A roadmap for libraries?

Last week, the NSW government announced its upcoming 'freedoms for fully vaccinated people', with Victoria announcing their 'roadmap out of lockdown' over the weekend. Both of them have incentivised vaccination by eventually easing restrictions for people who have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, and can verify this through a 'vaccination passport'.

So, what does this mean for libraries? How do these principles sit with values of freedom of access to information and privacy? Can libraries open up and still keep people safe? Let's take a look.

Re-opening libraries

In NSW and Victoria, many library buildings are closed, and offering contactless 'click and collect' services. Whilst neither of these states specifically mention libraries, NSW's roadmap mentions that once the state reaches 70% double-vaccinated (approximately 5 October), "indoor entertainment and information facilities including cinemas, theatres, music halls, museums and galleries can reopen with 1 person per 4sqm or 75% fixed seated capacity", but these will only be open to those who are fully vaccinated or have a medical exemption. (On a side note, I was curious to see the mention of music halls - perhaps they did some research on the reopening of cultural venues coming out of the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1920.)

On the other hand, Victoria has indicated that its community facilities in metropolitan areas should stick to click and collect until 80% are fully vaccinated (approx 5 November), at which point in time they can have vaccinated people inside the library (1 person per 4 sqm, max 150). Regional Victorian community facilities are already allowed up to 20 people indoors per facility, increasing to 1 vaccinated person per 4 sqm with a max of 30 ppl on 26 October, then 150 people on 5 November.

Of course, the big condition of re-opening libraries in these cases, is that people must be fully vaccinated to use these facilities, and wear a mask indoors. Given the trouble that libraries have already encountered in the past managing those who do not want to wear masks, asking visitors for evidence of vaccination is going to be another requirement that will not be fun for frontline staff to enforce.

Here in the ACT, libraries are closed, and do not offer click and collect. The ACT Chief Minister has already indicated that they will not be implementing a 'vaccine passport' system. What this means for libraries safely reopening remains to be seen.

Finally, there are the libraries in all of the other states. At the moment, it's business as usual with physical services on offer, but it will be interesting to watch is how libraries will need to respond once the state borders re-open, and they move from living in a 'Zero COVID' environment to a 'living with the virus' environment. It won't be an easy adjustment, but that will become the reality in the new year, and libraries in these states may need to implement restrictions to reduce the risk of the spread.

Quarantining books

This has always been one of those contentious issues, ever changing. We did a lot of book quarantining last year with the first lockdowns. Then it pretty much stopped once we returned to COVID zero and now we focus more on using gloves and sanitiser on hands. However, once books come back into circulation, in a 'living with the virus' environment, there will need to be a new benchmark for managing the risk of infection through book surfaces - especially if libraries move into a hybrid system of in-person browsing and borrowing (for those fully vaccinated) and click and collect (for those not fully vaccinated).

Vaccinating library staff

This has not been mentioned in either of the roadmaps, but in the US we are already seeing instances of organisations mandating vaccination of all employees. Whilst I would hope that all librarians would have the skills to manage and identify misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines, and get the jab themselves, there are instances in the US where a large proportion of staff are refusing to get vaccinated - and indeed, we already see it happening amongst health care workers in Australia. Library organisations owe it to their workers to ensure that they have a safe workplace to go to - and that includes keeping them safe from other workers who choose to not get vaccinated. 

Privacy

This is a big one. Both the NSW and Victorian roadmaps hinge on the principle of controlling the movement and activities of those who are not vaccinated - which means constantly asking people for personal information, which might include:

• Full name
• Age
• Vaccination status
• Medical reason for not being vaccinated

There were plenty of concerns expressed around libraries gathering personal information for contact tracing purposes last year. What is proposed will be next level - it will be intrusive, confronting, and sends the message that only certain people are welcome to enter the library. A vaccination passport is effectively an ID card that everybody will be expected to carry with them and produce when requested. And whilst it may be absolutely necessary for keeping staff and other library users safer, it's not going to be sending a positive message to the community.

Access to information and services

There are already many who are opposing the establishment of a 'vaccination passport' system, saying that it will create a kind of apartheid society - and they're not entirely wrong. Whilst there are many who choose not to get vaccinated as a result of misinformation, there are also those who have medical reasons for not being vaccinated. There are fundamental principles of freedom of access to library resources that should be considered. Of course, keep your staff safe, but provide equal services to all - don't promote library access as a 'special reward' or 'freedom' to those who are fully vaccinated. A freedom for a select group of people is a restriction for everybody else. Find ways to equitably reach out and connect to all in your community - not just those who are allowed to walk in the front door.

