What do you think?

An op-ed in the New York Times has stirred up a lot of discussion, and I would love to hear your thoughts.  In "Where Are the New Jobs for Women?", writer Linda Hirshman calls for President-elect Obama to expand his proposed public works stimulus program to include jobs for women professionals who “build the most important infrastructure—human capital.”  Her examples are social workers, child care workers, and education, training and library workers.

What are your thoughts?  Obviously, all information professionals are not women--but how do you think information professionals could fit into such a scenario?  During the Depression and after World War II, major infrastructure building programs left us with roads, bridges, national parks and the interstate highway system; what kinds of “infrastructure” could information professionals build?  How would society benefit, immediately and in the long term?

Comments

[Scott Brown]

I find it interesting that libraries are brought up briefly but not integrated into the latter part of the op-ed piece that talks about infrastructure. I think an unstated assumption behind the "human capital" concept is that there IS the information to support all of this, and that relevant and complete information is unquestioningly available to everyone. Libraries, as mentioned in this piece, are almost completely separate entities - "traditional" libraries - not information infrastructure.

What we do with that unstated assumption is up to us. I think initially making more explicit this assumption to the incoming administration would be a critical first step. Part of that first step would be to be able to offer a proposal of an overarching information "infrastructure". Is there a piece of the administration that can integrate or support this? What lessons can we learn from how the incoming administration is already using social networking tools, and how could that be incorporated into an information infrastructure?

There is a ton of opportunity there, and I think we as an organization and we as individuals have the ability to pursue at least some part of it.

[Rebekah Azen]

SLA and ALA should follow up to get this situation corrected. Librarians need to "get political" get off their butts and get involved for once. The long private interest agenda of librarians and information workers of the last 20 years is despicable! Isn't it time that librarians began thinking about more than their own self-interest? This is an opportunity to move this profession forward and grow human and intellectual capital, intangibles which raise the human condition, which are desperately needed in this society.

[L. Bellamy]

Librarians need to get involved? Librarians are in the business of ensuring that the public remains an informed population. Librarians do this in no small measure by fighting for intellectual freedom (to read, to expression, and to access) across ALL boundaries (societal, cultural, financial, gender, etc) and for EVERYONE. Our profession is driven by our sense of purpose to stimulate and nurture the information and educational needs of our communities. Our mission is to serve our communities, not separate ourselves from them. Librarians and other information professionals may be (stereotyped as) a quiet profession, but our actions can be heard -- by those who are listening -- volumes above the deafening attempts of oppression. And that's what counts.

[Ken Wheaton]

S.R.Ranganathan's fifth law of librarianship says that "the library is an growing organism". Then you combine that with Charles Darwin "it is not the strongest of species that survive, but the one most responsive to change".

The building of a "human capital" infrastructure has already begin in our knowledge starved global culture. Will librarians watch it all move on by or jump in and take the lead?

[Raoul Cohen]

Our profession is already 85% women- should it be 90%; 99%?????

[Librarian]

Gender equality is a problem within librarianship. Targeting more women to join the profession will only exacerbate the problem. That being said, I believe that more women should have the opportunity to join the workforce. As librarians, we need to do more to help women access the tools that they need to be able to compete in those “male professions” that the author targets: law, engineering, “green energy”, and manufacturing. Why should we, as information professionals, pigeonhole women into stereotypes?

[Sid Kaskey]

I have to agree with the point brought out by Ken Wheaton: why is this women focused? The profession is already womencentric. Why the focus of this article and follow-up? While I question the social legitimacy of one profession or another pushing for part of the pie I really question why it is also focused on one sex or another. That seems to me to be a step back.

[Charlotte Bensaada]

While the article conflates jobs that are traditionally held by women and libraries, the issues do need to be separated. This is not a new issue, in the stimulus package developed in the early Clinton administration this was brought up by many women members of Congress and addressed through an expansion to public service services including education, libraries and non-profit services. I would agree that when developing a stimulus plan you want to make sure that you are not disproportionally privileging major groups, though it is virtually impossible to spend equally.

Libraries on the other hand are another issue. While the headlines have focused on the closure of public libraries, it is likely more than a few academic and private libraries are taking a hit. ALA, SLA, AALL all the associations have to help their members learn to use their political clout and to develop metrics that define our value. But beyond this financial crisis libraries of all stripes will need to be better at defining where they are going within the organization they function and no stimulus package or federal policy will help until we can envision that future and align it with their organization.

[Richard Hulser]

The new administration understands that information is important (Obama not wanting to give up his Blackberry a key example). We need to capitalize on that understanding and ensure that information professionals are included in the infrastructure discussion. If we can succeed in getting the new administration to understand that information professionals are a key element towards solving the information infrastructure issues, it would benefit the entire profession which happens to have a large percentage of women. Thus two issues could be mitigated: heightening the value of us as professionals and the jobs for women in particular. It is unfortunate that the article refers to 'library workers' as that shows the writer not really understanding the depth and breadth of what we do, which is further noted in the way librarians are absent from the later comments on infrastructure.
We have to walk a fine line on the political rallying in order to not overstep our 501c3 non-profit organization status, but surely there must be ways to influence the politicians and others?! The change of administrations in the U.S. to one that 'gets it' regarding information provides an unusual and excellent opportunity to gain attention. I agree that a combination of SLA, ALA, ASIST, AALL and other information organizations in a collaborative effort would have the clout needed to be heard, though it is a challenge to get all those organizations to work together in a timely, concise and effective way. But it is worth the effort!