EAHIL 2023: my oral presentation

When the Call for papers opened for EAHIL 2023, I sent in my own submission for an oral presentation. It may have been a bit ambitious, considering I was programme chair, but I really wanted to take part in the conference, too. I decided early on that I wanted to do a talk on a subject that has become more important to me in the past couple of years, but that I have never written or spoken about before, namely vocational awe. I decided that I wanted to explore this more thoroughly, and I started a literature review. The review itself is not finished, but I hope that I will get the chance to work on it later.

The presentation I used can be downloaded from the EAHIL website, but I will include it here, too. I have also written a sort of script that I loosely used during my presentation, and I will paste that in here, too, so that the presentation makes more sense. I received many kind words after this presentation, and I wish I had been able to have more conversations on this during the event. Unfortunately, I had to run off to host another session, but I hope that people will reach out later or read the review if I get to publish it some time.

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oralpresentation21_vocational-awe_karenmarieovernDownload

This is the script. The numbers represent the slide number.

The purpose of this presentation is to remind us that we are only human and as such, flawed individuals who need support, encouragement and help to stop and think.

1. Introduction
   
2. Before I begin, I would just like to do a quick show of hands. How many of you have heard of the term vocational awe?
   
3. I always like to begin with a story. It might be somewhat recognizable to some of you.
   
4. This girl loved to read. My mother loved to read, and I quickly became an avid reader of anything from Nancy Drew to encyclopedias… Yup.. Encyclopedias! To me, the local library was a heavenly space. Filled with every story imaginable (or so I thought), audiobooks, games and lovely, service-minded people who seemed to love nothing more than to find me something new to read. It never occurred to me that the librarians had lives of their own or that they were probably underpaid and overworked. To me, the librarians were guardians of knowledge and defenders of stories. The library felt like it existed in a separate universe.
   
5. Even so, I ended up in library school as a bit of a coincidence, but I was very happy – and even proud, to be there. I felt like I was a part of an immensely old profession, almost a secret society of the few worthy to be initiated, defenders of the galaxy, protectors of democracy..
   
6. There was no shortage of these stories. The professors were all about how the future of information would be shaped by us librarians, and the professors hereby supported the idea of librarians as the saviours, the rescuers, the heros of an unruly and uncontrollable world. I never even questioned this. I had become a missonary for the cult, a «true believer».
   
7. When Hillary Clinton spoke to the ALA Conference in 2017, this is one of the things she included in her speech: [Libraries are]: “guardians of the First Amendment and the freedom to read and to speak. The work you do is at the heart of an open, inclusive, diverse society.”
   
8. Images like these keep popping up in my feed on social media – and I used to love them – and to a certain degree I still do. I mean, they soothe the ego, they make you feel like you are working for a greater cause – and that feels good.. For a while, at least. But when they pop up now, I can no longer enjoy them as they bring with them the bitter aftertaste.
   
9. Now that I have set the scene: Let us turn to what vocational awe is. In 2018, I read an article by Fobazi Ettarh, called «Vocational awe and librarianship: the lies we tell ourselves». It is hard to explain what I felt. Annoyed, overwhelmed, engaged, sad, inspired – it was all happening at the same time. I was reminded of it again when I read an excellent article called «Serving everyone or serving no one» by Bastone and Clement (2022). That was when I decided to do a literature review. Ettarh’s original text is as interesting today as it was in 2018. If anything, it is even more relevant – now that libraries are under attack (as we heard David say in the keynote).
   Vocational awe is an idea that we are working for the higher good, in institutions who are inherently good and flawless. We are encouraged (remember what the professors told me) to be «true believers», working for a higher power. In the sect of true believers, it is hard to change things without being seen as a negative force or someone who lacks dedication to the profession.
   In her original article from 2018, Fobazi Ettarh had a heading called «Martyrdom is not long-lasting career», and that stuck with me. When you are working to save democracy, be the defender of the weak, the protector of knowledge, it seems petty to argue for a full lunch break, Ettarh said. Just to be clear: democracy, freedom, knowledge, justice and equality are not bad values. It is just that it is completely unreasonable to expect an institution to manage them all flawlessly.
   
10. Over to the literature review. I know that the subtitle reads: literature review, but seeing as it has not been published, or even finished, yet I will leave the slides in so that you can have a look at the method etc. if you choose.
    
