Academic librarians arguing that relinquishing librarian faculty status will somehow magically lead to reductions in workplace inequality are really carrying water for neoliberalism and I will die on this hill. I will acknowledge that faculty status can contribute to hierarchies, but the way to deal with workplace inequalities is union contracts, not parroting anti-faculty administrator talking points dressed up in the language of workplace equality.
Watching librarians participate in their own deprofessionalization is cringe. I’m a socialist, I have many critiques of the entire notion of professionalization. But the reality is that in a violently capitalist context like the US, deprofessionalization opens up sectors to death by a thousand cuts. This has been going on in academic libraries for some time, and deans of academic libraries are often the leaders of this dynamic. Many librarians are complicit in it bc they have no power analysis.
The more we say librarians shouldn’t be faculty or anyone can be a librarian, the more we make ourselves vulnerable to the elimination of academic libraries altogether when Elsevier or whoever starts offering universities a “turnkey library” without all those, you know, annoying librarians and staff who dare to ask for an actual salary. That is where deprofessionalization could take us.
Apparently the Ohio State president is on a bitcoin mining company board and invited an OSU alumna who hawked bitcoin to give the commencement speech. You can’t make this shit up!
I am exceedingly proud that my book HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS: INSIDE THE SYSTEMS THAT SHAPE OUR WORLD, has been longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award for Non-Fiction! Just look at that company, my goodness!
@debcha congratulations! I’m reading your book right now. I’m inherently drawn to any literature on infrastructure but also want to say I love how you turn a sentence! Your writing style is major goals.
once an alaska economist on twitter unfollowed me because I disagreed that “construct more houses” was the only way out of this housing crisis and suggested we may have some regulatory leverage as well
@seachanger I live in Cincinnati and the way California real estate investors are circling properties for sale here is a huge part of why one of the previously most affordable Midwestern cities is now having a massive housing crisis.
Man, we gotta talk about stuff like this. The tendency of library leaders to not speak out fearing further retaliation rarely proves to be a winning strategy, and in fact can be demoralizing for staff: "Library directors are seeking opportunities to speak to others at peer institutions about these issues without drawing public attention. They do not want organizations to speak for them or advocate on their behalf, out of fear that it will draw negative attention to their libraries."
One of the things that I still carry baggage around from my time in higher ed is how difficult and lonely it is to be the one who speaks out while others thank you in private for your "bravery." It takes a massive unbelievable toll on people. Truth tellers do not want to be thanked for their bravery, they want you at their side also adding your voice to the mix. United we bargain, divided we beg.
Does anyone know (personally, professionally, or otherwise) of municipal regulations requiring green space on commercial property? US is most useful, but I'll take anything, and from green roof to potted plants by the door.
Please boost, and please suggest hashtags that might help!
Don’t know if it’s true, but I have just heard from my sib Tidy that “a state of emergency” has been declared for Austin the weekend of the eclipse. She says so many fucking weirdos are heading down here to stare at the sun through cardboard gas station glasses that the population is expected to DOUBLE. My weekend farmhand has already told me she won’t be coming in because she fears the traffic. IN JOHNSON CITY TEXAS, POP 1627. I cannot get behind this. Stay home. I beg of you. #Eclipse
I'm researching the idea of zero growth/steady state libraries (believe it or not, an idea that has existed for decades) as part of my work on net zero archives. Curious if anyone into #libraryhistory can speak to the 1976 Atkinson report, prepared for UK universities. From what I've gathered from 1970s library literature, this report seemed to have a wide impact on the thinking of library leaders around the world on starting to rethink space allocation needs for major research libraries.
Here is a link to the report. Thank god for the Internet Archive and OhioLINK, otherwise it would be impossible to get obscure 1970s reports to do my work as someone who no longer has research library access privileges https://archive.org/details/capitalprovision0000grea/page/4/mode/2up
@clive I worked in academic libraries for 15 years and never truly appreciated what a privilege borrowing privileges are until I left for self-employed life!
@j_feral@ashley@The_BFOOL i really like Linda a lot, from my POV she passes the Tansey test. Based on my experience with reporters, they typically do a quick google search, email a ton of people, interview whoever replies, and then ask that person for other names. Sometimes they interview great people but it ends up being on background (like the time I got reduced to an “experts say” by a NY Times reporter) and no quotes make it into the final piece
If you like having any form of scheduling certainty over more than two weeks of your life at a time, wearing anything other than sweatpants, showering without taping a ton of plastic to your side, and driving more than a couple of blocks from your house, I do not recommend experiencing a burst appendix, because my life has been exhausting for the last month as I await an interval appendectomy at some unknown date in the future (but hopefully will know soon?)
My kingdom for a plain language requirement in every single organization that includes people in the audience who are not academics https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/
Okay but also for real my commitment to plain language also derives from my Quaker commitments to equality and integrity. Using unnecessary jargon or refusing to define your terms in contexts when specialized language is called for is, in my opinion, both a form of discrimination and also of positioning yourself as an untouchable authority. This is why I think plain language guidance is really important, ESPECIALLY for folks socialized in academic writing norms.