Keeping library workers safe

I've already mentioned staff vaccination, which is an essential part of worker safety, but there's also the occupational hazards of delivering frontline services. Last year, when libraries reopened but required users to maintain social distancing and wearing masks, it was those workers on the frontline who were on the receiving end of customer abuse. Adding the above privacy concerns to the mix raises the risk to our workers, who may be expected to further police the rules of entry, and ask each and every person coming to the library to provide their evidence of vaccination. Frontline staff will be putting their physical and emotional wellbeing on the line every time they do this.

So, where to from here? My personal opinion is that libraries should only provide contactless services to their entire community until it is safe for them to reopen in-person services to their entire community. Unfortunately, it's not going to be possible to provide physical services safely for the near future - especially once we come out of lockdown, the borders reopen, and we have to 'live with the virus' at the expense of those who are not vaccinated (whether that be of their choosing or not).

The unfortunate reality, though, is that there is a stronger appetite to completely reopen than there is to stay closed. We know that there is value in libraries marketing themselves as 'essential' rather than 'nice to have' - especially when it comes to funding and budgets - and when library buildings are closed, many staff are stood down without pay. On the flipside, we currently see university libraries in Melbourne that have stayed open through lockdown, with casual frontline staff put in the unenviable choice of either taking paid shifts and risking their wellbeing, or not getting paid. The risk is that this will become the norm, where those who can work from home will continue to do so, whilst frontline staff are sent back to the frontline.

Finally, the ALIA Board have just released a statement, highlighting the importance of keeping staff safe, countering misinformation around vaccines, and ensuring that library services are open to all.

How we actually do that will be the big challenge, moving into 2022.

Where are the radical librarians of colour in Australia?

This month's glamblogclub theme is "radical" - and I'm not going to dwell too much on defining this term, other than to say that, depending on the context, it can be positive or negative, but is almost always focused on an extreme form of change and disruption - whether it be technological change, a shift in paradigm, or overhaul of power structures.
So, what does it mean to be "radical" in the context of libraries? For me, as a person of colour floating in a sea of whiteness - colleagues, collections and clients - I have many strong opinions on the topic of libraries and cultural diversity.

When I look to forums such as Twitter, and conference events, particularly in the USA and Canada, I see a strong contingent of radical librarians of colour, sharing their experiences, challenging whiteness in their collections, services and teams, and generally banding together to support one another.

And I wonder - why doesn't this happen in Australia? I see a growing trend in pursuing critical librarianship as a form of radical action amongst librarians, but amongst those who are particularly active, there is most notably a lack of cultural diversity. Of course, there are a couple of exceptions, but they are exactly that - exceptions.

Of course, this is Australia - a country where the White Australia policy is still in living memory for most of the older generations of this nation. As a child, I grew up in a culture where to be a real "Aussie" was to be white, and the best that the rest of us could do is try to fit in, and live in "harmony". To challenge that would just be to draw attention to one's own difference, and fuel the opinion that perhaps, if I don't like it, I should go back to "my own country".

Part of me wants to think that times have changed since then, but then I just have to look to any Australian person of colour who has voiced a radical opinion in the media, and then watch the torrent of abuse unfold.

So, there's often, at best, an uncomfortable reluctance to speak out on matters of cultural diversity, even when surrounded by well-meaning white folks. At worst? Well, ask me some time when we've both had a couple of drinks.

In a professional context, there's still so much risk involved in challenging the status quo from a cultural perspective. It's an uncomfortable conversation for everybody to have, particularly if you're in the vast minority. If you don't see that changing any time soon, there's nothing to be gained, and plenty to lose. I feel uncomfortable even writing this blog, as I fear reprisals of one form or another.

Of course, that discomfort isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's important to acknowledge. I don't feel comfortable talking about the lack of cultural diversity in libraries, when I'm surrounded by white folks - even when they're being supportive allies. It just makes me feel even more isolated and different. Alone, I'm just not ready to be radical.

So, instead, here's my modestly-radical proposal - and a call-out to all other Australian librarians of colour out there who have been silent for too long. Find each other. Make the time to meet in a safe environment and have these important conversations, critiquing and interrogating the systemic whiteness in your libraries. Mobilise, collaborate and be active. Find your collective voice. Write to professional publications - or create your own. Put together conference panels. Whatever it takes to build our own professional community to ensure that, in these conversations, there is nothing about us without us.

