Why doesn't Library Journal pay for its book reviews?

Library Journal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was unemployed for 6 months, I had the (entirely predictable) idea of perhaps writing book reviews until I could land my next library gig. It was disheartening to read the first bit of LJ's guidelines:

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Library Journal Book Review is a selection tool used in both public and academic libraries. Each year it offers signed professional reviews of approximately 7,000 current titles in a wide range of disciplines. Our service is thus an important one for libraries and their users.
Reviewing for LJ is a demanding and time-consuming activity, but one that can yield a good deal of professional satisfaction. We do not accept unsolicited reviews. We do try to honor our regular reviewers’ requests for specific books or subjects to review (though not, of course, books written by friends, relatives, or associates). We ask our contributors to agree not to review for other publications the same books they review for LJ, and not to send copies of their reviews to publishers or authors.
There is no payment for reviews. When possible, the reviewer receives a finished copy of the book. Our service to the library audience would not be possible without the generosity of over 1,500 contributors. The quality of Library Journal Book Review ultimately depends on their expertise, intellectual integrity, and professional commitment.
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What the crap is this classist shit? No payment for reviews? History is written by the winners. So too are its book reviews, apparently. Unemployed between jobs? (Under-)Employed full time but weak executive functioning due to neurological difference? Who cares what you think, apparently. Nope, reviews are for closers, er, I mean Type A librarians who work AND have time to write thoughtful reviews completely gratis, from their sense of professional commitment.

I know this is LJ we're talking about, but damn yo.  This is some first order noblesse oblige bullshit here.  Pay for your damn reviews, LJ.  You're extracting valuable intellectual labor and not paying for it.  Yes, I know it "pays off" for already-successful librarians in other ways, another feather in their cap, etc.  But if you actually paid for your reviews, it might motivate those of us who are struggling to write for you.  Otherwise why should I bother?  If my time and effort aren't valuable to you, why should I write for you and not myself?  Only the already successful can really afford to write for you.  It's classist as all getout. 

MG reconsidered

So after talking over the MG thing in a non-judgmental, neutral way with a colleague, acting just genuinely curious about it, it seems that maybe there's an in-house rationale for the way we're doing things after all...if only because of distortions owing to our curious local practices.  Because whereas in most libraries YA would now come to represent the edgier, high end "older teen" material in a standard collection, that stuff in OUR collection has already been pushed over into the Adult Materials section, such that existing YA in our system would be regarded as MG in any other library, so we might as well change the classification to the prevailing descriptive norm, which effectively phases out YA from current local usage because again all the stuff that would be YA in more standardized libraries are already sharing shelf and classification space with the rest of Adult Materials.  I still think it's weird...and believe me, it is...but bowing to local conditions being what they are, there is a certain kind of logic to it, however senseless it might seem at first blush.  At first blush it seems merely cosmetic and an empty gesture...and while on some level that's true, it's also an updated and more accurate description of the books in our collection that would other have remained in YA going forward if the MG category did not yet exist in the first place.

It's a little tough to wrap your head around, but it does make a certain kind of sense that I see more clearly today than in my original post.

It's hard to admit being wrong, but in this case, I guess I was in my original posting on this topic.

Cool but ironic signage (GML)

Snapped a picture of this cool signage we have advertising our manga collection:

Neat, huh?  The character in the image is named Natsu Dragneel and his is a major character in the Fairy Tail manga & anime.  The irony?  We don't actually own any volumes of the Fairy Tail manga itself.  I put in a "Suggest A Title" request, advising we collect at least the first 15 volumes or so, but it remains to be seen if those purchases will be made or not.  I personally am a huge fan of the Fairy Tail franchise, and its anime adaptation is one of my favorite Anime shows of all time.  Are you FIRED UP to discover more manga?

Currently reading (brief impression of) Listen, Liberal [by Thomas Frank]

I'm currently reading [read: listening to the audiobook] of Listen, Liberal by journalist Thomas Frank, of What's the Matter with Kansas fame.  It is basically a critique of the Democratic Party since the late 1960s; specifically a critique of its policy shifts away from the New Deal coalition of FDR and towards courting the young emerging professional class and outright disdain and contempt for traditional working class voters.

It's a very good and eye-opening book but also incredibly depressing.

It makes a good companion piece to Chris Hayes' Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy (2013), though Hayes' own programming shifts since 2013, and really since leaving UP with Chris Hayes on Saturday mornings, with its long-format, deep policy dives and landing the more prestigious but greatly abbreviated 7pm slot just before Rachel Maddow, and his coverage of the Bernie Sanders campaign, Hayes himself seems to have sold out and fallen in line with the Meritocratic consensus he once so eloquently deplored in the pages of his 2013 book.  It saddens me.

With the victory of Hillary Clinton over Sanders, the Meritocracy seems as firmly in charge of the Democratic Party's destiny right now as it ever has been.  That saddens me, as a "Bernie Bitter Ender", though I will probably reluctantly pull the lever for HRC come November because Trump must be stopped no matter what.  It just saddens me that "permanent disillusionment" seems to be the fate I must resign myself to in this country for someone with my particular set of political ideals that HRC pays lip service to at best.  I hope I'm wrong and that HRC pleasantly surprises me; but after the disappointments of the first Clinton presidency and the mediocre gains of Obama's two terms, I'm not holding my breath.  I feel like Bernie Sanders was our last best hope.  My tepid support for HRC is born out of an exhausted fatalism and looking back at the 1990s through rose colored glasses.

