#someone give Fobazi Ettarh a medal and big piles of money for her work on the topic

[archivlibrarianist]

Anne Helen Petersen breaks down why librarians are not okay. She's talking to academic librarians here, but a lot of problems she describes in her third point-- continued cuts to necessary services-- apply to public libraries, as well.

"First: You work passion jobs, and passion jobs are prime for exploitation... The second thing I want to acknowledge: you’re working a passion job that is feminized and, by extension, devalued....

The third thing that makes your jobs hard? You’re working for higher ed...

The fourth thing that’s making your job really, really hard? You just worked through a pandemic, and an ongoing reckoning with systemic racism, and a contested election, and an insurrection, and several climate catastrophes. Plus, we are still in a pandemic. Some of you were asked to be present in situations that felt unsafe every day. Some of you had to deal with people who were butts about masks. Some of you got sick or are still sick, many of you have spent the last twenty-four months in various cycles of fear-based adrenaline pushes through the week followed by debilitating crashes..."