Career Patterns of Women Librarians Who Were Early Adopters of the Internet Sharyn Johnson Ladner

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2004 Career Patterns of Women Librarians Who Were Early Adopters of the Internet Sharyn Johnson Ladner

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES

CAREER PATTERNS OF WOMEN LIBRARIANS

WHO WERE EARLY ADOPTERS OF THE INTERNET

SHARYN JOHNSON LADNER

A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2004

The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Sharyn Johnson Ladner defended on March 26, 2004.

Jane B. Robbins Professor Directing Dissertation

Patricia Yancey Martin Outside Committee Member

Kathleen Burnett Committee Member

Eliza Dresang Committee Member

Approved:

Jane B. Robbins, Dean, School of Information Studies

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

This work is dedicated with love and appreciation to my husband

Robert A. Ladner, Jr.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks and gratitude are extended to the following persons for their support and help in this journey into the life of the mind that began on the first day of my first doctoral seminar at the Florida State University in the fall of 1997: To my major professor Jane B. Robbins, whose encouragement, provocative questioning, and gentle nudging guided me from doctoral student to candidate to newly minted Ph.D. To Kathleen Burnett, Eliza Dresang, and Patricia Yancey Martin— the other members of my dissertation committee—who provided guidance at the various stages of the dissertation research process: Kathy, for technical assistance in the construction and implementation of web-based data collection instruments; Pat, for guidance in the literature of gender, work, and organizations; Eliza, for fitting into her busy schedule one more doctoral candidate whose research interests meshed with her own; and to Elfreda Chatman, who left us all too soon. To mentors outside the FSU community without whose encouragement this project might not have been finished: Joanne Marshall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, whose research in the practice of special librarianship has served as an exemplar for my work; Roberta Brody, Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, whose insights into the challenges facing corporate and business librarians broadened my perspective; and Joan Alway, whose graduate seminar in feminist theory at the University of Miami provided me with a deeper understanding of gender and feminist epistemologies.

To the School of Information Studies Web Team, led by Anthony Chow, for their assistance in converting my data collection instruments into interactive web- based formats, and to the Office of Graduate Studies for a Doctoral Research Grant in spring 2001 for funding this conversion work. To friends and colleagues at FSU who provided encouragement, understanding, and laughter along the way: especially Marie Landry, Laurie Bonnici, Ruth Sawyer Woo, Cynthia Barrancotto, and (posthumously) Barbara Clark. To three successive University Librarians at the University of Miami who supported my desire to engage in doctoral work while continuing my employment as a member of the Otto G. Richter Library faculty: Frank Rodgers, who granted me a sabbatical leave in 1997-1998 to pursue my studies at FSU; Don Bosseau, for granting me a research leave in the summer of 2001 and a nine-month contract in 2002-2003 to conduct the research and to write; and Bill Walker, my current boss, for his encouragement and support as I completed the writing. To Hope Tillman, friend and collaborator in our study of special librarians’ use of the Internet; and Trudy Katz and Judith Siess, who took time out of their busy special-librarian schedules to critique the first drafts of my research interview guide and work history questionnaire—your comments and contributions have been invaluable. To my family—my husband Bob to whom this work is dedicated, my daughter Katy, and my son Adrian (and his new wife Analia)—without whose love, encouragement and understanding this quest could not have been realized. Finally, this research would not have been possible were it not for the 26 women who shared their career stories and experiences with me. I am grateful for your willingness to share your thoughts and feelings about your work, your profession, and your life. In so doing you have not only contributed to the LIS knowledge base but have also contributed to my own understanding of my career as a librarian-educated information professional. Your participation in this research project has enriched my life, and I thank you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... x Abstract...... xii

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Overview...... 1 Background and Problem Statement...... 2 Marginalization of Librarianship as an Information Profession Marginalization of Librarianship as a Feminized Profession Undervaluation of Special Librarianship Purpose of Study...... 9 Theoretical Frameworks ...... 10 Abbott’s System of Professions: A Jurisdictional Conflict Model Acker’s Theory of Gendered Organizations Focus on Women Special Librarians ...... 19 Research Questions...... 25 Delimitations and Definitions...... 27 Delimitations Definitions Significance of the Study...... 31 Organization of the Dissertation ...... 34

2. RATIONALE AND METHODOLOGY...... 36 Introduction and Rationale...... 36 Feminist Methodology...... 38 Juxtaposition of Narrative and Thematic Approaches ...... 39 Narrative Analysis Thematic Analysis Data Collection ...... 42 Participant Selection Participant Recruitment and Response Phase 1 Data Collection Phase 2 Data Collection: Web-Based Discussion Forum Pilot Studies

Data Description, Analysis, and Interpretation...... 59 Data Preparation and Processing Using NVivo Qualitative Software Transforming Qualitative Data Trustworthiness...... 64 Researcher as Instrument ...... 66 Assumptions Voice The Researcher in Context Summary...... 71

3. RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS IN SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT ...... 73 Introduction...... 73 Demographic Characteristics...... 76 Educational History ...... 78 Work History ...... 80 Industry Areas and Information Work Work History Trends, 1991 – 2001 Organizational Size and Library Management Structure Participant Salaries and Comparative Industry Data Internet Adoption and Use...... 90 Summary...... 91

4. CAREERS IN THE CONTEXT OF PROGRESSION, COMPETITION, AND MEMBERSHIP IN A FEMINIZED PROFESSION...... 94 Introduction...... 94 Research Question 1: What Are the Career Patterns of High-Tech Women Special Librarians?...... 95 Five Career Modalities Family-First Modality “Found-My-Spot” Modality Manager Modality Multiple-Positions Modality Undervalued Modality Conceptual Issues Regarding Career Patterns Research Question 1(a): Given Competition from Other Information Professions, How Has Their Membership in a Feminized Profession Affected Their Career Progression?...... 112 Issue 1: What is Career Progression? Issue 2: Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions

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Issue 3: How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression Research Question 1(a) Summary Research Question 1(b): How Have Structural Organizational Features Affected Participants’ Career Progression? ...... 142 Organizational Factors Gender Relations Research Question 1(b) Summary Summary and Discussion...... 166

5. PERCEPTIONS OF UNDERVALUATION OF LIBRARIANSHIP IN THE INFORMATION-AGE WORKPLACE ...... 171 Introduction...... 171 Definitions and Analysis...... 173 Focus on Undervalued-Modality Participants ...... 174 Experiences of Undervaluation Organizational Environment Summary and Discussion...... 193

6. PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES ...... 196 Introduction...... 196 Definitions and Analysis...... 197 Work and Professional Identity ...... 198 Still a Librarian Information Professional Both Librarian and Information Professional Career Modality and Professional Identity ...... 209 Age and Years in Information Work ...... 211 Summary and Discussion...... 213

7. FOUR CAREER NARRATIVES...... 216 Introduction...... 216 Louise Mayfield: Family-First Modality ...... 219 Louise’s Story Reflections on Louise’s Story Janet Logan: Found-My-Spot Modality...... 232 Janet’s Story Reflections on Janet’s Story Linda Jacobs: Manager Modality...... 245 Linda’s Story Reflections on Linda’s Story

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Marty Roberts: Multiple-Positions Modality...... 260 Marty’s Story Reflections on Marty’s Story Summary and Discussion...... 275

8. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS...... 278 Introduction...... 278 Summary of Findings...... 278 Modes of Professional Practice Career Progression Jurisdictional Conflict and Competition Undervaluation as Librarians Professional Identity Themes Theoretical Implications ...... 288 Interpreting the Findings Through the Lens of Abbott Interpreting the Findings Through the Lens of Acker Methodological Issues ...... 301 Using Abbott for Contemporary Analysis Juxtaposition of Thematic and Narrative Analyses Connecting the Individual to the Organizational Lack of Private Sphere Data Singular Perspective Future Research ...... 304 Concluding Remarks...... 307

APPENDIX A...... 310

APPENDIX B ...... 315

APPENDIX C ...... 325

APPENDIX D...... 332

APPENDIX E ...... 339

APPENDIX F...... 345

APPENDIX G...... 350

REFERENCES ...... 360

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 379

LIST OF TABLES

2.1 Participant response patterns...... 47

2.2 Relationship of interview guide questions to research questions...... 52

3.1 Participants by birth cohort, year of MLS degree, and age at time of degree....75

3.2 Participant demographics, 2001 ...... 77

3.3 Participants’ educational history...... 78

3.3 Industries where participants worked during their careers...... 81

3.5 Information work done during career...... 82

3.6 Participants’ work history, 1991 – 2001 ...... 84

3.7 Size and number of U.S. special libraries, 1990 – 2001 ...... 85

3.8 Organizational size and library customer base and size, 2001...... 87

3.9 Participants’ salaries and comparison with industry surveys...... 89

3.10 Participants’ Internet use...... 91

4.1 Career pattern modalities ...... 97

4.2 Identification as a librarian in the workplace ...... 134

4.3 Identification as a librarian in the workplace by career modality ...... 140

4.4 Library size and management structure by career modality, 2001 ...... 148

6.1 Participants’ professional identity...... 199

6.2 Professional identity by career modality...... 209

6.3 Professional identity by years in information work ...... 211

6.4 Professional identity by age cohort ...... 212

7.1 Louise Mayfield’s work history ...... 220

7.2 Janet Logan’s work history ...... 233

7.3 Linda Jacobs’ work history ...... 246

7.4 Marty Roberts’ work history...... 261

ABSTRACT

Librarians have not generally been viewed as valuable contributors in the information-age workplace, yet librarians have the professional training to organize and manage information in a variety of contexts and forms, a critical concern in the 21st century. How do we account for the marginalization of librarianship in today’s information-driven world? Why are librarians seen as peripheral to our information- based economy? This research considers the problem by looking at career progression, undervaluation of librarianship within the context of other information professions, and professional identity of 20 women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet working in corporations and other organizational environments in which the library is not institutionalized. The research focuses on issues of expertise and gender by exploring how women with technological expertise (a male-identified skill) in a female-identified profession (librarianship) make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace (a gendered realm). The study is positioned within the conceptual framework of Andrew Abbott’s jurisdictional conflict model and interpreted from a feminist critical perspective using Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations. Research participants were selected from a group of special librarians who were part of a study of Internet use in the early 1990s. Data were obtained through telephone interviews and web-based questionnaires. Narrative and thematic approaches were used to analyze and interpret the findings.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Overview

This study describes, through analysis of in-depth interviews, the career patterns of women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet and who worked in corporations, not-for-profit organizations or public agencies in the early 1990s, and explores how these librarians make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace. The study is framed within two theoretical perspectives. First, Andrew Abbott’s (1988) theory of an interacting system of professions competing for control of tasks in a work jurisdiction provides a contextual framework for inquiry. Second, Joan Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations broadens the context for inquiry by foregrounding gender in the interpretation of these women librarian’s experiences in the information task area. Although these two theoretical approaches represent different epistemological views, in this study they are used as complementary frameworks for interpretation. This research focuses on women librarians with high-tech information management skills who work in corporations and other organizations in which the library is not institutionalized. Traditionally referred to as special librarians, these information professionals provide “focused information to a defined group of users on an ongoing basis to further the mission and goals of the organizations in which they are employed” (Porter et al., 1997, p. 2). Special librarians work in a variety of organizational types, including corporations, not-for-profit organizations and public

agencies. They may or may not work in a unit or manage a department with the word library in its name.1 The participants in this study operate simultaneously at the intersection of several social and professional domains: they are women; they are librarians; they are professionals; they work in the information domain; they were early adopters of the Internet; and most of them practice their profession in organizational environments in which the library is not a social institution. What do they tell us as women information professionals working in what Abbott calls the “contested information domain”? What do their experiences tell us about factors affecting the value placed on the work of librarian-educated information professionals in information-age organizations? What are their insights on the changes taking place in the profession of librarianship today to prepare for its future tomorrow? These are some of the questions addressed in this exploratory study of the work lives of these librarian- educated information professionals, filtered through the lens of gender.

Background and Problem Statement

Librarians are generally not considered to be serious contributors in the information-age workplace, yet librarians have the professional training to organize and manage information in a variety of contexts and forms, a critical concern in today’s information economy. Librarians, write Crawford and Gorman (1995, p. 77) “are routinely castigated for being technologically retrograde” even though they have been using computers to provide “solutions to incredibly complex problems since the early 1960s.” There are professionals in this country who have developed very effective means of bringing huge quantities of records of information and knowledge under control and making their retrieval possible. . . .

1 The use of the word special denotes library-based information services “specialized and geared to the interests of the organization and to the information needs of its personnel” (Mobley & Ferguson, 1984, p. 4, as quoted in St. Clair, 1987, p. 264). Special librarians are sometimes referred to as specialized librarians (see St. Clair, 2001).

Unfortunately, that group—professional librarians—tends to be ignored by the computer wizards dreaming of new and wonderful tools. (p. 77)

Marginalization of Librarianship as an Information Profession Librarians have historically been technological innovators, using technology to accomplish work more efficiently, but generally are not seen as innovators in the popular media or by computer scientists and engineers. Libraries in the 1960s and 1970s were seen as reactive, resisting change, burdened by old technologies, and it was up to the scientists and engineers to “meet the needs of the ‘technological society’” (Birdsall, 1994, p. 23).2 With the advent of the information age the library as place and librarianship as a profession has been viewed by many observers as increasingly obsolete (Birdsall, 1994; M. Harris & Hannah, 1993). Yet librarians, particularly those working in industrial and technical libraries, were early adopters of both mechanical and computer-based information technologies, which they used to control the increasing amount of scientific and technical literature being published (see E. D. Johnson, 1965; R. Williams, 1997; Woods, 1972) and to provide improved reference service through the use of online bibliographic databases (see Apostle & Raymond, 1997; Gorman, 2003; Special Libraries Association. State-of-the-Art Institute, 1988). Librarians were also early users of the Internet although this was not widely noted outside the profession (Sowards, 2000). Some had been using the Internet since the 1980s and could be considered pioneers in adopting the technology in the provision of information service.3 Articles on the Internet and libraries, written by

2 See W. Arms, a computer scientist (2000), for a recent expression of this perspective. Librarian Michael Gorman (2003) roundly criticizes this article as being shortsighted, ill-informed and based on faulty assumptions. 3 The earliest users were special librarians working in organizations that were part of the ARPANET in the 1970s (personal communication).

librarians, first appeared in the late 1980s.4 These early articles focused on Internet connectivity as a key to the library of the future (cf. C. Arms, 1990; Kalin & Tennant, 1991; Nielsen, 1990), followed shortly by reports on how librarians were using the Internet (see Denton, 1992; Ladner & Tillman, 1993; Tenopir, 1992; Tillman & Ladner, 1992). Information-related occupational research outside the field of library and information science (LIS) rarely includes librarianship as an information occupation (Abbott’s 1988 analysis of the information professions is a notable exception). The dearth of research on librarianship within the context of the information workplace would tend to support the presumption that librarianship is not recognized as an “information profession” outside its own milieu. One reason for this could be that librarianship is not classified as an information occupation by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Occupational Outlook Handbook, for example, does not include librarians within other information- and computer-related occupations; instead librarians are classified under the category of “Teachers and instructors, counselors and library occupations.” Database administrators, information scientists, Internet developers, web developers, and webmasters, by comparison, are classified under “Computer systems analysis, engineers, and scientists” (U. S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.). Exclusion of librarianship as an information occupation in occupational classifications systems means that studies on computer- and information-related work and occupations that utilize data sets produced by governmental agencies such as the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Education, Census Bureau, and National Science Foundation will not include librarians.

4 The first use of the term Internet appeared in Library Literature in 1988 in an article by Perry, Blumenthal and Hinden (1988) titled “The ARPANET and the DARPA Internet” published in Library Hi Tech.

Marginalization of Librarianship as a Feminized Profession In 2001, the year in which this research was begun, 86% of the librarians employed in the United States were women (U.S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002). Roma Harris (1992) asserts that “the increasing marginalization of librarianship [in the information age] is due to the fact that it is a woman’s profession” (p. xiv). She finds it “curious” that “there seems to be a great reluctance within this profession to acknowledge the significance of gender in its evolution” (p. xiii): Librarianship is undergoing a profound period of change due, in part, to internally generated pressures as well as to shifts in the economy and the impact of technology. It seems to me that the processes shaping the future of this field cannot be fully understood by ignoring the fact that for more than 100 years library work in North America has been women’s work. (p. xiii) In describing her research on food and nutrition work Marjorie DeVault (1999a) acknowledges the tendency to take the women’s professions less seriously by both journalists and feminist scholars: I was interested in taking this field seriously—and that is still my intention. I wish to avoid the dismissive, humorous, or hostile tone that characterizes much writing on the less prestigious professions . . . I believe that the pervasive sexism in societal views of professional work sometimes creeps into feminist writing as well, rendering us too ready to criticize women in the so-called “women’s professions,” and too easily inclined to see them in caricatured ways, simply as carriers and enforcers of dominant ideologies. (p. 140). The main reason why women’s work is undervalued, asserts R. Harris (1992), is because women do it. The primary reason why female-intensive occupations are low-status occupations—their “unique characteristic . . . is that they are, in fact, female” (p. 15).5 Suzanne Hildenbrand (1989) considers the presence of women as a symptom, not the cause, of the low status experienced by female-intensive professions: if women are the cause, then this “promotes the view that women must

5 R. Harris defines female-intensive occupations as those that “although they are numerically dominated by women, they are controlled, to a large extent, by men” (p. 3).

be kept out of occupations in order to protect those occupations from a devaluation” (p. 221). This logic was behind the active recruitment of men into the librarianship after World War II: if more men became librarians, the status of the profession would increase. What happened, however, is that these men moved into administrative and other high status positions within librarianship at the expense of the women (O'Brien, 1983). More recently referred to as the “glass escalator,” this trend continues into the present, as evidenced by Christine Williams’ (1992; 1995) case studies of men in four traditionally female occupations (nursing, elementary school teaching, social work, and librarianship). Using Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations as her conceptual frame, C. Williams (1995) concludes that male power and privilege is preserved and reproduced in these occupations through a complex interplay between gendered expectations embedded in organizations, and the gendered interests workers bring with them to their jobs. Each of these occupations is “still a man’s world” even though mostly women work in them. (p. 4) Support for this perspective also comes from the field of communication, which has undergone a gender switch from male- to female-dominant in the last 20 years. In the 1980s the majority of students enrolled in schools of journalism were women, and women now hold the majority of positions in this field. Pamela Creedon (1989) observes that contrary to expectation, “a female majority in the field does not translate into superior power or influence for women; instead, it has been translated to mean a decline in salaries and status for the field” (p. 17). The negative meaning ascribed to this transition is reflected in news stories about the “velvet ghetto,” a phrase “used to describe the impact of women in public relations,” and “pink-collar ghetto,” used to describe “predominantly female news editorial positions” (p. 17). Creedon uses this example to demonstrate how “media stories about women in this culture . . . have been written under a cloud of assumptions about the fact, the meaning of the facts, and the reality of the facts about gender in general” (pp. 20-21).

Creedon’s insight helps to explain the marginalization of women’s participation in Internet use and development. Up until the mid-1990s, the Internet was generally portrayed in the media as a technology dominated by young males, of little interest to women and people over 40 years of age (Coyle, 1996). Prior to 1995, there were few references even acknowledging women’s presence on the Internet (Sklar, 1997). Once their presence was acknowledged, however, women were not viewed as participants in the development and growth of this new information technology but as consumers, lending support to Dervin’s (1987) observation that “when female experience has been a focus” of research in new technologies, “the viewpoint brought to bear has rarely been female” (p. 108). Articles on women and the Internet in the popular press in the late 1990s incorporated familiar female stereotypes such as fear of technology and love of shopping.

Undervaluation of Special Librarianship For special librarians the undervaluation of librarianship is expressed primarily as the unrecognized value of the expertise that they contribute to the information workplace. Michael Koenig (2000) has examined the undervaluation of librarianship in comparison to other information professions or occupations in the business community: For the last decade and a half the business community has seen what appears to be one fad after another. . . . Those fads . . . constitute one major theme—the importance of information and its skillful use to the success of the modern corporation. Librarianship is about the organization and the use of information. The overlap between librarianship and that skillful use of information by the organization should be obvious, but it isn’t, at least, to the business community. (p. 174) He attributes the lack of recognition of librarianship’s contributions to information management to the business community’s “amazing ability to ignore the importance of information, particularly external information” to organizational productivity (p. 188). The contributions of librarians and libraries, from his

perspective, are undervalued because information, particularly published materials and other information resources generated outside the corporation, is not highly valued. Koenig does not consider gender in his assessment of why librarianship’s contributions are not valued in the business enterprise. Others who have written about the undervaluation of librarianship in the corporate environment likewise ignore gender as a contributing factor. Unlike Koenig who attributes undervaluation to the shortsightedness of the business community, these observers tend to place the blame on librarians for their marginality and lack of visibility in the organizations in which they work. Prusak and colleagues provide several examples of this perspective in their writings on the marginality of corporate librarianship in information-age organizations: they assert that corporate librarians are too oriented toward the old-fashioned “public library” model of service to succeed in a corporate environment (Davenport & Prusak, 1997), or that they pay attention to the acquisition and distribution of information rather than the management of organizational knowledge (Matarazzo & Prusak, 1995), or that they fail to market their services and promote their value to their managements (Davenport & Prusak, 1993). While these individual-level factors may indeed contribute to the increasing marginalization of the corporate library, gender as an organizational construct6 is largely ignored in the literature of LIS. Much of the LIS literature oriented to practitioners echoes this perspective, particularly with regard to the belief that undervaluation is a result of the failure of librarians to market and make visible their contributions and expertise (see, for example, Lettis, 2000; Siess, 2001; Studwell, 2002). The examples in this section, drawn from the literature of special and corporate librarianship (since that is the focus of this study), lend support to R. Harris’ observation that there is reluctance among both LIS scholars and practitioners

6 See Theoretical Frameworks section, below; see also Martin and Collinson (1999) for a review of gender concepts in organizational theory.

to acknowledge the significance of gender in the undervaluation of library work or to make it a focus for inquiry. The impetus for this research comes from the marginalization of librarianship as a feminized information profession concomitant with the reluctance of the LIS community to recognize the importance of gender as a contributing factor in its marginalization. To examine the interplay of gender and the recognition of professional expertise within the information task area, the research explores the career patterns and career progression experiences of women librarians (members of a feminized profession) with technological expertise (a male identified skill) who work in organizational environments in which the library is not institutionalized (non- library organizational environments). It is appropriate to employ a feminist approach to explore factors that may contribute to the undervaluation of librarianship in the information workplace (Creswell, 1998). In this study the ordinary experiences of librarians in the workplace are problematized in an attempt to identify and make visible how they experience the cultural marginalization of the profession and what actions they take as individuals to progress in their careers(DeVault, 1999a; D. Smith, 1987).

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this research is to gain an understanding of how women with technological expertise (a male-identified skill) who are members of a feminized profession (librarianship) make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace (a gendered realm). The research is framed within Abbott’s (1988) jurisdictional conflict model and interpreted from a feminist critical perspective, specifically through the application of Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations.

Theoretical Frameworks

Andrew Abbott’s theory of an interacting system of professions competing for control of tasks in a work jurisdiction provides a conceptual framework for this research. Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations enhances the explanatory power of Abbott’s model. For Acker, organizations are not gender-neutral but masculine: the abstract worker is a man. Abbott’s model of contested professional domains provides the structure for analysis. Yet Abbott’s model is deficient in that it does not consider gender “a fundamental structuring principle” of professional work (Davies, 1992, p. 243) or take into consideration the masculinity of organizational life. Acker’s organizational theory augments Abbott’s model by introducing gender as an integral component of the information domain, the area of professional work under investigation. This gender-augmented model is particularly warranted for research that examines librarianship, a predominantly female profession, in relation to other information professions and occupations—e.g., management information systems, market research, competitive intelligence, Internet or web development, knowledge management, etc.—in the changing information task area. Abbott and Acker’s theoretical approaches are summarized below.

Abbott’s System of Professions: A Jurisdictional Conflict Model Abbott (1988 p. 8) defines professions as “exclusive occupational groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases,” a definition based on theoretical questions that concern both the evolution and interrelations of professions and ways occupational groups control knowledge and skill. According to Abbott “the central organizing reality of professional life is control of tasks” (p. 84). His jurisdictional conflict model is based on the following postulates (p. 112): (1) that the essence of a profession is its work, not its organization; (2) that many variables affect the content and control of that work; and (3) that professions exist in an interrelated system. Change in professions can therefore best be analyzed by specifying forces that affect the content and control of work and by investigating how disturbances in

that content and control propagate through the system of professions and jurisdictions. The proper unit of analysis is the jurisdiction, or more generally, the larger task area. Jurisdictional claims can take place in three arenas: the legal system, public opinion and the workplace. The legal system and public arena control work through more formal mechanisms than the workplace. It is “through public opinion that professions establish the power that enables them to achieve legal protection” (p. 60). Jurisdictional claims legitimized through the legal system are more static and durable than public opinion and are codified in legislative bodies, the courts, or executive branches of government. Examples include monopolies on certain activities, e.g., auditing by Certified Public Accountants, practice of medicine by physicians, and practice of law by lawyers. By comparison, jurisdictional claims taking place in the workplace are informal and more complex. In the workplace jurisdiction is a simple claim to control certain kinds of work. There is usually little debate about what the tasks are or how to construct them. . . . The basic question is who can control and supervise the work and who is qualified to do which parts of it. (p. 64) Boundaries between professional and non-professional work blur, and professional staff may be replaced by paraprofessionals or untrained staff, particularly in downsized workplaces. Although more strongly organized professions generally have more jurisdictional control, “relatively less organized professions have certain distinct advantages in workplace competition” because they have less of a professional identity and cognitive structure and can float to where the work needs to be done (p. 83). Abbott cites as an example “computer specialists” who do not have a strong “computer profession” identity and who have therefore “used this freedom to float out from programming into planning and operations” (p. 84). Professions make up an interdependent system, each with its own jurisdiction: “It is the history of jurisdictional disputes that is the real, the determining history of the professions” (p. 2). A profession, Abbott asserts, “cannot occupy a jurisdiction

without either finding it vacant or fighting for it. Since jurisdiction is exclusive, professions constitute an interdependent system. A move by one inevitably affects others” (p. 86). Sources of system disturbances can be external or internal. External sources of new professional tasks include “technologies, organizations, natural facts, and cultural facts” (pp. 91-92). New technologies and new organizations create new professions. Internal (within the profession) sources include the development of new knowledge or skills. Internal and external forces “create vacant task areas and greedy professions” (p. 98). In sum, the growth and development of professions are, according to Abbott, “bound up with the pursuit of jurisdiction and the besting of rival professions. The organizational formalities of professions are meaningless unless we understand their context” (p. 30). Information domain and librarianship. Under Abbott’s (1988) model the interrelated information professions comprise a work or task area called the information domain. He delimits this area of professional work by “groups that provide others with information,” and he defines information professionals as those who “help clients overburdened with material from which they cannot retrieve usable information” (p. 216). He asserts that “the information professions are, by definition, involved in continuously negotiated and contested professional divisions of labor” (p. 223, emphasis in original). These groups occupy “a general information area of the system of professions . . . that at any given point in time . . . may control diverse portions of this general area in unique ways” (p. 216). Using selected secondary sources, Abbott undertook a historical analysis of the information professions, including librarianship, to “show how the system model studies a general area of work,” in this case the information domain (p. 215). Abbott was specifically interested in understanding how system disturbances such as a new technology or technique create an imbalance in the work area. Abbott identified the management information systems (MIS) and information science (IS) professions emerging in the 1970s as potential jurisdictional competitors to librarianship in a

“combined jurisdiction” task area that had emerged as a result of the rapid development of computer technologies and knowledge following the Second World War. He concluded that while members of various professions continue to enter the [information] area . . . there is no indication of a single group capable of general jurisdiction. . . . No coherent set of people has in fact emerged to take jurisdiction in this area. It continues to be extremely permeable, with most training on the job, most expertise readily commodifiable, and careers following wildly diverging patterns. (p. 245) Ten years later Abbott (1998) reexamined the position of librarianship within the information task area. Characterizing “contemporary librarianship” as “wildly dynamic,” he situated the profession within three “crucial contexts” in which changes in professional work take place: (1) the “context of larger social and cultural forces”; (2) the “context of other professions”; and (3) the “context of other ways of providing expertise” (pp. 433-434). What affects a particular profession such as librarianship includes new knowledge that transforms the nature of work, the encroachment of other occupations upon it, or capital requirements that force the reorganization of its work: “To think about the future of librarianship . . . is to think about the likely evolution of librarians’ work and to ask what the consequences of that evolution might be for the occupation” (p. 432). One obvious component contributing to the evolution of librarians’ work is technological competence and expertise. As Abbott demonstrated in these analyses, the profession of librarianship can be examined in relation to other information professions and occupations in an assumed-to-be-contested information task area in the workplace. In the 1990s and early 2000s these occupational groups could include market research, competitive intelligence, web development, knowledge management, information architecture, network database administration, etc., as well as librarianship and other more traditional information professions. Information professions and occupations jockeying for position can be analyzed by identifying the forces that affect the content

and control of work and by investigating how disturbances in that content and control propagate through the system of information professions. Several LIS scholars have applied Abbott’s (1988) system of professions to analyze trends in the profession. Apostle and Raymond (1997), for example, discuss their research on Canadian librarians in terms of the struggle for professional jurisdiction: If one follows Andrew Abbott (1988) in emphasizing the work dimensions of library and information science . . . then the primary focus of analysis here shifts to the question of connections between professional group boundaries and the control of work. . . . One can then argue that our competing paradigms are roughly aligned with specific categories of library work . . . the information paradigm is associated with the work of special libraries, while the Library Service paradigm is connected to work in public, school, and academic libraries. (p. 138) Michael Winter (1996) used Abbott’s model to frame his analysis of contemporary librarianship in terms of the social process that affects knowledge- intensive occupations in advanced industrial societies. He recommends that librarians both engage in specialization in order to cope with the realities of professional work and “to colonize appropriate new niches to replace the older ones that are now occupied by new groups of workers . . . defining exclusive new jurisdictions as autonomous domains of expertise” (p. 355) and at the same time assume an integrative function as “a kind of specialist in the social organization of knowledge” (p. 358). Abbott’s model has also been used to frame analyses of changes in LIS professional education (Cronin, Stiffler, & Day, 1993; Miller, 1994; Wiegand, 1986a), growth of academic librarianship (Estabrook, 1989), LIS professional values and norms (Cronin & Davenport, 1996), changes in health information work and health science librarianship (Bradley, 1996; Funk, 1998), changes in law librarianship (Danner, 1998), the user-librarian relationship (Tuominen, 1997), and libraries and digital technology in organizations (Huwe, 1997).

Abbott and gender. In both his 1988 analysis of the information professions and his 1998 essay on the future of librarianship Abbott has left gender out of the jurisdiction wars. He does not consider gender (or class) a social or cultural force affecting jurisdictional control of the information domain. Although acknowledging feminization to be associated with the degradation of professional work, Abbott dismisses gender as an organizing construct in processes of professionalization and deprofessionalization: Some might argue that the very notion of “profession,” both as real- world label and as social-science concept, is gender- or class-based, and that consequently gender and/or class have been the central determinants of professional development since the Industrial Revolution. I disagree. That professions pursue status is obvious. That this may involve class or gender alliance is unquestionable. That these alliances determine the major aspects of professional development is simply wrong. They reinforce, perhaps, but they do not cause. (p. 352) Some researchers, however, have used Abbott’s theoretical perspective in gender-focused studies of professions and professionalization. In the healthcare arena, for example, Kristin Barker (1998) extended Abbott’s framework to include gender in an analysis of jurisdictional disputes over maternal and infant care among physicians, midwives, nurses, and social workers in the U.S. in the 1920s. In LIS Christine Jenkins (1996) used Abbott’s model to analyze a gender-based jurisdictional dispute over control of the awarding of the Newbery Medal for children’s literature in the 1930s-1940s. Both these studies involved textual analyses of historical documents rather than data obtained through interviews or direct observation. Although Jenkins did not mention Abbott’s failure to consider gender in jurisdictional boundary disputes, Barker referred to this deficiency in her research: I extend Abbott's framework by demonstrating the ways in which gender functions to shape the boundaries of jurisdictional disputes, and I argue that the failure to investigate the gendered nature of intra- and interprofessional dynamics has left the history of medical professionalization in the United States underspecified. (p. 230)

It is clear from Barker’s analysis that gender must be considered a major factor in professional struggles involving women’s professions: What Abbott (1988) does not provide . . . is guidance on the gendered nature of this system. Many scholars [in healthcare] have begun to explore the extent to which professional struggles or projects are gendered processes [list of citations]. Taken together, this scholarship exposes the gendered nature of professional identities and strategies. (p. 233) Abbott’s model is strengthened through the addition of gender as an organizing construct.

Acker’s Theory of Gendered Organizations Like theories of professionalism and professionalization, traditional organizational analysis does not generally incorporate gender as an organizing principle (A. Mills & Tancred, 1992). By conceptualizing gender as an analytical construct, Acker (1990) shows how gender is an integral part of organizational processes, concepts and organizational logic: To say that an organization, or any other analytic unit, is gendered means that advantage and disadvantage, exploitation and control, action and emotion, meaning and identity, are patterned through and in terms of a distinction between male and female, masculine and feminine. Gender is not an addition to ongoing processes, conceived as gender neutral. Rather, it is an integral part of those processes, which cannot be properly understood without an analysis of gender (Connell 1987; West and Zimmerman 1987). (p. 146) Power relationships are inherent in Acker’s systematic theory of gendered organizations. She argues that organizations are not gender neutral but masculine; they are locations of male dominance. Likewise, jobs are not neutral or disembodied, but male: the abstract worker is a man. Organizational concepts, including models of professional work, are defined in male terms. Gender is “a constitutive element in organizational logic, or the underlying assumptions and practices that construct most contemporary work organizations (Clegg and Dunkerley 1980)” (p. 147). Because organizational logic is based on

“gender neutral” theories of bureaucracy and organizations, it appears to be gender neutral.7 Acker asserts, however, that “underlying both academic theories and practical guides for managers is a gendered substructure that is reproduced daily in practical work activities and . . . in the writings of organizational theorists” (p. 147). An example of organizational logic is the process of job evaluation within the bureaucratic organization. The concept “a job” is . . . a gendered concept, even though organizational logic presents it as gender neutral. “A job” already contains the gender-based division of labor and the separation between the public and the private sphere. The concept of “a job” assumes a particular gendered organization of domestic life and social production. It is an example of what Dorothy Smith has called “the gender subtext of the rational and impersonal (1988, 4). (p. 149) That gender is a constitutive element in organizational logic can be seen in organizational processes that ignore the demands of life outside of work. Organizational logic assumes that an “abstract, bodiless worker, who occupies the abstract, gender-neutral job has no sexuality, no emotions, and does not procreate” (p. 151). Acker, however, asserts that the abstract worker is actually a man, and it is the man’s body, its sexuality, minimal responsibility in procreation, and conventional control of emotions that pervades work and organizational processes. Women’s bodies—female sexuality, their ability to procreate and their pregnancy, breast-feeding, and child care, menstruation, and mythic “emotionality”—are suspect, stigmatized, and used as grounds for control and exclusion.” (p. 152) Acker’s theory of the gendered organization emerges from the exposure of a gender subtext in the work practices and rational discourse of bureaucratic organizational structure. Bureaucracies are not abstract, gender-neutral, disembodied entities: the universal worker is in actuality male. Acker’s argument is summed up thusly: “Organizational structures and work relations . . . in industrial capitalist societies . . . are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference” (p.

7 See Celia Davies (1996) and Witz and Savage (1992) for feminist critiques of theories of bureaucracy.

139). This gendered substructure “helps to explain the persistence of male dominance and female disadvantage, in spite of years of attempts to implement gender equity policies” (Acker, 1998, p. 197). Gendering Abbott. Abbott’s concept of the system of professions advances understanding of the rise and fall of professions because he brings power relations and conflict into the picture. It is necessary within the framework of Abbott’s model to include gender as an analytic category in order to enhance understanding of the jurisdictional conflicts taking place in the contested information domain. A feminist theoretical approach thus extends Abbott’s conceptualization of the information domain as a contested playing field by positioning the problem in terms of gender relations. As Sandra Harding (1986) asserts: Once we begin to theorize gender—to define gender as an analytic category within which humans think about and organize their social activity rather than as a natural consequence of sex difference . . . we can begin to appreciate the extent to which gender meanings have suffused our belief systems, institutions, and even such apparently gender-free phenomena as our architecture and urban planning. (p. 17) The essence of Harding’s statement about gender meanings is in fact made visible in Abbott’s use of androcentric language. Although he rejects the concept of profession as gender-based, his androcentric use of language in his construction of theory and in his analysis of jurisdictional conflicts must be acknowledged. Using phrases like “pursuit of jurisdiction and the besting of rival professions” demonstrates that his theoretical perspective is androcentric, not gender neutral. Davies calls this “a masculinist vision of professional work” (1996, p. 661). Abbott’s description of “defeated librarians” who “retreated” from education and outreach in the early part of the twentieth century in his analysis of the information professions is another cogent example. This androcentric use of language logically links Abbott’s “gender-neutral” theory of professions to Acker’s theory of gendered organizations. The gender subtext of Abbott’s theory is made visible through his androcentric language.

LIS historian Maack (1997) also observes that Abbott’s perspective is androcentric because of its focus “on issues such as jurisdictional competition, exclusivity in the creation and control of an esoteric body of knowledge, and legal control over entry into the field” (p. 283). Although she credits Abbott for providing a “broader, more sophisticated analysis of the professions” compared to earlier trait theories of professionalization, she challenges his masculinist power-control model, offering instead a client-centered empowerment model of professionalism (p. 283). Maack positions librarianship, along with other female-intensive “service” professions such as teaching, social work and clinical psychology, as empowering: “their shared goal is to enable their clients or students to gain knowledge that will allow them to exert more control over their own lives and over their environment. For these professionals “power [is] conceived as empowerment rather than control” (p. 291).

Focus on Women Special Librarians

The profession of special librarianship came into existence over one hundred years ago, concomitant with the rise of the modern industrial corporation. It developed in part as a response to the need for management of scientific information by both industrial and government research laboratories during the early part of the twentieth century (Rankin, 1925) and in part through the rapidly developing library profession and the concept of reference service (Christianson, 1976; Dana, 1914/1991; Rothstein, 1955). Throughout their history special librarians have been leaders in the development of technological innovations for library practice (Woods, 1972). They were, for example, the first to develop computer-based indexes and catalogs for bibliographic control of their collections, and to emphasize just-in-time access to information rather than just-in-case building of collections (Birdsall, 1994; R. Williams, 1997). Today, many members of this profession are incorporating new information functions in their scope of services such as knowledge management,

corporate intelligence, database administration, and web development and management. In 2001 there were 12,413 special libraries in the U.S. and Canada, representing 35% of the libraries in these two countries. During the decade of the 1990s the number of special libraries increased 6%. However, between 2001 and 2003 their number decreased by 11%, to 11,007.8 Special libraries can be found in a variety of organizations and subject areas: areas of specialization include the arts, communication, business, social science, biomedical sciences, geosciences and environmental studies, and industry, business, research, educational and technical institutions, government, special departments of public and university libraries, newspapers, museums, and public or private organizations that provide or require specialized information (Special Libraries Association, 2000b, p. 10). The majority of special librarians work in business or scientific-technical areas. Fifty-seven percent of the special librarians in the U.S. and Canada who are members of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) worked in for-profit organizations in 2001 (Special Libraries Association, 2001). Special libraries resist categorization because of their diversity. In the 1940s Jesse Shera (1944) referred to the “rugged individualism” of special librarianship because “the entire field of special librarianship . . . is composed of such a multitude of diverse libraries as to have, in the final analysis, very little in common” (pp. 92- 93). The public library, the college or university library, the high school library, each has much in common with its fellows. Not so the special library, the characteristics of which are striking for their diversity. . . .

8 These statistics are derived from annual editions of the American Library Directory (ALD), which reports totals for public, academic, armed forces, government, and special libraries in the United States and Canada. Special library totals reported here include special libraries in public, academic, armed forces, and government as well as in corporate and not-for-profit organizations (special libraries in regions administered by the United States are excluded from the total). It should be noted that libraries and media centers in elementary and secondary schools are not included in ALD statistics; in 2000 there were 77,288 public and 17,054 private schools in the U.S. with libraries/media centers (U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics, 2003).

