Thread, which collided in my head with challenges to library “neutrality” discourse.

In my Purple Squirrel talk for CALI, I asked about the perceived value of the Purple Squirrel myth. How is it useful for people to believe/say that technological skill is inherent, not learned? https://twitter.com/cfiesler/status/1347626345371750404

By the same token, what is the value to librarians of believing that librarianship is some weird outpost of Switzerland?

Vocational awe (belief in the inherent total goodness of the profession, hi hi hello @Fobettarh) is deffo part of it. But I think there's more, too.

Fiesler's thread concludes (among other things) that active shaping of people's information environments is necessary to fix the incredible mess America (among others, again) is in right now.

That is a FEARSOME responsibility, lemme just say that RIGHT now.

But it's also a central thing librarianship, like, DOES. Collection development, cataloguing and metadata practices, digitization choices, preservation choices, the whole SHEBANG shapes other people's info environments.

And it's legit anxiety-inducing, y'all.

So I think one value of the neutrality myth to librarians is as an anxiety-reducer. If we're neutral, we can do coll-dev in peace without worrying about instigating the collapse of society, you know?

(Of course, if you combine that with vocational awe you get the very bad situation where we don't take our info-environment-shaping responsibilities seriously enough because We Are Good Neutral People Ergo All We Do Is Good. I can't, won't, shan't ever defend that.)

Buuuuuuut I think if we're going to challenge "library neutrality" successfully we'll need a frame that addresses the very real and very legit anxieties around doing info-environment-shaping right.

I don't know what that frame is, but I'll be thinking about it.

GAH, y'all, just realized I completely blanked on public-service librarians also shaping info environments. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, it was my home specialties talking.

Reference, reader's advisory, event mgmt, and space mgmt ABSOLUTELY shape folks' info environments. A LOT.