CASE STUDY NUMBER 2 / ETHICAL TOPICS FOR LIBRARIANS
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When I was in library school at the thinly veiled McTavish University, we had a classmate named Rehab Cranium. Though many anagrams of her name are possible (for example, ‘Erica Burnham’), Rehab Cranium stood out for her library pedigree, her insider ambitious climber status and her shiny white face like a slice from a loaf of bread. Rehab Cranium quickly became involved in our student government and in editing the student newsletter. I found the previous year’s editions of that marginal publication to be unusual and overly sexualized in its depiction of librarians as sadists and dominatrices wearing leather outfits while yielding whips and such on the front cover.
To her credit, Rehab Cranium reduced the unusual imagery and I gave her a compliment for it saying ”A remarkable improvement over last year.” To my surprise, the previous year’s editor whom I thought was busy being employed in Boston, strode into the computer lab and confronted me over the compliment which he took as an insult. Rehab Cranium snickered and confessed she had passed my comments along to him. The former editor then disappeared back to Boston and never did anything to enrich my career. I recalled silently what my aunt had told me about family loyalty and realized Rehab Cranium had none for her own classmates.
After graduation, Rehab Cranium moved to Chicago and I to New York, working at the Brooklyn Library. I learned Rehab Cranium was deeply involved in gay rights and was seen marching in the Pride Parade. She also was reputed to do research for an AIDS database and got a job working for Noah, a well known health database. When I was the victim of discrimination at work for perceived homosexuality, I leaned on Rehab Cranium for her support. Though she seemed to sympathize with me at first, her legendary network of LGBTQ friends and contacts yielded absolutely nothing for me and she offered less. Instead, American librarians like Ed Jelen and Norman Eriksen were much more helpful and lent a sympathetic ear. In the ensuing years, Rehab Cranium would snarl and ask sarcastically ”Did you spend ten years at Guantanamo Bay Prison?” in reference to her Taliban heroes.
To my surprise, I bumped into Rehab Cranium at an event for alumni of McTavish University in New York City. She had left Chicago and moved to NYC as part of her social climbing illustrious career. While the Principal of McTavish (you know, his brother was the Principal at Yale) was addressing the assembled alumna, Rehab Cranium did — completely out of the blue — threaten to denounce me to the Principal and assembled crowd as a cult survivor. ”What an insane bitch” I thought to myself and persuaded her to consider it an act of victimization and to pretend I was a person worthy of respect, as if I were a woman.
Since then, I have less contact with Rehab Cranium though she has from time to time remarked on small imperfections in my behaviour while reminding me I never served ten years at Guantanamo Bay prison and that she is after all, a feminist. For those who thought she may be a lesbian, Rehab Cranium has married and she and her husband have obnoxiously named their son after the main character in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird. If nothing else, the boy will grow up knowing what to do if ever he should find himself practicing law in 1960-era Alabama or if he should travel there after jumping into a time machine to escape his bizarre mother.
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PRACTICE QUESTIONS FOR YOUNG LIBRARIANS
- What is the responsibility of McTavish University to filter out people like Rehab Cranium during the admissions process?
- What should be the involvement of the American Library Association in developing checklists to identify problematic behaviour in librarians like Rehab Cranium?
- What is her fucking problem?
- What should the Principal of McTavish University have done if Rehab Cranium had indeed assaulted her classmate’s reputation in front of the alumna?
- What does it say about the Brooklyn Library that their administration cannot directly support their staff who are persecuted in the workplace based on false claims and hatred but instead rely on local male librarians such as Ed Jelen and Norman Eriksen?
- What other anagrams of Rehab Cranium can you think of? In addition to Erica Burnham, there are Carine Hambur, Cherub Marina, Enrica Rhumba, Aaren Bumrich, Braai Muncher, and of course my personal favourite, Urban Chimera.
Case study scenario By Frederick Klein