The new Thomas Frank book also reminds me of my ultimate failure to join the Professional Class as a working librarian.  I'm shut out, largely owing to my inability to navigate the intricacies of office politics owing to my at the time undiagnosed Asperger's.  If I had made it, I might have had to more deeply examine myself as potentially part of the problem...or I'd be more oblivious to that fact, shielded from critical self examination by my larger paycheck.

I belong to what my friend PK describes as "The Intellectual Proletariat", e.g. highly educated but under-employed, well-read liberal artsy types lacking high tech STEM skills but otherwise skilled at critical thinking, writing, etc. but objecting to The Washington Consensus on moral grounds.

I'm only a few chapters in so far, but Thomas Frank makes it clear that things went awry by deliberate design as far back as 1972, so basically for as long as I've been alive (born in February 1971).  The Great Society was undermined fatally by the Vietnam War and the social split caused by that war, with union hardhats beating hippies with a sense of patriotic zeal, and the over-correction in reaction to that, the undue obsession with the then Youth Culture, as the "new" base of the Democratic Party, and the inculcated disdain for working stiffs and probably returning veterans not lucky enough to get a college deferment from the war, or lacking the economic means to flee to Canada for the war's duration.

As the old saying has it, "The Personal is the Political";  I'm reminded that Librarianship has become so professionalized that the MLS is today a defacto MBA for Libraryland and if you're not in some kind of managerial role, you're deemed unworthy to call yourself a Library professional or Librarian period if you're "merely" a solo practitioner providing core library services to the public directly.  That role is considered unworthy of "professional" level salary compensation, etc.  That's what merely college educated "paras" are for, no MLS required.  Librarians manage Paras & Clerks first, and provide core library services only as an afterthought, or in more of a consulting capacity at most.  It wasn't always this way, and the change isn't necessarily for the better, and definitely hurts ASD people from becoming successful Librarians due to the emphasis on the managerial role, which we often SUCK at.  If you have an MLS but are mainly interested in providing core library services directly to the public, well, you're an underachiever by definition and sucks to be you, pal.

I deplore this state of affairs, but also feel I'm just a lone voice, crying in the wilderness.

Half-assed Public Outreach (HPL @ Anime Matsuri X)

     I really enjoyed this year's Anime Matsuri X (tenth) convention at the end of February 2016 down at the George R. Brown Convention center.  I got to meet voice actor Vic Mignogna and get his autograph on a few of my prized DVD/Blu-Ray combo packs.  It was my friend Sarah's first Anime Matsuri, so I devoted my efforts to ensuring she had an enjoyable convention and thus spent a lot more time with her exploring the dealer's room and a lot less time attending panels than I had originally planned for.  I'm just about out of shelf space for anime figurines, so I didn't make any purchases of that nature this time around.  Probably the first anime convention I've been to where I didn't walk away with at least one purchased figurine.  I did pick up a few rare/out-of-print DVDs for myself but otherwise I was good and restrained myself.

Anyway, while wandering the dealer's room, I noticed that Houston Public Library had purchased and set up a booth at the convention, presumably to do library outreach.  That was definitely a cool idea, I thought.  However, having attended both Friday and Saturday (the busiest days), I kept walking by the HPL table and there was NEVER any person manning the booth, at all, all day.  Just a table laid out with general information about the library and its services and collections, to pick up at your leisure.  But no actual library personnel on site to ask questions, sign up people for library cards, etc.

I thought to myself WOW, this is really half-assed library outreach.  Did they just not want to PAY anyone to be there on library time?  And even if they had been willing to pay at least one library worker or librarian to sit/stand behind the booth's table, their set-up was really really generic and not at all eye-catching.  I was thinking to myself the whole time Guys! You're at an ANIME convention for heaven's sake!  Don't you think you ought to be playing up the parts of your collection that would interest this captive audience??

If I had been in charge, I would have had 1 circulation person on hand ready to sign people up and issue library cards to all Texas residents interested; maybe even with a credit card square on a tablet in case any out-of-state people wanted to pay to get a card for a year (or pay off fines).  More importantly I would've had demonstrations of Hoopla! and all the manga that can be found on ComicsPlus (Library edition) and Hoopla! respectively.  I would've been showing off all the cool old school anime that Hoopla! currently showcases.  THAT would be knowing your audience and catering to their interests.  If they liked what they saw but didn't have a library card, you could sign them up on the spot, show them how to download the Hoopla app, and how to sign in with their new library credentials.  Then they could go on their merry way, watching anime on their phone, showing it to their friends, who might also want to sign up, etc.

I mean, I'm glad HPL was there at all, which was more than we did, but damn did they go about it really half-assed.  They could've gotten so much more out of their library outreach effort if they'd tried just a little bit harder and invested fractionally a bit more $$ beyond what they already sunk getting a dealer's room table in the first place, probably the biggest single ticket expense item in their effort that weekend.