The inability of special librarians adequately to define their basic terminology has stymied many a meritorious attempt to codify special library practice. (p. 93) Goedeken (2002) echoes Shera’s postwar comment about the rugged individualism of special libraries: “Public and academic libraries may resemble each other a great deal, varying perhaps mostly in size. But special libraries represent a wide range of types, sizes, and orientations that reflect their individualist nature” (p. 141). Nevertheless, one feature is common to most special libraries that has historically distinguished special librarianship from other types of librarianship: to make information available. In the following passage business librarian Ethel M. Johnson describes the functions of the special library in 1915. Her description is still relevant and today might be referred to by the trendy term knowledge management. The most distinctive feature of the special library is not so much its subject matter as its service. Before anything else, it is an information bureau. The main function of the general library is to make books available. The function of the special library is to make information available. . . . The most important part of its equipment may not be printed matter at all, but human brains. . . . An essential duty of the special library is to know the individuals and organizations that are experts on subjects related to its own interests, and keep in touch with them. (pp. 158-159, emphasis added) Special librarians—particularly those working in the corporate environment— experience more job volatility than their counterparts in public and academic libraries. The corporate library has often been viewed as peripheral, a “luxury” to be eliminated during economic downturns. E. M. Johnson observed in 1915 that Business library positions are unstable because business itself is unstable, and is subject to periodic depressions and panics. . . A large number of firms still regard [the business library] as a pleasing luxury to be cherished during prosperous times and promptly dispensed with in adverse ones.” (p. 161) A half-century later Woods (1972) similarly noted that of the several “unique qualities” of special libraries, “one is especially frightening—they come into, and go

out of, existence rapidly. . . . Economic stresses seem inevitably to hit the special library first” (p. 760). Although the number of special libraries that close each year is not known, anecdotal evidence through announcements on Internet discussion lists frequented by special librarians and articles in library trade periodicals suggest that special library closings are increasing. That recessionary economic conditions around the turn of the millennium may be adversely affecting special librarians is reflected in the 11% decrease in the number of special libraries between 2001 and 20039 and also in a 17% decline in membership in the SLA, the primary professional association for special librarians, between 2000 and 2003.10 From the beginning special librarians have had to justify the cost of their operation to management (Rothstein, 1955). This is primarily because corporate management has found it difficult to understand the value their corporate libraries provide. In a survey of corporate library managers on the value of their corporate libraries, Matarazzo, Prusak and Gauthier (1990) found little consensus on how to evaluate the library’s impact. Further, few managers could state what “exact function the library performs within the firm’s information structure” (p. 1).11 It is not surprising that corporate managers do not have a good idea what functions their corporate libraries perform. Kate Ehrlich and Debra Cash’s (1999) ethnographic research with customer support analysts and corporate reference librarians suggests that “the expertise and experience of intermediaries is often invisible—to the consumer, to the organization in which these intermediaries work, and even to the intermediaries’ managers” (p. 147). Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day (1999), who interviewed and observed librarians at the Hewlett-Packard and Apple

9 The American Library Directory reported a total of 12,413 special libraries in the U.S. and Canada in 2001 and 11,007 in 2003. 10 For the years between 1995 and 2000 the SLA annual membership directory reported a membership averaging around 14,400; in 2003 SLA’s web site (http://www.sla.org) reported a reduced membership expressed as “more than 12,000.” 11 Siess (1997) found that “15 percent of the libraries Prusak and Matarazzo [sic] had surveyed in 1990 had closed their libraries by 1995” (p. 59).

corporate libraries in the 1990s, consider these librarians “keystone species” in an “information ecology.”12 The contributions of keystone species in information ecologies “are often unofficial, unrecognized, and seemingly peripheral to the most obvious productive functions of the workplace” (pp. 53-54). Nardi and O’Day elaborate on the concept of keystone species in terms of corporate librarianship: In our study of [corporate] reference librarians, we were struck by the “high-touch, high-tech” service librarians provided their clients. The latest technologies were in use, and they were used efficiently and effectively. But right alongside them was the enactment of the librarians’ ethic of service. . . . Keystone species must be identified through extensive fieldwork—they are invisible unless you look and analyze carefully—and one of our goals here was to reveal some of the invisible work of a keystone species in the library ecology. (p. 212) Their research provides insight on reasons why the work of librarians who work in corporate environments is difficult to value and so easily discounted. The invisibility of the work coupled with the lack of understanding by management is an occupational hazard for special librarians. In this account Nardi and O’Day show that the closing of the Apple Library in 1997 during the company’s restructuring and downsizing was at least partly due to management’s lack of understanding of the value the library added to company productivity: It was apparent from some comments made by management that they did not understand the nature of the work librarians were doing. For example, when the decision was being made about whether to close the Apple Library, a certain well-known, high-level executive was invited to the Apple Library to get a tour and talk to the head of the library about the services the library provided to employees. The librarian was explaining how the library was able to provide timely information to Apple engineers so they could do their jobs better. The executive stopped her and said, “They should already know all that, shouldn't they?” (p. 221) In their study of the impact of technological change on the work and skill patterns of Canadian librarians, Apostle and Raymond (1997) found that special

12 Nardi and O’Day (1999) define an information ecology as “a system of people, practices, values and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology” (p. 49).

librarians “see a more complex and sophisticated technological future for librarianship” and that they had “a wider and more complex range of technical skills” than other types of librarians (p. 48). They concluded that the work and attitudes of the special librarians in their sample conformed more to an “information paradigm” rather than a “library service paradigm” (p. 51). Little research has been done on the work and careers of special librarians. Knowledge about special librarians’ values and opinions regarding changes taking place in their profession is derived mainly from articles and other writings in trade and professional publications (for examples, see Abram, 1997; Barden, 1997; Mount, 1997; St. Clair, 1999; St. Clair, 2001). This literature is generally prescriptive, providing an uncritical perspective on the work of special librarians and their attitudes about their work and their profession. Special librarians are the least studied group of librarians although there is a lot of anecdotal information about how they practice. Their numbers are not small— there were over 11,000 special libraries in the U.S. and 1,400 in Canada in 2001—yet little is known about how special librarians practice their profession. “Special libraries,” wrote Elin Christianson (1976), “have continued to be separated from the mainstream of librarianship. Special libraries are an information resource which is little known and poorly understood both by those not involved with special libraries and by special librarians themselves” (p. 414). Part of this is due to their diversity: a special library in an astronomical observatory is quite different from one in an investment banking firm. It is difficult if not impossible to define a typical special library. Yet both the astronomy librarian and the business librarian very likely hold some professional functions and values in common. It is still as accurate to state today as it was almost 90 years ago that the function of the special library is to make information available—to provide focused information to a defined group of users to further the mission and goals of the organization. What this information is and how it is made available, however, is as diverse as the subjects on which special libraries focus and the missions and goals of

the organizations in which they work. The increasing importance of information in various forms to organizations that is provided by an increasing diverse combination of information professionals and commercial firms makes special librarians a highly relevant group on which to focus in a study that explores the interaction of technological expertise and undervaluation of librarianship in information-age organizational environments.

Research Questions

Abbott’s (1988) conceptual model of the information task area frames and delimits this study of women librarians with high-tech information skills in non- library organizational environments. Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations augments Abbott’s model by foregrounding gender and privileging women’s experience in this interpretive study. The three questions that focus the research are derived from the study’s theoretical framework and the larger problem being investigated—the marginalization of librarianship in the information age. These questions are not asked in order to generate straightforward answers. Rather, they are asked in order to reveal processes of professional practice, career progression, jurisdictional control, undervaluation, and professional-identity formation through an analysis of the experiences of women operating simultaneously at the intersection of several social and professional domains. The first research question is exploratory. It is to provide a structure for examining the processes of jurisdictional conflict that Abbott describes. The subquestions also address the issue of how women librarians with technological expertise practice their profession in assumed-to-be-gendered organizations. Research Question 1. What are the career patterns of high-tech women special librarians?

a) Given competition from other information professions such as network database administration, information science and Internet/web development, how has their membership in a feminized profession affected their career progression? b) How have structural organizational features affected their career progression? The second question is directly related to the problem of undervaluation of librarianship in non-library organizational environments examined from the perspective of Abbot’s jurisdictional conflict model. This question also examines the processes by which these librarians respond to the cultural marginalization of the profession. Research Question 2. How do high-tech women special librarians experience the undervaluation of the library profession in competition with other information professions? a) How do these women make sense of their experiences? b) What mechanisms do they invoke to deal with their situation? The third question examines how changes in work brought about by new technologies affect professional identity. It also addresses the larger issue of whether one’s professional identity constrains or enables jurisdictional claims in the workplace. Research Question 3. How have the work experiences of these librarians affected their professional identity? a) Do they still consider themselves librarians? b) If not, then with what professions, if any, do they identify?

Delimitations and Definitions

Delimitations This study confines itself to interviewing only women special librarians. Librarianship is studied in terms of other information professions and not vice versa. Only the views and perceptions of the participants are considered as the focus of this study concerns how these special librarians make sense of their careers as librarian- educated information professionals. The study does not seek to corroborate participants’ stories through other means but instead uses a dual approach of narrative and thematic analyses and the concept of trustworthiness to validate the findings.13 As in any qualitative study multiple interpretations are possible. By employing both narrative and thematic analyses, multiple interpretation is built into the research design. Because an interpretative, critical paradigm guides this inquiry, positivist assumptions about sampling and generalization are not warranted. Generalization is limited to the research participants or when appropriate, to theory. Assumptions regarding the conduct of inquiry are presented in the next chapter.14 Limitations derive from the conceptual framework and the study’s design (C. Marshall & Rossman, 1999). The following limitations apply to this research: 1. Because only library practitioners were interviewed, the findings are based solely on their accounts—how they make sense of their experiences, how they choose to talk about them, and what they choose to include. This limits analysis to the research participants’ perceptions of actions and events; the opinions of others who interact with the participants cannot be directly determined or inferred. This means, for example, that it is not possible to know how a participant’s library or information services unit is valued—only a participant’s perception of that value can be reported.

13 See chapter 2, Juxtaposition of Narrative and Thematic Approaches and Trustworthiness sections. 14 See chapter 2, Researcher as Instrument section.

2. The research design delimits the application of Abbott’s jurisdictional conflict model to the self-reported interactions of the research participants with members of other information-providing units in their own organizations. Experiences with information providers and information professionals outside the organization (e.g., publishers, sales representatives of information products, etc.) were not investigated, nor were inter-professional jurisdictional disputes and conflicts with people or departments within the organization but outside the information domain (e.g., customers or clients, human resources departments, etc.). 3. The focus of this study is on women special librarians who were early adopters of the Internet. This precludes using gender as a variable: the research is not intended to compare the career experiences of male and female special librarians. 4. Limiting the participant pool to special librarians who were early adopters of the Internet results in an over-representation of special librarians in science and technology fields and an under-representation of business librarians.

Definitions15 In this research the terms career and career pattern are closely related. Career is defined simply as an individual’s job history (Spilerman, 1977); career pattern calls attention to non-linearities, deflections, and periods of voluntary and involuntary employment as part of an individual’s work history. Career progression has traditionally implied upward mobility or advancement into positions of increasing prestige or responsibility during the course of one’s career, and career progression was conceptualized as synonymous with career advancement when this study was designed. However, the participants in this research did not conceptualize career

15 Other terms are defined contextually throughout the dissertation.

progression as career advancement, and so this concept was reassessed as part of the analytic process (see chapter 4). A high-tech librarian is operationalized in this study as a librarian who used the Internet prior to 1993. Persons who were using the Internet prior to 1993 were early adopters of this technology; they had access to the Internet before the National Science Foundation lifted commercial-use restrictions to the NSFNET Internet backbone and were active on the Internet before the development of the World Wide Web. Because most special librarians, particularly those working in the private sector, were accomplished online researchers (Apostle & Raymond, 1997; Nardi & O'Day, 1996), being a skilled searcher of online research services would not by itself qualify these librarians as having high-tech information management skills. Internet use by information workers was relatively rare in the early 1990s and by women even rarer. Many librarians considered the Internet a highly innovative and technologically advanced tool that they were eager to learn how to use, as evidenced by the popularity of programs and continuing education courses about the Internet held at professional meetings during this time. For these reasons, use of the Internet prior to 1993 serves as a selection criterion that sets these early Internet-adopting librarians apart from their peers, identifying them as technologically advanced, forward-looking members of the profession in the early 1990s. An information professional is not easy to define because of the ambiguity surrounding both the term information and the term professional. Abbott (1988) states simply that information professionals are people who “help clients overburdened with material from which they cannot retrieve usable information” and that “groups that provide others with information [occupy] a general information area of the system of professions” (p. 216). The issue addressed here is how to define librarianship in relation to the other information professions and librarian with information professional. What is an information professional? A review of the documents on the web sites of two professional associations that include “information professionals” in their membership scope provide little help in defining what an information

professional is. The American Society for Information Science and Technology’s (ASIST) Professional Guidelines refer to “the profession” but do not provide a definition of what “the profession” is: “ASIST members have obligations to employers, clients, and system users, to the profession, and to society, to use judgment and discretion in making choices, providing equitable service, and in defending the rights of open inquiry.”16 The SLA provides a functional definition in its recently revised “competencies” document (Special Libraries Association, 2003): An Information Professional (“IP”) strategically uses information in his/her job to advance the mission of the organization. The IP accomplishes this through the development, deployment, and management of information resources and services. The IP harnesses technology as a critical tool to accomplish goals. IPs include, but are not limited to librarians, knowledge managers, chief information officers, web developers, information brokers, and consultants. The SLA definition, however, leaves out the information-service-to-clients aspect that is part of Abbott’s definition. For this reason Abbott’s definition of information professional, because of its very broadness, is used in this research as the a priori definition (chapter 6 explores the professional identity of the research participants and in this chapter their conceptualizations of librarian and information professional are discussed). A librarian as defined by the American Library Association (ALA) in 1983 is “a class of library personnel with professional responsibilities, including those of management, which requires independent judgment, interpretation of rules of procedure, analysis of library problems, and formulation of original and creative solutions, normally utilizing knowledge of library and information science represented by a master’s degree” (Young, 1983). Because this definition is dated, librarian in this research is defined in terms of librarianship’s professional degree and its knowledge base: a librarian is considered to be a person with a master’s degree in

16 See www.asis.org/AboutASIS/professional-guidelines.html (accessed August 14, 2003).

library and information science or its equivalent and whose professional career has involved the utilization of knowledge of library and information science.17

Significance of the Study

Despite calls for feminist research (Hannigan & Crew, 1993; R. Harris, 1992; Pritchard, 1994), comparatively little research has been done on contemporary issues in librarianship from feminist perspectives. There are fewer empirical studies in which gender is foregrounded in LIS, compared to research in other female-intensive professions such as nursing and teaching.18 In all three disciplines, however, there are more essays and critiques of traditional research than reports of empirical research grounded in feminist methodologies. In LIS feminist perspectives have more often been employed by library historians than by contemporary researchers; notable examples include Hildenbrand’s (1996) work on how gender shaped career building in librarianship in the early part of the twentieth century, Maack’s (1998) analysis of how women’s vision and values influenced American librarianship, and Joanne Passet’s (1996) exploration of early twentieth-century women librarians’ attitudes about their employment and compensation. The small LIS research corpus on contemporary gender issues includes Besant’s (1999) doctoral research on white lesbian librarians; Hildenbrand’s (1999) analysis of trends in LIS education; Maack and Passet’s (1994) study of mentoring among LIS women faculty; Dickson’s (1990) study of re-entry women librarians; McDermott’s (1998a; 1998b) research on women librarians’ attitudinal barriers to career progression; and C. Williams’ (1992; 1995) and Carmichael’s (1992; 1995;

17 This degree is commonly abbreviated as MLS or MLIS; MLS is used in this study. 18 A review of the English-language education, nursing and LIS literature published in the 1990s reveals that in both nursing and education there is a small corpus based on feminist perspectives, whereas in LIS the number of titles is miniscule: only 127 titles (0.1% of a total of 125,869 titles) indexed in Library Literature during the period of 1990 to 1999 are feminist in orientation, compared to 815 titles (0.2% of a total of 409,218 titles) indexed in CINAHL, the Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and 2,162 (0.6% of a total of 299,469 titles) indexed in the U.S. Department of Education’s ERIC database.

1996) research on male and gay male librarians. Roma Harris’ Librarianship: The Erosion of a Woman’s Profession (1992), which focuses on the historical undervaluation of librarians’ work and the increasing marginalization of librarianship in the information age of the late 20th century, remains the definitive work on gender and librarianship. The present study adds to this corpus. Studying what happens to women—from their own sense-making accounts— whose high-tech information skills would likely make them competitive in the workplace for high prestige and lucrative information careers, but who are identified and compensated as members of the feminized profession of librarianship, contributes to an understanding of how gender affects career progression and what this means for the future of the LIS professions. The focus on women in a profession comprised primarily of women “highlights the complexity of women’s experience” in organizations that are theorized as not gender-neutral but masculine (Chase, 1995, p. 5). It is an attempt “at remedying the long history of social scientists’ neglect and distortion of women’s experience” (p. 5) in a specific area of professional work, the information domain. This research focuses on special librarians and how they practice their profession. Special librarianship is an understudied segment of librarianship (Christianson, 1976; Goedeken, 2002; Jackson, 1986). Little is known about the work lives of special librarians that is based on systematic investigation. Even less is known about the women who make up 83% of this profession in the U.S. and 87% in Canada (Special Libraries Association, 2001). As early as 1915 there is evidence that gender was a factor in employment of corporate librarians: women were more likely to be hired because they were willing to accept lower salaries but men had a better chance for advancement (E. M. Johnson, 1915). An analysis of the work experiences and career patterns of women special librarians who were technological innovators in the 1990s contributes to a richer understanding of the changes that have been taking place in the information workplace. Making visible the gender implications of these

changes informs both professional education and practice. It can help LIS educators and practitioners better prepare for twenty-first century information work. The study further contributes to the field of LIS by employing “theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences” that can “contribute to the solution of problems specific to librarianship” (M. Harris & Itoga, 1991, p. 348). As a pragmatic discipline (see Gorman, 2000), LIS until recently has been reluctant to embrace theoretical approaches for problem-solving from other social science disciplines. Alternative epistemological projects . . . have much to offer research in LIS,” asserts Trosow (2001, p. 360), referring specifically to feminist standpoint epistemology “as a research strategy that can provide a starting point for reconceptualizing LIS research.” This study attempts to broaden the scope of LIS research by taking an alternative perspective to explore the problem of the undervaluation of librarianship in contemporary society. Almost 20 years ago Phenix (1985) noted that in surveys of librarians there is very little research where gender is the primary focus of investigation: Most surveys of librarians provide empirical data that describe the status of librarians at one point in time, and do not provide longitudinal data about how they got where they were and where they may want to go from there. (p. 176) Phenix’s observation still holds today. A few LIS scholars (Trosow, 2001; Wiegand, 1999; Wiegand, 2003) have recently issued calls for research in which critical theory and alternative epistemologies are employed as a way to broaden the LIS knowledge base: “One gets the impression,” states Wiegand (1999, p. 24) “of a profession trapped in its own discursive formations, where members speak mostly to each other and where connections between power and knowledge that affect issues of race, class, age, and gender, among others, are either invisible or ignored.” The research presented here is intended to fill a gap in this area of knowledge production.

Organization of the Dissertation

This study of the career patterns and career progression experiences of women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet is organized as follows. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the study with sections on the problem statement and purpose of the study, the theoretical frameworks of Abbott and Acker, the profession of special librarianship and its relevance to the research purpose and problem, the research questions, delimitations and definitions of key terms, and the significance of the study. Chapter 2 presents the rationale and methodology for the study, including an overview of a feminist methodological approach to inquiry; the rationale for juxtaposing thematic and narrative analyses; descriptions of procedures for data collection and data reduction, analysis and interpretation; and an explanation of the concept of trustworthiness as a substitute for tests of validity and reliability in qualitative research. The chapter ends with a section on the researcher as instrument where assumptions about the conduct of inquiry and voice are presented and the researcher’s sociocultural biases are made visible. Research findings are presented in chapters 3 through 7. Chapter 3 presents descriptive information on the 20 research participants within a socio-historical context, providing background and context for the findings presented in subsequent chapters. Chapters 4 through 6 present findings in response to the three research questions, respectively. Chapter 4 describes the career patterns and career progression experiences of the research participants, defining five career modalities and examining the effects participants’ membership in a feminized profession and selected structural factors have on their career progression. Chapter 5 focuses on three “undervalued-modality” participants and their perceptions of undervaluation of librarianship in the information-age workplace. Chapter 6 looks at how participants’

work experiences and organizational environments have affected their professional identity over the course of their careers. Chapter 7 presents career narratives for four representative participants within an interpretive framework, each narrative corresponding to one of four career modalities (family-first, found-my-spot, manager, and multiple-positions). The narratives complement the cross-case thematic approach of the previous chapters, providing a richer understanding of how the research participants make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace. Chapter 8 presents the conclusions and discusses the implications of this exploratory research on the career patterns and career progression experiences of women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet. It is comprised of five sections: a summary of the research findings; interpretation of the findings based on the two theoretical perspectives that inform the study; discussion of some methodological issues identified during data collection and analysis; and suggestions for future research. The chapter ends with concluding remarks.

CHAPTER TWO

RATIONALE AND METHODOLOGY

Introduction and Rationale

This research focuses on the workplace experiences and career patterns of women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet and who were working in corporate, not-for profit, or government organizational environments in the early 1990s. The qualitative genre of individual lived experience provides the context for analysis (C. Marshall & Rossman, 1999, pp. 60-68). Andrew Abbott’s (1988) system of professions model and Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations, a methodology based on feminist standpoint epistemology (DeVault, 1996; 1999a; Harding, 1991) provide the framework for interpretation. This research approach is appropriate for the questions being asked: Research Question 1. What are the career patterns of high-tech women special librarians? Research Question 2. How do high-tech women special librarians experience the undervaluation of the library profession in competition with other information professions? Research Question 3. How have the work experiences of these librarians affected their professional identity? This is a descriptive study. The intent is to describe the career patterns of these librarians and to search for a deeper understanding of how these librarians who were early adopters of the Internet experience the changes taking place in their work

life and in their profession. The design is emergent and flexible in order to be responsive to changing conditions as the study progresses (Merriam, 1998). There are several reasons why this research focuses only on women librarians: 1. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of how women with technological expertise (a male-identified skill) in a female-identified profession make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace (a gendered realm); 2. The focus on women in a profession comprised primarily of women “highlights the complexity of women’s experience” (Chase, 1995, p. 5) in organizations that are theorized as not gender-neutral but masculine (Acker, 1990)—it is an attempt “at remedying the long history of social scientists’ neglect and distortion of women’s experience” (Chase, 1995, p. 5); and 3. Because of the complexity of the analytical design, it is important to keep the gender of the interviewer and participant the same to reduce variability during data collection (Seidman, 1998). Because only women were included in this study, gender cannot be considered a variable; rather, gender was employed as an analytical construct by using feminist epistemology as an interpretive frame (DeVault, 1999a; Harding, 1987; Lather, 1992; Trosow, 2001). Both thematic and narrative approaches were used as analytic methods in this study. Data were obtained primarily through individual in-depth telephone interviews with research participants (Mishler, 1986; Riessman, 1993; Seidman, 1998). The interviews were supplemented through the use of a web-based self-administered questionnaire for background data such as demographics, education, and work histories prior to the interview; and through a two-month-long web-based discussion forum for participants that took place approximately eight months after the interview phase of the research was completed. E-mail was used to follow up with individual

participants for response clarification during data review and for feedback during the analytical phase of the research.

Feminist Methodology

According to Marjorie DeVault (1996), feminist methodology is a field of inquiry rooted in feminist activism and in feminist critiques of the standard procedures of social science. Feminist methodologists do not use or prescribe any single research method; rather, they are united through various efforts to include women's lives and concerns in accounts of society, to minimize the harms of research, and to support changes that will improve women's status. DeVault (1996, pp. 32-33) delineates three goals espoused by feminist researchers: 1. “Feminists seek a methodology that will do the work of ‘excavation,’ shifting the focus of standard practice from men's concerns in order to reveal the locations and perspectives of (all) women”; 2. “Feminists seek a science that minimizes harm and control in the research process” that reduces/minimizes the power relationship between researcher and subject; and 3. “Feminists seek a methodology that will support research of value to women, leading to social change or action beneficial to women.” Virginia Olesen (1994, p. 167) discusses voice and the account within the feminist perspective. Feminist epistemology introduces a particular voice to the research methodology. The issue of voice concerns how the researcher treats the accounts of respondents—i.e., how they are reported and interpreted. Feminist researchers are concerned with the absence of women’s voices in accounts of social situations and within the larger historical social structure (see also DeVault, 1999a; Personal Narratives Group, 1989; D. Smith, 1987). Reporting women’s accounts using traditional social science methods further contributes to the problem of voice if one assumes that social structures are 42

themselves gendered. Respondents’ accounts are themselves filtered through the power relations of the hegemonic culture (Olesen, 1994; D. Smith, 1987). It is important to be aware of this issue and use methods that minimize it, but at the same time recognize that this problem cannot be solved through traditional qualitative methodology. Ideally, a dialectical methodology is called for (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Olesen, 1994) in which researcher and participants interact to produce one or more interpretations (Personal Narratives Group, 1989, pp. 201-203), but this is not always possible. What feminist theorists assert is that in patriarchal society, experience is itself problematic: “Experience is at once always already an interpretation and in need of interpretation” (Scott, 1991, p. 779, as quoted in Olesen, 1994, p. 167). It is this perspective that is used to understand the workplace experience of the women librarians in the current study. Their experience as librarians who were early adopters of the Internet—i.e., as female members of a feminized profession holding male-associated competencies in information technology—is considered to be problematic in this research. In this approach participants’ accounts and stories are understood to be filtered through the power relations of the gendered workplace, conceptualized in this study in terms of Abbott’s contested information domain.

Juxtaposition of Narrative and Thematic Approaches

Narrative and thematic analyses were used dialectically in this research: thematic analysis focuses on emerging patterns and generalization across settings, while narrative analysis privileges context and the complexity of human existence (Personal Narratives Group, 1989, p. 263) and the “coherence of individual courses of action in local settings” (DeVault, 1999a, p. 102). By using both narrative and thematic analyses, with gender as an organizing principle, the interpretation that emerges becomes a synthesis that incorporates and encompasses the tension of the two analytic approaches. The analysis thus consists of both the more traditional method of thematic analysis used in grounded theory research (Merriam, 1998;

Strauss & Corbin, 1990) and the more radical method of narrative analysis often employed in critical and interpretive approaches (Chase, 1995; DeVault, 1999a; Riessman, 1993).

Narrative Analysis Narrative analysis is an appropriate method for interpreting the interview data since one purpose of this research is to understand how these women librarians make sense of their work experiences as information professionals in the larger organizational environment. Interviewing, according to Seidman (1998), “is a basic mode of inquiry. Recounting narratives of experience has been the major way throughout recorded history that humans have made sense of their experience” (p. 2). Further, The best stories are those which stir people’s minds, hearts, and souls and by so doing give them new insights into themselves, their problems and their human condition. The challenge is to develop a human science that can more fully serve this aim. The question then, is not “Is story telling science? “ but “Can science learn to tell good stories?” (Peter Reason, 1981, p. 50, as quoted in Seidman, 1998, p. 3) Since narrative analysis has been infrequently used in LIS research, it is appropriate to describe it in more detail here. According to Catherine Riessman (1993), “narrative analysis allows for systematic study of personal experience and meaning: how events have been constructed by active subjects” (p. 70). Riessman defines narrative as a long account with coherence and sequence, defying easy categorization (1993, p. vi). Under this definition, which is broader and less structured than some others (cf. Denzin, 1989; Gubrium & Holstein, 1998), interviews become narratives. Individuals recapitulate and reinterpret their lives through story telling: “The purpose is to see how respondents in interviews impose order on the flow of experience to make sense of events and actions in their lives” (Riessman, 1993, p. 2). The researcher would lose analytical cohesiveness by

fragmenting an account into thematic categories: There is “a common structure beneath talk about a variety of topics” (p. vi). Narrative analysis is not just one method but encompasses a variety of approaches to textual analysis. “Narrative analysis . . . has to do with ‘how protagonists interpret things’ (Bruner 1990, p. 51)” (Riessman, 1993, p. 5) and how researchers systematically interpret their participants’ interpretations. Narrative analysis is appropriate for research focusing on subjectivity and identity such as this study. Personal narratives are rooted in time and place with their own perspective, their view of the world and what they reveal about social life—e.g., gender inequalities, racial oppression and other taken-for-granted “practices of power” (p. 5). For an example, see Susan Chase's (1995) use of narrative in her interviews with women school superintendents. Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein (1998) provide an “empirically sensitizing vocabulary” to help researchers interpret respondents’ personal stories and accounts (p. 163). A story is a communicative genre; a “good story . . . [has] sequentiality and make[s] a point” (p. 178). Narrative practice “characterize[s] simultaneously the activities of storytelling, the resources used to tell stories, and the auspices under which stories are told” (p. 164). It enables the analyst to focus attention on the relation between the hows and the whats of the process of storytelling. Chase, for example, asks phenomenological questions in her analysis of interview narratives of female school superintendents: What is her narrative strategy? How does that narrative strategy make her contradictory experiences of achievement and discrimination intelligible and meaningful? These what and how questions highlight the relationship between culture and experience as that relationship is expressed in and shaped by the individual’s narrative. (p. 31, emphasis in original)

Chase focuses on narration “as a sense-making and communicative practice that is at once cultural and personal” (p. 31). In the current study Chase’s approach is followed in the analysis and interpretation of the workplace narratives of the participants.

Thematic Analysis Thematic analysis was also used to interpret interview data since another purpose of this research is to describe the career patterns of these women. In thematic analysis, interviews are taken apart and reduced and reconstructed in terms of patterns, thematic connections and concepts (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996; Seidman, 1998). In this more conventional approach to qualitative analysis, excerpts of interview transcripts are organized and constructed into categories, and these excerpts are examined for connecting patterns and themes. In this study interview transcripts were examined inductively using the constant comparative method (see Merriam, 1998 for emerging conceptual categories and patterns within the context of the research questions; also Strauss & Corbin, 1990).

Data Collection

Data were obtained through two phases of data collection activity. The first phase, which took place June through August 2001, consisted of a self-administered web-based questionnaire for gathering demographic, education, and work history data that was followed by a semi-structured in-depth telephone interview. Interviews were conducted during the summer of 2001; all interviews were audio-taped and professionally transcribed. The second phase of data collection consisted of an optional web-based threaded discussion group conducted in March and April 2002 for all participants who had participated in Phase 1 of the study. Throughout the two data collection phases, e-mail was used to contact individual participants as necessary. E-mail was employed for a variety of tasks: for scheduling interviews, clarifying responses, obtaining feedback concerning the accuracy of interview transcripts, and for providing instructions for accessing the web-based questionnaire and discussion forum. E-mail is an appropriate method of

contact for this study since the participants, as Internet early adopters, had been using Internet-based e-mail systems since the early 1990s or before. The following sections describe the research participant selection process and rationale, the recruitment procedure, and the content and administration of the instruments used for Phase 1 and Phase 2 of data collection.

Participant Selection Research participants were selected from a group of 33 women who had participated in an earlier study of Internet use that this researcher conducted in 1991 – 1992 (Ladner & Tillman, 1993; Tillman & Ladner, 1994).1 Since this research explores the career patterns of women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet and who were working in corporate, not-for profit, or government organizational environments in the early 1990s, participants were selected according to criteria that applied to them approximately ten years ago—i.e., during the time of the earlier study, rather than criteria that apply to their current career and work environment. Participants had to meet the following three conditions to qualify for this study: 1. They used the Internet either at work or at home prior to 1993; 2. They were employed as librarians in corporations, not-for-profit organizations (excluding academic institutions) or government/public agencies in the period 1991 to 1992; and 3. They had received an American Library Association (ALA)-accredited master’s degree prior to the position they held in 1992. The rationale for these criteria is provided below.

1 A total of 82 librarians participated in the 1991 – 1992 study. Excluded from the current study were two librarians working outside North America, 35 librarians working in academic libraries and 5 in occupations in the information industry but outside libraries; 19 male librarians were also excluded. Since gender was not recorded for the original study, gender was determined by examining the names of the original respondents (see Tillman & Ladner, 1994, for more information).

Internet use. Individuals—particularly women—who were using the Internet prior to 1993 before commercial-use restrictions were removed can be considered early adopters of the Internet as an information technology because they used the Internet before commercial access was permitted and before the development of the World Wide Web. Reports of Internet use by women in the popular press during this period of Internet evolution are rare: Prior to 1995, there were few references even acknowledging women’s presence on the Internet (Sklar, 1997). The Internet was typically portrayed by the popular media as a “guy thing” (Coyle, 1996, p. 43)—a male-dominated computer-based virtual community populated (and manipulated) by under-30-year-old hackers and computer geeks. Librarians, however, had been using the Internet since the early 1990s, although this was not widely noted outside the profession (Sowards, 2000). Early use of the Internet—particularly prior to 1993—serves as a selection criterion that sets the women librarians in this study apart from their peers, identifying them as technologically innovative, forward-looking members of the profession. These women can be categorized as high-tech librarians in the early 1990s because of their early and innovative use of the Internet at work or at home. Corporate and other non-academic librarians. Not included in this research are women with Internet experience who were working as academic librarians in the period 1991 – 1992 (the time of the earlier study of Internet use by special librarians). Academic librarians work in a context in which the library is an identified organizational unit within the academy with known functions, established career paths, and opportunities for advancement within the library organization itself (Dewey, 1998; Hamlin, 1981; Robinson, 1983). Librarians working in for-profit corporations, not-for-profit organizations and government or public agencies, by contrast, work in organizational environments where librarianship and library work are less well defined or understood (Ehrlich & Cash, 1999; Matarazzo et al., 1990; Nardi & O'Day, 1999). Here the library is a relatively small organizational unit within the larger organization and because of its

size, career advancement within the library itself is more limited. By confining the study to librarians working in non-academic environments, the research focuses on members of the profession who are more likely to be affected by factors external to the library such as downsizing, re-engineering, organizational restructuring, acquisition by another corporate entity, etc.—factors that could negatively affect promotability and job security. Professional status. A master’s degree in library science (MLS) or equivalent degree from a graduate program that is accredited by the ALA is an employment criterion for professional positions in libraries. Not all employers require that a person working as a librarian have an ALA-accredited master’s degree, particularly in the private sector where smaller libraries and information centers are the norm. However, because this study looks at the profession of librarianship, it is essential that participants have the appropriate professional credential—i.e., an ALA-accredited masters degree, in which the “critical components in professional competencies are those related to theoretical foundations, societal context, ethics, adaptability, professional improvement, and professional growth” (Robbins, 1990, p. 210).

Participant Recruitment and Response In this research women who are part of a specialized component of librarianship were asked to discuss their experiences as librarians and information professionals. Even though their names were changed and their organizational affiliations and geographic locations masked, it is possible that these participants could be identified by others working in similar environments or who were members of the same professional subgroup. It was therefore important that the number of librarians participating in this study be large enough so that individuals could not be readily identified by their peers. It was anticipated that up to 20 women from the earlier study would be willing to participate in current study. This would be a large enough group to produce a diversity of accounts and stories and small enough to be manageable and affordable.

Because of confidentiality issues, the choice was made not to do multiple in-depth interviews with a smaller number of respondents from just one type of library, for example, interviewing just corporate librarians. This decision necessitated a more structured type of qualitative interview research design, in which conceptual categories and themes would be identified in addition to the interpretation of personal narratives and stories. As described below, 22 women from the earlier study agreed to participate in the current research, and 20 of these women completed questionnaires and were interviewed. Qualified respondents from the 1991 – 1992 study for whom a current e-mail address could be found were contacted via e-mail to ask them to participate in the current study. E-mail addresses were obtained from the membership directories of five professional library associations,2 from Internet e-mail directories and through searches on 1991 – 1992 respondent names using Internet search engines. Individuals who agreed to participate in the study were then sent a second e- mail message with an attached human subjects informed consent form approved by the Florida State University Institutional Review Board (see Appendix A for the human subjects approval memoranda and informed consent form and Appendix B for the e-mail contact letters). Upon the researcher’s receipt of the signed informed consent form, the participant was sent a third e-mail message with instructions for completing a self-administered web-based questionnaire on which to enter demographic, education, and work history information. Upon the researcher’s receipt of the completed questionnaire, the participant was contacted via e-mail to schedule a telephone interview. Table 2.1 shows the response patterns of the 33 women librarians who were identified as potential research participants from the 1991 – 1992 Internet use study.

2 American Association of Law Librarians, American Library Association, Association of Independent Information Professionals, Medical Library Association, and Special Libraries Association.

Table 2.1 Participant Response Patterns Item Participants Total potential research participants (from 1991 – 33 1992 study) Potential participants with valid e-mail addresses 26 Did not respond to e-mail invitation to participate 3 in study Declined to participate in study 1 Agreed to participate and returned informed 22 consent form Participants who completed web questionnaire 20 (6/19/01 – 7/13/01) Participants who completed telephone interview 20 (6/27/01 – 8/10/01)

First contact: invitation to participate. On June 3 and 4, 2001, the researcher individually contacted 30 respondents via e-mail inviting them to participate in the study: Four e-mail addresses were not valid (identified through the receipt of e-mail rejection messages), leaving a potential pool of 26 research participants. Follow-up e-mail messages were sent three weeks later to four women who had not responded to the initial invitation. Participants were offered a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate as an incentive, to be issued upon completion of the telephone interview. (See Appendix B for a copy of the invitation to participate message and follow-up note.) Second contact: informed consent. Twenty-two of the 26 women with valid e-mail addresses agreed to participate in the study, and each was sent a confirmatory e-mail message with a copy of the informed consent form attached. Follow-up e-mail messages were sent three weeks later to two women who had not responded to the confirmatory message. By July 2 all 22 signed and returned the consent form. (See

Appendix A for a copy of the consent form and Appendix B for a copy of the confirmatory message and follow-up note.) Third contact: questionnaire instructions. Upon receipt of the signed consent form, the researcher contacted each participant via e-mail with instructions for completing the web-based questionnaire, available through controlled access on the Florida State University School of Information Studies web server. Follow-up reminder e-mail messages were sent two weeks later to 12 of the 22 who had not yet completed the questionnaire. By July 13, 2001, twenty women had completed the questionnaire and were being scheduled for telephone interviews. (See Appendix B for a copy of the questionnaire instructions message and follow-up note and Appendix C for a copy of the web-based questionnaire.) Fourth contact: telephone interview. Telephone interviews were conducted between June 27 and August 10, 2001 with all 20 participants who had completed questionnaires. This was a response rate of 77% of the potential respondents with valid e-mail addresses. (See Appendix D for a copy of the interview guide.) Fifth contact: transcript review. In the fall of 2001 the researcher sent each participant a copy of her interview transcript to review. Eleven participants sent back either a corrected copy of the transcript or an e-mail message listing corrections; five approved their transcripts “as is”; and four did not respond to the request for review (see Appendix B for a copy of the e-mail request to review the transcript). Sixth contact: discussion forum request. On February 20, 2002, participants were individually contacted with an invitation to participate in a web-based discussion forum (see Phase 2 Data Collection: Web-Based Discussion Forum subsection, below). On March 2, the day the discussion forum was opened, a second message was sent to each participant that listed her screen name and password, along with instructions for accessing the website (see Appendix B for copies of the two e- mail requests to participate in the discussion forum).

Phase 1 Data Collection The Phase 1 data collection process consisted of a self-administered web- based questionnaire for gathering demographic, education, and work-history data and a semi-structured telephone interview. The in-depth interview was the primary tool for obtaining information from the research participants; the web-based questionnaire provided background information on the participant before the interview was conducted. The content and administration of these two instruments are described below. Web-based work history questionnaire. A self-administered web-based questionnaire was used to gather initial demographic, education, and work history data from participants. The questionnaire, developed by the researcher as a Microsoft Word document, was converted to a web-based form by the FSU School of Information Studies Web Development Team in March and April 2001 (see Appendix C for a copy of the questionnaire).3 The work history questionnaire was divided into the following sections (items in each section are listed within parentheses): 1. Education history: undergraduate (name of college/university, school or concentration/major, degree, year of degree); 2. Education history: graduate (name of college/university, school or concentration/major, degree, year of degree); 3. Work history since 1990 (name of organization, position title, name of department/unit, position title of supervisor, name of supervisor’s department/unit, most important duties in position, year participant began and left position, reason for leaving position, beginning and ending salary); 4. Time when not in paid workforce (in years);

3 The cost of this conversion was paid for through a FSU Doctoral Research Grant awarded to the researcher in the spring semester 2001.

5. Internet use (year began using Internet, how used during the first year, how used today); and 6. Background information (level of education and work done by participant’s mother and father, participant’s age). The questionnaire was organized so that participants could include as many undergraduate and graduate colleges/universities and employment positions as necessary. They were also provided the opportunity to upload a copy of their resume since the information requested on the questionnaire is commonly found in a resume (10 of the 20 participants included their resumes as an attachment to the questionnaire). Participants were given a chance to review their information and correct errors before submitting the questionnaire. Once the questionnaire was submitted, however, a participant no longer had access to it. A separate contact information form was included as a separate part of the questionnaire in addition to the above six sections. Participants were informed that the information on the contact form “will be used only to contact you to schedule your telephone interview or for follow-up purposes” and that the form would be filed separately from the work history questionnaire and other data collected during the course of the study. The questionnaire took less than 20 minutes to complete. It was designed so that a participant could leave and come back later to complete it, in which case a unique code number and password would be assigned for confidentiality. Telephone interview. Telephone interviews were based on procedures for conducting effective in-depth interviews (Merriam, 1998; Mishler, 1986; Seidman, 1998). Interviews were semi-structured and were conducted in a conversational format using an interview guide (Merriam, 1998, p. 74; Seidman, 1998). The interview guide consisted of questions and issues to be explored, supplemented by probe questions as needed. Where possible, interview questions were adapted from those used in related research (Chase, 1995; DeVault, 1991; 1990/1999b; Watson- Boone, 1998) or from research handbooks and guides (Merriam, 1998; Olesen, 1994;

Seidman, 1998). For example, Olesen’s (1994, p. 160) questions about success (What do you think a successful career is? How do you feel about success?) were included in the interview guide to find out how the participants conceptualized success, a concept traditionally embedded in studies of men’s lives. The questions were organized into the following topical areas for ease of administration: 1. Introduction; 2. Current career, work as an information professional; 3. Work life history; 4. career advancement, career progression; 5. Work environment; 6. Factors affecting/shaping career; and 7. Professional identity. The same interview guide was followed for each participant, although not all questions were asked of all participants (see Appendix D for a copy of the interview guide). Table 2.2 lists the interview questions for each topical area in relation to the study’s three research questions. In-depth interviewing as a strategy is simple in design with close interaction between the researcher and participants (C. Marshall & Rossman, 1999, p. 61; Seidman, 1998). For some participants interview questions were reformulated during the data collection process and additional questions were asked if appropriate to encourage the telling of a story or account. The interview guide was constructed so that notes could be taken during the interview; these interviewer logs were used to check for errors when the interview transcripts were reviewed and as a guide during analysis. Within 48 hours of each interview “impression memos” were written about the interview process; these memos included anything noteworthy about the interview, such as a participant’s attitude toward the topics being discussed, any hesitancy in responding to certain questions, her speech patterns, or anything else that seemed interesting that might not be apparent on the audio-tape or in the transcript.

