Some years ago I was an ignored and worn out Chief Librarian. I had lost my belief in my profession, the library system and had doubts about my future as a librarian. I had bought a PC and was connected to the Internet - my way of protesting the resistance against information techniques (Norwegian term for all data-related information) that I met on the job. One night I started searching for material about librarians, and after half an hour I found a woman who made a flare out of the little spark of love for my profession that still was left.

Her name is Jennifer Cram and she is currently the Manager of Library Services at Queensland Department of Education in Queensland, Australia. She is a prolific writer for Australian library journals and a sought after speaker both in- and outside Australia. She has exciting home pages where she publicizes articles, papers and more.

Cram is focusing heavily on values: the value we find in our work, the values which we allow others to attach to our work, and the value we give ourselves, our clients and our colleagues.

Her articles span from informal lectures on her own values to serious professional discussions on cost analyses. But regardless of her subject, the main subject behind it all is values.

When Cram discusses our value as human beings first and then as librarians, she draws on various sources from fairy tales to statistical studies. In an article entitled When ants carry elephants, Applying the Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples to Library Leadership, Library Administration and Management 9(4), pp 219-225, Cram discusses attitudes towards cooperation, guidance, leadership and generosity as they are expressed through our work. She draws examples from different autochthonous populations and compares them to library work. In the section about cooperation, she writes "The title pertains to a saying from the Mossi in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries: "When ants unite their mouths they can carry an elephant." We like to think that ours is a profession with a great ability for cooperation but we have lots to learn about cooperation. It is completely possible to cooperate without caring about "the inner person" in the people we cooperate with.

There is a sea of a difference between helping others to fulfill their wishes and to look at other people as a part of ourselves. It is the difference between a wish-and-fulfillment ethics and ethics based on inter-human relationships.

She ends the article by quoting Halidou Sawadogo, a peasant leader in Burkina Faso. Cram feels that the quote contains an important message to our profession: The most important is to start with what we are - not until we are firmly anchored in what we are, can we build and improve what our parents created.

Relationships

Cram also writes about our professional obligations as librarians. The title for this article is taken from Cram's article Professionalism: a matter of relationships, choices and obligations, Australian Library Review, 12(2), 151-158. The article discusses different theories on different relationships. Cram compares fundamental characteristics of relationships to the professional life of a librarian - our relationships to professional colleagues, mercantile colleagues and others. The main point is the discussion of ethics and what work ethics should be for a librarian. She says among other things:

Professional requirements for humor, excellent service and life-long learning can also be seen as an aspect of ethical conduct. To be able to laugh at oneself and the blunders made by one’s professional group is healthy and keeps a good balance. When everything gets too serious, one stops looking at things with a critical eye and rather chooses the camaraderie. As professionals we are obligated to render service of the highest quality, to do the best possible job, and to be courageous, for without courage our integrity is weakened.

Cram then writes that the library is a tool for our development into independent human beings. The logical result of this is that librarians by definition help human beings coming into their own. This theory resembles closely our tradition of popular education. But combined with her thoughts about ethics and courage, theories on popular education get new strength for the approaching year 2000.

Cram claims that we have an obligation to behave toward each other like human beings and as members of a professional collegium. We have an obligation to promote our profession and everything it achieves.

This doesn't happen if we make excuses for belonging to the profession. It happens by us identifying and claiming as ours what librarians do, by letting others know what contributions we have made to the world around us and our successes.

Cram feels that it is left up to us to change the attitudes our society has toward librarians. She demonstrates the main factors in making this happen in her articles Self-love and joy and satisfaction in librarianship, Cram, J. (1991) Issues 17, 4-7 and No permission needed: Librarians and the PPC factor, Australian Special libraries. vol. 29, no. 2, June 1996, pp 39-47. In the first article, Cram discusses the librarian’s self image. She says that we are more occupied with libraries, “dead things that they are, than the people who create the libraries and make them come alive. She doesn't deny that a negative librarian stereotype exists. Don't all professions have their stereotypes, she asks, and mentions the Shylock lawyer, the paedophile priest, the overservicing doctor. Aren't most professional stereotypes worse than ours? It must be better to belong to a profession associated with calm, order and the thirst for knowledge than with exploitation of others.

