How We Work Better Now: a History of Librarian Professionalization
The Details: This 5-week course begins on August 1, 2024 and is open to the public. The time for the course is 1pm PT - 2:30pm PT (4pm ET-5:30pm ET). Registration is limited to 20 and closes July 25, 2024.
The Short Description: This course will study a snapshot of the histories of academic librarians, focusing on the 1950s-1970s towards asking what is the professionalization of librarianship, and why did it happen? For who did it happen? How does it affect today’s profession? Course participants will cultivate critical approaches to the past and present issues, politics, and commitment of professionalization — that is, this is a political education project in the tradition of Black Radical teachings.
See the full description, pricing and refund policy, and much more below.
The Details: This 5-week course begins on August 1, 2024 and is open to the public. The time for the course is 1pm PT - 2:30pm PT (4pm ET-5:30pm ET). Registration is limited to 20 and closes July 25, 2024.
The Short Description: This course will study a snapshot of the histories of academic librarians, focusing on the 1950s-1970s towards asking what is the professionalization of librarianship, and why did it happen? For who did it happen? How does it affect today’s profession? Course participants will cultivate critical approaches to the past and present issues, politics, and commitment of professionalization — that is, this is a political education project in the tradition of Black Radical teachings.
See the full description, pricing and refund policy, and much more below.
The Details: This 5-week course begins on August 1, 2024 and is open to the public. The time for the course is 1pm PT - 2:30pm PT (4pm ET-5:30pm ET). Registration is limited to 20 and closes July 25, 2024.
The Short Description: This course will study a snapshot of the histories of academic librarians, focusing on the 1950s-1970s towards asking what is the professionalization of librarianship, and why did it happen? For who did it happen? How does it affect today’s profession? Course participants will cultivate critical approaches to the past and present issues, politics, and commitment of professionalization — that is, this is a political education project in the tradition of Black Radical teachings.
See the full description, pricing and refund policy, and much more below.
Expand each section to learn more about this workshop.
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This course will study a snapshot of the histories of academic librarians, focusing on the 1950s-1970s towards asking what is the professionalization of librarianship, and why did it happen? For who did it happen? How does it affect today’s profession? The histories will mostly be focused in California (the state where the instructor resides), but still will include and involve U.S. nation-wide aspects of librarianship. Often history is seen as a boxed, curated, organized story that is unrelated to the present, but understanding the histories will provide sharper insight into the present, and work towards better futures; studying history allows us to play in space/time. Course participants will cultivate critical approaches to the past and present issues, politics, and commitments of professionalization – that is, this is a political education project in the tradition of Black Radical teachings.
Each session discusses a relevant critical framework and related historical primary sources. A session, devoted to one theme (including graduate education, automation, faculty status, and more) will last 90 minutes, and not require any kind of preemptive work (readings will be available for personal pursuit). Each session will begin with an overview of the provided theme and framework, we will together question, laugh at, analyze, and wonder about a provided primary document. Applying the critical frameworks, many that have grown from the work of Black Radical Revolutionaries during the same time period, to the document will provide space for more questions, bring in personal context, and workshop ideas. This course is also partly opening up the research aspect of my doctoral studies; the process and ideas within ‘earning’ a PhD will be transparent. This will be a dialogue in both learning and teaching, where all will learn from each other, and ‘expertise’ is not simply ‘given’ in any sort of way. I hope this group will be more political and intentional than a book club, and more personal and less preemptive than a grad seminar – I hope we make this space a space we need.
This work is an attempt to both create organizing around how we work, and how we understand what the work is. Organizing should be about connecting with a political analysis, and ideally we will be able to come together to better understand what other options we have as professionals (constructing alternative choices to the ones we are forced into), make communal connections, and determine what type of recourse is next. This does not necessarily mean “providing solutions” or “how to be radical,” but more, work differently than the confines of our current state(s), hopefully even a move towards what Dr. Joy James describes as academic abolition. -
Thursdays in August, 90 minutes
The time for the course is 1pm PT - 2:30pm PT (4pm ET-5:30pm ET).
August 1, 2024: Graduate School Education for librarians and its intention / cultural studies / Primary document: 1961 Intro to Librarianship syllabus / framework: university as state
August 8, 2024: The Fight for Faculty Status in the 1960s / critical whiteness studies / Primary document: CLA resignation letter / framework: racialized organizations
August 15, 2024: Area/Ethnic Studies Librarianship / relational race studies / Primary document: Area Studies conference papers / framework: relational race
August 22, 2024: Federal Management in Libraries in the 1970s / critical labor studies / Primary document: Management Review And Analysis Program / framework: Braverman’s labor analysis
August 29, 2024: Automation in Libraries for/of Librarians / surveillance studies /Primary document: automation plan / framework: abolition in libraries
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Technical Requirements: This is an online, synchronous course, which will take place over Zoom. This course is offered August 1, 2024 through August 29, 2024 and meets on Thursdays, for 90 minutes.
