The Martyr Trap

Janet Swan Hill

It probably wouldn't come as a great shock to any of you if I were to say that Technical Services librarians are not uniformly regarded as the noblest and most essential of all librarians, and It should come as no shock to have me say that technical services activities are not always held in the highest regard in libraries and among librarians. You have probably all been the butt of too many jokes, snide comments, rolled eyes, or stares of disbelief, to come anywhere close to believing that you are regarded as the ideal, the "which than which there is no whicher" among librarians.

In fact, I'll bet that most of you, no matter what your ethnic, economic, religious or other background, in which you may be firmly in the majority, from time to time get a sense of belonging to an oppressed minority among librarians, and that some days, you feel as if you should be singing that wonderful song that my daughter learned in nursery school lo these many years ago: Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates me, I'll go eat some worms. It's no wonder. We in technical services are in the minority in our profession, and in some senses we are oppressed ..... we are in many ways the perfect raw material from which martyrs may be made.

Now being a martyr -- or at least a potential martyr -- isn't all bad. There are some good things associated with being one of a group that may feel itself to be undervalued or under attack. I'm going to start out with a discussion of why technical services may be viewed by others as a "lesser calling", followed by a few illustrations of how this attitude shows itself. Then I'll talk some about the kinds of behavior this may elicit in us. And finally, I'll suggest some strategies for combating, and maybe even changing the opinions that others have of us.

With that kind of a pre-amble, feel as if I should start out as in a twelve-step self-help meeting. If you haven't ever been to one of these meetings, you've probably seen them portrayed in movies or on TV. The speaker gets up, says their name and admits their problem, and the group as a whole all say "Hi, whoever-you-are", to welcome the speaker, and assure her that she is accepted. Hi. My name's Janet, and I'm a cataloger.

There ..... I feel all warm and fuzzy now. You realize, of course, that by responding, you've admitted that you're a part of this group too. Maybe you aren't a dreaded cataloger ..... maybe you are an even more arcane variety of technical services person ...... an acquisitions librarian; a preservation librarian; a serials librarian. Maybe you work in a smallish library and you are ALL of these things and more.

I wonder ......... How many of you started your professional career as technical services librarians? How many of you went to library school WANTING to go into some aspect of technical services? How many of you thought, before you went into technical services, that the different specialties in librarianship were differentially valued?

I know I didn't. I remember getting the distinct impression during library school, that much of technical services work - especially cataloging - was BORING and picky and difficult, and that some aspects of it were on the way out, but I certainly don't remember getting the feeling that the work accomplished by technical services people was regarded as any less necessary, any less legitimate, or any less valued than other kinds of library work. I certainly didn't get any different impression from my first job, since I started my career in one of the last great bastions of technical services, the Library of Congress. There were lots of us catalogers there. We were creating records for the nation and the world, and we were establishing practice and policies and standards for the nation and the world. We were important.

And back when I started, in 1969, many of the most exciting things going on in librarianship were happening in technical services ....... things like machine-readable cataloging, and bibliographic networks. In the position I went into following my internship, first as a map cataloger, and then as head of Map Cataloging ..... I never found myself having to defend the value of my work. Occasionally I might find it necessary to defend the quality of my work, or to explain why I had done something one way rather than another, but I never had to defend the intrinsic value of the assignment.

It wasn't until I left LC, and entered the real world to become Head of Cataloging at Northwestern, that I began to discover that, while no one actually SAID it, and few people would probably even put it that way in their mind, technical services librarians were in many quarters, regarded as a kind of underclass. A group of people -- stereotypically oddballs - who cared about things that were less noble or lofty than other librarians did ..... I mean, we cared about consistency and accuracy and cold stuff like that, and didn't spend a lot of our professional life discussing things like censorship, or troublesome patrons, or free and equal access to information. I began to understand that while I had found a home in my profession, there were lots of people who thought my home was on the wrong side of the tracks.

