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SMNTY Classics: Librarians, Part 1 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to Stefan
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Never Told You production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: And as this is coming out, we are entering into
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Pride Month and we were looking at classics to bring back,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: and I thought about librarians because Kristin and Caroline did
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: a two parter on librarians, and as we've discussed previously,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: unfortunately there has been an increase in book banning that's
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: only gotten worse since we've talked about them last A
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: lot of it is targeted towards LGBTQ plus material, and
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: it's really infuriating because in several instances the material they're
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: med at is not at the library they're attacking. Yeah,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: so you can see the episode we did about how
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: that's really an organized effort to get books banned. But
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: also there's been a lot of interviews with libraries lately
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: saying like I've had to leave because I'm getting attacked
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: for all these horrific things, which is upsetting, upsetting. I
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: have many good, fond memories of libraries.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: So I just got my library card two months ago. Yes,
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: that's awesome, very delighted by all the options I have too.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: I love that libraries like also offer all kinds of
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: other things.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Simpoint, I really do.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: She may be a whole pamphlet in the librarian phenomenal
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: love her. She was so excited when I walked in,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: told me all my options they're the best.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: It's like, really, if you don't know, libraries offer like
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: a lot. I mean, the books are great, obviously, that's
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: there for it, but they offer like a ton of
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: other stuff you might not know about.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely check them out. Support your local library.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: But yes, in the meantime, enjoy part one of this
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: classic episode about librarians.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from Houstuffworks dot Com.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: And by very popular demand, we're talking about librarians not
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: just in this podcast, but also in the.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Next because there's so much to talk about.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: There is so much to talk about, and you are
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: just going to listen to me over the course of
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: two episodes. Try not to say librarians. And I'm not
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: teasing anyone. I'm not making fun of speech impediments. I'm
• 2:50
  Speaker 5: literally concerned about my lazy mouth.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: Well, and it didn't help that the email I sent
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: Caroline with all of my library sources that I would
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: reading was subject lined library sources.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: So now library is in my head.
• 3:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, library sounds like some kind of refreshing tonic ooh,
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: a library juice?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Really go for a library right now? What flavor would
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: a library be? Something sour? I bet like lime and BlackBerry.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Ooh, hello, let's make that happen. Can that be a cocktail?
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: Throw some gin in there, I'm.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Sure it could.
• 3:28
  Speaker 5: But about specific actual human librarians. True, we seriously did
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: receive so many emphatic requests for this episode.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: People out there who.
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: Work with books, work around books, they do tend to
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: call themselves librarians. And yeah, we couldn't not listen to
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: you guys. Your request.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: We had to answer, well, because we mentioned offhandedly in
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: an episode. I think it was our episode about Hillary
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: Clinton's early life that we should revisit librarians because there
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: is a librarian themed episode of Stuff Mom Never Told
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: You from the Vault. I think it came out in
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: twenty ten, so we will be revisiting a little bit
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: of that. But I have a feeling a lot of
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: listeners either haven't heard that episode or it's probably been
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: a while since you have heard that episode.
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: Yeah, because I mean children born that year are like
• 4:28
  Speaker 5: six now.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I know, so so six year olds, this is for you. Yeah,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: this goes out to you, and also all the librarians
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: out there.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: If, by the way, the two bossy dames who are
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: fantastic librarians who send out a weekly newsletter that you
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: should absolutely subscribe to, if they're listening, because I think
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: they might know who we are.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Hello. I thought about you a lot during this episode,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: just pondered them.
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: I'm picturing you like sitting in your window looking out
• 4:56
  Speaker 5: at the moon.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Because they're rad librarians. I mean.
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: And in college, Caroline, I really wanted to work at
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: our college library. Why so as part of my student aid,
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: I had an on campus job and you could check
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: off the ones that you wanted, and the library was
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: where all the cool kids worked, Like a lot of
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: townies worked at the library, and it just kind of
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: sounded cool, like, oh, I just came from my shift
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: at the library, and they always had.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Cool glasses and cool tattoos.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: And instead I ended up working at the print shop,
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: which had its own you know, benefits hashtag free copies.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: But still it was it was my dream to be
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the college librarian.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: Well, it's funny that you mentioned like the cool kids
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: and the cool glasses and the tattoos and everything, because
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: that is sort of a latter day librarian stereotype. You know.
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: Over the course of these two episodes, we will discuss
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: stereotypes a bit. But you know, I've always had the
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: image of the old spinster woman shushing children. But I
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: feel like, more recently, the new stereotype that's been introduced
• 6:11
  Speaker 5: is like it is a cool lady job, and here
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: I am the alternative librarian with the tattoos and glasses.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and she has really cool glasses, some great tattoos,
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: she wears modcloth dresses, has fantastic vintage decor in her home,
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: and a record collection, and essentially is just has really
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: great esthetic taste and also so many cultural references.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Because she's read so much cultural and literary references. She
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: sounds like somebody i'd want to hang out with. She's
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: kind of my ideal woman. I think it's what I'm
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: realizing right now. Sounds like you still want to go
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: work in a library a little bit.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I've also been thinking about librarians a bit though.