Other participation details:
Zoom link will be provided, along with a syllabus linked in Google Docs. Any other use of technology will be decided via the group. Participants are expected to be present, and are encouraged to offer what they’d like. -
Refunds for Community School courses will only be honored until 12am 7 days before the first scheduled day of the course. No refunds will be provided for courses thereafter.
Please see the Terms of Service. Pricing and attendance is one individual per purchase. To purchase multiple seats, adjust the quantity.
Paying by Invoice: To pay by invoice, please email us at us@wehere.space. To pay by invoice, we require the following:Completed registration form for everyone enrolling in a Community School event.
Payment via ACH or credit card, paid through our invoicing platform, sent before the registration deadline. Fee for the platform will be charged to the customer.
Payment and registration form must be completed before the Register By date. We require payment within 21 days from the day the invoice is sent. If payment is not received, we will cancel your order. We are unable to hold seats for any events. If the event sells out before the invoice is paid, your order will be canceled.Minimum Enrollment Requirement:
All courses have a minimum enrollment number they are required to meet in order for the course to happen. The minimum enrollment for this course is 10. If this course does not meet the minimum, it will be canceled and anyone who has enrolled will be refunded. Refunds will be issued on or around August 1, 2024. -
Zoom, with captions. All materials will be made available and accessible via Google Docs.
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One We Here community member will be selected to join this course free of charge, based on application. We Here members can find the application form in our private spaces.
Applications are due July 25, 2024, 11:59pm ET USA.
Meet the Instructional Designer - jaime ding
jaime ding is a phd student, taking advantage of time and space to think about the current and historical problems of perception of labor in academic libraries. She has learned from trash and cleanliness, reality tv and revolutionaries, studio art and digital projects; and has worked in waste management, museum education, academic libraries, and corporate archives. Her most recent publication touches on this project - “In the Service/Surveillance of the UCLA School of Library Service” in Libraries: Culture, History, and Society.
Code of Conduct
All Community School instructional designers and attendees as well as other event attendees are expected to following the Code of Conduct:
We Here LLC seeks to provide a welcoming, professionally engaging, supportive, safe community for our members and the public. We do not tolerate harassment in any form, which is understood as any behavior that threatens or demeans another person or group, or produces an unsafe environment. Anyone engaged in this behavior will be removed from We Here events without refund.
All of Community School offerings and other events are designed to center folks who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), who make up less than 15% of the people who work in libraries and archives. If you do not identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a person of color, we ask that you please refrain from questioning the authority of those who do. Rather than calling out, we ask you to reflect and think about calling in any errors you hear in terminology or technical knowledge. Event leaders are almost always placing themselves in vulnerable positions and performing emotional labor, all for shared learning.
Additionally, the structure of our events may differ from what you’re used to in “professional” settings. We provide full support and authority to Community School and event leaders to design ‘pop up rules,’ rather than relying on ‘etiquette’ or ‘professionalism,’ which actually work to exclude. Pop up rules could be applied to the question and answer period, break out rooms, etc (1).
Other guiding agreements:
W.A.I.T. & W.A.I.N.T.: Ask yourself Why Am I Talking & Why Am I Not Talking? We all come with relative societal privileges and oppressions based in part on our experience with race, gender, class, ability, nationality, sexuality, health, citizenship-status, and more. Let’s be aware of how this affects what we say and how we act.
In this space, listen to your intuition; be open to learning; and practice self-care and community care, which means paying attention to your needs and the needs of others.
Speak your truth and keep in mind confidentiality: take the lessons, but not the details. This includes not sharing or distributing materials produced during or for our events with anyone without written permission, which includes derivatives such as screenshots.
Be open to but not attached to the outcome. Sometimes the process is the outcome.
Assume best intent, but attend to impact.
BIPOC: Recognize the multiplicities of BIPOC. We’re here after centuries of trauma. Don’t assume your ancestral trauma is that of all BIPOC and vice versa.
(1) We love how Priya Parker describes this in her book, “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (2018, pg. 121): “And if etiquette is about keeping people out of certain gatherings and social circles, pop-up rules can actually democratize who gets to gather. What could be less democratic than etiquette, which must be internalized for years before showing up at an event? A rule requires no advance preparation.”
