Okay, I'm probably misquoting, and I'm definitely taking it out of context, but I do remember hearing uber-librarian Joseph Janes say that we need to "listen to the stupid people" more. I took it to mean that we have to take ourselves out of our librarian heads and actually think about the questions that people ask that don't make any sense to us. (Why are the books about health on a different floor than the books about yoga, for instance? And why *can't* they borrow the bound serials, anyhow?)
This morning I was listening to CBC Radio One and heard an especially rage-filled caller ranting about the civic strike. This woman said that the striking employees were holding the city hostage, and that we should each be individually negotiating with our bosses about our wages and benefits, like they do in the private sector. My gut reaction was to want to swear and yell something along the lines of "and you think we *want* to be out of work, and worrying how we're going to pay our bills?", but my librarian self thought immediately of what Joe Janes said at that conference. Could this, perhaps, be what Janes would call a stupid person? Surely there was something I could learn from her ridiculously ill-informed opinion.
So far I don't have an answer to that one. But later, when I was on picket duty today close to my own neighbourhood, a woman came up to the library with her very young child in a stroller. Like my daughter on Friday, this mother couldn't seem to understand that we really weren't open. There weren't going to be any story times. She really couldn't return her books (there's no access to a book drop at this branch) or take new ones. She looked at us for a moment in disbelief and anger before she wheeled the stroller away, muttering bitterly.
I guess some people could say she should have known, if she only looked at the TV news or the front page of a newspaper. But I couldn't think of her as one of the stupid people. The library *should* be open, damn it.
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1 comment:
Yes. It should be. :(
I think for many of us one of the hardest things about this strike is the fact that we're deliberately taking an action that results in library service to our patrons being blocked. We became public librarians because we believe passionately in the value of the services we provide, and the difference they make to people's lives. No matter how important the principles behind the strike are, it's inevitably going to be hard for us to reconcile the fact that we've withdrawn those services from the people who need them.
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