librarypunk - 089 - Leaving Libraries feat. Allison

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

This week we’re talking about leaving academic libraries. Allison joins us to talk about using your skills to move into another field, barriers in academia, work/life balance, and the impact of temporary grant funded positions.  Media mentioned https://medium.com/@allisonjaiodell/why-i-left-academic-libraries-26e2a63c8bf2

One time I want to bet because my dad said that, like, you know, gigging bands and stuff, their sound check song about, you know, maybe 10 minutes in is going to be working man blues. Like, they've already done their like pre-show sound check, but this is where they're playing outside. It's at like a county fair, right? And their guitars are going out of tune a little bit. So you do Workin' Man Blues as you're like after a song or two sound check. And I've wanted to bet one time being like, I bet they're going to do Worker Man Blues here in a

longer too. It's never happened at a show I go to. Well, it's because you're not going to like gigging Dad Rock playing Skinnerd shows. Yeah. I would harass my dad by shouting

Free Bird from the back because I thought it was very funny when I was 15. It is. It's still funny. Yeah. He would just tell me to shut the fuck up like over the microphone. I'd be like, that's my kid. I'm glad they finished repaving the road

before we recorded because there was just a the whole road just got redone so all day there's just this low hum from like 7 a.m. onward which was actually really nice because they let me sleep in because there weren't just cars going by blaring music all morning. I watched an opera about a hum last month. It was very good. Actually, it's called The Listeners by Missy Mozzoli from 2021. It's about in this town some people can hear a hum and they form a cult around it. It was really good. I feel like I was just reading Wikipedia articles about hysteria, like mass hysteria. And I feel like a hum was one of them. Yes, it's a real thing. Yeah. As in like that's a supposed, you know, mass hallucination or something. Okay. Alice, do you want to test your mic a little bit?

Boo. Sounds great. All right. Let's go. I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkaum library. My pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I am a music library director. My pronouns are he, him, and Arthur is lost in the sauce because I gave him some catnip earlier. Hell yeah, Arthur. We have a guest who isn't Arthur for once. Would you like to introduce yourself? You have two guests. So I'm Allison. I'm a technology and database consultant. I am joined by Lucy, who is very short. She comes up about four inches high. She is black and fluffy. And her pronouns are she heard as well. Where's Goose? I want to see Goose.

She's underneath him. You can't see him. Oh, I don't know who's behind me. You literally can't tell the difference. They all look at the same. I think it's Millie by process of elimination. So, Allison, if that is your real name, we're going to talk to you about your career in libraries and beyond and how that changed over time. But first, we have got news. Everything's still bad. Congratulations.

Illinois is... Less bad. I mean, Illinois passed this bill that I find pretty interesting. And I was a little worried about it because it was the way it was described in the news. And this is me going back to my, we can't trust reporting on libraries and legal stuff because reporters neither understand legal stuff nor libraries. So you just have to read the bill yourself. But the way the bill was written about was every library in Illinois will need to, will be protected from censorship, but has to have an intellectual freedom policy that aligns with like the ALAs. And I was like, okay, how is that enforceable with the arbitrary nature of collection development right?

But then I actually went and read it. And it just says you have a policy that says you support plurality of ideas and then local. government can't make you pull books. So it's just a preemption thing. So it's just preempting local governments from being able to do all the Looney Tunes bullshit they've been doing. Good job, Illinois. Yeah, it seems pretty straightforward. Like, all you got to do is write a policy and then your local government can't fuck with you as much.

And didn't they just elect like a cool mayor to Chicago or something? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's his face? Yeah. I don't, I mean, I don't live in Chicago. Vote in local elections, including state. Build a pipe bomb. They can't catch all of us.

That too. Kill Mark Rupatcher. dig her up and shoot her again. D all the above. So yeah, that was news. Not as much this time. Alison, you wrote a piece about leaving libraries in, it says April 2020. That doesn't seem right.

It was like two years ago you wrote this, right? Like three years ago. It was like 10 years ago. This has always been in my life. 10 years ago, I raised, but two years ago, you're not wrong. June 2021, I participated. on a panel presentation at that year's RBMS conference about the gig economy and special collections. I forget the exact title of the presentation, but it was something to do with the gig economy and special collections.

Different people presented their perspectives on the pros and cons of having short-term positions in special collections and archives. And the perspective that I brought to the table, having taken on a bunch of different, from unlimited positions was that it's really fucking hard. Can I say that? Oh, yeah. No, this is a Christian podcast. We were funded by Focus on the Family and the Crosswalk Network. No, you can kiss.

I had to mark it explicit because Jake up saying certain words. I was like, if I don't tag this as explicit, we might get in, we might actually get taken down. Sorry, I didn't know. Okay. We could skin by. So this is a safe space to. share that when you are forced to change jobs at least once a year, like that wreaks havoc on your life. But on the flip side of that, it also means that you're constantly learning new skills,

you know, like engaging with different sectors. So having been bouncing from soft money gig to soft money gig to soft money gig in libraries, I was along the way picking up lots of different programming skills, learning to work with like very diverse user bases and kind of honing communication skills, et cetera. So the perspective that I brought to that panel presentation was essentially, if you're forced into switching from gig to gig in libraries, well, you're also going to be forced to learn a lot of skills that eventually might accumulate and you asking yourself the question, hey, could I take all of this experience and go somewhere else? So Justin, you're not wrong. I'm thinking, that this was two years ago.