(And if you don't know anybody else that you can connect with, you can email me - I'm happy to get things in motion.)

Game of Loans.

Following on from my previous post... yes, developing a future-proof set of skills will ensure that you are employable in an ever-changing information society. But it's not necessarily going to get you a job, let alone a fulfilling and/or successful career.

Because, like any personal journey, navigating challenges to develop one's own status in society, and live a prosperous and fruitful existence, it's a game. A game in a competitive world, where there are more would-be librarians than jobs. A game with rules, often secret rules, that will give you either an advantage or a handicap, depending on the path you choose to take. A choose your own library adventure.

A Game of Loans. And when you play the Game of Loans, you win or you die end up unemployed and/or frustrated.

Back in the old days - or so our parents told us - it was simply a case of getting a job in the mailroom, and one day you could be CEO of the company.

For my generation, it was always the tautologous frustration of needing experience to get a job, but needing a job to get experience. And for most kids, it was a case of finding a family friend who could help out getting you that first job.

And in the library world, experience is everything. The vital step is getting that library experience - preferably long before you've even considered becoming a librarian. I was lucky in that my first job was in a computer lab that was *in* the library - though technically not actually part of the library, since it was back in the days when libraries were still all about books, and wifi didn't exist yet, or if it did, you had to buy a seperate wireless card and jam it into the slot in the side of your enormous laptop, and then ask the guy at the desk (i.e. me) for the proxy settings to configure your computer to connect to the wifi. Ah, those were the days... but I digress! I was lucky, because I developed librarian skills in the form of information literacy training skills before they were really a thing!

By the time you're halfway through a librarianship course, you really need to have a job in a library. Even if it's just casual shelving, it all counts. Because once you've graduated as a librarian, you absolutely must have experience, or it will be extremely difficult to get any job in a library. Despite policies of merit-based recruitment, libraries will rarely employ qualified librarians into sub-professional positions (such as library officers, library assistants, etc.) because they know that you just want to job as a stepping stone into a "real librarian" job. I've known of qualified librarians who have underplayed their qualifications, just to get their foot in the door.

Which brings me to the next great Game of Loans - writing resumes and addressing key selection criteria. If you want to get a librarian crowd to an event, just put on a workshop, and they'll come in droves. This is a game that seems easy in theory, except that every job is different, and requires tailor-made tactics. One-resume-fits-all is now a foolhardy approach, and writing KSC is a careful exercise in concise detail, choosing every word for all of its loaded potential.

And then, like the Great Houses of Westeros, there are the various sectors of the library industry, and you need to choose your allegiances (does that make me a wildling?). Or perhaps it's more like the factions of the Divergent trilogy, where certain personality types are naturally drawn to certain sectors (does that make me Divergent - or possibly factionless?). Some librarians start out with an attitude of "I don't care - I'm happy to work in any sector as long as I'm a librarian." I would urge caution to such an approach. As much as we don't want to admit it, there is a social order of library sectors - it's easier to move from some sectors to others, but if you find yourself at the "bottom", it can be quite a struggle to climb "up".

Finally, once you've picked your tribe, passed all of the challenges, and got that library job, then the real Game of Loans begins - working with others in the library. Every job is a political minefield. You want to form alliances, familiarise with the landscape, take advantage of the benefits, and learn to negotiate the hurdles. Be assertive without being arrogant; obliging without being easily-exploited. Pick your moments. There are various approaches to succeeding at this particular Game of Loans, and depending on your workplace.

And then, there are other games. I've been playing a very different game in recent years - perhaps a bit like Arya Stark in Braavos, trying to pass her initiation into the guild of the Faceless Men. And it's a difficult game at the best of times, where the rules often change or seemingly contradict each other. Perhaps I should go back to playing a game that actually I'm good at.

My top five skills for future proofing a librarian's employment opportunities.

So, today I'm being lazy, and riffing off Kathryn's latest blogjune post, entitled "Top five skills for future proofing a librarian's employment opportunities".

This is a particularly apt topic for me, as I am soon to be going back into the job market, and I, naturally, want to have employment opportunities. At the same time, I currently work in an organisation where many people are very concerned about their employment opportunities. Some are anxious that every professional decision they make will determine their future career success - or failure. Others feel completely trapped, but have stayed so long that they don't have the skills to move to another sector.

