In my first public library job, every single person in the library service worked reference desk shifts. All the way to the very top.
I see the value in this - if you lose that face-to-face connection with people in your community, how can you truly understand their information needs, and develop services that cater to what they want and needs - whether it's building collections, managing catalogue systems, planning programs or producing forms of in-person and digital engagement products.
So, my modest proposal: all organisations should have this approach to their frontline services. If your organisation (cultural or otherwise) has frontline customer services, then everybody - especially your senior staff - should have regular shifts working face-to-face with their customers. Even better - they should also roster in time moderating their social media channels and responding to comments and feedback.
I think a lot could be gained - especially in establishing measures that minimise the risk of harm to frontline staff. But also, it'd help everybody understand what their organisation means to their community.
So, firstly a nostalgic blast from the past, just because.
But seriously, this week the Canberra Times reported a huge recent spike in COVID-19 cases which has prompted a return to mask mandates and restricted visitor numbers in health facilities.
Which raises the inevitable question: what should we be doing in other public spaces right now? That includes libraries, museums, and entertainment spaces such as theatre that hold a huge number of people in a tightly enclosed space.
We already know that people are infectious usually a couple of days before symptoms emerge. So if there's currently a higher risk of infection, why aren't we wearing masks when indoors and in close quarters with other people?
I feel like the main answer is because it triggers a lot of feelings for a lot of people. You just need to read the comments in the above Instagram post. Nobody wants to be the one to make that call. And certainly nobody wants to be the person to have to enforce that rule (see my previous post).
At the same time, I'm also observing a growing trend of people lobbying for people to opt to mask up anyway when indoors at public events as a sign of being a good ally to those who may be immunocompromised and more susceptible to the effects of COVID-19, especially those who have been experiencing long COVID. Basically, refusal to wear a mask in a public place is ableist behaviour which contributes to harm to people living with disability.
I think that things are also becoming more dangerous, now that COVID tests are no longer freely available. I think I saw a packet at the pharmacist for $20 the other day. But the reality is that many people just don't want to know, and would rather pretend that they're not sick and infect others. I am fortunate that if I'm not feeling 100% then I can (and do) work from home. Both times that I've come down with COVID, I isolated until I was clear, and even then masked up for a few days to minimise the risk to others. But I had no obligation to, and there are plenty who don't have enough sick leave and/or cannot work away from the office for a week.
Again, it comes back to those frontline workers who are face-to-face with the public every day. Another way that we are putting workers at risk of harm. And whether we enforce mask-wearing in our spaces, or allow people to enter these spaces freely without masks, it's those frontline workers who will bear the brunt of the resulting harm.
After many, many years of delivering face-to-face customer service, I worked my last desk shift in February 2019. That's over five years ago.
That's not to say that it was the end of my work in customer service. I've still continued to have many years of responding to public enquiries, mostly in digital form via email and social media, or over the phone. And people can continue to behave in many challenging ways, especially when you're a faceless channel that represents an potentially oppressive or at best bureacratic institution.
But it's been more than five years since I've had to physically put myself on the frontline and deliver immediate in-person services to a member of the general public.
Of course, things have happened in those five years that have impacted face-to-face customer service. One very big thing in particular - the COVID-19 pandemic.
Libraries closed in line with public health orders. Well, most of them. With time, they reopened, but with requirements for social distancing, QR code check-in, room capacity limits and mask-wearing.
And guess who often had to enforce these requirements? You got it - the frontline staff.
I've heard many stories from library staff on the frontline who were abused by the public on a daily basis. In one extreme example, a staff member at a university library was spat on. Such an act would be considered assault at the best of times, but in the middle of a pandemic for a highly contagious disease where there had not yet been adequate vaccination programs in place, it seems particularly malicious.
Whilst many in society seemed mostly compliant at this time, it was those who objected to these orders who would make life particularly difficult for our frontline customer service staff. I feel somewhat fortunate that I'd somehow managed to pivot away from working in the front-of-house side of things.
