When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
Clarity as Accommodation
Posted on June 18, 2024 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Sam Berry-Sullivan
Something I hear often from other librarians, and that I say myself, is that I had no idea how much librarians do in their day-to-day work until I became a librarian. Even earning my degree only gave me a partial insight. It took several years of working in the field to get a sense of the scope of what our responsibilities can entail, and those can shift from institution to institution, and even from librarian to librarian. A librarian hired as part of a team that focuses on helping faculty researchers will have a different range of responsibilities than a librarian at a smaller institution whose library’s full staff is equivalent to the specialized team at the larger institution. However, both librarians will be equally stumped if asked to describe a “typical” workday. For many of us, it is precisely that variability that makes librarianship such an excellent fit, but this lack of clarity can have disastrous downstream results.
One of the insidious effects of a lack of clarity can be “job creep”—when librarians take on more and more tasks, assignments, and responsibilities, regardless of their relevance to that librarian’s job title, a phenomenon familiar to many librarians. Discerning a healthy demarcation between taking on “other duties as assigned” and job creep is a challenge, particularly in a field also haunted by “vocational awe.” Vocational awe, which exists in professions that are considered “caring” or “helping” professions, is the idea that because a job or vocation is “noble,” suffering caused by the job should be expected or taken in stride as part of the admirable burden of working that job. People within librarianship can be afflicted with vocational awe and therefore endure otherwise unnecessary hardship thinking their overburdened, underpaid state is simply how it must be. Library administrators and trustees may weaponize this awe to push back on requests to improve working conditions, increase pay, or any number of other requested improvements or accommodations.
Librarianship’s inscrutability to the general public, the indistinct boundaries around job duties for working librarians, job creep, and vocational awe all contribute to serious conditions of low morale, anxiety, and even burnout. The collection Libraries as Dysfunctional Organizations and Workplaces (2022), edited by Spencer Acadia, describes those phenomena as particularly detrimental to early career librarians. I would like to add neurodiverse librarians to that list, specifically autistic librarians and those with ADHD, between which there is a significant intersection. Both types of librarians will likely struggle with managing their time and creating structure for themselves (known as executive dysfunction), thinking in all-or-nothing terms, creating and sustaining good work habits, and experiencing generalized and/or social anxiety. For librarians already struggling with executive dysfunction, it can be extremely difficult to prioritize an increasing stack of very disparate responsibilities and devote the time and mental energy necessary for managing larger, more complex tasks. All-or-nothing thinking combined with an unclear scope of duties and a lack of guidance from management can lead to feeling like even library administrators are not sure what a librarian does, what their purpose is, and whether they are fulfilling their duties, leading to considerable distress. People with autism can struggle with having a solid sense of their identity or self to begin with. If they find themselves in situations where they cannot come to a precise conclusion or definition, they may feel that there must not be one. And when their very profession feels nebulous and possibly even unessential, the psychological consequences can be devastating.
When having difficulty creating their own structure, neurodiverse librarians will expend considerable energy being anxious about how correctly or how well they are doing their job, observing their colleagues and asking questions about their processes, and researching what other librarians have done to get the professional guidance they so desperately need. Needing guidance and attempting to struggle through on their own can contribute to a sense of imposter syndrome in neurodiverse librarians that is heightened by a lifetime of experiences feeling out of the loop, different, less than, and fear that they will be ‘found out’ as inadequate any day. Accordingly, a passive management style is as detrimental to early career librarians as neurodiverse ones, as they all do not know what they do not know and therefore need their direct supervisors to be proactive in their offers of advice, support, and guidance. This proactive management approach will also circumvent the anxiety-inducing vulnerability librarians may feel when needing to admit they do not have the information or skills needed to succeed; they may not even seek help. A sink-or-swim, laissez faire management style that prioritizes worker independence fails those librarians seeking help or guidance, and it will certainly make neurodiverse librarians second-guess asking for workplace accommodations.
There is a significant overlap in the challenges faced by neurodivergent librarians and their neurotypical peers, but even where these challenges do not intersect, accommodating the neurodiverse librarian will increase the quality of work life for all librarians. Specificity and clarity of job duties, equitable distribution of those duties, and an engaged and supportive administrator are necessary “accommodations” for the successful functioning of any library. A library administrator who advocates for their staff, supports their professional development, creates an environment where a neurodivergent librarian can begin to focus less on “passing” and instead celebrate the things about their diagnoses that enrich their librarianship, is a must for a successful and inclusive library workplace.
Want to read my references? Consult with your librarian to access those that are paywalled in your own collections!
About the author:
Sam Berry-Sullivan is a white, nonbinary, neurodivergent academic librarian who leverages their privilege and unique experience of the world to advocate for diversity and equity in librarianship, higher education, and health sciences, for which Sam is subject liaison.
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