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: Caroline because I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: the first time, Thank you Netflix. And Giles the Watcher
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: is a librarian and he fits the stereotype of your
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: of the He's not a curmudgeon, but he's a little
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: bit fusty.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And it is interesting to see, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: I mean it makes total sense.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: It's pretty self explanatory. It's interesting to.
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: See the evolution of the librarian stereotype and how it
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: exactly matches the trends that we see in librarian inging librarianship.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh sure that'll work as well.
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: Yes, And in this episode we are going to talk
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: about how librarianship used to be a dude's job and
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: how a guy named Melville Dewey came along and changed
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: all of that. And he also is the one who
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: created the Dewey decimal system. And while he often gets
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: praised for that, I mean he's kind of considered this
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: hero of librarianship, we have darker tales to tell about Dewey.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds like a he's a real joy.
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: But the whole transition of librarianship from being a man's
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: job to a woman's job, which it still very much
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: is today is a really intriguing exploration of how masculinity,
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: ideal masculinity changed in turn of the century America.
• 8:32
  Speaker 5: Yes, this is such a great episode to encompass all
• 8:36
  Speaker 5: of the themes that Sminty just loves.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Like what, So we've got women in.
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: The workplace, yes, but we've also got the professionalization issue
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: surrounding gender, so very professional when it comes to men,
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: but less professional when it comes to women and wages.
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: We've also got issues of the spinster and marriage and
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: relationships and who is allowed to be employed, both like
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: you know, legally and just socially, what is socially accepted?
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: And just a boatload of stereotypes. Yeah, Victorian womanhood, gender norms.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: These two episodes, folks have it all.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: So in this episode we're going to be focusing on
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: men in librarianship, and then in our next episode we're
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: going to be talking about rad lady librarians and how
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: it became feminized, and we should say that it is
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: still very much a feminized occupation. So, according to stats
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: from the American Library Association, as of twenty ten, women
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: made up eighty two point eight percent of all librarians
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: and eighty one percent of all masters in library science students.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but it's not as diverse a field as ideal
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: it would be. Women of color actually comprise less than
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: sixteen percent of all librarians. And so this is another
• 10:10
  Speaker 5: very smintiesque tidbit.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I love all the sintiesque tidbits.
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I do remember tidbits. They were little cheese snacks.
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: I don't think they make them anymore, but I ate
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: them so often as a child.
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: I was about to say that smintyesque tidbits sounds like
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: like a British cookie.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: So we've got the library drink Library, drink library to
• 10:30
  Speaker 5: eat with our smintiesque tidbits.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm sorry.
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: I will get back to the topic at hand, But
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: basically what I'm getting at is that, like teaching, and
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: we discussed this inner episode on teachers, if you want
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: to go back and check that out, men are disproportionately
• 10:44
  Speaker 5: represented at the top higher ranks of librarian ship and
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: library societies. So men make up forty percent of all
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: university library directors, and they earn a median one hundred
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: and eleven thousand dollars. It's basically always been this way,
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: even when the profession became incredibly feminized, and the ranks
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: were overwhelmingly.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Filled by women.
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: Men were still at the higher ranks of running the libraries,
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: and the bigger libraries too.
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: Because of how Dewey and his male cohorts professionalized librarianship.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: I mean, they essentially built this structure so that men
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: would stay at the top.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, We've got a quote about that later in
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the episode.
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and really quickly, speaking to the issue of diversity
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: and librarianship, we are going to talk about women of
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: color and librarianship and also libraries during the civil rights
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: movement in our next episode.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: To stay tuned. Stay tuned, because real red stuff to come.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: Let's talk about the original librarians who were fellows.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: They were well to do, educated guys. That's right.
• 12:10
  Speaker 5: The original librarian, contrary to popular belief, was not the.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Ghost from Ghostbusters.
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: Oh remember I've never seen all of Ghostbusters.
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: It's at the very beginning question mark up speak. They
• 12:27
  Speaker 5: go to the basement and she makes the Dewey decimal
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: cards fly everywhere. Oh yes, okay, probably so pissed about
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: Dewey being a jerk.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: AnyWho.
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so the original librarians were dudes. They were curmudgeons.
• 12:43
  Speaker 5: They were curmudgeonly. As we have established.
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: There's a great quote from an article about librarian stereotypes
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: and the development of them in American Libraries Magazine, which
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't mind subscribing to, which describes these the original
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: librarian image as fusty, white male curmudgeons.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's not even us slurring these male librarians.
• 13:10
  Speaker 5: So it sort of is Giles from Buffy. Yeah, totally.
