Revolting librarians > We lost it at the library
Revolting librarians > We lost it at the library
The following is issued as a general warning to anyone who is looking for a radical library job, or who believes a liberal environment to be ideal for the furthering of progress and radical change, or who thinks a liberal power structure can be anything but tyranny masked. There's something for everyone in this story: betrayal by a "radical," betrayal by liberals, betrayal by the power structure. (From our point of view, radical means making real change, at the heart of things, or wanting to make that change; liberal means being inherently ambivalent about change: i.e., the difference between a liberal and a reactionary is the degree to which the former masks his/her desire to maintain the status quo.)
You may have seen the ad in Vocations for Social Change (now Workforce) that called for "turned on Synergy-type librarians" to work at St. Mary's College of Maryland, a campus "moving in creative, experimental directions." We are the people who grabbed up that opportunity to join in a "participatory democracy," where all decisions would be made collectively and where everyone, including (especially!) the director, would be working actively toward social change and new approaches to library service.
It should be noted at the outset that though we think there are many different causes for the failure of this experiment, we do not hold ourselves completely blameless: we were too naive and idealistic to be effective radicals in any sense. Neither of us had thought very concretely about what we wanted to do at the college, yet we were confident, from the atmosphere of freedom we sensed and from the rhetoric of experimentation we heard, that all else would follow naturally.
The library seemed a microcosm of the campus - small, flexible, eager for change. Besides the director, only three professionals remained from the previous year - all, the director raved, the kind of people who could work in a collective situation. The two of us and one yet to be hired were to complete this super-staff.
| Position | Sex | Professional experience | Approx. salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Male | 2 yrs. | $14,000 |
| A-V | Male | 3 | 11,000 |
| Reference | Male | 0 | 10,000 |
| Cataloger | Female | 15 | 9,000 |
| Periodicals | Female | 0 | 8,500 |
| Circulation | Female | 1 | 8,200 |
| Acquisitions | Female | 0 | 8,100 |
The director himself seemed a promising sort: socialist background, experience in and knowledge of the Movement, with a fine patter that we took at face value. He believed that he was in the vanguard of radical library-directorship, that he had gone the straight route long enough to get this position of power so he could hire people like us and try out all the things that would be impossible elsewhere. To satisfy the college bureaucracy, he as director would be our spokesman outside the library but would be equal with us inside.
It didn't take us long to discover that the director couldn't keep up emotionally with the intellectual beliefs he professed. He saw us as image/reflections of himself and of his good sense in hiring us. What he hadn't bargained for was the possibility that we would not always agree with him, nor merely follow his lead. At staff meetings he repeatedly brought a rigidly prepared plan and defended it in complete disregrd of our criticisms and suggestions. Either he won, or we did, out of sheer force of numbers and the audacity of believing we shared his authority.
Clearly, the director had never anticipated actually joining in the give-and-take process of decision-making among equals with their own identities. Instead of recognizing the root of the problem, he wove the fantasy that we were all being brainwashed by the strongest and most articulate member of the staff (the cataloger, hereafter referred to as C.) whom he called an "empire-builder."
We tried many times, but could never reach him on a personal level. We wanted to reassure him that we were not trying to overwhelm him. But he couldn't talk to us, or listen; he could only lecture like an uptight politician. Finally over dinner one night, he explicitly stated to one of us that if the group process meant he would have to "abdicate" his role (read: power) as director, he couldn't go along with it.
He then split for his summer vacation, calling in occasionally. The rest of us did the gut-level running of the library during that time, with one staff member (the reference librarian, R., a man of course) appointed acting director.
The two of us had a very good relationship with C. and R. They were in their late thirties' but still seemed marvelously open to new ideas and eager to share our enthusiasm. We accepted their help and encouragement, not realizing at the time the great gap that lay between us.
We were determined to make the Revolution that summer, to prove our capacity for handling both mundane and creative tasks. The line between work and play was very thin. We spent our lunch hours and many evenings and weekends dreaming about the changes we would make in the library, the hordes of people who would suddenly come flocking to avail themselves of our services. We believed we were trying a whole new approach to librarianship in which administrative duties were handled cooperatively. Our efforts were kept from being communal only by the slight inconvenience of living in separate places. We worked so well together that we talked of finding a library the following year that would hire all of us, where we would not be encumbered by a reactionary director.
When summer ended, so did our romantic vision. The director returned from vacation more distant and uptight than ever, and the beginning of school plunged us into the hassles of student work scheduling, faculty meetings, etc. Our personal relationship with C. and R. seemed to have been put aside. We stopped eating lunch together, talk of the "collective" disappeared, and it seemed we were all succumbing to the pressure of mundane library duties and the despair of working with a director who was not pretending any longer to be working collectively.
At first he had been fond of comparing the library to a workers' state. Suddenly he was referring to himself as "management." The final blow to his own romanticism came in a meeting when we insisted he couldn't be the "director" of a collective. "You mean I'm supposed to wither away like the State?" he asked.
