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lattelibrarian's review
4.0
This book was so incredibly informative, and I absolutely loved it. There was so much to glean from this book, especially surrounding the topic of coming out. Sometimes coming out is no big deal, and sometimes it is, and it all comes down to your coworkers. But regardless of how your coworkers feel about your sexuality, it is important for all workplace staff to remember that librarianship is about being open to and respecting ideologies and lifestyles and experiences that are different than their own. This book iterates the necessity of boundaries, and what to do when a patron has a reference query with a homophobic spin.
Authors in this book include lesbians, gay folks, trans folks, and more. There's discussion about finding a safe haven and creating one for your patrons, discussion about the multiplicities of identities one might have and how those identities may affect your work and interactions with staff and patrons.
Not only that, but discussions surrounded libraries such as small town public libraries and city libraries, academic libraries, and even culinary libraries. The amount of variety in this book was stunning, and helped make this text as a whole well-rounded and fully-fleshed out.
Out Behind the Desk makes for an informative work that is important for LIS professionals to read and understand. It's definitely worth your time.
Review cross-listed here!
Authors in this book include lesbians, gay folks, trans folks, and more. There's discussion about finding a safe haven and creating one for your patrons, discussion about the multiplicities of identities one might have and how those identities may affect your work and interactions with staff and patrons.
Not only that, but discussions surrounded libraries such as small town public libraries and city libraries, academic libraries, and even culinary libraries. The amount of variety in this book was stunning, and helped make this text as a whole well-rounded and fully-fleshed out.
Out Behind the Desk makes for an informative work that is important for LIS professionals to read and understand. It's definitely worth your time.
Review cross-listed here!
riotsquirrrl's review
3.0
This collection is only ten years old, yet it already feels dated, not just because of the focus of domestic partner/marriage equality issues which are now a non-issue. Given that men make up only a small percentage of the field, I was surprised to see that this collection contains roughly the same number of men as well as women. I was also surprised to see that there only appeared to be one article by a person of color.
About a third of the articles are accounts of being gay or lesbian at various institutions. They're mostly notable for multiple authors stating how they can be gay, but not, you know, swishy and weird. "Gender non-conforming." That's it. I think that now, in 2021, we recognize that attempt at distancing oneself from one's less conforming peers for the internalized homophobia that it is.
Despite being about LGBTQ library work, this book has a paucity of articles by trans and bisexual/pansexual librarians. What there is gets herded into a section labeled "The Rest of the Rainbow." Combined with contributor Jim van Buskirk's kinda busted comments about trans people as a cis man, and I was about ready to leave this book on DNF.
I am glad I persevered, if only for K. R. Robert's funny and useful piece on coming out as trans that I wish I had had 5 years ago when coming out. To me the collection gets better the further it gets from the coming out stories at the beginning of the book. Shawn(ta) D. Smith's essay is especially incisive, pointing out the ways in which she performs reference differently because she has a different relationship with men than her straight women colleagues. Not talked about: how men in librarianship are often coded as being gay even if they're straight because they are service-oriented, which is frequently read as being a feminine trait.
It's only the last section of essays that wrestles with some of the thornier ethical issues of being out. How do we determine how out we are? How do we grapple with having patrons who do take offense at our identities? How do we deal with the fallout from choosing to hold back part of who we are? How do we find room in our institutions to serve other people like us? I could have read another half dozen articles about those issues. Especially helpful would have been to investigate when these ethical issues intersect with trans librarians' lived experience when many of us cannot/refuse to pass as cis.
Does having a book of essays about LGBTQ issues even make sense in 2021? A more updated version is definitely needed, but it too is likely to be obsolete within a decade of publishing, as the internet is helping to push us to more nuanced ideas of gender and sexuality every day.
About a third of the articles are accounts of being gay or lesbian at various institutions. They're mostly notable for multiple authors stating how they can be gay, but not, you know, swishy and weird. "Gender non-conforming." That's it. I think that now, in 2021, we recognize that attempt at distancing oneself from one's less conforming peers for the internalized homophobia that it is.
Despite being about LGBTQ library work, this book has a paucity of articles by trans and bisexual/pansexual librarians. What there is gets herded into a section labeled "The Rest of the Rainbow." Combined with contributor Jim van Buskirk's kinda busted comments about trans people as a cis man, and I was about ready to leave this book on DNF.
I am glad I persevered, if only for K. R. Robert's funny and useful piece on coming out as trans that I wish I had had 5 years ago when coming out. To me the collection gets better the further it gets from the coming out stories at the beginning of the book. Shawn(ta) D. Smith's essay is especially incisive, pointing out the ways in which she performs reference differently because she has a different relationship with men than her straight women colleagues. Not talked about: how men in librarianship are often coded as being gay even if they're straight because they are service-oriented, which is frequently read as being a feminine trait.
