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A review by erine
Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver
3.0
This starts out uneven, clunky, and a bit preachy. Once Oliver gets to her experiences in the public library, things even out a bit and there's a focus that pulled me along to the end. The crux of the book narrows in on Oliver's nine months at a challenging branch of the DC public library. While I'm a public librarian in a well-funded, suburban, single-branch library, the problems she describes are well-known to librarians the country over. Trying to balance freedom of information and access to the library itself with creating and enforcing reasonable and fair behavior standards, while at the same time satisfying a widely varied pool of community needs as an institution that is both free and open to all is no simple task. Each community experiences all these demands differently and has its own challenges in implementing solutions, but despite the fact that my own experience is much more fundamentally mild than Oliver's, I was easily able to relate to her struggles.
Despite her mere nine months on the job, I thought Oliver did a decent job at describing many of the conflicts and difficulties facing libraries, including that sneaky concept of vocational awe. Librarians are not superheroes, nor should they be placed on a pedestal. But much like other public services, the necessity of the job frequently gets in the way of appropriate support. We've seen teachers and medical professionals get stuck in this same whirlpool: the services are necessary, the professions are inherently noble, and so the professionals should thrive on all the "rewarding" experiences they have. Funding, additional support, and other considerations that would make these jobs easier somehow rarely manifest.
In the end, this was more individual memoir than a roadmap for the profession, although Oliver offers a good amount of context to her personal experiences.
Additional notes:
Data is not just numbers, but numbers plus the experiential knowledge and context of the librarian. Circ stats and door counts do not exist in a vacuum.
I've read before about how "first responders" are not really first. First responders are whoever is on the scene (bystanders, ordinary people, librarians). Oliver hammers on this point, and notes that librarians are responders at all levels -- first, second, and post-emergency -- which puts a unique kind of stress on them.
Librarians are explorers, withholding the appearance of judgment, demonstrating and explaining as they adventure alongside patrons to find answers.
Despite her mere nine months on the job, I thought Oliver did a decent job at describing many of the conflicts and difficulties facing libraries, including that sneaky concept of vocational awe. Librarians are not superheroes, nor should they be placed on a pedestal. But much like other public services, the necessity of the job frequently gets in the way of appropriate support. We've seen teachers and medical professionals get stuck in this same whirlpool: the services are necessary, the professions are inherently noble, and so the professionals should thrive on all the "rewarding" experiences they have. Funding, additional support, and other considerations that would make these jobs easier somehow rarely manifest.
In the end, this was more individual memoir than a roadmap for the profession, although Oliver offers a good amount of context to her personal experiences.
Additional notes:
Data is not just numbers, but numbers plus the experiential knowledge and context of the librarian. Circ stats and door counts do not exist in a vacuum.
I've read before about how "first responders" are not really first. First responders are whoever is on the scene (bystanders, ordinary people, librarians). Oliver hammers on this point, and notes that librarians are responders at all levels -- first, second, and post-emergency -- which puts a unique kind of stress on them.
Librarians are explorers, withholding the appearance of judgment, demonstrating and explaining as they adventure alongside patrons to find answers.