He began to issue directives without consulting us at all. In his few dealings with us in our work areas, he displayed a thorough ignorance of the way the library functioned - the typical figurehead administrator. The "working staff," as he called us, had to run the place and do all the long-range planning and collection-building.
Although we resented his ineptness in dealing with us, the two of us gradually began to realize that we couldn't blame the failure of the experiment totally on him. We began to ask ourselves: since he isn't stopping us from acting, why do we feel so thwarted?
We called a gathering of the old "collective" in a comfortable setting, with plenty of wine, to try to get at the real reasons for our despair and lack of togetherness. It was then that we saw that C. and R. were liberals. They wanted to expand traditional services but could think of a million reasons why we shouldn't try anything new. The specific projects (short or long term) and general ideas we had proposed throughout the summer had been quietly squelched with the typically liberal, "We agree, but...." They continually discouraged us by claiming our ideas had been tried before and hadn't worked. They knew "exactly how we felt" but told us to be patient. We "didn't know how good we had it" and should be thankful for the freedom of lifestyle afforded us (bluejeans and gay liberation posters) and the opportunity to order anything we wanted without having to justify our selections. These are some of the changes we wanted to make. There was nothing very radical about any of these ideas, but we considered them to be at least a start:
I. ALTERNATIVES ROOM We wanted one room or area of the library as a comfortable place, with cushions and carpeting, stocked on a rotating basis with all the books, periodicals and other media which could loosely be called "alternative," e.g., Movement publications and trade books on women's and gay liberation, the third world, imperialism, yoga, rock music, the draft, prisons, the counter-culture, communes, social change. We felt that though we had a lot of exciting material in the library, it was largely inaccessible - first because of the dated LC system, and second because of the difficulties of using any subject system for finding a lot of current materials. The concept, obviously, was no different from the "browsing room," traditionally a less controversial collection of mysteries, science fiction and the like.
Their objections:
1. A lot of work would be involved in putting location indicators on the catalog cards, especially if the collection were rotated.
2. "Alternatives Room" seemed to imply an alternative to the rest of the library. The library had a lot of good books and shouldn't be divided so arbitrarily.
3. We would be pushing our own point of view. Everything we put in there would be propaganda for "our side." (Could anyone agree with every proposed alternative to the system, from dropping out to guerilla warfare?) The classic question was, of course, whether books by the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan would be included. Heaven forbid that we be "unbalanced." (We don't believe there is any such thing as objectivity in standing institutions. What is "objective" is either noncontroversial or heavily stacked in favor of the established ways of thinking.)
4. We would turn off 65% (?) of the student body. (It apparently didn't matter that the most creative and politically-minded students on campus were already turned off by the library. We served faithfully the term-paper writers who wanted such vital information as the number of sheep in Australia.)
5. The student would have to go an extra step to find a book. (Students already had been diverted to the reserve collection, a special collection of materials on the State, and a small fiction "browsing area." No one made a move to abolish these areas.)
6. A student who went to the shelf for a "straight" book might see and read a radical one if it were on the shelf nearby, but wouldn't if it were in a special area. (Here was more of that exclusive concern for straight students.)
7. Our library was too small - 36,000 vols. - to need an alternatives room. (We felt it was still too large for fruitful browsing.)
II. EXTENDED HOURS OF SERVICE We envisioned 24-hour service, with librarians living right in the building if they wanted to. In the meantime, we wanted to open past the present closing hour whenever possible, working staggered shifts and doing without student aides.
Their objections: We had to follow the posted schedule so people would know when we were open. Anything except rigid adherence to the schedule would create security problems and meet opposition from the President.
III. EXPANDED SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY (SURROUNDING COUNTY) We hated to see the college use tax money and the most beautiful land in the county, which is rural and poor, while doing nothing for its residents. We dreamed of bookmobile service, publicity encouraging county people to use our facilities, etc.
Their objections: The community was already served by an existing library which would be offended if we encroached on its territory. The few community people who tried to borrow materials from us were told they could only get them on interlibrary loan through the public library.
IV. LIBRARY AS INFORMATION CENTER As a start, we wanted to house a switchboard that would answer questions about drugs, the draft, abortion and other problems. Another project would be gathering enough information about the county - services, activities, etc. - so we would be useful to campus and community people.
Their objections: The impracticality of housing a switchboard, the time involved in answering the phone, and the need not to serve county residents.
V. NO SLOTTING IN JOBS We would not be stuck in our roles as periodicals librarian or acquisitions librarian, etc. We would work collectively and flexibly. An example of this was that three weeks after beginning work we wanted to switch jobs.
Their objections: Though they agreed with the principle, they felt the clerks would be confused, and that we would hurt the director's ego by implying we knew more about where we should be than he did.
VI. "THEORY OF COMPENSATION" We believed that alternative materials needed and deserved not only special publicity - the Alternatives Room would help solve this problem - but also priority in ordering and cataloging.
