Will Sherman of Degree Tutor (the same guy who wrote that 33 Reasons Libraries Are Still Important article) interviewed 27 library workers including me. I'm pretty happy with how mine came out--except for some grammar weirdness and missing links.
I was especially glad to see that many people who were asked what the most useful features of libraries today are answered that librarians are.
Will did a pretty good job I thought getting a range of interview subjects, including a couple from South America, so kudos for that. However, the ratio of male to female interviewees is utterly sickening (10 women out of 27 in an 80% female profession).
And why why why aren't we listed alphabetically--or in some other discernible order? I gotta say I'm glad I'm near the top, though. It's really hard to read 27 interviews one after the other. I stopped about a third of the way through, and then just skimmed the interviews of the people I know.
Comments
Will Sherman (not verified)
Thu, 07/26/2007 - 7:15pm
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Re: Librarian 2.0 - Interviews of the future of librarians
Jenna, I added a link that had been left out and tried to smooth out some of the sentences. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like me to change. And overall thanks so much for contributing your thoughts to the discussion!
Also, I'm sorry if a perceived gender disparity among those I interviewed offended you, it was not my express intention to interview more men than women, nor is it something I counted up or even thought about. My negligence in tallying up the number of women to men reflects that this classification has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose and extent of this series of interviews. These interviews are not a statistical, representational, demographic slice of librarians, nor do I ever claim that they are, nor is that implied in any way. I'm flattered that you feel that a handful of interviews is making some definitive statement about the profession. It's not. It's just another piece of a larger conversation.
In that larger conversation I don't deny that gender, age, race, sexual orientation, continent dwelled upon or any other variety of demographic features are important and should be discussed in depth, intentionally and explicitly as such. But this project is necessarily limited in scope.
And while I appreciate your criticism and will take it into account, I'd suggest that you strengthen your argument before bringing it to the fore, first by displaying a better sensitivity to the process by which these interviews were researched and conducted. For instance, did you care to ask whether or not I was done with the interviews, or how many males got back to me vs. females? Now, I’m not saying that more men got back to me - I could go back and check, but that’s not the point. The point is that you displayed a certain trigger-happiness before checking in with me to ask about why I might have interviewed more men than women.
Also, get your act together when you throw out statistics.
>>>10 women out of 27 in an 80% female profession
I don't doubt the validity of your source and its context, but why didn’t you cite it? I wonder which libraries were studied, and what regions of the world? Getting back to how the interviews were researched, I’ll point out that I found a lot of interviewees through their blogs. Do you know for a fact that 80% of librarian bloggers are female? Would you care adjust the percentage of female bloggers to the proportion of bloggers I interviewed? You might even find that the gender disparity under-represents males. You see, I’m afraid you’re comparing apples to oranges.
From LibraryJournal:
In academic librarianship, for example, about 70 percent of all jobs are held by women, but about 66 percent of the computer systems leadership jobs are held by men.
Do consider that many of those interviewed were from academic libraries, as well many whose jobs could be described as "computer systems leadership".
Again, it was not at all my intention to "represent" one gender more than another, but for you to say "10 women out of 27 in an 80% female profession" appears disingenuous, because you don't adjust for the proportion of academic librarians interviewed, or those in computer systems leadership roles. I don’t know what the math would conclude, but the point is that you don’t either. You went ahead and made a damning statement, and labeled the post “sexism” which implies that what I did was sexist. You are entitled to that opinion, but I’d submit that your careless argumentation does you a disservice.
You don’t even take into account that three of the men I interviewed are not librarians, one is not a practicing librarian, and one is a library assistant. So your estimation of a "sickening" 10 out of 27 should really be a "sickening" 10 out of 22 practicing librarians.
Also, I felt Google Book Search was important to interview. The appropriate librarian happened to be male. Should I have canceled the interview? If he were female, it would have made for a "sickeningly" 50-50 representation of 11 out of 22 practicing librarians.
Nor do you care to mention that the president of the ALA and the University Librarians for University of Virginia and Carnegie Mellon are all three female. Again, it was not my intention to demonstrate that one gender wields more power or influence than another. But as long as you’re in the business of drawing quick conclusions, why didn’t you look at that fact? You might end up concluding that I favored women disproportionately.