Table 2.2 Relationship of Interview Guide Questions to Research Questions Research Interview guide questions question Introduction Verify participant’s current job title and place of employment; date of master’s degree qualifying in LIS; year participant first became involved with Internet. questions How did you first become involved with the Internet? Would you consider yourself an 1 early adopter of the Internet? How would you describe your current Internet use? 1 Current career, work as an information professional Tell me what you do. (Watson-Boone, 1998, p. 136) 1 How do you use technology in work? What technologies are most important in your 1 current position? [If no longer a librarian] How did you get to be a ____? (Merriam, 1998, p. 75) 3 Work life history Tell me the story of your career. (DeVault, 1991, p. 87) 1, 3 I’d like to hear about the history of your work life. (Chase, 1995, p. 43) 1, 3 How did you decide on librarianship, on getting an MLS? 1, 3 What are some of the highlights, or key events of your work career? What were the big 1, 2, 3 decisions for you? (Chase, 1995, pp. 41-43) Could you describe a time when you had to choose between jobs? 1, 2, 3 Could you describe a time when you questioned your choice of career? 1, 2, 3 Could you describe a time when you were passed over for a job or promotion? 1, 2, 3 Career advancement, career progression I want to talk about the things we do to get promoted, to advance, in our work / 1 workplace. (DeVault, 1990/1999b, p. 64)

What do you think a successful career is? How do you feel about success? What is 1 success to you? (Olesen, 1994, p. 160) Work environment / competition and position within the organization What is the reporting structure? To whom do you report? Who reports to you? 1, 2 Do you work with (or for) other information professionals / managers? What other 1, 2 kinds of information professionals do you interact or come in contact with?

Table 2.2—continued Research Interview guide questions question Factors affecting / shaping career What are some of the influences or factors that have shaped your career? (Merriam, 1, 2, 3 1998, p. 75) Are there people who have had an important influence on your career (positive or 1, 2, 3 negative)? Have you ever had a mentor? How about family or friends, people outside of your work life? How has your knowledge of, or early experience with the Internet / other information 1, 2, 3 technologies figured in /or affected your career? How has being a woman figured in / or affected your career? 1, 2, 3 How has being identified as a librarian figured in / or affected your career? 1, 2, 3 Throughout your work history and all your different work experiences, would you say 1, 2, 3 you’ve experienced [gender / ethnic / age etc.] discrimination? (Chase, 1995, p. 55) Professional identity Do you (still) consider your self a librarian [or] information professional? What does 3 “being a librarian / information professional” mean to you? What values do you bring to your work, to your profession? 3 Are you a member of any professional association? 3 If you could do it all over again, would you have gotten a master’s degree in library- 3 information science? (If yes: why; if no: what degree/training would you have pursued?) Given what you have said about your work, where do you see yourself going in the 3 future? (Seidman, 1998, p. 12) Optional probes (for questions listed above) Tell me [in your own words] what happened (Riessman, 1993, p. 54) 1, 2, 3 What was that like for you? (Seidman, 1998, p. 70) 1, 2, 3 Given what you have said about ___, what, what sense does it make to you? (Seidman, 1, 2, 3 1998, p. 12) Note. Research questions: (1) What are the career patterns of high-tech women special librarians? (2) How do high-tech women special librarians experience the valuation of the library profession in competition with other information professions? (3) How have the work experiences of these librarians affected their professional identity?

To encourage narrativization in the context of a semi-structured interview, questions were asked in such a way as to allow participants to construct answers that would be meaningful to them, rather than using a more structured question-and- answer format. For example, probes such as “Tell me in your own words what happened” (Riessman, 1993, p. 54) or “What was that like for you?” (Seidman, 1998, p. 70) were employed. Riessman (1993, p. 56) states that “almost any question can generate a narrative” when interviews are approached as conversations: “anything of an experiential nature is worthy of a lengthy account or at least can be made so.” The interviews in this study were deliberately conversational (DeVault, 1990/1999b); this approach seemed natural for both the researcher and participant as the researcher had previously worked in specialized library environments, was active in the same professional association as some of the participants, and was herself an early adopter of the Internet (see Researcher as Instrument section). Questions were also asked during the interview that positioned the respondent in time. These questions served to clarify and elucidate some of the events listed in the participant’s work history questionnaire, as well as to fill in gaps in the work history that were not included in the questionnaire—e.g., employment events that took place prior to 1990. It had become apparent from a review of the second pilot study interviews that to understand more fully the contextual meaning of a participant’s career and her professional identity, it would be necessary to look at work-life events that happened prior to the most recent decade of her career. The decision was made, therefore, to obtain information on participants’ work lives starting from the time the participant entered a graduate program in library- information science. This information would be collected as part of the interview process, rather than revising the work history questionnaire. It was felt that participants would be more willing to discuss their work histories in an interview setting than to spend more time completing a lengthier questionnaire. As it turned out, participants were indeed willing to talk about themselves and their careers: The

average duration of the interview was 108 minutes, with the shortest interview 82 minutes and the longest 168 minutes in duration. Each individual brings her own “personal history to the events that are under investigation” (Denzin, 1989, p. 28). The concept of work history worked well to organize interview talk. Chase found that participants respond to a request for a work history by telling a story, that a work history request draws professional women “into the settled, traditional discursive realm of professional work” (1995, p. 45). This was also the case with the participants in the current study.

Phase 2 Data Collection: Web-Based Discussion Forum Eight months after the individual telephone interviews were completed, a web-based threaded discussion forum was set up at the School of Information Studies where participants would be engaging in topical discussions concerning professional identity, jurisdictional conflict, core values, and gender in terms of their experiences as librarians and information professionals. This online environment would provide a more socially situated method of data collection (Wilkinson, 1998). Data from these asynchronous “discussions” would be used to supplement the data that had been obtained from the telephone interviews. In addition, the discussion forum would be used to inform the participants about the theoretical components of the research—in particular, Abbott’s (1988) theory of jurisdictional conflict in a professional domain and Joan Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations—and to have them react to these concepts in terms of their own work experiences. (Participants had not previously been informed of the theoretical basis of the research, either during the interview or in subsequent e-mail correspondence.) Participants’ responses to the two theoretical discussion topics would then be compared to data from their interviews on gender and jurisdictional conflict for congruence and internal consistency. The discussion forum also provided participants with an opportunity to contribute to a collective discussion of their experiences, with the intent that this

activity would lead participants to an increased understanding of their work lives both individually and within the larger social context (an online “consciousness raising” activity in an asynchronous mode). Establishing an Internet-based discussion forum thus was an attempt to encourage participants to contribute their individual work experiences within a communal environment, providing them with a forum they could use to gain insight into their own work lives through a sharing of experiences with each other, as well as providing additional research data several months after the individual interviews had been completed. The threaded discussion forum was located on a research website that had been created as a prototype for faculty research at the FSU School of Information Studies the previous year that was modified for the current study. Access to the research website was controlled through a UserID-password login sequence assigned by the researcher. The discussion forum was one of four modules on the website. In addition to the “Discussions” module there was a “Schedule” module for posting announcements and time-sensitive material, a “Documents” module where participants could retrieve preliminary research findings and copies of the discussion topics, and a “Help” module that contained information on how to participate in threaded discussion forums and how to navigate the research Website. (Copies of sample research website screens can be found in Appendix E.) Participants were individually contacted via e-mail, inviting them to participate in a two-month-long online discussion group in which they could share “insights into the factors that you feel impeded or facilitated your progress in your career” (quoted text is from the invitation to participate e-mail message; see Appendix B). Participants were asked to provide a “screen name” as their real names and e-mail addresses would be masked in the discussion forum.4 Respondents who did not provide screen names would be assigned an identifier, “Respondent[nn]”

4 This is the reason that threaded discussion forum software was used rather than e-mail discussion list software. Threaded discussion forum software has the capability to mask participants’ names and e- mail addresses, whereas e-mail discussion list software does not.

(e.g., Respondent20). Also included in the initial message were descriptions of the first four discussion topics. Of the 20 participants who had completed telephone interviews and were invited to participate in the threaded discussion forum, eight posted one or more messages. A total of 19 messages were posted by participants; the researcher posted an additional 8 messages. A review of the comments made by participants in private e-mail messages to the researcher either in response to the initial invitation to participate or during the two months the discussion forum was in operation showed that there were 10 requests for screen names (an indication of interest in participating in the discussion forum) and four reports of technical problems in accessing the website where the discussion forum was located (none of these participants subsequently posted messages to the forum). Unfortunately there were problems with the web servers at the School of Information Studies during the first week in March (the week the discussion forum was launched) and it may be that receiving error messages plus an unfamiliarity with the format of a threaded discussion forum served as barriers to participation. It could also be that the discussion topics were not that interesting or relevant for participants who had already committed roughly two hours of their time the previous summer to the research project. Participants were selective in responding to discussion topics: There were 8 responses to the topic concerning professional identity, 5 responses to the topic related to Abbott’s model of jurisdictional conflict within information professions, 3 responses to the topic concerning challenges and problems today versus 10 years ago, 2 responses to the topic on professional and workplace values, and no responses to the topic related to Acker’s feminist perspective.5

5 This was an early indication that gender issues were not a topic of much interest for the research participants. See chapter 4, gender relations subsection, for participants’ perceptions of the effect of gender on their careers.

Pilot Studies The work history questionnaire and interview guide were subjected to two pilot studies for testing and refinement. The second pilot study was also used to test the e-mail-based participant contact and recruitment procedure. The first pilot study took place four months before and the second was initiated one month before the research participants were first contacted and invited to participate in the study. First pilot study. The first pilot study was comprised of two women librarians who had worked in corporate libraries in the 1990s and were active Internet users but who had not participated in the 1991 – 1992 study of Internet use. Both women were known to the researcher but lived in other parts of the United States. The first pilot study took place in February 2001. These two librarians were informed about the purpose of the current research and were asked specifically to critique the work history questionnaire, the interview questions, and the interviewing process itself. They were informed that the data they provided would not be part of the research database and would not be distributed or published. Each was asked to complete a Microsoft Word version of the work history questionnaire, and each participated in a telephone interview in which a draft version of the interview guide was used. They were asked to critique the questionnaire by writing comments on the form in addition to answering the questions and to critique the interview questions by indicating whether they had difficulty responding to any of the questions. The interviews were audio-taped and transcribed, and the transcripts were reviewed by the researcher. Both the questionnaire and interview guide were modified as a result of the feedback received from the two pilot study participants. Second pilot study. The second pilot study was a full-scale test of the e-mail recruitment procedure, including informed consent, completion of the web-based work history questionnaire, and completion of the revised version of the interview. Seven women librarians who were part of the 1991 – 1992 Internet use study but who did not qualify for the current study were recruited for the pilot study and six agreed to participate. Five were working in academic libraries and one was a sales

representative for a vendor of online database services to libraries at the time of the earlier study. The second pilot study took place from April 30, when the invitation to participate was e-mailed, to July 9, 2001, when the last pilot study participant was interviewed. In general the second pilot study interviews flowed smoothly; respondents were not at all hesitant about talking about their work and their careers. The average length of these six interviews was 101 minutes. The six participants were not informed that they were part of a pilot study; all signed the informed consent form. The data obtained from these participants are not included in the current analysis (see Appendix F for pilot study participants’ response patterns and attributes). The interviews were audio-taped and transcribed by a professional transcriber, and the transcripts were reviewed by the researcher. As a result, three questions were added to the interview guide: (a) whether the participant considers herself an Internet early adopter, (b) the influence of family or friends as a factor affecting the participant’s career, and (c) what values the participant brings to her work or profession; and one of two questions concerning discrimination in the workplace was deleted. No changes were made to the web-based work history questionnaire. It became apparent during the conducting of the pilot study interviews that to understand more fully the contextual meaning of a participant’s career and her professional identity, it would be necessary to look at work-life events that happened prior to the most recent decade of her career—i.e., before the 1990s, the original focus of the study. This expansion did not require modifying the questionnaire or interview guide as it could easily be covered by the existing questions in the Work Life History section of the interview guide.

Data Description, Analysis, and Interpretation

This section describes data preparation and processing activities, the use of the QSR NVivo qualitative analysis program for data management, coding, and analysis,

and general procedures used for identifying themes and patterns and for constructing participant narratives. Specific analytic strategies are described in chapters 4 through 7 within the context of the findings presented in these chapters.

Data Preparation and Processing The telephone interviews were audio-taped and transcribed by a professional transcriber who was instructed to indicate in the transcript occurrences of non-lexical utterances (e.g., ums and uhs, laughter) and pauses. The researcher read each transcript guided by notes taken during the interview on the interview guide (the interviewer log), listening to the interview tapes where necessary to clarify garbled text. These copy-edited interview transcripts were sent to the research participants in the fall of 2001 to check for accuracy and clarify any ambiguities found in data collected from the interviews or web-based discussion forum. An Excel file was created containing values of attribute variables obtained from the work history questionnaires. This file was expanded as additional attributes were identified in the transcripts as analysis progressed. Descriptive statistics were computed for interval- level items such as age, years of undergraduate and MLS degrees, number of positions held, and salary. Interview transcripts were prepared for importing into an NVivo database by creating header templates and assigning style headings and subheadings corresponding to topical areas and questions on the interview guide. This preprocessing prepared the transcripts for section coding in NVivo, the first step in data reduction. The interview transcripts, work history questionnaire data, impression memos, and follow-up email correspondence with research participants comprise textual data analyzed in this study. These documents were saved as RTF files and imported into an NVivo database for data transformation following approaches to qualitative analysis recommended by Wolcott (1994), Merriam (1998), and Seidman (1998).

Using NVivo Qualitative Software NVivo is a qualitative data analysis software program that facilitates both processing and analysis.6 Documents created in Word can be imported into NVivo as RTF files, thus saving enhanced textual features such as boldface, italics, heading styles, etc. Memos and internal annotations can be created in NVivo and linked to specific text within a source document. On-screen coding is facilitated through an easy-to-use coding feature, and codes can be grouped together in hierarchical “trees” or remain as “free nodes.” In addition to coding, two other strengths of NVivo are the ability to tag documents with values of attributes that can be added directly or imported from Excel or SPSS files and the ability to search or query the data using free text, codes, attributes or a combination. The outcomes of NVivo searches are themselves saved as nodes that can be searched and further coded. Thus it is possible, for example, to search for all text coded with terms related to aspects of undervaluation, and then this result can be assigned to a “node” named “undervaluation,” which can searched again using additional criteria. This process was followed in chapter 5 (see Definitions and Analysis section) to identify text segments on undervaluation, a concept neither defined by the participants nor incorporated into the interview guide. Assigning multi-level headings in Word prior to importing into NVivo facilitated the automatic coding of transcript sections and subsections into section nodes. In this way, for example, text from all of the interviews pertaining to the section in the interview guide on “factors affecting / shaping career” was grouped together in a separate node called “factors affecting career” and text on the factor of “being a woman” similarly comprised a node called “being a woman.” These nodes then could be searched on the “career modality” and “age” attributes to examine differences by modality and age (see chapter 4, subsection on Gender Relations).

6 NVivo is produced by QSR International Pty Ltd., Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The use of NVivo for data management, coding and analysis in this research is based primarily on methods recommended by Richards (2000) and Bazeley and Richards (2000) and the experience gained from attending a two- day NVivo workshop at the University of Georgia in January 2002.

In this research coding was primarily inductive; a master code list comprised primarily of free nodes was created through the constant comparative method from the first six interview transcripts. This code list was expanded and refined as additional transcripts were coded. Additional attributes were constructed and values assigned as transcripts were reviewed. Once most of the preliminary coding was completed, NVivo facilitated the process of “dialoging” with the research data (Morse & Richards, 2002), testing (and discarding) hunches and assumptions as the analysis progressed.

Transforming Qualitative Data Data transformation is an iterative process, moving from data management tasks such as section coding to querying coded text files as part of the analytical process. Wolcott (1994) views qualitative data analysis as a three-stage process of treating descriptive data as facts, then expanding and extending these data in “some careful, systematic way to identify key factors and relationships among them,” and then making sense of these factors and relationships, “reach[ing] out for understanding or explanation beyond the limits of what can be explained with the degree of certainty usually associated with analysis” (pp. 10-11). The three categories of description, analysis, and interpretation are not mutually exclusive but are categories that “can be regarded as varying emphases . . . employ[ed] to organize and present data” (p. 11, emphasis in original). Wolcott’s conceptualization of a three-stage transformative process from description to analysis to interpretation is followed in this research. Chapter 3 is descriptive. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 present findings to the study’s three research questions and move from description (presenting the findings) to analysis (discussing these findings) as each chapter progresses. The narrative analysis presented in Chapter 7 incorporate all three dimensions, moving from a description of the research participant’s work history and current work responsibilities (description), to construction of her career “story” (analysis), to an interpretation of her story that is

informed by the study’s theoretical perspectives and themes identified in chapters 4 through 6. Chapter 8 is primarily interpretive. Identifying patterns and themes. Methods described by Merriam (1998) and Seidman (1998) were primarily used for identifying themes and patterns in chapters 4 through 6. To facilitate cross comparison of participants’ career and educational histories, “life events charts” (Giele, 1998, p. 250) and brief vignettes (Seidman, 1998, p. 102) were constructed for all 20 research participants from their work history questionnaires and interview transcript data.7 Text segments pertaining to concepts incorporated in the research questions were identified and coded through constant comparison of the interview transcripts. This systematic reading of the transcripts was used to construct five career pattern modalities that could then be used as attributes for further analysis (see chapter 4, subsection on Five Career Modalities, for more information). Constructing participant narratives. The career modalities provided a framework for constructing participant narratives. Once participants had been grouped into modalities, the transcripts of participants within each modality were examined to select a representative participant for narrative analysis. Six potential participants were identified based on attributes such as age, library type and size, type and size of organization, and industry or subject focus of the organization and library. A narrative “profile,” which is a narrative in the participant’s own words (see Seidman, 1998), was constructed from passages selected from the interview transcript for each of these participants organized according to the interview guide topics. Based on the pattern analysis of data for the three research questions presented in chapters 4 through 6, the decision was made to construct four rather than five narratives (see chapter 7 for more information on the selection process). Construction of the narratives followed methods described by Riessman (1993) and Chase (1995).8

7 See Appendix G for the research participant vignettes. 8 See Narrative Analysis subsection, above, in this chapter.

Trustworthiness

This discussion of the concept of trustworthiness is based on Riessman’s (1993, pp. 64-69) contention that validation should replace the positivist concepts of validity and reliability when discussing the issue of bias in qualitative research. “Validation, the process through which we make claims for the trustworthiness of our interpretations, is the critical issue” (p. 65). According to Riessman there are four criteria for determining trustworthiness in qualitative inquiry: persuasiveness and plausibility, correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic use. These criteria, summarized below, were used in the review and analysis of interview transcripts and interpretation of findings. The persuasiveness and plausibility criterion asks: Is the interpretation reasonable and convincing? Are theoretical claims supported? Are alternative interpretations considered? “Persuasiveness is greatest when theoretical claims are supported with evidence from informants’ accounts and when alternative interpretations of the data are considered” (p. 65). The correspondence criterion corresponds to internal validity in the positivist paradigm. Correspondence was achieved in this research by sending copies of interview transcripts to participants for comments and corrections. Coherence, the third criterion, must ideally span three levels of constructed reality: global, local, and themal (p. 67): 1. “Global coherence refers to the overall goals a narrator [research participant] is trying to accomplish while speaking.” Global goals can be strategic (such as impression management) or justificatory (justifying an action taken). 2. “Local coherence is what a narrator is trying to effect in the narrative itself.” This is how a narrator tells the story, how she puts it together linguistically.

3. “Themal coherence involves content.” Narrators develop content around themes that are to be discovered by the researcher. The researcher must continuously modify her own hypotheses and hunches about a participant’s goals and beliefs (global coherence), how the narrative is organized and structured (local coherence), and the recurrent themes that emerge (themal coherence). According to Riessman, this process helps to check ad hoc theorizing and should lead to more coherent interpretation of meaning. Finally, the pragmatic use criterion “assumes the socially constructed nature of science” (p. 68). The researcher can provide access to her data upon request (e.g., copies of interview transcripts with identifying information masked) so that others can determine the trustworthiness of her interpretation. By describing how the interpretations were produced, she makes the process visible to other researchers.9 These forms of validation are congruent with the interpretive paradigm, where alternative interpretations are possible; there is no one “right way” to conduct this type of research. In this research peer examination—i.e., asking colleagues to comment on emerging findings and interpretations—was used to counteract and act as a foil to researcher bias. Finally, the researcher should bring her assumptions out in the open; the assumptions underlying this research are presented in the Researcher as Instrument section of this chapter, below. Like Riessman, Olesen (1994) considers adequacy and credibility in feminist research to parallel validity issues in quantitative research. She recommends that the researcher use her own biases as resources by recognizing up front that these are biases. In other words reflexivity counters the biases the researcher brings to her research, especially cultural biases. In the Researcher as Instrument section below the researcher presents a brief autobiography as a way of making visible her sociocultural biases.

9 For this reason numerous excerpts from interview transcripts are presented in chapters 4 – 7 that help to make transparent the analytical process.

Researcher as Instrument

In this section I change the rhetorical voice of this dissertation from the third person to first person because my intent is to inform readers about how I perceive my role of “researcher as instrument”—as collector of data, reporter of findings, and analyst-interpreter. An essential part of this exposition are my assumptions concerning the conduct of inquiry, my explication of whose voice is represented in this research, and who I am and the potential biases I bring to this research.

Assumptions I assume that we live in a socially constructed world (Guba & Lincoln, 1994), that reality is socially constructed (Berger & Luckmann, 1966)—i.e., it cannot be divorced from one’s history, culture and language—and that scientific knowledge is socially situated (Harding, 1991). As Sandra Harding asserts, We cannot “strip nature bare” to “reveal her secrets,” as conventional views have held, for no matter how long the striptease continues or how rigorous its choreography, we will always find under each “veil” only nature-as-conceptualized-within-cultural projects. . . . Nature-as- an-object-of-knowledge simulates culture, and science is part of the cultural activity that continually produces nature-as-object-of- knowledge in culturally specific forms” (p. 12). I assume, like Samuel Trosow (2001, p. 368), that methodology serves as a “bridge between the ontological and epistemological realms.” Methodology is what provides internal consistency to the research project and must be based on these philosophical groundings—i.e., one’s conception of reality and one’s understanding of how knowledge is constructed (how we know what we know). “Assumptions about methodology concern the manner in which one attempts to identify, gather, and record knowledge of reality” (p. 368). I assume, like Acker (1990) and other feminist theorists (see, for example, Ferree, Lorber, & Hess, 1999; Harding, 1986; Scott, 1986; D. Smith, 1987; Stacey & Thorne, 1988/1998; West & Zimmerman, 1987) that gender is a central organizing

principle of society: “in all social systems, including work, politics, everyday interaction, families, economic development, law, education, and a host of other social domains” (Ferree et al., 1999, p. xi). To do feminist research “is to put the social construction of gender at the center of one’s inquiry” (Lather, 1992, p. 91). I assume, like Patti Lather (1992), that multiple interpretations are possible in any research project and that one cannot put words into research participants’ mouths that may not be there. One should not be the all-knowing researcher forcing her view of the world onto her research participants. However, the researcher can provide several interpretations as long as she makes sure that it is her perspective that is presented, and that this is not necessarily the perspective of her participants. Lather recommends that researchers show how data can be interpreted differently—not just through the use of different analytical methods, e.g., thematic and narrative analyses, but also through different ontologies and epistemologies or through the multiple voices of the researcher and participant. I assume, like Matthew Miles and Michael Huberman (1994, chap. 1), that the researcher must tell her readers what her view of reality (ontology) and understanding of how knowledge is constructed (epistemology) are. The philosophical underpinnings of the research project must be made known. I reject, like Harding (1986), the unity of science principle. I do not believe that there is, as Trosow puts it, “one world that is knowable through one truth . . . and that this one truth, a representation of nature’s order, can be discovered by one science capable of understanding it” (2001, p. 361). I presume that objectivity is not to be conflated with neutrality (Harding, 1986, p. 249) and that value-free—i.e., neutral—science is impossible. I presume that it is possible to strive for objectivity in feminist research as long as the researcher’s assumptions about the nature of reality and the nature and grounds of knowledge are made known and that the researcher’s perspective is taken into account and acknowledged. Harding (1991) calls this “strong objectivity”:

We can think of strong objectivity as extending the notion of scientific research to include systematic examination of such powerful background beliefs [as cultural agendas and assumptions]. It must do so in order to be competent at maximizing objectivity. . . . In a society structured by gender hierarchy, “starting thought from women’s lives” increases the objectivity of the results of research by bringing scientific observation and the perception of the need for explanation to bear on assumptions and practices that appear natural or unremarkable from the perspective of the lives of men in the dominant groups. Thinking from the perspective of women’s lives makes strange what had appeared familiar, which is the beginning of any scientific inquiry (pp. 149-150). Like Harding, I presume that a researcher can work towards an objectivity that is based on internal consistency—of the data collected, the stories told, the methodology employed, the theory framed. I assume, like Roma Harris (1992), that women’s work, including women’s professions, are undervalued in Western society because women are undervalued— i.e., because they are women’s professions, these professions are undervalued by society. I do not need to demonstrate this: it is an assumption based on ample empirical evidence (e.g., salary studies, studies of professions that have shifted from male to female, etc.). The way my research questions are phrased stem from this assumption. Finally, I assume that my participants are telling me their truths about their lives and work as they perceive them. The Personal Narratives Group emphasizes that there are “multiple truths in all life stories. Only by attending to the conditions which create these narratives, the forms that guide them, and the relationships that produce them are we able to understand what is communicated in a personal narrative” (1989, p. 262). Further, When talking about their lives, people lie sometimes, forget a lot, exaggerate, become confused, and get things wrong. Yet they are revealing truths. These truths don’t reveal the past “as it actually was,” aspiring to a standard of objectivity. They give us instead the truths of our experiences. . . . Unlike the reassuring Truth of the scientific ideal, the truths of personal narratives are neither open to proof nor self-

evident. We come to understand them only through interpretation, paying careful attention to the contexts that shape their creation and to the world views that inform them. (p. 261, emphasis in original)

Voice Whose story is to be told in this research and in what context? The relationship between researcher and research participant involves issues of power and authority (DeVault, 1996)—these include control of the data collection process as well as control of the intellectual product. I believe that research participants are participants—they are not subjects or even respondents. They are the “narrators” and I am the “interpreter” (Personal Narratives Group, 1989, p. 201). Although the researcher has a responsibility to report her findings and to make sense of—i.e., analyze and interpret—these findings, the researcher does not have the right to exclude participants from this process. As the researcher, I have an obligation to share my analysis and interpretation with my research participants, but I retain the final authority concerning what to include, analyze and interpret. I am careful, however, to maintain the distinction between my voice and the voices of the participants in this research project.

The Researcher in Context Finally, it is appropriate to tell something about myself. In this way the sociocultural biases I bring to this research are made visible to both readers and research participants. I am currently both a doctoral candidate at Florida State University and a tenured librarian at the Otto G. Richter Library, University of Miami, where I hold the rank of Associate Professor. For almost 25 years I have worked as a librarian in academic, public and special library settings, as well as a research evaluator for a state-government agency and project manager for a market research firm in Miami. I

have published in the areas of resource sharing and Internet use by special librarians. I received my MLS from Indiana University in 1971. I am white, of Pennsylvania Dutch heritage, middle class, heterosexual and married to the same man for 35 years. We have two children, a son and daughter both in their 20s. I am the elder of two daughters and the first in my family to attend and graduate from college. I am a registered Democrat but politically uninvolved. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, my husband and I have lived in Miami-Dade County, Florida, since 1974. My parents came from working class and farming backgrounds, achieving middle-class prosperity in the post-war boom years of the 1950s. My father was a draftsman and mechanical engineer who learned his skills on the job, working for the same company for over 30 years; my mother was a homemaker for most of her life, although before she was married and during her early married life she worked as a dime-store sales clerk. My parents believed in the importance of education and encouraged me to do well in school—I believe it was one of their biggest regrets that they were unable to pursue their own dreams of higher education. I see this as perhaps the greatest gift they could have given me. I realize now that I was a kid who always loved school and who thrived in that environment. I came of age in the 1960s. My husband and I married right out of undergraduate school, where I was a biology major. I followed him through a master’s degree at the University of Kentucky and a doctorate in sociology at Indiana University, working in several medical research technician jobs while he was going to school. While in Indiana I became involved in a Women’s Liberation conscious- raising group. I also enrolled in an MLS program with the intent of becoming a medical or science librarian—I had set aside my childhood goal of becoming a medical doctor because my undergraduate GPA was not high enough for a woman to be accepted into medical school in the 1960s. Like some of the participants in this research project, I knew I didn’t want to teach high school, and my experience as a

research technician told me it was a dead-end job. Librarianship, on the other hand, would give me a profession. Although some unfortunate early job choices made me think that I had chosen the wrong profession, after I began work as a corporate librarian for a medical device manufacturer and then moved into academic librarianship, I realized I loved being a librarian. In 1990 I became involved with the Internet through the encouragement of a colleague who was active, as I was, in the Special Libraries Association; together we conducted some research and wrote a book on how special librarians use the Internet (Ladner & Tillman, 1993). This experience served to broaden my perspective of what librarianship could become and made me even more excited to be a member of this profession. In 1995 when I turned 50 I read Gail Sheehy’s book, New Passages10 and decided to go back to graduate school to study for a doctorate in library and information studies. I believe that my professional work experience has provided a practical foundation and my experience as a doctoral student a conceptual foundation for understanding the changing role of the librarian-educated information professional in a variety of organizational settings. My own coming to grips with what it means to be a librarian and a woman in the information age has been a major factor driving my doctoral research. I also realize that my involvement in the Women's Liberation Movement while at Indiana University 30 years ago set the stage for rediscovering feminist theory and making it integral to my doctoral research.

Summary

Chapter 2 has presented the rationale and methodology for the study. Included are the following components of the research process: an overview of the tenets of a feminist methodological approach to inquiry; the rationale for juxtaposing thematic and narrative analyses of the interview and work history data; a description of the

10 New York: Ballentine Books, 1995.

data collection process, including participant selection and recruitment, construction of the semi-structured interview schedule and web-based work history questionnaire, and procedures for data collection; a description of the process employed for data reduction, analysis and interpretation; and a description of the concept of trustworthiness (validation) as a substitute for tests of validity and reliability in this qualitative research project. The chapter ends with a section on the researcher as instrument where the researcher’s assumptions about the conduct of inquiry and voice are presented and her sociocultural biases made visible. Research findings are presented in the next five chapters. Chapter 3 presents descriptive information on the 20 research participants within a socio-historical context. Chapters 4 through 6 present findings in response to the three research questions, respectively: chapter 4 describes the participants’ career patterns and career progression experiences within the context of five career modalities constructed from interview and work history data; chapter 5 focuses on three “undervalued-modality” participants and their perceptions of undervaluation of librarianship in the information-age workplace; and chapter 6 looks at how participants’ work experiences and organizational environments have affected their professional identity over the course of their careers. In chapter 7 career narratives for four representative participants are presented, each narrative corresponding to one of four career pattern modalities.

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS IN SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Introduction

Chapter 3 is the first of five chapters reporting the study findings.1 The chapter presents descriptive information on the 20 research participants within a socio-historical context, providing background and context for the findings presented in subsequent chapters. It is important to present the research participants in social, economic and historical context—i.e., to position them in time as well as in social space—to understand how they made sense of their careers as specialized librarians and information professionals in the information workplace of the 1990s. The image of any society is an historically specific image. . . . The institutions, the ideologies, the types of men and women prevailing in any given period constitute something of a unique pattern. . . . That within this historical type various mechanisms of change come to some specific kind of intersection. These mechanisms . . . are the very mechanisms that the social scientist, concerned with social structure, wishes to grasp. (C. W. Mills, 1959, p. 149) Giele (1998) asserts that one of the two major innovations of the 20th century is the phenomenon of women moving into the workforce. The participants in this study are making retroactive sense of a 20 to 30-year process of career activity and may take for granted some of the historical elements that are part of the phenomenon. For example, double digit inflation in the 1970s forced middle-class women into the

1 Chapters 4 through 6 present findings in response to the three research questions driving the study. Chapter 7 presents a narrative analysis of the work histories and experiences of four representative participants.

workplace; prior to that many middle-class women with families who worked outside the home were stigmatized. With the economic environment of the 1970s women had come to be accepted in the workplace and the rise of the service economy—including daycare and fast food services—facilitated this move. The women’s movement of the late 1960s opened up opportunities for women in traditionally male careers, yet the women in this study stayed in librarianship, one of the traditional female professions that originated more than a century earlier (see also Bell & Nkomo, 1992). The women in this study have lived through a 40-year period of tremendous social change. Half of them, born before 1950, entered the workforce at a time when career options for women were for the most part limited to being a librarian, teacher, social worker, or nurse. Those born after 1950 became librarians when professional opportunities for women were greater. They also entered the workforce as American industry was moving from a model of modern industrial production, with hierarchical management structures and rigid gender roles, into post-industrial models of flattened organizational structure, team-based management, outsourcing and downsizing, and computer-based information-age technologies. Table 3.1 positions the 20 research participants in terms of their birth decade and their age and year of graduation from an MLS (or equivalent) program.2 Participants who were born after 1950 had more choices for professional careers than those born in the previous decade when career opportunities for women outside the traditional female professions were much more limited. Table 3.1 suggests that there may be age-cohort differences between participants born before and after 1950. For example, five of the ten participants born prior to 1950 earned their MLS degrees at age 35 or older, whereas none of those born after 1950 did.

2 Details of employment, including names and geographic locations of employing organizations, are masked for confidentiality. Participants’ names are pseudonyms assigned by the researcher.

Table 3.1 Participants by Birth Cohort, Year of MLS Degree, and Age at Time of Degree MLS Degree Birth Cohort 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

1939-1949 (n=10) Born 1939 Louise Mayfield 1981 (42) Born 1940 Olivia Chambers 1963 (23) Born 1941 Janet Logan Joanne Dalton 1966 (25) 1989 (48) Born 1943 Shirley Levine 1970 (27) Born 1946 Susan Maxwell 1991 (45) Born 1947 Linda Jacobs Portia Hughes 1971 (24) 1989 (42) Born 1949 Sarah Long Roberta Kramer 1972 (23) 1985 (36)

1950-1959 (n=8) Born 1950 Audrey Rosen 1980 (30) Born 1952 Gwen Jackson 1975 (23) Born 1953 Roxanne Meyer 1975 (22) Born 1954 Diana Baker 1987 (33) Born 1956 Eileen Norton 1980 (24) Born 1957 Marty Roberts 1983 (26) Born 1958 Vivian Walton 1986 (28) Margaret Taylor 1988 (30)

1960-1969 (n=2) Born 1962 Dolores Peral 1990 (28) Born 1964 Laura Henderson 1989 (25) Note. Adapted from Giele (1993), Table 2.1, pp. 34-35. Participants’ age at year of MLS degree is in parentheses; participants’ names are pseudonyms.

In the following sections information about the research participants is presented in tabular form (see Tables 3.2 – 3.10). To provide an overview of who the participants are and where they have come from, descriptive data are organized in terms of demographics, educational history, work history, and Internet adoption and use. Biographical information on each participant (cf. Seidman, 1998) can be found in Appendix G (Research Participant Vignettes). The descriptions and tabular presentations in chapter 3 provide background and context for the research findings presented in the next four chapters.

Demographic Characteristics

Table 3.2 displays participants’ demographic data, including age, marital and family status, and geographic location. The average age of participants is 51 years: 10 were born prior to 1950 (between 1939 and 1949) and 10 were born between 1950 and 1964. Participants born before 1950 came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, during the civil rights movement and the beginnings of the women’s movement, but before the impact of the women’s movement was felt in the workplace; participants who were born in 1950 or later came of age in the 1970s and 1980s during a time when more career opportunities had opened up for women outside of the traditional female professions. The six participants who are 55 years old and older can be considered late career; the other participants, mid-career.3

3 What constitutes mid-career is imprecise, especially for women who left the workforce to raise a family. Schneer and Reitman (1995) in their study of men and women MBAs consider managers who are 13 to 18 years post-MBA to be mid-career; for Auster (2001, p. 720) mid-career is “one’s career at its midpoint (approximately 15-20 years into one’s professional career).” For the several participants who received their professional degrees in their 40s—in mid-life, another imprecise label (see Table 3.1)—these definitions of mid-career do not exactly fit. For this reason, the term late career is used for participants who are within 10 years of the retirement age of 65. All other participants are considered to be in mid-career.

Table 3.2 Participant Demographics, 2001 Number Item (n =20) Age (years) Under 45 5 45 – 54 9 55 – 64 6 Mean 50.7 Median 51.5 Geographic location Canada 1 US census regions: New England 4 Middle Atlantic 4 South Atlantic 4 Mountain or Pacific 4 Central 3 Marital status Married 14 Divorced or widowed 3 Never married 3 Family status Has children or pregnant at time of interviewa 13 Does not have children 7 aTwo participants who were pregnant at the time of the interview gave birth to their first child in November 2001 and February 2002, respectively.

The majority of participants (14 out of 20) are married. Two are divorced; one is widowed. Several participants had been divorced but have since remarried. Thirteen participants currently have children; two were pregnant with their first child at the time of the research interview and subsequently gave birth to live children. Nineteen participants live in the USA; one lives in Canada. All but three participants live in urban areas.

Educational History

Table 3.3 displays data about research participants’ educational history, including year of undergraduate degree, undergraduate concentration or major, and year of masters’ degree in library science (MLS) or equivalent. The majority of participants (18 out of 20) graduated from college in their early 20s, having entered college within a year or two of high school graduation. It is not surprising that the majority of participants (13 out of 20) majored in the arts or humanities, rather than science; historically librarianship, including special librarianship, has attracted students from these disciplines (Detlefsen & Olson, 1991; Moen & Heim, 1988).

Table 3.3 Participants’ Educational History Number Item (n = 20) Undergraduate concentration or major Arts or humanities 13 Social sciences 4 Sciences 3 Year undergraduate degree awarded 1960 – 1969 7 1970 – 1979 9 1980 – 1989 4 Mean 1972 Median 1971 Year MLS (or equivalent) degree awarded 1960 – 1969 2 1970 – 1979 5 1980 – 1989 11 1990 – 1992a 2 Mean 1981 Median 1982 a The cut-off date for participation in the study was 1992.

Unlike the uniformity of their undergraduate attendance, participants display different enrollment patterns for their graduate education in library and information science: 11 received their MLS degree within 5 years of college graduation; 3 received their MLS between 6 and 10 years post-graduation; and 6 received their MLS more than 10 years after they graduated from college. Employment conditions differed for participants depending on the decade in which they received their MLS degrees. Participants graduating from LIS programs in the 1960s entered the profession in an environment where demand for librarians outstripped supply. By the early 1970s, however, the job market had tightened substantially and remained tight throughout the decade, although Library Journal’s 1973 annual Placements and Salaries Survey (Frarey & Learmont, 1974) reported that “there are still jobs to be found by any who can be mobile and a little flexible in their expectations” (p. 1767). By the mid-1980s the employment situation had improved somewhat, particularly for “nontraditional positions” categorized as “other information specialties” in the1986 annual Placements and Salaries Survey: “There is still a strong demand for . . . people with systems backgrounds [and] other specialties [such as] medical, law, archives, and science. All of these specialties have been in high demand in recent years” (Learmont & Van Houten, 1987, p. 31). The employment situation in the 1990s was more volatile, with more part-time or temporary placements being reported (20% in 1994), and a continuing increased in nontraditional positions such as “Webmaster, Interface Designer, Cybrarian, Internet Specialist, Online Systems Administrator” which accounted for 58% of beginning placements in 1994 (Zipkowitz, 1995, p. 27). Graduate library education in the 1980s differed from that of the 1970s because of the changing information technology environment: Librarianship as practiced in the 1980s relied more on computer-based information services and

systems than ever before, particularly in business and science-technology libraries. This in turn required that library schools incorporate more technology-centered courses than had previously been included in the LIS curriculum. In other words, new MLS librarians in the 1980s entered the work force with a different skill set than their colleagues who had graduated a decade earlier.

Work History

Tables 3.4 – 3.9 display data about participants’ work history.4 These data are organized in terms of: 1. Industry areas (Table 3.4) and types of information work (Table 3.5) in which participants were engaged over the course of their careers; 2. Work history trend data for 1991 and 2001 on type and subject focus of participants’ libraries or information centers and comparative data on special libraries (Tables 3.6 and 3.7); 3. Size of participants’ current organizations and the management structure of their libraries or information centers (Table 3.8); and 4. Participant salaries and comparative industry data (Table 3.9).

Industry Areas and Information Work Table 3.4 lists the industries where participants worked during the course of their careers. This list serves to illustrate the science-technology focus of the research participants’ careers. This focus was expected since participants were selected based on their use of the Internet prior to 1993, the year when commercial restrictions were removed from the NSF Internet backbone; prior to 1993, only commercial firms with defense contracts or who were involved in research and development projects with academic or other organizations had access to the NSF-sponsored Internet.

4 Data for Tables 3.4, 3.5 and 3.8 were obtained from participants’ interview transcripts; data displayed in Tables 3.6 and 3.9 were obtained from participants’ work history questionnaires.

