Libraries Role in Fighting Hypermasculinity: Reflections from A Week of ALA Midwinter and a Mass Shooting

I returned from Denver, Colorado where I attended ALA’s Midwinter 2018, which was my first time. It’s hard to reflect back on the conference now when so much is happening in the world and when it coincides with the Parkland High School mass shooting where 17 people (mostly children) were killed and more were injured. I keep trying to reflect on one but the horror of war machines exploding outside and inside classrooms in our country keeps reverberating.

With both in mind, I’m reminded of Junot Díaz’s words on Saturday on libraries and their importance in our society and specifically on his life. How instead of getting into trouble he would skip school to go and look for books at his local library. “Who the fuck does that,” Díaz punctuated.

It’s stories like these that remind that me what we do is important because somehow we may be the only escape or resource that a young working class, latinx male can find. Someone from the audience later asked what are some of the things librarians can do to help urban young men from the horror that they might see in neighborhoods as per gangs or bullying. Diaz said (and here I’m paraphrasing based on my own tweet) that we have to defeat the hyper-masculinity that exists in our society.

And maybe in discussing the Parkland, Florida High School shooting we need to discuss not just the guns, more security, or mental health issues. But what about the hypermasculinity that permeates so much in our culture online and in real life? Where males feel entitled to feed their anger and frustration and unleash it the only way they’ve been taught.

Nikolas Cruz, the shooter, and killer in Florida, is nineteen years old. He was probably born in 1999, the year of Columbine mass shooting. Two years later 9/11 blew up the skies of New York, DC, and Pennsylvania. The United States has been in continual wars since then. Shooting after shooting, drone strike after drone strike, enhanced surveillance, and fully armored police forces who freely shoot men of color, especially black . . . violence and violent culture have been the solutions to conflicts.

But somehow, when we discuss hypermasculinity we only refer it to Black or Latin men. The gang culture, the machismo, the bullying on the streets ‘in da ‘hood’. And if you look up hypermasculinity in google, you’ll see images of black men pop up quite like the same searches that Safiya Noble produced while researching searching black girls in for Algorithms of Oppression. (IEEE History please don’t, Just Don’t).

Why don’t we talk about hypermasculinity when it’s expressed in White men, white supremacist or not. It’s infected our society that has forgotten to teach kindness, collectivity, love. Instead, it’s everyone’s out for themselves, “I gotta do what I gotta do.” And quietly, drone strike you in the middle of the night for national interests abroad. Hypermasculinity is now celebrated and validated because of the Trump Administration and his tough guy, eat steak with ketchup, sexual predator treatment of women, deporting immigrant ways.

We've seen how the movement of capital has left many without a home, a job, or a sense of being. Advancements in technology have not brought us closer together but have isolated us more by the drive to not make these technologies more social but make them more profitable. Racism and sexism are the cleverest of tools ever created to keep humans apart from recognizing their class solidarities. Shit has intensified.

Can libraries counteract hypermasculinity? Of course, because we in the library world do every day. But we must express our values consciously so that we fight against the violent individualism of the market economy. Fighting imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy is the struggle many of us are engaged in and much more are needed. The opportunities are there at the reference desk, in our collections, online chatting, and in our events. We're here to express hey we're here for you, if you have some questions, we can help and if we don't have answers, let's figure them out.

In “the Are Libraries Neutral” debate, R. David Lankes said, “libraries are about communities trying to find meaning.” That’s what Junot Díaz found in his public library in Old Bridge, New Jersey by finding a librarian who was there to help him find the information he was searching in the shared collection of his community.

It's much too simple to say that a killer like Cruz needed a library but what he did need was a society that cares (mental health or health care, a society that cherishes life over freedom of gun ownership, an anti-racist, anti-sexist society just to start). Luckily, libraries still stand as an expression of that. We're hopefully here to try to find meaning in a mad world.

Our Defining Moment

To say that all of us have had a bad couple of weeks is an understatement. We've had to deal with the election of a man who not only wants to further the exploitation of the working class by deregulating and freeing up capital, but has unleashed the racist underbelly of the U.S. Then it got worst for myself and fellow librarians when our main professional organization, the American Library Association went  toe-stepping and complying with the new administration.