The presentation was two years ago. It took me maybe about a year to sit down and write that up and put it out as an article in the world. Were you ever told to be grateful for your short-term positions after criticizing them? I never criticized the length of my positions, but I definitely, you know, had questions about compensation or hours that I was expected to put in at work. It was definitely told by more than one HR manager. You should just be grateful for the opportunity to give to these amazing collections. I was once told after I was criticizing the possibility of,

I was not in a temporary position anymore, but we were thinking about having one. And I criticized, like, no, we shouldn't be having these sort of of short-term contract, short positions and stuff, because I had been in a residency, and it, like, ruined me financially. I lived in a hotel for, like, a few months, couldn't get a job and had no help and all this stuff. And they were like, well, you wouldn't be here without that residency now, would you?

And, like, they weren't even the one that gave me the residency, but I was, like, I was, like, told to, like, kind of sit down to stop criticizing the concept of precarious employment because I had been in precarious employment. and it got me into a good place now, didn't it? That was the job you quit, right? Yes, that was the job that I quit. Famously, after talking about it on the show quite a while. Yeah, no, no, don't worry about like, like, you know,

shit talking previous employers. I did it a lot. I mean, good on you for quitting. I wish I had the guts at the time, right? Like, I would just try to stick it out as long as possible because- Well, it gave me a nervous breakdown. I had to quit. been there famously came you a nervous breakdown i only ever straight up quit one job ever

wow and it was because somebody threw a stapler at my head that's a good reason to quit a job yeah no no no no it gets better um so i was new i'd been in the job for like a couple of weeks and um my boss asked me to do some things in the catalog, which I did. I was new. I didn't have a lot of institutional knowledge. And a coworker of mine was like very upset that I had exposed publicly a certain mark field. I think it was the one for binding information that that had been. We're really getting into it now. Oh, yeah. That would have been made searchable in the catalog. And she was like, I can't believe you did that. I've been putting private notes there. And like, she starts yelling at me. Why would you put private?

notes in that field. I'm like, question number one. Like, that's kind of on you. How was I ever to know? But yeah, she's just screaming at me. And she threw a stapler across the room, like, chucked it at my head. Scared the shit out of me. Was this a cataloger?

Yeah, it was a cataloger. But let's not hate on cataloger. I'm a cataloger I'm allowed. Or I was. Anyway, so I like left the building. I was like, what just happened? We were actually the only two working because it was a Saturday shift. I came back on Monday morning. Like I went to Arvost and I was like, I don't even know that this thing happened on Saturday. And the response was, oh, is she at it again? And I'm like, this is a pattern? This is what we're doing here. I asked if like, okay, so this wasn't like a momentary last. of judgment. This is a thing to be expected. I was like, could I not share an office space with this person? And the response was, new idea. How about you do? Because we're hoping she finally does something worthy of firing. So you're going to be bait? I'm sorry. How is throwing a stapler at somebody

while you're on the job not worthy of firing? Was this an at Willstein? And then using you as bait? Right. And he basically asked me, could you go sit next to her to antagonize her by your existence, sufficient that the assault becomes worse next time, and we can finally get rid of her. Was this not in a right to work state where you could just fire someone? This is in Washington, D.C. in the mid-aughts, if you want to look up what the laws were at the time. Reunionized? Yeah, that was my next question. Was this a public library? I got to ask.

Private. Okay. So I did. That was the only job I ever quit because I actually feared for my life at this place. Yeah. Actually, to give context, why don't you go over kind of like your journey through libraries? Because you basically did a lot of specialized library work over a lot of temporary jobs. So give us like a rough chronology of like after library school or if you want to explain how you even got into libraries.

Yeah. How did I get into libraries? The first time I ever had as a teenager was shelving books at the public library. I think if you'd take it back a step when I was a kid, I would play a librarian. I would label my own books, like the spines of them, with, like, tape and pretend like they had call numbers. I think I always wanted to be a library. It's a red flag. Yeah.

Just taking you to specialists. Definitely something wrong with me. So, yeah, when I was in high school, my first job ever was shopping books at the public library. In college, I worked in the preservation lab at my college library. I graduated college. I had a brief stint doing database management in the nonprofit sector. And then I sort of needed like a job that would pay the bills. So I found one working in a law library.

And on the interview I lied, I said, I'm definitely interested in pursuing my MLS. That's why I want this job. And so I committed myself to going to library school. Yeah. But it wasn't like outside the realm of something that I had on, you know, on my list of possibilities, right? But because of that job, I was just like, well, I'm doing this. Yeah. Yeah.