Table 3.4 Industries Where Participants Worked During Their Careers Number Industry (n = 20) Aerospace, defense 6 Computers & computer components 4 Consumer products 1 Environmental engineering 1 Food, agriculture, natural resources 3 Higher education 11 Information products & services 4 Internet (and Internet-precursor) services 2 Medical, healthcare 5 Pharmaceuticals, biotechnology 3 Policy research & analysis 2 Professional services 5 Research & Development (applied research) 5 Scientific research (basic research) 1 Telecommunications & telecommunication components 3 Note. Multiple responses are possible. Participants worked in 2.8 industry areas during their careers as information professionals.

In addition to sci-tech industries, five participants have worked in business and related fields, e.g., in professional services such as accounting and auditing, financial services, management consulting, legal and other corporate services; and four participants worked in the information industry, e.g., for providers of information resources, information industry consulting services, or in the publishing industry. There is some overlap among these industry areas, as several participants have worked in both business and sci-tech areas, either as managers of libraries or information centers, or in the information industry. The various types of information-related work accomplished by participants during the course of their careers are listed in Table 3.5. In addition to traditional

library work such as acquisition and cataloging of printed materials (books, journals, technical reports, etc.), circulation of these resources, interlibrary borrowing and lending, document delivery, and reference services, participants have managed or participated in a variety of technologically advanced information functions, including database development, discussion list moderating, library systems management, licensing of electronic products for desktop access, online searching of specialized information databases, computer programming, computer and Internet training and support, web development and web content management, and provision of virtual library services, such as real-time electronic reference service.

Table 3.5 Information Work Done During Career Number Number Item (n = 20) Item (n = 20) Archives, records management 3 Management 18 Business research 5 Marketing, promoting 12 Competitive intelligence 5 Needs assessments, surveys 5 Database development, management 11 Online searching 14 Discussion list moderating 2 Programming 3 Electronic document management 3 Sales 2 Environmental scanning 4 Staff or user training 13 Grant writing 5 Computer training & support 3 Historical research 1 Internet training & support 9 Information consulting 3 Traditional library worka 19 Intellectual property research 1 Virtual library services 4 Knowledge management 7 Web content management 8 Library systems management 10 Web development 6 Licensing of electronic products 8 Writing on information topics 7 Note. Multiple responses are possible. a Traditional library work includes acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, document delivery, interlibrary loan, and reference service.

Participants have also been engaged in the provision of strategic information services such as competitive intelligence, information consulting and knowledge management. Most have proactively marketed and promoted their information services to stakeholders and other potential users of their services and as unit managers have been responsible for other management functions such as budgeting and supervision and training of staff. In addition, about one-third of the participants (7 out of 20) have written one or more articles that have been published in the professional literature and two have served as columnists for information-industry magazines.

Work History Trends, 1991 – 2001 Table 3.6 displays trend data on the type and subject focus of the libraries and information centers where participants worked in 1991 and 2002, illustrating the mobility patterns of participants over the past 10 years.5 The number of participants working in corporate environments decreased by half between 1991 and 2001, from 10 participants in 1991 to five at the time of their interviews in 2001. Of the five who left corporate libraries, one moved to an academic library, one moved to a library in the non-academic not-for-profit sector, one opened an information consultancy, one moved into information-industry sales, and one left the information services field altogether. Only one of the 10 participants who were working in not-for-profit or government agencies in 1991 moved to a corporate environment, and she left this position in 1998 to move to an academic library. Participants who were corporate librarians in 1991 were also more mobile than their non-corporate colleagues during the decade, holding an average of 3.4

5 The research design excluded special librarians working in academic institutions or in non-library environments in 1991-1992 when they were first surveyed regarding their Internet use (see chapter 2, Data Collection section). Hence there were no participants represented in the academic or other-or- none categories for 1991.

positions during this 10-year period, compared to only 1.7 positions held by participants in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies.

Table 3.6 Participants’ Work History, 1991 – 2001 Number (n = 20) Item 1991 2001 Type of library or information center Corporate 10 5 Not-for-profit or government agency 10 9 Academic 0 3 Other or none 0 3 Subject focus of library or information center Science-technology, astronomy, or engineering 13 10 Medicine 3 4 Business 3 3 Other or multidisciplinary 1 3 Average number of positions held, 1991 – 2001 2.6 Note. The category not-for-profit or government includes libraries or information center in not-for- profit organizations and government agencies but excludes libraries in academic institutions (academic libraries are listed separately).

Data from Special Libraries Association salary surveys from 1990 to 2001 indicate that the size of U.S. special libraries, as measured by number of staff supervised, has been shrinking (see Table 3.7). Corporate libraries are being downsized or closed as a result of corporate restructuring and downsizing (N. Smith, 1997) as well as from a common assumption held by corporate management that libraries are an anachronism in information-age business organizations (Davenport & Prusak, 1997; Koenig, 2000; 2002). The data displayed in Table 3.7 also indicate that although special libraries have gotten smaller, their number remained relatively constant during the decade of the 1990s. This suggests that as some special libraries

were being closed, others were being created. It is not surprising then, that participants who were corporate librarians in 1991 experienced more job volatility than their counterparts in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies.

Table 3.76 Size and Number of U.S. Special Libraries, 1990 – 2001 No. of Percent of libraries within staff size categoriesa special Date No staff 1 – 2 3 - 4 5 - 9 10+ Total librariesb 1990 31.2% 30.6% 14.2% 14.3% 9.8% 100.0% 10,048 1992 32.2% 29.5% 14.2% 13.4% 10.7% 100.0% 10,850 1994 25.7% 32.8% 15.5% 15.0% 11.0% 100.0% 11,148 1996 43.6% 24.8% 11.6% 11.2% 8.8% 100.0% 11,340 1997 43.4% 24.6% 13.1% 11.2% 7.8% 100.0% 11,044 1998 44.1% 24.2% 12.5% 12.8% 6.4% 100.0% 11,022 1999 40.2% 26.0% 11.6% 12.7% 9.4% 100.0% 10,808 2000 41.3% 24.8% 11.0% 12.1% 10.8% 100.0% 9,993c 2001 40.7% 25.8% 11.2% 12.6% 9.6% 100.0% 11,017 Note. Data reported in this table are compiled from two disparate sources. a Percentages were derived from table, “Salary Distribution by Number of Employees Supervised,” from the following Special Libraries Association salary surveys: 1985: 1990 – 1996: SLA Biennial Salary Survey (1991, 1993, 1995, 1996 editions); 1997 – 2001: SLA Annual Salary Survey (1997 – 2001 editions). b Number of special libraries was obtained from table, “Number of Libraries in the United States,” data item “Total Special Libraries,” from The Bowker Annual: Library and Book Trade Almanac (republished from data reported in annual issues of the American Library Directory). c The number of special libraries listed for 2000 may be an undercount.7

6 Table 3.7 includes data for special libraries in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. In 2001, for example, 57% of the SLA salary survey respondents worked in for-profit organizations; the rest worked in non-profit organizations including government, academic or public libraries. The number of special libraries reported in Table 3.7 also includes special libraries in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. It is not known whether the ratio of for-profit to not-for-profit special libraries has changed between 1990 and 2001. 7 The “Total Special Libraries” count reported by the American Library Directory “includes all law, medical, religious, business and other special libraries found in the American Library Directory™ regardless of who operates them” (Information Today, 2002, p. xii); this data item is reported in Table 3.7 because it is more closely related to the data obtained from the SLA Salary Surveys (both include special libraries from all types of organizations). Another count of special libraries reported by the American Library Directory (titled “Special Libraries”) excludes special libraries that are located in “Public, Academic, Armed Forces or Government institutions” (p. xii). The difference between these two counts of special libraries ranged from 9.3% to 11.4% for all years listed in Table 3.7 except 2000,

Participants exhibited stability in their subject focus, regardless of movement from one type of an organization to another (Table 3.6). They tended to remain in the same subject area—mostly science and technology fields—regardless of organizational type. Even the two participants who moved to large multidisciplinary academic libraries had responsibility for subject areas that they previously managed in other venues. The focus on science and technology is to be expected since access to the Internet was restricted to scientific research and development organizations and to corporations with ties to defense, aerospace and related scientific areas prior to 1993.

Organizational Size and Library Management Structure Table 3.8 displays data on the size of the organizations where participants worked in 2001, the number of potential customers they could serve, and the size and structure of their libraries or information centers.8 Of the 17 participants for whom employee organizational data are available, four worked in small and presumably less bureaucratic organizations; six worked in mid-size organizations of 100 to 999 employees; and seven worked in large organizations with 1,000 or more employees. Of the four participants working in organizations with 10,000 or more employees, three work for multinational corporations and one is in a large land-grant university. The size of the customer base was substantially less than the total number of employees in the multinational corporations; the library or information center generally served only the professional, technical and managerial level employees of these organizations. By contrast, the three participants working in academic libraries serve both employees and students in their organizations, so for these institutions the customer base is larger than the total

which showed a difference of only 0.5% (45 libraries), indicating that special libraries in public, academic, armed forces or government institutions might have been underrepresented in 2000. 8 These were the organizations listed by participants in their work history questionnaires as their “current position.” These data were collected in May – June 2001.

number of employees (the two participants serving 10,000 or more people work in academic institutions).

Table 3.8 Organizational Size and Library Customer Base and Size, 2001 Number Item (n = 20) Number of employees in parent organizationa Under 100 4 100 – 999 6 1,000 – 9,999 3 10,000+ 4 Self-employed 2 Customer base of library or information centerb Under 100 2 100 – 999 4 1,000 – 9,999 5 10,000+ 2 Not in library or information center 4 Library size and management structure One-professional library (“solo” librarian) 6 Small library (2-3 librarians plus support staff) 4 Large library (10+ librarians and support staff ) 6 Not in library or information center 4 a Employee data are not available for one participant’s organization. b Size of customer base is not available for three participants.

The management structure of a specialized library or information center is a function of both size and composition of the organizational unit and the type of organization in which the unit is located. Corporate libraries and information centers tend to be smaller and academic libraries larger. Three categories of specialized libraries or information centers are listed in Table 3.8, based on their management structure:

1. Solo librarians are managers of libraries or information service units where they are the only information professional in the organizational unit. These libraries or information centers can either be a one-person unit or a unit run by one information professional and several support staff (Siess, 1999; 2001; St. Clair, 1991).9 Four of the six solo librarians listed in Table 3.8 were working in corporate libraries or information centers and two were in not-for-profit or government agencies in 2001. 2. A small library is defined as a library or information center managed by an information professional who supervises one to two other information professionals and several more support staff, the number of personnel in the unit totaling less than 10 people (Tees, 1991). Four participants—three in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies and one in the corporate sector—managed small libraries. 3. A large library is a library or information center managed by an information professional with two or more information professionals and support staff totaling 10 or more employees. Six participants—three in academic institutions and three in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies—managed or worked in large libraries or information centers.

Participant Salaries and Comparative Industry Data Table 3.9 provides a distribution of the research participants’ salary for 2000 and comparisons with industry surveys for librarians and other information professionals.

9 The solo librarian has also been referred to in the literature as an OPL—a one-person librarian or one- person library (Siess, 2001; St. Clair, 1987).

Table 3.9 Participants’ Salaries and Comparison With Industry Surveys Participants’ annual salary, 2000a Number Under $50,000 3 $50,000 - $64,999 6 $65,000 - $79,999 6 $80,000 and above 3 Comparison with industry surveys Mean Research participants $68,886 Special librarians and information professionalsb $58,937 Academic and public librariansc Director/dean $72,384 Deputy/associate/assistant directors $59,346 Department heads/coordinators/senior managers $52,677 Information technology professionalsd Manager of Internet/intranet technology $73,716 Database manager $71,178 Technical support manager $61,109 Systems analyst/administrator $57,766 a Participants’ salary data are reported for the calendar year 2000. Part-time salaries were converted to full-time equivalents, and Canadian dollars were converted to US; two participants who were self- employed were unable to provide salary data. b SLA Annual Salary Survey 2001, p. 65. The SLA survey is a random sample of the US membership and all Canadian SLA members and covers the year ending April 1, 2001. c ALA Survey of Librarian Salaries 2001, pp. 9, 12. The ALA survey is a stratified random sample of US public and academic libraries and is based on salaries paid as of April 1, 2001 (Lynch, 2001). d Computerworld’s 14th Annual Salary Survey (Brandel, 2000), accessed August 25, 2002, from www.computerworld.com.

Participants reported a wide range of salaries for 2000, from a low in the mid $30,000s to several who earned over $100,000. Their average salary of $68,886 is 17% higher than the $58,937 reported for the profession of specialized librarianship as a whole (Special Libraries Association, 2001, p. 65) and 16% higher than the $59,761 reported for deputy / associate / assistant directors of academic and public libraries but 5% less than directors / deans (Lynch, 2001, pp. 6, 9) for the same time period. Participants earned, on average, less than some information-technology professionals with comparable skills, e.g., manager of Internet/intranet technology

($68,886 vs. $73,716) or database manager ($71,178), but they earned more than technical support manager ($61,109) or systems analyst/ administrator ($57,766, Brandel, 2000). Given the wide range of salaries reported by participants, there seems to be little relationship between type and structure of organizations or industry areas in which participants worked. The nine participants working in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies (with an average salary of $69,625) were among both the lowest and highest paid of the 18 participants for whom salary data are available. There also does not appear to be any difference in salaries reported by the three participants in academic institutions ($61,193) compared with the five working in for-profit corporations ($59,950) in 2000. Nor is there a relationship between participants’ age and salary.10 The management structure of the library, however, does appear to be a factor. The four participants working in small special libraries earned less, on the average, than their colleagues who were solo librarians ($46,964 vs. $61,961) and those in large libraries of 10 or more librarians ($46,964 vs. $71,722).

Internet Adoption and Use

Table 3.10 displays data about participants’ Internet adoption and use. Seven participants began using the Internet in the 1980s: the three earliest users, who first accessed the Internet in 1983 and 1984, worked for organizations that were part of or had access to the original ARPANET. Of the 18 participants who were asked if they considered themselves early adopters of the Internet, all but one said yes.11 The three participants who had been using the Internet since the early 1980s, however, qualified their responses in that they did not consider themselves early adopters of this technology in the organizations in which they worked, but they did consider

10 Spearman rank correlation coefficient = .25, n.s.. 11 Gwen Jackson, the participant who did not consider herself an early adopter, left librarianship in 1997 to become an event planner (see chapter 4, Multiple Positions Modality subsection).

themselves early adopters within the context of their professional work as special librarians.

Table 3.10 Participants’ Internet Use Number Item (n = 20) Year first used the Internet Before 1985 3 1985 – 1989 4 1990 – 1991 7 1992a 6 Type of Internet use, 2001 Both user and provider of Internet services 11 User but not provider of Internet services 9 a The cut-off date for participation in the study was 1992.

Eleven participants stated that they are both users and providers of Internet- based services in their present positions, while nine considered themselves Internet users but not providers of Internet services to their organizations. These librarians were engaged in innovative uses of information technologies throughout most of their careers (see Table 3.5). They used the Internet, along with other information technologies, as tools to accomplish work, not as ends in themselves.12

Summary

The descriptions and tabular presentations in this chapter provide background and context for the research findings presented in the next four chapters. This information is summarized below.

12 See chapter 4, Issue 2: Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions subsection, and chapter 7 for discussion of participants’ technological competencies.

Demographic characteristics: Participants ranged in age from 37 to 62 at the time of their interviews; their average age is 51 years. Half were born before 1950 and entered the workforce when career options for women were limited to the so- called women’s professions; those born after 1950 chose librarianship when professional opportunities for women were greater. Fourteen participants are married and 13 have children. All live in North America, and all but three live in urban areas. Education: Eighteen participants entered college within a year or two of high school graduation; the majority majored in the arts or humanities, rather than science. About half received their MLS degrees within five years of college graduation; six participants, all born before 1950, received their MLS degrees more than 10 years after graduating and can be considered second-career librarians. Graduate library school in the 1980s differed from that in the 1970s and 1960s because of the changing information environment; the 13 participants who received their MLS degrees in the 1980s and early 1990s entered the workforce with a different skill set than the seven who earned their MLS degrees in the 1960s and 1970s. Work environments: Most participants have worked in science and technology industry areas (aerospace, computers, research and development, medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc.) during their careers; this is to be expected since participants were selected based on their use of the Internet prior to 1993 when access was restricted to organizations with defense or research contracts or educational institutions. Over half worked in academic libraries at some point in their careers; five have had experience as business librarians. Participants have engaged in a variety of information work. Like many special librarians they have managed or engaged in a variety of technologically advanced information functions throughout their careers, including database development, library systems management, computer programming, web development, and web content management in addition to managing traditional library functions.

The 10 participants who were corporate librarians in 1991 experienced more job volatility than their counterparts in not-for-profit organizations or public agencies; half left the corporate world for other venues in the 1990s (e.g., to academe, information industry sales, consulting, not-for profit organization, non-information work). By contrast, only one of the 10 participants who worked in non-corporate environments in 1991 moved to a corporate library, and she left this position for one in academe in 1998. Regardless of organizational type, participants tended to remain in the same subject areas—primarily science and technology fields. Of the 17 participants for whom organizational data are available, four worked in small organizations of less than 100 people, six worked in mid-size organizations; and seven worked in large organizations of 1,000 or more employees in 2001. Six participants were solo librarians, four managed small libraries (less than 10 employees), and six worked in or managed libraries of 10 or more employees. Salary comparisons: Participants’ average salary of $68,886 in 2000 is 17% higher than the $58,937 average for special librarians and 16% higher than the $59,761 average for management-level positions in academic and public libraries. They earned less than some information-technology professionals with comparable skills (e.g., manager of Internet/intranet technology, database manager) but more than others in similar positions (e.g., technical support manager, systems analyst). Participants reported a wide range of salaries, from a low in the mid $30,000s to several who earned over $100,000. There appears to be little relationship between a participant’s salary and the type of organization or industry area in which she worked. The management structure of the library, however, does appear to be a factor: the four participants who managed small special libraries earned less than their colleagues who were solo librarians or who worked in large libraries. Chapter 3 has presented descriptive information on the 20 research participants. Next, chapter 4 describes participants’ career patterns and career progression experiences within the context of five career modalities constructed from participant interview and work history data.

CHAPTER FOUR

CAREERS IN THE CONTEXT OF PROGRESSION, COMPETITION, AND MEMBERSHIP IN A FEMINIZED PROFESSION

Introduction

This chapter is an exploration of the career patterns of the 20 early-Internet- adopter women librarians introduced in chapter 3. The second of five chapters reporting the study’s findings, chapter 4 describes five career modalities derived from interviews with the research participants and addresses the first of three research questions that drive the study.1 This question and its two sub-questions are as follows: Research Question 1. What are the career patterns of high-tech women special librarians? a) Given competition from other information professions such as network database administration, information science and Internet/web development, how has their membership in a feminized profession affected their career progression? b) How have structural organizational features affected their career progression?

1 Findings for Research Question 2 (“How do high-tech women special librarians experience the undervaluation of the library profession in competition with other information professions?”) are presented in chapter 5, and findings for Research Question 3 (“How have the work experiences of these librarians affected their professional identity?”) are presented in chapter 6. Issues identified in chapters 4 through 6 are explored in chapter 7 through narrative analyses of the work histories and experiences of four representative research participants.

As stated in chapter 1, the purpose of this research is to gain an understanding of how women with technological expertise (a male-identified skill) who are members of a feminized profession (librarianship) make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace (a gendered realm). The study is positioned within the conceptual framework of Abbott’s (1988) jurisdictional conflict model and interpreted from a feminist critical worldview (Acker, 1990; 1998; Chase, 1995; DeVault, 1999a; Olesen, 1994). Research Question 1 centers on the career patterns and career progression of the 20 early-Internet adopting women librarians who participated in the study. Following this main question, the two sub-questions explore the dynamics of jurisdictional conflict and competition within an assumed-to-be- contested information domain (Abbott, 1988; 1998), the effect this conflict may have had on participants’ progression in their careers as information professionals in assumed-to-be-gendered organizational environments (Acker, 1990), and the effects of various organizational factors on their career progression.

Research Question 1: What are the Career Patterns of High-Tech Women Special Librarians?

Findings for Research Question 1 provide a descriptive foundation for the study by focusing on the career patterns and career progression experiences of the research participants. These career patterns are organized in terms of five career modalities, described below.

Five Career Modalities Constructing career modalities based on participant career patterns was not part of the original design, but early in the analysis it became apparent that it was necessary to construct a model for both exploring the data and elucidating concepts embedded within all three research questions. The career pattern modalities were derived inductively from systematic readings of research participants’ work histories

and interview transcripts following the constant comparative method (Merriam, 1998). These modalities were then examined for consistency with the literature on women’s career development and compared with other career typologies found in this literature (e.g., Barrett, Goldenberg, & Faux, 1992; Lee, 1994).2 The five career pattern modalities, along with the names of the participants who best fit each modality, are summarized in Table 4.1.3 Participants were assigned to a particular modality in terms of where they are in their careers today, within the context of their work histories. Several elements of the work histories and career accounts were particularly salient: 1. A participant’s description of her current job and status of her career at the time of the interview (or post-interview in the case of two respondents who changed jobs after the interview); 2. Any sense-making accounts provided by the participant about the direction(s) her career has taken or decisions she has made since deciding to become a librarian; 3. How participants described their work and feelings about their work; and 4. The examination of background variables (attributes) to identify those that might serve as discriminators—e.g., age, number of positions held in the past 10 years, salary, marital and family status, etc. These career pattern modalities are not mutually exclusive categories, as in a formal typology, because a participant’s career can incorporate characteristics of more than one modality. For example, a library manager who is also concerned about balancing work and family would be placed in the family-first modality rather than the manager modality if she reported that she made major career decisions based on the needs of her family.

2 For reviews of the literature on women’s career development see Burke & McKeen (1994), Gallos (1989), Powell & Mainiero (1992), and Stroh & Reilly (1999). For reviews not specifically focusing on women’s careers see Ornstein and Isabella (1993) and Rosenfeld (1992). 3 Participants were assigned pseudonyms by the researcher. Details of employment, including names and geographic locations of employing organizations, are masked for confidentiality.

Table 4.1 Career Pattern Modalities Modality Characteristics Participantsa

Family first Puts family first, ahead of career. Louise Mayfield Major decisions about career always made in the context of Roxanne Meyer family needs, independent of job status, number supervised, Vivian Walton size of budget, type of library or information unit, etc.

Found my Intrinsic rewards are paramount: “loves her job.” Olivia Chambers spot No desire to leave present position and sees herself in it Portia Hughes until she retires. Janet Logan Been in present position for 10 years or more. Susan Maxwell Oldest modality: average age is 55 years, compared to 51 Margaret Taylor years overall.

Manager Professional identity is that of “manager” rather than Linda Jacobs “librarian” or “information professional.” Shirley Levine Looks at work environment and career strategically, more Dolores Peral forward-looking and planning for future outcomes. Span of managerial control is greater, compared to other participants. Highest average salary of all modalities: $92,860, compared to $68,886 overall.

Multiple Held at least one professional position in a field outside Diana Baker positions librarianship, regardless of other factors, e.g., number Gwen Jackson supervised, size of budget, type of library or information Roberta Kramer unit, etc; or held a variety of information-related positions Sarah Long over the course of career. Eileen Norton Held more positions over the past 10 years than those in Marty Roberts other categories: average is 4.5, compared to 2.8 overall. More likely to be childless: 5 of 7 participants with no children are in this modality. Youngest modality: average age is 48, compared to 51 years overall.

Undervalued Comments about being undervalued or under appreciated. Joanne Dalton Evidence of structural organizational features indicating Laura Henderson participant is undervalued, e.g., low salary, staff layoffs, Audrey Rosen downsized, location within reporting structure, etc. Lowest average salary of all modalities: $45,285, compared to $68,888 overall. a Italics indicate that the participant’s narrative is featured in chapter 7.

Because the participants in this study include women who were at varying stages of their careers at the time of the interviews, these modalities are not static. A participant could move to a different modality in the future should there be major changes in her life or work environment, such as the birth of a child, loss of her job, organizational restructuring, illness, or death of a close family member. For example, participant Diana Baker was placed in the multiple-positions category because of the number of positions she had held in the 1990s; however, had she still been in her hospital-librarian position at the time of the interview, Diana would have been assigned to the undervalued modality.4 The five career modalities, illustrated using the participants’ own words, are described in more detail below.5 All 20 research participants are included in these descriptions. Defining these career modalities is an important first step in understanding the dynamics of career development for these librarians and the variations in perceived jurisdictional conflict (or lack of conflict), the experience of being in gendered organizations, the status of being in a feminized profession and the conceptualization of career progression.6

Family-First Modality The family-first career modality is defined as a pattern of career activity based on family considerations rather than personal career advancement. The balance of family and work is paramount: family considerations are the major factor in a

4 See Diana Baker’s account of her hospital library experience in the Undervalued Modality subsection below. 5 Excerpts from participant interviews are edited for ease of reading—e.g., repetitions, pauses, and non-lexical utterances (ums, uh huhs) are excluded. Omitted text is indicated by ellipses. The interviewer’s statements are indicated by her initials (SL) and enclosed in brackets. Generic terms that mask identifying information are also bracketed. 6 See subsection, What is Career Progression?, in the next section below for further explication of this concept.

participant’s choice of work or position. Three participants were assigned to this modality: Louise Mayfield, Roxanne Meyer, and Vivian Walton. Louise Mayfield and Vivian Walton, two of the three participants in this modality, work part time by choice. Louise, whose four children are now adults, has worked 30 hours per week at a small research-engineering firm since earning her library degree in 1981. She defines a successful career in terms of her family: Well, actually, my family comes before my career and so first I have to have that. But then to have a career that is always challenging and letting me learn new things, keeping me interested. And I need lots of people involvement. I need interaction with people. And I need it to have a strong intellectual component. Vivian moved to part-time work when her former company, a computer firm at one time in the vanguard of the industry, downsized in the early 1990s. When [former company] went into Chapter 11, I cut my hours. But also because I was having my kids. When I had my first child, I went back to work within the normal time. Two or three months I was back to working 32 hours a week. . . . Then when my second child was born, several different things happened . . . my mother, who was living with us, was my childcare. But by the time my second child was born, it was obvious she had Alzheimer’s, so that was no longer going to work, so I reduced my hours. And it all worked out fine for the company because they didn’t need me 32 hours either. So I went down to 24 hours. And so that was my decision and the company’s decision. It worked out for everybody. Roxanne Meyer, on the other hand, has always worked full time, but over the course of her career she has put her family first when making career decisions. Actually, I was considering—there’s a deanship opening at [another university] which would be a big step up and one I could probably take. . . . It would be fun and challenging because it’s starting a library again, and I would just love doing that. But I weighed family and said, no, that’s OK. . . . It’s close enough not to require a move, but it’s the amount of work I know I would have to do at this point in my career and the amount of time I would have to put in and the fundraising. I mean, it would be a day and night job. And I don’t want to do that. . . . I thought about it, but made the decision that it’s just more than I can want to chew off. . . . So I made the decision that it wasn’t the time for me to do it. Again, it’s my choice. I’m completely comfortable. That

will always be the mix because I have kids and husband. And those are important to me. The found-my-spot participants were comfortable making tradeoffs in putting their families first, before their careers. Like Roxanne, who opted not to become a library dean, Vivian has chosen part-time work in an industry, environmental engineering, that doesn’t “set her aflame” over full time work in a leading-edge, high- tech firm. [SL: Do you have an interest in moving back into the high tech industry?] I would love to if I could find similar accommodations in terms of hours. That is my driving thing. It’s not the money anymore. Not the job satisfaction. It’s the hours that are most important to me right now. I need to be able to work 24 hours a week.

“Found-My-Spot” Modality The overarching feature of the found-my-spot career modality is a strong emphasis on personal job satisfaction expressed by the participants in this group, articulated with expressions such as “I love my job” or “I love coming to work every day,” combined with a strong emphasis on personal growth within the job rather than ascension up a career ladder. A total of five women had “found their spot” in their careers: Olivia Chambers, Portia Hughes, Janet Logan, Susan Maxwell, and Margaret Taylor. Janet Logan, librarian for an astronomical observatory, enthusiastically described her position: When I come to work in the morning, I have no idea what may happen. I may have a plan for what I’d like to get done on this particular day and it may or may not happen. . . . It’s a wild variety of things, which is one reason I love the job. You don’t get stuck in a rut. I would find it very dull to be just a cataloger or reference librarian or whatever. . . . And, of course, if you look at the changes in libraries from the time I came here from 1975 to now, it’s a whole different world. There were all these changes. The wide variety of tasks, the people here are great. And then there’s all the Internet stuff, which is endlessly fascinating and exciting. So why would I ever do anything else!

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Intrinsic rewards are paramount for the found-my-spot participants, such as feelings of collegiality with coworkers as well as the work itself. As Susan Maxwell put it regarding her work as a bibliographer at one of the national libraries: And I like the people at the library very much. And it’s been quite a wonderful opportunity. . . . I couldn’t have gotten a better job for me. I describe it as shopping on a grand scale—with someone else’s money. . . . I can't imagine myself moving on just yet. Margaret Taylor, librarian for a state agricultural agency for the past 12 years, emphasized the opportunities for learning new things as well as the variety of experiences available in a small specialized research library: I could be making more money and had more prestige possibly if I’d done it differently, but it’s a nice area to work in. . . . I think I’ve got a really nice little niche here and I enjoy it. It’s one of the few jobs where you can keep learning and learning new and different things. And I have a lot of variety because it’s a small library partly and the questions change and technology changes and there’s always something to learn. There is some overlap between participants assigned to the found-my-spot and family-first modalities. The discriminator is whether the participant mentioned family as a reason for her career decisions. But it should be noted that two of the five women (Portia Hughes and Olivia Chambers) who found their spot in their current positions spent at least 10 years out of the paid work force to raise their families, as did family- first participant Louise Mayfield. Portia Hughes, who while an undergraduate in the 1960s had worked in her college library, got her MLS degree in 1989. She gained experience in corporate librarianship as an intern while in library school; upon graduation she was hired by a computer manufacturer to set up their library and has been there ever since. It [the internship] was just a tremendous experience. . . . I had decided that I didn’t want to be a school librarian. And I didn’t want to be a public or academic librarian. I really wanted to work in a company environment. . . . I went in to talk to [the] placement director and she said there is a company looking for a temporary person to set up a library for them. And I looked at the ad and I said, “Well, I don’t qualify. You’re supposed to have six years of library experience.” And

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she said, “Just go for it anyway.” So I did, and I ended up getting the job. . . . So I went in and I set up the library and started in January and in August I was converted to a full time employee. Age is a consideration for three of the five women in the found-my-spot modality: Janet Logan, Olivia Chambers, and Susan Maxwell are 55 years old or older, and some of their satisfaction with their jobs may arise from greater maturity, appreciation for personal growth, or simply a perspective that comes with realizing that they are approaching retirement age, compared to women under 55 years of age who could still be considered to be mid-career professionals (Lynch & Verdin, 1983; Phillips, Carson, & Carson, 1994). Olivia, who was 61 at the time of her interview, was looking forward to retiring in four years. Reflecting on her career, first as an academic medical librarian in the 1960s, then “retiring” in 1967 at the urging of her husband, and after her divorce in 1980 returning to the workforce as a defense- industry librarian, she said: I’m very happy I made that change in my career decision, my career choice, and have often noticed how people are in jobs that they don’t enjoy, and . . . I feel very fortunate that I never felt that way. I guess my greatest sorrow was to have quit in 1967. Because it might have taken me a whole different direction, staying with the academic world and perhaps going off into—I probably would’ve been head of the [medical] library. . . . However, what is ironic about all that is I probably make a lot more money here. . . . So I have to say that, by being in this particular field, I’m just kind of lucky.

Manager Modality Participants in the manager career modality defined themselves as managers rather than as librarians or information professionals, indicating a shift in their self- image (as well as actual job duties) that reflects management and administration rather than direct service. The average salary for this group was $92,860, the highest of any of the career modalities. Three participants were assigned to the manager modality: Linda Jacobs, Shirley Levine, and Dolores Peral.

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Linda Jacobs, the manager of the library at a research and development laboratory, characterized herself as a manager when asked the question, “Do you consider yourself a librarian or information professional?” I mostly consider myself a manager of certain kinds of delivery of information. I don’t know if that’s the same as a librarian or not. [SL: How would you differentiate the two?] I guess just being a manager is more what I think about than individually delivering information that customers need, which is more what I think of a librarian as being. I suppose it’s the distinction between being a factory worker and a factory manager. And I’ve also managed other things and I know that I can so my identity has become that of a manager. The span of managerial control is also greater for the three women who fit this modality, compared to other participants who are managers of small or one- professional libraries. Linda describes her operation as follows: [My staff is] usually between 24 and 30 including sub-contractors. . . . I’m the manager, I have an assistant manager, who is more in charge of certain kinds of system things. . . . We buy a huge number of books and still have about 1500 paper journals we receive. . . . So we still have the traditional library work. We have 40 hour a week staffed reference desk and circulation department. We do a whole lot of searching still. . . . Archives reports to us also. We do a lot of training now, which we’ve been doing mostly within the last year, so managing all those people, the budget, and occasionally I get to lead some projects, which is sort of fun. . . . I do a lot of assessment with teams outside the library, you know, cross-organizational teams of new technology initiatives. I do a lot of marketing . . . . and then I certainly have personnel issues and administrative and budget preparation issues. I think six people still report to me directly, so I have the issues of performance reviews, etc. Shirley Levine described similar management responsibilities for the specialized library consortium she directed until she retired in 2001: I was the executive director. Obviously I managed the staff and budget. The budget . . . when I left, it was about $1.8 million. . . . I hired, evaluated and fired staff. I developed educational courses for the members. Communicated, of course, with the members. Solved problems for the members. I always felt my role, aside from managing the consortium, was running a real business. I had to deal with real estate problems, maintenance problems, insurance problems, health

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insurance for the employees, which took quite a hunk of time trying to identify what would be the best for them that we could afford. Finally, the three women in this career modality tend to look at their careers strategically in terms of a traditional up-the-ladder career-advancement model. For example, in 2000 Dolores Peral moved from managing a corporate library to directing a small liberal arts college library, a strategic change for her: And at that point, I said, I’ve been here nine and a half years, had a good run of it, but I really need to move forward and be at an executive level—or near it. It’s going to be awhile before I get to do that at [company]. I have an opportunity right at my doorstep. And it’s in academia, which I would like to at some point get into, and it’s a director position. Where else, when else will I have a chance to go straight into a director position in an academic environment? Probably never again. I would have to work my way up.

Multiple-Positions Modality The multiple-positions career modality is characterized by the presence of at least one of two career elements, regardless of other factors: (a) having held at least one professional position in a field outside librarianship, or (b) having held a variety of library- or information-related positions over the course of one’s career. Six of the 20 research participants fit into this career modality: Diana Baker, Gwen Jackson, Roberta Kramer, Sarah Long, Eileen Norton, and Marty Roberts. Diana Baker, for example, earned a masters’ degree in social work in the 1970s and worked in this field for seven years before making a decision to go to graduate school to become a librarian in the 1980s. After coming to the realization that she was “dead ended” at her social work agency, I did some research and looked at other careers and one of the things I saw in the library business, it was very technology driven and I really wanted to learn about technology, so I thought this is the way for me to go. I knew nothing about computers or anything, so I decided to enroll in [library school in the same city] and that’s where I got my teeth cut. I saw libraries as being in the forefront of all of that.

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On the other hand, Sarah Long and Eileen Norton left the practice of librarianship for other positions in the information industry. After a decade of working in corporate libraries, Eileen became a sales representative and later regional sales manager for several online services vendors. Laid off in 2000, she was recruited by an information industry research firm to be a member of the sales team, a position she held at the time of the research interview. She experienced another layoff when the firm’s sales team was disbanded after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.7 After working in two academic research libraries and starting a library for a company in the aerospace industry, Sarah Long left librarianship to work in publishing. She then moved to a trade association in the aerospace industry, first as head of information products and then was promoted to team leader for business development. She explained why she left librarianship after nine years at the corporate library: When I came back [after setting up a library for the company’s European subsidiary], it was, like, to the same job. It was a small organization and I saw that I just needed to leave there. . . . I decided I wanted to go to [another city]. . . . And I contacted [publisher], he said he was looking for someone as head of his editorial services. And it was frankly an opportunity to get me to [city]. He paid quite well. And I said, well, this will be an interesting detour. I might find I like the publishing arena. . . . I worked [there] two years. Sarah left the small publishing company in 1991. She found her next position through networking. And because of my work at [company] . . . I got to know the people at [industry association]. . . . I kept in touch with them while I was at [publisher] . . . so I started hitting them up for a job. . . . But because of my background, I initially was marketing [their publications and database] to . . . special libraries and academic libraries. . . . But then I expanded that and then had an opportunity . . . to bring in new book titles, new authors. And so I took over that position, as well as still

7 After eight years in sales she returned to librarianship in 2002 as the manager of a corporate law library.

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doing this marketing effort. . . . During this time, I think it was 1993- 94, 1994-95, the [association] reengineered and became a team-based environment. . . . And while I was doing the book acquisition as well as still doing some marketing, the head of business development became open. Sarah returned to academic librarianship in 1998, for both personal and professional reasons. But the more I worked in that area and was getting away from libraries, I thought I wanted to get back into that arena. I had remarried by that time. . . . And we both decided we had been in [city] long enough and didn’t want to be there any longer, so we decided to look for jobs elsewhere. . . . I knew that here I’d have better luck going back to the academic route just because of availability of jobs. . . . So I started monitoring [university]’s website for positions. This one was posted . . . so I threw my hat into the ring and I ended up here. Some participants’ moves into different jobs and careers were serendipitous. Roberta Kramer, for example, enrolled in a graduate library program for the second time, after working at series of jobs and occupations, including indexing of alternative periodicals and repairing lawnmowers. As she explained: It’s been pretty serendipitous. I started college to be an engineer. . . . switched to German at the end of my freshman year because my advisor . . . said if you declare German as your major, you can take your junior year abroad. . . . Then I was going to go to graduate school in computer science. And I started at [university] . . . ended up taking a couple library school courses just because they were sort of related to . . . my overall interest . . . of computer processing of non-numerical data. Roberta left graduate school, went to technical school, and drifted for a while. Then I dropped out of library school. . . . And then I went back to technical school and became a lawnmower repairman. I worked on that job for a while. Just worked and did a whole lot of different stuff until I was in my mid-30s. . . . And a friend of mine . . . just happened to be working at the library school at [another university]. . . . I got interested in the fact that [library school] was about to buy an automated system and talked to the people involved with that. Next thing I knew I got hired away by the people who were installing the automated system. So I went to work for [company] . . . and I got [them] to pay for the rest of my education.

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After graduating from library school, Roberta worked in a research university library as automation coordinator, then in 1990 she took a position as automation librarian at a federal agency. Disillusioned with the civil service bureaucracy there, she moved to a large federal library as head of the systems unit, her position at the time of the interview. Gwen Jackson, who started her career as a children’s librarian and then moved into academic librarianship following her return to library school for a post-master’s specialist’s degree, relates how she got her first corporate library job, another example of serendipity: I had been up in [state] for several years and wanted to move to the east coast because I knew a lot of people here and so I had asked some people if I could use them as professional references. And one of these people got a call from [a local company] saying we’re looking for a librarian, do you know of anyone? . . . So she gave my name to [company] and quite literally, while I was sitting at the reference desk in this academic library, [company] called and asked if I would please come in for an interview because they were interested in hiring me for their position. And I went over and interviewed and was offered the job. . . . I didn’t pursue it in the least. It fell in my lap. In the 1990s Gwen relocated to a large urban area and worked as a corporate librarian for several high-tech industry consulting firms. In 1997 she decided to change careers following her first marriage in her mid-40s. Gwen is the only research participant to have left the profession; she is now working part time as an event planner for non- profit organizations. The multiple-positions career modality is characterized by movement within various types of librarianship as well as movement into and out of other information- related work: from corporate to academic librarianship and vice versa, public to academic librarianship, corporate librarianship to non-librarian positions within the information industry, etc. Participants in the multiple-positions career modality have held an average of 4.5 positions within the past 10 years, substantially more than the average of 2.8 positions held by the 20 participants as a whole and the 1.2 positions held by the found-my-spot, 2.3 held by the family-first, 2.7 held by the manager, and

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2.3 held by the undervalued (see below) participants. They also have relocated more often and are more likely to be childless than participants in the other four career modalities. They are also younger: with a median age of 48, they are tied with the family-first-modality participants as the “youngest” of the five modalities. Marty Roberts fits this profile well: she has held six different positions at four different organizations in the 1990s, and was 44 years old at the time of her interview. She worked in radio before becoming a librarian, and after receiving her library degree in 1983 has been a computer training coordinator, corporate business library manager, project manager for an information services subsidiary, president of her own information consultancy, writer, and library-information science educator. She is profiled in chapter 7 as an exemplar of the multiple-positions modality.