Others like Emily Drabinski and Sarah Houghton have illustrated their disgust with ALA position in a now infamous press release welcoming the opportunity to work Trump and his merry band of racists, neo-cons and conservatives. ALA apologized for the numerous drafts that still don't sit well with members and rightfully so.


Our world is unstable: the neoliberal promise of globalization has sent millions of workers around the world into lower wages and slave-like work conditions in developing nations. Products are no longer made in a single countries, creating  greater alienation of workers from the fruits of their labor (The Economist, 11/23/16).  Countries like England, and looking more and more like France, are seeking isolation in Nationalistic policies. Non-stop wars in the middle east for control of natural resources like oil continue.

In the U.S. workers have been disenfranchised from the promise of the American Dream and get consumed by debt and lower wages, increase health care costs, while banks and financial organizations get bailed out. The future administration's promise is to deregulate and tear down some of the institutions that were created to give every working class member a chance: public education, social services, employment services, work site safety etc. Reforms that weren't given to us but were fought for by movements against racial, sexist and more specifically class oppression.

But let's not kid ourselves. A Clinton administration would have brought just as much war and exploitation. They were the leaders in bringing neo-liberal practices around the world. While yes, they would seek to protect individual liberties, they work for some of the biggest capitalist in the world and their end game is about profit.

Libraries are (and will be) in the cross-hairs of every capitalist's who doesn't believe in funding
access to information that is critical to democracy. We are already seeing how they are really not interested in public education and would rather toss it to private corporations or start-ups that are impersonating as charter schools or online educational outlets.

Over the last several years we've seen click-bait attack articles about how public libraries are unnecessary because of the internet. The latest coming from Greta Van Sustren when she tweeted that universities should stop funding academic libraries because they are  "vanity projects"  because students have access to libraries are on our phones. I wonder why she didn't mention that they should also stop building million dollar gyms when students can basically go run outside?

The U.S. needs to retool its workforce and fast if it wants to compete against other countries. Libraries can be seen as centers for re-education which is great in a pragmatic sense so workers can go out and sell their labor and support their families. But which workers will benefit from the crumbs thrown to them by the new American order that has the Republicans in control of the three branches of government? History has shown us that the ruling elite will use racism and sexism to super exploit workers of color and women at the same time bringing down the wages of white working class men.

Libraries need to be centers that promote resources that promote democracy and discussion about how to fight for a better life for the majority and not a small minority. Libraries are a community's center of agreed ideas and dreams for a better future. In this light, librarians must define themselves as the fighters for information that promotes an open democratic society, released of the chains of oppressions. Yes, I know it's an ideal but we must fight for it.

Librarians have been perceived as one stereotype or another which I believe is evident in the press release; we're here to serve or assist you while pushing up our glasses on our nose and somehow be ignore all that disgusting racist and sexist baggage you're wearing on your lapel because of some bs idea of neutrality.

Thank you to all the have stood up because now more than ever we need to define ourselves as not the professionals who stood by but fought back.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving. Talk and struggle. We've got a world to win.

Raising the Library Flag and It's Not White

Back in early 2009, I was a newly minted librarian settling in my job as an academic librarian with the mission that I would spread the gospel of information literacy and the value of libraries resources and services to students. At the same time however, a controversy began to simmer and then came to a rolling boil when Rutgers decided to disavow itself from the word Library and rename what was previously a “library school”, to The School of Communication and Information.

Rutgers reasons for the change came at period of significant change in the library world. New technologies were threatening to replace the brick-and-mortar landscape of libraries. Books, magazines and journals were going to disappear.  “No need to come to the library” because resources could easily be downloaded to your computer, tablet or mobile phone. It seemed that every six months librarians had to be confronted with headlines that spoke about the death of the library. Just last year we heard Tim Worstall in Forbes brashly suggesting that we should close all the public libraries and buy “every citizen an Amazon Kindle Unlimited Subscription.”