In the nearly 30 years I've spent in this profession ...... as an unabashed cataloger and technical services librarian, I've had many occasions to wonder why our own colleagues view us as they do, and to come up with some theories. I offer the following list not to make you feel bad, but in the hopes that if we begin to understand what we are up against, we'll have a better idea of what's worth being annoyed at, and a better chance at combating it. This list is in no particular order, and I'm not going to assign relative importance to the items on the list ....... because the importance varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance:

- People don't understand the work

People who are not in technical services just plain don't understand the work. They may have had a cataloging class in library school -- and they may well have hated it - and it was OK to hate it ... I mean there were plenty of people, including faculty who taught other courses, who were happy, willing, and likely to denigrate cataloging. But even if most librarians have had a course in cataloging, they almost certainly didn't have classes in acquisitions, serials control, materials preparation, preservation, circulation, or technical services management. And even for that one aspect they may have had some exposure to ..... cataloging ..... those of you who catalog know that "some exposure" isn't nearly enough for someone to understand it.

- People reject trying to understand it

Not only do many non-tech services types not understand the work, but they feel perfectly free to say that they have no desire to. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I've seen it in a variety of circumstances in various libraries and various gatherings of colleagues. Sometimes it's an outright rejection ...... "I'm not going to waste my time learning all that stuff", and sometimes it seems that people take a kind of perverse pride in their ignorance "I don't know anything about that. I'm in reference".

Perhaps this attitude starts in library school or in other places where it is considered perfectly OK to say "but that's technical services, it's a whole other world" or to utter any of a number of other statements in a dismissive tone that conveys the impression that understanding the hows and whys of technical services is not particularly important, and that only weirdos care. I find this rejection of trying to learn about and understand technical services concerns more than puzzling. It's also annoying to note that it's not a "privilege" granted in the other direction. We are supposed to make our decisions informed by an understanding of public services concerns, and we try to do so, but there rarely seems to be much of a reciprocal arrangement.

- People assume that if they don't understand it, it must not be important

This is one of those naturally occurring phenomena for which I have no explanation. It just happens. Maybe people believe that if something is really important, it will be automatically clear to them. Maybe there are those who believe that ALL important things are immediately self-evident. Whatever the reason, many people in effect say to themselves about things they don't understand - and this includes technical services work - "I don't understand it!" , and their self answers back, comfortingly "It's OK, it's not worth understanding."

- The work we do in technical services can be counted and quantified, and it appears that it can be reduced to rules, guidelines, and instructions.

Thus it seems clerical rather than intellectual - and clerical things are much easier to dismiss. As for the rules, well, sure there are rules ...... more than twenty shelf-feet of rules in cataloging alone, but they don't cover everything and they are not exactly straightforward. Intellect and judgement are required to apply them at all well. Nevertheless I recall that a couple of decades ago the U.S. GAO came to the conclusion that catalogers couldn't be considered professionals, because their work was governed by rules

- The work lends itself to abbreviations, technical terminology, codes, and caring deeply about things that appear to be terribly small.

First, it's hard to understand us when we talk in codes, and remember that item I've already covered: if they can't understand it, they assume it's not important.

And second, how easy is it to take seriously someone who can (and does) wax passionate about the exact placement of punctuation or the consistency of codes? The answer is ... not at all easy. And this question -- and answer -- comes to you from a person who served as Chair of the ALA/Committee on Cataloging Description and Access Task Forces on Indentions and on Ellipses. Terribly small things, but in the context of the cataloging code, both of these things mattered, because they had an impact on people's ability to understand, and to apply the rules sensibly and consistently. Yet, as much as I understand the importance of getting the indentions right in order to make the hierarchy of rules clear, and on being consistent in the use of open vs closed ellipses in order to make the rules clear and machine formatting of the text work properly, it seems funny to me too.

- Technical services involves workflow, machines, and support staff.

A concern with workflow makes it look like manufacturing rather than professional work. We also still seem to believe, at some level that if work involves machines, it's less skilled, and that machines are capable of anything, and if we just keep them fed and plugged in, they'll do all the work for us. And finally, the greater proportion of support to professional staff in technical services than in other areas of the library, also gives the impression that the work is somehow less challenging.