At the same time, responding to some of the online discourse when moderating online communities and responding to social media enquiries also seems to be getting increasingly more abusive and fraught with inflammatory behaviour. Perhaps this is a consequence of our online environments being the main platform for widespread disinformation, misinformation and the perpetuation of communities that seek to discriminate and harm others in our communities.
It feels easier to dismiss a lot of this, saying that it's just a vocal minority of people making life difficult wherever they can. But I feel like it's just getting worse. Or maybe I'm just a bit tired and don't want to argue with people anymore.
The thing is, I do miss working with the general public. At least some of the time, I'd have positive interactions with regulars, interesting conversations with researchers - and I love the thrill of helping people find that piece of a puzzle that they need to complete their work. And finding ways to surprise and delight people with stories and collections that come with working in a cultural institution. That's the job that I signed up for. But is it worth the job that I *didn't* sign up for?
I spent 18 years working on the frontlines of library services. I started out as a casual at the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne, and most interactions involved helping students access online databases, connect to the wifi or use the printing system. At times, these systems would not operate as designed, and students would get a little grumpy, but more often then not I couldn't do anything about it, and so they'd go off to try their luck at another student computer lab. The other very mildly challenging thing was that at night time, usually during the winter over SWOTVAC when we were open until 1am, we'd have homeless people come in to escape the cold. They napped on the couches and didn't bother anyone. When we closed, they'd quietly leave without a fuss.
Then, after graduating, I got my first full-time job in a public library. I thought that, with five (casual) years of library customer service experience, I'd be all over that. I was wrong - this was next level. Public libraries, by their very nature, often attract people who are socially marginalised and often moved along from other public spaces. But as Neil Gaiman famously said (and I paraphrase), libraries are one of the few remaining public places where you can go and aren't expected to spend money. Unfortunately, this means that from time to time, as a frontline worker, you have to content with very challenging behaviour. I've witnessed people behaving physically and verbally aggressively - to me, to other staff, and getting in full-on brawls with other patrons over something as banal as a computer booking or wanting to sit in a particular chair. I've had to confront people who are viewing pornographic online material in a public space.
So, it was really no huge surprise to me when I viewed Jane Garner's recent presentation about her research into occupational violence experienced by frontline workers in public libraries:
In some ways, I was lucky. I worked in a 'nice' neighbourhood in Melbourne. Those who were struggling with mental health and associated antisocial behaviour were relatively straightforward to address and once we got to know them as regulars, we do what we can to make them feel welcome and comfortable during their visit. Part of the reason I wanted to work in public libraries was to try to make a difference in the community, and help bridge those social divides by providing free access to information and culture to those who wouldn't otherwise have it.
On the other hand, the kind of behaviour that I personally found most challenging was the kinds of attitude that come from residents in one of the most privileged suburbs of Melbourne. The defensive behaviour when somebody is "accused" of returning a book overdue, and declaring that they have "never been so insulted in all their life". Or the personal offense of not having the specific issue of Better Homes and Gardens magazine that they requested half an hour earlier ready to hand over to them, and being told that "My rates pay your salaries". Or the regular guy who is first to walk straight through the door every morning, and just taps expectantly at the counter for "his" copy of the newspaper, as though he owns the place.
This kind of behaviour wore me down far worse than the overtly aggressive behaviour. It felt abusive - not physically or verbally, but psychologically abusive.
Of course, I realise that this is nothing that anybody in the hospitality industry hasn't experienced day in, day out. But, at least as a new graduate, I had the (perhaps misguided) expectation that workers should be treated with professional respect. After all, there's a reason that most people who start out in hospitality eventually move on to something else (other than being underpaid). And there's also a reason why public library managers love to hire staff who have extensive experience in customer service.
In hindsight, I'm not certain that there are really any 'safe' work environments for frontline workers. I see jobs advertised with euphemisms along the lines of 'It's challenging work - no two days are the same - but it's incredibly rewarding'.
I'd like to think this is true - but perhaps this is all just a textbook case of 'vocational awe' at work. But if so, where do we draw the line in protecting our workers, whilst still ensuring that those who need library services and spaces can access them?