I bring back these memories on the day when it was announced that my alma mater, Pratt Institute, is now going to drop the word Library from its school’s name. So no longer will it be the School of Information and Library Science but just the School of Information. I’m no luddite: our profession has changed drastically. My position at Stevens Institute of Technology as the Web Services Librarian ( combination of Information Architecture, User Experience and Instructional Librarian all wrap up into one) is a job title that didn’t even exist ten to fifteen years ago. So, yes I understand that while attending a School of Information may cover the myriad of new professions and subjects that have been created in the new information world, the decision at this moment in history to take out the world Library is a little late and not forward thinking. I’ll explain.

Since Rutgers and others banished the word library from the title of their schools, historical events have dismissed any arguments from those paid cynical scribes who were nailing shut the coffin of the library. First, the great crash of 2008 (during my last semester!), people were losing their jobs, wages stagnated and an overvalued housing market was crashing,  forcing many who were scammed by predatory lenders to foreclose.  Budgets were slashed in public and private sector jobs.  Many communities were lucky to have libraries like the ones in Colorado that stayed opened and experienced a  severe uptake in circulation and in services. Program attendance in itself rose by over 12% and continued throughout the recession.  Working class people were flocking to libraries for books, information, job hunting, etc. The library provided hope in the form of services and resources while surrounded by a bleak future.

Second, during the 2014 summer of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing by police of Michael Brown, where a rebellion fought against the racist oppressive system of the  town, the city was set ablaze with protest, anger and marching on the ground. Through the smoke and and chants for justice, The Ferguson Municipal Public Library stood as beacon where citizens could seek information and children could go while schools were closed. The New York Times even wrote about the activities and services provided by the the library on 21 August 2014 by librarians, teachers and volunteers. Library Journal awarded The Ferguson Library for its Library of the Year and called it a “critical community anchor.”

While these two flash points accentuate the need and worth of libraries in their communities, libraries have evolved from just places of printed material to centers of active learning and experimentation. Look at the 4th Floor Project at the  Chattanooga Public Library which converted a storage floor into a public space that help lead a movement to many public libraries and now academic libraries into creating maker spaces where people can come to a library and openly experiment with new technologies like 3D printing. (Kudos to fellow Pratt alum,  Nate Hill).

That said I understand that a school’s branding is important: the lines between education and business are becoming blurred every day. Schools need to draw students who are constantly worried about exploding tuition costs and taking out loans and making sure they see a return on investment. Changing Pratt’s School of Information and Library Science name to just School of information certainly would sound modern and yes it now has to cover all things “Information” like User Experience, Digital Humanities, Instructional Technology and the list can go on.

But would it not be a more radical statement for a graduate school (not necessarily Pratt since that bridge apparently has been crossed), to embrace Library in their name to give credence to a profession that requires knowledge, skills and intellectual thought to what librarians do on the front lines every day? We can see that there are dedicated librarians even across this country that are thinking about the politics of the profession and how it impacts communities of color, class, LGBT or gender (#critlib). Such careful thought about all the issues that arise in Libraries must be undertaken in an academic environment that places the library on the academic pedestal it deserves.

The information landscape is going to continue evolving but who will it serve? Will it serve the masses or will it serve private interests who find ways to itemize and put a cost on all types of information and services, not in the interest of people but in the interest of profit.

Libraries have proven, especially in the spectre of gloom and doom, that they serve their communities whether private or public. Libraries serve an essential service to our democracy in guaranteeing that most, if not all, of our citizens have access to information, the ability to evaluate information and aid in the development of new knowledge to improve society as David Lankes has cried from rooftops about.  This “mission” is something we need to protect if we are going to have an informed society that evolves and preserves the rights of all.

I’ll leave with an anecdote from just the other night. My whole family loves book stores. We were passing my local bookstore and my daughter was like “Ooooh the bookstore”.  We were trying to put off buying books because we do so all the time and don’t need any more to overflow our crowded shelves (for the moment).