Their objections: They agreed with the theory of compensation in relation to book selection but used only standard selection tools like LJ and Choice. The cataloger placed such a low priority on the Movement publications we ordered that most were still sitting in her office 6 months after they had arrived.
VII. NEED TO REVISE LC HEADINGS We railed continually against LC's racist, sexist, chauvinist headings and classification.
Their objections: They said LC was constantly changing and that by putting cross references in the card catalog, the problem of access would be solved. (This task was given very low priority in our library, however. Furthermore, LC itself adds very few radical, social change categories. Orientation renders it oblivious to their terminology and relevance.) They saw LC as not sexist and racist itself, but merely reflecting the larger society. (Yet a classification scheme should be objective and logical rather than a mirror of majority rule.)
VIII. PROCESS VS. GOAL ORIENTATION We felt we all needed as a staff - a collective - to be constantly open to new possibilities, to work out problems as they came, rather than first defining a goal and then taking the most direct line to it.
Their objections: That we didn't have a Ten-Point Plan worked out already was seen as a shortcoming. (We saw ourselves taking a much more intuitive/inductive route to building a non-institution which would really serve people.)It was our lack of insight that kept us from struggling over these things. Rather than having to work around a pointblank "no" from a higher authority, we accepted without question the rational objectives of our more experienced colleagues. We had been so intent on "revolutionizing" our internal relationship that it took us months to realize our service to the public had never changed.
The realization of the profound difference between us and the liberals on the staff came as a shock, but before long we were to face more difficult opposition, this time the traditional kind. For months the problems in the library had been an internal matter only. Then, after a confrontation with the director over library hours, he became extremely angry, walked out of our staff meeting, and issued a memo which announced the failure of The Creative Experiment (all our fault, of course.) He directed us to do as he said or resign: "If you do not choose to resign at this time I will take it as indication that you will do your level best to provide service to patrons and full cooperation with the director of the library." He sent copies of the memo to several administrators, including the President.
We gave him our reply: "...In our opinion 'doing our level best to provide service to patrons' is not contingent upon 'full cooperation with the director,' which implies unquestioning acceptance of your written directives without any participation in decision-making," and asked that he forward it to the President.
When the administration realized what was going on in the library, a meeting was arrnaged between our staff and two of the deans, the head of the library committee, and the president of the faculty senate. We explained that we couldn't work with the directory, would resign if he didn't, and that we felt we had been hired under false pretenses. They seemed to treat our criticisms with respect, though they displayed a profound ignorance of libraries and librarians' jobs. But we left the meeting hopeful that justice would be done.
We never heard from these administrators again. They'd said they'd be in touch with us when they "found out" from the director "whether" he planned to resign.
Meanwhile more trouble was brewing. We were told when hired that we had "faculty status," but not that this meant only that we could vote in faculty meetings and serve on faculty committees. We had no job security whatsoever. A faculty proposal for peer evaluation in promotion and tenure had been passed by the Board, but librarians were specifically denied this protection. As a result, when evaluations were due for second-year library staff, only our director's recommendations were considered.
The blow came the week before final decisions were to be made - C. and R., two librarians who were competent in every way and had impeccable credentials and excellent work records, were recommended for non-retention, one with an unspecified "conditional." The charge? "Undermining the authority of the director."
The President called each of us in for an interview and asked our opinions of C. and R. and of the recommendation. We told him how ridiculous the charge was, that it wasn't they who "undermined the director's authority," it was the director himself who undermined his authority with authoritarianism. We were asked whether we thought we and the staff members so charged could work under a "very strong" director. The present one had meanwhile resigned.
We replied it wasn't natural leadership we eschewed, but imposed - and incompetent - leadership. The President informed us that there was a limit to one's right to dissent, and that it was common practice when "something like this happened" to fire the whole staff and start from scratch. "There are a million other places to work in the world; you don't all have to work here."
Our challenging the director's authority obviously hit too close to home. The President, though supposedly a fine liberal, was feared and hated by a great number of people on campus. If participatory democracy were a reality, he himself might become the victim of a people's coup.
Before the President made his final decision about C. and R., they resigned, stating in a letter that they couldn't work in a college which had no fair evaluation procedures for librarians. This became the issue then, rather than the actual charge. The two of us, and others, disagreed with their handling of the situation, sure that they could have fought and won. But they didn't want to risk not being able to find a job elsewhere.
At the time this book goes to press, one of us has just been axed, too. Hoping to avoid the appearance of a political purge, the administration has delicately "phased out" her position, despite a favorable(!) recommendation by the directory. She has been told she is not qualified for any other position in the library. But some rousing politicking is planned with faculty ombudsmen, petitions, underground broadsides and campus meetings, which may save the day.
It's incredible to be going through this experience, more incredible still to see it written down in black and white. If we had to say in a few short sentences what we learned here and what we advise for others, it would be this: