This was a tough module for me (in a good way). While reading Stephens’ The Heart of Librarianship (2016), I found myself agreeing about the need to embrace change and innovation, while also recognizing myself in the fear felt by library staff he referenced. I have been working in public libraries for about five years, and have my fair share of incidents to point to that make me hesitate to, for instance, want to share my full name or photograph in my library’s social media posts; I’ve had colleagues and even supervisors who were stalked by library patrons. I truly love the idea of some kind of an interactive art piece that library patrons can contribute to spontaneously, but can’t get the “What if they contribute some kind of abusive hate speech?” thought out of my head, especially after we were the recent recipient of a first amendment audit that got filmed and put on YouTube, and which led to weeks of nasty phone calls.
I recognize my fear is standing in my way and want to get rid of it, but am not sure how to accomplish that.
And just because I’m now worried I’ve come across as a total scaredy cat, I want to make it clear that I take customer service super seriously at my job, and consider myself an “above and beyond” type when it comes to building relationships with patrons. I ask them about their lives (with genuine interest) and have built rapport with many people from all backgrounds and walks of life. I was delighted with the reading that encouraged library workers to ask community members about their lives, rather than what the library might do for them (Schmidt, 2016). I just have my guard up, too (speaking of which, I was also a guard at the Met for five years before working in libraries, and boy were there incidents there as well!). It honestly disappoints me that one of my first thoughts when seeing the frankly awesome library room with donated goods from community and staff was, what if someone locks themselves in and then overdoses and we don’t even find out about it for hours? Gah! How do I break out of this mentality?
I am very grateful and appreciative of the fact that this module included readings that provided tools to help address those fears, such as Dixon (2017) and her emphasis on the importance of comprehensive facilitation training for staff leading discussions on potentially sensitive topics. And I was overall so inspired to read about libraries that just leapt in headfirst, like the Madison Public Library developing a project that allowed community members to lead different incredible programs that ended up connecting new patrons to the library (Smith, 2017).
References
Dixon, J. A. (2017). Convening community conversations. Library Journal, 41-44.
Schmidt, A. (2016). Asking the right questions. Library Journal, 141(8).
Smith, C. (2017, June 25). Madison’s library takeover. American Libraries.
Stephens, M. (2016). The Heart of Librarianship. ALA Editions.
@messca13 Thank you for your candor with this post. Would suggest continuing to think about your comfort level and whatever opportunities you may have to share, etc. I would also say if your library has a strong well articulated policy on what is acceptable via commenting or behaviors in the library then you’re covered if somebody puts hate speech up in the art space. It should be removed! Same with comment policies for online spaces. Again, a thought and personal reflection.