Rigor in reviews, in writing, and in librarianship generally

April 28, 2010

In February author Zetta Elliott wrote a guest post for Justine Larbalestier’s blog in which she discusses the challenges writers of color face in a field that is largely white. She discusses problems of authenticity and white privilege (there are more books about African-Americans than there are books by African-Americans) and the difficulties in breaking into the field. I don’t see a lot of discussions about race or privilege in the library world (the literary world, sure, or the culture studies world, yes, but not nearly as often from librarians), so you should give Elliott’s post a read.

Elliott’s discussion of race and privilege in young adult writing is bookended by a consideration of the reluctance people show in writing critical book reviews, which Sarah McCarry picks up on in her Huffington Post article, “Faking Nice in the Blogosphere: Women and Book Reviews.” She examines this reluctance through the lens of gender, arguing that to shy away from criticism in a field dominated by female writers and readers does women and girls a disservice, because although we should be promoting good books and negative reviews can be very hurtful (see David Lubar’s post about the startlingly harsh Kirkus review of one of his books), a critic’s job is to have expectations, to evaluate a book, and to create discussion.

McCarry also contrasts the reception of works by male authors and the “cult of niceness”:

It goes without saying that male writers are accorded no such coddling, and that entry into this misty realm of sisterly solidarity requires acquiescence to a strict set of codes of behavior. Nice lady writers don’t rock the boat, they don’t hurt people’s feelings, and they sure as hell don’t write about topics that make other lady writers uncomfortable. But instead of promoting community, this obsession with niceness wields a potent silencing force. If nice ladies don’t say critical things about other ladies’ books, they also don’t talk about racism and sexism within the publishing industry, the enormous barriers facing writers of color and women whose work doesn’t fall into tidy and palatable genre categories, and the refusal of mainstream critics to acknowledge young adult fiction in particular as anything other than the realm of hack (read: female) writers incapable of producing “real” literature.

I’m still relatively new to the library world (I did my undergrad in math with the intent to become a math professor before realizing I needed a career with more room to have lots of interests and hobbies and with more of a human element), but I was really struck in my first semester by what seems to me to be a lack of rigor in the field–at least in public librarianship. We read an article in my collection development class that was published in a regional library journal that was just a description of a very narrow weeding project. There was no theory, no analysis, no critique–just a summary of events. The writing was poor and riddled with grammatical mistakes. It seemed shocking to me that an article of that quality was published in a peer-reviewed journal (not a magazine or a newsletter–a journal).

While it turns out that most of the library science literature dealing with public libraries isn’t as bad as that one article, it still seems like actual research and critical analysis can be difficult to find. Has this always been the case? Is it happening because of the emergence of information science from library science? Is it just public libraries that find themselves in a poverty of research? It seems to me that this ties in with librarianship’s struggle to be recognized as a profession.

I read a fantastic book last year by Roma Harris, LIBRARIANSHIP: THE EROSION OF A WOMAN’S PROFESSION (it’s out of print but can be found used or ordered through interlibrary loan) in which she discusses librarianship’s struggle to be regarded as a profession and the challenges librarians have faced because their field is traditionally viewed as a woman’s field. She draws on examples from social work and nursing, too, to show how librarianship is unique in its labeling as women’s work (in some ways we’re actually better off). Anyway, it’s a fascinating read and a lot of the following is informed by her analysis.

One way librarians have tried to achieve recognition as professionals is by adopting the traits of other professions (think doctors, lawyers, and clergy members). We institute educational standards (the required MLS), we have a professional association that adopts standards for ethical behavior, and we point to an exclusive body of knowledge in which active research is being done, all in the hopes that possessing these traits will make us a profession.

But librarianship is still often seen as women’s work, and public librarianship especially, and youth services librarianship doubly so. And so librarians aren’t afforded the prestige of other professions. I don’t mean to say that there is something inherently wrong with librarians or library research and that until those flaws are mended we will never been seen as professionals, but I do think that public library research lacks rigor. We need more library science doctoral candidates who are interested in public librarianship and youth services, whether that means encouraging current candidates to find research subjects in those areas or for people who are currently working in the field to return to school.

Many things that are regarded as “women’s work” are seen as such because they draw on traditionally feminine values like nurturing and caring and working with children. My call for rigor and criticism and research isn’t a call to discard these feminine traits and adopt more competitive masculine values and basically become men to effectively transform our profession into a more masculine one–our society devalues “women’s” values enough already. (Notice, for example, that more prestige and higher salaries are given to academic librarians, who are more likely to be men than public librarians and children’s librarians in particular–even within a “woman’s field,” being at the masculine end is preferred.)

Nurture and compassion and care for children is essential in our society and in our work as librarians to young people. But we do need to have that exclusive body of knowledge both to fit the traditional mold of a profession (if that’s the way to professionalizing librarianship) and to justify our master’s degrees being master’s degrees and not just bachelor’s degrees, but also to make us better librarians. It is through this research that we will find the best ways to serve our patrons, the best ways to understand them, the best ways to nurture them into successful adults and to create a better society.

Although she writes from the perspective of an author rather than a librarian, I agree with McCarry that we need to not be afraid to be critical in our reviews. I am not advocating nastiness or the destruction of a supportive community for writers, just higher standards and a willingness to hold authors to them. Young adult literature has improved in leaps and bounds since its emergence in the 1960s from children’s literature, but we should always be asking more. We should look for quality writing and plot construction and character development and recognize when it isn’t there. We should examine books from frameworks of race and gender. We should not be afraid to rock the boat. We should not be cruel, but we should analyze and evaluate and spark discussion and in doing so, push for more for our patrons.

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Tags: commentary, feminism, iu slis, librarianship, professionalizing the profession, ya lit