So I applied to schools, went to library. school, back at other step. My undergraduate degrees, and I had two of them because I didn't want to graduate. I wanted to stay in school forever and keep learning because I'm a perpetual student. My undergraduate degrees were in history and classics. I could read Greek and Latin. And I'm on the workforce for about six months. I go back to graduate school. And I get there. And it's the early aughts. I've been working, developing a database full of digital resources. This was like the wild west of electronic resources. We didn't have all of these like super easy plug-in-play discovery platforms for articles,

electronic resources. I was actually working to develop a custom in-house database of our subscribed digital resources and all of the journals, et cetera, that you have access to therein. So this seems like the future. The internet was new and novel, and I applied to my library program saying, I'm really interested in the possibilities with electronic resources, the management thereof, and how we're going to be able to find things therein. I show up, I meet with my advisor, and then tell me a little bit about yourself. I'm like, oh, and I got a degree in classics. I can read Greek and Latin.

They're like, ha, have you thought about rare books? And kept, like, meeting with faculty and others who were in the field. And I kept hearing that question. Have you thought? about rare books and I'm like that is the exact opposite of what I came here thinking I was going to do but I went and talked to an advisor in the classics department I was just like I don't know people keep suggesting I do like a dual master's I can say it was rare books thing and they're like yeah sounds amazing turn out it was a really good fit for me because it was like both things that I loved you know I loved using archaeological methods absolute passion for history and, you know, especially like history of the decorative arts, as well as this like kind of

professional love for information science and supporting information seeking behaviors. So I ended up pursuing a career in special collections libraries. Famously lots of jobs. Famously lots of jobs there. You should be able to sue for that fucking career advice. I would never tell someone to set your heart on like special collections if they were looking into e-resources and database creation. Right.

Yes, do that. If you fall into special collections, good for you. But it's mismanagement. There's a better idea. Do this thing where there's very little job aspects. So I did that for a while. And I could talk through the trajectory of my many jobs there in. Maybe we'll find our way there.

But eventually, I decide, you know what, there's no future. It's just a lot of moving and switching jobs every year. I'm done with this. I'm going to go work on database development again, which is where I started with all of this. Yeah. I mean, you had a series of grant, were all of the jobs that you went through, all those temporary rare book jobs, were they all grant funded, like temporary? Or were any of them, like, full time?

And they just, I guess the University of one was, you were more or less, like, fucked over, but you weren't on a temporary contract. That was the one that was supposed to be permanent. So we do these temporary gigs for a good decade, and I finally found a tenure-track position at the university. I was so excited. I got to focus on exactly what I'd been trained for, you know, the areas that I'd been developing skills in for a while.

I was the metadata librarian specifically focused on special and digital collections. I was excited. I was like, this is it. I was in a place I wanted to be in. Like, I have found my dream job, right? and I'm feeling good for about 10 minutes. Then the then chair of the department, the person who'd hired me that I was excited to work with and four retired.

And the department was in a bit of turmoil. Over the course of the next few months, the DN of libraries made it pretty clear that they were gunning to reorganize the cataloguing metadata discovery department change names a few times. But anyway, those folks who do technical services. I was in the position for about a year, only to find out that the position I'd been hired for, that I was excited to work in was dissolving, and that I would be reassigned to another department altogether. This might sound fine and well. Like, oh, great, they found home for you. Unless you factor in that the position was tenure track. So all of my research and service activities to date had been focused on metadata and

cataloging for special collections. And I was suddenly being told that with one year left to go before I was intending to submit my packet for permanent appointment, that I was being assigned to a totally in a different department that I would suddenly have to demonstrate work towards, you know, stuff that had to do with this brand new position. So while it sounds like, oh, great, they were keeping you. No, they weren't. I was basically being told, you're not getting tenure. You're going to lose your job next year.

You just got soft fired. I got soft fired. Quiet, quiet firing, quiet quitting. Yeah. That's evil. I took a meeting with our associate dean, and I was like, straight up, dude, are you just trying to get rid of me? And he said, well, I can't say that. I mean, you can.

It's Florida. Wow. Or maybe I've caught him wrong. This is, you know, I don't want to misrepresent anyone. Maybe he said something like, well, I'm not saying that. Yeah, that's better. A message was loud and clear. So I had to go on the job market again, and I could go on the job market and look for yet another library job.

But meanwhile, like, I had thought this was my forever. And it turns out it was just as temperamental as all of my known-to-be short-term homes. And I was exhausted. I was so sick of having to change jobs every year, of really killing myself for very little pay. in the library sector. So I applied for some library jobs, but I also applied for some joby jobs in the tech sector. And I ended up accepting a position doing database development for a nonprofit organization whose mission I cared a lot about. So I was able to still feel like I was doing good in the world, but get the heck out of Dodge from library land. I wanted to go back a little

bit to the beginning. But I wanted people to know kind of like how the timeline of your jobs worked out because there's a series of short-term jobs where you had to move a lot and it cost a lot of money and you didn't have a whole lot of disposable income. Can you talk a little bit about the barriers to working in rare books and manuscripts, RBMS, with the service work and then the income and affluence barriers in working in rare books and manuscripts world? Because there are a lot of assumptions about the people who apply for those jobs. Yeah. Well, first off, I think this is probably true of any academic job that if you want to grow,

if you want to promote, if you're in a tenure seeking or a permanent appointment seeking kind of role, that you definitely have service responsibilities, which means, or at least it meant pre-pandemic. going to meetings in person, often traveling to various conferences all over the country to give presentations, take meetings with folks. I was rewarded for doing unpaid consulting work for other organizations when I was at universities. So I had a travel budget, never mind moving, you know, to change jobs every year, but just like constant, like I was spending 50% of my time traveling in order to pursue these academic goals in order to pad my CV in order to expand my network.