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: I mean cardigans. I don't think that they didn't wear
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: cardigans back then, but you know, basically, so let's travel
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: back in time though, to this male dominated library era,
• 13:25
  Speaker 5: and this takes us back to the period before the
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: Civil War. We're gonna specifically visit Peterborough, New Hampshire in
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: eighteen thirty three, which is where we get the first free,
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: public tax supported library, and it was started by a
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: man named Abel Abbot. And I seriously like, I couldn't
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: get my internet to work before I came into the studio,
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: which is enraging. But I'm seriously wondering if I'm related
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: to him, because all of my people when they first
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: came to this country were in Vermont and New Hampshire,
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: and I have some Abbots in my family tree.
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: You could be the descendant of all Able Abbott, which,
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: by the way, that's a great name.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Abel Abbit. Well, when he.
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Arrived in Peterborough, he was on this mission to of uplift,
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: essentially saying, like, you know what, we should have a
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: place with books where everyone can come in and check
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: them out and read them if they want, so that
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: we can all become more virtuous and more virtuous Republican citizens.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And we should note.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: That parochial libraries were established here in colonial America, but
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: this is the big transition to people actually paying to
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: support libraries, which the small town of Peterborough voted on
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: in a town meeting. They were like Able Abbot, that's
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: a terrific idea.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: We vote yay. We love places with books. Yes. And
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: then there was like one naysayer in the corner who's
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: like nay, and oh, Susan, sus all Susan than God,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: all the town.
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: But this makes sense that this was happening in America
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: at this time. So this was the Peterborough Library opened
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: in eighteen thirty three, and America was coming down with
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: reform fever.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, This was the beginning of the reform era.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: So over the next few decades you're going to have
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: the rise of the temperance movement, labor reform, common schools,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: which you can learn more about if you go back
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: and listen to our episode on teaching. They were also
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: advocating for prison reform, specifically not throwing debtors in prison.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: The suffrage movement was coming about abolition. This was even
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: when we get the first vegetarian society.
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and don't we have an episode? We have an
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: episode on vegetarian.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, we do. It's easy. Our catalog is large, it's bursty.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like this is really everything's really coming together.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: And I know library episode.
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: We've been getting so many emails lately, which makes me
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: very happy from new listeners, and I love being able
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: to respond in the affirmative that we do have episodes
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: in our back catalog that they are requesting.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: It's it's very fun and I.
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: Enjoy I enjoy conversing with these new listeners.
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: We almost need a Dewey decimal system for our seven
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: hundred episode plus library, although of course we would not
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: call it the Dewey decimal system for reasons. The listeners
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: will learn in just a little bit.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people are like, what is the deal with you
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: doing so much dewey hostility because women are so aggressive?
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: Um.
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so as you might imagine, because you know, christ
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: and I have definitely talked about this reform era and
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: the progressive era on the podcast before. But there were
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: a lot of ideas around virtue, people wanting to improve themselves,
• 16:50
  Speaker 5: help lift others so that they could improve themselves, and
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: free public libraries were part of that. They were considered
• 16:58
  Speaker 5: a sort of democratic gait way for citizens to be
• 17:01
  Speaker 5: able to better themselves and thus the country.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: And then you have the issue of common schools popping up.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: These were kind of the predecessors to public schools happening
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: around the same time, but they really couldn't open these
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: schools fast enough, so libraries also became supplementary to public
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: school education because another background idea of all this, in
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: the whole push for virtue, was concerns that if they
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: didn't educate this younger generation of newly American citizens in
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: the ways of religion and Republican ideals, then you might, oh,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: I don't know, have something.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Like a civil war that would happen.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: Even though even though we got libraries, Unfortunately they could
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: not prevent a civil war.
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: Well, I mean if, but if you look at it
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: from the other direction, it makes sense because if libraries
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: are part of a reform attitude abolition as part of that,
• 18:02
  Speaker 5: and educating people in the ways of, you know, not
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: being a jerk is all wrapped up in that, then
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: fighting to end slavery in public libraries seem.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: To go hand in hand. Very true. I like that
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: glass half full perspective.
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Now, Bostonians listening right now might be wondering why we
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: have not mentioned their library, because Boston does have a
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: claim to fame of opening the nation's first large public
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: library in eighteen fifty two. And I would like to
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: note that Boston the same year hired a female clerk.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Oh fancy, so good on you, Boston, Good on you.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: But the you know, the original is in tiny Peterborough. Yeah,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I would love to go there. You know what, Caroline,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I think you can really Yeah, Okay, I'll have to
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: look into this.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: You just rent a horse and carriage from Uber.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and clippity clop to the East coast Cuber
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Cuber carriage Uber or Huber for horses. I'm done. I'm done.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I'm done.
