Inclusion: a personal revelation about why I'm a librarian

I've been hearing a lot about inclusion lately; the recent UXLibs IV conference in Sheffield has meant it's been a constant feature in my Twitter feed for a week and it's made me more attuned to it. I see it in the anniversary of Grenfell Tower, with the emphasis on community. I see it in many articles about the football World Cup in Russia due to the country's attitude towards LGBTQ people. Obviously, I see it in MeToo and TimesUp. I see it in much of the commentary about a certain president across the water from us. I was woken up to it close to home by the EU referendum, or more aptly the opposite of inclusion: exclusion. However as a middle class white female living in a developed country with free healthcare and education, I thought that I'm in a privileged position. But I haven't always been. It was in reading Christian's blog post of his UXLibs IV keynote, that I realised I haven't always been so privileged, that I have felt exclusion. For a long time in my life I was excluded and it has affected me ever since, in ways I'm just beginning to discover. It has lead me to search for groups, people and institutions that provide that sense of inclusion and community, for better or worse. I have a strong sense of loyalty to people and place. And it's why, even when I have been included, that I haven't felt the full force of that inclusion no matter how welcoming it is, because of the exclusion I felt at an impressionable time in my life. I work in a great library, among great people, in a great School for a great institution in a great city. I've probably been here longer than I should have been because I feel so included here. It was in reading this particular paragraph of Christian's that it hit me:

"I find the concept of belonging very important and very closely related to inclusion. I see belongingness as a fundamental emotional need for human beings to be an accepted member of a group: Could be a family, co-workers, religion, a football team or the UXlibs community. If you tell me you don’t need to belong I say you either a psychopath or a liar. We have a desire to belong and be a significant part of something that is greater than ourselves."
https://christianlauersen.net/2018/06/07/inclusion-and-belonging-in-libraries-and-beyond/

Exclusion and inclusion

One of my key drivers is to include others, to put others before myself and it's why being a librarian is an ideal job for me: libraries are open places, the best librarians are inclusive people and the library community is special to be part of because of their inclusivity.

That's the problem with the librarian stereotype; it's all about exclusion with the shhhing, the rules and the stern woman in a cardigan and haired pulled back into a bun. Librarians are usually the complete opposite; we try to be inclusive as we can get away with and UXLibs IV was designed to help us do that.

Libraries feel like safe places to me: havens and sanctuaries. I can relax in a library, feel at home and importantly be part of something, among my people! It happens when I walk into any library, an immediate sigh of relief. I should have thought about becoming a librarian sooner!

Alone in a library

WARNING: you might want to stop reading here as things get a bit personal from hereon in.

Here's a little history to explain. At primary school, a wonderful school; it wasn't their fault, they did all they could, all any school can; at the age of 10, I experienced my first sustained bullying. Up until then, I had a best friend and various groups of friends I hung around with. I went to their birthday parties and I was part of several groups, even the cool kids. I was basically included everywhere, apart from the boys of course! Afterwards, I only really had my best friend and this intense attachment broke our friendship up, but gradually over many years. I don't blame the others, it's the way schools are; one person gets singled out for being different; for me it was my glasses, intelligence and awkwardness; the others join in. I thought I had got away lightly as it was nothing particularly terrible as it was only really name calling and nothing physical. But thinking back, I should have realised it was the exclusion that was the worst thing; it's the worst thing about any bullying: the alienation, the loneliness and watching the world from the sidelines.

The grip of belonging

So where the bully lead, pretty much everyone else followed. They didn't bully me, they just excluded me, stopped inviting me to things, hanging around with me and finally, talking to me, apart from taking advantage of my intelligence to help with schoolwork, which I gladly gave them because at least they were paying attention to me! I was persona non grata. I was invisible. When my parents found out and alerted the school, things got a little better. But the damage to my relationships, forget friendships, with my classmates was irrevocable and they were never the same since. When we started secondary school, I hoped things would change, but they didn't, even with the bully in the other half of the school, so no chance of any classes with them; everyone had moved on.

That was the thing, the bully was one of my closest friends. I had recently gone to a sleepover round their house and not a group sleepover either. Then suddenly they turned on me. So it wasn't just the exclusion that was the problem, it was the withdrawal of inclusion. So for the rest of my life, throughout my friendships, professional relationships, let alone personal ones, I have always been on tenterhooks, not getting too close for fear of the future exclusion.

Standing out

It was only a year until secondary school, so I handled it by retreating to the library, the one place the bully wouldn't go and therefore find me. It's why libraries are the one place, apart from home and churches, where "my soul can rest".

I tried to move on, but I still saw the bully in the halls who'd take any chance they could to pick on me. When others saw, they caught on and it allowed various others to bully me. It was tacit permission to bully. I didn't help matters; my shyness, introversion and passivity stopped me from sticking up for myself. Friends I made came and went, often literally moving away, which didn't help my sense of abandonment. It wasn't until I was 16 that things got better, when I did my A-levels; I found a new group of friends, potential boyfriend and finally an identity of my own rather than just following what everyone else was doing in a desperate bid to belong, but then the anxiety and panic attacks hit.

Now I'm in the best place with my anxiety, realising the reasons behind my desire to be inclusive and actually using my intense aversion to exclusion for good and in my professional life, that can only be progress. My need to belong though, that is something I'm going to be working on for the rest of my life.

