Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 84: Critical Librarianship — with Baharak Yousefi
Speakers: Paige Smith, Am Johal, Baharak Yousefi
Paige Smith 0:05
Hey, I'm Paige Smith with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, we are joined by SFU Librarian Baharak Yousefi. She and Am Johal are in conversation about the politics of librarianship and issues of access to library spaces and the knowledge they hold. I hope you enjoy.
Am Johal 0:37
Welcome to Below the Radar--and Baharak Yousefi is already planning to leave the meeting she reluctantly agreed to do. I'm excited that you're here. But wondering if you can begin by just introducing yourself a little bit.
Baharak Yousefi 0:51
Thanks for having me, Am. I'm Baharak Yousefi. I'm a librarian, I'm reader, a fan, a consumer of culture, and not so much a talker and a producer.
Am Johal 1:05
So can you... you're a librarian now, but can you talk a little bit about how you started, yourself, going into libraries--what drew you in, your love of libraries and what they are.
Baharak Yousefi 1:19
I was a bookseller for many, many years before going to library school. And I was just really looking for something that paid me a living wage. And libraries seemed to be doing that. And I like books, and I like people. And that seemed like a good way to go. I mean, like, I'm a first generation high school student, nevermind, like a first generation university student. And while my parents cared a lot that I go to university, I didn't like, grow up in libraries, I--we didn't have a home library or anything like that. I mean, I suppose to be fair to my parents, it's not a priority when like you're living through a revolution and a war and you're trying to, like, smuggle your kids out of the country. But it wasn't it just wasn't part of my growing up. And I have brought this up with my dad. And he just always says "Shut up, I saved your life," which is, which is totally fair. But anyway, yeah. So it wasn't part of my growing up. But I've always had a big crush on libraries. And I still do so... yeah, so I went into librarianship.
Am Johal 2:28
And you also have a kind of a critical take on libraries as well. And where does that come from? Where, you know, having been on the inside loving libraries, working at them as well? Where does your critique of libraries come from?
Baharak Yousefi 2:46
Yeah, I definitely didn't go into libraries to try to pick a fight with them. That was, that was never the intention. But you know, after working in them for a few years, I just started noticing things kind of slowly. Now, I admit, any event that kind of comes to mind--a few years ago, I was at this big library conference in in Portland. And Lawrence Lessig was the closing keynote speaker. And his talk was, he was speaking about Aaron Schwartz and his kind of tragic death. And as you and your listeners know, Aaron Schwartz was a programmer, and activist, and an open access, kind of advocate. In 2011, I believe, he was arrested at the MIT campus for downloading JSTOR--which is a database--JSTOR's kind of entire catalog and setting it free. And they charged him, MIT and the US government charged him, with breaking and entering, and fraud, and a bunch of other things. And this would have meant kind of, decades in jail, probably, for him, and huge fines and... And in 20... a couple of years later, 2013 I believe it was, he... he hanged himself. So, this was the topic that Lawrence Lessig was talking about at this huge library conference. And I'm sitting there thinking, the very people that he's talking about, that essentially are the reason why this happened to Swartz, are, like, sponsoring this conference. Like they're, you know, like, the cocktail hour's sponsored by one of these publishers, and completely opposed to the message that this keynote is giving which is like, "Let's not make knowledge into profit-making. And of course, these publishers are worth billions and they're like actively lobbying against open access in government and other places, but... And so I was just kind of thinking that there's these parallel things going on--like you say, I'm working in libraries, I'm loving libraries. But at the same time, I'm like, slowly learning about kind of what we're complicit in. And I think that's kind of where I started thinking about, about libraries more critically and doing some of that work.
Am Johal 5:16
Now, there is something called the critical library movement. And what does that refer to?