- It costs a lot

This is another of the mysterious, inexplicable imponderables similar to "If I don't understand it, it must not be important". But it just seems as if there is a great human knee-jerk reaction that says "if it costs a lot it must cost too much". And of course, technical services work not only costs a lot, it KEEPS costing a lot.

- People don't see us

We stay in the basement, or wherever the library has stashed us away, doing our work, trying to see out from behind the backlogs, or trying to assure that a backlog doesn't build up, and we remain fascinated with our work, and we don't show up at general meetings, or on task forces or committees, so it's easy for those people who outnumber us to lose track of the fact that we are not troglodytes.

- We don't directly serve the public

aaahhhhh. Now we get to the crux of the matter. In librarianship, we subscribe as an article of faith to the belief that serving the public is the holiest of holies. Anything that doesn't involve direct contact with library users is regarded as less worthy than work that does involve direct user service. Any attempt to challenge this assumption and to assert equal value to work that serves users indirectly but without personal contact ..... is apt to be regarded as heresy, and also to be an indicator that the person who uttered it doesn't understand what it is to be a librarian.

You may never have sat down and made a list like the one I just went through, but I'll bet that none of what I said came as much of a surprise. You may feel these things or see evidence of them in small ways all the time, but although each tiny cut may hurt, it may not be particularly significant, and the tiny things don't inspire much sympathy, or spur many people to action. So what are some big things that illustrate the problems that may arise from not being viewed as a critical aspect of the profession? Here are some a few illustrations from my own experience. The list is not intended to be a definitive exploration of the subject ...... it's just very limited a sampler

- where are the cuts are taken?

I'm told that there was a time when libraries were in clover. When there was lots of money for materials and buildings, and support for staff and equipment. Trusted colleagues tell me so, and I believe them, but I've been in the profession for almost thirty years and I haven't seen it. The boom times were fading away just as I began to practice. Following those years, we've had a long period of not much or any growth, and in many places at many times, retrenchment. At the same time, we've had a period of tremendous increase in the number and kinds of things we could do for users, primarily as a result of computers and machine-readable bibliographic data. Being librarians, we want to do everything we can to serve users better, and what has happened is that our imagination has often outstripped our budgets. So, we look for ways to do things more efficiently and effectively, so we can do it with fewer personnel. Sometimes we have to rob Peter to pay Paul, otherwise known as reallocating our staff, putting more here and fewer there. Sometimes because we can't pay anybody, we just have to figure out who to rob, and we cut staff.

And where are the cuts taken? Where are people allocated away from and to? Right. We acquire more materials and offer more services, most of which depend on the availability and reliability of the information in the database, but we allocate our personnel to the direct user service functions. After all, a frazzled, overworked reference librarian (frazzled perhaps in part by the inadequacy of the data with which she has to work) shows. And an overworked serials acquisitions person doesn't.

-- job drift

There have been across the country quite a few adventures in reallocation of personnel and some haven't quite worked out as planned. We need to be alert to these situations, because they may be brought up as examples to emulate -- and brought up based on initial rosy reports rather than on final results. I'm going to mention just two of them: a widely reported one (The University of Illinois' romance with "holistic librarianship"), and one that has not been reported (my own library).

About fifteen years ago, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign restructured its library, billing the action as a philosophical decision hastened by budgetary considerations. Illinois had numerous branch libraries, but all processing had been done centrally. Faced with a need to increase librarian presence in the branches without increasing the number of librarians in total, faculty from central cataloging were moved and original cataloging became the responsibility of the branches. All branch librarians -- including those just transferred from cataloging -- were expected to do all of the professional jobs associated with the branch ....... reference, bibliographic instruction, collection development and cataloging. These people were blessed with the name "holistic librarians". Catalogers were trained to do reference and other work, and reference librarians were trained to do cataloging. Initial reports were positive, and there was a flurry of articles in the literature written by those who were experiencing the experiment first hand.

