{"id":4504,"date":"2016-11-18T15:46:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T20:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/bitstreams\/?p=4504"},"modified":"2016-11-18T16:40:56","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T21:40:56","slug":"4504","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.duke.edu\/bitstreams\/2016\/11\/18\/4504\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Our Labor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I always appreciate the bird\u2019s-eye view of the work I do gained by\u00a0attending national conferences, and often come away with novel ideas on how to solve old problems and colleagues to reach out to when I encounter new ones. So I was anticipating as much when I left home for the airport last week to attend the 2016 DLF Forum<\/a> in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"dlf\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And that is indeed the experience I had, but in addition to gaining\u00a0new ideas and new friends, the keynote for the conference<\/a> challenged me to think deeply about the broader context in which we as librarians and information professionals do our work, who we do that work for, and whether or not we are living up to the values of inclusivity and accessibility that I hold dear. <\/span><\/p>\n

The keynote speaker was Stacie Williams<\/a>, a librarian\/archivist who talked about the politics of labor in our communities, both specific to libraries and archives and beyond. She posited that all labor is local<\/strong>, and focused on the caregiving work that, so often performed by women and minorities in under- or unpaid positions, is the \u201cbeam underpinning this entire system of labor as we know it \u2026 and yet it remains the most invisible part of what makes our economy run\u201d. In order to value ourselves and our work, we need to value all\u00a0of the labor upon which our society is based. And she asked us to think of the work we do as librarians and archivists – the services we provide – as a form of caregiving to our own communities. She also posited that the information work in which we are engaged has followed the late capitalism trend of an anti-care ethos, and implored us to examine our own institutional practices, asking questions such as:<\/span><\/p>\n