Undervalued Modality The fifth and final career modality is that of the undervalued or under appreciated librarian or information professional. A participant is considered to be in an undervalued position if she has stated specifically that she feels undervalued or unappreciated, or she has mentioned structural organizational features that indicate her library or information unit is not valued within the organization. These may include low salary, selective staff layoffs or targeted downsizing, remote or marginal location of unit within the reporting structure, reduced budgets in comparison with other information-providing units, or an organizational culture that undervalues library services. This group showed the lowest average salary ($45,285) than any of the other career modalities. Three women fit the characteristics of the undervalued modality: Joanne Dalton, Laura Henderson, and Audrey Rosen. For these three participants, and for Diana Baker before she changed jobs,8 the undervaluation of

8 Diana is currently assigned to the multiple-positions modality.

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their work is approached in this research as a function of structural or organizational factors rather than personal or psychological factors.9 Industry sector may also be a factor in undervaluation. Audrey Rosen is in the medical-healthcare industry and Laura Henderson is in the financial-professional services field. The organizational structures of both of these industries have been described as hierarchical, gender-stratified bureaucracies (Barker, 1998; Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998; Manley, 1995; McKeen & Richardson, 1998) with medical doctors or MBAs, respectively, in positions of power; and both tend to undervalue the contribution of external information provided by information intermediaries (Bradley, 1996; Davenport & Prusak, 1997; Davidoff & Florance, 2000; Koenig, 2000). Laura Henderson is the manager of a four-person “knowledge services” unit in a global financial-services firm. Although she does not perceive her services as being undervalued, her comments indicate otherwise. For one thing, her salary is below the first quartile of the 18 participants for whom salary data are available; in response to the question, “How has being identified as a librarian figured in or affected your career as an information professional?”, her answer reflected the sense of undervaluation she felt her salary represented: If I was an MBA sitting here doing research you’d better believe I’d be getting more money. No doubt about that whatsoever. And unfortunately, within our firm, we have a lot of people who call themselves information professionals and they are coming from all different backgrounds and we have a lot of people who call themselves researchers and so part of our struggle has been identifying ourselves as good as these guys. Just because these guys get business degrees and whatever. But because they did business degrees, that’s where their salaries are coming from. Like if I had a bachelor of business administration instead of a bachelor of arts, I’d be doing better. Laura noted that changing the name of her organizational unit to “knowledge services” has not altered its identification as “the library.” In effect, it is not the

9 Undervaluation of librarianship is explored in chapter 5, Perceptions of Undervaluation of Librarianship in the Information-Age Workplace.

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library label that is undervalued in her organization, it is the library function (see Davenport & Prusak, 1997; Koenig, 2000). [SL: Do you actually call it a library?] Actually we do. Well, we call it everything. And our users call it everything. And we don’t care. We’re beyond caring at this point. Knowledge services is an umbrella group under knowledge management that we fall under, so under knowledge management, you have knowledge management operations and knowledge management services and we’re under services. And then within that you actually have what we call research centers, so technically I am a research center within knowledge services, but it just gets to be completely confusing for the user and so we just call it the library. We let them call it the library, whatever they want, whatever works easiest. Audrey Rosen, who manages a six-person medical library, expressed frustration at the continual need to market and promote the value of her services to her administration: The unfairness of it just strikes me a lot. . . . Because with the whole world doing Internet searching, I’m not sure that our value is going to be realized. You know, with mediated searching not being done anymore, I do feel even in my current position I’m fighting a battle a lot to promote our value. Even though I think we’re in an institution that probably values our services much more than some other places do. I do as years go on feel constantly that we have to promote and market ourselves. And I think the library literature supports this. In fact, sometimes I get angry seeing . . . this blaming tone of, “if you don’t promote yourself, then you have only yourself to blame if you don’t retain your job or get promoted.” I guess they’re right, but I feel like I don’t think other professions have to constantly prove themselves as much as we do. Although Audrey is not unique in her frustrations at having continually to market the library, she personalizes the battle more than the other participants, using words like “unfair” and expressing anger and helplessness with her situation. Diana Baker had also worked as a librarian in a teaching hospital in the mid- 1990s before she left because of dissatisfaction over her working conditions that she attributed to the managed care movement. An administrative reorganization resulted in her reporting to the “finance people”:

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Like I said, there was a reorganization, and I ended up reporting to people who were very young, late 20s, early 30s, who were finance people who had no idea about libraries, who didn’t care. They had no supervisory experience and that was very stressful. That was a horrendous experience. . . . A lot of times I was forgotten. We would have bad weather and everybody was told, oh, you can go home. I’m still sitting in the library unaware that everyone else is already gone. As can be seen by Diana’s account, changes in organizational culture and reporting structure appear to be contributing factors as to whether or not library services are valued (Matarazzo & Prusak, 1995; for a personal account see Wallace, 2000). Joanne Dalton, manager of strategic information at a computer industry association, supervised five librarians at the time of her interview. Six months later a new CEO with “a history of closing libraries” arrived on the scene. The CEO . . . ordered the library to be closed and the books to be disposed of. His suggestion was to donate them to schools. This action was met with almost universal vocal disapproval from employees at all levels. He would hear no discussion. I was ordered to lay off three of the five people who reported to me . . . I was also demoted in the sense that I no longer report to a director for the first time in 14 years, but to a manager reporting to a director. I do not manage any people. For both Diana and Joanne, changes resulting from new management at the top and corporate restructuring contributed to downward changes in the perceived value and importance of their services to the organization. There is an additional characteristic of the three women who are in the undervalued category: they all see themselves in competition or conflict with other information-providing units in their organizations, and in some cases they see themselves as losing the battles. While some of the other research participants also reported conflict in the workplace, the accounts of conflict provided by the undervalued women is more a matter of lateral or peer-group conflict with other information-providing units or departments and less a matter of conflict or competition with higher-ranking managers in the organization. This is examined in more detail in the subsection, Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions, under the Research Question 1(a) section below.

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Conceptual Issues Regarding Career Patterns The five career modalities outlined in Table 4.1 form the basis of a descriptive model for addressing the theoretical grounding of Research Question 1 in the work of Abbott (1988) and Acker (1990). These career modalities provide a means for addressing the concepts of career progression and workplace competition that are central to the two analytical sub-questions of Research Question 1, designated (on the first page of this chapter) as Research Question 1(a) and Research Question 1(b). In the next section Research Question 1(a) is addressed sequentially in three stages, each building on the previous explication. First to be addressed is how research participants conceptualize what it means to progress in one’s career as a librarian-trained information professional. Second is how participants experience competition and conflict (or the converse, cooperation and relationship-building) with other information professionals within in their organizations. Third, how participants perceive their membership in a feminized profession to have affected their career progression is discussed within the context of their understanding of their own career development and their relationships with other information professionals in the workplace. Following this section, Research Question 1(b) is addressed in terms of the concept of career progression explicated under Research Question 1(a).

Research Question 1(a): Given Competition From Other Information Professions, How Has Their Membership in a Feminized Profession Affected Their Career Progression?

Research Question 1(a) explores the dynamics of jurisdictional conflict and competition in an assumed-to-be-contested information domain (Abbott, 1988; 1998) and the effect this may have had on research participants’ careers as information professionals in assumed-to-be-gendered organizational environments (Acker, 1990). It is clear, however, from the accounts of the women in four of the five career

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modalities that these dynamics, which were assumed as part of the construction of Research Question 1(a), were not overtly reflected in accounts of their career development, their relations with other departments, or their identities as librarians. For this reason it is necessary to deconstruct this question, to describe in detail (1) how the research participants understand or make sense of the concept of career progression as it applies to their careers as librarians or information professionals, (2) how they experience and manage their relationships with members of other information-providing units in their organizations, and (3) how they perceive the effect the librarian appellation has on their career development within organizational environments where librarianship and library work are not well defined or understood. The five career modalities delineated in the previous section (see Table 4.1) provide a framework for addressing these issues.

Issue 1: What is Career Progression? Career progression has been traditionally conceptualized in the career development literature as if it were synonymous with career advancement or upward mobility. Based on the assumption that a career is something that should normally progress in an onward-and-upward fashion, much of this literature is prescriptive— i.e., if there is no advancement or progression in terms of systematic increases in pay, responsibility, job title, managerial level, and so on, the career is not “progressing” as it should (Gallos, 1989; J. Marshall, 1989). Enhancement, not advancement. One of the most interesting findings of this research is the relative absence of discourse about job advancement in the ways most of the participants describe their own professional careers. With the exception of the manager modality, the career patterns displayed in Table 4.1 do not include components that reflect a traditional upward-mobility, career-advancement model. Participants on the whole seemed to be motivated and describe their career progression—i.e., what they did to “advance”—in terms of increases in job satisfaction, broadened opportunities for professional enhancement and learning, or

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recognition by organizational stakeholders, team members or management of their value to the organization, rather than by the desire to progress to higher levels of management or to measure their “progress” in terms of increased salary, responsibility, power, budget or staff size.10 In other words, most participants did not perceive that the idea of moving up a career ladder to be something they necessarily wanted to do. These findings are congruent with findings on job satisfaction reported by Detlefsen and Olson (1990) for corporate and medical librarians, Pitts (1994) on the one-person library director, Lewin and Olesen (1980) on the lateral careers of nurses, and Phelan's (1994) research on the paradox of the contented female worker.11 The findings are also congruent with observations on professional (as opposed to managerial) work (Raelin, 1986; Scarbrough, 1996; 1999) and women’s career development (Gallos, 1989; J. Marshall, 1989; Powell & Mainiero, 1992; Stroh & Reilly, 1999). For participants in the family-first modality, the issue is clearly one of priorities: Balancing work and family means that job characteristics that facilitate family activities are highly valued, and being ambitious and moving up the corporate ladder may be antithetical to the values of family-first librarians. As Roxanne Meyer (family-first modality)12 put it, I felt like in the middle of my career it was a little difficult to find that next step up, but I think it was really more that I was torn between family. I wasn’t as focused on one. And what I wanted just wasn’t out there in the market. . . . I know nobody will believe me, but I’m not

10 The “Career Advancement, Career Progression” part of the interview guide considered career progression and career advancement as synonymous terms. The two questions in this section of the guide are: (1) “I want to talk about the things we do to advance (or get promoted) in our work/workplace. What are some of the things you did to advance, get promoted?” and (2) “I’d like to talk to you about success (What is a successful career to you? What do you think a successful career is? What is success to you?).” 11 The “paradox of the contented female worker,” according to Phelan, is the paradox “that although women have jobs with lower pay and less authority than men, they are equally satisfied with their jobs and employers” (p. 95). See also Hodson (1989). 12 The dominant career pattern modality for each participant quoted in this and following sections is indicated in parentheses.

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that ambitious about my career. I probably should be, but I’m not. I would much rather be doing stuff I like. Job satisfaction—“doing stuff I like”—is central to how many participants view their careers, and some of them defined success in these terms. When asked “What do you think a successful career is?”, Marty Roberts (multiple-positions modality) replied: “Liking what I do, enjoying who I work for and who I work with.” Likewise, when Sarah Long (multiple positions modality) was asked the same question, she mentioned personal enjoyment in a job well done and being recognized by her peers for her contributions to the organization: I think a successful career to me is being able to build on a lot of what you’ve learned and put it to good use. And also enjoying for the most part, what you do. And I think there’s a little bit of ego involved too. The longer I’m in this business, to some extent being recognized for the contributions I make. . . . I think coming to this organization and people knowing that I’ve been in government, in other types of libraries, . . . they recognize that and seek my advice. For some participants, career progression referred to growth in competency and learning new skills, particularly those who have “found their spot.” Olivia Chambers, who had found her spot as a defense-industry librarian, emphasized learning, competence and satisfaction with her current position in answer to the question, “What are some of the things you did to advance?” Well, I certainly took courses whenever I could as far as continuing education was concerned. I tried to keep current. . . . In terms of advancement, again, I was the manager at [former company] and I’m the manager here. So . . . there really isn't anywhere else for me to go unless I left the company. I’m perfectly happy. They pay me very well here in comparison to the kind of money I made at [former company]. I feel quite appreciated and so I’m very happy with it. So just to maintain my job and make sure I do a good job—I’m self-motivating enough to read and to study things of interest. A few of the participants seemed to struggle with interview questions dealing with career advancement and success. For example, Roberta Kramer (multiple- positions) replied to a question on career advancement by conceptualizing career

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advancement as moving into more complex jobs with greater demands for her technical skills: I changed who I worked for a couple times. And I think that’s been the major way I advanced. . . . I’ve been able, I think, to use my experience from the previous job to, you know, put myself out pretty well when I was ready to move onto another job. . . . I have some kind of unusual experiences and unusual combination of skills, which has helped. But I haven't really done a lot to advance myself. I just think I do my good job. For some participants, the idea that a successful career implies progression or upward mobility is relevant up to a point. That point, for participants who managed small specialized libraries, was to advance to the level of head of their unit within the organization as a whole. There was, however, no expressed desire by these participants to move into higher levels of management in the organization—for example, into positions above or outside the library. Like Olivia Chambers (found- my-spot modality), who has managed several small libraries in the defense industry, astronomy librarian Janet Logan (found-my-spot) articulated this perspective well: Given the fact that I am the person in charge of all our libraries and library functions, I’m at the top in the organization. I have no desire to leave the organization, and so that’s that. I’m perfectly happy . . . There are other things that I’ve sort of evolved, that I’ve done over the years for the observatory . . . because it’s perceived that my contribution is valuable. . . . But in terms of promotion and advancement, once I got here and the fact that I was doing a good job, and the person who was in what is now my job left, so I was the logical choice [to become head of the library]. I’d been here at that point [as assistant librarian] eight years. And so here I still am. Note also the emphasis on perceived value to the organization and on other intrinsic satisfiers in a career that would probably be seen as dead end by traditional career-development standards (Lewin & Olesen, 1980; Phelan, 1994). But to Janet Logan, her career is anything but dead end. She is excited about “the wider world of astronomy librarians” of which she is a part: It’s the collaborative and collegial connections with people around the world. That’s been a very important thing, something I care about

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personally, but it’s very useful professionally, as well. Somebody comes to me because they need something, some strange publication, technical report, whatever, that I think X observatory may have published, and so yes, I know the librarian there. I’ll email her and ask her. . . . I’ve visited a lot of libraries around the world just because I know the astronomy librarians there. It’s just neat. Participants have not necessarily changed jobs in order to move up to a higher-level position. Although this may happen over the course of career activities for some of the women in the study—particularly those in the multiple-positions modality—it is not a goal, as Diana Baker (multiple-positions modality) explained: Luckily for me, each time I was able to get a better position. But . . . for me it was always a matter of necessity. I was always able to find jobs I was happy with. I was happy at [company]. I knew it was just temporary, but necessity meant that I had to find a full-time permanent position, that I found in [company #2]. I would have stayed there forever if I could have. But because of circumstances I had to leave. Now, the only job that I really left that I was happy to leave was the hospital situation because at the end of that it wasn’t very pleasant. But for the most part, it was just a matter of necessity that made me leave to begin with, to leave one job to go to another. At the time of her interview, Diana was working in a company with a culture of team-based management. This company provided an alternative compensation structure where an employee might stay in her same department and supervisory relationship but can receive a higher classification and earn more money by managing more complex teams. Note that when asked whether she wanted to move up managerially, she said: I’ve talked to my boss about that, because she’s always asking me, “do you want my job?” and I’m like, “no.” For the simple reason I think the higher up you go, you lose some of yourself. I like me and I don’t want to change too much of me. I would like to move up to the executive-compensation level and then I’ll be happy there. . . . You can still be yourself and not have to worry about all the political mumbo jumbo that comes along with the higher-level salary. Like other participants, Diana did not equate success with moving up into management. On the contrary, she defined success as “enjoying what you’re doing,

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being happy getting up and going to work every day, feeling good about yourself, being recognized for your contributions and rewarded accordingly.” Her current company provided a way for her to progress in her career without having to advance into a management-level position. One possible reason why these women librarians are not more interested in moving up may lie in how they conflate career success and job satisfaction (Lewin & Olesen, 1980; Powell & Mainiero, 1992). Diana Baker provided some evidence for this in her comments about preferring the alternative career path available to her at her corporation rather than the traditional management career ladder. So too did Olivia Chambers (found-my-spot modality) in her emphasis on competency and satisfaction with her present position. These findings are similar to those reported by Lewin and Olesen (1980) for mid-career lateral-career nurses who expressed no interest in moving up into supervisory positions but who were highly motivated to learn new skills and increase their competencies in direct patient care, a factor they termed intensification. Manager-modality participants. The three manager-modality participants were more likely to conceptualize career progression in terms of advancement. Like participants in other modalities, Dolores Peral and Linda Jacobs did not seek to leave the library environment; however, they sought positions with advancement potential within the library domain and aspired to a greater span of managerial control.13 Shirley Levine, more so than Dolores or Linda, viewed career progression in conventional advancement terms. OK, why was I so ambitious? Everybody says I’m a workaholic. I had two children. I had no help from anybody in financially supporting those kids. It was me. That was it—one person. And I needed to earn as much money as possible. The only way to earn more money was to get promoted. That’s why I did it. You could get like a 4% increase within your rank at [company], but if you really wanted to get, like you know, another $10,000, you had to get promoted. So one of the main reasons that I worked so hard to get promoted was because I had

13 See Manager Modality subsection, above.

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two kids growing up who were going to have to go to college and where was this money going to come from, so I felt that I had to earn it. Maybe that was the wrong thinking, but that was my mindset. I had to provide for my children. Shirley’s emphasis on financial success and promotion to a managerial position outside the library was not shared by the other participants, even those who were, like her, single parents. Although several other participants, like Shirley, have worked in bureaucratic, hierarchical organizations,14 they did not express as much interest as she did in moving up the managerial career ladder, nor did they mention other traditional indicators of career advancement, like salary level, when they discussed things like career advancement, promotion and success. Issue 1 summary. Participants progressed in their careers and expanded their career opportunities in different ways, such as adding different responsibilities to their positions (see Lewin & Olesen, 1980; Montgomery, 2002), assuming leadership roles in their professional associations (Frank, 1997), learning new technical skills, and developing new competencies or expanding existing ones (Special Libraries Association, 1996b; 1998a; 2003). Except for those in the manager career modality who have left the role of librarian and identify more with the role of manager, most of the participants in this study tended to see their careers as specialized direct-service librarians and information professionals as ends in themselves and not a stop on the way to something else in management or administration. These women may well be replacing the male model of career progression as advancement—i.e., climbing up the managerial ladder—with an alternative model of career progression as professional growth and enhancement. In this model career success is understood not just in terms of upward mobility but also as the opportunity for being engaged in fulfilling and satisfying professional work in organizations where their contributions are acknowledged (Gallos, 1989; Lewin & Olesen, 1980; Powell & Mainiero, 1992; Raelin, 1987; Scarbrough, 1999).

14 For example, Portia Hughes, Diana Baker, Roberta Kramer, and Susan Maxwell.

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How the research participants view career progression may also have to do with their professional identity as librarians. This identity may be grounded in the values and philosophy of librarianship as an information service profession (see Crawford & Gorman, 1995; Finks, 1989; Gorman, 2000).15

Issue 2: Cooperation—Not Competition— With Other Information Professions A second assumption embedded in Research Question 1(a) is that women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet would be in competition with members of other professions to gain (or maintain) jurisdictional advantage in the information domain (Abbott, 1988; 1998). As with career progression, where most of the research participants did not consider career advancement or moving up to a higher managerial level to be an important aspect of their career development or professional growth, most of the participants in this study did not see themselves in conflict or competition with members of other information professions, including the male-dominant information technology or information systems professions.16 On the contrary, most participants emphasized cooperation, teamwork, and relationship building rather than competition and conflict in their interactions with other information services units in their organizations. Most reported that they cooperated well and had good working relationships with their information technology (IT) or information systems (IS) departments, that they were not competing with them for funding, and that they and the information units they managed were not being singled out for downsizing and staff reductions. The exception is the three participants who are in the undervalued career modality, who

15 Exploring this possibility is beyond the scope of this research. 16 Probes for the interview guide question, “What other kinds of information professionals do you interact or come in contact with?”, were handled in a variety of ways, depending on the participant’s work experience (examples include: “Would you describe your interaction with these other information managers as collegial, competitive, cordial, adversarial?”; “How would you describe your working relationships? Are you in competition for resources, or collegial?”; “Would you describe your relationship with your systems people as cordial or competitive?”).

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cited examples of jurisdictional conflict in their workplace environments even as they avoided describing their relationships with these other information-providing units as competitive. The interview data indicate several reasons why the research participants, with the exception of those in the undervalued modality, did not see themselves in competition or conflict with other information-services or information-technology professionals in their careers. These factors are: 1. The high levels of technological competency expressed by many of the participants; 2. Establishing content management as a niche, thereby establishing their own content-based area of jurisdiction; 3. The reporting structure within some of their organizations that insulated them from direct conflict; and 4. Their strong relationship building and teamwork values, which subverted some of the potential for competition by creating common corporate goals and objectives. Each of these four factors is described in more detail below, illustrated with examples from participant interviews with women in the manager, multiple-careers, family-first and found-my-spot modalities. These descriptions are followed by excerpts from interviews with the three participants in the undervalued modality who reported experiencing workplace competition and conflict. Technological competency. Many participants showed high levels of technical competency and understanding of computers and information technology. This placed them on a peer footing with the predominantly male computing, IT, or IS departments in their organizations. For example, Dolores Peral (manager modality) described her relationship with the director of the IT department at the college where she is director of the library. [SL: So he reports directly to the provost, you report to the academic dean and VP of academic affairs who reports to the provost, but you’re

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on the academic council and he’s not. But the two of you get along. It’s not like you’re in competition for these kind of positions.] Yeah, I don’t feel like we’re in competition at all. In fact, both the provost and the academic dean really encourage us to work together and sort of are relieved we are because that didn’t always seem to be the case with my predecessor. And what would happen is my predecessor would complain to the dean, the IT guy would complain to the provost, the provost and dean would try and work it out not really understanding what the issues were. Dolores attributes her good working relationship with the IT director to her understanding of technology, something her predecessor did not have (Dolores mentioned that this was one of the reasons why she was hired). She had a similar positive relationship with the IS department at her previous organization where she was corporate librarian, again largely due to her technological competencies and understanding of the contribution of information technology to the organization. All the hardware and connectivity things were provided by our IS department. . . . And I worked really closely with them on things that fell in between. . . . Originally I and the microcomputer manager . . . co-chaired the Internet task force. . . . He and I were great colleagues and felt very similarly about how the Internet should be populated within the company and at what pace and why. And we often found ourselves lone voices howling in the wind. But we had a very good agreement where, if it involved content, I handled it; if it involved technical matters, hardware or connectivity, he handled it. Similarly, Louise Mayfield (family-first modality) worked closely with a contract computer consultant and two engineers who “also have some IT duties” at her small engineering firm. She reported the following incident that took place in the summer of 2000: One of the engineers wanted to create a database of customers using Microsoft Access and I thought we should instead create a database from the library’s InMagic software. That’s probably the only time in all the years I’ve been there, where I felt like I needed to do a little research and push my arguments and show why. [SL: And what happened?] We’re doing it with InMagic. . . . When he saw the comparisons that I was able to show him, what InMagic could do and what Access could do, he could see that InMagic was by far the more flexible program.

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Roxanne Meyer (family-first modality) reported a similar mutual sharing of information with some of the programmers at the computer company she joined in 1992 after leaving organization where she had accessed the Internet through the UNIX-based ARPANET: It was a computer company and the time of the start of the World Wide Web, so a lot of the programmers showed me Mosaic, and so I was a fairly early user because they had shown me Mosaic and those types of things. It was a great place to be at a great time and I showed a lot of them about the Internet and doing searching, but there were programmers who showed me, “do you know about so and so,” and so I started using it. Content management as a jurisdictional niche. Some participants, like Dolores Peral (manager modality), Portia Hughes (found-my-spot), and Diana Baker (multiple-positions), see themselves as having carved out a niche as the information content experts in their organizations. They don’t see themselves in competition with the computer-support and IT-support units in their organizations because they serve different functions: the computer, IT, and IS units provide the information infrastructure; the library (or information center) provides access to and manages information content. As Diana Baker observed about her relationship with the IT group at her multinational consumer products company, “They tend to stick to what they know best, and that’s the backbone, the technology piece, and the content they leave to me.”17 Regarding her participation on a web design team at her computer- manufacturing firm, Portia Hughes confirmed that her relationships with the “IT people” have been good, and that IT’s function was to maintain the servers that they use for the library’s automation system and web pages. Well, I’ve always had good relationships with IT people that have interfaced with our systems, and that’s really been a blessing. . . . I’ve tried very hard to nurture that relationship so when I do ask them for something, I always approach it as, “I’m aware that you have a great

17 The implications of content management as a jurisdictional niche are discussed in chapter 8.

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deal on your plate, but I really need this done” type of thing. [SL: And in general you’re successful?] Yeah. Laura Henderson (undervalued modality) reported a similar relationship with the IT department in her firm: Even though [our clients] have had the Internet on their desktops for three years now, we will still get calls saying, “I can't find this on there. I know you guys will know where it is. Can you help me out with this?” [SL: So they call you rather than the IT group?] Oh, absolutely. If it’s content they call us. If the server’s down they call IT. And that’s the way we wanted it and the way we’ve trained it and the image we’ve put out. And IT was fine with that because they certainly didn’t want the content questions. Reporting structure. Reporting and organizational structure can mitigate against overt competition with other information-providing units, as well as exacerbate it. In some organizations, the IT or MIS units are in a different chain of command, a situation that did not appear to be of concern to some of the participants. This was the case at both Portia Hughes’ and Diana Baker’s companies, where the IT department was part of a different division and reporting structure than was the library. Linda Jacobs (manager modality), on the other hand, saw potential for problems with the complex reporting structure in her organization, where the library is part of corporate services and she reports to the head of the administrative services division, and the IT and telecommunications units report up through two different divisional lines. We have a very distributed information technology structure. There is an information technology office and a CIO that reports to the director that’s supposedly an information planning division and I work very closely with that person even though he’s in a different reporting line, obviously than I am. . . . And then there’s a whole other telecommunications infrastructure group that is inside a technical division we also work quite closely with. . . . As information technology has become more powerful it touches people in every aspect of their work. The boundaries of who does what are increasingly blurry and have to be defined. And since we don’t all work together in the same line management, that can be difficult.

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Some participants considered themselves and their units to be in a better position organizationally than the computing or IT people. This was because in some organizations the IT function was outsourced, but this brought with it other problems. For example, Vivian Walton (family-first modality) reported problems with personnel changes related to the fact that the management-information-systems (MIS) function is outsourced at her engineering firm. [SL: What kind of working relationship do you have with the MIS people?] Respectful. On the safe side. I think they respect what I do and I respect what they do and we don’t depend on each other overly much. I have found that it’s very important to have at least one person in MIS who thinks of you as a buddy. Because then you get things done. And if you don’t things take longer. I don’t have anybody in the MIS department here that I would want to have dinner with, which is a sad thing. I used to, but then he left. . . . And I have made it my policy everywhere I go to try to find one MIS person who I can become friendly with. . . . [SL: How many people are in the MIS department there?] It’s hard to say because we contract that function out, which is part of my problem with the whole thing here. They don’t have a regular staff here. Several other participants reported that they were not able to get the level of support they needed for their units. Olivia Chambers (found-my-spot modality) attributed this to staff shortages in her organization’s IT unit which hindered her own operation when she needed to have her unit’s workstations networked. At the time of her interview the three-person IT department was down to one person because of vacant positions. We are cordial, but I don’t feel he is totally committed to what we do, so I’m very anxious for the new people to be hired because I know that I will get one of them assigned to me. . . . And think he’s trying his best. He’s just overworked right now. I don’t have the feeling I could just run up to him and ask for anything I wanted and it would happen. However, I have the support of upper management. I have the support of his boss, so I have to walk that line where I don’t lose that. . . . I try to be very diplomatic. I’m old enough to know not to burn my bridges, to say ugly things that won't get me anywhere. . . . [SL: You have the support of upper management because you report to upper management?] Well, perhaps—and perhaps because they just

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like me and what I do. I feel that very strongly. [SL: What evidence do you have for that?] I get good raises. I get attaboys. My reviews are excellent. The director and deputy director always come down together to give me my review and my raise. Olivia’s account serves to illustrate aspects of her relationships with people in several areas of her organization, e.g., her relationship with top management and her relationship with what’s left of the IT department. Although she feels that she can “pull rank” with the overworked single employee in IT because she “has the support of upper management,” she chooses not to. She would rather delay the implementation of the upgrade to her integrated library system (ILS) until the acting IT manager hires someone who can be assigned to her project. Olivia Chambers acts from a confidence that stems from her understanding of the value she provides to her organization, and she has concrete evidence for this from her annual performance evaluations, her “good raises,” and from the “attaboys” and other statements of appreciation she receives from her boss and his boss, the organization’s director. Reporting and organizational structure is an important factor as well: Olivia’s organization is small—less than 100 people—and she reports to the deputy director, so she is in a good position to make top management understand the value that library-information services contribute to the organization. Relationship building and teamwork. It is obvious from their accounts that Portia Hughes and Olivia Chambers (found-my-spot modality) and Vivian Walton (family-first) have taken the time to nurture their relationships with their IT units. They are not unique in this. Many participants reported similar relationship-building efforts. Shirley Levine (manager), for example, mentioned that she had joined the computing department’s bowling team at the multinational corporation where she worked in the early 1980s and got a higher priority assigned for her knowledge- management-system database program as a result: [The program] ran on a mainframe with all the other mainframe programs, including accounting and the salaries and payroll and everything. And so sometimes you’d put in a search and just sit there for 20 minutes. . . . I had learned by then about how you could set

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priorities on the computing systems on the mainframe. And there was no way they were going to increase my priority for my library system. . . . So I heard from somebody in the computer department, . . . one of the members of their bowling team had quit . . . and if they didn’t get somebody to replace them, they couldn’t compete in the league. I said, “Geez, I used to do that in high school.” . . . And so I ended up being a member of the bowling team for the IT department. Within about a month, the priority of the library system was number one. . . . And people could not believe how fast the system was after that. But that’s how I did it. Marty Roberts (multiple-positions modality) provided a similar relationship- building account at the multinational industrial company where she worked for 13 years in the 1980s and early 1990s: I actually worked for six months in the data center, which had the computers for all of [company], the corporate computers. I made friends with the guys who worked the different shifts in operations, which helped me for years to get things done. . . . And [it] gave me a different sense for computer networks and how things tied together. Teamwork is very much related to relationship building and technical competence, as is evident in Dolores Peral’s (manager modality) and Portia Hughes’ (found-my-spot modality) accounts regarding their participation in Internet and web design teams. Linda Jacobs (manager modality) likewise enthusiastically described her participation in cross-functional teams at both her current and previous organizations. I actually also really love working in cross-functional teams. And that was one thing I learned at [former company]. Whenever I get to integrate either myself or a member of my staff into a group of people doing something that they didn’t know they needed our skills in order to get it done well, I find that incredibly fulfilling. I enjoy surprising people with what I or my skill-set can contribute. Eileen Norton (multiple positions modality) described how this process worked at the telecommunications company where she was the library manager in the 1980s, working closely with the marketing research department and sales force in the area of competitive intelligence.

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[SL: Was there competition with any of the other departments . . . in terms of who was going to be doing this kind of stuff?] No, absolutely not. It was a very good feeling type of relationship. And we worked together very, very well. All the groups. I would say there was no competition. [SL: What would you attribute that to?] I think open communication from the start. . . . And there weren’t really any turf wars about whose stuff it was or who brought it to the table. We all knew we had a specific role, that when into the product, if you could call it a product. We all brought something to the table. Perceptions of competition and conflict among undervalued participants. In contrast to the participants whose experiences are described above, Audrey Rosen, Laura Henderson, and Joanne Dalton—the three participants assigned to the undervalued modality—each gave accounts of adversarial or competitive relationships with other information-providing units. For example, Audrey described her competitive relationship with a patient library at the hospital where she managed the medical research library. But there are competing forces within the institution all the time that we view as basically trying to do our job, because people feel, and maybe it’s valid, that they can do the same thing. For example, we have a new patient library that was set up not by the library, because we were just not really allowed to have that responsibility. It sort of happened. And it was a political thing and it was given to our health educators. . . . We have those kinds of pulls all the time that compete with what we do. And that’s a threat. . . . They’ve hired outside speakers to give Internet classes, while we already give Internet classes. . . . We’ve told them that, but . . . I think they really want to promote themselves, which I can understand, but it’s not a great working relationship for that reason. Audrey also described a conflict she had with two computer departments in her organization over who would be do Internet training, a conflict that took over a year to resolve, ultimately in her favor. In essence, neither of the computer departments wanted to provide Internet training themselves but prevented Audrey’s library services unit from providing Internet training because they said, “You don’t have the understanding of the Internet and what the technology behind it is.” Ultimately Audrey’s library services department started giving classes because people

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were asking for them. Audrey’s adversarial relationships with these other information-providing units could be attributed to reporting relationships within the administrative structure of her organization. It was larger and more bureaucratic than Olivia Chambers’ (found-my-spot) organization, and Audrey was in a different reporting line than are the persons who started several other small “libraries” in her organization. Laura Henderson reported a similar conflict with her organization’s IT department regarding Internet training, but unlike Audrey Rosen’s situation, Laura reported that IT soon relinquished this function to the library unit upon receiving negative comments from the people they trained: For us, in terms of training even, in the very, very early days when IT first put the Internet to the desktop, they wanted to do the training. And apparently they were so bad at it and people told them they were so bad at it and we were training other things, some CD-ROM products, but they wanted to train the Internet and then just slowly they went, OK, you guys train the Internet as well. Because they kind of got it. They’re not the content people. For both Audrey and Laura, though, the responsibility for Internet training was originally the purview of the IT departments. In both cases it was IT that controlled which unit would conduct the training, although in Laura’s situation her organization’s IT department more readily gave up the control of this function than was the case in Audrey’s organization. Laura, like Audrey, also reported being in an adversarial relationship with another library services unit in her global professional services firm. And like Audrey’s situation, Laura’s could be attributed to organizational structure, in her case a recent change in reporting structure at her firm. Laura previously reported to the vice president of business development at her regional office; at the time of her interview she had been reporting to the senior manager of knowledge management services at corporate headquarters for about a month. [SL: You’re telling me you have conflicts between the people who have been trained as librarians?] Yeah, my professional relationships

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are better with the non-library managers. Because I’ve expanded myself outside the narrow role of librarian, and I see, I connect better with the other professionals I work with here. And so what happens is we do very good work at [regional office] as far as I’m concerned and then, unfortunately, we clash at this other level because our work here is so much more pro-service oriented. And so what we have in [corporate headquarters] is still a very, very traditional corporate library and there are services they just don’t provide. That we do. At the time of her interview Joanne Dalton felt that her relationship with the IT department was “quite collegial.” However, she described a conflict with her IT department regarding that department’s decision to discontinue support of Basis, her ILS software. Because they would no longer support the Basis software, she was now responsible for maintaining the system and any applications development or customization of the software. And they announced that Basis was not in [organization’s] strategic direction and they were going to move everything off of it. And why didn’t I go get a nice, cheap library system. So I did the investigation, the figures, showed them what it would cost to replace it and how long it would take me to replace the library system, plus the fact that I’d also have to replace the records management system because that’s built on Basis. And they didn’t say anymore about it. This may be a case of winning the battle but losing the war. Six months later under a new CEO, Joanne’s library was closed. She may have underestimated the impact on her unit of her organization’s “strategic direction” regarding information technology when she locked horns with the IT department over the Basis software. Joanne Dalton, Laura Henderson, and Audrey Rosen—all undervalued- modality participants—were the only research participants to provide accounts of conflict or competition with other information-providing units within their respective organizations. The question needs to be asked as to why only the participants who are in the undervalued career modality perceive that they are in these conflict-producing situations. The answer may have something to do with the culture and structure of the organizations where they work. Both Laura’s and Joanne’s organizations were restructured in 2001, and Audrey’s medical center appears to be administratively

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chaotic; at the time of her interview Audrey reported that there were three different computer departments and numerous departmental libraries and reading rooms. It is likely that changes in reporting and organizational structure could be contributing factors affecting the value placed on library and other information services as units jockey for position and status during times of managerial change (Davenport, Eccles, & Prusak, 1992; Davenport & Prusak, 1997). Perceived organizational instability could also contribute to participants’ insecurity regarding their perceived value to their organizations, resulting in a heightened sense of conflict and competition with other information-providing units. The industry sector in which these undervalued-modality librarians work could also be a contributing factor. Issue 2 summary. Except for the three undervalued-modality participants, competition with other information professionals for status, resources and visibility is not a factor for most of the research participants. Like the concept of career progression, which most participants defined in ways other than advancement, the issue of competition with IT or IS units for status, resources, visibility, etc. is not seen as all that salient. The reasons for this appear to come from the proactive behaviors of the participants: Their actions, such as developing technological competency, carving out a niche as manager of information content, building relationships, and joining cross-functional teams, may mitigate against engaging in competition for control of information-related work processes. Another reason for the perceived lack of competition with other information professionals may have to do with the value women place on relationships in their work and non-work lives (Gallos, 1989; Gilligan, 1982; Powell & Mainiero, 1992). Research on women’s career development indicates that relationships and relationship building are important components of women’s work and job satisfaction (Subich, 1998). Jurisdictional control of a professional task area may be less important than sharing the responsibility for information work, contributing a unique area of expertise in information management to the enterprise. They do not see the task area as contested but as a domain to be shared, in the same way, perhaps, that

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they see their roles not as controllers or gatekeepers of information content, but as empowering their clientele (see Maack, 1997).

Issue 3: How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression The findings presented in the two previous subsections, on (a) career progression and (b) competition with other information professionals, suggest that most research participants: 1. Did not conceptualize career progression as career advancement in terms of climbing the managerial ladder, but conceptualized their careers more in terms of career enhancement. They view their careers as opportunities to engage in intellectually challenging work, to contribute their expertise to further the goals of the organizations in which they work, to develop themselves personally, or to balance work and family life. 2. Did not perceive their workplaces to be an arena for competition or conflict with other information professionals. Instead, they viewed the workplace in terms of a win-win scenario where all contributors work together collaboratively to achieve their organizations’ goals. Analysis of the membership-in-a-feminized-profession component of Research Question 1(a) must be embedded in this context.18 How participants view the career impact of their status as female members of the feminized profession of librarianship is, therefore, addressed in the context of their conceptualization of career progression as career enhancement and their perception of the information domain as a collaborative rather than a competitive environment. The research participants are members of an information profession comprised primarily of women with technological expertise—a male-identified skill—working in organizations that are understood not as gender-neutral but as

18 The complete text of Research Question 1(a) is: “Given competition from other information professions such as network database administration, information science and Internet/web development, how has their membership in a feminized profession affected their career progression?”

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masculine (Acker, 1990). To probe the feminized-profession-in-masculine- organization issue with minimal bias, the interview questions that were developed to explore this issue were embedded in a series of neutral questions about factors that might have affected or shaped their career (see Table 2.2). Specifically, the participants were asked about the influence of people (mentors, family, friends) and their knowledge or experience with the Internet or other information technologies before they were asked the questions, “How has being a woman figured in or affected your career?” and “How has being identified as a librarian figured in or affected your career?” The participants were not informed during the interview of the study’s groundings in either Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations or Abbott’s (1988) model of jurisdictional conflict for control of professional work.19 Participants’ responses as to how identification as a librarian had affected their careers fit into four categories:20 1. Identification as a librarian was seen as generally positive; 2. Identification was positive or negative, depending on the situation or context; 3. Identification was seen as generally negative, or 4. Responses indicated ambivalence or difficulty in answering the question. Table 4.2 lists the participants in each librarian-identification category.

19 Participants were informed later about the theoretical components of the research through topical questions that the researcher introduced during the second phase of data collection, a web-based threaded discussion forum that took place eight months after the interview phase of the research had been completed. None of the participants in the discussion forum, however, responded to the question related to Acker’s theory of gendered organizations during the two months the forum was in session, although they did respond to other questions concerning professional identity, workplace values, and Abbott’s jurisdictional conflict model. 20 See Gender Relations subsection below for findings regarding the effect of being a woman on participants’ career progression.

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Table 4.2 Identification as a Librarian in the Workplace Generally Could not Generally positive Situational answer, neutral negative Diana Baker Linda Jacobs Laura Henderson Joanne Dalton Olivia Chambers Sarah Long Roberta Kramer Gwen Jackson Portia Hughes Susan Maxwell Shirley Levine Dolores Peral Janet Logan Roxanne Meyer Marty Roberts Louise Mayfield Eileen Norton Audrey Rosen Vivian Walton Margaret Taylor

Generally positive. Six participants expressed generally positive feelings about being identified as a librarian in their careers. For example, astronomy librarian Janet Logan (found-my-spot modality) responded: Well, the people that I work with think that libraries and librarians are wonderful. So for me personally and maybe this comes from being what is now getting into the older generation of librarians, all the furor about whether you’re a librarian or information manager—to me librarian is an infinitely expandable term. Librarian is what I do and the fact that it’s Internet, high tech and all that kind of stuff, well, over the years librarians have dealt in all sorts of formats and this just happens to be the current one. Janet, however, did not answer the question in terms of her career progression but in terms of how she was viewed in the workplace. For Janet, having been in the same position for 25 years, this is to be expected. Louise Mayfield (family-first modality), who has been with her small aerospace engineering company for 20 years, responded similarly; she also mentioned that “because we are so small and we know each other so well as individuals that the title doesn’t hold that much significance.” Diana Baker (multiple-positions modality) considered her identification as a librarian to be much more positive today compared to 10 years ago. She said that she “used to want to punch people” when they said, “You must love to read books,” upon

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finding out she was a librarian, but she does not hear that comments like that anymore. Well, now it’s great. I think here we are in the year 2001. More and more people understand our value and what we do. There’s still a lot who don’t, but if I am outside and I’m introduced to someone as a librarian at [company], people are very impressed that I’m a librarian. They’re like, oh, you know how to do this and you can do that. Blah, blah, blah. So it’s great now. Situational. Six participants felt that identification as a librarian could be either positive or negative depending on the situation, and depending as well as on one’s professional competencies. Linda Jacobs (manager modality) situated her response in terms of the subject focus of the organizations in which she has worked. In the kinds of intensely research and development organizations I have mostly worked in I don’t think being a librarian has that much of a downside. I really don’t think it does. The libraries are in some ways core to doing R&D. And whenever they forget about including the library in the development process they learn through lots of lost money and duplication of effort that didn’t need to be done that they made a mistake. Sarah Long (multiple-positions modality) at first stated that she thought being identified as a librarian was “mostly positive.” I think it’s mostly been positive. I think when I was at [industry association] the people I worked with at headquarters identified me first as a librarian because that’s how I came into the organization. . . . As I moved into different positions within [the association], I had some indirect feedback . . . like people didn’t understand how my library skills . . . might contribute to being process owner for business development. Then she expressed ambivalence, not quite sure how to answer the question. So I think that was the only place where it had sort of, I wouldn’t call it a negative effect, but because I’d been pegged as a librarian they weren't sure what to do with me outside a library experience. [SL: Do you think you had a harder time serving as the team leader for business development because you were identified by some people as a librarian?] Probably.