Basically, I was traveling all of the time to give papers to meet with different folks. And even if you have a travel and professional development budget, like, it's never going to cover everything, right? People wonder why I'm in so much debt and that's why. Yeah. Right. Just like running up your credit card in order to book that flight to get to the place or to buy that meal or even little things like being invited out to drinks with colleagues. And you're like, well, these are the people that are voting on me for tenure and promotion. So I really better show up and network with them even if it's the day before payday and I have $2.

Right. So I was really just like spending down all of my income, never able to save money, never able to make a dent in my student loan debt, just like spending all of my money on networking and working towards tenure. And for what? Only to find out at the end that I was just going to be screwed anyway. Yeah. So there was that. Justin asked me another question. So there was, I like how you're direct.

directing the podcast now. Just like, come on, bring me anyone. All right. No, but you had a separate article that you kind of linked to on your medium page, which is about the question. I remember you complaining about this to me. I get like eight years ago. So you were complaining about people always ask you this in job interviews.

What do you collect? Which is very specific to working in like special collections. But they would ask you, what do you collect? And I have never gotten that question, but you seem to get it a lot. So what's going on there? Yeah. So if you're meeting somebody new for the first time, maybe, you're like, oh, hi, and I work at the such-and-such library.

And they're like, oh, and I work at this one. And you're getting to know each other. Like elsewhere in the world, people will say, oh, what do you do? Which also kind of hints at, like, what is your socioeconomic sense? But in special collections libraries, I found that people would often say, oh, what do you collect personally? not at your library, not what are you working on, not what are you researching in your professional role? But what do you as a person collect? Imply that if you're interested in rare books,

you obviously personally collect rare books. Well, I don't. I didn't. As mentioned, I barely made any money in the space. And what money I did make, I was spending on things like being able to show up for this networking event where you're asking me what I collect. I have a tiny studio apartment. I barely have air conditioning on a good day. I have no money for collecting. And if I did, and based upon my understanding of proper preservation and conservation practices, I would never feel it responsible to collect anything worthwhile, because where the heck am I going to put it? So this question, what do you collect always seem to come with the subtext of, and how much money do you have, right? Because you're not making it working in libraries or special collections. If you're a collector, you have your own

independent wealth. And there seemed to be this hint of, do you come from money inherent in this question, right? As well as inherent in your ability to function as an academic and as a special collections librarian. Never mind like, you know, what do you collect or do you understand collecting behavior being a prerequisite for participating in the community, being something that's brought up on job interviews, but also just like, you know, as I mentioned, that ability to network, like showing up for the bibliophile events, like paying your society dues in order to meet the people that you need to meet with to get that next job or to bring in new collections to the institution that you're working at, right? Like, it's definitely a space that assumes affluence and wants

affluence. Yeah, and there was something that stood out to me when, uh, in, in the post where you talk about the Lilly Fellowship program that early applicants to the fellowship, so I don't know if this was an an ongoing thing, but part of the criteria was, uh, evidenced by personal interest in our books, evidenced by personal collecting activities. So getting into the fellowship at some point, I don't know if that was ongoing, but had to do with your own, like, weird little library, Adam's family ass room with a bunch of books. This is my go-to example of wealth. It's the Adam's family.

I don't know. Yeah. In IT, at least in a couple of interviews, there's kind of a similar question that I'll always irritates me. And it's, so what's your personal project right now? Like, you have to be doing something IT like outside of work, right? And I'm like, no, I'm not because I get all of what I need from my job portion. Like, I'm not one of those people that has a server rack in my garage, mostly because, at least partially because I don't have a garage, right? Like, none of these jobs I was making good, good IT money at, I should put it, because I was making about the same as the librarians. So,

Yeah, what do you collect sounds a lot like ITs. So what's your personal project right now? Like, why are you asking me about my personal project in a job interview? Yeah, and it just speaks to this expectation that you live and breathe the work, that it's not a job that you do for a salary so that you can lay on the beach when you're done with it. But like you were saying before, that suggestion that you should just be grateful to have the job. that you should be grateful to work with these amazing collections. Or that you have enough independent generational wealth that you are not working because you need to or have to,

but because you just love it that much and you want to. But if you didn't want to, you could just live off of your wealth. Right. Exactly. And, you know, maybe that is the impulse behind the screening question of what do you collect? I mean, let's make sure. I collect a lesbian pulp fiction. I bet they'd love to hear that. Yeah, yeah.

Let's make sure there were only staffing libraries with people who have independent wealth. Because if they don't, well, they're going to complain about the salaries. And that's going to be a problem for them. Yeah, this is my theory about every job that opens, every library archivist job that opens in New York, like pretty much anywhere in New York, but especially around the city. No one could live off that salary. That's impossible. To work at the Boston Public Library, you have to live in Boston.

