The Library Superhero Roadshow is a professional development workshop that aims to inspire library staff to "shout about their work," at seminars, conferences, and in professional press. The process of being a "loud and proud" librarian (I'm not even going to touch on that one) is likened to being a superhero. Where are you on the "Superhero Scale of Professional Pride?" Are you shy and retiring, like Ant Man, or are you "superlibrarianly" like The Incredible Hulk? At first glance, it seems all in good fun. Except the underlying language and premise of the workshop are a teeny bit concerning.
It's not fun being a superhero. The work of a superhero is alienating, demanding, and requires impressive sacrifices. For example, Peter Parker/Spiderman and Clark Kent/Superman both sacrifice their love lives so that they can save the world. A reliance on superheros also externalises the responsibility for injustices. No longer is it the duty of citizens, public officials, or the state to solve our problems. Instead, superheroes will come to our rescue, literally carrying the world on their shoulders for us. It's not the fault of organisations or governments for systematically eroding worker's rights, dismantling cultural funding, or discontinuing social services. It's the librarians' faults - they're not shouting loud enough!
In a recent issue of Information Professional one of the facilitators writes that "It occurred to me that there was a superhero analogy between the self-depreciating persona we routinely adopt on the library helpdesk and the self-publicising role we should be aspiring to." Asking information professionals to engage in unpaid, voluntary, scholarly activity risks the overburdening and burnout seen in academia. It also misses a salient point - libraries are already overrun by volunteerism, and burnout. Linda Christian (2015) describes how under the guise of professional responsibilities, employers already routinely extract additional labour from librarians. Not engaging in scholarship doesn't make us self-depreciating.
Fobazi Ettarh (2018) describes vocational awe as the manifestation of an assumption about the inherent goodness of libraries. Libraries are sacred spaces, where employees are saints fulfilling their calling in a labour of love. We see this in Richard O'Connor's (2018) recent animation The Temple of Knowledge and when Maya Angelou (2012) called the library a "rainbow in the clouds," placed there by god. Ursula K. Le Guin (2004) even describes the library as a "sacred place to a community," in her homage to the written word, The Wave in the Mind. An entire book by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell (2006) has been dedicated to capturing the "deeper meaning and higher purpose" of librarianship. We would question this if it took place is other professional settings. Not so librarianship. Ettarh notes that in the professional literature the discussion about job satisfaction in libraries is about passion, or a lack of it, rather than fulfilment, safety, or support. For this reason, we must struggle and sacrifice to become 'superlibrarians' because being a 'normal' information professional isn't good enough.
In the face of grand missions of literacy and freedom, advocating for your full lunch break feels petty. And tasked with the responsibility of sustaining democracy and intellectual freedom, taking a mental health day feels shameful. Awe is easily weaponized against the worker, allowing anyone to deploy a vocational purity test in which the worker can be accused of not being devout or passionate enough to serve without complaint. (Errarh, 2018)Self-depreciating indeed.
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