After a while it was noticed that the reference librarians who were supposed to catalog put the cataloging off. They weren't comfortable doing it, they didn't like it, and besides, there were the users right there wanting assistance. The catalogers who were supposed to do reference work managed a little better. Most of them took to the non-cataloging work fairly well. But while they were better at preserving time for cataloging than the former reference librarians were -- after all, they weren't uncomfortable doing that work -- even they found that it was difficult not to let the cataloging go ...... there were the users right there wanting assistance. It's my understanding that the situation has evolved away from the original vision, and that functional specialization has to some extent reasserted itself, and in addition, a certain amount of the original cataloging has been drawn back into central processing, because it just wasn't getting done.

My own library also has limited staffing. There have been several instances in the past fifteen years when an attempt to increase the reference presence in one of our subject collections or branches has led to redescription of a position to one that was half cataloging, and half user services. From the perspective of a technical services administrator, it hasn't been a successful approach in any instance:

- A position in Cataloging was transferred to Government Publications to do original cataloging, supervise copy cataloging, and perform some reference. Before long the person was doing no original cataloging, very little copy cataloging supervision, and a lot of reference work -- after all, there were all those users there wanting something.

- A position in Cataloging, that was half Chinese and Japanese cataloging was transferred to the newly formed East Asian library and was to continue to catalog Chinese and Japanese materials half time. Before long, that person was doing almost no cataloging, and had transferred most of her attention to reference and collection development (after all, there are all those users there wanting something) We've concluded that if we want to get any appreciable cataloging of these languages, we'll have to either get a new position (highly unlikely) or outsource the work.

- A position in Cataloging was transferred to Special Collections to do cataloging on site, and while that person remained, she did nothing but cataloging. Upon her retirement, the position remained in Special Collections and was augmented by another that was to catalog for both Special Collections and Archives, and both were to serve from time to time at the desk. It never worked that way. Both positions tilted toward reference (after all, there were all those users there wanting something) -- to the point that the second position never did any cataloging for Archives, and precious little for Special Collections. When it fell vacant it was transferred elsewhere, and we hardly noticed any difference in cataloging production.

That's only three of the five examples I could cite from my library alone, but I don't tell this tale in order to elicit sympathy. I'm just pointing out a pattern: When cataloging and reference vie for the attention of a single person, reference will win out because of the imperative of all those users right there needing help right then AND because the work that isn't getting gotten to is technical services, and technical services work is considered lesser in importance. Faced with a choice of which to pay the most attention to, managers will almost always choose reference. Beware the situations in which personnel are supposed to split their time "half and half" because frequently, half and half leads to all and nothing.

job sharing and cross training

We have a policy in our library that says that people interested in cross training or in job sharing may present a proposal to the departments involved, and if it is at all feasible, the departments will try to make the proposal work. Because the onus is on the staff themselves, there aren't very many such arrangements but those that have been done have been regarded by all concerned as highly successful. We also have a policy of reacting positively to requests from staff to spend a little time in another department. Again, there aren't many such arrangements, but over time a pattern can be seen: few people propose to crosstrain for, or spend a little time in technical services unless they are already there. Part of this may be that the work is daunting. Part of it may be that we are inhospitable to such requests .... we see how much time would be involved in training for how little return in production, and we discourage them. Part of it is almost certainly that technical services work is seen as "lesser" or "beside the point".

Where are the misfits sent?

This is something that we see less of than in the past, but it still happens. People who aren't working out in public services, but who it would be difficult to fire, may be transferred into technical services as a means of getting them out of sight. The assumption that it matters less to have a nonproductive or disruptive person in technical services than in user services is both wrong and insulting. Insulting because it assumes that just about anyone can be turned into an at least acceptable technical processing person. Another aspect of slotting misfits can be seen when you recruit for beginning professional positions, and discover that shy, unassertive, or troublesome people or those with poor communication skills seem still to be steered by library school faculty into technical services, when the better place to steer them would be some other field.

I've been active in ALA for over twenty years. Mainly I have centered my activity within ALCTS and mainly within the Cataloging and Classification Section. I have, however, made myself known beyond ALCTS by attending meetings and forums of association level committees whose work concerned me .... especially the Standing Committee on Library Education, and the Committee on Accreditation, and I've chaired the American Libraries Editorial Advisory Committee, joined the COA Accreditation Site Visitors Pool, served two terms on Council, and am on the President's Task Force on Outsourcing. I also joined ALISE and attended their conferences for about eight years.