Oh yeah. I know that that's true in Philadelphia as well. You have to live within the city limits. Yeah. I'm like who you're going to afford to. I finally saw a job in New York that had like a decent pay kind of for the level. It was like a director position. It's like a department head position. So it's kind of the position that I'm eyeing right now. And it was like 85 to 110,000. And I'm like, okay, where is Cornell? And I look at where Cornell is on a map. And I'm like, that's the middle of fucking nowhere. Why is this the only job that seems to pay decent? Because they have to pay you that much to move out to the middle of fucking nowhere. That's why the University of New Hampshire pay so much. I live in the middle of fucking nowhere and I don't get paid that much. You have to fly to me. You can't even drive to come visit me.

There's nothing but like six hours of Texas on all sides of me. It sounds like a good horror band name, Six Sides of Texas. Six hours of Texas on all sides of me. Yeah, I'm going to play that to the... Library rock band. No, I'm going to play that to the theme of a Lone Star. Sixthars of Texas. All right.

All right, Justin. I'm directing this podcast now. Okay, okay. Yeah, I'm fucking doing it. I'm fucking, don't fucking, I'm going. So you start working in non-library stuff. You start doing web development, data architecture, discovery, design, marketing. How was the transition into those jobs?

Because you kind of like jumped straight into one job, but you've been moving, You've moved a couple times since then. So, like, how has it been and how has it been, like, job hopping outside of academia? Ah, interesting difference. So I have switched jobs a few times since I left libraries, but all voluntarily so. Mm-hmm. I think when I started that first job, I mentioned I was working as a database developer for a nonprofit organization. I had about 12 minutes of imposter syndrome where I was just like.

Like, do I really understand coding enough to hack it as a real IT person? Am I going to be able to figure out this totally new sector? And I was a bit intimidated that first day on the job. And I quickly realized that nobody anywhere knows what they're doing. Or rather, nobody has all of the answers, right? Any role that you're in, whether it's in libraries or another sector. Like, there's always more stuff to learn. There are always a million ways that you can and should rely upon your colleagues for guidance, for insight, input.

Especially in tech where things move so quickly. Yeah, exactly. One of the things I love about working in tech now is that I am constantly challenged to learn new things. Like on a day-to-day basis, I'll be like, I have never encountered this before. And I can reach out to my colleagues and just be like, have you done this before? And maybe they'll be like, nope, no idea. Or maybe they'll be like, yes. And here's how you do it. And we hop on for like a 10-minute huddle. And then I've learned something

totally new in the space of a day, right? That I can apply going forward. Yes, imposter syndrome is real. Get over it. Things that I was able to bring to the table from working in libraries included exposure to a lot of different data models for starters. Like one of the first things that I realized when I moved into tech is that a lot of folks, are used to working in a relational database. They know SQL, never heard of link data, never heard of Sparkle, don't know what to do with an XML file other than parse it as if it's a text file. So bringing a lot of experience working with different data models and architectures and just

having exposure to like a variety of query languages and data management tools really helped bring a different perspective to the table when I was working with my team. Also, all of that experience sitting on the rough desk or working with different user bases is something that's absolutely coveted in the tech sector. Like, a lot of job descriptions will focus not just on, you know, like your actual tech skills, but like communication ability, being able to work with clients, to work with user groups, to talk through their own user needs and use cases, basically to be able to draw out what people actually need. and want to be able to do in a system and then translate that into technical requirements is a skill that is rare and covered it, covered in the text case. But it's so commonplace in libraries that we don't

even think of it as a skill, right? Like you take, you take a required course on reference and research skills in library school. Everybody knows how to do it. Who's a librarian? And not a lot of people are really good at doing that kind of like discovery and solution design, basically talking to users, understanding what they're on about and what they need, translating that into technical requirements and specifications. That's rare in tech. And all librarians bring that. And it's like something that can set you apart for hiring. I know a couple librarians in tech services, though, who could use a refresher course? Why do you think that is? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's weird because I started out in a small library,

which is like the ideal way, I think, to start because you do everything. Also, University of Illinois didn't require reference classes. That's so weird. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Isn't it still? I don't know. I mean, I've been out of libraries for a while, but when I got one of the list, it was ALA required.

You had to take, like, libraries 101, 102, basically, where you kind of talked about everything, but you didn't have to take a cataloging class. You didn't have to take a reference class. Because at that time, they hadn't got the separate info management degree yet. And so there was the data curation track. So a lot of people were actually there for more like data curation stuff and not actual and not library science. So they wouldn't make those people take reference. I think they've restructured some stuff.

But yeah, there were no required classes beyond like LIS 501 and 502. Yeah. They redesigned the degree to infrascience for boys. That's not ALA required. Yeah. That was a big thing when I was in library school. was still in history mode. So I was still doing all my gender analysis on my papers.

I was just doing feminist analysis to libraries because I was like, whatever. This is what I know how to write papers on. And then so I just was like, oh, yeah, they're doing infoscience for boys. They're non-A accredited info science programs because of the way they enter people. That are coaching on international student tuition. Yeah. The first cohort was just international students. Yeah.

