Head Tale

There was a good Twitter thread recently which posed a simple question: “What’s your controversial library opinion?”

I thought it might be interesting to record some of my responses to these opinions whether I agreed or disagree (if this isn’t clear, all the bolded opinions below were submitted by Twitbrarians and the plain text under each is my response):

Most databases that public libraries pay for – from car repair to language learning to online encyclopedias – are a waste of money when there are easier-to-use, free equivalents available.
This one was my contribution to the Twitter thread so of course I agree with it! 😉

Okay, here’s another: toddlers are the best people in the world to work with and I will die on this hill.
I don’t know if they’re the best – I like all age groups that come into the library for different reasons.  Sometimes it’s not about age either – I remember a former coworker at our Central library saying “Not everyone does but boy, do I ever like the crazy ones!” 🙂

No Christmas trees in the public library.
I’m fine with this and beyond the religious/secular/favouring one group over another aspect, honestly, it’s mostly because nobody on staff wants to put it up and decorate it as “Other duties as assigned.”

Library cats are a bad idea.
Yep.  Just like peanuts are banned in schools because of allergies, you probably don’t want someone with a cat allergy coming into your branch and breaking out in hives or whatever.  Hmm, should we ban peanuts in the library?  There’s another controversial take!

Cats are a bad idea.
Someone spring boards off the last point to put out a *very* controversial point in libraryland.  I’m not opposed to cats in general but I also don’t like how librarians fetishize them.

That at least 30-60% of the collection must PISS me off so that I know it’s balanced.
This is actually a great way to tell if you have a balanced collection instead of one you’ve allowed to be configured around your personal biases.

Recycling or tossing books is fine and actually a good idea. Soak them in paraffin and they make great firestarter gifts. Or make paper bricks out of them.
Hmm.  I’m definitely not opposed to weeding, pulping or binning books.  But burning books has a pretty strong evil connotation in society so I have to admit I struggle with this one (even if it’s only cheap weeded books being burned.)

Patrons aren’t customers (I’ve worked in bookstores- there’s a difference). …however it’s absolutely our job to change and adapt to the info landscape.
Agree.  As soon as you start calling patrons customers, you are treating your public service like a private institution which unlocks all sorts of potential badness from corporate sponsorships to funders willing to “downsize you” just like in the private sector.

Another spicy one is that every single librarian no matter what you do should have a basic understanding of cataloging and reference. Catalogers tend to get mad at this one.
I’d go one further and say that I think every librarian should have at least a basic understanding of everything that might be part of librarianship, either directly or indirectly – collections, cataloguing, IT, HR, Marketing, etc.

Just because you don’t want librarianship you change doesn’t mean it’s not changing
No duh.  But I would say that I don’t like the people who say “You’re resistant to change” if they push back on some of the things that are changing.  I think it’s important to make a distinction between good change and bad change.

Children should not be limited on what they can check out by their reading level. (Public school librarian – this is my hill-to-die-on).
Absolutely 100% agree.

And children with a “high” reading level shouldn’t be shamed for wanting younger books. I was on an 8th grade “reading level” at age 6, but I still preferred picture books and simple chapter books, like most 6-year-olds.
Absolutely 110% agree.  I believe all reading is good reading and regularly talk about how I spent a lot of time when I was in college reading Garfield and Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes.

We really DON’T need to carry texts from established fascists (e.g. Mein Kampf).
Going to go with strong disagree on this one.  Hitler’s an easy pick but who gets to decide who’s an “established fascist”?  Dangerous territory.

I’m a librarian, not a social worker.
This maybe ties back to that question about how libraries are changing and I think libraries are being forced by cuts in other areas of society to be unofficial social workers.  I don’t think we have the training or education for this role fully but as a micro-function of our role, just like we might be asked to know a bit about everything from car repair to shuttle launches to crocheting, it’s fine.  In each situation, we should be able to refer people to services and information that might be useful, just as we would for anyone else in the library without being expected to be experts.

[whispers] Don’t listen to Neil Gaiman – more often than not, Google ***will*** give you the right answer…
Very true. As long as we use all our library skills to ensure our results are factual and from reliable sources and all that good stuff, Google is often the quickest and best way to find out something.  (Same with Wikipedia which many librarians also pooh-pooh.)

Cutter numbers on spine labels are useless. See also: libraries are hard to use for many/most people.
Hmm, honestly never thought about this one.  I do think Dewey is something that’s less useful than BISAC-based systems but every classification system is going to have advantages and disadvantages.  But the actual labels on the spines?  Well, in my branch, we have BISAC for non-fiction so we don’t use spine labels – just words on labels on the back of books.

