Dumb luck, fear, and patriarchy

Where am I? It’s a question begged by this month’s GLAM Blog Club theme “How I ended up here”. I don’t really like the idea of writing up my life story - it seems pretty self indulgent. But the whole reason we chose this topic was because we know there are lots of GLAM people with interesting backgrounds and we wanted them to share those stories. So I’m actually going to slot this into two posts. Today’s is about how I ended up here, as a librarian.

I graduated from UTas with a Bachelor of Arts, having taken every History class I was allowed. There weren’t a lot of job vacancies in Hobart for BAs with a hodge-podge of Australian, European and Asian history, so my father bought me a one-way air ticket to Melbourne and drove me to Wynyard Airport to catch the next flight out. After spending a few months outstaying my welcome at a friends’ parents’ house, I finally landed a Library Officer job in Melbourne’s leafy inner East after a union dispute led to 8 positions being advertised at once. Turned out to be the luckiest break of my life.

I quickly realised that I didn’t want to be a Library Officer for the rest of my life, and enrolled in a Graduate Diploma of Information Management at RMIT. Another lucky break allowed my to move straight into a Childrens’ and Youth Librarian role at the library I was working in, as soon as I graduated. This is a luxury most graduate librarians a decade later can only dream of. It was in that position that I first became truly aware of the different standards to which men and women are held in librarianship. As an Officer I had noticed that tradesmen and older men tended to assume that I had more authority than was true, simply because I was the only male staff member on site, and therefore clearly in charge 🙄. But as a male Children’s Librarian I could almost do no wrong. Inexperienced and not particularly fond of children, I was mediocre in the job at best, but every possible allowance was made and the most minor success was feted. It was hard to believe a woman in the same position would receive such support.

'Micro Blogging'

After two years I was growing tired of twice-weekly storytimes, and moved into an Information Librarian role - the role formerly known as a Reference Librarian. I spent a couple of years being jaded with libraries, but it was also during this time that I got serious about blogging and signed up for a Twitter account. Both of these were crucial to what happened in my library career subsequently. I was careful from the beginning to avoid mentioning my place of work. I wanted to explore some of the bigger questions in librarianship (and specifically public librarianship), and blogging allowed me to do this. I certainly didn't want to complicate things by appearing to speak for my organisation. Ironically, it didn’t hurt that my Manager read my blog, and I’m quite sure that blogging has helped me to get at least two jobs. As much as Twitter feels like a cesspool entering a death spiral now, in 2009 it was a revelation. I’d actually looked at Twitter when it was very new, as part of the ’23 Things’ program based on Helene Blowers' original program, a couple of years earlier. At that time, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen online, but by 2009 it clicked. I met amazing switched-on librarians from all over the world, and doors were opened into completely new conversations, ideas, and thoughts. I’ve met great friends through Twitter, and it’s how I discovered In the Library With the Lead Pipe, ultimately joining the Editorial Board for a couple of years. Lead Pipe introduced me to a whole new world of North American librarianship, activist GLAM, and DIY publishing. Brett Bonfield taught me more than he probably realised about writing with clarity, and respectful communication. Emily Ford showed me how it’s possible to stay true to one’s values whilst working within a giant bureaucracy, and Erin Dorney showed me how to stay joyful about life even when things seem to be falling apart. Ellie Collier was one of the best editors I've ever had, and Gretchen and Micah showed me the amazing things that can happen when you combine passion for what you do with a willingness to critique it.

My run of luck continued. The Victorian State Government decided to fund every public library in the state to install wifi. The Manager of my library service asked if anyone had experience with managing wifi and I volunteered that I had a home wifi network. That was enough to get the gig managing the wifi rollout project.