Watching Folly from the Sidelines.

     There used to be (and may still be) a column in the monthly professional military periodical Proceedings by the Naval Institute Press that had the title of "Nobody asked me, but..." which were guest articles by active duty, reserve, and retired Navy & Marine personnel who would weigh in with their personal opinion about current Navy or Marine Corps practices.
     I remember reading these columns with interest with every new issue of Proceedings that would appear on the periodical shelf in the NJROTC room of my High School.  When I think back on it, I wonder how many of the contributors to this column were undiagnosed Aspies in uniform in the late 1980s.  People who march to the beat of a different drummer, or had a different, or outsider's perspective on things that could point the way to a new and better way of handling things. 
     It's been I can't remember how long since I last looked at an issue of Proceedings, of course, and I've long since distanced myself personally from any involvement in military affairs apart from a lingering layman's interest from time to time.  But it's funny the things you remember from a few years spent in High School NJROTC and a few semesters of college level NROTC.
     All of this is a long-winded way of writing a blog post that is basically the Libraryland equivalent of "Nobody asked me, but..."
     Word was passed down that from henceforth we would be re-labeling all of our YA books as MG books, which stands for "Middle Grades"; this was to be implemented system-wide.  I thought it was a curiously labor-intensive long term project for such a seemingly cosmetic and superficial change.  I'm not a Youth Services librarian, would not want to be one either (unless my outsized interest in manga and anime could be of use in such a context someday).  Nor am I actively involved in Cataloging work either.  I think RDA is madness and a step backwards or at least weirdly sideways from AACR2.  But I've made peace with that philosophical objection and backed away from the active discussions of cataloging professionals.  But I was curious about the rationale behind the change, and did some very cursory Googling to find out about why this change from YA to MG suddenly came about.  Was it merely fickle fashion or was there a solid reason for it?  I consulted YALSA and read a few professional articles to gain a deeper understanding of the debate.
     And the debate, as I understand it now from that cursory review of the literature, is that some libraries are agitating for a more fine grained distinction between Young Adult (YA) literature aimed at more mature late teens (16 and up) and Juvenile (read: children's) literature.  Literature in the more broad sense of "reading material" (Lektüre in German), beyond the narrow sense of Literary fiction (Literatur, in German).  I know most professionals know that already, but it took a number of years for that distinction to become clear to ME, I'm embarrassed to admit.  Middle Grades (MG) fiction, as I now understand it, has been proposed by YALSA members to fill the perceived gap, aimed at Tween and Young Teen readers who are beyond Juvenile reading material but for whom some of the material currently found in YA is a bit more mature, serious, emotionally challenging, etc, than this subset of young people.  Delineated in this fashion, it makes perfect sense.  You would have J, MG, & YA literature in your collective Youth Services collections, ideally speaking, and these readers would eventually age out and begin checking out the majority of their reading materials from the Adult Services main collection.  One of the "shell-games" we play locally to head off censorship challenges before they occur is to selectively classify certain controversial topics as the next level of age classification than is standard practice in other, less conservative communities.  We place in YA certain materials that other libraries would place in J, and place in the Adult Collection certain very mature YA works (usually those dealing with sexuality and social issues) that might otherwise be challenged by overly nosy & conservative parents.  I think it's unfortunate we have to play this game with our public patrons, but I concede it's better than fending off constant challenges and raising public ire against the library, since we exist thanks to the local taxes paid by the general public, and if it maintains goodwill, the game is worth continuing,  however much it may offend my inner sense of professionalism and cherished ideals about library ethics in the abstract.  The net effect is fewer challenges, we still collect and retain the material, and those that truly need it can still obtain it without shame or judgement, and that is what we call a WIN at the end of the day.
    But the fact that we play this delicate, quasi shell-game of classification as a normal part of doing business where we operate fills me with a sense of dread at our ham-fisted implementation of the Middle Grades (MG) classification schema as a complete replacement for YA.  I'm beating my head against my desk in frustration at just how stupid our local decision is versus YALSA's original intent with creating MG in the first place.  It completely misses the point of what YALSA was advocating; instead of a more fine-grained classification schema, our local decision essentially *collapses* the distinction between MG and YA.  The net effect may well be that a lot more material in the upper end of YA maturity levels will get shunted over to compete for shelf space in the Adult Collection.  YA will cease to be a meaningful designation in our system, and that's really unfortunate, since it's a perfectly good schema and I personally like a lot of the popular fiction that's written at this level of reader, and the spinoff media that comes from it (think Harry Potter or Percy Jackson).

To reiterate, I'm not a cataloger, I'm not a Youth Services librarian.  It's none of my business and nobody asked me.  I'm an obscure Interlibrary loan clerk and just content to keep doing my job.  But as someone who once upon a time actually held a professional position as a librarian with an actual ALA-accredited MLS, this boneheaded local decision makes me want to scream on the inside.  I don't raise a stink locally because it wouldn't do any good and would be plain disadvantageous for my long term career prospects.  But I did feel the need to get this off my chest, since just yelling into my pillow at night wasn't quite enough.