TOPIC
Vocational Awe In A Pandemic
Fobazi Ettarh (@fobettarh) coined the term "vocational awe" and describes it in detail in a 2018 article in "In The Library With The Lead Pipe" titled, "Vocational Awe And Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves". She defines "vocational awe' as, "the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary."
In the current global pandemic situation, vocational awe led librarians and librarian leadership to intuitively want to stay open and serve their patrons. Libraries are seen as "safe spaces" and librarians as trusted individuals. However, viruses do not respect space and large public gathering spaces like libraries are no different than other spaces when it comes to groups of individuals getting infected. This chat will revolve around the past few weeks of the global library response to the pandemic and lessons learned to use for the future.
Sarah Braun works in a small political science special collections library in Washington, DC. She's an active member of the DC Chapter of the Special Libraries Association and is its current Communications Chair. She's also a member of the Public Policy Advisory Council of SLA. In her free time she attempts to garden and dabbles in analog photography. If you want to get in touch with her, reach out on twitter, she's @braunsk.
PLEASE REMEMBER THAT WE'VE CHANGED THE TIME TO 8:30PM ET!
QUESTIONS
We post the questions here in advance of the chat so you can decide whether or not this topic is of interest to you and/or prepare your answers in advance.
Q1 How did the libraries around you, whether it be the one you work in, the public library you frequent, or the university's library where you're a student, respond to the virus? Were they keen to stay open, or did they immediately scale back hours? Did they have a policy in place to deal with this kind of situation?
Q2 What was the rationale for the decision taken? Do you think vocational awe and the library's mission to serve patrons at all costs played a role? Do you think public libraries or academic libraries were more likely to respond more quickly?
Q3 In general, what is your experience of vocational awe within the field? Have you experienced burnout because of these ingrained values? Has this pandemic caused you to rethink the notion of vocational awe?
Q4 What lessons can we take away from this pandemic? How can we creatively serve patrons during a pandemic, which we now know requires us to social distance ourselves, while keeping from experiencing too much stress and burnout?
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