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: So when these first libraries were being established, we've already
• 19:22
  Speaker 5: said that it was men running the show, running the
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: running the books, running the books, but it was associated
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: definitely with a higher class element of men working as librarians.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: But it was also associated with this idea.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: That you were a librarian because you had failed at
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: something else. Perhaps you had received a great education, but
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: you were not able to become a lawyer or a doctor.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: So that's where we get the stereotype of the male
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: librarian who can't.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Do so he libraries.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because it wasn't considered that much of an actual profession,
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: because oh, you're just babysitting books.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: What are I mean?
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: It sounds great to me.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: You know, right, pushing a cart listening to music. I'm
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: telling you, God, if I had time to read. But
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: in this time, the masculine elite status.
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: Was achieved through breeding, education and gentility, like hard work
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: was not the name of the game. So a leisurely
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: occupation considered leisurely in quotes occupation like librarianship was something
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: that would have fit into that ideal. Because there was
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: also this paternalistic mission of educating the poor through you know,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: all of these books that you would essentially be babysitting
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: for them to come in and check out.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And read reading.
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: So earlier, you know, Kristen mentioned this, this shifting idea
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: of sculinity and what the ideal masculinity was. And this
• 21:03
  Speaker 5: happens after the Civil War. So rather than the ideal
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: man being this genteel elite who sits.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: At home, I don't know, smoking a bubble pipe, he
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: probably calls up a huber every now and then.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: As he probably owns huber.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: Well his father's father, did you know, when he first
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: came to this country and received a land grant.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But so that's out.
• 21:30
  Speaker 5: We were class warriors. Now we don't care so much
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: about being those genteel men wearing tights, and instead we
• 21:38
  Speaker 5: get the ideal of the capitalistic, self made man. You know,
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: we're leaving the babysitting and preservation of books and culture
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: to the womenfolk.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: Because this is also the era of separate spheres, you know,
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: this is the Victorian era is also coming in full steam,
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: and this shift in masculinity norms and the separation of
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: those spheres really positioned librarianship societally to become a female
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: dominated occupation, but at the same time it also fostered
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: a cultural and downright sexist reluctance to consider it a
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: bonafide profession like being a doctor or a lawyer, for instance,
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: because it was still associated with gentility. So that left
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: the male librarians of the day in a little bit
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: of a pickle because they're like, Okay, we realize that
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: this is rapidly becoming women's work, but we want to
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: be respected for this, so though, we're going to professionalize it.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where Dewey finally comes in.
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: All Melville Dewey, Melville Dewey, which is a really adorable name.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: It's a shame it's attached to such a jerk, the
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: labbit Melville Dewey.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: There's some good names in this effect.
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: They all sound like cartoon characters too. But yeah, So
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: Melville Dewey and his book loving contemporaries mail book loving contemporaries,
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: I should say, wanted and therefore worked to professionalize the field.
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: They were like, we don't want any of this Lucy
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: gasey librarianing.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, and Dewey was also motivated by that
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: shift into you know, the masculine ideal of the self
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: made man. So he was like, you know what, I'm
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: going to take advantage of this passion I have for
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: librarianship and this you know, mission to build these communities.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: But at the same time I need respect.
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: So we're going to institute hierarchical organizing and standardizing of systems.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Because at the.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: Time, you could have a library in Peter, New Hampshire,
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: which also doubles as the general store and the post office,
• 24:05
  Speaker 4: which wonderful, I know, right, a real one stop shop.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Dudes love a hierarchy, it's true.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: But you have something like that, which might be a
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: little loosi er goosier, and then a Boston Public Library,
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: which is obviously much larger and are probably running on
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: different kinds of structures.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So Dewey's million dollar idea, although I don't think he
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: ever made a million dollars.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: Off of it, was to basically institutionalize libraries.
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: Yes, that's right, and we start to see the official
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: associations and organizations popping up. In eighteen seventy six we
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: get the founding of the American Library Association. So we
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: do have Dewey to thank for that, and he was
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: member number one, because.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Of course he was. Of course he was, and he
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: He's like the commenters on YouTube videos. First yeah, really
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: adding to the die.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: And in eighteen eighty seven, Columbia College establishes its School
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: of Library Economy. So schools are being established. The next
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: stop on this journey is surely the continuing trajectory of
• 25:16
  Speaker 5: librarianship becoming even more professionalized.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Right, but no, no, because the Columbia College was essentially
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: like going to a technical school, because that's what you
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: would be learning. It would be getting more of an
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: associate's degree rather than a full bachelor degree. Partially because
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: it was rapidly becoming so feminized. Because you know, libraries,
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: even from the very beginning, as is the case today,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: did not tend to have huge budgets. They were supported
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: by taxes and also trustees, and they were like, you
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: know what, we need a lot of cheap labor, similar
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: as was happening in public schools at the time, Like, okay,
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: we need a.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Teachers and librarians who is really cheap and does not
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: have a lot of job opportunities.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Oh right, women, Women were a cost saving measure in
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: the same way that it's like let's use the cheaper
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: you know, desks, or let's buy robots.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: I don't know if those are cheaper. I don't know
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: how much of robots going for these days. Probably more
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: than I can afford.