Baharak Yousefi 5:25
The critical library movement, there's a couple of versions of that answer. And one version is that it started as a hashtag, which is hashtag #CritLib. And my friend and colleague Emily Dubinsky, who's in New York, I really like her definition of it, she says, "Critical librarianship knows that the world could be different." And what that basically means... that it's a group of library workers that have kind of committed ourselves to looking at and questioning and interrogating kind of the structures that produce a bunch of people as librarians, and produce a bunch of spaces as libraries, right? Like, none of it is inevitable. There's, like, lots of social and political and kind of economic processes and power that goes into it. But then, in libraries, there's this kind of assumption of inevitability, like there's this assumption that "That's just how things are and that that's how things have been." And so, this group is trying to challenge some of that. Yeah, and then, and, of course, there's more to it as well, like, there's a historical context to the movement, when I say sort of as a hashtag, I don't mean to say no one was doing this work before Twitter, or someone put this on there. Some of the background is that... kind of the terminal degree, I guess, for librarianship is a Master of Library and Information Studies. It's called different things in different places. But that's essentially the degree that gets you into being a librarian. And this--and you have to have an undergrad degree to get into it. And you can have an undergrad degree in, in whatever field. So the time that people spend together, being educated in the field is fairly brief. It's just a couple of years. And very generally speaking, I don't, I'm generalizing for sure, and there's definitely cases where this is not the case--but there is not a whole lot of like historical or critical education that goes on in these library schools, which of course, has like a couple of... there's an impact on that, right? Like, there is the impact of people like me taking forever to figure out something's actually not quite right here. And the other impact, which I think is really kind of tragic, is that, again, people like me, and movements, have to start over again, because we're not told that this is--there's like a long legacy of like, "It was called radical librarianship before; it was called this other kind of thing." And I mean, of course, there're smart people that figure this out for themselves, but it's not part of kind of the formal education.
Am Johal 8:17
Yeah. When I think about libraries--and really, there is a long history of at least attempts at radical accessibility. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it falls short, but libraries have become kind of like community centres and other places of social services, in that people can access bathrooms, they can access the internet, they can access other places where there may be barriers in place. And so, this is also drawn a lot on what does a library today need to be doing to fulfill its mission and... Wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you see, how libraries perform that more social function of just being a place where people can hang out and be in the world. And there's that sort of--Jean Renoir, the French filmmaker, had this quote, and I'm paraphrasing badly here, but something about... "All great societies are based on loitering." And libraries are still a place where one can loiter, and there's something really good about that, because so much of society is built on not being able to do that and just hang out... one of the busiest libraries in the city's the Carnegie Community Centre. The library there is, is packed, like all the time, every day, all the time. And, but I'm just wondering, whether it be university libraries or civic libraries, what kind of trends you see in terms of how people are attempting to reimagine these places as a welcoming space for people in the community to be coming to. And what are kind of additional services that a library needs to provide today in order to be to be relevant?
Baharak Yousefi 10:03
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, that what you're describing about Carnegie and about the opportunity to loiter, and hang out and not have to buy something, and... All of that is, is really the best thing about libraries, right? It's what it's what attracts so many of us to the field. So that's happening, that--what you're describing is absolutely happening, right? Like, the washrooms at VPL are well-used by folks that you know, need to get in there in the morning, and, and I love the kind of the outside area of the central branch of Vancouver Public Library, I used to work at that library, and it would go up every morning at opening time, because there'd be this huge number of people, waiting to get in. I mean, libraries are well-used. There's no question about that. But at this--and there's lots of people doing really great work and hard work to try to make sure that continues to be the case, and providing better and more services to folks. And, and that's great--at the same time that that's happening, there's also no sleeping policies in some VPLS branches. There's also kind of airport style security gates going up in Winnipeg. There's also, you know, a protest outside of Toronto Public Library, just this past year, kind of protesting the transphobia that was being platformed there. So, both things are happening, and I think it's just really important for people in the field to be mindful of that, and to acknowledge that. I mean, kind of going back again, to the history of libraries that I was talking about... I mean, it's important to know that public libraries in the US were originated, because there were elites that saw this, like, urgent need for... to like, assimilate and control like immigrant populations in Boston and in New York, like, that's why must the Boston Public Library was established. And so there's this social control agenda that's always been part of this profession and part of librarianship. So like, we're in the business of--historically, we've been in the business of like, educating, like, as in control, not educating as in liberating. And so, while there is good work being done, I there is a need also to kind of deal with that past and look at the ways in which it's kind of coming into our work now.
