Building Collective Wellness with Slow Librarianship
Meredith Farkas (she/her)
Portland Community College
https://bit.ly/farkasslow
The pandemic revealed
a lot about our society
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Hello!
I’m Meredith (she/her)
Librarian at Portland Community College
Author: Information Wants to be Free
Union member
Former child & family therapist
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Also me
ACRL-Oregon Award for Excellence, 2014, 2020
PCC Learning Assessment Council Exemplary Assessment of Student Learning, 2017, 2019
ACRL Instruction Section Innovation Award, 2014
WISE Excellence in
Online Education Award,
2008, 2011
LITA/Library Hi Tech award for Outstanding Communication in Library and Information Technology, 2009
Library Journal Mover and Shaker, 2006 *rejected in protest, 2020
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Also me
Anxiety
Depression
Invisible disabilities
Work addict
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Work addiction... is a socially-acceptable addiction...you get a lot of reward and external validation."
-Morra Aarons-Mele
The Anxious Overachiever
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What is achievement culture?
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“Since the members of each year’s peer review cohort are judged against each other, and it has been made clear that only a select few can ever earn the coveted marker of ‘exceptional performance,’ the process has become an arms race of the biggest, most impressive accomplishments librarians can showcase. How do you play up the fact that you’re a talented and beloved teacher when you have a colleague who has just overhauled the entire information literacy curriculum for their subject area and deployed a brand new series of online instructional modules? Sure, that approach may not have been appropriate for the departments with which you liaise, but think about how these two stories look side by side. There is intense pressure to constantly innovate, to throw out the old and invent something new.”
-Julia Glassman, "The innovation fetish and slow librarianship: What librarians can learn from the Juicero." In the Library with the Lead Pipe
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“In his book Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz describes
the current generation of strivers as ‘driven to achieve without knowing why.’ And then they become paralyzed when they’re not sure how to proceed. I jokingly call the hang-ups associated with a drive to achieve as ‘the Achievement Demons.’ When I was growing up, I’d study for days trying to get good grades. When I’d get an ‘A,’ I’d feel elation for about 30 seconds, and then a feeling of emptiness. Rinse and repeat.”
-Andrew Yang “The Dark Side of Achievement Culture” Quartz.
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You are not
enough
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HERE IT GOES AGAIN!
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“The Protestant work ethic, then, not only gives rise to the spirit of capitalism. It also promotes an ethic of self-help and of responsibility for one’s fate congenial to meritocratic ways of thinking. This ethic unleashes a torrent of anxious, energetic striving that generates great wealth but at the same time reveals the dark side of responsibility and self-making.”
-Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
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Consequences of achievement culture
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What is “Slow?”
and how does it apply to librarianship?
Slow food
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The slow revolution!
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Glassman, Julia. "The innovation fetish and slow librarianship: What librarians can learn from the Juicero." In the Library with the Lead Pipe (2017).
Perhaps, if we reject the capitalist drive to constantly churn out new products and instead take a stand to support more reflective and responsive practices, we can offer our patrons services that are deeper, more lasting, and more human.
-Julia Glassman
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A slow library is
Antiracist, responsive, values-driven
Rejection of neoliberal values
Workers focused on relationship building, learning & meeting patron needs, providing equitable service
Org culture focused on learning, reflection, collaboration, solidarity, valuing all contributions, supporting staff as whole people
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Characteristics of slow librarianship
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Good
Good
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Good
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Human(e)
Human(e)
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Human(e)
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Human(e)
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Thoughtful
Thoughtful
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Thoughtful
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The things I had to let go of to get well
Most solutions are systemic!
The things I had to let go of to get well
The illusion
of control
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Scarcity mindset
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“How would your office culture shift if you actually thought of yourself in solidarity with your coworkers — and together, advocating for greater resources — instead of competition with them for the few resources allocated to you? How would your conception of yourself shift if you felt empowered not by your hopes for eventual advancement, but by identification with others?”
-Anne Helen Petersen
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The achievement culture treadmill
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Distraction
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Thanks for listening!
Any questions?
What resonated?