But they also make higher, they can also say they make higher salaries because just because of gender pay gap. because more men applied to it. So they could say that they were making more money being a non-A-accredited program. It's weird because I got to do everything. And then now I'm in a larger university, not a huge one.

And I've trained up a couple people as brand-new librarians. And I can see how they're limited by like being specialists from day one. So I can see that. And I can't really do a whole lot about it because there's no point making them cross-train and everything. But I don't know. I guess people just get stuck in a special.

No, that hurt me in technical service. services, being a jack of all trades, hurt me. You have to call it. My first job was not in cataloging your metadata. It was a residency because I could not get a job in cataloging or metadata because I didn't have enough focused experience in it. And I was too chatty. And I wasn't a good cultural fit in tech services departments. I scared all the catalogers away. And then my first proper cataloging, whenever it was metadata and discovery, where I didn't actually interact for the cataloging department at all. And I was actually, my office was in the reference and instruction folks. And then I got nervous breakdown out of that position. But yeah,

I was like living in a hotel for like a few months because I couldn't like I was having trouble even after my residency getting a job in tech services because I was too jack of all tradesy. I was too well-rounded. Tech services cataloging metadata wasn't wanting to hire people with those skills. It was like, do you know how to batch load and market it? Do you know the specific L.A. L-S-P-I-L-S. No, then fuck you. Even in academia. Yeah.

It's where you just lie. I've told so many people just Google how to do it before the interview. Yeah. Because you'd probably be fine. That's why tech services is still fucked because they don't want people who have those skills. They're not a good fit for those departments. Mm-hmm.

I'm not bitter. I want to dig deeper into how folks who work in technical services become quite so misanthropic because I have a theory. Hit us with it. They stick us in the goddamn basement. No windows. Or maybe the attic. University of Utah, they're on the top floor with glass windows.

Okay. No cushy up there. I never once in libraries worked on a normal floor. It was always deep dark into the basement or the attic. Never once did I work on the first, the second or the third floor. Like, it messes with your head. All of these people have seasonal effective disorder. They're all probably lacking in oxygen.

I'm like only being halfway facetious. It is actually a problem. Like it's a workplace health and safety problem that we lock people in basements and addicts. We don't give them access to sunlight. We expose them to all sorts of threats like mold, halon. Asbestos, yes. I think I've been pretty open about my brush with asbestos, which we can definitely dive into further if you're curious. Yeah, no, these jobs are like physically dangerous. And catalogers especially

are the ones who are hiding in the basements in the attics and working with the materials. Collections come in. Maybe they do or don't go through some sort of quarantine and biosecurity procedures depending on how well-endowed your institution is, but the first place that they go is the catalogers' desk. And the catalogers are the ones who are going to go, nope, my mold allergy tells me these materials are dangerous. The catalogers are the one who are going to go, I developed an extreme mold allergy because of working at this job. Yeah, an animal excrement.

Yeah, no, there's a reason I have a no donations policy because people just want to give me their grandpa's old moldy sheet music. And that's a health hazard to my student workers. I made them when I was forced to like take some donations. I made them wear latex or vinyl gloves and like COVID masks before they even touch them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I got some really nasty Audubon Society stuff one time that should have been pre-processed before it got to me.

But, uh, oh, well, I was a grad assistant. What I know. Do you want to talk about like bad work environments? Because, I mean, there's plenty of stories. Yeah. Why don't we just like stick on that? We've already covered the asbestos and mold. So why don't we talk about sort of a, you want to eat?

Um, do I want to? No. The following has been cut for legal reasons. No, seriously. Like, I could say about my experience at the University of Florida. That the lesson is that the 10-year system is broken, right? It doesn't actually offer job security. It just offers a lot of competitiveness.

of bullying between people as they're buying for spaces that are left at the institution, that it forces you to work endless hours to never feel satisfied or secure. Like you've done enough work yet, right? There's a lot that's wrong with the tenure system. I don't know what the lesson is from my experience at the University of... Because I don't fully understand what went wrong there. All I know is that I had two bosses. they were competitive with each other, and I was the bait in between.

Maybe you can say that. Maybe you can use that something. Okay. Okay. As a way of wrapping up, because this is something I think we've talked about. It's something I feel strongly about, but you've gone through all of these grant-funded positions, and you said something, I think, in one sentence is pretty good. If the grant project padding, your CV has generated a term-limited position,

you're not creating opportunity for new professionals. you're creating instability for the entire workforce, which I think pretty self-explanatory, but do you want to expand on that? I would love to actually break that down. So it's something I've seen in grant applications, right, for library, especially catalyging projects. I worked on one of those clear hidden collections projects once upon a time. It was one of my first experiences in libraries.

I've seen hiring managers, grant applicants, pitch the concept of a term limited position as an opportunity for new professionals, which it might very well be. So long as you convert that into some sort of permanent position or opportunities for next steps. But if all that you do is post a position in another city, another state that the right candidate is going to have to move to take on that's available for, say, a year or maybe a couple of years, that pays 40,000, perhaps maybe salaries have improved in the last couple of years, I hope, due to inflation, but it's probably not much to live on no matter where you are. And if this is a position that's becoming available because of a grant-funded project, your goal is going to be to keep your grant budget tidy, right?