11. My goal was not to do a systematic review or a complex search at all. My goal was to get an overview – the big picture of how vocational awe as a term is used and what themes are emphasised.
    
12. There were more themes than this descibed, but these were some of the most prevalent. Many of these themes were discussed in Ettarh’s original text, but they were exemplified and broadened in many of the studies I included. I have chosen a few of these to address in this presentation.
    
13. I will just include a table of the included studies with the thematic analysis, but I will not go into it now. You can have a look at the slides later if you are interested. This is not finished. I have only just begun the thematic analysis
    
14. I will jump right in. I just wanted to highlight a few of the themes I found in my review so far. Emotional labour was first defined by Arlie Hochschild in 1983 as “the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display [that is] sold for a wage”(Hochschild, 2012, p. 7), or as Moran and Nadir (2021, p. 16) call it: “the dissonance between outward-facing feelings and emotions, and emotions that are truly faced”. Emotional labour is not the same as emotion work, however. Emotion work is the social tasks one does for others, like being expected to be the one who makes the coffee every morning, or collects donations for gifts for co-workers etc. Emotional labour is the commercial twin sister of that. Toxic positivity is a part of that. Being in the flight attendant mode, smile on even if you have a migraine or would rather cry, professional demeanor, being polite to rude patrons, keeping calm even when a student is yelling out of frustration. I don’t need to tell you that that is exhausting at times.
    
15. Burnout is a real issue within all service-oriented professions. However, it hits librarians particularly hard because everyone outside the profession picture us as having the dream job – just sitting around reading books all day. It is a double whammy with shame. Shame because you can’t take the pressure anymore and shame because you are afraid of not being believed. No one equals librarians with stress. No one.
    I have already touched on the issue of emotional labour and toxic positivity, but job creep is an equally important stress factor. Van Dyne and Ellis defined job creep as: “the slow and subtle expansion of employee job duties that is not officially recognized by the organization” (Van Dyne & Ellis, 2004, p. 181). Does that sound familiar? When I started my current job years ago, my duties were teaching and journal management.. Well.. Toto, we ain’t in Kansas anymore. Doing more with less, service with a smile, while being undercompensated, few real advancement opportunities other than leadership, being treated like “just service personnel” even with advanced degrees, spending your evenings or weekends for professional development because you have no time to spend on that during work hours – and then the shame of not being able to stick it out (aka vocational awe and working for a higher power). Is it any wonder that our profession is saddled with a high turnover and burned out people?
    
16. Leadership is another theme often mentioned in the articles. Power relations, too. Leading libraries can be hard. There is often little real autonomy, an increasing number of services to uphold, many budget restraints and a heterogenous population to serve.
    The literature points to job creep as a leadership issue. A theory is that many are afraid that if we say no, the rest of society will say that we have no value or that we are unable or unwilling to fulfil our societal responsibilities. But it isn’t so. Those who want to cut our budgets will do so no matter how many extra tasks we take on.
    I believe it was Fobazi Ettarh herself that explained in a podcast that there is a cycle of exploitation going on. The library hires a new, passionate librarian, this librarian is faced with the realities of library life and has the low morale experience, they reach the breaking point and leave the library (and sometimes leave the entire library sector), and the leadership either hire a new person and starts the cycle anew or (more commonly), do not hire anyone new and push the extra tasks onto existing personnel. The library is based on a Taylorism model, Ettarh said, where the library staff is like an assembly line or conveyor belt where any librarian can easily be substituted for another and where love and passion is the fuel.
    
17. Let us go back to the beginning here. The girl in the sofa who loved stories and then to the student who felt she was part of a crusade for democracy, education, knowledge and stories. Let us compare that to the academic libraries of today. Statistically speaking, Norwegian academic libraries are poorly staffed. Each librarian (I am including everyone who works in the library), has approx. 300 students each to deal with. At NTNU, the number is 400, and at my local department, the number is 750. These are only indications of course, but how well would you be able to serve 750 students?
    
