Library Faculty/Staff Scholarship and Research
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/11
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Item The Saboteur in the Academic Library(Routledge, 2022-11-30) Dohe, Kate; Emmelhainz, Celia; Seale, Maura; Pappas, ErinIn 1944, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services released the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Originally intended to aid the WWII-era citizen in committing small acts of sabotage within an enemy organization, the Field Manual developed a second life on social media after its declassification, as its advice on how to make erroneous decisions, stonewall, and lead others astray echoed the pitfalls of modern office work. We observe that academic library staff also use ‘neutral’ actions to actively delay and derail work, including an insistence on following proper channels, creating committees, haggling over precise language, and holding unnecessary meetings. This chapter shows how academic libraries find themselves uniquely susceptible to unintentional and willful saboteurs alike. Library saboteurs have the potential to derail and impede our organizational missions, as well as to push back against toxic leadership and mismanagement. This chapter explores the power and powerlessness of the library saboteur, and outlines how staff at all levels can identify the saboteur in the next cubicle—and in their own learned behavior.Item Delay, Distract, Defer: Addressing Sabotage in the Academic Library(2019-10) Dohe, Kate; Pappas, Erin; Emmelhainz, CeliaIn 1944, the US Office of Strategic Services released the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Originally intended to aid the WWII-era citizen saboteur in committing small, undetectable acts of sabotage within an enemy organization, the Field Manual developed a second life on social media after its declassification, as its advice to “make faulty decisions, to adopt an uncooperative attitude, and to induce others to follow suit” echoed the pitfalls of modern office work. In the context of academic libraries, seemingly neutral actions that actively work to delay production may include our insistence on following proper channels, creating committees, haggling over precise language, and holding unnecessary meetings. In this paper, we argue that academic libraries find themselves uniquely susceptible to unintentional and willful saboteurs alike. As higher education’s hierarchical culture meets professional norms that stress collaborative decision-making and emotional labor, we create an environment ripe for exploitation by those unhappy with the direction of an organization. As workers charged with the stewardship of information infrastructure, and as individuals who create and implement best practices in digital cultural heritage systems, library saboteurs have the potential to derail and impede the care work essential to information maintenance. This paper explores aspects of the Field Manual that apply to modern organizations, how academic libraries can fall victim to sabotage, and ways that individual librarians and staff can identify and resist the saboteur in the next cubicle--or in their own learned library behavior.Item Doing More, With More: Academic Libraries, Digital Services, and Revenue Generation(Ithaka S+R, 2019-01-24) Dohe, Kate; Hamidzadeh, Babak; Wallberg, BenThe axiom to “do more with less” in university research libraries is increasingly untenable, as budgets continue to shrink and demand for novel services continues to rise. The impacts of such existential uncertainties are self-evident and widely discussed in the literature--staff burnout, lowered morale and increased toxicity, weakened local collections, and limited capacity for ambitious and genuinely innovative work. In response to calls for entrepreneurial initiatives from campus and library leadership, the Digital Systems and Stewardship (DSS) division of the University of Maryland Libraries has been engaged since 2015 in developing a revenue generation program known as Digital Data Services. This initiative tackles the challenging financial landscape of higher education and furthers our institutional mission by offering fee-based technological services to the campus community, to affiliated partners, and to the commercial sector. Conceived of as a means to generate steady revenue to support and sustain library initiatives, the program currently represents a significant source of income for the Libraries DSS division after three years of growth, and is envisioned to contribute to other divisions in the Libraries, as well. More than standard cost recovery programs, the Digital Data Services program generates returns that can be reinvested in staffing or equipment for the Libraries, and DDS projects represent unique opportunities to cultivate talent and expand expertise to benefit other library initiatives. While a large-scale revenue generating program may initially appear contrary to traditional models of library services, this program has enabled the Libraries to expand both our capacity and aptitude to improve many of our mission-driven services over time.Item Starting with “Yes, And...”: Collaborative Instructional Design in Digital Scholarship(Library Orientation Exchange (LOEX), 2016) Dohe, Kate; Pappas, ErinImprov principles and techniques are applicable in any instance of teaching: respect your partner, know your audience, work the room, jump in with both feet, agree agree agree. These techniques take for granted that this form of instruction and collaboration is new for both partners, that neither person is the expert, and that the content and situations will have to be recreated anew in every classroom and workshop. In this workshop, two librarians and former improv and theater instructors lead workshop attendees through some of the fundamentals of improv, and reflect upon how these same activities and principles help create an environment of collaboration and openness necessary to support the diverse goals of digital scholarship.