So salaries are always going to be as minimal as possible that we think we could conceivably get someone. And the someone that we think we could conceivably get is probably somebody fresh out of library school because they're going to be desperate enough to work for whatever low salary we're offering. So we pitch these positions as opportunities. They're not. They're just a great way to incur more debt fresh out of school. You move across the country for this job. You're barely making minimum wage. You can hardly afford to work in whatever city likely you had to move to because that's

where the collections are, right? They're in urban environments. And you're doing whatever you can. You have seven roommates. You're racking up credit card debt. How are you going to fresh out of school, unless you come for money, pay that deposit on your new apartment in the new city? How are you going to buy all of the cute little business suits that you need to show up for work? How are you going to pay for those happy hours with your new colleagues so that you can schmooze, make connections, network, hopefully secure a permanent position?

These are just incredible ways to go into further debt, fresh out of school. school unless we pay people in adequate wage, unless we pay people a competitive salary, what they could potentially be making elsewhere in other sectors on the job market, unless we give people opportunities for permanent appointment. A one-year gig is not an opportunity. Like I said, it's just a great way to incur debt. It's a liability for the person that's in the job. On day one, you're already thinking, shoot, in 12 months, I'm going to have to find you. another job. You're not working towards creating good stuff for the institution that you're working at. You're working towards patting your own resume because you know that you're on the job market in a minute.

That's going to change the kinds of suggestions that you make in the job, right? So you're going to pitch ideas like, oh, we should do this because I need to learn that skill. Or, oh, we should present at this conference because I want that on my resume or I want to meet so-and-so. at that event, right? Like, you're absolutely going to be biased when you're in a term-limited position. And all the ways that you're not biased, all of the good things that you actually do for the institution, to build knowledge, to create new information-seeking pathways for those collections, you just took all of that institutional knowledge and walked out the door with it at the end of your term.

Like, these temporary gigs do not help the collections. May you get a finding eight or two out of them. May you get a few hundred, maybe a thousand odd catalog records out of them? Yes. But all of the other opportunities that you had to develop institutional knowledge to create a new professional who's an advocate for your collection, those go bye-bye. Like, terminal and positions are problematic. If you really want to create opportunity for new professionals, and create capacity for your organization, work on creating permanent positions. Or also offer them 100% remote so the person doesn't have to fucking move.

Yeah. I mean, there's one idea. Yeah. Actually, I was going to ask you how that would have affected your career path if you had been able to be, I know rare books you wouldn't have been able to. But if you had been in a series of grant funded jobs that had been remote, how would that have been different? I mean, it definitely would have affected my pocketbook.

Maybe I wouldn't have affected my career trajectory, right? Because I would still be thinking, well, I'm going to need some income in 12 months. Yeah. So it still begs the question of how I'm spending my time and if the decisions that I'm making or, you know, just the little moments that I take. Like, I have an hour free. Do I spend that hour working on a service commitment because I'm trying to network and because I'm trying to expand my resume? Or do I spend that hour? I don't know. I know, developing some curricular materials that only people in-house are going to see. You can look at my resume and understand the decisions that I made. I was constantly thinking about having to go for new jobs. And the extracurricular activities that I took on reflect that. Yeah. You can definitely see that in my early service commitments.

Me too. I wrote a book while I was in my residency. Yeah, it was very anything with the word technical services in it, I would because I needed like that part of my resume padded a little bit. So I was like head of the FLA tech services group for some reason because no one else wanted to do it. And I just like showed up one year and I was like, I'll do it. Because I knew it was just going to be a line on my resume. No one was going to like ever look into.

Right. So, you know, just any kind of small thing like that. And I just, you know, ran meetings for a year. Easy line on the CV. And I try and instill that with like my grad workers too. I'm like, anything you do here, you can just put on a CV. and like you can say you did it. So if you have any project that you're interested in, just do it.

And I will tell you how to put it on your CV. And so that's kind of like a big thing is like trying to instill that, especially for the ones who want to go into like academia, trying to teach them how to play the game because you don't learn this unless your parents were academics and they teach you how to do it. As a non-academic person, this all sounds horrifyingly difficult. I'm so happy that I'm in. I'm complicated.

I still work in academia, but I no longer. have academic, like, requirements of my librarianship. Like, I have a staff position. I don't have literally any scholarship or service commitments at all in my job description. I still do. Like, I'm on the homosaurus, but, and I've presented at some things because people have asked me to. I haven't submitted to something or even thought about submitting to something in, like, a

year now. And it's so really nice. I come home and I'm like, wait, I don't have to work anymore. Fuck. And like, I still work in academia, but I don't fucking do it anymore. And it's so goddamn nice. Like, I was like, oh shit. Fuck writing. I don't give a shit anymore. I don't want to do service anymore. I'll stay on the homosaurus because I like it. And fuck Tucker Carlson. Talk shit. Get hit, bitch. And like, but I don't like have to do that shit anymore. When I was at the University of Utah in my residency, I presented five times within like a summer. while also transitioning and my mom had just died. And then I wrote a book and like two days later was starting to apply for jobs because my residency was ending. Like I don't know how I slept. And then I still had a hard time finding a job even with how padded my resume was.