So disappointed that we were not stopping in, I told my daughter, well you know what’s better than a bookstore? Knowing that her old man is a librarian, of course she responded, “ a library?”  YES! I said. “But” she added, “you can buy other stuff in a bookstore.” “Yes but at the library you can get the books that the library is sharing with everyone.” Obviously she got the point but it was worth teaching her that library is not just there to “get books” it’s there to share our collective knowledge.

In the end, I know we’ll always have information but will we always have libraries? We better make a fight.

` In Struggle,

Romel Espinel, Class of '09

Is the MLS Irrelvant to Academic Libraries?

So one of the most provacative panels of this year's conference was this one. it is being presented as a debate one in the positive of the negative. James Neal vice-president of Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University presented the debate and the challenges of being an academic library.

Arnold Hirshon,, NELINET, Inc. with present the postive. Liz Bishoff, Director Digital and Preservation Services will present the negative. Audience response. Positive and negative will rebutt and then back to audience.

The positive argument (meaning MLIS dgree is NOT Relevant to the Future of the Library).

1. Library schools and curricula lacks unique content

2. Good criteria to admitt right students into their programs. library schools lack predictive selective criteria for individuals.

3. Library schools teach the wrong things. Must teach things realistically. Teach transient skills that may be irrelevant. Don't teach research and strategies,

The schools need to teach about transformation and transititions.


Argument in negative (MLIS is Relevant):

a library must response to the fundamental changes to the academic world.

1. Our MLS program must focus on educating and NOT Training.

2. Research the foundation of the academic library. It is the librarians that play a key role with all in the college or the university in the research process and access.

3. Advancing the digital library. One of the top ten observance of the future is the storage and curration of data management. Where do people go to learn these skills: LIS programs.


Responses from the floor.

U of South Florida Lib: What her students are told about what academic librarians are told that they should be sheep and because of their role in the school.

Clear fellow/UCLA: shouldn't be the dichotomy.

U of Illinois: Not the question of the MLS but how we bring together the graduate training in the class with substantive real life experiences and practices employ it in real world enviroment.

Dir of Library in Arlington, Virginia: Academic research and resources are not taught by Ph.D programs Creating educational malpractice if we are not teaching information literacy.

Curriculium needs to be changed. We don't have the skills to do advocacy and policy in curricula. Statistics and
Assessment.

At the end of the discussion, Richard Sweeny asked the panel how they would define a librarian with the analogy of the description of a doctor is someone who heals. The debaters including Neal agreed that librarians are people who connect people with the information they need. Neal added that they also help them be creative.

In the end what was resolved through the discussion is that librarianship is about the users we serve. The point couldn't have come at better time.

Scholarship Breakfast, Richard Sweeney and Whole Lot of Talk About Millenials

This morning I participated in a discussion and breakfast (for scholarship winners)which was hosted by ACRL. The discussion was led by Richard Sweeney from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) about the millennial generation (people who are born roughly between the years of 1979 - 1994) and how they will change the library to meet their needs.


I had had the privilege of having heard Mr. Sweeney talk about millennials because he was a guess speaker in my first semester at Pratt during E.Dimattea class of Information Professions (aka 651).

Sweeney preempted his discussion by handing out a survey and challenging some of the perceptions people have about millennials. Sweeney's all about taking surveys and focus groups so the discussion started out by pointing out who the millennials were in the room (minority by the way). He then went on to ask them what was the music that many of them were listening to at the moment. To the surprise of many there was no one set of genre of music that these young people were listening to but varied greatly. Sweeney pointed out that this was common as young people have more choices now with a wider variety of music.

He also pointed out through his research and the research of others that millennials communicate more than any other generation.

Some of his conclusions that the future of Academic libraries will be "Millennial Driven Library Innovation" in that these young people especially young people will define what the libraries will look for in the future.

One thing in particular that is very interesting is that millennials prefer peer-to-peer learning as opposed to online alternatives. This is very important because I think we tend to think to much about the media and not the people.

He also predicts a drastic change in scholarly communication and how it will affect the academy all together.

Those are somes of my thoughts . . . off to another session.