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For Sarah, her “mostly positive” identification as a librarian was situational to her role in the organization. As manager of a corporate library and in her current position as a team leader in an academic research library, being identified as a librarian was a positive experience, but when she moved outside the library milieu as process owner for business development, her librarian identification became problematic. She perceived that her coworkers did not know “what to do with her outside a library experience,” as she herself was unsure of how “being a librarian” applied to her non-librarian positions at the industry association. Roxanne Meyer (family-first modality), who like Sarah had moved from a corporate environment to a university, also felt that being identified as a librarian was viewed differently in the computer corporation where she worked in the mid-1990s, although she did not think it affected her career. She mentioned that she finds it “frustrating that some people make the assumption because you’re a librarian that you’re not an interesting person” and that she goes out of her way “to show those people we’re interesting.” I have an award sitting here from [company] that basically is their award for the person who least looks like their job description. They just didn’t think I looked like a librarian. . . . I think I’ve brought a positive image of the librarian to the company. . . . In the university it’s so much easier because library is viewed as so critical to everything the university does. . . . In the corporate setting, you really have to justify yourself all the time. Could not answer or ambivalent. Five participants appeared ambivalent about the effect their librarian identification had upon their careers or had difficulty responding to the question. Shirley Levine (manager modality), for example, felt that she could not answer the question because she never had the word, librarian, in her various position titles: “So I can’t say it helped or hurt me because I never had that specific title. I consider myself a librarian, but I’ve never had that title.” Laura Henderson (undervalued modality) was ambivalent because she felt that at her financial-services firm labels were less important than “what you do for them.”

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I still don’t think that in most people’s minds in here that it matters one way or the other. It really doesn’t. Like I actually have my degree on the wall and it just doesn’t matter. There are a few people who will comment on it or be more interested in it, but most of them just want to know what you do for them and don’t care what your background is. They don’t care what your education is, just what are you going to do for me. And so the proof is in your service, basically. Audrey Rosen (undervalued modality) also had difficulty responding to the question in terms of her career as a medical librarian, a difficulty that may be related to her perception of the “low status” of librarianship “in our society.” I think it has somewhat of a low status in our society, is that what you mean? How has it affected just the whole career? . . . Yeah, it’s hard for me to answer. Because I am a librarian. [SL: You are a librarian, and you are visibly identified as a librarian because you run the library?] Right. Exactly. So it’s not really an issue, I don’t think. Audrey found it difficult to discuss how being identified as a librarian in the medical center where she worked has affected her own career as a medical librarian. In response to a previous question in the interview concerning whether she had ever questioned her choice of career, Audrey had responded, “I still do—all the time.” She expressed regret about choosing librarianship as a profession because of its low status and salary. I don’t think it was the best choice, that’s why. Although in some ways I’m very well suited to it and I love my work. But I just feel that the salary, the income that I make, it’s a good thing I have a husband to support me because it’s very, very low. And that’s very disillusioning. . . . I do feel the status of a librarian is so negative in society that it just is a real disappointment. Evidence for Audrey’s conflicted feelings about being identified as a librarian come from comments she had made throughout her interview about being in a “profession that she loves” concomitant with comments about the low status of librarianship in society. This conflict may have contributed to her difficulty responding to the question. Generally negative. Three participants stated that being identified as a librarian could have negatively affected their careers. Each, however, used a different

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strategy to mitigate it. Gwen Jackson (multiple-positions modality) said that “at some point in my career I quit calling myself a librarian and started calling myself an information specialist” because of the librarian stereotype. Joanne Dalton (undervalued modality) viewed her identification as a librarian as “something she had to overcome” at the computer research and development organization where she has worked since 1989. Although she indicated that she felt she had to overcome the librarian image to progress in her own career, Joanne identified with the profession of librarianship and the librarian title. Even though her title at the time of her interview was Manager of Strategic Information, unlike Gwen, she considered herself a librarian rather than an information specialist. Dolores Peral (manager modality) reported that while she was in graduate school (and working full time as a law librarian) she was thinking about switching to computer science because of the disadvantages of being in “a female-dominated, service-oriented profession.” That was one thing that almost drove me out of the profession when I was thinking about switching. I just said I’m in a female dominated, service oriented profession. . . . I’m in one of these loser professions, we have to get all this education and then are undervalued and underpaid and it’s because we’re female dominated and service oriented. So I felt like it was sort of a disadvantage, not that I was a woman but that I was a woman in a female-dominated profession. For Dolores, being a woman was not an issue—however, being a member of a female-dominated profession was. Although Dolores saw negative connotations in the librarian label, she also felt she could overcome any constraints inherent in the appellation through her own individual competencies. In the same way that Joanne Dalton shifted from her own experience about being identified as a librarian to her feelings about what the profession should be called (“I figure it was probably something I had to overcome, but I don’t want to change the name”), Dolores shifted the discussion to her feelings about the title of librarian and the librarian image and stereotype. She described how she has dealt with the negative connotations of the stereotype in her own career.

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I’m not out to change the title. At one point I thought, either the profession needed to split into these traditional librarians and the rest of us high tech information specialists. And then I thought, we need to change the name of the whole profession and that will make us somehow be more glamorous. And now I think, no, you need to redefine the profession from within. I mean, if people have an image of a librarian it’s because they got it from somewhere. It didn’t just come out of thin air. . . . My job is to simply defy the stereotype. That’s the most powerful thing I could do. I could tell people, “Call me this and this and this.” But as long as they don’t see the substance underneath that, it’s all just words. As can be seen in this excerpt, Dolores considered her technological competencies as a way to counter the stereotype, and in this way she dismissed the stereotype as having little effect on people like herself who “redefine the profession from within.” It is not the label that is important (“it’s all just words”), it is “the substance underneath.” Dolores felt that she could “defy the stereotype” through the substance of her own competencies: Any constraints on her career that being identified as a member of a feminized profession could impose would be nullified by her technological competencies and the value she provides. In this, Dolores expressed sentiments that were similar to those of other participants (e.g., Laura Henderson and Louise Mayfield) who considered individual qualities to be more important than any negative connotations associated with the female-librarian stereotype. Career modality and perceived identification as a librarian. There are some differences by modality in terms of how participants viewed their identification as librarians in the workplace. Table 4.3, which displays the participants listed in Table 4.2 by career modality, reveals several interesting patterns. All of the family- first and found-my-spot modality participants viewed their identification as librarians as either positive or situational; none considered it negative nor did they have difficulty responding to the question. By contrast, none of the participants in the undervalued modality viewed their identification as librarians as positive or situational. These findings are congruent with findings reported above regarding career modality, career progression and job satisfaction.

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Table 4.3 Identification as a Librarian in the Workplace by Career Modality

Identification as a librarian Generally Could not Generally Career modality positive Situational answer, neutral negative

Family first Louise Mayfield Roxanne Meyer Vivian Walton

Found my spot Olivia Chambers Susan Maxwell Portia Hughes Margaret Taylor Janet Logan

Manager Linda Jacobs Shirley Levine Dolores Peral

Multiple positions Diana Baker Sarah Long Roberta Kramer Gwen Jackson Eileen Norton Marty Roberts

Undervalued Laura Henderson Joanne Dalton Audrey Rosen

Issue 3 summary. Most participants considered their identification as a librarian in the workplace as either generally positive or situational—i.e., it could be positive or negative depending on the context. Only three participants considered their identification as librarians to be generally negative, and this negativity was expressed more in terms of the librarian image rather than having a direct effect on these participants’ own careers. Some participants (e.g., Linda Jacobs, Roxanne Meyer, Janet Logan, Diana Baker, Vivian Walton, Dolores Peral, Joanne Dalton) responded to the question in terms of both their own career progression and how they perceived the librarian image to affect the profession as a whole. Several participants attempted to distance themselves from the librarian stereotype through their own individual competencies, particularly through their technological expertise (Roxanne Meyer, Dolores Peral) or through disassociation with the librarian label itself (Shirley

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Levine). Others (Louise Mayfield, Laura Henderson, Portia Hughes) considered the librarian label less important than their individual contributions or demonstrated competence. These kinds of responses may be viewed as individualistic solutions to the collective problem of inequality (Chase, 1995), in this case the inequality inherent in being a member of a feminized profession.

Research Question 1(a) Summary Most participants did not think that being identified as a librarian had a negative effect on their careers. The following observations lend support to this assertion: 1. Participants felt that they had little problem finding better jobs or positions because their high-tech information-management skills made them competitive in the information marketplace; 2. They could find better positions in larger library organizations, such as academic libraries with more opportunities for advancement within the library; and 3. They did not see themselves as competing against members of other information professions—they have found their niche providing and managing content and these are the positions they seek, not positions in IT managing the information infrastructure and not moving into positions in management outside the library. Overall, the assumptions about career progression and competition with other information professions embedded in Research Question 1(a) were not directly reflected in participant accounts. Most participants (except for those in the manager career modality) did not define career progression in terms of career advancement, but in terms of career enhancement or growth—if participants did not view their careers in terms of “advancement,” they would be less likely to consider their title or appellation an important career factor. Within the context of these findings, it appears that the research participants did not perceive that that their membership in the

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feminized profession of librarianship has negatively affected their career progression in the information-age workplace. These findings are further explored in the participant narratives that comprise chapter 7, as well as in the analysis of undervaluation of librarianship in the next chapter. Implications of these findings, particularly with regard to feminist theory, are discussed in chapter 8.

Research Question 1(b): How Have Structural Organizational Features Affected Participants’ Career Progression?

The findings presented thus far in this chapter include: (1) a description of the career patterns of high-tech women special librarians in terms of five career modalities and (2) the findings for Research Question 1(a) of Research Question 1. The following section presents findings for Research Question 1(b). Research Question 1(b) explores the structural features of the organizations in which the research participants have worked over the course of their careers to identify factors that have affected their career progression. The five career modalities derived from interview transcripts and work histories and the concept of career progression explicated above guide the exploration. Career choice, career development and career progression are functions of psychological factors such as personality, motivation, temperament, etc. as well as organizational structure. Professional growth and career progression are also partly structural, and in this respect are outside the direct control of the individual. Researchers studying career factors in librarianship have tended to focus more on psychological or developmental perspectives than on structural factors (for example, Detlefsen & Olson, 1991; Farmer & Campbell, 1998; Ivy, 1985; Kong & Goodfellow, 1988; McDermott, 1998a; 1998b; Phillips et al., 1994). Although it is recognized that psychological factors are important in a person’s career development and progression, they are not the focus of this research. Rather, the career experiences and career

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patterns of the research participants are examined from the structural perspective of Research Question 1(b). Structural organizational features were identified through systematic examination of participant interviews and work histories. The following structural factors appear to be related to participants’ career progression: 1. Organizational factors such as type of library or information services unit, size of the organization of which the library or information services unit is a part, and size and management structure of the library or information services unit; and 2. Gender relations within the organization, including issues of family and work in assumed-to-be-gendered organizational environments.21 These structural features are described in more detail below, illustrated with examples from participant interviews and from findings presented in chapter 3.22

Organizational Factors Structural changes that have taken place within the organization and production of work over the past 10 to 15 years affect career progression of managers and professionals, including information workers. This subsection focuses on the effects of three organizational factors on the careers of the research participants: (1) type of library or information services unit, (2) size of the organization of which the library or information services unit is a part, and (3) size and composition of the library or information services unit.23

21 Within Acker’s (1990) gendered organizational model, gender is considered a structural feature of the organizations and institutions in which the participants exist. Gender as an independent variable is not a focus in this research. 22 See chapter 3, Work History section, particularly Tables 3.6 – 3.8. 23 Interview data indicate that reporting structure may also affect career progression (see subsection, Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions, above). Reporting structure is also examined in terms of undervaluation of librarianship for the three undervalued-modality participants in chapter 5. However, the size and organizational structure of the organizations in which the participants worked over the course of their careers were too disparate to explore further the effect of reporting structure on participants’ career progression in this section.

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Type of library. In chapter 3 it was shown that during the decade of the 1990s the type of library in which participants worked was a factor in participants’ career progression. Participants working in the corporate world experienced more volatility than their counterparts in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies. The number of participants working in corporate libraries decreased by half from 1991 to 2001, from ten participants to five (see chapter 3, Table 3.6). Two of these five corporate librarians (Linda Jacobs and Dolores Peral) moved to higher level positions in other types of libraries, two stayed in the information industry (Marty Roberts into consulting and Eileen Norton into sales), and one left the field altogether (Gwen Jackson). By contrast, only one of the eight participants working in non- corporate special library environments in 1991 (Roxanne Meyer) had moved to a corporate library in the 1990s and she left this library in 1998 to take a position as an academic librarian. Over the past decade U.S. special libraries have been shrinking in size but their numbers have remained relatively constant (see Table 3.7). This trend has also been reported in recent research on management perceptions of the value of corporate libraries (Matarazzo & Prusak, 1995) and on the effects of business trends such as outsourcing and downsizing (N. Smith, 1997). Corporate libraries are being downsized or closed as a result of corporate restructuring and downsizing (N. Smith, 1997) as well as from a common management assumption that corporate libraries are an anachronism in the information-age organization (Davenport & Prusak, 1997; Koenig, 2000; 2002). Several participants who were corporate librarians in 1991 reported being laid off or their units downsized in the 1990s. For example, Diana Baker (multiple- positions modality) had been laid off from one company in 1992, then at her next position as a hospital librarian, she lost her staff through downsizing; and Vivian Walton (family-first modality) reported that as company veered toward bankruptcy in the mid-1990s she lost her assistant and then had her hours reduced. In addition, several participants who had worked as corporate librarians in the 1980s reported that

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their information units experienced layoffs and downsizings during this time as well (for example, Eileen Norton, multiple-positions; Olivia Chambers, found-my-spot; and Shirley Levine, manager modality). The instability of corporate librarianship may have been a factor in some participants venturing into other types of information work. Marty Roberts (multiple- positions modality), for example, reported that she formed her own information consultancy after she became disillusioned with some of the management practices at the financial services company where she was information services project manager for a new subsidiary. She decided in 1998 that the time was right to venture out on her own as an independent information consultant. The career-pattern-modality framework is congruent with these observations. Four out of the six participants who were assigned to the multiple-positions modality (Marty Roberts, Diana Baker, Eileen Norton, and Gwen Jackson) were corporate librarians in 1991, and only Diana was still in a corporate library in 2001 but in a different corporation than in 1991. By contrast, four out of the five participants in the found-my-spot modality were working as librarians in either not-for-profit organizations (Janet Logan, Olivia Chambers, and Margaret Taylor) or government libraries (Susan Maxwell). All four in fact were employed at the same organization in 2001 that they were at in 1991. It is apparent that these librarians had found what they liked—as evidenced by their high levels of job satisfaction reported earlier in this chapter—and did not want to leave their current positions to try something new. It may also be the case that positions in the not-for-profit and government sectors are less volatile than those in the private sector. Size of parent organization. At the time of their research interviews in 2001 the majority of participants (13 out of 17 for whom organizational size data are available) were working in organizations that could be considered bureaucratic in structure based on organizational size: seven worked in large organizations of a thousand or more employees and six worked in mid-size organizations of 100 to 999

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employees. Four participants were working in small organizations with fewer than 100 employees and two were self-employed (see Table 3.8).24 The size of the parent organization may be a factor in the career progression of some participants, for example, those working in organizations with libraries large enough to have career ladders and opportunities for promotion within the library. Six participants were working in libraries with defined career ladders in 2001.25 Of these six, four were senior-level administrators: three in academic libraries (Roxanne Meyer, Dolores Peral, and Sarah Long) and one (Linda Jacobs) who managed a large special library for a research and development organization. The other two (Susan Maxwell and Roberta Kramer) worked in mid-level positions in the national libraries with no expressed desire to advance managerially. Only one of the four librarians currently in administrative positions was promoted from within: Roxanne Meyer, who had moved from a corporate solo librarian position to science librarian at a large public university, was promoted three years later to head of the technical services department of her library. The others advanced in their careers by changing organizations, not by moving up an internal organizational career ladder.26 Organizational size may also be a factor for librarians who are undervalued, since none of the three librarians in the undervalued modality (Joanne Dalton, Audrey Rosen, and Laura Henderson) worked in small organizations (those with fewer than 100 employees). Since the three undervalued-modality participants also managed small special libraries, both the size of the parent organization and management structure of the organization’s library or information center must be examined

24 Participants working in large organizations in 2001 were Linda Jacobs, Roxanne Meyer, Audrey Rosen, Sara Long, Diana Baker, Laura Henderson, and Portia Hughes; participants in mid-size organizations were Janet Logan, Vivian Walton, Dolores Peral, Susan Maxwell, Roberta Kramer, and Joanne Dalton; participants in small organizations were Louise Mayfield, Shirley Levine, Olivia Chambers, and Eileen Norton. Marty Roberts and Gwen Jackson were self-employed. 25 Only one of these six participants (Susan Maxwell) was working in a library large enough to have a career ladder in 1991. This is a function of the participant selection criteria: Special librarians working in academic institutions (with defined career paths) in 1991-1992 were excluded from the study. 26 It is interesting to note that Dolores, Sarah, and Roxanne, as academic library administrators, became part of a more traditional career-advancement organizational model.

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together to explore the effect of organizational factors on participants’ career progression. Management structure of library or information center. The management structure of a special library or information center is a function of both its size (in terms of number of employees in the unit) and its composition. The career pattern modalities provide a mechanism for understanding the dynamics of career development and progression for the women librarians in this study regarding both size of organization and management structure of the library. Table 3.8 in chapter 3 lists the number of participants in three library management structure categories:27 (1) the one-information-professional library or information services unit (the “solo” librarian model); (2) the small library, composed of several information professionals and support staff; and (3) the large library of 10 or more information professionals and support staff (the fourth category includes participants who did not work in a library or information center in 2001). Table 4.4 below displays the same four categories in terms of the career modalities of the participants. The data displayed in Table 4.4 suggest a relationship between career modality and the management structure of the organization’s library or information center. The majority of found-my-spot- and family-first-modality participants were solo librarians (of the six solos, five were in either of these two modalities). By contrast, all three participants assigned to the undervalued modality were managers of small libraries (of the four managers of small libraries, three were in the undervalued modality). Not surprisingly, two of the three manager-modality participants were directors of large libraries.

27 See chapter 3, Organizational Size and Library Management Structure subsection, for a description of these categories.

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Table 4.4 Library Size and Management Structure by Career Modality, 2001 One-professional library (“solo” librarian) Family first: 2 out of 3 (Louise Mayfield, Vivian Walton) Found my spot: 3 out of 5 (Margaret Taylor, Olivia Chambers, Portia Hughes) Multiple positions: 1 out of 6 (Diana Baker) Small library (2-3 librarians plus support staff) Found my spot: 1 out of 5 (Janet Logan) Undervalued: 3 out of 3 (Audrey Rosen, Joanne Dalton, Laura Henderson) Large library (10+ librarians and support staff ) Family first: 1 out of 3 (Roxanne Meyer) Found my spot: 1 out of 5 (Susan Maxwell) Manager: 2 out of 3 (Dolores Peral, Linda Jacobs) Multiple positions: 2 out of 6 (Roberta Kramer, Sarah Long) Not in library or information center Manager: 1 out of 3 (Shirley Levine) Multiple positions: 3 out of 6 (Eileen Norton, Gwen Jackson, Marty Roberts) Note: Under each library size category are listed (a) modalities represented in the category, and (b) number and, in parentheses, names of participants for each constituent modality.

These data indicate that it may not be the size of the parent organization but the size and composition of the library or information services unit that is a critical factor in participants’ career progression and satisfaction. The three participants in the undervalued modality are all managers of small libraries in mid-size or large organizations. It is likely that these libraries, comprised of several professionals and support staff, would be too costly to be supported by smaller organizations of less than 100 employees. More important, though, is that—based on their own accounts— participants who are solo librarians as well as those who work in large libraries appear to be more satisfied with their careers than three out of the four participants managing small special libraries. These participants echo the comments of other solo librarians found in the work of one-person librarianship’s chronicler Judith Siess

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(1999; 2001). Pitts (1994) also found a high level of job satisfaction in her research on one-person library directors. Several participants who were solo librarians in small organizations seemed to have a particular fondness for these organizations. Roxanne Meyer (family-first modality), for example, had worked for a small start-up company in the computer industry in the mid-1990s; she left the firm in 1998 after it had been acquired by a telecommunications conglomerate. Here is how she described the start-up company before and after the merger: I was a very happy camper. I loved my job at [start-up]. I really, really did. But the company started shifting. It was bought out by [conglomerate], but [conglomerate] . . . sort of treated [startup employees] as second-class citizens. . . . At [start-up], which was a very wonderful company, very young, new, responsive company, people made decisions quickly, things happened, and it was a growing and developing and successful startup company. [SL: Minimal bureaucracy?] Minimal bureaucracy, and then it got bought by a very bureaucratic organization. And so if you were happy in the one, you probably weren't all that happy working for [the other]. Louise Mayfield (family-first modality) expressed similar feelings about the aerospace engineering research firm where she has worked since 1982 as a solo librarian for “about 12 Ph.D.s in astronautics and aeronautics or physics”: There’s just never been a time at [company] when I have not felt valued. They’ve given me nice raises, they’ve given me wonderful verbal appreciation when it couldn’t be financial and they’ve always supported the library and supported me. . . . [SL: Could you describe a time when you questioned your choice of career?] No. I have not been sorry, and as a matter of fact, it’s gotten more and more interesting. . . . I think I have been incredibly lucky to go into a career that I thought was going to bring me to rare books or an academic, well, I did kind of get the academic part, though. Because [company] in many ways has a very academic atmosphere. Because they are research scientists and it’s a very collegial sort of atmosphere. From this account Louise appears to be working more as an active member of a research-and-development team than the manager of a library as an organizational unit.

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Organizational factors summary. The relationship between library management structure and career pattern modality raises certain questions and issues. Some of these issues are addressed through findings presented in chapter 5 on the undervaluation of the library profession and in the participant narratives presented in chapter 7. Others are beyond the scope of this research. It is sufficient at this point in the analysis to introduce some questions as to how the relationship between library management structure and career pattern modality can contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of participants’ career progression. 1. Why is solo librarianship an attractive career path for certain participants? Why are the found-my-spot and family-first participants clustered in the solo librarian category? Is this their preferred type of librarianship, or in the case of the two family-firsters who are part-time solos (Louise Mayfield and Vivian Walton), is this form of librarianship the only thing available for special librarians who want to work part time? 2. The career modality data indicate that participants in the found-my-spot modality are highly satisfied with their work—they “love their jobs”: Three of these five participants are solo librarians (Margaret Taylor, Olivia Chambers, Portia Hughes). Both participants working as librarians in small organizations (Louise Mayfield and Olivia Chambers) are solo librarians. What is it about working as a solo librarian in a small organization that is so satisfying? 3. Is the solo librarian less vulnerable to downsizing simply because of the size of her unit? Is she viewed not so much as a librarian managing a little library but as a functional specialist adding value to the organization (and the organization’s project teams) independent of a physical library? Note that solo librarians are found not just in small organizations but in mid- size and large organizations as well. 4. Are small special libraries “endangered species,” a dead-end career path? Why are the three participants assigned to the undervalued modality all

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managers of small special libraries? Is it because these libraries are large enough to be labeled “libraries” in their organizations and carry the baggage of the old “book” model library stereotype? Are these small special libraries more likely to be seen as overhead—and expendable— compared to the more flexible and less-likely-to-be-identified-with-books solo librarian? Are these small libraries more vulnerable because of their size, a relatively small unit within a larger organization that is not a library? Are they in industries that are less likely to value libraries and librarians? 5. Are participants working in large libraries—i.e., those large enough to be considered library organizations in their own right even if located within a larger institution such as a university or research organization—less vulnerable than participants managing a small library within the larger non-library organization? Large libraries also have defined career paths that may make them more attractive to some special librarians. The type of library in which participants have worked is also a factor in their career progression. Participants working in corporate libraries experienced a more volatile job environment during the decade of the 1990s than their counterparts in not-for-profit or government sectors: half of these participants left the corporate environment for careers in academic or governmental libraries, consulting, or information-industry sales.

Gender Relations In this study gender is treated structurally as an integral part of organizational processes and logic. Gender is conceptualized as a relation, not a thing, and viewed as historically situated: “Gender relations in any particular historical situation are always constructed by the entire array of hierarchical social relations in which ‘woman’ or ‘man’ participates” (Harding, 1991, pp. 13-14).

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Just as most participants did not think that being identified as a librarian had a negative effect on their career progression, neither did these participants feel that being female had negatively affected their careers.28 Although some participants reported instances in which being a woman was a disadvantage—e.g., where they may not have been listened to as seriously as a man or where they discovered salary differentials between themselves and men doing similar work—most did not see themselves as having been discriminated against because of gender. Regardless of career modality, participants generally tended to look at their careers from a more individualistic perspective. Most did not seem to make a connection between their gender and their career progression. Nor did they view balancing work and family life as a gender issue, but as a work-related issue. Dolores Peral (manager modality) was the only participant to refer specifically to librarianship as a female-dominated profession in response to the interview question.29 Yet Dolores, looking back at her experiences as both a corporate librarian and college library director, did not feel that “being a woman librarian has been a disadvantage” in her career, despite the gender stratification in librarianship. I’ve never felt like being a woman librarian has been a disadvantage. And I know there are more males who are in the higher positions of librarianship and I think it stinks. But I’ve never felt like I’ve been turned down for a job or not been allowed to do something as a librarian because I was a female. Like many participants, Dolores believed that her competencies as an information professional, particularly in the area of technology, would overcome any inherent disadvantage in being a woman or a woman librarian. The discussion of gender relations and career progression below is organized into two areas: (1) participants’ perceptions of the gendered workplace; and (2) work and family issues as a structural component affecting participants’ careers.

28 The interview question was: “How has being a woman figured in or affected your career?” 29 See also Dolores’ account in subsection, Issue 3: How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression, above.

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The gendered workplace. Examples from participant interviews show in different ways how organizations are gendered and how this gendering of the workplace has affected participants’ career progression. Although most participants have not necessarily made direct links to how gender relations—i.e., how being female in a male-defined work environment—have affected their careers, some perceived that as women they are responded to differently in the workplace. In each of the following accounts, gender serves as a structural factor affecting participants’ effectiveness in the workplace and ultimately, over time, their career progression. Linda Jacobs and Dolores Peral (both in the manager modality), for example, mentioned experiences of not being listened to in meetings. Dolores reported that I know that there were several times both at [company #1] and [company #2] where I . . . identified an issue or problem or put forth an idea or proposal that was ignored. And then maybe a few months later, a year later, a man said the same thing and people snapped to and said, “Wow, this is great. I’m so glad somebody brought this up.” Whether it was timing or whether it was gender, maybe they weren't ready to hear it when I said it. Linda reported this experience at a management meeting that took place within the past year: I’ve always worked in a primary male [environment] . . . since I left public libraries. . . . Just the demographic of Ph.D.s in physics is still very male. And you learn how to deal with that [laughs]. . . . I certainly am sometimes frustrated. Even recently I was on a team with my peers developing a proposal to change some HR practices. And quite frankly a couple of them I think really are not nearly as smart as I am. . . . And yet I felt that my peers listened more respectfully to a person I view as almost an idiot than they did to me and continually interrupted me. And I actually think one of the reasons I speak so quickly has to do with just getting in what I have to say in a male environment. Linda did not feel that experiences like this have negatively affected her career. On the contrary, she has found that she could “use to her advantage” the fact that people underestimate her because of her “relatively traditional” current position as library manager in a male-dominated research and development laboratory:

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I do think that being a woman does certainly affect people imagining you in certain [traditionally male] positions and you have to then, if you really want to get them, you have to push yourself out there. It just won’t occur to people. Being a library manager is relatively traditional but as soon as you leave that, I think it gets harder. And people do underestimate you and you can use that to your advantage. I really don’t mind being underestimated as long as I can get what I want done. Linda has used the state of being underestimated in a gendered organization as a strategy to accomplish her goals. At the same time, though, she recognized that as a woman, you have to “push yourself” to be considered for “certain positions” not traditionally identified with women. Sarah Long (multiple-positions modality) thought that gender was the reason she was not hired for a position as head of a trade association library, since she found out later through informal channels (her own professional association’s “old-girl” network) that the library staff had preferred her, and that the man who was hired did not have a library degree: When I was trying to leave [publishing company], I interviewed with [association] as head of their library. And again, it came down to two people, I was told. I met with the staff, I met with everybody else, and . . . I was told later by one of the staff members . . . that the staff had preferred me and they’d hired someone without a library degree and that really set badly with the staff. . . . [SL: Since they brought in someone who didn’t have a library degree, do you think this was a gender thing?] I think it was, yeah. Sarah recounted another experience, in this case after she had been promoted to process owner for business development at the aerospace industry association, that illustrates how gender serves as a constraint to managerial authority. In this account it can be seen that Sarah was left out of the loop when members of the association’s old-boy network, led by the association’s executive director, decided to remove the “marketing people” from her span of managerial control: I think there might have been a gender issue going on at [industry association]. . . . I think it’s partly because it was an engineering association, and aerospace engineers are still 95% male out there. . . .

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It was very much dominated by member maleness, if you will, as well as executive people. And what I found out later was that the president of the association, the director, sometimes had meetings with his buddies deciding on some things that I wasn’t included in on. And then this information would get to me some other ways. . . . I think it was the executive director’s idea to take the marketing people that reported to me and had them report directly to the executive director’s group. And I really felt like that was an issue that had to deal with my management ability, my style of manager as a woman. But they didn’t want to confront me with it. So this was a way to do it. [SL: So did you lose the marketing people?] I did. And I argued as best I could and I was more mad about the process that took place than the fact it actually happened. [SL: Because it was like a done deal before you even got to talk about it?] Right. Within a year Sarah left this organization and returned to academe, to a management position at an academic research library. Her account of this transition is reported earlier in this chapter.30 Sarah’s earlier statement that she was not sure that her “skills and expertise . . . were truly appreciated” at the industry association takes on a different meaning when examined through the lens of gender relations. Although other factors contributed to Sarah’s decision to relocate, her decision to move back into academic librarianship was influenced by the gender bias she had experienced at the industry association. In this account Sarah’s reference to her skills not being “truly appreciated” can be seen as a gloss for what she left unsaid: that her skills were not appreciated by the male executive director’s group and “member maleness” of the aerospace industry association. Like Sarah Long, Marty Roberts (multiple-positions modality) also found out through her own informal networks that gender mattered. In her case it had to do with salary discrepancies at the financial advisory services company where she worked in the mid-1990s, before she left to form her own information consultancy. She had previously described the company as “an old-boy, male-dominated” firm where “being a woman was detrimental.”

30 See Multiple-Positions Modality subsection, above.

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We were not supposed to know [other people’s salaries] and you could be fired for knowing what other people got. And last year I talked to someone else who had also left and who I’ve maintained a friendship with and we’ve done work for each other. And we got talking about salaries. And I told him what I made at [company] and he was shocked. Because he knew I should’ve been making a lot more and probably he was making a lot more. . . . He knew what he was making and what he was doing and what I was doing when I told him what I was making. And for what I was doing, I should have been making more than [amount]. Interestingly, when Marty was asked a bit later during the interview whether she had “ever experienced gender or age discrimination,” she responded: “I don’t think I’ve had any gender discrimination.” Her response suggests a reluctance to acknowledge gender as a constraining factor in her career, even as she discussed the evidence for gender differences in salary. Shirley Levine (manager modality) also reported that she inadvertently found out about salary differentials at the multinational corporation where she had been promoted to manager of technical information services in 1983: The only way I ever discovered that men were getting paid more for the same job was when I became a manager and they gave me the personnel file. [SL: Of the people who reported to you?] Yeah. Shirley’s promotion, however, was the result of an affirmative action effort by the company to move minorities and women into management positions. Here is her account of what happened after her promotion to manager: [Company] went through a situation where they had no women managers or hardly any. And they decided they had to upgrade the minorities there. So they took about 20 minorities, including women, and put them through a management course, and made them managers. So here I am, brand new super manager, at a higher level than most women were able to achieve. I was in this group of women and minorities. In Shirley’s case she benefited from her company’s affirmative action policy by being promoted to manager. Later during the interview, however, when she was asked the question, “How has being a woman figured in or affected your career as an

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information professional?”, Shirley’s first response was, “Somebody else once asked me that and the answer is I don’t have a clue.” She paused and then said, No, that’s a lie. It did help me. I would not have been promoted to a [manager] grade at [company] if I wasn’t a woman. Because they needed women managers. So I guess it helped. Mostly I don’t think about it. Both Shirley and Marty’s responses indicate ambivalence about the role of gender in their career development and their unwillingness to situate gender as a central issue in their accounts. R. Harris and Tague (1989) reported a similar example in their biographical study of Canadian library directors. Chase (1995) in her analysis of work narratives of women public school superintendents refers to this as discursive disjunction: “the disjunction between discourse about professional work and discourse about inequality as a significant cultural phenomenon shaping professional women’s work narratives and self-understandings” (p. 178). It is also apparent in the accounts of Sarah Long and Linda Jacobs (above) that gender relations had a constraining effect on these participants’ opportunities for advancement within their organizations, even if this was not recognized by the participants themselves. Linda counteracted this state of affairs by manipulating the gender subtext to her advantage; by not being seen as a threat, she could put the pieces in place unnoticed to accomplish her goals.31 Sarah, on the other hand, counteracted the gender bias she experienced at the aerospace organization by leaving. Work and family. Issues of work and family comprise a major structural component that affects a professional woman’s career progression. Corporate life in the twentieth century has not been family friendly, particularly in the last 30 years, with the disappearance of the family wage and concomitant rise of the two-income

31 See chapter 7 for an example of this process in Linda Jacobs’ account of how she managed to get a new position reporting to her rather than to the manager of the publications department.

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household.32 The traditional large business organization, based on the abstract male worker (Acker, 1990), makes it more difficult for female employees to balance career and family responsibilities (Burke & McKeen, 1994; Ornstein & Isabella, 1993; Stroh & Reilly, 1999). Women still have the primary responsibility for raising children and handling other family concerns in most households, and the research participants were no different. Women’s careers are complex, according to Powell and Mainiero (1992) because women lead complicated lives: “The modal pattern of men’s careers is unlikely to provide a good fit for the modal pattern of women’s careers” (p 219). As described in the career modalities subsections earlier in the chapter, the issue of balancing work and family is the main focus of the family-first modality (see Table 4.1). For these participants (Louise Mayfield, Roxanne Meyer, and Vivian Walton) family responsibilities came first: The needs of their families were the major determinant in the types of positions they accepted. Achieving a balance between the demands of work and family contributed to these participants’ conceptualization of career success. Roxanne Meyer, for example, defined success within the context of a “proper balance” between family and career: Well, to me it’s that proper balance between your family and your career, which is one reason why I didn’t choose the [library director] job. It was not going to be a balance. For me, my family is more important than the work. I probably could’ve gone up higher further, faster, if I had moved and left the area. I wasn’t going to do that to my family. . . . So it’s a kind of balance. So success for me is people saying she does that well. And she gives it her all and so doing the best I can and trying to get that proper mix of home and work. Vivian Walton also wanted to balance work and family responsibilities when she considered quitting her part-time position as an engineering librarian because of sandwich-generation family responsibilities:

32 By 1990, “nearly 60% of American women were in the paid labor force; women comprised nearly 50% of the professional and technical labor force” in “the developed economies of the world” (Sennett, 1998 p. 57). In 1960, by comparison, only 30% of American women were in the paid workforce (p. 57).

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I toyed with the idea of, maybe six months ago, of quitting because I’ve got other things going on at home. With two little kids and my mother’s got Alzheimer’s and we were moving and everything was crazy and I thought I should just quit working. But I went and talked to a professional about it and he said, “It sounds like you’d be out of your mind if you quit. Work is the only place where you have any sort of control or anything. Don’t quit.” So I didn’t. And I’m glad I didn’t. Vivian no longer considered her career her top priority, as her “big thing.” She in fact described it as “a side dish”: My career is no longer my big thing. That’s now my kids, my mother, my dogs, everything else. This is a side dish now for me. An important side dish, but not the main course like it used to be. Vivian’s situation—having two children in primary school and a mentally- impaired mother at home—also points out the structural factors that make it difficult for her to achieve the balance she is looking for. Her solution was to find an organization that would allow her to work part time in a professional position. At the time of her research interview, she was working 24 hours a week. Other participants were dealing with family responsibilities as well, and balancing work and family responsibilities was a major concern for them. Like Vivian Walton, Linda Jacobs (manager modality) was responsible for taking care of a mother with dementia. At age 54 Portia Hughes (found-my-spot modality) was juggling non-work demands involving the care of her elderly, disabled father and the implications of her husband’s heart condition, as well as dealing with her own conflicting feelings as the daughter of a stay-at-home mother. [My husband] had quadruple bypass, I guess, about four years ago . . . and I think part of it is my mother was a homemaker and she really enjoyed and loved her home. And I also have that bent too, where . . . I’d just love to have the time, let’s put it that way, [laughing] to do some gardening or . . . do some traveling or whatever. And then besides, I’m in that sandwich generation, my dad lives with us. My father’s 92 and he’s legally blind. . . .

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Portia, however, received help from her husband, who had taken early retirement after his bypass surgery, in caring for her father. This mitigated somewhat the stress of being a sandwich-generation worker. So there’s kind of a number of different factors that play in my personal life that I don’t think they necessarily impact my work because I think my husband gives me a lot of support. He does a lot of the day-to-day things with my dad. So . . . you kind of get that squeeze where you think some day you’d like to be someplace else other than at my job. . . . But I still like what I’m doing. So if I were to leave, it would not be . . . because I don’t like my job anymore. That’s not true. By contrast, Margaret Taylor (found-my-spot modality), library services supervisor for a state agency, did not have the kind of family support that Portia reported. Recently divorced, Margaret said, “I’m not in a position to be a real risk taker right now.” As she explained: Probably one reason I took this job in the first place, I had a small child and wanted regular hours where I didn’t have to work weekends or evenings. Since then I’ve had another child. . . . This is a nice job. I seldom have to work overtime and I don’t have to work weekends or evenings and that’s very helpful when you have a family. Like Vivian Walton, Margaret Taylor has family responsibilities that constrain her job mobility. Some participants (for example, Louise Mayfield, family-first, and Audrey Rosen, undervalued modality) chose librarianship as a career because they felt that they could have a professional career and still take care of family responsibilities. This is also the reason why Shirley Levine, a newly divorced mother of two small children in the late 1960s, decided to go back to school to get an MLS rather than pursue a doctorate in the sciences: I’ve had a very interesting career. Don’t misunderstand me. I love what I’ve done. But you asked me if I ever regretted it and I have to say there were circumstances beyond my control. Due to personal circumstances, I had to support two children by myself. . . . In those days, in the ‘60s, I was earning maybe $5,000 a year and I just couldn’t do it. . . . That’s how I got to library school rather than getting a Ph.D. in botany or marine botany. It was because library school, for

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better for worse, it was one year. And my aunt . . . paid for everything for a year and I didn’t know what else to do at that point. But it certainly was never at the top of my head. Shirley entered library school in 1969, a time when career opportunities were more limited for women. In addition to Vivian Walton’s account above, several other participants provided accounts which indicated that their organizations were more family friendly than the norm. The small aerospace engineering where Louise Mayfield (family-first modality) has worked since earning her MLS degree in 1981 is not typical of corporate America. With four young children she was specifically looking for a part- time position upon graduating from library school but found it difficult to find part- time professional work. And then I applied at [current company], not because I wanted the job, but because my husband said, “Why don’t you just do it to get some practice interviewing?” And it was a 40-hour a week job and there was no way in the world I would work 40 hours a week. I had four kids in elementary school. I was looking for a 20 hour a week job. When she refused the job, the company president offered to reduce her hours to 30 hours a week so she could be home when her children came home from school. The information industry research firm where Eileen Norton (multiple- positions modality) worked at the time of her interview is perhaps the family- friendliest of all the organizations described by participants. As a member of the newly created sales team, Eileen, the mother of a nine-year-old daughter, worked from home. To emphasize the point that “family comes first” at this company, Eileen reported the following conversation with one of the firm’s co-founders during her job interview earlier that year: She said, “Listen, family comes first. If you want to take your child to ballet or if you want to go to church from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, that’s fine. You put in your hours elsewhere. Obviously we have customers to support and . . . obviously you have to manage your time wisely.” But, she said, “I leave every day at 2 because I have kids and want to be home with them, when they come home on the bus, so I can't

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exactly tell all of you that you have to be there at your home desk from 8 to 5.” The flexibility found in the organizational environments described by Louise Mayfield and Eileen Norton that contributes to a more family-friendly workplace is not typical of the majority of organizations in which research participants have worked. A flexible work environment is important to these participants, just as it is to other women professionals (Lee, MacDermid, & Buck, 2000; Powell & Mainiero, 1992; Scandura & Lankau, 1997), but “boundaries between families and work organizations” mitigate against it (Acker, 1998, p. 196). The reality of gendered organizational culture is encapsulated in the following statement by Vivian Walton about how hard it was to find part-time professional work (“I look all the time”); Vivian felt that more “little companies would have librarians if they knew they could have them part time”: I think it’s something they haven't thought about, just like I didn’t think about going to library school. It hasn’t crossed their minds. And I can see a lot of companies that would benefit, but they don’t know about them. Vivian did not link her belief that companies just “don’t know about” the availability of part-time professional librarians to gender relations. Her statement in fact serves as a cogent example of the gendered substructure of organizational process: it “hasn’t crossed their minds” that women information professionals are available for part-time work and would likely welcome the opportunity to work part time in professional positions. Although family-first participants were the most concerned about balancing work and family, issues concerning work and family were mentioned by participants in other modalities as well (for example, by Linda Jacobs, manager; Portia Hughes, found-my-spot; and Eileen Norton, multiple-positions). The two participants who were pregnant at the time of their interviews were also dealing with work-and-family

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issues.33 Both mentioned that they were reevaluating their careers after their children (in each case, their first) were born. Dolores Peral (manager modality), who was 40 years old when her daughter was born, was struggling with both her priorities and her self-identity as career woman and mother: I kept thinking about how for 15-plus years I had given most of my focus and energy to my career, and then I only got eight measly weeks to focus on my family; it didn't seem like a fair trade at all. I really wanted to take more time off . . . to spend with [my daughter]. . . . On the other hand, though, there are times even now when I need to get some time and space away from being mommy or I think I'll just go nuts. . . . And work gives me the opportunity to flex other muscles. . . . On the whole, though, I'd say that having the baby has forced me to re- evaluate how much time and energy I give to my work. . . . I simply can't do the 60-hour work week anymore without feeling like I am neglecting critical pieces of who I am. Laura Henderson (undervalued modality) felt similarly: I love [being a mother]. All of my professional accomplishments to date pale in comparison. In terms of thoughts about my career, to be brutally honest, I would quit tomorrow and spend the next five years raising my son, if I could. My perspective has changed that radically. . . . Whereas in the past, my career was everything to me, I now have something, or rather, someone much more important to fill my “spare” time. The daycare situation will force me to do far less overtime than I did in the past. Gender relations summary. Work and family issues appear to be more important for participants than gender issues in the workplace. These issues affected participants’ careers in the following ways: 1. Limited opportunities for part-time professional work constrained career options for participants with family responsibilities who wanted to work part time;

33 These two participants were contacted via email in the summer of 2002 to find out whether their thoughts about their careers had changed since becoming mothers. At the time of the follow-up contact, Dolores Peral had been back at work for four months and Laura Henderson was preparing to return to work after almost a year at home.

