Of course!!! ❤️ Always happy to answer questions :)

Late?! You look like a youngin! I’m currently a Circulation assistant and I do love it. I’m changing the face of my library as well. I’m one of maybe 5 who look like me out of thirty. The two older black women are so helpful in my understanding of my job and how to deal with coworkers (so to speak.) Good luck on your educational pursuits and stay grounded and trust the process!

You will be surprised how little people care about your race and sexual identity. You think they will be upset that you are intruding on their territory some how? Jim crow is over. Long over.

I just became an On-Call Library Assistant so I can relate.

Librarians=Keeper of the books? Me too. Representation Matters.

There are scholarships at some of the library schools. Two to look at are East Carolina University and also Northa Carolina Central as well as UNCG. All of these degree pro havgrams have financial aide and are online. The funds cover the entire program in many cases. Also you can search for books at online sites that have discounts. I care and hope that this works.

@@lilliansteele7165 thank you for this I’m preparing to apply to library schools

You are quite humorous. Diversity over time is something that is happening... no matter how incrementally small that change may seem. Stereotypes of the female Caucasian librarian serving public libraries is part of the history of the profession. History isn't something that you can change. That is the past. History can't be change. Focus on the Future. You see it the way it is and then do your best to challenge ideals to promote diversity. That is all that you can do.

What a LOVELY MAN!

I feel that it is that way for about any organization. Stability. Management of Change is a difficult process. That is why directors and higher management stay within a particular role for so long. If the organization is thriving, then is a change of leadership needed at that level? I feel that it really depends on each organization. I do like the idea of a chosen administrator. It sounds quite democratic!

Well, in some places that might work. Here in the small town I moved to about 3 years ago though. They thrive with one person being in charge because they have the trust of the public and actually at my local library. The Branch Librarian was a kindergarten teacher and she knows many of the people that walk into the library. Heck, she even remembered my older sister (when our mother lived in this area my sister went to school with the Branch Librarian as her teacher). The Branch Librarian is a Librarian because she cares about the people/patrons. So she's right where she's meant to be and she looks after the place and the people really well.

That is their choice. How they voice themselves is up to them.

Ahh shucks, thanks for the comment! ^_^

I mean, the story is bigger than can be told in a short comment on a KZfaq video. It is really quite significant.

The best source I have been able to find is a journal article called "FOUNDING MOTHERS: THE CONTRIBUTION OF WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS TO PUBLIC LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES" Library Quarterly, vol 64, July 1994. The author is Paula D. Watson. It is kind of expensive research when you are not affiliated with any university.

I'll take it! :D by all means, share with your friends if you want to see the view count creep up, I promise not to complain ^_^

​@@StacksFacts Oh and yes, nice video too :D I am actually very curious now - what prompted you to caption your videos? I know it's a lot of work and honestly not even big channels that are primarily focused on hearing loss or other disabilities consistently create captions for every video like you do. It's quite unusual, so I truly wonder what the reason behind that was.

Accessibility is important to me, so I don't want to alienate folks. It also helps that nearly all of my videos are scripted, so I just have to do some clean up after I upload them.

@@StacksFacts That's honestly great; keep it up! And also I genuinely hope to see your channel expand and grow further. Good luck!

Yep, reading about pink collar jobs broadly is part of what inspired this!

Parallel research. Nice.

Glad to hear! I've really appreciated my time at UBC, so if I can answer any questions, lmk ^_^

Aw, thank you ^_^

Hey, no worries. I appreciate ya :)

Absolutely. Aside, I'm suuuuper frustrated because KZfaq held this comment for review so I'm only JUST seeing it. And I'm assuming it's because you used the word "gay." Ugh.

Authenticity and Diversity. You are and you will. You passion to promote literacy for you community is powerful. Society should do better.

All about perspective...there are many. Interesting. I feel that people of color need to challenge themselves to go beyond expectation.

Progress takes time and happens over time. But it is happening.

I love it! Which school if you don't mind sharing?

@@StacksFacts University of Alabama!

*bites nails in anticipation*

@@StacksFacts Excellent script and delivery, friend.

I realize you wrote this comment over a year ago, but do you remember what the roles of the multicultural librarian entailed? I am considering getting the mlis masters and becoming a librarian, and I’ve always been an advocate for learning about and appreciating other cultures, so that career title sounds exactly like something I should strive for!

@@ailyntrujillo257 so the role initially was i think envisioned in relation to the local Asian population - so in the UK that means Pakistan, India etc. They were responsible for ordering and cataloguing stock in those community languages for both adults and children. They also took on overview of other books in non English languages for adults. Over time the role also organised events engaging with communities such as a mushaira (Urdu poetry event), looking at stock with regards to better representation of Black Caribbean and African people in our children's books. It kind of developed in various directions depending who held the role.