I still like ended up having to live in a hotel on the grace of Violet Fox sharing around to go fund me that raised money for me. and racking up my credit cards. Yeah, I know Violet Fox is a fucking champ. Anyone who donated to that, by the way, back in 2019, thank you. It means the world to me. But I still had a hard time finding a permanent tenure track job. Even with all that, people were like, you had a hard time finding a job. I'm like, yes, I had a very hard time.

No one wanted to interview me. And then when I did, I was not a good fit for any place I interviewed. And then the place I did get a job at, the dean proceeded to like force me to disclose medical information in meetings that weren't recorded and like kind of like threatened me and constantly harass me and go against union stuff, but in a way that she never got caught even when I reported her.

And I'm not the only librarian who left because of her in the time that she's worked there, by the way. So what good did it fucking get me? And then I left that job, put myself in even more debt because I'm in a lower paying job now, in fucking Boston. But at least I don't have to like do that shit anymore. I don't have to like

fight or worry about is this going to make my CV look good? Is it to do my fucking job? Like if people want to work in academic librarianship stop doing the fucking academic thing. I know it's nice and I know it feels good to publish and to but then like get a job where you don't have to

do that and it's liberating. I swear to God. It's so nice. I remember the first time that I went to the beach post-academia and I like, wait, I don't feel guilty about this. I can just stare at waves and relax and I'm not crippled by the thought of I should be writing. This is amazing. And it's, it's not as if I don't continue to engage in a lot of extracurricular activities or continue to expand my skill set or to give talks and publish about things that interest me. It's just that the pressure to do that is gone. Like, I don't

feel guilty about not doing it. Rather, I do it when I'm inspired when I'm interested in things. And all of it feels positive. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, it's like I've like been able to like say no to stuff that I was maybe interested in, but was like, you know what? I'm too fucking burned out right now. I can't do that. And I've said yes to some things that I shouldn't have because I was desperate for some supplemental income. That's what's been getting me now is like, oh, maybe I should do this thing because I need the money and then being burnt out and feeling obligated and guilty about that. But like I've like thought about like, well, what if I, you know, like I have ideas about ways to integrate myself into the curriculum at my institution.

And that would be like kind of extra stuff because I might be teaching or whatnot. Like I might teach a class. It's, it's a music conservatory. It's just graduate students. And so they have this like extra little like curriculum called Catalyst, where it's like learning about doing like being a gigging musician or arranging your own music festival or you know basic copyright stuff or working in local communities like stuff like stuff like that and it's like what if I did some like info lit but like what is it like information seeking for like a gigging professional you know like stuff like that and it's like that would be extra to like my main job because I would actually get faculty pay for it as as well but it's like I don't

I'm not doing that with that in mind or we're desperation, but because I want to put that back into these students, not because I want to pad my CV or feel like I need to anymore. And I also don't feel rushed to do it. The only rush I feel is like, well, the longer it takes, the longer students don't get to have that. But not, it's not pressure for me anymore. It's just because that's something I want to do for them. But it's like, oh, well, I've got fucking time. I don't have a clock over me. I don't have the sort of damocles over me anymore. So I can, like, actually develop that properly. I swear to God. learn from our mistakes.

It's complicated. It's going to work differently for different people. I'm in like a pretty good position right now, but really only because like they can't afford to lose me. So I just have like complete utter freedom to do my job however I want, which is pretty sick. But also I have six hours of Texas on all sides of me, which is a disincentive to stay here forever.

So, you know, it's it works in different ways. But I am curious going back to the whole series of grant job. jobs if there is like a cumulative effect on wages and libraries by pushing all of these temporary grant positions. It keeps wages suppressed across the field. So there's your paper idea. Go do that study. I'm not going to do it because I just wait for some other professor to be like,

hey, I need to publish. And I'm like, cool, I'll co-author. And then they do all the work. And then I get my name on a paper. Play the game. It's sick. It was so cool. You ever seen like an old professor crank out of paper?

It's fucking amazing. I'm just like, how did you do this? And they're just like, oh, it's just in there. Weird, wild skill set. Just watching someone do something real well. Always cool. So, Alison, I think we're good to wrap up. Is there anything else you wanted to let people know about it?

Because I'm going to link to your Medium Post, but is there anything else you want people to check out? If you link to my Medium Post, I would encourage the librarians of the world to read it, not so that I get the clicks, but rather because one of the things that I do there is. is compare activities that we undertake in libraries and skill sets that we have as librarians to average salaries in the tech sector. So if you're wondering how to take the skills that you've learned in libraries and translate that into real money, this might be a place to start to begin asking yourself further questions. I conclude with a call to action for libraries to pay. competitive wages. So if you're a library director and you're worried that Allison is trying to encourage

all of your staff to quit, she's not. What she really wants is that libraries get their act together and think about burnout. Think about competitive wages. Think about problems of affluence and socioeconomic status amidst their workforce and really begin to create space for a equity for diverse workers who don't all look a certain way and come for money, right? Fair enough. I think this fit very well and this went very good. So, thank you for coming on. Yes, thank you for coming on. Anyway, good night.