I know, I know.. I had plans to use this blog more in 2024, but as many other things.. it keeps getting pushed further down on my to-do list. When we are stressed and pressed for time, we are in survival mode and only the things that is on top of the list gets done. That, in turn, leads to lack of motivation and morale issues. I have seen this so many times, and when we lose sight of the big picture, we are in trouble.
I don’t mind admitting that I have been in a bit of a slump the past year when it comes to professional development. I believe that it is important to keep learning and trying new things. That has always been my base line, and I always try to up my teaching game and to enjoy learning new things. However, for the past year, the new literature on information literacy has not given me enough motivation to read to overcome the threshold to do so. I still think information literacy is as important as it has always been, but I haven’t seen anything radically new for the past few years. It is still very much variations on a theme, or at least I find it so these days.
A couple of years ago, I almost stumbled into the Vocational awe subject area, and I gave a presentation on this last year at EAHIL 2023. I have been reading more on this subject for the past year as I have been working on an article on that particular subject. There are a lot of interesting articles that address some of the issues connecting to vocational awe, and I have been enjoying learning more about this. Maybe, therefore, I have still learned something and developed a deeper sense of the profession I have worked in for so many years — even though I have stepped back a little from the information literacy subject..?
I am not going to bore you with an entire reading list on vocational awe, but I thought I’d say a little about a couple of books that I am currently looking through:
- Acadia, S. (2023). Libraries as dysfunctional organizations and workplaces. Routledge.
- Holm, C., Guimaraes, A., & Marcano, N. (2022). Academic librarian burnout: : causes and responses. Association of College and Research Libraries.
Acadia (2023) looks into the concept of dysfunction in libraries, and the book consists of 14 chapters from various authors. I haven’t come very far here yet, but I was intrigued by some of the chapter titles in this edited work. For me personally, I was particularly interested in chapters on power and conflict in libraries, as well as chapters on turnover and alienation, as these chapters directly talk about subjects that are present in the vocational awe narrative. There is also a chapter on why libraries struggle with diversity, equity and inclusion that I find exciting. As I said, I have not come very far yet, but there are several things in here that really resonate with me.
Holm et al. (2022) is an edited work on why librarians suffer from burnout and what we can do about it. There are 24 chapters, and each of them has their take on burnout. Until I started working on my article about 1,5 years ago, I had no idea that burnout is such a major factor in libraries. It blew my mind when I saw some of the statistics for turnover and illness in libraries, and I have gained so much more understanding for this subject through working with a couple of excellent human beings and experts on emotional labour (more on that soon..). I haven’t read many chapters of this book yet, but I know that I will learn a lot. From the pages I have read so far, it is clear that this is something we have to talk more about in Norway. (Is it just me, or are almost nobody publishing anything on this here..?) From what I have seen so far in this book, the authors are pointing to a number of reasons for librarian burnout, including fear of making mistakes, workload, dysfunctional culture, service expectations, role conflicts and management issues. These all seem equally relevant in Norway as in the US, so I am looking forward to diving deeper into this.
Anyway, this turned out far too long, but I hope to get back here with an update as I get through the pages here.
EAHIL 2024 starts in Riga, Latvia next week, and I will be there as I am part of the programme committee and that I am giving a workshop with a lovely librarian from Toronto. I will be summing up my experiences (as per usual) after this conference.
Karen Marie 