Am Johal 12:47
You know, you take a look at current social issues, anti-racism movements, libraries tend to be involved in in various ways: the site where things happen, public conversations, and now our libraries situated in terms of contemporary anti-racism conversation.
Baharak Yousefi 13:08
There has been, as with I think, other institutions, like some of our parent institutions, universities, and in terms of public libraries, in terms of cities, there has been a lot of work being done in this area. But I think there's been also a lot of focus on personal reform, or individual reform. And that kind of what that looks like is anti-bias training or you know, anti-racism workshops, and book lists that like... librarians love making [laughs] We love making book lists, right? So it's like, "Here's a list of all the books that you can read, to learn more about, you know, the history of racism in Canada," for example, and reading groups and that kind of stuff. And this is all like, this is all good, well and good, right? But they, but at the end of the day, in libraries, the balance of power has remained the same. Like we haven't actually... we're not accomplishing anything. We know that personal reform is an entirely inadequate response to structural violence, right? Like, we know this. And if we are actually serious about EDI or whatever we're calling it, we have to be... we have to get serious about redistributing power, we have to be serious about collegial governance, we have to be serious about who gets to make decisions, you know, like where is power centralized? And also about material things, like money and benefits and who has, who's a precarious worker, who has ongoing positions and... and I think, in a way I'm almost sometimes seeing the other side of that, like, were you sometimes EDI and diversity and this kind commitment is being used to undermine labour gains, which is really concerning to me to look at, like, I've seen things like particular qualifications, or seniority, or different things that kind of, unions have fought for are being used as impediments to equity and diversity, which is, of course, not true. But that's, that's an issue that's happening, that I see all around. So I think we just need to be really thinking about this holistically, and intersectionally. And think about all the different ways in which... we don't want to lose the gains we've had in labour. We can have both!
Am Johal 15:41
Now, you're doing your your PhD in geography as well, related to trauma-informed librarianship.
Baharak Yousefi 15:49
Yeah, I'm... I'm not doing it on trauma informed librarianship anymore.
Am Johal 15:55
Last time I spoke to you, you were, so it's a great to see you moving on. I shouldn't have even said anything. So what are you studying?
Baharak Yousefi 16:02
Yeah, no, it's brand new. Just to say something about trauma informed librarianship quickly, I think... I think it's a really interesting field, and I think there's a lot to learn there and do there. But mainly what concerned me was, as I was reading and starting to think about things, I was... at the same time is when the events that I mentioned at Toronto Public Library with the platforming of transphobic speakers, and all of that was happening, and the workers at Toronto Public, were kind of coming out, speaking against what their institution is causing, which is trauma to a whole large part of our communities. And they were fighting against that, but they were being met with this kind of wall of power, that was citing things like intellectual freedom, to shut down, kind of, them speaking up against management, if you will. And so as I was thinking about some of the, kind of the aspects of trauma informed librarianship, I was thinking, well, these are frontline workers that are already dealing, you know, with the powers that are running the library, and I'm kind of putting this emphasis on these individual people, again, kind of in a way that I was talking about EDI stuff, as opposed to looking at the structures of power that are really what the problem is. It's not yet... Do you know what I mean? Like not that both can't happen, but I kind of personally shifted focus and was more interested in looking at things on... at the institutional level. So that's what happened with that. What I'm just beginning to think about right now is I'm really interested in... There's groups of folks out there, library workers who may or may not also have day jobs in libraries, who are creating communities and grassroot organizations that are doing a lot of great work outside of the institutional walls, the official walls of libraries and library associations. Shannon Mattern, who's at the New School in New York has called some of these libraries, I'm using her phrase, "fugitive libraries," and others have called them other things. And I'm interested in kind of that... I'm interested in that whole thing. I'm just really inspired by this refusal to engage with institution, but also put a lot of thoughtful work into how best to serve communities that folks are seeing as not being served by the traditional spaces and the traditional services. Yeah, so that's kind of where my head is at with that.