I was looking back at my blog posts from ten years ago, and this one particularly struck a chord. I had attended an ALIA New Grads event, and took the opportunity to get some quick vox pops for a Uni assignment on youth services in libraries:
A lot of these felt like a tale as old as time, being:
Keeping up with the technology that youth are engaging with and connecting with them on those platforms and devices
Ensuring that public and professional communities are aware and appreciative of the professional principles that are embedded in the practice of youth services library professionals.
Creating new spaces that are engaging for young people - and ensuring that these spaces continue to be dynamic
In that blog post, I also recounted a story from a librarian who had to contend with parents who did not want their storytime programming to cater for the diversity of their community. Sound familiar?
Reflecting on these things, ten years on, it's so striking to realise that these are issues that have been around for a long time and will likely continue to be issues for the foreseeable future. It's a reminder that sometimes it's less about trying to "fix" these problems, but instead being constantly vigilant and committed to "holding the line", as it were, and aspiring to do better.
And, of course, it's exhausting. When you consider the emotional and cultural labour that goes with some of these issues, and the constant pressure to 'do more than less', it often feels like it's an unending battle that you're never going to win.
I've been blogging for a long time – since before blogs were called blogs. Once upon a time, there was my personal Livejournal, then there was my professional newbie Librarian Idol, then my mostly-travel vlog, The Land of Surprising Pun, and now here.
And as far as I can gather, I first participated in Blogjune in 2014 – that's ten years ago for those of you who are counting.
Once again, June feels like a pivotal month for me and I'll need to make some important decisions in the coming weeks, so perhaps this is a good space for me to start reflecting once again on all my life choices and the current state of the world.
It's been quite some time since I last blogged back in June 2023. At the time, I was two months away from the end of a fixed-term contract and due to the rising cost of living, I was compelled to start looking for a better-paid job - which I found, and now I'm doing web publishing and content editing for a museum.
On paper it's a good opportunity to tick off some extra things in my resume, and it feels like a nice privilege to be going to work in a heritage building every day I'm in the office, but it's also unglamorous work - often socially isolating, repetitive and easy to lose perspective of why I want to be on this particular career path.
This week, I'm quite conscious of the fact that the ALIA National Conference is on in Adelaide, which quite a few familiar faces amongst delegates and keynote speakers. I also regularly try to stay across many of the issues in the library sector, which are not incongruous with the issues for other cultural agencies in the GLAMR sector.
But it feels different now. When I was hired as a Librarian, these were principles that I felt professionally obliged to engage with as part of my job. What's more, when I was a 'big-L' Librarian, it felt like there was a 'choose your own adventure' set of intertwined future Librarian pathways. And certainly with many library organisations, if you come on board at an entry-level position, you can often just move your way up to the top over time. Now that I've stepped off that multiverse of career paths, I feel much less stability as a professional with a reliable career path. Sometimes that feels liberating, but often it's just scary and chaotic - like I'm taking a suite of skills and experiences accrued over 20 years and then fake it until I've make it.
A couple of years ago, in a job interview, one of the panelists asked me: 'Do I miss libraries?'
To be frank, there's a lot that I don't miss about libraries - but also, many of those factors also exist in other cultural organisations, so maybe it was never about libraries in the first place. When I took that big step out of my professional comfort zone, a little over two years ago, my aim was to try to learn how to do things better by seeing how it was done in other sectors. A professional circuit-breaker.
However, when all is said and done, libraries are still what I know best. I do miss Being A Librarian - working with collections and ideas, curating and describing them, helping people connect with them, and communicating the value that they bring to their community.
As I start to consider my next career move (I still have a few months left in my current role), I need to keep reminding myself of my career priorities. My last move was determined by economic situation at the time, but now that things are hopefully stabilising again, I need to find ways to remind myself of what motivates me professionally, and how to stay connected to my professional values.
I'm not necessarily 'bibliotheque bound' - but as a way of reminding myself of what's important, libraries are still on the radar.
