence.)

Ironically, I see now that I managed to tar her for the 'crime' of providing access to these (still to me) disturbing points of view. And me a seasoned librarian, haven't I learned anything? My criticism, and it's a small one, was more about conflating humor and politics. Rarely do they mix well, let alone parse.

AL makes a good point: politically and socially conservative librarians get annoyed too, and why not? It's simply a different manifestation of the same human condition, one not often revealed in LIS blogs. I might submit that I should spend time reading 'liberal' blog rants, but that begs the question. Even as that prussian blue 'liberal' I have to concede that labels like 'liberal' and 'conservative' don't necessarily contribute to the debate, only to the shrillness of the demagoguery. And personally I find the labels more and more misleading, whether wielded by their owners or detractors. But I digress.

I'm not sure I would abandon the idea of blogrolls just yet, however. I like the idea of being able to showcase and promote useful (informative? humorous?) blogging elsewhere. But as far as seed material for my own blogging or for areas I think are out-of-scope for my blog, there are some corners I may choose not to highlight in my blogroll, and they will remain 'private'.

And here's where the librarian's professional mantra of impartiality and the still-quite-personal blogosphere might seem to conflict. Should individual librarian bloggers avoid capitalizing on the intrinsic potential of blogs because of perceived professional standards? I see now probably not. (Here I might be retreating from the 'blogs don't have to be personal' position I took in a comment to Life As I Know It.) Yet as someone who hopes to bring up an library-generated blog, with all the institutional and individual professional responsibility that adheres to it, I will have to face issues regarding the tenor and authority of our blog soon enough; Selection will become an issue.

By the way, some might think that I started a tempest in a teapot in order to draw attention to my new blog. That would be really clever if I had actually thought of it. Far from it! It's more a case of underestimating the potential for the very medium I was jumping into. I have been dodging controversy most of my life, in that annoyingly WASP-y sort of way, and applying it in my library career is simply a new outlet for a familiar attribute. I would just as soon matters here weren't thoroughly distorted by this one post, canting a blog meant for positive discussion of social networking software in the context of art museum libraries (and elsewhere by extension) toward polemics. There will always be a place for the latter; I'd rather it wasn't here. I don't want to stumble into a nightmare of endless intellectual pre-ignition.

And many thanks, AL, for the book citation as well. What kind of librarian blog contribution would it be without one? I look forward to perusing it. Rest assured that when I do, it will be more because you cited it and to enrich my own personal philosophy than as a vade mecum to your political beliefs. I'm sorry I can't gainsay a comparable publication that matches my political p.o.v.

Thanks also to Dances With Books for reminding me that I should be paying closer attention on what's blogging around me, let alone about me.

So let's on with the blog!

The things you learn ...

... when cobbling together a blog.

Today I learned that there are a lot of angry librarians out there. Not disgruntled. Not cranky. Not even quarrelsome. Just plain angry. This when I was trying to populate the sidebar I've called Anecdotes, facetiae, satire, etc. In my pre-blogger days (that is, until this week) I might drop in on Librarians Guide to Etiquette or Annoyed Librarian to enjoy self-mocking jibes at the library community. It seemed something definitely worth sharing.

I found many of these dyspeptic blogs nestled in a blogroll of the Annoyed Librarian, whose wry stylings I admit enjoying. Granted she labels her roll Library Blogs and Websites: Political, Humorous, Informative. The blogs that alarmed me must be the 'Political' in that collection of strange bedfellows.

An interesting thread running through many of these blogs is the conspiracy theory. I haven't had too many professional dealings with the A.L.A., but I have a hard time believing they're the center of a cabal whose evil goal is fluoridating the water, figuratively speaking. In any event, there was a distinct us-against-them thread running throughout. The profession, they bemoan, is heavily weighted by wrong-thinking liberals set on despoiling the name of Library. It's sad to contemplate the self-loathing inherent in thinking you're the persecuted minority within your chosen profession.

One of the reasons I was attracted to this profession -- enough to want to be part of it -- was the universally good-naturedness of its practitioners. Librarians may be overly self-effacing, I reasoned, but they're fiercely proud of who they are and keenly aware of their intrinsic worth. It's probably one of the reasons that librarians have such a high approval rating with the general public. It's not often that a librarian will throw a book back at you. The infrequent exception tends to stand out glaringly. I never imagined these were inherently left-wing traits.

Librarians, like sanitation workers, lawyers, and houseparents, are political (well, some of them, at any rate), but as a group they tend not to be bomb tossers. 'Earnest' might be the worst thing you say of them collectively; in some cases, 'blinkered' or at their very worst, 'strident'. (In the interest of full disclosure, I work in the prussian blue core of the Blue States.)

In the end it put me in mind of the fact that, even in the hands of librarians, the quintessentially impartial, there's no pretence that the blogosphere is anything but personal. And If 'political' here means 'conservative' or 'right-wing', all power to her. Maybe in this instance, however, it would be wise to wield those library-learnt categorizing skills more deftly.