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What is "low morale"?

Why?

- lack of PoC voices in original study

- persistent LIS recruitment/retention issues

- EDI concerns

- recent past re: PoC welcomeness in libraries & in LIS

Our Questions

- What is the low morale trajectory for racial/ethnic minority academic librarians?

- How does holding a racialized identity impact the low-morale experience for this group?

Research Frameworks

- Critical Race Theory (Solorzano 1998)

- Counternarratives (Solorzano & Yosso 2002)

- Negative Workplace Behaviors (Freedmen & Vreven 2016; Ortega 2017)

- [Historical and persistent] Whiteness in LIS (Hathcock 2015; ALA 2017; Cooke 2018)

- EDI (Davis & Hall 2007; ALA 2017)

- Emotional Labor (Hochschild 1983; Evans & Moore 2015)

Methodology & Participants

- qualitative (phenomenology)

- 17 participants

- deep interviews (286 pages of rich data)

  • 39% from the Southern region of the U.S.
  • 90% female
  • 48% 26 -35 years old
  • 48% new librarians (0 - 5 years of experience)

Grand Total:

4 Impact Factors

12 Enabling Systems

The Low-Morale Experience of Minority Academic Librarians: A Review

Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, University of South Carolina Lancaster

Ione T. Damasco, University of Dayton

Let's...

  • Review the original low morale study
  • Share established and nascent frameworks
  • Summarize the LME development and impacts
  • Introduce PoC-centric low morale data
  • Discuss emerging countermeasures
  • Share ongoing work

Traditional Markers

  • respect
  • lack of recognition
  • unclear expectations
  • leadership problems
  • poor communication
  • organizational changes

Updated Links

Low morale is the result of repeated and protracted exposure to emotional, verbal/written, and system abuse or negligence in the workplace.

(Brun & Cooper, 2009)

(Kendrick, 2017)

  • incivility/toxicity
  • bullying/mobbing
  • Resilience narratives
  • Vocational Awe
  • Job precarity*

Frameworks

Resilience narratives

  • encourage individualization
  • depoliticizes structures
  • normalize insecurity
  • additional labor on traditionally marginalized groups

(Berg, Galvan & Tewell, 2017)

Vocational Awe

"The idea that libraries as institutions are inherently good. It assumes that some or all core aspects of the profession are beyond critique, and it, in turn, underpins many librarians' sense of identity and emotional investment in the profession."

5%

Native American

(Ettarh, 2017)

Job Precarity

Contractual, ambiguous, insecure, unprotected, & poorly paid labor/work/employment.

25%

Latinx

35%

Asian

  • emerging area
  • correlates with mental health impacts
  • more likely to impact already marginalized people
  • negative impact on library structure, operations, and development

25%

Multiracial

30%

African American

(Brons, Riley, Yin & Henninger 2018)

The General Low-Morale Experience

A Quantitative Portrait of PoC Low Morale

  • Starts with Trigger Event
  • 57% of reported incidents at 4 year public institutions
  • 28% at 4 year private institutions
  • 48% of incidents happened between 1 - 3 years ago
  • 24% recounted experiences from 4 - 6 years ago

- unexpected

- identifies co-worker as abuser

- short-term affective and physiological effects

  • Repeated, Protracted Exposure to Abuse/Neglect

- emotional, verbal/written, system, negligence

- compounded affective, physiological, and cognitive responses

- negative outlook on LIS career and profession

Top Triggers:

  • Negative LIS Practice Impacts

- reduced collegiality

- reduced professional confidence

- increased procrastination

- increased absenteeism/tardiness

- reduced professional engagement

  • Administrative/managerial incompetence (67%)
  • System abuse (67%)
  • Racial microaggressions (62%)
  • Personality conflicts (62%)
  • Withholding workplace recognition (57%)
  • Lack of accountability (57%)
  • Murky communication channels (52%)
  • Work overload (48%)
  • Collegial incompetence (48%)

  • Impact Factors (2)

- Insidiousness

- Contagion

Countermeasures? Let's Talk...