In connection with these "beyond technical services" activities, I've noticed a number of things. One of them is how few of us technical services people there are out there, which I take as a combination of our not looking beyond our own specialty, and of the appointing authorities' not recognizing the value of a technical services viewpoint to profession-wide concerns. What's worse, I've come to believe that it increasingly arises from the appointing authorities' not recognizing that there even IS a technical services viewpoint - and not realizing that the organization as a whole is marginalizing this facet of the profession.

Some examples:

- Partly in response to a groundswell of irritation with library school programs removing "the L word" from their names, in September of this year, the ALA President put together an "Education Summit", with a steering committee drawn from what was supposed to be a broad representation of the profession. That Steering Committee, however, includes no one who has as a primary professional concern the organization of knowledge. This was not done unknowingly, because when the as-yet-incomplete list of appointees was posted to the Council electronic discussion list, I pointed it out, noting that it concerned me greatly that the topic without which we would not even exist as a profession, and one whose decreasing presence in the curriculum had been a problem for at least two decades, should not be represented. Within a couple of weeks, the appointments were completed, and the nearest we got to a technical services representative was a recent graduate in preservation who had been on the original list.

- In recent years, ALA has been guided by something called "Goal 2000" .... a kind of umbrella that includes "Key Action Areas" which will influence how the organization spends its resources. These action areas are: Diversity, Education and Continuous Learning, Equity of Access, Intellectual Freedom, and 21^st Century Literacy. Goal 2000 documents have been widely circulated for comment, and ALCTS has commented more than once that the way these Action Areas have been defined makes it difficult for ALCTS activities to be encompassed by them. Recently I went to the fall meeting of the ALCTS Executive Committee and the joint meeting of all Division Boards, and we heard that in an effort to make conferences more "user friendly", it has been proposed that programs be divided into tracks. All programs on a particular track would then be located in the same hotel, and financial assistance would be given to program planners whose programs fit into the tracks. The tracks were related to the Key Action Areas. People from both ALCTS and LITA noted that while the concept was sound, the tracks identified had the effect of excluding programs from those two divisions.

Later, the ALCTS Board received a visit from the ALA President Elect, who laid out her plans for next year, and something inside me snapped as a light dawned. I told her that while I found nothing objectionable about her plan, it was distressing to me to see the path chosen by ALA as a whole ..... where the type of library divisions are considered "what the organization is about", and the type of activity divisions, especially ALCTS and LITA ..... the two divisions most relevant to technical services -- are overlooked in the planning processes and in the language chosen by the organization to guide its work. This pattern of development marginalizes, disenfranchises, disheartens and estranges those members of the profession who identify themselves with a type of activity rather than with a type of institution, and especially those who identify themselves with the very heart of librarianship - the organization of knowledge.

You might think that this is a something that mainly affects those organizational creatures who participate in ALA governance, but it has an impact on us all. When the national professional organization, through its programs, publications, actions, and allocation of funds marginalizes one aspect of the profession, it cannot help but have an influence on how all librarians view the field. And remember that among the many things that ALA does, it accredits graduate programs for the profession, so the attitude cannot help but influence those programs, and by extension all future librarians.

Maybe you are wondering what good it does to notice these things. Well, until you become aware of them, you can't fix them. Until you finally say "This is not OK" and explain why, people will continue to do so. Think back to the equality movements of the fifties, sixties and seventies. A part of what was accomplished in those movements was to make people aware ..... both those in a position of power, and those in the underclasses .... of the power of tradition and assumption, and the power of language. Until people understood that "the way things are and the way they are expressed" was not OK, and could articulate why, there was insufficient support for change.

I have now, at great and possibly depressing length suggested many reasons that technical services activities may be viewed by others as either not terribly important, or not terribly professional, and I've provided some examples of how this manifests itself.

What happens to people who belong to a group that feels itself to be undervalued? How do they act?

-- They can become hopeless and depressed, and stop trying either to do their own jobs or to improve matters.

-- They can become bitter and alienated from their profession and those they work with, and convinced that nothing ever works

-- They can become vicious and begin returning insult for insult and slight for slight.