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: But we are about we're on now the precipice of
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: the Dewey period, and we're gonna introduce you more to
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: Dewey when we come right back from a quick break.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: So let's talk a bit more about Melville Dewy and
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: the whole Dewey period, which is the period of librarianship
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: from around eighteen eighty seven to nineteen twenty three. Because
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: I mean Dewey, yes, what is kind of the father
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: of librarianship.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: But he was an intense man. Yeah, that's I feel
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: like that's very generous.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: Yes, that is, so please tell our listeners more about
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: just like the type of dude that Dewey was.
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, dude, we did we stop trying to make such happen. Caroline, Well, yeah,
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: he was intense. He for one, he he absolutely hated
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: the idea of wasted time. He advocated for us, all
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: all of US Americans to not only adopt the metric system,
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: which isn't crazy, that's pretty smart, but he also advocated
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: for shortening words and everyone using.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Shorthand. So was dewe we kind of ahead of his
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: time for tech speak? Yeah? Yeah, was he totes totes
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: ahead of his time? He was totes ahead of his time.
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: But part of that uh tendency, I guess is that
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: he literally had his wife record how each minute of
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: her day was spent because he wanted to be sure
• 28:08
  Speaker 5: that his spouse was not twiddling her thumbs during the day.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: Are there some contemporary scholars who suggest that Dewey probably
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: had some type of OCD?
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, So we read this fascinating article giving a glimpse
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: into Dewey's background, and the authors write that he very
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: likely had legit obsessive compulsive personality disorder, which briefly lets.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Distinguish that from OCD.
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: So OCD is obviously when you have obsessive and compulsive
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: tendencies but they are unwelcome. You have intrusive thoughts and
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: intrusive compulsions and you realize it's terrible and you hate it,
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: but you're powerless over it, whereas oc PD, those compulsions
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: and obsessions energize you. So in this article, he's compared
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: to like an earlier Steve Jobs and his very likely
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: AICPD is also associated with his extremely turbulent and questionable
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: interpersonal relationships, which, as we are about to dive into,
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: were largely with women.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and.
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: It sounds like from everything that we've read about doing that,
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: his mind just never stopped because, in addition to his
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: librarianship passion, he was also an innovator. Generally, he was
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: always kind of trying to start up little entrepreneurial side
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: hustles that would never really take off. And when he
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: really dove into librarianship, on the one hand, he sounds
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: really progressive at first because in eighteen eighty three he
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: hired six Wellesley grads to help him organize the Columbia
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: University Library, and of course Wellesley is a women's college,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: and the Columbia University staff were scandalized at the idea
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: of this guy hiring women.
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: That those vaginas were way too close. Yeah, get those
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: vaginas out.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: Of here, well, I mean, and how incompetent they must be,
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: and how could you be in such close quarters with them,
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: and Dewey, you know, is kind of championing them, being like,
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: no women have brains and they're pretty good at using them.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: So point for Dewey, that's all. That's really the only
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: point I can give him.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Though.
• 30:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like this is echoes of our look
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: into Jay Mary and Sims, where it's like, oh, god,
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: you contributed so much, but you were also the works
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: are our.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Father of gynecology, as he's called. Yeah.
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: So four years later, in eighteen eighty seven, Dewey insists
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: that women be admitted to Columbia's newly established Library School,
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: and again the trustees freak out, Oh my god, we're
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: gonna have all these hysterical women around us working with books.
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: This is crazy, And that's actually a little bit ironic,
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: like people who were freaking out to worry about hysterical women.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: And also by this time, I mean there were a
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: lot of women working as clerks and assistants in librarians
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: but of course Columbia University at the time was exclusively male.
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, most of those women were able to keep their
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: uteruses from floating away.
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: Well, they probably had to kind of, you know, tighten
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: their corsets, yeah, hold it in.
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: Well, they got you know, when you get the balloon
• 31:24
  Speaker 5: at the grocery store, and they gave it a little
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: plastic discs to weigh it down.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's what they were doing.
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, they had weighted corsets, right, gotcha. Well, Dewey,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: to his credit, was like, okay, listen to these trustees
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: are not going to officially let these women in. So
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: from what it sounded like, he kind of claimed a
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: little space like a closet.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, he had a shed.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: He found a shed on the Columbia University campus and
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: was like, ladies.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Come on, just come into the shed.
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: Ladies, ladies, ladies, that doesn't sound shady at all.
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Ye, Dewey's shady shed.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: But he was training these women under the radar essentially
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: until finally everything came to a head and Colombia was like, listen,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: this is not okay.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: You have to stop, like have to. We're you gotta
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: get out of this.
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: She hate women and we hate that you're in the
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: shed with them.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: Uh So Dewey resigns in a huff, which, again like
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: good on Dewey. Okay, he like stuck by his guns,
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: and in eighteen eighty nine he's like, peace out Columbia
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: and he transfers the technical school to the New York
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: State Library, and as we'll talk about more in the
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: next episode, he did train during this period some superstar
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: students who became like pioneers in libraries, who created some
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: of the state of libraries that we still use today.