    And yet, the thing that nearly killed me, metaphorically speaking, was the loss of the idealism. The awakening from the pleasant dream that I was working for the higher good  – was hard. For the Matrix fans here, I took the red pill. It doesn’t mean that I can’t take pride in my work (I DO), or that I cannot like libraries anymore (I definitly DO), but that the reality of the business that we are in has sunk in. Awe is not a comforting feeling, Ettarh reminded us, but a fearful and overwhelming one. And we need to deal.
    
    
18. It may seem very hopeless now after I have talked about all of these bad things. I believe, though that there are things we can do to make things better. If we start by acknowledging that the library profession is struggling and that we have some challenging times ahead of us (remember what David said), it can set us on a track to better understanding.
    
    I want to work more for Slow librarianship. Meredith Farkas helped me understand this concept. She talks about slow librarianship as an antiracist, responsive, and values-driven practice that stands in opposition to neoliberal values. It is a process, not a destination, but it is about learning, reflection, collaboration and solidarity. I think we need to find our way back to that.
    
    
19. I started this presentation to tell you the story of my own path to library and information science. How the story ends is too soon to say. I can only say that we know that for a lot of librarians who started out like I did, it doesn’t end with «and they lived happily ever after». Our profession, across all the different library types, is plagued with burnout and high turnover, and it is not a sustainable way forward. As Kelly Jensen (2022) said: «Library workers can’t self-care themselves out of systemic problems». This is not an easy fix, «just do yoga in your lunch hour», kind of thing.
    I suggested a few things just now, but unless we stand together, we will not succeed here. First and foremost, we need to raise the issues, keep pushing it onto the table, because sticking our heads in the sand will not do. We do not have to agree on everything, but addressing the issues, bringing leadership in, writing about this can help us start a way up and out. Find a way to be a radical, positive change agent. Thank you!
20. Reference list

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I hope that this topic will be more emphasised and discussed in our profession. I think we need to do something to prevent burnout, low moral and high turn-over. Anyway, I thank the reviewers for feedback and for accepting my oral presentation, and thank you to all who came to listen that day. Your comments made my day!

EAHIL 2023: Teachmeets in stead of posters

I have been to quite a few conferences over the years. The conferences have given me new knowledge, new experiences, new ideas and a network. I am one of those people who prefer going to oral presentations over workshops etc. EVEN though I know that workshops and interactive sessions are more conducive to learning than just listening to a talk. (My goal is to go to more workshops in the future.. I need to push myself out of my comfort zone.) No wonder then, that I also enjoy teachmeets. More on that in a moment.

The problem with posters (in my opinion)

For EAHIL 2023, we decided to drop poster presentations from the programme. I suggested it early on in the International Programme Committee (IPC), and I met with little opposition there. As I wrote in the beginning, I have been to many conferences, and I have therefore seen many poster exhibitions, but I have never been able to understand how they can be so popular. I get that people feel like they can connect to the presenter in a closer, more direct way when the presenter is standing by the poster and engaging directly with the participants, but I have never really understood the format. I mean, delegates move around within the exhibition, which means that new people are constantly coming to the posters. Most of us are uncomfortable with breaking into a conversation, and the presenter can only talk about their project to a limited group of people at the time. It is frustrating both to the speaker and the delegates, right? In many ways I find that poster presentations are treated as a necessary evil. Something we put up with, but never really value or remember afterwards.

Let’s take an example: there are 15 posters in a room. Three colleagues are walking together (more or less) between the posters. They stop at a poster that looks interesting, and engages the speaker next to it. The speaker is eager to explain what her poster is about, and the three of them listen to the speaker. Behind them, a delegate is walking between the posters. She notices the poster, and finds the subject interesting. She stops to look at the poster in more detail, but she can’t see very well, because the three colleagues and the speaker is standing close to it. The speaker points to the poster to explain something. The single delegate cannot move closer without directly intervening the conversation, and the speaker cannot disengage mid-sentence to the three colleagues, even though she sees that the single delegate would like to ask a question. The single delegate moves on. Two minutes later, the three colleagues moves on in the exhibition, and the speaker is left to wait for another. Plus, the speaker always have to stand next to the poster for the allotted time, and often also during breaks when the delegates are invited to view the posters. This limits time for the speaker to do networking with other delegates.