@@ailyntrujillo257 Also you aren't just talking about a year old comment. The role hasn't existed in my service since I think about 2010. So if I'm a bit fuzzy you will have to bear with me.

Done! Have a look at the channel :D

That's a great question -- to me I think it would be a great combination, particularly if your goal is to do library work with an orientation toward serving vulnerable communities. There's been some discussion of libraries with embedded social workers but I don't know if they had MLIS's or not. In any case, you might want to reach out to your local library system or Health and Human Services department to see what the feasibility is. Additional reading if you haven't seen it already: americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/pla-social-worker-walks-library/

There is, but it may take a while. Some people pick them up pretty quickly after graduation, but others have to wait a few years. It's... messy.

That's a great question! I suspect that some of them are actually a combination of US and Canada stats, as ALA and ARL have membership in both countries. Pinning down to strictly canadian context is a bit trickier, since the Canadian Library Association is no longer a thing. You can poke through the sources more in-depth here: www.stacksandfacts.com/2018/10/21/why-are-most-librarians-women/

Why would you employ yourself at your local library Peter?

@@amandajohnson2695 I volunteered there one day a week for quite some time. I know everyone there. I am working in the salvage and demolition space now.. but if I needed a less physically demanding job the library would be a good place to start.

@@dorkboi267 Thanks Peter for sharing your piece of your life story. Your input is quite encouraging. Demolition has more physical demands. It can be freeing process though to tear down old and start something new. Enjoy being you.

George you made a difference. Way to go.

Media portrayals, i tell ya!

Sure, you can find my email on the channels about page or at petermusser.com -- drop me a line!

Sure, who doesn't?! :D

In many places, but not all!

Just a tongue in cheek reference to the wave of reporting a few years back that blamed everything on millennials, from eating out to home buying to being content with suboptimal wages. As a millennial myself, it felt just so right to include it. :D

@@StacksFacts as long as it's tongue in cheek, then it's ok.

I heard that Millennial spelled backwards is murderer so like

Ok!

Thanks for taking the time to comment! The underrepresentation of different groups in librarianship is a big, messy complex issue, so I'll try to clarify a little bit. People of color can't become librarians in the first place because they are excluded due to the cost of the necessary education. People of color by and large can't even *enter* the profession, let alone get a job. If they *can* afford the education (or are somehow able to get access to the debt it requires), they can't afford to be underemployed for their first year or more out of school -- which not only excludes people of color, but just about *anyone* who is either responsible for feeding themselves or their families. Since the overwhelming majority of librarians are white women, the profession has evolved such that white women are the ones for whom the career is ideally designed -- it privileges employing people who already have an alternative source of income, typically in the form of a spouse or family support. This was an unintended consequence, but has real (negative) impacts on the profession as a whole. Librarianship, and just about every profession that ends up having some groups majorly underrepresented in them, suffers from this in two ways that I can think of off the top of my head. 1) As a profession that exists to serve communities, having librarians that look like the communities they serve helps the institution understand their communities' needs better, and builds trust. It's the same reason that a male patron was willing to talk to me rather than my colleagues who are women about having prostate surgery: he feels that I understand that better because of our similarities. 2) When you have a profession that has people who all come from similar backgrounds, there are fewer instances of even realizing that something might be a problem, and you have more missed opportunities to improve how a job is done. We can look at facial recognition software for example: it's always been pretty good at spotting and differentiating between lighter skinned people, but even now that it's been under development for a decade, the darker a face is, the worse the software performs. In fact, even Amazon's facial analysis tech has been shown to have problems mistaking darker skinned women for men. It is not such a stretch to see that this is probably in large part due to the lack of darker skinned people (and doubly so darker skinned women) in tech. The problem is not the presence of white librarians; it's the absence of people from other backgrounds who bring different life experiences and understandings of problems to the table. When I was in the Navy, I was fortunate to work in one of the most diverse workplaces you can find, and the work we did benefited from it because we had people who just thought about things differently. When we got stuck on a problem, we could find someone with a different perspective to help us work through it. That's something that librarianship needs, especially as a profession that's doing its best to keep changing at the same pace as society. As for one librarian losing their job to someone else, that's not the reality we're worrying about at the moment. Rather, what's been happening more often is that 1) librarians are waiting longer to retire, and 2) when they do retire, shrinking budgets means that the position gets cut entirely, rather than being passed on to someone new.