The Dean's List- Milquetoast and Cookies

Among the more risible neologisms of recent years is "caregiver." It virtually elevates caring for a friend or loved one to a paraprofessional activity instead of something most of us do naturally most of the time. I tell you, before long there'll be a National Council of Caregivers, with its own journal, annual conference, and all the accouterments of professionalism.

It won't surprise you to learn that I bracket caregiving with nurturing, and in our own little world "nurturing" is a big deal. Variants on the n-word are metastasizing all over the landscape of Libraryland. And it's not a pretty sight, as I have intimated previously in these pages (see "Amazons R Us," LJ 10/15/01, p. 54).

Let's start with the basics. Librarians are librarians: they are not caregivers, nurturers, social workers, surrogate parents, welfare agents, or therapists. When all is said and done, their role is straightforward: they gather stuff, impose some order on said stuff, and make the stuff available to the public.

Some specialist skills are brought to bear on the organization of the stuff, along with, one presumes, a modicum of sensitivity to the needs and wants of the patron. Nowhere in this stripped-down occupational brief do notions of nurture intrude. Nor should they. Nurturing and caring are not constitutive of librarianship and should be left to those with the requisite training and willingness to face the occasional liability suit.

Not long ago, I was reading a performance review of a library director, in which there was explicit concern that the administrator in question was not doing enough "to nurture the staff." Later, in the same document, there was a plangent lament that the organization was not "a joy to work in" for some of the staff. I don't know about you, but I come to work every day to get a job done, not to seek nurture or joy. Joy was not mentioned in my job description, nor promised during my recruitment.

Enjoying my work is a considerable plus, but it's not a perquisite. Many of you probably read magazines like Fast Company and Wired and are familiar with the breezy and sometimes touchy-feely language of 21st-century human resources management. Some of it seems eminently sensible; some a little thin on specifics.

Nonetheless, in the age of the postbureaucratic enterprise, most of us realize that organizational culture and leadership styles can make a measurable difference to both individual and collective performance. Although the ineffable may, indeed, matter, that's no excuse to promote twaddle about joy and nurturing, or rhapsodize woolly headedly about the feminine qualities of the profession. Ironically, this near-metaphysical language is rooted in certain very concrete (and calorific) practices beloved of Librarylanders.

Every semester in our school, members of the American Library Association's (ALA) student chapter hold what is termed a "bake sale," designed to raise much-needed funds to support student activities. I've been known to disparage these activities (though not, I hasten to add, the underlying goal) as part of the "milk and cookies" syndrome I associate with the profession.

Surely, I'll say to my blanching colleagues, there are more imaginative, inspiring, effective, and image-enhancing ways to raise a few bucks, like a pay-per-view auto-da-fé of a certain LJ columnist? I may be wrong, but graduate students in other professional programs, like law, business, or journalism, don't seem to fall into what I'll term the "tea cozy" trap, the way some of our students and professional colleagues do.

ALA President-elect Mitch Freedman has made librarians' pay one of the key issues of his term. The factors that influence public perceptions of status and, by extension, remuneration levels are many and complex. Professional image is an important variable in the mix.

Many years ago, I shared an office in London with Australian market researcher Margaret Slater, who wrote Career Patterns and the Occupational Image (Aslib, 1979). That book is a revealing, if slightly dated, insight into how the world sees us vis à vis other occupational groups. Image matters.

So, if we would like to be valued more highly (and receive tangible expressions of that value in our paychecks), it might make sense for Freedman and others within the ranks of ALA to examine the signals we send out to the wider world, particularly the ways in which we seek to valorize nurturing and caregiving as part of the praxis of modern librarianship.

The trend I'm sketching is not altogether new. I have a vague recollection of a stunt carried out in a public library somewhere in this country to hug patrons as they entered the library. Apparently, it was felt that random hugging would work wonders for the library's public image. This kind of nonsense sets the profession back years and does nothing to advance Freedman's well-meaning agenda. What I want from a professional, be he or she a lawyer, librarian, or liposuctionist, is competent, ethical, and courteous service. Hugging, nurturing, and caregiving are strictly off the table.