• 33:03
  Speaker 5: Well, sure, I mean, like you said, Kristen, he was
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: absolutely an innovator, and he did believe in women's abilities.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: To do this work.
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: And he also, man or woman, had incredibly high expectations
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: of the people who surrounded him. And so if you
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: were a like minded person who also wanted to have
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: a job, work outside the home, wanted to work around
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: books all day, wanted to push those cards, and wanted
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: to learn from someone brilliant, then it makes sense that
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: some pretty brilliant women would come out from under.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: His tutelage as well.
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: It makes sense, But a lot of not so great
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: things came out of his working with so many women too.
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they're On the one hand, he really got along
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: better with women than he did.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah with men.
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: Well, he was surrounded almost entirely by women. He almost
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: refused to associate with other men.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: And in a way, he's kind of the Florence Nightingale
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: of librarians because weird, well, because Florence Nightingale stepped in
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: with nursing and was like, dudes, get out of here.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: Women are better suited for this. Like temperamentally, women are
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: suited better to this job. They're nurturing and tender, and
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: men you just you can't. You don't have any bedside manners,
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: So get out of here. And in the same way,
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: Dewey thought that women were even better suited than men
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: for these technical jobs, more of the assistant ships and
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: doing all of the organizing rather than the administrating. And
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: the thing is, when he was, you know, running his
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: library school, he had some peculiar application requirements for his
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: female students, including their height, weight, hair color, eye color,
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: and a photo which I have a feeling that, like
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: in eighteen eighty nine, in eighteen ninety getting a photo
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: of yourself seems like you would be kind of hard, right,
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: you could like snap a selfie, but in his words,
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: he wanted to know that they would be attractive enough
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: because quote.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: You can't polish a pumpkin.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: What that has to do with organizing books and classifying them,
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: I don't know, but he didn't want any pumpkins essentially.
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and one of these articles that we read in
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: the Library Association magazine by Joshua Kendall, you femistically referred
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: to Dewey as a quote serial hugger and kisser and
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: a literary litherario with quirks. Yes, seriously quirks. I mean
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: that makes it sound like your dad's or your grandfather's,
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: like creepy friend who you know, like we've all I
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: feel like we've all known that we've all met creepy Jim,
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: Like why yeah, creepy Jim Batman, why are you hugging me?
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Why are you?
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: I don't want the sloppy kiss on the cheek, Like
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: this is gross. It makes him sound like a harmless
• 36:05
  Speaker 5: duttering Is that a word?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Old fool who.
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: Like I don't know what's bad and good, I'm gonna
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: hug you.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Oh but he did.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: He absolutely did, getting you know, all of those heights weights,
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: and as Joshua Kendall emphasized.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Not their bust size, he was like, there is a myth.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: That that Dewey wanted to know their bus size.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: That's that's not true. No, because he had the picture
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: with which to judge exactly.
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: And this whole sexual harasser side of Dewey is something
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: that has only come to light in more recent decades
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: because earlier biographies of him, of course, didn't really talk about.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: They were like decimal system.
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: He was really smart, and he had quirks, but he
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, he essentially sexually harassed many of his students.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: We had two assistants that lived with him and his
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: wife in Albany, New York, both of whom were repeatedly harassed.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: And Joshua Kendall.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: I have a little bone to pick with Joshua Kendall
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: and the way he wrote this Dewey profile in the
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: Ala magazine, because he says, yes, there are records of
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: him having unwanted contact with his assistants, but they never
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: reported it to authorities. It was like WHOA, Okay, Well,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: the term sexual harassment didn't exist for another century, mister Kendall.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: But even though that term didn't exist, there came a point.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: It was so egregious that he became known as essentially
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: a sexual harasser.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: However you would have called it at that time.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: And apparently things peaud And went public in a Library
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: Association meeting conference in Alaska, which that seems like a
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: pretty exotic trip to take where he made four librarians,
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: female librarians at the time, feel incredibly uncomfortable, and since
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: they were already in the profession, they.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Weren't his assistants under his tutelage.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: They were like, whoa, Okay, there's a problem here, and
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: it is your hands on my body without my consent.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I mean no, they didn't have the words
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: sexual harassment to use, but you did have Tessa Kelso,
• 38:36
  Speaker 5: who was the Los Angeles Public Library director, who said,
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: for many years, women librarians have been the special prey
• 38:43
  Speaker 5: of mister Dewey in a series of outrages upon decency.
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: In other words, he is a sexual harassing creep.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: Well, and Mary Wright Plumber, who was one of his
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: original students who will talk more about in our next episode,
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: would eventually become the president of the American Library Association
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: in nineteen fourteen, and once she got in that role,
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: she refused to meet with Dewey.