There are not enough non-white librarians
Double no duh.  I used to be (still am in many ways) very idealistic about libraries and strongly believe in our core values.  But we’re also sort of the “Elizabeth Warren” of careers – earnest and policy-driven but maybe a bit elitist and out-of-touch in our own way?

1. I don’t think we should be everything for everyone. I think it’s more than okay to say no to someone’s request or to redirect to another place.

2. everyone (ex: admin) should have to take a shift at the public desks. Would help them realize what we have to deal with all day.

1. Sure.

2. I think it’s useful for managers (front *and* back of house) to occasionally spend some time on the desk – even a shift or two every year (Or, failing that, regularly attend staff meetings.)  One problem is that managers, by their nature, tend to have had a mostly vertical career path that means by the time they’re managers (especially in senior roles) they’ll likely have been away from the desk for a long time and though they may understand new issues conceptually or even by being told by staff, there’s nothing to replace experiencing things firsthand.  I remember when our Director came by (he brings staff chocolates every year at Christmas and is therefore better than your Director!) 😉 and I was able to directly show him an issue we continually run into with our public computer booking software which likely would never reach his desk otherwise.  He immediately “got it” and was able to start brainstorming solutions on the spot.

Reading for book club while on the reference desk should be both allowed and celebrated.
This is a tough one, especially in unionized environments, as presumably most library staff do a lot of reading on their own time that helps them with their work.  I’m not sure that just because you have to read a book for book club, it should be on paid time, especially since it is very possible to run a book club without having read the book (I do think time to read synopsis and reviews does fit under the category of “prep time”.)  I guess my solution would be if the time to read the book is comparable to the time allowed to prepare for any other program, I’m fine with it but if you’re taking hours and hours to read a book and you normally only get, say, one hour to prep for a program normally, that’s a no-go.

I hate little free libraries. I’m not even sure why, but they make me want to scream.
Never use them but I like the idea of them, making books and reading a communal, community experience.

Librarians are called on to provide all the services we as a society have decided are not important enough to fund and deserve all the care and protection we can give them.
Yes. But I also think we also have a responsibility as a profession to advocate that those services be funded and provided by the appropriate agencies (see question above about social work.)

Does every library have to upgrade? Visiting a favorite tiny library in Vermont and heartbroken to see they modernized everything and all the old musty wonderful charm was gone…
I came across the idea in library school and think it was France (?) or maybe just generally in Europe where many new public libraries are designed as combinations of traditional “bibliotheques” and modern “mediatheques” and I thought that was a great way to get the balance between people who want the quiet, reserved, solemn libraries of old and the rambunctious, loud, electronic modern libraries.

Shelver is the most important job in the library. Easiest job to learn, but the most difficult one to master.
I personally believe in the inverted theory pyramid of management which says the most valuable part of your organization are the people nearest the bottom of the traditional org chart – for libraries, clerks and pages – and that’s where the true value of your organization is created.  So yes, very much agree with this one.

Copyright is broken, and in many cases the ethical thing to do is utterly ignore it in service of your community.
If I was ranking how *much* I agreed with some of these statements, this one would be near the top!

Every job shouldn’t need a MLS. If it does, it should pay appropriately high enough to pay off the degree. Well, I doubt my second sentence is controversial!
I would reframe this as “make sure people are working at the appropriate level” – you probably don’t need people with an MLIS delivering programs let alone setting up for them.  But you do need someone with an MLIS overseeing all aspects of programming or guiding the more “big picture” strategic planning.

Get rid of the visual clutter. Also no clip art or fancy lettering on signs and displays, remember English is not the first language of many people who walk through the door.
Library people are word people so yes, I think we could do a much better job of less wordy signs, less fancy signs and more focus on short, understandable messages, only where absolutely necessary.

Librarians are not better than non-degreed library workers.
Yep. Everyone is an equal part of the team in my view although all have different backgrounds, education levels, roles and responsibilities but that doesn’t make anyone better or more important.

What’s the problem with someone sleeping in the library?
In my view, nothing though the most common answer I hear (including in the original thread) is “What about medical emergencies?”  Well, I don’t disagree with ensuring that this isn’t the case but once you can confirm that someone isn’t in distress or at risk of choking on vomit or whatever, who cares if people sleep in the library?  Honestly, I feel like this is one way that certain librarians who technically believe in our “open to all” value manage to profile the homeless and addicted and so they won’t darken our doors with their unruly…sleeping?

If in doubt, throw it out: scummy and unread books, pamphlets, free magazines, tax forms. Especially tax forms.
One of the first lessons any new library worker needs to learn is to not be precious about books (or other materials.)  There’s always new stuff coming so we have to keep clearing out the old.