When I started out as a new graduate librarian, I was very focused on my career path. I took opportunities to move up into management roles quickly, but soon found that this could only get me so far, and my career was, by no means "future proof". More recently, I've opted for the path less-travelled, which has made for a much less-conventional librarian career, but hasn't made me any less a librarian in my mind. The former was about establishing valuable core skills and experience. The latter has been about developing resilience and versatility. I suppose that time will tell how "future proof" my current career path has become, but for the time being, here are my top five.

Skill 1 - Competence. Yes, it's important to know your core principles of librarianship. That's what education is for. However, what takes time to learn is being able to get the job done, and get it done properly and on time. And part of this is understanding the barriers in the workplace, and knowing how to overcome them. These may be due to a limited budget, lack of professional capacity in the organisation, internal politics, or purely social barriers. The more you diversify your experience, the better you'll be at negotiating these pitfalls and getting things done. We all know the people in the workplace who are reliable, and the ones who aren't. You want to be the person that everybody can count on. Get a reputation for it, and people will remember you.

Skill 2 - Resilience. Even the most competent person has a breaking point, and we've all had times in our working lives where we've wanted to flip the table and walk away. But being able to handle constant setbacks, but return with a new approach until you succeed is an indispensable skill. No work place is perfect, and the more experience that you get in achieving results in imperfect work places, the more resilient you will become as a professional.

Skill 3 - Mindfulness. At the same time, as a renowned poet once said, You gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em. The more you challenge yourself, and build resilience, the more you're going to be mindful of where your own professional limitations are - where your strengths and where your weaknesses lie. You'll learn to be able to promote your strengths to prospective employees. You'll also know where you might want to take some professional development - or just decide that some aspects of the professional field are never going to be your thing. 

Skill 4 - Connectedness. Call it networking, schmoozing, or just spending too much time on Twitter. The more you connect with your peers, the more you'll appear on the professional radar. I'm not saying that you should be a big self-promoter - quite the opposite! Engage with others by responding to what they've been doing, whether it's writing a blogpost, or taking part in an online discussion. Share your own learning moments, and learn from others. Be the kind of professional that your peers will want to engage with.

Skill 5 - Heart. Yeah, I know, it's all very Captain-Planet-fifth-element-y, but when I think about what makes libraries future proof, it often goes back to Michael Stephens' core principle of the Hyperlinked Library - that the library should encourage the heart. And as facilitators, we need to have the skills to make these human connections between our services and the user. To do this, we need to express our own genuine wonder of our world, and be need to be passionate in the ways we pursue and create our own life experiences. Only then can we inspire communities that create, share and engage with one another with their own experiences.

So, that's me. Looking back at Kathryn's post, I think we perhaps have a different approach to coming up with our top five, but ultimately, when put together, they are very similar sets of skills.

What are yours?

Visiting the Vijećnica

In my recent Balkan travels, I was able to spend a couple of days in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This is a beautiful city, and when I arrived, it was surrounded by snow-covered hills, and characterised by a blend of Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Yugoslav architecture. Walking around the city, it is still very conscious of its tragic history - to some small extent, with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, but more prominently with the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war from 1992 to 1995.

One of the most significant buildings in Sarajevo is the Vijećnica (City Hall), built between 1892 and 1894 during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and opened in 1896.

In 1949, it became the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, eventually holding over 1.5 million volumes, with over 700 rare books and manuscripts spanning over five centuries of Bosnian culture.

On 25 August 1992, firebombing of the besieged city resulted in substantial destruction of the library and its collections, as it burned for three days in a seemingly targeted attack, as adjacent buildings remained undamaged.

To me, this is reminiscent of when I first heard of the burning and looting of the Iraq National Library and Archives, and the willful destruction of such priceless cultural heritage collections is deplorable. Report tell of of librarians and volunteers braving sniper fire to form a human chain, rescuing books, whilst under constant sniper fire. Aida Buturovi, one of the National Library's librarians, was killed by a sniper in the process.

Almost 15 years later, with the support from the international community, the building has been rebuilt and refurbished, and is now a national monument. For a small entrance fee, I was able to go inside and have a look around. At present, the space is mostly empty, as the refurbishment has only recently been completed. There was an photographic exhibition showing the state of the building after the bombing, and the work in restoring the building is remarkable.

Some of the interior detail

I look forward to one day revisiting the Vijećnica again, when it returns to its former glory as a functioning city hall and library.

Vijećnica in its restored state