You can find me at:
meredith.farkas@pcc.edu
meredith.wolfwater.com
@librarianmer on Twitter & Bluesky
Slides at https://bit.ly/farkasslow
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Berg, J., Galvan, A. & Tewell, E. (2018). Responding to and reimagining resilience in academic libraries. Journal of New Librarianship, 3(1). Retrieved from https://bit.ly/2J29Lwf
Brach, T. (2019). Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN. Viking.
Bowler, Kate. “Kristen Howerton: World’s Okayest Mom.” Everything Happens Podcast, 11 Aug. 2020. Retrieved from http://katebowler.com/podcasts/kristen-howerton-worlds-okayest-mom/
brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. AK Press, 2017.
Craig, Geoffrey, and Wendy Parkins. Slow Living. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006.
Brown, D. N., & Settoducato, L. (2019). Caring for Your Community of Practice: Collective Responses to Burnout. LOEX Quarterly, 45(4), 5. Retrieved from https://dl.tufts.edu/concern/pdfs/vd66wc899
Ettarh, F. (2018). Vocational awe and librarianship: The lies we tell ourselves. In The Library With The Lead Pipe. Retrieved from https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
Farkas, M. (2020). Pay Attention to Attention. American Libraries. Retrieved from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2020/06/01/pay-attention-to-attention/
Bibliography
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Farkas, M. (2017). Less is not more: Rejecting resilience narratives for library workers. American Libraries. Retrieved from https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2017/11/01/resilience-less-is-not-more/
Farkas, M. (2021). What is slow librarianship. Information Wants to be Free. Retrieved from https://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/category/mid-career/
Glassman, J. (2017). The innovation fetish and slow librarianship: What librarians can learn from the Juicero. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Retrived from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/the-innovation-fetish-and-slow-librarianship-what-librarians-can-learn-from-the-juicero/
Honoré, C. (2009). In praise of slow: How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed. Vintage.
Kendrick, K.D. (2017). The low-morale experience of academic librarians: A phenomenological study. Journal of Library Administration, 57(8): 846-878. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01930826.2017.1368325
Kendrick, K.D. (2020). The public librarian low-morale experience: A qualitative study. Partnership, 15(2), 1-32. Retrieved from https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/partnership/2020-v15-n2-partnership05779/1074628ar.pdf
Bibliography
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Kendrick, K.D. & Damasco, I.T. (2019). Low morale in ethnic and racial minority academic librarians: An experiential study. Library Trends, 68(2): 174-212. Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/746745
Klotz, Leidy. Subtract: The untapped science of less. Flatiron Books, 2021.
Kreizman, Maris. (2020). “Where did my ambition go?” Gen. Retrieved from https://gen.medium.com/where-did-my-ambition-go-c800ab4ad01d
McGhee, Heather. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. One World/Ballantine, 2021.
Mountz, Alison, et al. "For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university." ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 14.4 (2015): 1235-1259.
Odell, J. (2019). How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Melville House.
Okun, T. (n.d.). White Supremacy Culture. https://www.dismantlingracism.org/uploads/4/3/5/7/43579015/okun_-_white_sup_culture.pdf See an excellent adapted version here: https://coco-net.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Coco-WhiteSupCulture-ENG4.pdf
Parkins, Wendy. "Out of time: Fast subjects and slow living." Time & Society 13.2-3 (2004): 363-382.
Bibliography
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Peterson, Anne Helen. (2021). The diminishing returns of productivity culture. Culture Study. https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-diminishing-returns-of-productivity
Peterson, Anne Helen. (2020). Why Office Workers Didn’t Unionize. Culture Study. https://annehelen.substack.com/p/why-office-workers-didnt-unionize
Petrini, C. (2013). Slow food nation: Why our food should be good, clean, and fair. Rizzoli Publications.
Poole, Steven. “Against the Insufferable Cult of Productivity.” The New Republic, 14 Dec. 2013.
Sandel, Michael J. The tyranny of merit: What's become of the common good?. Penguin UK, 2020.
Tsui, Bonnie. “You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything.” The New York Times, 21 June 2019.
Yang, A. (2015). The dark side of America’s achievement culture. Quartz.
Yousefi, B. (2017). On the Disparity Between What We Say and What We Do in Libraries, Feminists Among Us: Resistance and Advocacy in Library Leadership, Duluth, MN: Library Juice Press. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/17387
Bibliography
Credits
Special thanks to all the people who made and released these awesome resources for free:
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