Am Johal 18:59
For years you used to produce One Book, One SFU. I've seen you talk with, or bring Tegan and Sara to SFU. But also, I think Maggie Nelson came, but wondering if you can talk a little bit about some of the kind of public work that you did with SFU through your work there.
Baharak Yousefi 19:20
Yeah, so like I said, I'm a reader and a fan. I just love producing things and thinking behind... I'm much more of a behind the scenes like, you know, making things up. As a bookseller, I was really... I did events in bookstores, and there's just a love of kind of bringing these conversations together for me, personally, and it's something that I'm really realizing right now with being online all the time, and being on Zoom, and there's just the amount of great material that's on Zoom everyday! Like I would have flown... You know, like I've seen Arundhati Roy talk like 10 times in the last 10 weeks. And it's just, it blows my mind. But I love being together with people in a room, you know? And I miss that. And I get that some of what's happening now is also really exciting in terms of accessibility and what it's allowing people to do. But I've, there's something that, kind of an emotional learning that happens for me when there's, when I'm in a room listening to great people, talk to other great people, and talk about their work that I've really enjoyed, so... Yeah, so I've just really enjoyed the opportunity to make some of that happen, as it were, to use kind of my little platform in the library to bring people together.
Am Johal 20:46
Now, I've been following your Twitter feed for a while, which I find incredibly crazy. But you were doing quite a few posts around #WestEndFonts. And how did you get caught up in this zone? Because I found it, I found it fantastic.
Baharak Yousefi 21:03
Thanks, Am! I noticed you like my cocktail tweets, though, the most, I've noticed this about you. Honestly, I just... I don't have anything profound to say about this other than I, I love the West End. I'm like, just deeply, deeply in love with it. It's like, possibly one of my favorite places on Earth, like there is just no... I mean, think about it, what an--in all the cities, great cities in the world, a neighborhood like that is quite rare, where you're like, right in the middle of nature, but also right in the middle of the city, if that makes sense? I've just, I've lived there for over two decades and walk. And I just, it's, I have no hobbies other than wandering around. So I just wander around the neighborhood. And there's just some really good design, right? Like from the 60s and the 70s. And I've just really enjoyed looking at them, so I just started taking photos and was like, "I'll make up a hashtag. You know, everyone else does." So that's... so then that's just how I just like made up #WestEndFonts. And then the most, the best part of it has been when other people will post a photo and use it as well. Or there's sometimes it's like East Van, West Van kind of competition that happens, which I also really enjoy. So yeah, and... and I just really like Twitter, like I love the engagement on there. And if that's like, it brings a little bit of like levity to otherwise horrible situation, then why not?
Am Johal 22:41
What's next on your dissertation? Where are you at on it right now?
Baharak Yousefi 22:45
I've defended my exams, and I'm supposed to have had a proposal to Eugene McCann, who was my advisor a while ago, but [laughs] that's where I'm at. But yeah, hopefully soon I'll get to a proposal stage, and then after that, research and writing. I just... I mean, the PhD just hasn't really given. I wanted to do it because it gave me an official reason to like pay really close attention to what's going on in libraries, if that makes sense? Like, I have to officially read people like Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and I'm bringing people like Arundhati Roy into the work, and I'm not so much interested in like, creating new knowledge, which I know is what PhD students are supposed to be interested in doing. But mostly, I'm just interested in like, bringing these thinkers into a world where they haven't been before, or have not been as much as they should be and kind of thinking about things. Because it's all related: libraries are just a part of society, it's not like it's a different thing. So that's really what I'm most excited about the PhD work is a reason to reread those folks and bring them into this work for whoever might be interested in it.
Am Johal 24:06
Well, good luck on all your work, and hey, it'd be lovely to bring you back to Below the Radar after you're done your dissertation to talk more about it. Thank you so much for joining us, Baharak Yousefi!
Baharak Yousefi 24:19
I can't wait can't wait to come back. [laughs] Thanks, Am.
Paige Smith 24:28
Thanks for tuning in to hear from our guest and colleague Baharak Yousefi. Head to the shownotes for links to some of the people and events discussed in this interview and to follow along with the hashtag West End fonts. We'll see you next time on Below the Radar.