All that said, Jenna, I do appreciate your criticism, even if the way you approached it was a bit poorly thought-through. I will take it as constructive criticism in the sense that next time I set out to capture the thoughts and perspectives of a group of people, I'll be much more self-questioning about the demographics of who I interview. I may conclude again (as I have this time) that demographics simply don't play a role. But at least I'll be more explicitly aware of what I'm doing and the possible reactions that will arise. In other words, a sincere "thank you" for your continued contribution to the discussion :-)
jenna
Fri, 08/03/2007 - 5:42pm
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Re: Librarian 2.0 - Interviews of the future of librarians
Hi Will,
First of all, I apologize for taking so long to respond and more importantly for making you feel so attacked, if that is how you felt. At first I felt your response to sound unnecessarily defensive, and then I thought back to the times I've been challenged, insulted or slandered on a discussion list and remembered how such things can seem intensely personal and even vicious far out of proportion of what they are really saying. So...
I have a quick trigger finger when it comes to gender and librarianship. I am indeed sick sick sick of men dominating or at least disproportionately represented at conferences, in leadership, and in print. The 80% female statistic came from an American Library Association report called Diversity Counts. It was an American Library Association membership survey conducted in 2006. Table 4, page 10. Actually I think I saw it somewhere else earlier, but this is the one I found the most quickly. I don't know how accurately membership in the American Library Association reflects the demographics of all active librarians more or less in the U.S., or how respondents (14% of the membership as of the report) further reflect the demographic. But that's the stat I have to work with.
You talk about the fact that three of the women you interviewed--the ALA President and two University librarians--are in positions of extreme power. I'd like to point out (and again, this is not really directed at you; it's a brief feminism soapbox moment) that the Executive Director of the American Library Association is male, as is the editor of American Libraries. The President-Elect is a man, as is the Treasurer, half of the executive board, and three of the last 6 presidents. There was an article in College & Research Libraries ("Is the Revolution Over? Gender, Economic, and Professional Parity in Academic Library Leadership Positions" by Marta Mestrovic Deyrup. Chicago: May 2004. Vol. 65, Iss. 3; pg. 242, 9 pgs) that got all excited about the fact that 50% of academic library directors were female and called that gender parity. It would be if the profession were evenly split gender-wise. (And by the way, I don't mean to harp on the gender binary. It pisses me off every time I see only "male" and "female" listed on a survey.) Okay...I'm getting distracted, so now I've added 50% of academic library directors to my list. If I had the time, I'd go through the library associations and divisions, dig up more library director statistics, and determine how many library journals are edited by men.
My point to all this, though, is to underline a problem that isn't your fault or responsibility. I think about gender and demographics all the time. If I organize and event or a program, I pay attention to how those presenting represent the group to whom they're speaking. I will not attend a library conference panel that has no women speakers (unless there is some important reason for the gender bias). The male dominance is self-perpetuating, so we need to pay active attention to who we interview or promote. Gender disparities are very intense in the rest of academia, as well, so you might want to consider it even when you're not specifically writing about diversity, demographics, or whatever.
I don't know what the gender balance is in the biblioblogosphere, but 12 of the 14 individual blogs that I read most often are by women, and come to think of it, 1 of the men is unemployed and doesn't write that much about libraries and the other while using the blog format, just isn't all that bloggy. If anyone is curious, some of the women not included on your list (and for all I know were invited but didn't respond to your inquiry) I would interview are
They're not all academic librarians, but of course neither were all of your interviewees.
This post just isn't hanging together very coherently, but I've really got to finish it so I can take care of some other things.
You've given me some things to think about--how I need to take as much care with what I say on a blog and how I say it as I do with anything else I write or say in public. I'm new to this kind of individual blogging is my only excuse for perhaps behaving badly. Frankly, since I am sort of new to this and I'm also not known as a proponent of "library 2.0," I'm sort of amazed, though quite pleased, that you found and included me in your interviews. I do thank you for your interest, your questions, and your comments here.
Will Sherman (not verified)
Sat, 08/04/2007 - 9:13pm
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Re: Librarian 2.0 - Interviews of the future of librarians
Jenna, even while writing my first comment I looked back and realized that you couldn't have meant anything really as a personal attack, but rather you were just quickly writing your impressions, which befits the blogging genre in many ways. Since then I've also thought about the tag "sexism" and what tags really mean and how it's probably an exaggeration to construe that as a personal accusation of sexism, but rather independently of what my intentions were, the result of it is perceived by you as something representative of sexism, and not only is that okay "because it's your valid opinion" but it's also something I think I can accept, especially based on your more lengthy explanation in your latest comment.
As you have made it clear you understand (and thank you for that), the point of my comment was to defend myself. I hope I didn't "counterattack" too fiercely, because I sincerely do see where you're coming from, especially since your latest comment.
Anyway, if you haven't already, I noticed that Meredith Farkas is starting a 2007 biblioblogosphere survey and the 2005 survey does have some interesting statistics. She's looking for participants in the 2007 survey.
Also, I recently published Jenny Levine's interview, I was late in publishing hers. :-) Here you go:
Jenny Levine Interview