This started as a you-post-for-me comment at Meredith’s blog… but why not post it here and get the link juice?
Back in 1992, I believe it was, Jean Armour Polly, one of the pioneers of the Internet in libraries (back when that was tantamount to suggesting beer in libraries), wrote (and I paraphrase, badly) that librarians do great things and then never tell anyone about them.
This behavior is endemic to the profession. Thinking about OpenURL, online databases we lease that no one uses, books that never get displayed, reference hidden behind ponderous fat clients, libraries so badly hidden by poor signage that Magellan couldn’t find them… oh, it goes on and on.
I admit to a certain wistfulness that I have never been formally selected as a “Mover and Shaker.” But I don’t begrudge anyone that designation. I have also been targeted–really, since 1992–as a sometime shameless hussy who self-promotes. Sometimes that is meant to hurt. Someone hurled it at me at my last brick library, when I was doing things like dressing up in plaid pajamas and handing out flyers at the local mall to advertise our Go To The Library In Your Pajamas campaign for online services. (One little boy screamed and ran, but I think that was unrelated.)
At the risk of sounding too Californian, most of the b—hing about shameless self-promotion seems to come from an angry place. It also seems to be targeted at a few people. Does anyone think Roy Tennant is a shameless hussy? Even though he self-promotes all over the place, and you can even buy a thong with his face on it?
Here’s another insider tip. When you are self-promoting on some issue of higher urgency, it’s not always an easy place to be. When I was pushing the issue of filtering and libraries, I was screamed at in ALA meetings (for not toeing the ALA party line of age-neutrality). I was labeled online as someone who liked child porn by a librarian who then went on to work for a filtering company. I was implicitly labeled a liar by one major listserv moderator. I endured many bad flight arrangements, lonely weekends in motels, grillings at library meetings and presentations, and endless hours (pre-wifi) waiting for my next connection, as an outcome of this luxurious self-promotion which, by the way, was for an issue I cared about and put a very small amount of extra income on my table (and I should have charged some libraries far more; I know better now) when I was a grossly underpaid “part-time” rural library director.
The last message we need to deliver to librarians is that self-promotion is a bad thing. Or that, like one brand of hair color, it’s just for men. Shameless hussies of the world, unite!
Posted on this day, other years:
- Sentence First, Verdict After: Quilting Bees and Amazonfail and Censorship - 2009
- But is it Good for the Episcopalians? - 2005
- New Appeal for Cuban Librarians Launched - 2004
In this sort of situation, my mother’s advice to me was, “He who tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted.”
Oh, that–and the sunshine–made me smile! Is that from the Book of Mom?
I would have LOVED to have seen the pajama gig! (I promise I wouldn’t have run away screaming.) What a great way to promote the library. Maybe I should recommend that our Children’s Librarians use this tactic to promote pajama storytimes!
It’s actually quite liberating to walk around a shopping mall in flannel pajamas!
If I had a band, I’d name it “The Pajama Hussies.”
(This by way of saying I have nothing to add but: “Yes! What Karen said.”)
I think I could have lived without knowing that there was a Roy Tennant thong…but hear hear! to the rest of it. 🙂
The thong, by the way, was nowhere near my idea. It is an embarrassment that I try to put up with in good humor. But I will admit to self-promotion. If that makes me a shameless hussy, then so be it. But I happen to believe in self-promotion done well. I mean, if you don’t do it, who do you expect will? You just want to do it right, and not clumsily and in ways that annoy and put-off rather than attract. As I think someone said in the comments on Meredith’s post, someone should teach a class on it.
Roy, you do put up with the thong with good humor, and it’s funny. It’s funny because you are hardly the sort of person to put yourself on a thong to begin with, and it’s funny because you put up with it, and it’s funny because every once in a while someone brings it up again.
You are a great model for the rest of us in many respects–self-promotion, good humor, and leadership!
The idea that wandering about in PJs is liberating probably explains all the undergrads that do that around here. Of course, it might also be because they live in residence, and thus view the entire campus as their backyard. Or I just don’t understand they fashion sense of the underdressed 22-year-old.
Most of my favorite people are hussies of either the shameless or brazen variety. When can we get the KGS boxers? (LITA could sell entire an entire TTT line of intimate apparel…)
Santa Cruz (where Sandy had a consulting job for 18 months) is like that. Either they are walking around in their PJs or it’s some trend I’m not getting. Hmmmm… the kgs boxers! That raises the whole issue of the kgs logo. Am I a chicken or a cow? A delightfully self-absorbed concern!
Assuming that the IP issues can be resolved, I think that your “Simpsons” character would be a good logo.
It’s a little scary how much that character looks like me…
Karen, this was the exact topic of a paper I wrote for school, “The Organizational Culture of Female Dominated Service Professions.” Basic Thesis: All our teeth-gnashing woes can be traced right back to how we set up these professions (teaching, nursing, and librarianship) to begin with, and if we want change we have to chage us first. Hang our diplomas on the wall, put MLS on our business cards, and self-promote without any shame. Alas, we punish each other, and our profession punishes us, for doing just that.
What I find fascinating are the gatekeepers who argue against self-promotion. It’s almost as if we have a self-correcting universe with a powerful tropism toward the “sacrificial” ideal.
The wearing pajamas in public thing has just recently mushroomed on my small liberal arts residential campus in central Maine. It used to be a rare occurence during finals; now it seems to be fairly common at various stress points throughout the semester. I just figured it was a way for them to save time…..
I just want to know if the I can use the quote
He who tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted.
In another words, did someone besides Underwood’s mom say this?
Walt–what say?