-- They can become the people who take pleasure in pointing out the weaknesses of others as a kind of retaliation, who declare, for instance, that all administrators are incompetent, all reference librarians are touchy-feely know-nothings, and all collection development librarians are elitists .... but while you might understand how a person could come to this point, such tactics are destructive.

- They can pull in their appendages and develop a kind of bunker mentality, continuing to work while isolating themselves and expecting occasional shelling from outside.

-- They can pretend that they don't really see the devaluing, and that may be comfortable for them, but it doesn't help anyone else, and it encourages a continuation of the status quo.

-- They can develop a sense of community and take comfort in shared suffering, which is a good thing. There is something empowering about identifying with a small group of like-minded people, and if you can combine that with a feeling of being the underdog or can build it into a feeling of being superior, but misunderstood, you can ride with that for quite a while. But that's not enough. What's best is take that sense of belonging to a community, and go to the next possibility:

-- They can try to fix it.

I opt for that last choice: trying to fix it, either acting on your own, or as a member of a community, or on your own with the comfort of knowing you ARE a part of a community. Of course you can't fix it all by yourself. You can't even fix it all in concert with your community. And you can't fix it fast. But you may be able to make a difference that matters, and it's worth trying. Again, I'll concentrate on just a few suggestions as a place to start:

-- Be visible

Technical Services librarians have tough and absorbing jobs, and let's face it, technical services work takes a particular bent. People who are fascinated with technical services may not find the work of the rest of the library nearly so fascinating. It's really easy to get so wrapped up in your work, or to feel under such pressure to do it, that you don't get involved in discussions, or committees, or working groups or what have you beyond your own bailiwick, especially when the work "out there" doesn't fascinate you in the same way your own work does.

Nevertheless, emerging from the fastness of your own workspace and your own little piece of library operations is one of the easiest ways for tech services types to begin replacing an unfavorable or ignorant view of us with a more favorable and better informed one. It's easier to dismiss something that you are not exposed to. It's easier to assume incompetence or lack of understanding on the part of someone you don't know. It's easier to take an action that fails to consider the ramifications of that action on people who aren't there to hear to speak for themselves.

In addition to pursuing visibility and involvement for reasons of self-preservation, which is, after all, good reason -- you might be surprised and pleased to discover that there IS a great deal that's fascinating that happens beyond your doors, and that you CAN make significant contributions.

Volunteer for task forces or committees. Suggest others for task forces or committees. Form working groups within technical services and ask those from other areas to serve with you. Show up at meetings that you might once have shunned as "off topic" or "not essential". Learn to recognize that the time spent in this way is valuable. Show up in the staff room and have coffee with the folks from Interlibrary Loan. At the next holiday party, hang out with a Reference Librarian. Walk back from a faculty meeting with a systems Librarian. If you do merge with some other entity such as a computer center, it is absolutely essential that you make yourself as visible and involved and informed as you can from the very outset -- which means, from the beginning of exploration or consideration, because these new people will have no idea what you do, and you don't want them to hear about it from someone else.

- Stop apologizing

Don't get sucked into a tendency to join others when they make jokes at the expense of technical services, or talk about catalogers or whatnot in those dismissive tones. You don't have to get all obnoxious or strident, or lose your sense of humor, but neither do you have to contribute to the problem. Be proud of what you do and be informative about it. You are engaged in activities without which the profession would not exist, and without which no user would ever get the materials she wants or needs. Without you, libraries would have no collections, or if they did, materials would be in no particular order and could only be found by accident, and what we have wouldn't last long. It would be just like the internet.

-- Watch your language

Another of the easy things that can be done to help us get closer to our colleagues is to start speaking in English instead of in MARC. You may even find that it changes how you yourself feel about things. Sometimes, using a code helps us hide or forget the real purpose or content of something, whereas saying it all, and saying it in English can clarify things for us as well as for others. Speaking in codes acts as a kind of fence. If we don't have the courtesy to speak to our colleagues in a language they understand, then it's hardly to be wondered at if they stay on their side of that fence and leave us on ours

-- Adopt the native dress

Remember that no matter how much you may like your work, and no matter how firmly convinced you are of its intrinsic worth and centrality to librarianship, you are, when it comes down to plain numbers, in the minority. You've got to use the language and the reasoning of the majority if you want to get anything done. You've got to explicitly relate what you do to what they care about, because they will not make the intuitive leap between what they care about and what you are talking about without your help. Unless you provide the bridge, people will assume that you want to do whatever you want to do for its own sake, and not because of the good it will accomplish.