A writing or writer's holiday

They say never go back. Nothing is ever as good as we remember. Sometimes they're right. I went to Scotland last year, to a hotel we went to years and years ago and had always wanted to return to and it wasn't the same. Mostly, because there were fewer red squirrels because they had cut down a lot of the trees. I also went back to the Lake of Menteith and Inchmahome Priory a few years ago and it was nowhere near as magical as the first time. But that place had grown to near mythic-like status in my mind, so much so, I constantly wear a ring on my left hand I bought there to remind me of the place and it helps me when I'm anxious; it centres me, grounds me and brings me serenity, taking me back to the first time I went there and luckily the second time hasn't marred the memory of bright sunshine after a rainy morning; the clouds literally parted as we got there; having the island almost to ourselves and the instant peace I felt as soon as I stepped off the boat and onto the island. I never take the ring off, even when I'm having a panic attack and all my jewellery and some clothes have to come off as it all feels constricting, that ring always stays on.

The Lake of Menteith and Inchmahome, so serene

However I'm returning to an area of the world I haven't been to for almost 20 years: Carmarthernshire. I went to Aberystwyth, Machynlleth and Ceredigion as recently as five years ago; Aberystwyth is where I did my library degree; but not further south. I love those three place names, spelling them, without help I might add, and mentally sounding them out. We had a favourite resort we stayed in many times near Laugharne, the home of the poet Dylan Thomas. We're not staying there as that would be a nostalgic step too far, but we will go back to Laugharne. I hope it lives up to the treasured memories. The last time we were there, I didn't have a digital camera, a mobile phone or any technology really other than a Tamagotchi! I'm hoping it will help clear my mind, shake off this fug and blow away this mental fog.

Laugharne beach

Basically I'm hoping this Easter holiday is going to force out this writer's block. Yes, I'm finally admitting I have writer's block. For me, that phrase makes me think about a lack of ideas, fear of the blank page and procrastination. However writer's block is at heart about a loss of confidence, fear of not being good enough and, okay, procrastination. Anyway, I've written about writer's block before and far more eloquently.

Mental veil

It feels like there's a veil between me and the world right now, where I'm existing, not living. I'm not experiencing anything other than on a shallow level, not making enough ties, bonds or relationships. Nothing is reaching me, tugging at my heart, funny bone or tear ducts. Apart from watching Harry Hill and Martin Kemp on Bake Off which did all three. Is it worrying that people I will never meet incite reactions far beyond those from the people I love and care about? It's difficult to explain, but I've felt this way many times during my life, sometimes so much I convince myself I'm an automaton, sometimes its only momentary. But this mental weather has set in. So, onward to Wales and forging deeper connections.

Tied to the 90’s

Harpagornis ~away~

A young library assistant (well she’s the youngest in the department) was walking around in her own little world, not seeing the reality of her profession, not particularly knowing where she was going and not really that bothered about it to be perfectly honest. That is until she found a wise group of Cambridge librarians who led her down a new path, one that led to enlightenment as to the ways of the world, one that opened up new possibilities and one where she was not alone in her journey. It made her realise that appearances, age and even gender can be misleading. She may have been at the right age to latch onto all the new technology as it came in: CD’s, the internet, DVD’s, mp3’s, chip and pin, digital radio and HDTV, but it doesn’t mean that she welcomed it. She misses the old Commodore 64, rewinding VHS tapes, recording the Sunday chart show onto cassette (timing it just right so she misses the waffle but not the start of the song), CD players where you can only listen to one album at a time and TV’s with dials instead of controllers (she even remembers a black and white TV). She was the last one to get a mobile in her group of friends, vowing to only use it in emergencies (we all know how that one ends), and she still hasn’t bought a new one, she was the last one on facebook and Twitter and the last to discover the joys of eBay and Amazon. jurvetson

This is a cautionary tale about someone who got complacent, who stopped exploring because they felt they knew all they needed to know and who, in doing so, became naive, stubborn and buried their head in the shifting sands of technology. In this age where we’re all literally connected, supposedly sociable over online networks and where we can speak to and see anyone, anywhere and at any time using webcams, she felt the growing dissension, realising that talking to people over the internet, whether it be posting on peoples’ walls on facebook, Twittering to the ether or via online forums, isn’t any substitute for face-to-face contact. She misses not being able to contact someone and having to live with that uncertainty, she misses answering the phone without knowing who it is and she even misses using phone boxes. Mostly, she misses trust. The internet has made everyone paranoid about privacy, we can check up on people whenever we like as we all have mobile phones, facebook pages and email addresses and everyone is going overboard (pun intended) about the piracy of music, TV and films.

Despite this new path, this cynicism about technology has remained; her overactive imagination has painted a dark picture of a dystopian future where gadgets, the web and robots have taken over everything. The fact that she cannot remember how she survived without computers, the internet and mobile phones only makes it worse. Whatever anyone thinks, she is old enough to remember that time. Nevertheless, that has now been tempered by her following in the wake of that wise group of librarians. She may have at least heard of if not used most of the things she discovered while on her Cam23 journey, but she had never realised their potential before. She has experienced how having a page where she can see lots of websites at once can prevent procrastination. She is enjoying sending and reading the twittering in the ether. She has started to see the benefits of having access to a whole library of beautiful images at your fingertips (it appeals to her sense of beauty, love of humanity’s quirks and her hoarding instinct). The best thing about this path? The journey hasn’t finished yet and it never will.

Tom Rydquist