Hi, Miss Julie!

I presented at my state’s annual library conference recently with two amazing colleagues, Becky Spratford and Alea Perez. The title of our session was The Call is Coming From Inside the House: How White Librarianship Protects Itself and Hinders Belonging. Alea initiated the idea and contacted me and Becky, and I really appreciate that she thought of me for this opportunity. Collaborating with two…

Dysfunctional Family Dynamics: Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel Whenever a workplace says “We’re like a family here!” they’re not lying….they are just leaving out the crucial word dysfunctional. I’ve had the bad luck of almost exclusively working in dysfunctional libraries. Having grown up in an abusive, dysfunctional home, I was always able to recognize toxic workplaces, and after many…

During the interview: Wow, you’re a musician? That’s great. The kids will love it! During a performance review: “Employee’s musical ability intimidates their coworkers.” Employee who isn’t married but has cats and friends and, indeed, a FAMILY: Why do I work two night shifts and everyone else in the department only works one? Manager: Well, you don’t have a family to get home to at…

(Sing the title to the tune of Jive Talkin’) What is a library? Webster’s dictionary defines a library as– Ha no I’m not doing that. That’s tired. WIRED let’s talk about what libraries are NOT: schools daycares shelters warehouses for books gyms hunting grounds for pickup artists playgrounds NEUTRAL holy always fully staffed always fully funded understood the reason your tax bill…

In college, for one of my literature classes, I had to write a paper on the novel Moby-Dick. Being the person I was, I waited and waited to decided on a topic, until it was the night before the paper was due, and in a frantic fever I churned out a paper about how writing a paper about Moby Dick was in a way my own personal white whale.1 I wish I still had that paper, but sadly, it was lost many…

But you don’t have to take my word for it (although I could tell you some real upsetting stories.) Talk to anyone who is not white, cis-het, able-bodied, and neurotypical how they feel about libraries, either as a user or an employee. No matter how many posters you put up, no matter how many hollow DEI statements you write, no matter how many trainings on serving the unhoused, the mentally ill,…

Heading into Big Beautiful Women Bath and Body Works Banned Books Week (🤮) this year is extra rough. All of my previous hatred of this campaign still seethes deep in my heart, but after four years of dealing with real challenges and the people who make those challenges, my rage has become incandescent. If I had the power to go back in time to 1982 and convince whomever the decision makers were…

The Freedom to Be Totally Ignorant

“I’m not afraid anymore so go for it.” — Jane Elliot The Oprah episode above aired in 1992. Jane Elliott first did her blue eyes/brown eyes experiment the day after MLK was assassinated. (Note, that transcript contains offensive racial terms.) (If you’re not familiar, in brief, Jane did a lesson in prejudice with her class of white children by dividing them by eye color. One day the blue eyed…

let's talk about teens, trauma, and the future of libraries

Imagine if a library closed its doors from 3-5 p.m. every day, which just happens to be when the Senior Center across the street lets out for leisure time, and heading to the library was a popular activity. Now those seniors need to go somewhere else during that time. Imagine if a library decided that they had too many behavior problems when disabled patrons were in the library, so they…

Much like neutrality, niceness* is a quality that I believe causes more harm than good, in almost every situation, but especially in workplaces, and especially libraries. Librarianship is rife with nice white lady librarians. They dominate the profession and thereby the professional culture. And boy, few things are more terrible than a nice white lady when it comes to EDI. You see, nice white…

to all the garbage library leadership I’ve loathed before

The male manager who told me I needed to work two nights when everyone else only worked one because I was “single and had no one to go home to”;

To the same male manager who cited my musical ability as a pro when I was hired, but then wrote on my performance evaluation “Julie’s musical ability intimidates her coworkers” ;

To the deputy director who gestured to the buttons on my shirt and…

Calling in Librarianship: A Manifesto

What is calling in? To state it simply, it’s a much nicer way of calling people out:

Much like calling out, calling in aims to get the person to change their problematic behavior. The primary difference between calling in and calling out is that calling in is done with a little more compassion and patience.

EveryDay Feminism

I’m not here to make friends–yet I desperately want all of you to…

Why are we promoting something we’re against (banning books) instead of promoting something we are FOR (the freedom to read)?

It confuses library users. I’m sure nearly every library worker has a story about someone seeing a “banned books” display and saying something to the effect of, “Oh, are these all the books that the library’s banned?”

Books are rarely actually banned. Sometimes they’re challenged, but most people don’t even go that far when they’re faced with paperwork to make the actual challenge. Shouldn’t we, as information professionals, care about accuracy of language?

50% of book challenges happen in schools and school libraries, so why doesn’t the OIF lay off “banned books week” and throw some support and effort towards helping schools keep books in the hands of kids?

Oh, and also in prisons. That’s another place where books are actually being banned, not just challenged. Why don’t we focus on helping that situation? If what we really care about is making sure people can access the books they want to access, this should be a bigger concern for the profession.

Look up images for Banned Books Week and groove on the cognitive dissonance of the imagery. If reading “banned” books is something to be proud of, why is so much of the imagery based in shame? And some of which is blatantly offensive, featuring images of shackles, and the ever popular “banned book mugshot”, which has to be one of the whitest and most offensive things I’ve ever seen. Mugshots aren’t a cutesy pinterest friendly promotional tool, y’all. Jesus. Do you have people of color in your community? Are you aware that “African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites” for shit that is just about as dumb as reading a banned book? Have you ever considered how these mugshots might impact people in your community who are affected by incarceration? COME ON NOW.

8. It’s divisive rather than inclusive, promoting an “us against them” mentality.

Consider this my perpetual treatise on banned books week. So long and thanks for all the misplaced effort.