By Jon Fletcher
dsa...@zurich.csail.mit.edu
http://kimchijon.blogspot.com/2005/02/mlc-doesnt-live-here-anymore.html
http://kimchijon.blogspot.com
Kimchi Jon's
Exotica Blog
http://kimchijon.blogspot.com/2005/02/mlc-doesnt-live-here-anymore.html
http://kimchijon.blogspot.com
Homer's World
FatMan Seoul
Obachan's Kitchen
Eche Blog
Donut Jelly
In Our Kitchen
Illustrated Librarian
Kuishinbo Meow
Green Bananas
Tiny Lil Lib
Pink Cocoa Tabetai
Watashi to Tokyo
Oslo Foodie
Radical Chef
Grilled Aubergine
Ron's Log
Friday Fishwrap
SHOP: iKoreaPlaza
SHOP: KGrocer
SHOP: Pacific Rim
SHOP: iShopIndian
SHOP: Thai Grocer
SHOP: Shamra.com
RECIPE: Korean Rec
DEFINE: Korea Food
RECIPE: Eat Greek
RECIPE: Thai Grocer
RECIPE: Kasma Thai
DEFINE: Japanese
DEFINE: Thai
SEEDS: Tropical
SEEDS: Asian
Cooking by Jonny Angel of Palm Springs
[photo4.gif]
AIM/Y!:
malelib2003
Friday, February 25, 2005
MLC Doesn't Live Here Anymore
http://kimchijon.blogspot.com/2005/02/mlc-doesnt-live-here-anymore.html
http://kimchijon.blogspot.com
Thanks to those of you who have been writing and asking me what's
been going on my personal life. I have realized for some time now
that dropping the MLC blog in favor of the Jonny Angel Asian food
fetish blog has left a hole of sorts. So let me try and catch you
up a little.
As you know, about three months ago I was liberated from my awful
position at the Palm Springs Public Library; I'm now an archivist
at a local museum. Although I certainly gained a lot from my two
years at the library, most notably some good friends who I love and
cherish, I also learned that when offered the choice that I wasn't
willing to spend a minute longer in that insane asylum. I was so
unhappy there that I don't really have the words to properly
portray my feelings.
[mummies5.jpg] We are taught in library school that the the "new
librarian" is a person who is at the forefront of technology, who
uses those skills to help the world navigate through an array of
complicated mazes. What I learned from my actual experience is that
public librarianship is in reality a field governed by a cadre of
dried out old mummies who who could care less about offering such
things to the library-going public; that these same people will do
everything in their power to strip away whatever power, energy, or
desire their employees might have to bring technology and
innovation to the public at large; they instead choose to emphasize
the importance of antiquated, outmoded "library priorities" such as
sitting at the reference desk and waiting for real reference
questions that never come (because society has moved on) or
spending entire shifts taking dimes for Internet-print outs like
monkeys tethered to a crank organ. God forbid library employees
today might actually spend time in their offices doing things like
building databases or websites that reach a worldwide audiences!
No, librarians can't be trusted to do things like that because they
would "probably just be goofing around on the Web," as I was once
indirectly accused of doing.
Yes, that was the type of thanks I got for my two years of service
there.
We are also not taught in library school that public libraries,
being one of the last remaining social services in this great
country of ours, is a great place to aggregate and attempt to deal
with all our collective social ills in one little place. For two
years I had to deal with mental cases that in lieu of receiving
drugs and treatment chose to hang at the reference desk, the
homeless who used the library as their personal living space (and
bathroom), and the roving bands of demonic devil children whose
absentee parents found it oh-so-convenient to drop them off and let
them run amok completely unattended. And this is just the top tier
of offenders!
How little prepared I was for being a social worker when I was told
that I'd been hired to be a librarian.
At the Palm Springs Publc Library, librarians are also asked to be
passport agents. Yes, it's true! As passport agents, they are asked
to review and sort out issues pertaining to American citizenship,
birth records, and the like. About one of five passport patrons
turns out inevitably to be a raging lunatic, screaming that this or
that piece of paperwork is in fact valid and how dare anybody infer
that might not be. When I told the powers that be that I was
unwilling to do this due to these types of people, the Assistant
Director's reply was that "passport patrons were no different from
other library patrons," even though I had to listen to these mad
ravings day after day and knew that in the past restraining orders
had been filed and tires of library employees' cars had been
slashed by enraged passport patrons. How stupid did she really
think I was?
Most people are probably completely unaware of the safety issues
that librarians have to deal with from day to day in their
work. This situation was so dire that the Palm Springs Library had
a full-time security guard to try and protect its employees from
that whack-jobs who make the library their personal mental ward; it
is about every other day that an individual is banned from the
library, in fact, due to their wild rantings or some similar,
offending act. A list at the reference desk is kept by librarians
with dates and offenses:
1/26 Patron urinated into drinking fountain
1/26 Patron became verbally abusive at Internet terminals
1/27 Patron yelled at reference librarians
1/27 Patron smeared feces on bathroom walls
1/27 Patron hit other patron at Web terminals
During my tenure/enslavement at the library, I always made a point
of keeping such records in the hope that certain repeat offenders
would be banned. (As crazily selfish as I was, personal safety
mattered to me.) I normally also emailed a report to the Assistant
Director so that documentation existed to support this. Well, can
you believe that this person once told me that "I really needed to
stop sending fickle reports" and that "reports needed to be severe
in nature" before I emailed anything off to her. God forbid that my
concerns about feeling physically threatened by a library patron
might unnecessarily fill up somebody's email box!