  • Enabling Systems (6)

- Promotion and Tenure

- Human Resources Limitations

- Staffing & Employment

- LIS Perceptions

- Leadership

- Uncertainty & Mistrust

Top Abuse Types and Offenders

  • Recovery
  • System abuse - Supervisors (67%)
  • System abuse - Colleagues (64%)
  • Emotional abuse - Supervisors (59%)

- long-term

- unresolved

- physical/mental health implications

Qualitative Results Summary

Qualitative Results Summary

  • New (and additional) Impact Factors
  • Low morale experience validated

- stereotype threat

- deauthenticity

* internally motivated

* cautionary/defensive behaviors against hostile/unwelcoming workplaces

Ongoing Work: Academic Librarians

- all types of abuse/negligence reported

- physiological, affective, and cognitive responses

- impact factors

- enabling systems (except staffing/employment)

- recovery (attempts)

  • Assertive Communication
  • (In)formal Leadership
  • Reducing Shame
  • Boundaries
  • Taking care
  • Safe online/community spaces
  • Others?

Spot-check: https://bit.ly/2HPR6UU

Strategies: https://bit.ly/2tPWYnn

  • More likely to:

- experience emotional & system abuse during trigger events

- experience system abuse & negligence during low morale development (feeling "tricked" or baited-and-switched; more likely to block memory of instances of abuse)

Ongoing Work: Racial/Ethnic Minority

Academic Librarians

  • New (and additional) Enabling Systems

Study: Forthcoming Fall 2019

Deauthenticity survey: https://bit.ly/2NHvg5v

- Diversity rhetoric (cognitive dissonance; superficiality; pushback, tokenism; scholarship devaluation)

- Whiteness (white women abusers; white privilege; lack of intersectionality)

- White supremacy (paternalism, whitewashing of institutions role in historical/current racism; reductionism of accomplishments)

- Racism (stereotyping, microaggressions, oppression, phenotype reliance)

Ongoing Work: Public Librarians

Spot-check: https://bit.ly/2Tjb5AV

Strategies: https://bit.ly/2XGVxFp

ALL

Share Your Story: https://bit.ly/2TrgUvn

Facebook Community: Renewers

Website: Renewals (renewerslis.wordpress.com)

The Renewal Seminar / The Renewal Workshop

  • New (and additional) Enabling Systems

- Career/environmental landscapes (hostile campus or living communities; racially homogeneous workplaces; dissonance between student body/faculty)

- Politics (results of 2016 U.S. Presidential election and subsequent education, social, and civil rights assaults)

- Collegiality (collaborations, support, credit-stealing)

- Oppressed group behavior (hazing or lack of assistance due to newness in workplace or in the field)

Works Cited (cont'd)

Freedman, S. & Vreven,D. (2017). Workplace incivility and bullying in the library: Perception or reality? College & Research Libraries 77 (6): 727-48. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16553/17999.

Works Cited

American Library Association. 2017. 2017 ALA demographic study. http://www.ala.org/tools/sites/ala.org.tools/files/content/Draft%20of%20Member%20Demographics%20Survey%2001-11-2017.pdf.

Hathcock, A. (2015). White librarianship in blackface: Diversity initiatives in LIS.” In the Library with the Lead Pipe. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/diversity.

Berg, J., Galvan, A. & Tewell, E. (2018). Responding to and reimagining resilience in academic libraries. Journal of New Librarianship, 3(1): Retrieved from https://www.newlibs.org/article/3218-responding-to-and-reimagining-resilience-in-academic-libraries

Hochschild, A.R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kendrick, K.D. (2017). The low morale experience in academic librarians: A phenomenological study. Journal of Library Administration, 57(8): 846-878.

Brons, A., Riley, C., Yin, C. & Henninger, E. (2018). Catalog cards from the edge: precarity in libraries. Presented at the British Columbia Library Conference. Retrieved from https://osf.io/sqvcm/

Brun, J.P. & Cooper, C. (2009). Missing pieces: 7 Ways to improve employee well-being and organizational effectiveness. Houndsmill, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ortega, A. (2017). Academic libraries & toxic leadership. San Diego: Elsevier Science.

Cooke, N.A. (2017). “The GSLS Carnegie Scholars: Guests in someone else's house.” Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 1 (1): 46-71.

Solorzano, D.G. (1998). Critical race theory, race, and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicano scholars.” Qualitative Studies in Education 11 (1):121-36.

Solorzano, D.G. & Yosso, T.J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research.” Qualitative Inquiry 8 (1): 23-44.

Davis, D.e M. & Hall, T. (2007). Diversity counts. http://www.ala.org/aboutala/sites/ala.org.aboutala/files/content/diversity/diversitycounts/diversitycounts_rev0.pdf.

Ettarh, F. (2018, January 10). Vocational awe and librarianship: The lies we tell ourselves. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Retrieved from http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

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