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, but not only for her sake, But I got
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: the impression reading the article that it was also in
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: solidarity with other women who had dealt with his crap. Yeah,
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: the like, I promise I won't meet with this guy.
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: Like I don't want to talk to him, and I
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: know y'all don't want to be around him either.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: But as all of this was going on in the
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: background and sometimes in the foreground, the library education that
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: he and other male counterparts were architecting at this time
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: was really designed for essentially training.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, a lot of women.
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: They were welcoming women into the fold, but it was
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: training them for lower level positions of being clerk's assistants,
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: maybe the heads of smaller libraries. To the point that
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: publicly librarianship was just considered this, you know, kind of
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: rowaway job for women. They didn't get paid really anything
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: at all. It didn't have a reputation of being super
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: respectable because you couldn't.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Go very far in it.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: So the American Library Association was like, Okay, we need
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: to kind of burnish our image. So they said, you
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: know what high level librarianship being like a capital l librarian,
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: like a Dewey, that is something that you were born with.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: That's such crap.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: I know when I read that, I couldn't believe it,
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: because how can you whether it's eighteen seventy, nineteen seventy,
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: or twenty seventy, Like, seriously, how can you read that
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: and believe it, but librarrianship, no, I just can't like.
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: But that also, but that also speaks to the paternalism
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: of the occupation at the time too, because they really
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: did think they I mean, they kind of had a
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: little bit of a christ complex about.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: It, sure well.
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: And I mean, who it's not like they were saying,
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: you're born with it, whether you're a man or a woman, right,
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: and whether it's Mabelne, you are born with it because
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: you're a man.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: And that's something that the author of a paper we
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: were reading on the feminization of librarian pointed out sort
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: of an outrage at this idea of the suggestion that
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: being a librarian was something that you would be born
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: with because, as she wrote, because it also required being
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: born with a penis.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, although maybe you come out of the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: womb with a little book.
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: In your hand, well then yeah, maybe you are born
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: to be a librarian.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: So but with this hierarchy that they were establishing, you
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: have sort of a pyramid structure with the much higher
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: paid administrators usually men, at the top in place to
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: kind of tamp down on individuals being able to rise.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: Up through the ranks.
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: So unlike university faculty at the time, which would have
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: been mostly men, if you were a professor, you could
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: make a name for yourself as a professor and would
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: probably be better known than say, the administrator of that university.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: But with librarianship and same thing going on with the
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: development of public school teaching and the feminization of that,
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: you have these strict standards put in place to essentially
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: just like level the playing field, So you kind of.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Have to stay in these little boxes.
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's really hard to break through the ranks.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: You kind of have to go around being a clerker
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: assistant and jump right into administration.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: But they weren't training them in the.
• 42:49
  Speaker 4: Library schools because again they thought that it was something
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: at that time that you would be born with slash penis.
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: And I mean, obviously in the next episode we're going
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: to talk more about women and feminization specifically, but there
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: was one source that we read that cited a male library,
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: contemporary male librarian who was saying all of this stuff
• 43:12
  Speaker 5: about how the fact that the lower ranks in libraries
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: were dominated by women is what ruined essentially ruined the field,
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: which is hilarious if it weren't so depressing because when
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: you look at this stuff, like things were engineered to basically,
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: like you were saying, keep women in their box or
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: in their lane, keep people from advancing up the ranks.
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: And so if you establish a system where the only
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: people who are in those higher ranked positions are like
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: clearly born to be there, and they happen to be men, well,
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: how can you break that bookish ceiling?
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, you really can't.
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's also such an ironic contrast of
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: the lofty mission of those top library administrators of considering
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: themselves really the arbiters of culture and learning and virtue
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: for all of these communities and these developing urban centers,
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: but at the same time keeping women's work in the
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: field devalued.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: And it's also worth noting, if we jump forward in
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: our timeline, that in nineteen thirty a seventy eight year
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: old Dewey settled for two thousand dollars a sexual harassment
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: lawsuit brought against him. And of course, again we don't
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: have the term sexual harassment yet, which should tell you
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: something even more that before people were literally and legally
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: protected from issues of sexual harassment.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: A woman sued him for his behavior.
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: Which is why I suggested to Caroline that the Doe
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: decimal system should be renamed to what not Sure, but listeners,
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: I am open to suggestions because there's so many amazing
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: women librarians that you could name it after. But of course,
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's never gonna happen. But because we're only
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: just now really acknowledging the fact that Dewey in his
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: personal life was kind of a shady dude.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Not kind of he was a shady dude. He was
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: a shady dude.
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: But in that regard, I really am interested to hear
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: from our librarian listeners. I know, you guys have a
• 45:28
  Speaker 5: lot to tell us about Dewey, and so I'm interested to.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: Hear, Like, do you do you feel a degree.
• 45:34
  Speaker 5: Of conflict when you look at him as the father
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: of librarianship who was also shady in the shed?