Countless other outrageous things happened to me during that time,
but what was generally most regrettable and offensive to me during
this whole experience were the times that I realized with absolute
clarity that the people in administration did not know and did not
care what types of skills their employees brought to the
table. Take for example the time a technical committees and a
website committee were formed to deal with various technology
issues at the library. Now, considering that my former occupation
was working for a Silicon Valley dotcom, wouldn't you think it
might have entered administration's mind that they might want to
take advantage of the skills and insights such an individual most
certainly would have brought to the table? No, it never crossed
their minds. I was not invited. I had to later ask to play a part.
In a similar vein, there was also the time that I was working with
a volunteer to digitize and post a series of oral history
interviews onto the library website. When the library director
caught wind of this, she flew into a tizzy saying that I had no
right to tell volunteers what to do and asked why I'd ever want to
place something like that on the web anyway?" How outrageous that I
would have to explain and defend core concepts like promoting
access and the need for finding aids to somebody who is supposedly
the director of a library!
I suppose the coup de grace that finally broke the camel's back for
me was the time I launched a 25-year old newspaper citation index
onto the library's website. Librarians had been building it for 25
years, but during that whole period it had been accessible to
reference librarians alone. My launch and demonstration of this
product to the library administration was met with a bland,
lukewarm response, but as my colleage later revealed a web-based
calendar to the staff replete with moving gif images (dancing
pansies and whatnot), this was met with agog ohhhh-and-ahhhhs from
the library administration. Launching of a database vital to the
local community bored them to tears but boy did they love those
dancing pansies! Yes, I worked for people completely removed from
the modern world. Dancing pansies were a great innovation to them,
just as television probably was to Ishi the Last Yahi Indian.
It was experiences such as these that so utterly disillusioned me
with public librarianship.
Anyway, I just felt like ranting about all this. It is liberating
to do so. Working for crustly old bitches with no souls was really
draining and I still feel victimized by the whole experience. It
was thankless and emotionally exhausting spending two years of my
life there. Partially, I suppose I was inspired to write all this
due to people asking about the old MLC blog. A lot of issues came
flooding back when I thought about it. I was also inspired by
recent news reports about people being fired for writing unpleasant
things about their employer. Well, what are they going to do, fire
me? The idea of spilling the beans about my former workplace just
seemed sort of enticing and therapeutic. Who can stop me? Perhaps I
also had a few more things to so that were never spelled out quite
so thoroughly on the old MLC blog, thoughts muted for fear of being
found out.
But as time passes, I am getting over all these stormy emotions.
It was against this backdrop that I came up with the MLC blog. I
had no lack of material from day to day, and humor is how I dealt
with the all the relentless idiocy I faced. People still ask me
about this blog and the person who wrote it, but in a way feel like
I'm no longer that person. I still carry some anger about the
experience, but the experience is over. I'm now happy with my job
and I feel that the people that surround me now respect me for the
work that I do. They take me seriously and see me as a human
being. They have souls, and amongst us there is the recognition
that we all have a valuable part to play. My ranting material is
gone. Thankfully. :-)
After I left the library, I found a certain sense of inner peace. I
still struggle with issues as everybody does, but the issues are
more personal than externally caused. I'm no longer desperately
struggling to deal with my environment or the people that I work
with or for. This release of anger is what's allowed me to move
away from the MLC blog and focus on a hobby, which right now is my
cooking.
I think cooking has also come to play an important part of my life
right now because it's my way of being peripatetic on a shoestring
budget. :-) For so many years, I spent my life traveling from one
place to another, soaking up cultures and meeting new faces,
gaining new perspectives. Cooking and sharing my experiences on
this blog allows me to do the same thing without actually picking
up and moving every two years. I suppose it is also my way of
adapting to an "adult" life in which I am more anchored to a full
time place of residence and my new, long sought after career.
Another reason I have turned to cooking, I think, has been my new
found ability to simply relax and enjoy myself. For so much of my
life, I have pushed myself to spend my free time pursuing things
that were (in my mind at least) "substantial" and "intellectual."
In the times that I did something other than read a novel or
discuss "serious" topics in "serious" discussion, I hit myself over
the head feeling that I was wasting valuable time.
But now that I have a reached my career goals, it suddenly occurs
to me that my ability to spend time on non-intellectual pursuits is
overdue. I want to spend my free time gardening, cooking, watching
stupid movies, and fixing up my house guilt-free.
I deserve it, goddamnit. :-)
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By Jon Fletcher