It's only the last section of essays that wrestles with some of the thornier ethical issues of being out. How do we determine how out we are? How do we grapple with having patrons who do take offense at our identities? How do we deal with the fallout from choosing to hold back part of who we are? How do we find room in our institutions to serve other people like us? I could have read another half dozen articles about those issues. Especially helpful would have been to investigate when these ethical issues intersect with trans librarians' lived experience when many of us cannot/refuse to pass as cis.
Does having a book of essays about LGBTQ issues even make sense in 2021? A more updated version is definitely needed, but it too is likely to be obsolete within a decade of publishing, as the internet is helping to push us to more nuanced ideas of gender and sexuality every day.
blueskygreentreesyellowsun's review
3.0
This book was much more academic than I had anticipated, with most of the contributions sounding exactly like scholarly papers. Unsurprisingly, the essays I liked best were the ones written so as to be interesting to the audience rather than just informative or persuasive. My favorites included "Out of the Frying Pan: Coming out as a Culinary Librarian", because it was so interesting to learn about a type of library that I never even knew existed, and "The Secret Life of Bis: On Not Quite Being Out and Not Quite Fitting In", because it brought up the interesting situation of being a bisexual woman who is married to a man - how out do you want to be, do you need to be, when you can "pass" at work?
I also enjoyed the essay "Patricia's Child, Patrick's Penis & the Sex of Reference: A Lesbian Librarian's Log of Perverse Patronage". The premis of her essay is that as a young, Black-Carib, lesbian she was sexually harassed at the reference desk more than librarians of other demographics. Whether her premise is correct isn't really the point for me, it's the idea that the reference desk is a sexualized space because of the very nature of the work that is done there (service) and how it's done (with a smile and request for more). Harassment by patrons was never addressed in my reference classes, and judging from the information in this article it is a topic that should absolutely be discussed with future librarians.
I also enjoyed the essay "Patricia's Child, Patrick's Penis & the Sex of Reference: A Lesbian Librarian's Log of Perverse Patronage". The premis of her essay is that as a young, Black-Carib, lesbian she was sexually harassed at the reference desk more than librarians of other demographics. Whether her premise is correct isn't really the point for me, it's the idea that the reference desk is a sexualized space because of the very nature of the work that is done there (service) and how it's done (with a smile and request for more). Harassment by patrons was never addressed in my reference classes, and judging from the information in this article it is a topic that should absolutely be discussed with future librarians.
alexauthorshay's review
3.0
Not as inclusive as I would have liked. Mostly gay and lesbian, with one bisexual and one (two?) trans contributors. Granted, it may just be a question of when the book was published. A lot has changed in the 10 years since then, including the variety of identities that have been named. A more updated version of this book would be interesting to read.
Beyond that, though, the subtitle of "workplace issues" implied to me a more textbook/analysis style of writing, when actually this was more an anthology of personal essays. Not a bad thing, but not really what I was looking for. Some of the contributors bring up valid points still relevant today, particularly regarding safety of being out at work and defending intellectual freedom in an unbiased way, even if that means giving anti-queer resources to a homophobe when you yourself are LGBT+. But it was also an American publication, and given how every state's laws are different, it's a little harder to relate to a Canadian context. A range of experiences from not being out to being completely out are provided, however, with a range of reactions from others in response. A little too context/situation-specific for what I was hoping to get out of the book, but the pieces around intellectual freedom and how to handle particular customer requests when your very identity can be seen as political were very eye opening.
It is also very specific to librarians—meaning those who have obtained an MLS/MLIS and hold senior positions in the library. While many discuss their experiences in customer facing situations, as someone who is not in the customer facing or leadership branches of librarianship, it's not as relevant as it could be. It targets a very specific demographic of library workers, which is unfortunate because there are so many other library positions no matter what library you are located at.
Beyond that, though, the subtitle of "workplace issues" implied to me a more textbook/analysis style of writing, when actually this was more an anthology of personal essays. Not a bad thing, but not really what I was looking for. Some of the contributors bring up valid points still relevant today, particularly regarding safety of being out at work and defending intellectual freedom in an unbiased way, even if that means giving anti-queer resources to a homophobe when you yourself are LGBT+. But it was also an American publication, and given how every state's laws are different, it's a little harder to relate to a Canadian context. A range of experiences from not being out to being completely out are provided, however, with a range of reactions from others in response. A little too context/situation-specific for what I was hoping to get out of the book, but the pieces around intellectual freedom and how to handle particular customer requests when your very identity can be seen as political were very eye opening.
