Resilience, Grit, and Other Lies: Academic Libraries and the Myth of Resiliency

ACRL 2017, Baltimore | March 23, 2017 | #ResistingResilience | Slides: tinyurl.com/ACRLresilience

Angela Galvan, galvan@geneseo.edu, @dropvase

Jacob Berg, bergjs@state.gov, @jacobsberg

Eamon Tewell, eamon.tewell@liu.edu, @eamontewell

What is Resilience?

• Commonly conceived of metaphorically, as “bouncing back” from a catastrophic event.
• Found widespread adoption in psychological and ecological disciplines and professions.
• Later applied to engineering, emergency preparedness, and security after 9/11.
• Now present in financial industry to urban planning; self-help to libraries.

Resiliency and Libraries

• Consider the library’s narrative agency in campaigns and marketing.
• “Save Libraries” or “Libraries Save”
• Ask what forces and actors are shaping the library’s story.
• Avoiding White Savior imagery and repackaging trauma for admins.

Resisting Resilience

Collection Development:

• Bohland, J., Davoudi, S., Knox, P. and Lawrence, J. (Forthcoming, 2017). The Resilience Machine. More information at: www.urbanresilienceresearch.net/2017/02/09/the-resilience-machine 
• Evans, B., & Reid, J. (2014). Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously. Polity Press.
• James, R. (2015). Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism. John Hunt Publishing.
• Tough, P. (2012). How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. Mariner Publishing.

Counter-narratives: Resilience is designed to turn your labor into capital.

• Focus on the structure, not your agency.
• Take back the buzzwords!
• Performing resilience may strengthen what you could and should be trying to resist.

Create structures and channels that allow staff to succeed.

• Give library staff space to fail.

• Encourage risk-taking.
• Don’t ask staff to perform.