We accept too easily that others influence our future. And even if we can’t always control what others give us or think about us, we can at least control how we react.

More humanities

Cram uses the concept "the Prometheus Principle" to demonstrate the way librarians react. Prometheus, she explains, was very good at changing. He changed so many times that in the end he forgot who he really was. We can recognize ourselves in this. She dislikes that the profession focuses more and more on the informational aspects - a problem that we share with many other professions. We should not de-emphasise the humanities, the central role played by reading, and the big role that libraries play in the dissemination of ideas, because this is an area in which we have a certain monopoly.

We change direction partly because we accept the myth about the successful. Cram feels that to consider prominence and success as equals is wrong, and is one of the reasons why librarians have such a bad self image.

We easily believe that success is to join the one percent at the top and that the ones who have made it are for some reason or the other better qualified to stake out the road for the rest of us and worse than this is the belief that we don't have any say in the matter if we don't belong to that one percent.

Every librarian offers a unique blend of experience, abilities and knowledge and has therefore something unique to offer. When the library profession doesn’t care about this, it helps keep alive the stereotypes and the victimization.

Not only librarians keep the victimization alive. Cram views this as a complex and deceitful play between librarians and our society. In No permission, Cram draws parallels between the opposition experienced by librarians and the opposition minorities experience in society. She renames the concept "aversive racism" and explains: "Aversive librarianism" is an attitude found among the ones who want to be and want to be seen as pillars of the society of librarians. Many still hold a negative image of librarians. The wish to be a generous supporter of librarians conflicts with the established (and possibly unrecognized) negative image of librarians, and creates uneasiness.

Attempts to relieve the feeling of uneasiness sometimes are demonstrated through conduct which bothers the librarian and at other times through negative actions. The problem is that changes in behavior are unpredictable and easy to explain away as something but hostility towards librarians.

Break with the system

What thoughts has Cram on what we can do to fortify ourselves in such situations? She writes that we must know exactly what happens around us at all times. The way we react is often not the way we should react, simply because we are surprised and confused. We are patient, we are kind and at the same time we know we have little to gain from it.

In such situations we must be able to negotiate, and our efficiency at this task is dependent on the image we have of ourselves and our counterparts. If our image of a librarian is a weak one, we also signal that. We must dare to show a certain arrogance, something Cram calls "constructive arrogance", and we must dare to break with the system, the set of spoken and unspoken rules about method, protocol and the rules of the game.

If librarians are to come into power, they will have to break with the system. In order to break with the system, they have to conquer self-imposed obstacles. Breaking the system occupies our minds with what may be, we can imagine a better future. Important and meaningful progress is not possible without breaking with the system…breaking with the system not only liberates us, but it liberates the system from its own obstacles. This allows us more choices and makes further development possible.

I think that Cram's approach to the problem is amazingly like our own. Her thoughts are easily transferable, even if we feel that the situation "in this country", "in this county" or "here at my own little library" is so special that no one can understand what we are struggling with.

I see our profession as bound by rules and sectors. We are divided and delegated, and in the end we find ourselves alone, each in our own little patch. We are captured and rendered apathetic in the system that Cram tells us we must dare to break

Does the successful one percent see how capable the newly educated on the floor are, do we support each other visibly and audibly, do we tell our surroundings about our accomplishments? Do we raise our voice when we hear that a librarian has been exposed to "aversive librarianism" - or do we remain passive because it happened in another county, it is a matter for the National Trusteeship of Libraries, a case for the organization, a case for ...

Do we know exactly what happens around us at any time? Do we strive to know, or do we leave this to someone with excess strength, to the organization, to the National Trusteeship of Libraries?

Cram's articles offer much food for thought. Her belief in each and every librarian and our profession is something we should share with her and each other in a more visible and audible manner.

You can meet Jenny Cram at http://www.alia.org.au/~jcram