A token Menorah doesn’t balance out Christmas in public librariesssss
By this point, many answers are echoing earlier answers and like I said about Christmas trees, I’m fine with the library not making a big deal out of Christmas.  At the same time, sometimes I think we trip over ourselves to be fair and accommodating – I remember talking with a staff member who wasn’t Christian about our Christmas decorations (no tree but a few other things) and she said “When I moved to this country, I wanted to experience all aspects of it.  I don’t celebrate it but I like being exposed to it” so we have to be careful to make assumptions about who/what is going to offend other people as well.  Plus the whole idea of Christmas being offensive because it’s a Christian holiday is a bit misguided as I’d say Christmas is pretty much a secular holiday as a Christian one these days.

Outsourcing is a huge issue and ultimately a problem of capitalism. Qualified professionals aren’t just customer service reps.
Outsourcing is often not any cheaper than hiring your own employees either plus you get increased loyalty, responsiveness and so on.  On a related note, I think libraries, since they tend to be 90-95% municipally funded should have a “buy local” policy where they try to buy everything from books to office supplies to yes, workers, locally as much as possible rather than sending money to Amazon or jobbers in another province/state or whatever.  There’s a political benefit too in that you can tell city council that you’re keeping taxpayer dollars local (within reason – maybe if something’s 10% more expensive locally than through Amazon, you still buy it locally but if you can find it for 50% less online, your other duty is to be fiscally responsible so if local suppliers can’t meet that price, you’re free to buy from the other source.

Late to the thread – here goes – book quarantine more than 3 days is not necessary.
Although it is more up in the air during the early days of the pandemic (who wiped down all groceries with Lysol wipes after a trip to the grocery store in March?  Are you still doing it now?), I would agree that some of the latest findings about how Covid is transmitted would indicate touches of surfaces aren’t a main transmission point.  At the same time, as long as you’re not charging huge fines and have space to do so, quarantining for a few days isn’t a huge deal (and for those patrons who insist items come off their records *right now*, glove up and check the books in.)

Librarians are in a toxic relationship with libraries
Hmm, I’ll have to think about this one.

Libraries aren’t (or shouldn’t be) neutral.
I’ve covered this in other posts over the years but I’ll say it again – libraries aren’t neutral (because nothing in society is) but one of our greatest strengths is that we *aspire* to neutrality instead of taking sides or being overly political (as an institution, as individuals have at it!)  And it’s a dangerously slippery slope if we start aggressively taking stands in favour of one issue or another.

The Masters degree requirement enforced the whiteness of the profession, contributes to public libraries becoming charged white spaces, and enforced systemic racism. We should chuck it.
People regularly say “You need a Masters for that?” and I often wonder how things would change if the MLIS was replaced by a BA/BSci?  I often answer the people who say that by explaining that an MLIS is “like an MBA but specialized in running public institutions” (which isn’t 100% accurate but at least gives them a sense of what an MLIS is *supposed* to be about.  If the requirement stays (and honestly, it is unlikely to change), I guess another part is figuring our how more POC can access the MLIS – scholarships, bursaries, quotas, mentorships, etc. etc.

I could do these all day, here’s another one: not every issue is a “both sides” issue. We actually DONT have to have every opinion or belief represented on the shelves. Some things are wrong or harmful or misleading & don’t need to be purchased.
I really struggle with this one – part of me thinks we need to have all views but I realise the harm we do.  The problem is trying to decide *which* items make the cut on *which* sides of an issue.  To put another way, I know librarians who believe in magic crystals healing disease and I’d pull those books if I could.  I know librarians who are 9/11 truthers and I’d pull those books if I could.  I know librarians who are Trump supporters (yes, they exist.)  I’d pull those books if I could.  I even know librarians who are, god forbid, Edmonton Oilers fans.  I’d definitely pull those books if I could!  But they might pull books on the things I believe in if they could (Socialism!  Climate Science! Basketball is better than hockey!) So maybe we’re better off not trying to draw arbitrary lines about what is acceptable and what isn’t and leave it to others in society to try to shape our culture and politics?

LibGuides are the worst. So is EndNote.
Passed unanimously.  Next question.

My belief that you are better building a collection by buying as you need, rather than buying in anticipation.
Never thought of it that way to be honest.  I suspect a combination approach is the best and if you know a certain book/topic is going to potentially be popular or of interest, you’re serving your community better to buy from anticipation so that it’s there when demand is instead of waiting for the item to show up after you clearly identify the need.

Staff working at libraries should use the libraries (read, watch, come to programs, etc)
I’d go one step further and say this should be integrated into your hiring process to ensure people are library users (or at least were at some point and/or lovers) and all things being equal, we should hire the people who use libraries over those who don’t and think we’re just another workplace.  This isn’t just for front-line staff either – I think it applies when hiring HR and IT and Marketing and so on.