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2. The desire for a rewarding and meaningful career coupled with the desire to meet the needs of family members created tensions and tough choices for participants working full time (this tension was particularly apparent in the accounts of Dolores Peral and Laura Henderson who were pregnant at the time of the interview and confronting the issue of balancing motherhood and career); and 3. Some participants chose librarianship as a career because they saw it as a way that they could combine meaningful work and family responsibilities (Shirley Levine saw this as a career constraint; Audrey Rosen and Louise Mayfield did not). Participants generally did not associate gender with their career progression, either in terms of gender relations in the workplace or with regard to family responsibilities. Few felt that “being a woman” had affected their careers either positively or negatively (Shirley Levine’s account of the effect of affirmative action on her career is an exception). Participants seemed to construct their accounts more in terms of gender relations being annoyances than as career-determining factors. They did not seem to view gender relations in the work place as an important factor in their career progression. Career modalities do not help to explain gender relations in the workplace, even with regard to work and family issues. Although the family-first-modality participants assigned a higher priority to their family responsibilities in terms of career decisions than did participants in the other modalities, it is a matter of degree rather than kind that places them into this modality. In other words, gender affects the careers of all participants to a greater or lesser extent, independent of modality. This is a logical outcome when gender is viewed as an organizational construct: as Acker (1998) asserts, “the gender understructure of organization continues to shape work and non-work lives” (pp. 197-198).

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Research Question 1(b) Summary The effects of organizational factors and gender relations on participants’ career progression experiences are summarized below. Three interrelated organizational factors appear to affect participants’ career progression: (1) type of library or information services unit, (2) size of the organization of which the library or information services unit is a part, and (3) size and composition of the library or information services unit. 1. Participants who were corporate librarians in the 1990s experienced more job volatility than their counterparts in not-for-profit organizations or government agencies. The instability of corporate librarianship may have been a factor in some participants venturing into other types of information work. 2. The size of the parent organization appears to be less important than the size and composition of the library or information services unit. Participants in large libraries and those who are solo librarians express more satisfaction with their work and careers than participants managing small special libraries. 3. All three participants in the undervalued modality manage small libraries in mid-size or large organizations. They expressed the least satisfaction with their work environment. Gender is treated structurally in this research, with an emphasis on participants’ perceptions of the gendered workplace and issues of work and family. Most participants, however, have not made direct links to how gender relations have affected their careers, although some perceived that as women they are responded to differently in the workplace. Workplace gender issues appear to be positioned more in terms of being annoyances than as major factors in participant accounts. Work and family issues appear to be more important for participants than gender issues in the workplace, as evidenced by the larger number of accounts concerning work and

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family issues compared to fewer gendered-workplace accounts. Few felt that “being a woman” had affected their careers, either positively or negatively. Career pattern modalities do not help to explain gender relations in the workplace, even with regard to work and family issues. Gender affects the careers of all participants to a greater or lesser extent, and it is independent of modality.

Summary and Discussion

This chapter describes the career patterns and career progression experiences of 20 women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet. Five career pattern modalities—labeled family first, found my spot, manager, multiple positions, and undervalued—were constructed inductively from research participant interview transcripts and work history questionnaires. Defining these career modalities is an important first step in understanding the dynamics of career progression for these librarians and forms the basis of a descriptive model for addressing issues arising from the study’s theoretical framework. The salient characteristics of the participants assigned to each modality are listed below: 1. Participants assigned to the family-first career modality considered the balance of family and work to be paramount, making decisions about their careers based on family considerations rather than personal career advancement; 2. Participants in the found-my-spot modality emphasized job satisfaction and personal growth within the job rather than ascension up a career ladder; 3. Participants in the manager modality defined themselves as managers rather than librarians or information professionals, a perspective that reflects management and administration rather than direct service; 4. Participants in the multiple-positions modality held at least one professional position in a field outside LIS or held a variety of LIS-related positions in multiple organizations; and

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5. Participants in the undervalued modality provided accounts indicating that their work or the work of their information units was not valued or acknowledged within their organizations. The findings summarized below focus on two elements of the research participants’ careers theorized to affect their career progression: (1) their identification as librarians—as members of a feminized profession—in the information workplace; and (2) structural factors, including gender, of the organizations in which they have worked over the course of their careers. In general a priori assumptions about career progression, competition with other information professions, and identification as a librarian in the workplace were not directly reflected in participant accounts. First, except for those in the manager modality, participants’ concept of career progression did not conform to a career advancement model. Participants on the whole seemed to be motivated and to describe their career progression in terms of increases in job satisfaction, broadened opportunities for professional enhancement and learning, or recognition of their contributions to the organization, rather than by the desire to progress to higher levels of management or to measure their progress in terms of increases in salary, responsibility, power, budget, or staff size. Most looked at their careers as librarians or information professionals as ends in themselves and not a stop on the way to something else. These participants may very well be replacing a male model of career progression as advancement with an alternative model of professional growth and enhancement where career success is understood not in terms of upward mobility but in the opportunity to be engaged in fulfilling and satisfying professional work in organizations where their contributions are acknowledged. Second, except for those in the undervalued modality, participants did not see themselves in conflict with members of other information professions—competition for status, resources, and visibility is not an issue. On the contrary, participants emphasized cooperation, teamwork, and relationship building rather than conflict or

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competition in their interactions with other information services units in their organizations. The reasons for this may come from proactive actions of the participants such as developing technological expertise, carving out a niche as manager of information content, building relationships and joining cross-functional teams. Structural factors such as reporting relationships and organizational culture may also be salient. The perceived lack of competition with other information professionals may also stem from the value women place on relationships in their work and non-work lives. Jurisdictional control of a professional task area may be less important for these participants than sharing the responsibility for information work and contributing a unique area of expertise in information management to the enterprise. They may not see the task area as contested but as a domain to be shared where all contributors work together collaboratively to achieve their organizations’ goals. Third, participants did not perceive that their membership in the feminized profession of librarianship has negatively affected their career progression in the information-age workplace. There may be several reasons for this. For one thing, participants may not have considered their librarian identification a career constraint because (a) they felt their high-tech information management skills made them competitive in the information marketplace; (b) they could move into better positions in larger library organizations with more opportunities for advancement; or (c) they did not see themselves in competition with members of other information professions, having found their niche in content management. Another reason, perhaps more likely, is that because most participants did not define career progression in terms of advancement but in terms of enhancement or growth, they were less likely to consider their title or professional label an important career factor. Identification as a librarian in the workplace simply was not relevant— it was not an issue for them. The fact that one quarter of the participants found it difficult to respond to the question about their identification as a librarian lends credence to this interpretation. (Issues concerning professional identification and

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librarianship are further explored in chapter 6 and in the participant narratives in chapter 7.) Three interrelated organizational factors appear to affect participants’ career progression: (a) type of library or information services unit; (b) size of the organization of which the library / information services unit is a part; and (c) size and composition (management structure) of the library / information services unit. Participants in large libraries and those who are solo librarians expressed more satisfaction with their careers than participants managing small special libraries. All three participants in the undervalued modality manage small libraries in mid-size or large organization, and they expressed the least satisfaction with their careers. Participants in the found-my-spot and family-first modalities, who expressed high levels of job satisfaction, tended to be solo librarians. (The relationship between library management structure and career pattern modality is further explored in the analysis of perceptions of undervaluation of librarianship in chapter 5 and in the career narratives presented in chapter 7.) Participants generally did not associate gender with their career progression, either in terms of gender relations in the workplace or work and family issues. They viewed balancing work and family life not as gender-related but as a work-related problem. Just as most did not think that being identified as a librarian had negatively affected their career progression, neither did they think that being female had negatively affected their careers. Although some participants reported instances in which being a woman was a disadvantage, they did not see themselves as having been discriminated against because of gender. They viewed workplace gender issues more in terms of annoyances than as career factors. It may also be the case that participants’ technological expertise mitigates gender and other structural factors as constraints on their careers. (This issue is examined in chapter 7.) Chapter 4 has described the career patterns and career progression experiences of the research participants, defining five career modalities and examining the effects participants’ membership in a feminized profession and selected structural factors

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have on their career progression. Next, chapter 5 focuses on the three undervalued- modality participants and their perceptions of undervaluation of librarianship in the information-age workplace.

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CHAPTER FIVE

PERCEPTIONS OF UNDERVALUATION OF LIBRARIANSHIP IN THE INFORMATION-AGE WORKPLACE

Introduction

This chapter examines the undervaluation of the library profession through the workplace experiences of the early-Internet-adopter women librarians who are introduced in chapter 3 and whose career patterns and career progression experiences are described in chapter 4. The chapter addresses the second of the three research questions that drive the study.1 This question and its two sub-questions are as follows: Research Question 2. How do high-tech women special librarians experience the undervaluation of the library profession in competition with other information professions? a) How do these women make sense of their experiences? b) What mechanisms do they invoke to deal with their situation? Like Research Question 1 regarding research participants’ career patterns and career progression (see chapter 4), Research Question 2 is situated within the context of an assumed-to-be-contested information domain (Abbott, 1988; 1998). The undervaluation of librarianship and other feminized professions is assumed to be

1 Chapter 5 is the third of five chapters reporting the study findings. Findings for Research Question 1 (“What are the career patterns of high-tech women librarians?”) are presented in chapter 4, and findings for Research Question 3 (“How have the work experiences of these librarians affected their professional identity?”) are presented in chapter 6. Issues identified in chapters 4 through 6 are further explored in chapter 7 through narrative analyses of the work histories and experiences of four representative research participants.

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culturally embedded, even if participants do not directly experience or acknowledge this undervaluation as individuals. The purpose of this research question is not to determine whether cultural undervaluation of librarianship exists but how the research participants experience it. Research Question 2 focuses on the undervaluation of librarianship in comparison to other professions and occupations in the information domain. The analysis presented below builds on the findings on career progression and competition with other information professions presented in chapter 4. Contrary to expectations, most participants did not see themselves as being in competition or conflict with members of other information occupations in their work organizations for promotion, status or resources.2 Only three participants, all of whom were assigned to the undervalued career modality, reported experiences of conflict or competition in the information domain. Because both Research Questions 1 and 2 are situated within the context of Abbott’s jurisdictional conflict model, competition with other information professions is an integral component of both questions. A total of 12 participants provided accounts or made brief comments indicative of undervaluation of librarians or libraries in the workplace; most, however, were as likely to discount their undervaluation as they were to discount conflict and competition in the workplace. Although undervaluation-as-librarian extends to a majority of participants in this research, this chapter concentrates on the experiences and accounts of the three participants who are in the undervalued career modality. The undervalued-modality participants are the only research participants who reported that they have experienced conflict or competition with other information-providing units in their organizations, and they provided more accounts of undervaluation than their colleagues in the other career modalities.

2 Instead, they characterized the workplace in terms of a win-win scenario where all contributors work together collaboratively to achieve their organizations’ goals. Possible reasons why most participants did not perceive conflict or competition are discussed in chapter 4.

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The difference in emphasis between findings reported in chapter 4 concerning the undervalued-modality participants and findings presented in chapter 5 is the focus on their sense-making and adaptive responses to their organizational environments. In chapter 4 three participants are designated as undervalued based on structural organizational features derived from interview data such as low salary, targeted downsizing, remote or marginal location of unit within the reporting structure, reduced budgets in comparison with other information-providing units, or their own statements about feeling undervalued or unappreciated. Chapter 5 presents an analysis of these data in terms of how these three participants made sense of or responded to their organizational environments.

Definitions and Analysis

To minimize response bias, participants were not asked Research Question 2 directly.3 Data pertaining to undervaluation of librarianship were instead obtained through an examination of participants’ descriptive and sense-making accounts of their experiences in the various organizations in which they have worked as LIS professionals. Because research participants were not asked Research Question 2 directly, it was necessary to operationalize the concept of “undervaluation of the library profession” and state what is meant by participants’ “experiences.” Experiences are defined in this study simply as participant accounts of workplace or other events that are related to their being librarian-educated information professionals. The concept, undervaluation of the library profession, is operationalized as accounts in the interview text where a participant’s library or information services unit is ignored,

3 It should be noted that participants were not asked to respond to any of the research questions directly. The intent of this research is to understand how these particular librarians experience and make sense of the changes taking place in their work life and their profession. The study’s three research questions focus on specific aspects of this experience—career progression, undervaluation, and professional identity—to be answered through analysis and interpretation of participant accounts rather than from direct questioning.

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passed over, downsized, etc., where the participant cites evidence that librarian skills are not understood or appreciated, or accounts of negative references about librarians or librarianship by people outside the workplace, such as friends, family, “society,” etc.4 Based on this conceptualization, experiences of undervaluation can encompass both accounts of workplace or other events that a participant acknowledges as undervaluation as well as accounts in which a participant does not identify the event as undervaluation but it is identified as an example of undervaluation by the researcher. The coded discourse pertaining to the undervaluation of the library profession was examined within the framework of the two sub-questions of Research Question 2: (1) how participants made sense of their experiences; and (2) what adaptive mechanisms they invoked to deal with their situation. As two complementary components of a sense-making cycle, the two sub-questions are addressed together within the context of the main question (unlike the sub-questions to Research Question 1 in chapter 4, which are addressed separately since they focus on discrete factors affecting career progression). These acts of making sense of and dealing with their experiences illustrate how the research participants experienced undervaluation of the profession in the workplace.

Focus on Undervalued-Modality Participants

Selected workplace experiences of the three undervalued-modality participants—Audrey Rosen, Joanne Dalton, and Laura Henderson—are presented below to illustrate ways in which undervaluation of librarianship occurs in non- library organizations. It is important to note that these participants did not place themselves into a category called “undervalued” nor did they necessarily describe themselves as undervalued during their interviews. As described in chapter 4, the 20 research participants were assigned to one of five career pattern modalities that were

4 These accounts are coded as the NVivo free node “undervaluation.”

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inductively derived from systematic readings of their work histories and interview transcripts. Audrey, Joanne, and Laura were assigned to the undervalued career modality because they had made specific comments indicating they were undervalued or underappreciated (even if they did not refer to it as undervaluation), or there was evidence of structural organizational indicators of undervaluation such as low salary, location within the reporting structure, targeted downsizing, reduced budgets in comparison with other information-providing units, etc. Audrey, Joanne, and Laura also reported that they have experienced conflict or competition with other information-providing units in their organizations. Although this was not the basis for their being assigned to the undervalued modality, they are the only participants who provided accounts of conflict or competition with other information-providing units in answer to the interview guide question, “What other kinds of information professionals do you interact or come in contact with?”5 Undervaluation accounts and workplace experiences of the three undervalued participants are organized below in terms of: 1. How their experiences of undervaluation differ from those reported by participants in other modalities; and 2. How their work environments may contribute to their undervaluation as librarians in their organizations.

Experiences of Undervaluation Not surprisingly, Audrey, Joanne, and Laura provided more examples of undervaluation in the workplace than did participants in the other career modalities, and their responses were often longer and more complex. Like the other participants, they did not generally refer to themselves as being undervalued in their accounts.

5 Probes for this question were handled in a variety of ways depending on the participant’s work experience (for examples, see note in chapter 4, Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professionals subsection).

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Although longer, many of their accounts were similar in content to those of the other participants. About half of all the participants provided accounts indicating that their librarian skills were not understood or appreciated by management. These included being excluded from project teams, planning or other top-level management meetings, or purchasing decisions involving information-management products or services. Laura’s account of her library services unit not being included in her financial-services firm’s proposal-writing teams is typical: At the beginning there was no seat at the table for the library and then we pointed out that we do 90% or so of the research for these things. They said, “Oh, then you guys better come.” So we kind of constantly have to be looking for our chance to get in there. [SL: But once you point out the fact that you can contribute, there’s acceptance?] Exactly. We’re just not right at the top of their brains. That’s normal. Laura’s statement that it is “normal” for her clientele not think of the library as a contributor to the proposal-writing process suggests that she experienced this lack of awareness as a recurring problem. On the one hand, this example could be considered mundane; on the other, it obtains an importance because participants generally did not view incidents such as this as examples so much of undervaluation of themselves as librarian-trained information professionals but as “get-overs.” They were simply incidents that they had to work around and rectify and not indicative of undervaluation or of a devalued profession. Some accounts differed in degree and substance from the accounts of their colleagues in the other four career modalities. These accounts comprise three main areas: 1. Inadequate funding or support from other departments for effective delivery of services; 2. Inadequate salaries compared to other information professionals; and 3. Targeted downsizing of their information-services units.

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Inadequate funding or other support. Audrey Rosen and Joanne Dalton are the only participants who provided accounts that suggest their libraries do not have adequate budgets or sufficient technical support for the delivery of value-added services, e.g., remote access to electronic resources or web-based interfaces. Audrey mentioned, for example, that she is unable to provide desktop access to several important scientific databases because she did not have the budget to purchase site licenses. Instead, she is stuck with an obsolete CD-ROM tower and single workstations, and users must come to the library to search these databases. And we have some CD-ROM databases, unfortunately we can't afford to get the web equivalents of them, so we’re still bumbling along with those that are just single workstations. . . . So we struggle with that because it’s based on a CD tower and we have a lot of technical problems with it and it’s not very convenient for our users and we know that. But we just don’t have the money to do anything better at this point She also mentioned that she has been unable to provide remote access to online resources such as electronic journals because she does not have the support from her computing services department for a proxy server. That’s one thing we would like to have. So our researchers can only access [electronic resources] through their work stations at work. . . . Research computing . . . has said that a proxy server is too much trouble and can't do it. But I haven't really pushed it. Because I know a lot of libraries do have that, and I don’t think it is that difficult as they seem to think it’ll be, but I do need their support in order to go forward with something like that. We haven't had a lot of requests from our scientists for that. We’ve had some, and I’m sure they would appreciate it, but they seem to accept that we don’t have it. Although Audrey states that she does not have the technical support for these value-added services, she also acknowledges that she has not “really pushed it” with her research computing department. She minimizes the effect of her actions on her users with comments like “we haven’t had a lot of requests from our scientists for that” and “they seem to accept that we don’t have it.” This account, along with her account of a conflict she had with two computer departments in her organization over

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who would be do Internet training,6 suggest that Audrey may not consider herself to be on an equal footing with research computing, that by needing their support she may see herself in a position of having to take what they give her, rather than negotiating on behalf of her users for enhanced service delivery. Her statements indicate a great deal of ambivalence or internal conflict in her relationships with research computing and other computer support units that she interacts with in her organization. They may also indicate a power differential between these computer departments and Audrey’s medical research library based on technical knowledge or relative status within the organization. Joanne Dalton’s account of lack of support for her library services unit was described in chapter 4 as an example of conflict with her IT department regarding its decision to discontinue technical support for her integrated library system (ILS) software.7 Because IT would no longer support the Basis software, Joanne was now responsible for maintaining the system, including any applications development or customization. And they announced that Basis was not in [organization’s] strategic direction and they were going to move everything off of it. And why didn’t I go get a nice, cheap library system. So I did the investigation, the figures, showed them what it would cost to replace it and how long it would take me to replace the library system, plus the fact that I’d also have to replace the records management system because that’s built on Basis. This account reveals several facets of undervaluation concerning Joanne and her department: (1) the IT department had relinquished its responsibility to maintain the library’s automated system because it no longer views this activity as part of the organization’s strategic plan; (2) responsibility for maintaining Basis would now be assumed by Joanne with her existing staff but with no additional funding; (3) it is

6 Neither computer department provided Internet training themselves but prevented Audrey’s unit from providing Internet training for over a year because they told her, “You don’t have the understanding of the Internet and what the technology behind it is” (see chapter 4, Cooperation—Not Conflict—with Other Information Professions subsection). 7 See chapter 4, Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions subsection.

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apparent that the IT department neither understands the complexity of library automation (there is no such thing as a “nice, cheap library system”) nor highly values library-based services (the library could get by with a “cheap” system); and (4) Joanne, whose title was manager of strategic information, apparently was not included in the organization’s strategic planning for information technology, otherwise the IT department would not have had to “announce” to her that Basis was not part of the organization’s “strategic direction.” Joanne adapted to this turn of events by personally assuming responsibility for maintaining Basis. At the time of her interview she was learning XML in order to implement a new web-based Basis interface. When asked whether it would make sense to hire someone to handle this new responsibility handed to the library, Joanne replied, “Yeah, but I don’t have the budget.” Viewed as overhead, small libraries such as those managed by Joanne and Audrey are often underfunded. They may be unable to provide the kinds of value- added services that users want and that can be obtained from competing information providers, both within and external to the organization. Joanne and Audrey’s accounts indicate that they are in environments in which their IT or computer services departments have more influence over information-management decisions than they as library-information-services managers do. Both have reported interactions that can be seen as conflictual, and their accounts indicate they are competing for support from their respective computer departments. Joanne’s account shows that she has the IT skills to assume responsibility for upgrading her ILS, and that she can hold her own with the IT people; Audrey’s account, on the other hand, indicates a tentativeness about her own technical expertise that may put her at a disadvantage when interacting with her computer services people.

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Inadequate salaries. Audrey, Joanne, and Laura are the only participants who felt that their salaries are too low for the kind of information work they currently do.8 Audrey and Laura think their salaries as librarians are too low compared to salaries of computer professionals; Laura also compares herself unfavorably to information professionals with business degrees who earn more than she does in her firm.9 Audrey and Laura base their assessments on personal experiences with members of their immediate family. Laura is married to a computer engineer with a bachelor’s degree in computer science who “makes twice what I make.” She mentioned that her low salary as a librarian in comparison to salaries in computer science is a reason for questioning her choice of career: You know, you compare yourself to other professions and go, well, money-wise this was a dumb one. She does not regret her choice “in terms of enjoyment of the work”; it is the “economic reality” of her profession that she questions: It’s more like economic reality sometimes. And [city] is a very, very hard market to be in. It’s sort of underpaid. . . . It’s always been a sticking factor for us, but the market is absolutely brutal. It doesn’t matter and the employers’ attitude is always go work somewhere else. You want more money, go somewhere else. Audrey’s son is a programmer with a master’s degree in computer science who earned “almost double” her salary in his first job out of graduate school. Like Laura, she has questioned her choice of career, primarily because of her low salary: I don’t think it was the best choice . . . Although in some ways I’m very well suited to it and I love my work. But I just feel that the salary, the income that I make, . . . it’s very, very low. Even though she states that she loves her work, Audrey also questions her choice of career because she feels that librarians have a negative status “in society.” 10 In the

8 Two other participants (Susan Maxwell and Marty Roberts) referred to low salaries in previous positions in comparison to others doing comparable work; however, only the three undervalued- modality participants provided accounts of perceived salary inadequacy in their current positions. 9 See chapter 4, Undervalued Modality subsection, for Laura’s account. 10 Audrey is one of only two participants who used the word undervalued in reference to librarianship as a profession The other participant is Dolores Peral, whose account of librarianship as a “loser

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excerpt below she appears to be equating the status of a profession with the salaries its members earn, and librarianship comes up short: Sometimes I do feel the status of a librarian is so negative in society that it just is, a real disappointment. I guess as years have gone on, it’s been even more so because I’ve seen young people in my family graduate college and go onto professional careers and make tons more money immediately, working in areas that I think are sometimes less intellectually stimulating or involved than what I’m doing. The unfairness of it just strikes me a lot. For Audrey, salary is an important indicator of the value of her chosen profession. She seems to be unable to reconcile her feelings of conflict within herself over her self-perceived value of her intellectual contributions as a medical librarian, her enjoyment of her work, and what she is paid. Audrey has attempted to resolve this conflict by conceptualizing her work as something that helps cancer patients, sometimes going so far as to equate it to volunteer work rather than paid employment in conversations with others. Some of me regrets not having gone farther—or, you know, being in a profession that is more visible and makes more money and is more respected in the society. But yet I really enjoy what I do. And I also feel that I’m contributing a lot to society. I sometimes say I’m doing volunteer work that is helpful because I indirectly help cancer patients. Joanne Dalton’s salary account, in contrast to those of Audrey and Laura, concerns her unsuccessful attempt to have her salary and her job classification upgraded. She reported that as part of work on a cross-functional team on business processes she benchmarked other libraries and found that she was underpaid. But I can't convince them that I’m underpaid. [SL: so you found out that you were underpaid compared to some of your benchmarking libraries?] Yeah. [SL: and that didn’t make any difference?] Nope. And the fact that I run two functions, and did all that database work for three years, I was never able to get anything out of that either. However, I have an adequate salary. Joanne’s attempts to have her job classification upgraded have not been successful:

profession” is discussed in chapter 4 (see subsection, Issue 3: How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression).

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I’ve asked a number of times, just about annually. And I’ve gotten raises—what I would like is an upgrade in salary rank, so that I wouldn’t be so high in my range. Later in the interview when she was asked about whether she had ever experienced discrimination, Joanne stated that Oh, I’m sure I have. For instance, I think if I were a man I would probably get the salary grade raise. But I don’t have any concrete proof of that. Joanne is the only participant who discussed an unsuccessful attempt at having her position and salary upgraded. Her comment about having “an adequate salary” is surprising, given the fact that her salary was below the first quartile of participant salaries in 2000. This contrasts with Audrey and Laura’s views about their salaries, both of whom considered their salaries inadequate.11 However, Laura and Audrey compared their salaries negatively with those earned by members of other information professions whereas Joanne’s frame of reference was other librarians. Even though she could demonstrate that her salary was lower than the librarians against whom she benchmarked, Joanne still considered her salary “adequate.” Her complaint about her salary was not couched in the context of low salaries of librarians in general as were Laura and Audrey’s but was based on the fact that in her opinion her organization would not pay her what she thought she was worth. At first glance it seems surprising that only five participants overall mentioned an inadequate salary as a factor in their careers. Of the nine participants earning less than the median in 2000, only the three undervalued participants expressed discontent with their salaries. Upon reflection, however, this finding makes sense as it is congruent with participants’ perceptions of career success. Findings in chapter 4 indicate that most participants do not equate career success with financial gain; rather, they place more importance on professional growth and enhancement than

11 Audrey’s salary was higher than Joanne’s; Laura’s was lower. The undervalued-modality participants had the lowest average salary of all modalities ($45,285, compared to $68,888 overall); Joanne and Laura’s salaries were below the first quartile and Audrey’s salary was below the median

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advancement.12 Most conceptualized success in terms of job satisfaction, and they emphasized perceived value to the organization as a component of a successful career. For most participants, salary is simply not an objective measure of success or of their perceived value to their organizations. Targeted downsizing. Although seven participants reported they had experienced layoffs or downsizing during their careers,13 only Joanne and Laura thought that their libraries were singled out for downsizing. Joanne’s library was downsized twice in the 1990s, and in 2002 her physical library was eliminated by a new CEO with a reputation for closing libraries.14 Joanne considered that her mid- 1990s downsizing, part of an organization-wide workforce reduction, was also partly due to her management’s lack of understanding about who used her library and how it was used. I had one person who wrote speeches for the Chief Operating Officer . . . so I thought he knew she was using the library. . . . He didn’t. He didn’t realize that she needed the library to get that done. So he was going to cut the department down to her and me basically. She was able to save three positions by appealing to her users for support, ending up with a staff of five rather than being reduced to a two-person library. Her downsizing experience in 2002 was different. A new CEO ordered Joanne to lay off three people, close the library and dispose of the books. Joanne reported that with the help of her supporters in the organization she sent parts of the collection to offsite storage and checked out the remaining material to newly created departmental libraries. Her attitude when this took place was both proactive and defiant:

12 Only Shirley Levine (manager modality) stated that she considered salary an indicator of career success (see chapter 4). 13 Vivian Walton (family-first modality); Linda Jacobs and Shirley Levine (manager modality); Diana Baker and Eileen Norton (multiple-positions modality); Joanne Dalton and Laura Henderson (undervalued modality). 14 This incident is described in chapter 4, Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions subsection.

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I have taken the attitude that a library is not a roomful of books but a collection of librarians who may or may not have a collection onsite. We're still here and we can still answer your questions and help you find the information you need. . . . I do not feel that there was anything that could have been done to avoid this. We had strong customer support at all levels, excellent service, and were always under budget. This particular person has a history of closing libraries. Although the actions of her new CEO are evidence of his low opinion of libraries, he did not lay off Joanne when he ordered the library closed. Nor did she choose to leave. She has not allowed this setback, which she views as the aberration of a new chief executive, to keep her from providing library services to her users. Laura’s experience with downsizing, like Joanne’s in the mid-1990s, could be seen as the outcome of a corporate bureaucracy engaging in company-wide staff reductions during a period of economic uncertainty. Like Joanne, Laura saw this downsizing as the result of management not understanding her unit’s contribution to the firm. She stated that in the early 1990s “the firm was not in a very good place” and that one library position had already been eliminated as a result of company-wide layoffs. Then they were asked to cut another position, and this time Laura felt that the library had been arbitrarily singled out simply because it was their “turn.” What happened was they told us we had to [downsize] because we were the only group in the office who had not cut staff. And it’s like, “Well, OK, but there’s a reason for that. We’re really busy.” And so it was just like, “No it’s your turn. You have to.” And that was just completely demoralizing. Shortly after this experience, Laura left to join another financial-services firm in the same city. Although this action could be seen as the result of a company-wide mandate to reduce the workforce, Laura viewed it as a lack of understanding of her department’s contribution to the enterprise; and because it was so arbitrary, it “was just completely demoralizing.” She attributed this lack of understanding to her unit’s size and position within “the giant firm.”

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What I’ve always found is you really have to self-promote, otherwise, they just don’t catch on and don’t care. Your group is so small within the giant firm of what they do that it just doesn’t get recognized as much so you have to do a lot of self-promotion basically. Laura Henderson and Joanne Dalton both have experienced downsizing of their library-services units during economic downturns. Unlike other research participants who had experienced similar situations, they felt their libraries were targeted for downsizing through lack of understanding or awareness of their contribution to their organizations. Reasons why they may have been more attuned to the idea that their units were targets for downsizing cannot be determined from the interview data although it can be speculated that factors in the organizational environment, such as reporting relations or conflicts with other information departments, played a part. Experiences of undervaluation summary. The accounts presented above point out differences between the undervalued-modality participants and participants assigned to the other career modalities. Accounts of inadequate funding for value- added services and lack of support from information-technology departments came only from the participants in the undervalued modality, as did complaints about low salaries or assertions of targeted downsizing. The relationship between undervaluation and conflict or competition with IT or computer-services departments is also made visible through these examples. They help to shed light on the finding reported in chapter 4 that none of the undervalued participants viewed their identification as librarians in the workplace as having been a positive factor in their careers.15 The three undervalued-modality participants did not differ from other participants as to the ways in which they make sense of their experiences in the workplace. Most participants, regardless of career modality, did not describe their

15 Joanne considered being identified as a librarian something she had to overcome, Laura considered it irrelevant, and Audrey was not able to respond to the interview question (see subsection, How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression, in chapter 4).

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experiences as undervaluation. They viewed the perennial lack of awareness and understanding of their work as a problem to be solved through marketing, public relations and promotion of their services to their clientele, rather than a cultural phenomenon. Laura Henderson’s comment that “you really have to self-promote, otherwise, they just don’t catch on and don’t care” was echoed by Audrey Rosen (“I do as years go on feel constantly that we have to promote and market ourselves”) and Joanne Dalton (“I do a lot, a fair amount of marketing, both on an individual level and departmental level”). This recognition of the need to market and promote is the way these participants adapted to the reality that libraries are generally not seen as the first (or even last) place to go for information. They made sense of this reality, however, more from an individualistic perspective rather than seeing it as a collective problem of the cultural undervaluation of librarianship. Discussed thus far are the undervalued-modality participants’ accounts of their experiences in the workplace that are indicative of the undervaluation of librarians or libraries. What has not yet been discussed is how their organizational environments differ from the other participants and how these differences may contribute to their undervaluation as librarians in their organizations. This is explored below.

Organizational Environment The concept of organizational environment is comprised of a constellation of factors such as organizational structure and size, organizational culture, management style, psychological climate, and reporting relationships. The structure, size, and location of the library-services unit within the organization are part of this environment. Organizational environments are not static but change through events such as reorganization and restructuring, arrival of a new CEO or other executive- level personnel, or corporate mergers and acquisitions. In chapter 4 it was reported that the three undervalued-modality participants are all managers of small special libraries in organizations of more than 100

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employees;16 none worked in smaller and presumably less bureaucratic organizations, and none were solo librarians or worked in large libraries. This finding suggests that the undervaluation of librarianship in non-library organizations could be related to the size and structure of the library-services unit and to the size of the organization.17 Features of the organizational environments of Audrey Rosen, Joanne Dalton, and Laura Henderson that may contribute to their undervalued status include: 1. reporting structure; 2. size of the organization and the library; and 3. conflict and organizational culture. These are discussed below. Reporting structure. Analysis of reporting structure and reporting relationships may help to explain why they seem to demonstrate more characteristics of undervaluation than the other participants. Audrey, Joanne, and Laura are all located in the administrative divisions of their organizations and thus could be viewed as part of administrative overhead. Audrey has reported to the same person, an administrative vice-president who reports to the CEO, since becoming director of the research library in 1989. She thinks that her reporting structure has worked well because she has a good relationship with her boss. Audrey’s description of her organization’s structure indicates there are different divisional hierarchies, each with its own computing- services unit; the several libraries that she views as competitors are in different divisions. Audrey manages a staff of seven, of which three are part time. Her library,

16 Audrey’s medical center has about 1,900 employees; Laura’s global financial-services firm has 160,000 employees worldwide; and Joanne’s computer R&D organization has about 500 employees. A small special library is defined as one with less than 10 people that is comprised of two to three librarians plus several support staff (see chapter 3). 17 Findings pertaining to the organizational environments of the participants are preliminary and must be interpreted with caution since they are based entirely on participants’ own perceptions of their work environments. These observations can, however, provide insight for future research on the undervaluation of librarianship in organizations.

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named the Research Library, is considered a middle-management-level department. Audrey’s title is Director of Library Services. Reporting to the administrative side of her organization is a recent change for Joanne Dalton. Her reporting structure is more unstable than Audrey’s—she has had eight managers since arriving in 1989, and until 2000 the library reported on the operations side. Her unit was moved to the administrative side following a corporate reorganization. At the time of her interview she reported to a director who reported to the chief administrative officer. Her title is Manager of Strategic Information. Joanne fought this move because she felt the library would be more “secure” in operations than in administration. For a long time, until last year, we reported on the operations side of the house. . . . And even though the chief administrative officer just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to report to him. He was a big library supporter. But he’s dead, and the new guy’s the one that wants the engineers to go to [the local university to do their work].18 And they had a reorganization. My director’s position was eliminated . . . and I now report to the director of communications on the administrative side. She reported that she was “demoted” to reporting to a manager when her library was closed in 2002. Until then she supervised a staff of five (two in records management and three are in the library); she currently supervises no one. Laura’s global financial-services corporation is larger and more hierarchical and complex than Joanne or Audrey’s. Her firm has also gone through a recent restructuring to centralize operations, and about a month before her interview she no longer reported to a vice president in her regional office but to the head of knowledge management services at the firm’s national office in another city. Laura is not happy about this move toward centralization because her chain of command is no longer

18 Earlier in her interview Joanne had mentioned that a “financial type” who later became her organization’s chief administrative officer asked her “why the engineers couldn’t go over to [local university] and do their own work.” This is an example of a decision-maker’s lack of understanding of the contributions of a corporate library to the organization (see Matarazzo et al., 1990).

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connected to the regional office of the people for whom she provides “knowledge management services.” She said the reorganization is an outcome of “turmoil” in her industry and the merger that had taken place in the late 1990s in her firm and others in the industry. They have undergone a series of reorganizations “on a sort of continual basis” since 1999. Laura stated that knowledge management is comprised of two groups: knowledge management services, which are the research centers (i.e., libraries), and knowledge management operations, which is responsible for the external website and intranet. Organizationally knowledge management is part of “infrastructure,” the administrative side of the corporation. Laura has three full-time and several contract staff reporting to her. Her title is Manager of Knowledge Services.19 Size of library and organization. Of the four participants who manage small special libraries in mid-sized or large organizations, three of them are in the undervalued modality.20 This suggests that there may be something about some small special libraries that make them vulnerable to undervaluation—or conversely, that there is something about solo librarians in small organizations that protects them from undervaluation. In chapter 4 it was shown that participants who are solo librarians appear to be more satisfied with their careers than three out of the four participants managing small special libraries, and that Olivia Chambers and Louise Mayfield, the two solo librarians in small organizations, seemed to have a particular fondness for these organizations. What is it about working as a solo librarian in a small organization that is so satisfying? The answer to this question can be found in Olivia and Louise’s comments about feeling valued for what they contribute and being acknowledged for their contributions.

19 Laura noted that changing the name of her organizational unit to “knowledge services” has not altered its identification as “the library” in the minds of her users (see chapter 4, Undervalued Modality subsection). 20 The fourth manager of a small specialized library is astronomy librarian Janet Logan; her narrative is featured in chapter 7 as representative of the found-my-spot career modality.

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Olivia (found-my-spot modality) and Louise (family-first modality), unlike Joanne, Audrey, Laura, and other participants, do not seem to feel the constant need to market and promote their services. Olivia works with 25 to 30 researchers in a defense-industry organization with a total staff of about 60 people. That she knows she is valued comes through statements like these: I think being validated for what you do is very important. I think feeling satisfied that people you work for think you do a good job. . . . That sense of accomplishing something and giving to the whole of the company in terms of its success. . . . I like being respected. . . . I can look back and see what I’ve accomplished over the years. Moreover, Olivia’s physical environment is evidence of the value her organization places on the library. Not only does Olivia not feel the need to market her services to her clientele, her organization uses the library to market itself to prospective employees and consultants. And the library is a showplace library. When you first walk into the building you see a very large and beautiful expanse. So professors who are contemplating working for us . . . can see at a glance what a wonderful library we have so that you are at the same time using the library to woo prospective researchers. Louise Mayfield works with about 20 researchers at a small engineering research firm in the aerospace industry. Her library is prominently featured on the company’s web site as “one of the most comprehensive private libraries of [subject] literature in the country.” Louise considers this “hyperbole” because most of her collection consists of papers and reprints housed in a library of about 1,100 square feet. I did not write that. . . . I said we are not the Linda Hall Library in Kansas. We are not a NASA center. But they are really quite proud of the library and I don’t want to discourage that. . . . Whenever we have visitors they’re always brought to the library and it’s pointed to with pride. [SL: And you think this is part of the corporate culture?] Oh, I do. Yes, I do. Louise also mentioned that

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There’s never been a time at [company] when I have not felt valued. They’ve given me nice raises . . . and they’ve always supported the library and supported me. Louise and Olivia’s organizational environments are obviously quite different from those of Laura, Audrey, and Joanne. Louise and Olivia work in small, non- bureaucratic organizations. The entire organization can be considered a work team, and Louise and Olivia are fully participating members of these cross-functional teams. Louise in fact mentioned that “because we are so small and we know each other so well as individuals that the title [of librarian] doesn’t hold that much significance.” These organizations of fewer than 100 employees would probably be viewed on the outside as too small to support libraries. But they do. They have libraries and professional librarians because they want them and value them. Louise thinks that the reason “why I’m still here” is because we’re a research organization . . . That’s what they do is research. That’s what they value is research. And the person who does much of the preliminary research is me. And they just count on me to do it for them. But it is more than that—having a library is part of this organization’s corporate culture: The company president points to the library with pride when he meets with visitors. Audrey Rosen’s medical center is also a research organization, but the corporate culture is different. Audrey’s conflicted feelings about the perceived value of her services are apparent in this account:21 I do feel within the workplace, there is a good deal of respect for what we do. In that we get a lot of compliments about that the library really provides a great service and we appreciate you. Blah, blah, blah. But there are competing forces within the institution all the time that we view as basically trying to do our job, because people feel, and maybe it’s valid, that they can do the same thing. . . . You know, with mediated searching not being done anymore, I do feel even in my current position I’m fighting a battle a lot to promote our value.