It is also very specific to librarians—meaning those who have obtained an MLS/MLIS and hold senior positions in the library. While many discuss their experiences in customer facing situations, as someone who is not in the customer facing or leadership branches of librarianship, it's not as relevant as it could be. It targets a very specific demographic of library workers, which is unfortunate because there are so many other library positions no matter what library you are located at.
charlotte_owl's review
5.0
A wonderful collection of essay and mini-memoirs about what it is like to be an LGBTQ+ librarian. I found this book very inspirational and enlightening.
archaeolibraryologist's review
4.0
Great stories from LGBTQ+ library personnel about the trials, tribulations, musings, joys, and humor about being themselves at work.
jsjammersmith's review
5.0
I'm not just a queer man working in a library, I happen to be "the" queer man working at my library, and all of the other LGBTQ employees at my library are regularly impressed by my ability to find books like this collection. I literally typed in LGBTQ in the search bar and found this book, and once I was sure that this book was real I filled out my ILL request.
In the course of two years libraries have become, not just a saving grace to me, but the center of my intellectual and creative fascination. I want to be a good library employee, and I want to figure out how to navigate being a queer man while balancing my desire to help patrons find the information they need. And being a queer man in the southern United States this is not always easy. The essays and personal narratives in this book were opportunities for reflection, but also identification. Like many of the writers I struggle with how "out" I am at work (I wear a rainbow button just above my name-tag). Like many of the writers I worry about how much I should, and can, promote the LGBTQ materials in my library's collection. And like many of the writers in this book, I struggle with what my Queer identity, desire, and self actually is in relation to the idea and function of the library as a political and social institution. This all makes it sound like this book is one long, ungodly academic affair, but the miracle of this book is that in fact almost all of these essays are simply personal stories.
Queer people telling their stories to other queer people who, like them, have found purpose and drive by working in libraries. That doesn't just make this book important, it makes it vital. The library as an institution is a constantly changing idea and place that, despite the mass rhetoric, is not fading away and queer people have just as much a right to it as straight patrons. This book is a reminder that libraries are part of the discourses and culture and that if Queer people intend to have their voices heard and their stories told, the library is part of the larger narrative.
But to the reader, what matters most, is that these stories are told. The person who purchases this book, or checks it out from their local library, is opening the door to testimonies of real people who want to help their community, not just other queer people, but the culture at large. This book is a chance to see how LGBTQ people can and have tried to make their worlds better places by being here, by being queer, and occasionally offering the reader advice on what books to read or what websites to go to to find a job.
And I think that's fabulous.
Read my full review at my site White Tower Musings: https://jsjammersmith.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/why-libraries-matter-part-5-out-and-about-the-fabulous-lives-of-fabulous-librarians/
In the course of two years libraries have become, not just a saving grace to me, but the center of my intellectual and creative fascination. I want to be a good library employee, and I want to figure out how to navigate being a queer man while balancing my desire to help patrons find the information they need. And being a queer man in the southern United States this is not always easy. The essays and personal narratives in this book were opportunities for reflection, but also identification. Like many of the writers I struggle with how "out" I am at work (I wear a rainbow button just above my name-tag). Like many of the writers I worry about how much I should, and can, promote the LGBTQ materials in my library's collection. And like many of the writers in this book, I struggle with what my Queer identity, desire, and self actually is in relation to the idea and function of the library as a political and social institution. This all makes it sound like this book is one long, ungodly academic affair, but the miracle of this book is that in fact almost all of these essays are simply personal stories.
Queer people telling their stories to other queer people who, like them, have found purpose and drive by working in libraries. That doesn't just make this book important, it makes it vital. The library as an institution is a constantly changing idea and place that, despite the mass rhetoric, is not fading away and queer people have just as much a right to it as straight patrons. This book is a reminder that libraries are part of the discourses and culture and that if Queer people intend to have their voices heard and their stories told, the library is part of the larger narrative.
But to the reader, what matters most, is that these stories are told. The person who purchases this book, or checks it out from their local library, is opening the door to testimonies of real people who want to help their community, not just other queer people, but the culture at large. This book is a chance to see how LGBTQ people can and have tried to make their worlds better places by being here, by being queer, and occasionally offering the reader advice on what books to read or what websites to go to to find a job.
And I think that's fabulous.
Read my full review at my site White Tower Musings: https://jsjammersmith.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/why-libraries-matter-part-5-out-and-about-the-fabulous-lives-of-fabulous-librarians/
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