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, because that is the thing that his profiler,
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: Joshuma Kendall, in that Ala Magazine piece, was kind of
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: wavering between like the acknowledgment of like, Okay, yeah, he
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: was a quote serial hugger and kisser, but he was
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: so brilliant and he, you know, gave us this thing
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: which did revolutionize our learning, our public learning.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean Steve Jobs was also a creep, but
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: we all have iPhones, you know.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: I mean yeah, it's like, do the ends justify the
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: sexually harassing means?
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: And I mean I'm not saying that Steve Jobs is
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: the harasser. I don't know about that. I just know
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: that he was incredibly difficult, right and.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Tempestuous.
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, they seem to have similar temperaments for sure.
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: But quickly, in terms of men and librarian stereotypes, because
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: it was so feminized so quickly by the time you
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: get into the twentieth century, you get the stereotype of
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: male librarians having to be gay because how could a
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: straight guy want to do quote unquote women's work. Yeah,
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: and it seems like from more recent research that the
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: stereotype has fallen away and that men don't feel, you know,
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: uncomfortable being librarians because they worried that people might assume
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: that they're gay, like they might have and say like
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: nineteen fifty or sixty. But in terms of that administrative hierarchy,
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: after World War Two, there was I think from the
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: American Library Association a recruitment effort specifically for men, to
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: get more men in libraries, but not as clerks or assistants,
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: but into administrative.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Roles make libraries great again. Yeah, so it just it
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: just kept on going.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: So with this, we're going to close the book on
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: dudes and librarians. Dudes and dewey dewey dudes and librarians.
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: We absolutely want to hear from you about this.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: And male librarians listening. We want you to weigh into.
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: We want everyone to weigh in, and also quickly thank
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: you librarians teachers. I feel like they are always so
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: undervalued in our communities but indispensable. So mom Stuff at
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: housetuffworks dot com is our email address. You can also
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: tweet us at mom stuff podcasts or messages on Facebook,
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: and we've got a couple of messages to share with
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: you right now.
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: So I have a letter here from Ella in response
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: to our Boston marriages episode.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: She says, I think Boston.
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: Marriages may be more common than we think among young people.
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: I'm not that aunt yet, but I have every intention
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: of being one eventually. My roommate, that's her quotes and
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: my ridiculous way of speaking, my quote unquote roommate and
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: I are both in our twenties. We share a bed
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: and a dog and often describe each other as our
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: girlfriend or partner to explain why we have no interest
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: in dating other people. But neither of us is into ladies.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: We're just uninterested in traditional romantic entanglements. I'm a sexual
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: and she's a lapsed great person who's disillusioned with men.
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: And we save an awful lot on rent by sharing
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: a bedroom and a wardrobe. I've never seen a reason
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: why I would want to stop living with a roommate,
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: even if I could afford it, other.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Than that's what's expected of me.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: It's a sleepover every day, and my ten year old
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: self is really and truly living the dream.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks for the awesome episode.
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: I never knew what to call what we do before,
• 49:21
  Speaker 5: and it's genuinely a great relief to have a label
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: to apply to myself other than just weird.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: And if I ever marry her for tax reasons.
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: The invitation is absolutely going to read please join us
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: in celebrating our Boston marriage, and everyone but you and
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: me will just think it's a weird reference to the
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: fact that we lived in Boston for a while. You're
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: totally invited, Well, thank you.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Ella for that great story.
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: So I have a letter here from Francis also about
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: our Boston Marriage's episode and France's writes.
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: I grew up in the Bible Belt.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: And never knew that lesbian couplings were so accepted. I
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: don't have a personal experience with Boston marriage, but whatever
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: the male equivalent is, I do. My grandfather was originally
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: a New Englander, but after marrying my grandmother, they moved
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: to North Carolina, where my mother was born, and I
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: spent most of my life. I didn't know anything about
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: same sex couplings, and growing up in the eighties and nineties,
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: we frequently visited confirmed bachelor friends of my grandfathers. Not
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: until many years later did I realize those men were
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: actually long term, monogamous gay men. My parents are extremely
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: against homosexuality, but to hear my mother lovingly speak of
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: these men is interesting. I think a lot of our
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: society's issues come from not understanding the humanity of people
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: who are different than us and refusing to know them
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: as individuals with feelings and personalities.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: All that said, is there a term for men in
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: Boston marriages? I'd be interested to know.
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: Love the podcast and now I forced my husband to listen.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Francis.
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: I think that we could call male Boston marriages, what like,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: maybe like a Philly.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Marriage, Key West marriages, Key West marriages.
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what's a really like dudely City San Antonio marriages?
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Sure well, keep your letters.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: Coming, mom, stuff at hellstuffworks dot Com is our email
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: address and for links to all of our social media as
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts with
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: our sources. So you too can learn about Melville Dewey,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
• 51:42
  Speaker 4: houstuffworks dot com