When you want to make a case for something that is in aid of accuracy or quality control or consistency, or authority control, make sure to talk about predictability, and ease of access, usability of the catalog, and delivering needed materials to users. When you want to make a case for a particular fund structure, make sure that you don't give the impression that you are pursuing the structure for its own sake. Talk about the kinds of information it will make available for things like collection development.

-- Look beyond your own walls

I've already talked about ALA and its focus on libraries as institutions and its persistent focus on activities and issues that do not naturally lend themselves to a technical services interpretation. I have many soapboxes stored under my desk back in Colorado, but this is the one I've brought with me to stand on today.

Get involved. Your professional organizations need you. In addition to needing you in the areas of your specialty, they also need you in other arenas. I'll talk mainly about ALA, but you can translate some of these thoughts to your state library association and the other groups you are involved with.

Next time you get your ALA ballot, look at who is running for Council. Put a tick mark next to the names of those who seem to have technical services as a primary professional identification. I've done this for the past ten years ..... since the first time I ran for Council. The number is pitifully small, usually between five and fifteen out of more than a hundred names. Save the candidates list, and when the election results are announced, see how many of those whose names you marked got elected. Three? Two? Any? Who did YOU vote for?

Having served on Council now seven years, I can say that technical services librarians make good Councilors. They can read documents carefully and identify the important things, and they can detect logical fallacies or misleading language. They are organized. They have a recognition of the value of process and detail, so they have a tolerance for it, combined with a desire to cut to the chase. They do their homework and they come prepared.

In addition, they are there when someone get upset about something for which there is an answer in technical services. The Outsourcing issue is a good example of one whose discussion benefitted signally from the perspective that technical services librarians could bring to it. Other examples include a recent flurry over disaster preparedness, in which the Councilors who were active in technical services could inform the body ..... for the second time in six years ...... that there already is a locus for this activity in ALA - and to cite the many activities and resources engaged in and developed by ALCTS that are directly relevant to their concerns.

So, my plea is ....... run for Council. And if you can't bring yourself to do it, then vote for technical services librarians for Council, and make your vote count more by voting for only those individuals you definitely want elected. Incidentally, don't be put off by the possibility that you won't win. Three quarters of the people who run don't get elected. Don't take it personally ..... there is absolutely no explaining who gets elected and who doesn't.

But Council isn't either the beginning or the end of the ways in which you can make a difference. You can also express your interest in, and begin attending meetings of, and asking for nomination to, association-level committees and other bodies that are involved in matters that may have an impact on your work, or to which you think you might well contribute. It's my opinion that just about every committee would be better off for having a level of technical services involvement, and the work of just about any committee is diminished if the viewpoints and the expertise available to it do not include us.

I can almost feel some people shuddering at all of these suggestions, and probably especially at the last ones. Believe me, I understand the sensation, but it's important. It's not just your status or your image that is of concern. It's not just a matter of trying to make it easier or more pleasant for you to get your job done. It's your profession. It has a real impact on how you chose to identify yourself and who you are, and ultimately, it's about providing the best possible service we can manage. There may be something wickedly satisfying or vaguely comforting about feeling yourself to be misunderstood and underappreciated, and there may be entertainment in sharing horror stories with others who understand your trials, but it's not good enough. How much better it would be to be able to do what you do best in a manner that has a significant and positive impact on the field you are in, and on those whom it serves. It's all very well to admire Joan of Arc. But as for wanting to be her ..... I'd think again. I'll bet that Joan would much rather not have been a martyr. I'll bet she would rather have won, and would rather have talked things over around the fire instead of on top of it.

Copyright c1998, Janet Swan Hill