After this rant, my views on poster presentations probably needs no further explanations.. However, and this is an important point, budgets are limited all over, and many delegates need to present something in order to secure funding. Submitting a poster presentation can therefore be a sort of solution here, and more attainable than maybe a full oral presentation, workshop or other type of presentation. I do not want to underestimate this point. This, I have been told, can particularly be important for delegates from less developed nations, or where libraries are particularly targeted for budget cuts. If we are to be diversive, equitable and inclusive, we have to take this into consideration.

Teachmeets

Teachmeets can be very different in format. The main goal, however, is to share ideas, experiences, best practice stuff etc. to make us better teachers. Some teachmeets are like lightning talks, where one presenter after another share an idea or a good practice example in about 5-6 minutes. Others have a main topic and round-table discussions, some are based on the fishbowl discussion method and so on. The variations are endless. At EAHIL, we decided on using the same method that I experienced once on the LILAC conference. There were a number of presenters, each at a table with a fixed number of chairs. The presenters gave their short presentation, about 7 minutes, and there were a couple of minutes for discussion and questions. The host for the session then blew a whistle and all the delegates rushed to another table. We did the same thing. There were five to six presenters in the room, each at a table with six chairs around it. The presenters gave their presentation six times. The delegates moved around.

To me, this is like a poster presentation, but where the group come to your table (kind of like poster stand) and you give your short presentation to a larger group, one at a time. This makes it easier for the delegates because the presentation starts when you sit down, no need to interrupt in mid-conversation) and it makes it easier for the presenter because the delegates all arrive at the same time, and when the hour is up, the job is done. No need to run back to your poster when a session is over. It is, however, very intense when the teachmeet is in session. The delegates can be a bit flustered when they are moving between tables, and the speaker has to give the presentation six times in a row, with only a minutes between groups. I can understand why this format might not suit everyone.

What we learned

Lesson 1: you need a big room. We had been assigned a classroom for this activity. With five or six presenters there were a lot of people in a pretty confined space. For some, it was hard to hear the presenter over all the other voices in the room. It was an unusual warm week in Trondheim (over 20 degrees C – it was snowing two weeks before the conference), and while it was lovely to be able to show the city in all its summery glory, it was pretty hot inside the smaller rooms. I believe therefore that some might have found the teachmeet somewhat claustrophobic, particularly on day two, when there were a lot of participants.

Lesson 2: You need to keep an eye on the set up of the room. I had missed out on the fact that one presenter had pulled out of the conference (I mean, I knew, being the IPC chair), and I neglected to adjust the number of tables in the room for the second day. Six tables, five presenters. I made the sixth table the “reflection table” on the spot, but honestly, I should have fixed this beforehand.

Lesson 3: Round things off. I think the teachmeet would have benefitted from having a sort of round-off. I cannot recall that they did that on LILAC either, but there were a lot of different topics being discussed, and it would have been nice to have a little something to kind of bring threads together at the end. It could have been as simple as a sort of pinboard with notes, where the delegates could have shared a particular idea or takeaway. It could have been a sharing session of 10 minutes, where people shared something they had learned or things they wanted to test out back home. I don’t know. Just something.

The evaluations

I have just had a quick look at the evaluations, but so far, most people who went to teachmeets found them a fun and interesting twist to the programme. Several noted that it had been interesting and useful, and that they found it a stimulating format. Some noted that they had problems hearing the presenter and commented on the heat in the room. Some said that they would have preferred a lightning talk format where the presenters entered the stage one by one. That is fair. I think however, that a lightning talk is different, because you get the same “distance” to the audience as in an oral presentation. A point in this teachmeet format is that you get closer to the presenter, both mentally and physically. By sitting at the same table, it is easier to ask a quick question, and it is not as scary as raising your hand in a full room. However, I agree that a larger room with more space and air would have been preferable.

In the evaluation form, we asked specifically if people missed the posters. This is what they answered:

While 47 percent answered that they did not miss posters, a pretty clear answer, I do not want to underestimate that 21 percent said that they missed it and that 31 percent didn’t know. In a way, I think this points to the fact that poster exhibitions are not a very effective presentation format, but also that some people find it useful. I will keep this in mind for later.

I am not sorry that we chose to ditch the posters. It made more room for the sponsors, and judging by the comments in the evaluation form, people found the teachmeets fun and interesting. Seeing as our theme was “Radical positive change agents”, shaking things up a bit sounded like a good idea.