21 This excerpt is also referenced in chapter 4, Cooperation—Not Competition—With Other Information Professions subsection.

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Audrey manages a library in an industry—healthcare—that is gender stratified (Davies, 1995; Fisher, 1990; Game & Pringle, 1983; Manley, 1995) and gives lip service to the value of external information provided by information intermediaries (Atlas, 2000; Davidoff & Florance, 2000). Similarly, Laura Henderson manages a knowledge management services “research center” in the professional-services industry, part of the business community that Koenig (2000) characterizes as having “an amazing ability to ignore the importance of information, particularly external information” (p. 188). Conflict and organizational environment. Audrey’s reference to “competing forces within the institution” in her account above is an example of how the undervalued-modality participants experienced competition or conflict with other information providers in their organizations for promotion, status or resources. Changes in reporting and organizational structure such as those that Laura and Joanne have experienced could affect the value placed on library and other information services as units jockey for position and status during times of managerial change. Perceived organizational instability could also contribute to participants’ insecurity regarding their perceived value to their organizations, resulting in a heightened sense of conflict and competition with other information-providing units within the organization. Although Audrey has reported to the same vice president for over ten years, her medical center appears to be administratively chaotic: at the time of her interview there were three different computer departments and numerous departmental libraries. Corporate culture—the personality of the organization—is a key factor affecting the degree to which competition and conflict are experienced within the workplace. In organizations where competition is encouraged, as in industries that are highly competitive, there are losers and winners. Laura mentioned that her financial- services firm is “highly competitive” and the information her firm shares with the “external world is very controlled.” What value is placed on library services (or “knowledge management services” in the parlance of Laura’s firm) in an environment

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where competition is encouraged and information is controlled? How does this compare to an organizational environment where cooperation and information- sharing is the norm? These are questions for future research.

Summary and Discussion

Participants in the undervalued modality provided longer and more complex examples of undervaluation than participants in the other career modalities. They did not, however, generally associate these events or experiences with the undervaluation of librarianship or refer to themselves or their information-services units as being undervalued. Like participants in the other career modalities, they described their experiences as situations to be overcome through self-marketing, public relations, and promotion of their services to their constituencies. With the exception of Audrey Rosen, participants seemed reluctant to label these experiences as the undervaluation of their role as a professional librarian in the larger work environment. These findings are congruent with those presented in chapter 4, which suggest that participants employ an individualistic perspective rather than collective identification with the profession of librarianship. Two of the three undervalued-modality participants—Laura Henderson and Joanne Dalton—made sense of experiences identified in the research as examples of undervaluation of librarianship by conceptualizing these experiences as incidents that they had to work around and rectify, rather than as examples of professional undervaluation or of a devalued profession. These participants saw them as “get- overs” that they could fix through more effectively promoting their services and demonstrating their value to their clientele and organizational stakeholders. The third participant, Audrey Rosen, however, did consider her low salary to be indicative of the undervaluation of librarianship compared to other information professions, which led to expressions of conflict and ambivalence about her chosen profession. She

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seemed unable during her interview to reconcile doing work that she “loves” with her sense that this work is not highly valued by “society.” It could be argued that the research participants do not directly experience the undervaluation of librarianship because of their high-tech expertise. Technological expertise could also explain why participants in general do not acknowledge their undervaluation as librarians in the workplace: they believe that through their marketing and public relations efforts they can make evident their technological expertise and competencies to stakeholders. Accounts from Linda Jacobs, Dolores Peral, and Shirley Levine, the three participants in the manager modality, indicate that technological expertise may be a mitigating factor in more library-friendly organizational environments. They all mentioned that their technological knowledge was an important factor in their being hired into the positions they held at the time of their interviews.22 The accounts of Audrey and Joanne above, however, suggest that technological expertise may not be a mitigating factor in an organizational environment in which the library function is undervalued. Joanne, for example, displays more expertise and appears to be less reliant on her IT department than Audrey, yet Joanne’s library was closed by a new CEO six months after her interview.23 Although technological expertise may play a role in a participant’s continued employment, evidence from this exploration of undervalued-participant accounts suggests that organizational culture is a primary determinant of the value of library-based information services. The findings reported above suggest that the small special library in mid-size and large organizations may be especially vulnerable to undervaluation. The organizational units these participants manage are large enough to look like

22 Linda Jacobs and Dolores Peral are directors of a large special library and college library, respectively; Shirley Levine, now retired, was director of a library consortium when interviewed. 23 It is also possible that without her technological expertise, Joanne would have been laid off along with the other library staff when the library was closed. Joanne’s age (60) also could have been a factor in her continued employment.

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libraries—and they may carry with them the baggage of the stereotype. The talents of these special librarians may be buried within their organizations’ bureaucratic structure and the identified-with-books library stereotype. Small special libraries such as those managed by Joanne, Audrey, and Laura run the risk of obsolescence and further downsizing if their levels of funding and technical support are not sufficient to provide convenient and seamless access to the kinds of digital resources their users will soon come to expect. Their accounts lend credence to the observation made in chapter 4 about small special libraries being endangered species. Participants’ accounts may indicate gaps in perception between the value they place on their libraries’ contributions to their organizations’ bottom line, the value they perceive their clientele and stakeholders place on their contributions, and the value those to whom they provide information or they report actually place on their library-information services. Since the study does not include data on the perceptions of persons other than the research participants, this issue cannot be explored empirically (but is a question for further research). Chapter 5 has focused on the three undervalued-modality participants and their perceptions of undervaluation of librarianship in the information-age workplace. Next, Chapter 6 looks at how participants’ work experiences and organizational environments have affected their professional identity over the course of their careers as librarian-educated information professionals.

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CHAPTER SIX

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES

Introduction

This chapter examines how their work experiences and organizational environments have affected the professional identity of the 20 research participants whose career patterns and career-profession experiences are described in chapter 4. It builds upon the analysis of undervaluation of librarianship in competition with other information professions presented in chapter 5. The chapter addresses the third of the three research questions that drive the study.1 This question and its two sub-questions are as follows: Research Question 3. How have the work experiences of these women special librarians affected their professional identity? a) Do they still consider themselves librarians? b) If not, then with what professions, if any, do they identify? Research Question 3 focuses on the effects that work experience outside the confines of a traditional library might have on the professional identity of librarian- educated information professionals. The analysis presented below builds on the findings on career progression and identification as a librarian in the workplace in

1 Chapter 6 is the fourth of five chapters reporting the study findings. Findings for Research Question 1 (“What are the career patterns of high-tech women librarians?”) are presented in chapter 4, and findings for Research Question 2 (“How do high-tech women special librarians experience the undervaluation of the library profession in competition with other information professions?”) are presented in chapter 5. Issues identified in chapters 4 through 6 are further explored in chapter 7 through narrative analyses of the work histories and experiences of five representative research participants.

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chapter 4, perceptions of undervaluation presented in chapter 5, and on the descriptive data on the research participants presented in chapter 3. The five career pattern modalities delineated in chapter 4 provide a descriptive model for analyzing the professional identity of the research participants.

Definitions and Analysis

Professional identity is conceptualized in this research as affiliation or identification with a specific profession, defined by Abbott (1988, p. 8) as an “exclusive occupational [group] applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular cases.” Identity is “the fact of being who or what a person is [or] the characteristics determining this.”2 Like the analysis of undervaluation of librarianship in chapter 5, the analysis of factors affecting participants’ professional identity is based on an examination of participants’ descriptive and sense-making accounts in the organizations in which they have worked as LIS professionals. Although participants were not asked to respond to Research Question 3 directly, several questions in the interview guide pertain to aspects of professional identity. Responses to these questions, listed below, were examined in the analysis.3 1. Do you consider yourself a librarian or information professional? 2. What does ‘being a librarian / information professional’ mean to you?” 3. How has being identified as a librarian figured in / affected your career?” 4. Are you a member of any professional associations? 5. If you could do it all over again, would you have gotten a master’s degree in library-information science (why / why not)? Interview transcripts were also reviewed for any other accounts pertaining to professional identity; relevant accounts were coded and included in the analysis.4 The

2 The New Oxford American Dictionary, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. 3 Responses to each question are coded as NVivo section nodes. 4 This text is coded as NVivo free node “professional identity.”

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coded text was examined in terms of participants’ career pattern modality, organizational factors such as type of organization or library, and age and number of years in information work.

Work and Professional Identity

Participants’ responses to the two main questions—“Do you consider yourself a librarian or information professional?” and “What does ‘being a librarian / information professional mean to you?”—can be placed into three categories (see Table 6.1): 1. Participants who considered themselves primarily librarians; 2. Participants who considered themselves primarily information professionals; and 3. Participants who considered themselves both librarians and information professionals, either simultaneously or at different times during their careers. The responses of two participants did not fit into these categories and were labeled other: one participant (Gwen Jackson) left the information professions altogether in 1997 to become an event planner, and one (Linda Jacobs) considered her identity that of a manager “of information related things” rather than a librarian or information professional.5 As can be seen in Table 6.1, most participants still refer to themselves librarians: eight prefer the term librarian over information professional; and seven more consider themselves both librarians and information professionals. Only three participants consider themselves information professionals rather than librarians, yet even these participants did not disassociate themselves completely from librarianship.

5 Linda responded to a probe question of how she would differentiate between librarian, information professional and manager by confirming her identity as a manger as follows: “I suppose it’s the distinction between being a factory workers and a factory manager. And I’ve also managed other things and I know that I can so my identity has become that of a manager.”

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Participants’ conceptualizations of librarian and information professional are discussed in more detail below in terms of the three reference groups: librarian, information professional, and both librarian and information professional.

Table 6.1 Participants’ Professional Identity Information Librarian Both Professional Other Olivia Chambers Diana Baker Portia Hughes Gwen Jackson Joanne Dalton Laura Henderson Shirley Levine Linda Jacobs Roberta Kramer Sarah Long Louise Mayfield Janet Logan Roxanne Meyer Susan Maxwell Dolores Peral Eileen Norton Marty Roberts Margaret Taylor Audrey Rosen Vivian Walton

Still a Librarian Eight participants still consider themselves librarians. Janet Logan and Margaret Taylor (found-my-spot modality), Vivian Walton (family-first modality), and Joanne Dalton (undervalued modality) are squarely in the librarian camp. Janet defines librarian as an information professional, rather than the other way around. I think of myself as a librarian because I think of my definition of a librarian is an information professional. As opposed to the other way around or some separation between the two. . . . To me the term librarian is infinitely expandable to cover all sorts of aspects of handling information in all formats. Vivian Walton also sees the title of librarian as encompassing information management in all formats: “I think of myself as a librarian because I don’t limit it to books. . . . I acquire, organize and disseminate information. That’s what a librarian is

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to me.” Vivian has toyed with other labels to describe what she does, but has returned to librarian to describe her profession because “everything else involves more than two words.” I was an early adopter of the cybrarian and an early rejecter of it. I never, ever, ever wanted to be an information specialist. Sounds like sanitation engineer to me. . . . When I first encountered [the term cybrarian], I loved it. I thought oh, this is so true. Cyber-arian. Great. Pulls it all together. Then I don’t know, it just seemed too silly or something. So librarian works. Until something better comes along and I still haven't found it. Everything else involves more than two words. Joanne Dalton equates the name librarian with people who have earned the MLS degree, not necessarily by the work they do. Responding to the question, “What does being a librarian mean to you?”, she replied: Oh, I think librarians can do anything. We know how to learn. We know how to manage information. So I’m not at all surprised that, you know, we had one here who was a speech writer, then we have them managing a publications department, there was one in the training department, there was one in the competitive analysis department. And I’m not surprised so many of them have gone into computers. Because it seems to me that’s just absolutely logical. Susan Maxwell (found-my-spot modality) and Roberta Kramer (multiple- positions modality), the two participants who work for the national libraries, consider themselves librarians because they work in libraries, not because of the work they do. Roberta, whose primary work involves transforming MARC records into XML- tagged output, states that I still consider myself a librarian. I still, you know, use that as my title. When I explain to people what I do, however, I usually say I have a library degree, but mostly what I do is computer systems analysis. . . . I describe my job that way because there’s so many different things librarians do in our organization. Interestingly, Susan, a selector in a specialized subject area with no direct service contact, considers an information professional as someone who provides direct service to people needing help finding information: “The fun things in reference . . .

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and all the things that make you feel more like an information professional.” Other participants, however, see reference work as traditional library work, not the work that information professionals do. Joanne Dalton, on the other hand, stated that the term information professional means nothing to her because it’s getting used for all kinds of things. . . . And just about anybody can claim that. And I do place a very high value on the [MLS] degree. The participants who identify themselves professionally as librarians conceptualize librarianship broadly. Like Janet Logan, they consider the term librarian “infinitely expandable,” including “all sorts of aspects of handling information in all formats.” Because they see it as a catch-all category, these participants for the most part find little meaning in the term information professional. They tend to view it as a meta-classification including librarians and a variety of other information-based occupational groups (database specialists, online searchers, “someone who works in marketing or MIS,” “someone who analyzes data,” and “computer person” are some of the examples given).

Information Professional Three participants (Portia Hughes, Shirley Levine, and Louise Mayfield) consider themselves information professionals rather than librarians. The accounts presented below indicate how they differentiate between the two terms and why these participants feel the word, librarian, no longer describes what they do. Shirley Levine (manager modality), responding to the question, “What does being an information professional mean to you?” replied, It means that I don’t just run a building. It’s a broader term, that all aspects of information and knowledge and the management organization, distribution of it, the capturing of it are part of my job. . . I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the word librarian except that it denotes a more narrow career to me. A librarian is somebody who works in a library. An information professional can work anywhere.

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At the end of the interview Shirley reiterated her feelings about being an information professional: This is, to me, a very exciting profession. . . . You don’t have to work in a library to be an information professional. I mean . . . there are all kinds of jobs that use these skills. Like librarian-identified participants Susan Maxwell and Roberta Kramer, Shirley defines librarians in terms of place—a librarian works in a library. Shirley’s definition of an information professional, however, is almost identical to librarian- identified participant Janet Logan’s definition of a librarian. Whereas Janet incorporates information professional under an expanded concept of librarian, Shirley distinguishes between the two on the basis of place by limiting librarians to libraries. Shirley, however, does not dissociate herself from librarianship. In response to the question as to whether being identified as a librarian has affected her career, she responded: I have never had the title librarian. . . . So I can't say it helped or hurt me because I never had that specific title. I consider myself a librarian, but I’ve never had that title. Shirley has been an information specialist, manager of a technical information center, director of a library consortium, and she identifies herself as an information professional. Yet she still considers herself a librarian even though she does not identify with the label. She mentioned that If it wasn’t for technology, I don’t think I would’ve stayed in library science. It was the automation portion of it and the technology of the information business that interests me more than straight cataloging or something else. . . . I mean, if it hadn’t been for that, I’m not sure I would still be in the profession. It seems obvious that Shirley is referring to the profession of librarianship in this passage. Like Shirley, Portia Hughes (found-my-spot modality) and Louise Mayfield (family-first modality) consider an information professional to be broader in scope and include more information-management functions than a librarian. Both prefer the

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label information professional because they feel it better describes what they do. In response to the question, “What does being a librarian or an information professional mean to you?”, Louise said: Today I call myself an information professional, rather than a librarian. It means being someone who’s involved in the explosion of information, being a part of one of the most exciting events occurring today. And being part of the profession which allows this enormous ocean of information to be effectively gathered, evaluated, and used. Like Shirley Levine’s account, Louise’s conceptualization of herself as an information professional is practically identical to how Janet Logan conceptualizes herself as a librarian. Although she considers that “librarian is too narrow a definition for what we do these days,” Portia found it difficult to define the qualities of an information professional and considered its lack of specificity to be a drawback: If someone has MD after their name, you know what kind of coursework and what they’ve had to do to get there. But if you’re an information professional, people don’t know what you had to do to get to become an information professional in many cases. You know, people still are surprised I have a master’s degree in library science. I don’t think they have that comprehension as to exactly what that means. Although both Portia and Louise identify themselves as information professionals rather than librarians, both have the words library or librarian in their current position titles: Louise’s title is Library Manager; Portia’s is Librarian. The three participants who consider themselves information professionals rather than librarians distance themselves from librarianship by defining what they do as being different from what librarians do or where librarians work. Unlike the participants who consider themselves librarians and who broaden the profession of librarianship to include the work they do, these participants define librarian more narrowly, viewing librarianship in terms of more traditional, print-based functions involving work that takes place in a library. None, however, completely dissociate themselves from the profession of librarianship.

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Both Librarian and Information Professional Seven participants consider themselves both librarian and information professional, either simultaneously or at different times during their careers, depending on their jobs or organizational environment. There is some consistency between the responses of these participants and those who identify themselves as information professionals. Sarah Long, Marty Roberts, and Dolores Peral, like Shirley Levine, Portia Hughes, and Louise Mayfield above, conceptualize information professional as broader and functionally more inclusive than librarian, particularly in the area of technology. Yet unlike Shirley, Portia, and Louise, participants in this group express more ambivalence in how they identify themselves professionally. Their responses also reflect ambiguity in how they distinguish between librarian and information professional as labels for different types of information professions. Diana Baker (multiple-positions modality), for example, does not distinguish between the two terms: labels and semantics are not important to her. In answer to the question of whether she considers herself a librarian or information professional, Diana responded: Well, to me it’s all one and the same. I don’t get hung up on the semantics. . . . The skill-set is there regardless of what we call ourselves. I look at my skills, experience, background, knowledge, expertise, and in our profession, we understand when we say librarian, information professional, what that means. Some people outside our profession, they understand librarian, what that means and some of them realize that’s expanded. Other people don’t, but I think it’s just our responsibility to educate them and not worry about the label. Diana’s reference to “our profession” in this account implies librarianship rather than something else. Like Janet Logan, she considers herself a librarian, but unlike Janet she is not wedded to the term. She sees her responsibility as one of educating people as to what her skill-set, expertise, and knowledge can provide “and not worry about the label.”

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Roxanne Meyer (family-first modality) and Sarah Long (multiple-positions modality) identify themselves as both librarians and information professionals, with one or the other ascendant depending on their organizational environment. Roxanne, who moved from the corporate world to an academic library in 1998, responded to the question as follows: I probably know that in some way I’m more an information professional, but because I’m in a traditional library, I probably would say most people would think of me and know me as a librarian. And I’m comfortable with the “L” word. . . . I’m in a traditional setting, as opposed to some people who have gone to mainstream in their corporation and up the career ladder. But I know I’m a librarian in a traditional setting. [SL: Before you moved to academe, how would you have answered that question?] Probably more as an information professional in my computer company. Like Roxanne, Sarah Long moved to a large academic library in 1998, having worked in a variety of organizational environments since beginning her career as a librarian in 1972. Unlike Roxanne, however, Sarah is selective in how she identifies herself professionally to others, even in academe. I flip flop back and forth as the case might be. In this academic environment, I consider myself a librarian. . . . I use that, information professional, if somehow I want to get across, even subliminally that I feel like I need the message to get across to a particular group or individual, that I’m beyond what they might think a librarian is. And it’s almost on a case by case basis. Sarah recognizes that she tailors her professional label to her audience and struggles to differentiate librarian from information professional, not entirely succeeding in her efforts: I see an information professional being broader than a librarian. . . . I think the image of a librarian and still the one in my mind is that librarians serve customers and help them find information. Which is a good thing, and that’s part of what I feel my mission is. I think an information professional can also be a purveyor of technology, can be a purveyor of, um, evaluating information. And I think not that librarians can't and don’t do that, I think they do, but I think the word librarian for most people doesn’t encompass the other things I mentioned.

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These passages indicate that Sarah is concerned that the image of the librarian might constrain how others view her competencies with technology and information analysis and evaluation, so she is selective in the labels she uses to describe herself professionally to her non-librarian colleagues. She sees herself both as a librarian and “beyond what they might think a librarian is.” Like Sarah, other participants also find it difficult to identify solely with one or the other “profession.” They appear ambivalent about what to call themselves and have trouble conceptualizing or assigning a name to the profession of which they feel they are a part. For example, Laura Henderson (undervalued modality), who considers herself both a librarian and information professional, thinks that librarianship as a profession has become ambiguous. It’s just that we are an ambiguous profession. I think we always have been. Well, as soon as we stopped calling ourselves librarians we became ambiguous. It’s unfortunate. Like before, if you were just a librarian it was very obvious but slightly wrong as to what it was you were doing. And the minute we tried changing it, though, we kind of stirred up this giant pot and it’s never settled down to the point where things are easily branded. It’s just not. When asked “what comes to mind” regarding the word librarian, Laura responded: “Oh, books. I know it’s sad, but it does.” When asked the same question about the phrase, information professional, she replied: “Well, see, I don’t have any image of that, no specific image. It’s cloudy actually as to what comes to mind.” Laura expressed the dilemma she feels about being a librarian-educated “information professional” at her professional-services firm: Within this firm, we have so many people who call themselves information professionals and researchers and information specialists and they’re all different kinds of people. . . . I mean in some respects within the firm it might be good. . . . But on the other hand, for the stuff where we [i.e., the MLS-educated information professionals] really are the better experts, we’re not differentiating ourselves either because they’re going, “Well, if that person’s one and you’re one, what’s the difference between you guys, and why do we have so many of you?”

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This account helps to clarify Laura’s ambivalence, first discussed in chapter 4, about being identified as a librarian at her firm and her feeling that labels are less important than how she demonstrates her value: 6 Marty Roberts (multiple-positions modality) expressed similar sentiments regarding her work as an independent information consultant: What I’ve found over the years is that people don’t care about what my degree is or anything like that. As long as I can tell them what I can do and how they’ll benefit, then that’s what matters. In their accounts above, Sarah and Laura seem to be positioning librarianship as the lesser of two information professions. By positioning librarian in terms of the familiar image when comparing it with information professional, they are, in effect, devaluing librarianship. Sarah’s statement that she refers to herself as an information professional because “I’m beyond what they might think a librarian is” and Laura’s statement that “for the stuff where we really are the better experts, we’re not differentiating ourselves” indicate a reluctance to identify themselves professionally as librarians in organizational environments where librarianship might be undervalued. Audrey Rosen (undervalued modality), on the other hand, might be identifying herself as both librarian and an information professional because of the low status she feels society grants to librarianship. Like her conflicted response to the question about how being identified as a librarian figured in or affected her career, discussed in chapter 4, Audrey’s response to the question about whether she considers herself a librarian or information professional appears similarly conflicted: [SL: Do you consider yourself a librarian or an information professional?] Probably both. . . . I think, because my title is director of library services, when people ask me what I do, I say librarian. So maybe a little more that way, but I also consider myself an information professional.

6 See chapter 4 subsection, How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression.

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She found it difficult to respond to the follow-up question, “When I say librarian, what comes to mind?” Oh, boy. I don’t know . . . I guess what comes to mind is it’s the profession I chose that I really do love, and find, you know, somewhat disillusioning at times because there’s a lack of recognition, but I . . . still do have a warm spot in my heart for it. I think of people who are hard working and contribute a lot to society. [SL: And when I say the term information professional, what comes to mind?] Not as warm as librarian. . . . I think more of a corporate person who is providing information services in a corporation. . . . They basically do the same kinds of work but just in a different setting. Although Audrey states that librarians and information professionals “basically do the same kinds of work but just in a different setting,” her account suggests that she would prefer to think of herself as a librarian but that she also calls herself an information professional because of the low status she feels librarians have in society.7 Like Audrey, some of the participants who identify with both librarianship and what they see as the broader meta-category of information professional may be hedging their bets, not really comfortable with either label. Unlike the participants who no longer consider themselves librarians, these participants have not made or perhaps do not feel the need to make an “either-or” choice. There is more ambivalence and ambiguity in their responses compared to participants who identify themselves as either librarians or information professionals. They see themselves as both librarians and information professionals, and they are not altogether comfortable in either camp. Other participants who identify with both labels may simply not care what they are called. Findings presented in chapter 5 indicate that participants take a more individualistic approach to their work and their contributions to the organization; they do not let other people’s perceptions of librarianship bother them. For these

7 See chapter 5, Experiences of Undervaluation subsection.

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participants identity with a particular profession or occupational group may not be very important.

Career Modality and Professional Identity

Table 6.2 displays the participants listed in three of the four professional identity affiliations in Table 6.1 by career modality. Table 6.2 indicates that there is some variation by career modality; this finding is consistent with previously reported findings on career progression and job satisfaction.

Table 6.2 Professional Identity by Career Modality

Professional identitya Information Career modality Librarian Both professional Total

Family first Vivian Walton Roxanne Meyer Louise Mayfield 3

Found my spot Olivia Chambers Portia Hughes 5 Janet Logan Susan Maxwell Margaret Taylor

Manager Dolores Peral Shirley Levine 2

Multiple positions Roberta Kramer Diana Baker 5 Eileen Norton Sarah Long Marty Roberts

Undervalued Joanne Dalton Laura Henderson 3 Audrey Rosen

Total 8 7 3 18 a Two participants are not included in the matrix: Linda Jacobs (manager) considers her professional identity that of a manager; Gwen Jackson (multiple positions) left the information field in 1997.

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Four out of the five participants in the found-my-spot modality identify themselves as librarians, rather than as information professionals or combination of the two. There also may be a weak relationship between the multiple-positions participants and their identification as both librarians and information professionals, as three of the five participants in this modality who are still in the LIS field consider themselves both librarians and information professionals. This is to be expected in light of the variety of positions held by these participants. The found-my-spot participants seem to have found their spot as librarians, but for different reasons. Janet Logan, for example, has redefined what a librarian is and does based on her own experiences as a high-tech astronomy librarian. Susan Maxwell, on the other hand, considers herself a librarian because she works for “a traditional, old-fashioned library.” Margaret Taylor and Olivia Chambers, both solo librarians in sci-tech research organizations with specialized print collections, are somewhere in between. Olivia identifies with librarianship “because that’s my history” and because “it hasn’t hurt me.” Although not redefining the term librarian (“It means that I’m aware of the techniques of organizing and retrieving information of all kinds: bibliographic, as well as material that might be a little less book-like in nature”), Margaret Taylor rejects the “multi-purpose term” information professional: “It could mean computer person, someone who analyzes data, someone who does research, librarian. It’s kind of a multi-purpose term.” The finding that there is little or no association for participants in the family- first, manager, or undervalued modalities between labeling oneself as librarian or information professional may indicate that a participant’s identification as a librarian or information professional may be idiosyncratic. Professional identity, in other words, could be based more on a participant’s own unique work experiences in the information task area, a professional domain populated by a plethora of occupational groups lacking strong professional identities (Abbott, 1988). Examination of the types of organizations and libraries in which participants have worked over the course of their careers lends support to this interpretation.

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Participants with a varied job history seem to gravitate towards the dual identity of librarian and information professional. Participants with corporate library experience seem to prefer to be called an information professional or consider themselves both librarian and information professional. Fourteen participants have had corporate library experience, including the three participants who identify themselves as information professionals and six of the seven participants who consider themselves both librarians and information professionals. By contrast, only three of the eight participants who identify themselves as librarians have ever worked in a corporate library.

Age and Years in Information Work

Table 6.3 displays the participants listed in three of the four professional- identity affiliations in Table 6.1 by the number of years they have worked as professionals in the information domain. Table 6.4 lists the same participants by age cohort.

Table 6.3 Professional Identity by Years in Information Work

Years in Professional identity information Information work Librarian Both professional Total

21 – 32 Olivia Chambers Sarah Long Shirley Levine 8 Janet Logan Roxanne Meyer Susan Maxwell Audrey Rosen Eileen Norton

11 - 20 Joanne Dalton Diana Baker Portia Hughes 10 Roberta Kramer Laura Henderson Louise Mayfield Margaret Taylor Dolores Peral Vivian Walton Marty Roberts

Total 8 7 3 18

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Table 6.4 Professional Identity by Age Cohort

Professional identity Information Birth year Librarian Both professional Total Before 1950 Olivia Chambers Sarah Long Portia Hughes 9 Joanne Dalton Shirley Levine Roberta Kramer Louise Mayfield Janet Logan Susan Maxwell 1950 – 1964 Eileen Norton Diana Baker 9 Margaret Taylor Laura Henderson Vivian Walton Roxanne Meyer Dolores Peral Marty Roberts Audrey Rosen

Total 8 7 3 18

Table 6.3 demonstrates that years of experience is not a factor as to whether participants consider themselves librarians, information professionals or a combination of both. Like the finding that there is little association between professional identity and career modality (other than for the found-my-spot modality), the apparent lack of association between professional identity and length of time in the information workplace suggests that a participant’s self-identification as a librarian or information professional may be idiosyncratic, based more on her own unique work experiences than on any external factors. The relationship between age and professional identity is a bit more problematic. Whereas Table 6.3 indicates no relationship between years of service and the professional identity labels participants prefer, Table 6.4 indicates that age cohort and identity label may be connected. Participants born before 1950 tend to call themselves either librarians or information professionals. Participants born in 1950 or

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later seem to prefer a more inclusive approach, referring to themselves as both librarians and information professionals, depending on the situation. Participants in the younger cohort tend to see librarian as a subset of the more ambiguous information professional label and feel comfortable claiming both domains; for this group what they call themselves is less important than what they can contribute.

Summary and Discussion

For most research participants their professional identity remains within a broadly defined professional domain of librarianship, even if they prefer to call themselves information professionals or managers. Participants who refer to themselves as information professionals rather than librarians tend to define the term based on the type of information management work they do. Others expand the concept of librarian to encompass the same type of information-management functions as those who call themselves information professionals. As can be seen by the examples presented above, some participants who call themselves librarians and some who call themselves information professionals are describing similar professional work but just labeling it differently. They may in fact be describing the same profession. Participant Laura Henderson’s comment above that “as soon as we stopped calling ourselves librarians we became ambiguous” sums up the quandary, and perhaps a professional-identity crisis, for LIS-educated professionals who consider themselves to be beyond what they think people think librarians are but who are also uncomfortable with the vague “information professional” appellation. The participants who identify themselves solely as librarians do not seem to experience this ambiguity. These participants reject information professional as a title because its very broadness and lack of specificity dilutes its relevance for their professional lives. Some have found their spot as librarian-identified professionals and have stayed in the same organization in similar positions for over 10 years; these

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participants like what they are doing, report high levels of job satisfaction, and define career progression as professional growth and enhancement. Some broaden the definition of librarianship to be comparable to the type of information profession that participants who call themselves both librarians and information professionals conceptualize. Even the librarian-identified participants who do not specifically redefine librarianship do not refer to it in terms of the traditional librarian image. Some participants who consider themselves both librarians and information professionals differentiate the two “professions” by asserting that librarianship is more narrowly delimited—focused on books and other printed materials, or on a building called a library. They revert to the common definition, the traditional image of librarian, as a differentiator. These participants do not relinquish the librarian title in favor of information professional because like librarian, it also does not describe who they are professionally: it is too broad and ambiguous a term. So they combine the two concepts, defining themselves as both librarian and information professional. It is important to note that none of the participants in this study have moved into other categories of computer-based information work. Although one participant left information work altogether, none of the other participants left the LIS field for occupations classified by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as “computer and mathematical occupations” (U. S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.). They may have incorporated other information functions into their work during the course of their careers, performing tasks such as competitive intelligence, database development, knowledge management, programming, web-content management, or web development (see chapter 3, Table 3.5), yet their accounts indicate that these participants’ core identity is with a professional domain of information content management traditionally referred to as librarianship. This finding is supported by data on participants’ professional association membership. Professional association membership and participation in professional association activities can provide insight on professional identity. All 20 participants reported that they have been actively involved in one or more professional

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associations related to libraries or librarians during their careers. At the time of their interviews, 18 were members of the Special Libraries Association (SLA); three were members of the Medical Library Association (MLA); and two were members of the American Library Association (ALA). Over half of the SLA members (10 out of 18) and one of the MLA members have served in leadership positions in these associations. Although several participants mentioned they were members of professional associations more closely related to computer and information technology such as the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) or the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), none held leadership positions in these associations. Participants’ work experiences and the types of organizations where they have been employed over the course of their careers have helped to shape their identity as librarians or information professionals. As shown above, participants with corporate library experience tend to identify themselves as information professionals or as both librarians and information professionals, whereas participants whose careers have been spent primarily in public agencies or not-for-profit organizations are more likely to call themselves librarians. Participants, however, do not disassociate themselves from the profession of librarianship even if they choose to identify themselves as information professionals, or in the case of Linda Jacobs, as a manager. Chapter 6 has examined how the work experiences and organizational environments of the research participants have affected their professional identity over the course of their careers as librarian-educated information professionals. Next, chapter 7 presents career narratives for four representative participants, each narrative corresponding to one of four career modalities (family-first, found-my-spot, manager, and multiple-positions).

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CHAPTER SEVEN

FOUR CAREER NARRATIVES

Introduction

In chapters 4 through 6 the career patterns of the 20 research participants were discussed in the context of the three research questions, focusing on emerging patterns and themes across the career experiences of the participants within each of five career modalities and across all modalities. This chapter presents the career stories of four participants, each representing one of four career modalities, as progressive narrative accounts of their work histories and career experiences in counterpoint to the cross-case thematic analyses of the previous chapters. Each narrative is positioned within the context of the career modality that the participant represents. The patterns and themes identified in chapters 4 through 6 serve to inform the narratives, rather than the narratives supporting or informing the themes. The four women whose work narratives are presented below are Louise Mayfield (family-first modality), Janet Logan (found-my-spot modality), Linda Jacobs (manager modality), and Marty Roberts (multiple-positions modality). A narrative for a representative participant in the undervalued-modality was not constructed because the experiences of the three undervalued-modality participants were examined in detail in chapter 5. The narratives of these four women are addressed in the context of the following seven themes, derived from the findings presented in the previous three chapters:

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1. Career progression as enhancement and growth, not advancement— participants’ concepts of career progression and success differ from the (male) norm; 2. Balance of career and work life with family and home life—participants aspire to a holistic, life-centered view of work, expressed as a desire to balance family and home life with their work and career; 3. Teamwork and cooperation rather than conflict or competition— participants engage in teamwork, cooperation, and relationship building, rather than conflict or competition in the workplace; 4. “Inarticulating” gender—participants do not acknowledge gender relations in the workplace or the effects of gender on their careers; 5. Individualistic responses to undervaluation of librarianship—participants view experiences of undervaluation in the workplace as situations to be overcome through self-marketing and other efforts to demonstrate the value of their services, rather than an acknowledgement of the cultural undervaluation of librarianship; 6. Professional identity as situational—participants consider the work they perform and value they contribute to be more important than their title or the name of their profession; and 7. Content management as jurisdictional niche—participants consider their area of expertise in the information domain to be that of content management. Not all of these themes apply equally to all four research participants. For example, in Louise Mayfield’s family-first career story, Theme 1, Theme 2, Theme 3 and Theme 6 predominate; by contrast, Linda Jacobs’ manager career story emphasizes Theme 3, Theme 5, Theme 6 and Theme 7. A definition of career progression as career enhancement rather than advancement (Theme 1) is more salient for Louise than for Linda; both participants emphasize teamwork and cooperation (Theme 3) and conceptualize their professional identity as situational

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(Theme 6); individualistic competency-based responses to undervaluation (Theme 5) is of greater salience in the narrative of Linda, whereas balancing family and home life with her career and work life (Theme 2) is seen as more important in Louise’s narrative. Although there are differences in the themes that predominante in each participant’s career narrative, the purpose of this analysis is not to compare the themes present in each narrative but rather to examine the career stories of the women in their own context. Narrative analysis emphasizes context and the complexity of human existence (Personal Narratives Group, 1989) as well as changes taking place over time. It provides an analytical cohesiveness to accounts reduced and reconstructed into thematic categories. Looking at women’s lives from a holistic perspective means recognizing “the power of the historical forces that influence the roles, status, and opportunities” available to them (Bell & Nkomo, 1992, p. 236). This chapter focuses on the career progression experiences of these four high-tech women librarians from a similar perspective. The narratives thus complement the thematic approach of the earlier chapters, providing a richer understanding of how women with technological expertise who are members of a feminized profession make sense of their experiences in the changing information workplace. The narratives presented below are constructed primarily from responses to the following interview topics: 1. Why did the participant become a librarian? 2. What are her career highlights and key events? 3. Does she consider her technological expertise to be an important factor in her career? 4. How have gender relations affected her career? 5. How does she define success? 6. What values does she bring to her work? 7. What is her professional identity and how has it changed over the years? 8. Looking back over her career, would she still seek an MLS degree?

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Each narrative begins with an overview of the career modality the participant represents, a summary of her work history, and descriptions of her current work responsibilities and organizational environment. This is followed by the “story” of her career—i.e., a career narrative constructed within the context of the parameters listed above.1 Each narrative ends with a section titled Reflections, an interpretation of her story informed by the theoretical frameworks of Abbott’s (1988) jurisdictional conflict model and Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations within the context of the themes identified in the previous chapters.

Louise Mayfield: Family-First Modality

Louise Mayfield is one of three participants in the family-first career modality. This modality is a pattern of career activity in which family considerations are more important than personal career advancement. The balance of family and work is paramount: Major decisions about one’s career are always made in the context of family needs and are generally independent of job status, number of persons supervised, size of budget, type of library or information unit, or other career- advancement qualities. Participants in the family-first modality, however, do not accept just any position for the sake of their families. The three participants in this modality all accepted positions with professional responsibilities and salaries, rejecting positions that did not meet their standards of professional information work. Librarianship is Louise’s second career. Born in 1939, she is the oldest participant in the study. She came of age in the late 1950s, graduating from college in 1960 before the advent of the women’s movement. Upon graduation from college she taught high school English for three years. She then worked as a library assistant for six years at the university where her husband was studying for his Ph.D. in

1 The four career stories are organized by topical areas with common headings (“Becoming a special librarian,” “High-tech competencies,” “Gender relations,” “Professional identity”) and topical headings unique to each story.

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psychology. In 1968 she left paid employment to raise her family. She entered graduate library school in the late 1970s, attending classes part time while her four children were in elementary school. She received her MLS degree in 1981 at age 42. Louise has been with the same company—a small engineering research firm in the aerospace industry—for her entire career as an information professional. She began using the Internet in 1991 through her company, which was connected through a regional mid-level network to the NSFNET. She was 63 years old at the time of her interview and would be considered late career (Greller & Simpson, 1999; Greller & Stroh, 1995). Table 7.1 lists the major features of Louise’s work history.

Table 7.1 Louise Mayfield’s Work History Age at interview 63 (late career) Marital / family status Married, four children Undergraduate major English Year (age) graduated from college 1960 (age 21) Year (age) of MLS degree 1981 (age 42) Year (age) first used Internet 1991 (age 52) Number of positions, 1991-2001 1 Organizational environment, 1991-2001 Type of organization For-profit corporation Number of employees About 20 Management structure of library unit One-professional library (“solo” librarian) Subject focus Science-technology (aerospace engineering) Salary Below participant average ($68,886); above average for specialized librarians ($58,937)a Professional identity Information professional Would seek MLS again Yes a SLA Annual Salary Survey 2001 (see also chapter 3, Table 3.8)

Louise is a corporate librarian working in a scientific research environment. There are about 20 employees in her firm, 15 of whom are Ph.D. researchers. She catalogs printed materials down to the article level at the request of the company

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president and does the bulk of the online searching for the research scientists who prefer her to continue this function rather than doing it themselves. She provides proactive, personalized information service, tailored to the individual needs and interests of the engineers and researchers working there. She also has taken responsibility for a variety of non-library functions, a situation common to small organizations. Louise’s corporate environment is small and non-bureaucratic, an environment in which the company’s entire professional workforce can be considered a work team. Although she “officially” reports to the executive vice president, she reported that she confers more frequently with another vice president who is “most involved with the library.” Louise has worked part time (30 hours per week) by choice since 1981. Her choice of career was based on both her personal interests, including her intellectual curiosity, and her family orientation. Librarianship was a way to combine her intellectual interests in reading, English literature, and her family responsibilities. Both profession and family were important to her, and librarianship was the ideal profession for her to have it all. She fell into sci-tech corporate librarianship by chance: it provided a way for her to work part time in an intellectually stimulating environment and stay connected with her family and her community.

Louise’s Story Becoming a special librarian. Like many librarians, Louise became interested in librarianship as a result of working in a university library, in her case while her husband was in graduate school in the 1960s. She had taught high school English after graduating from college but found the work “too time-consuming.” Well, I actually have always been a book reader and a lover of literature. And when I taught English, I loved it, but it was too time- consuming. It took every night and every weekend, as well as all day long. And when we . . . moved to [university] for my husband to get his Ph.D., I was unable to get a job as a high school English teacher. There were simply no openings, and so I started working at the [university] library and I discovered that I loved it. And I also

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discovered my evenings were free. I could go home and read at night instead of prepare lesson plans. After Louise’s husband completed his doctorate they moved to another state and started their family. She left the workforce in 1969 when her first of four children was born. She entered library school part time in the late 1970s, graduating in 1981. Corporate librarianship, however, was ‘the farthest thing from [her] mind”: And then when I went back to library school, I thought what I would do is be an academic librarian or a rare book librarian. Certainly never anything in the corporate world. That was the farthest thing from my mind. That was the one thing I knew I wouldn’t do. But it didn’t work out that way. After graduation Louise was specifically looking for part-time professional work as a librarian. Although she had applied for a position at a research university in her area, she was “incensed at the salary” they offered her and turned down the position. I was so incensed at the salary they were going to offer me. I couldn’t believe they would offer me such a low salary. And I thought they didn’t understand that I had all this experience and my master’s. But it turned out that they understood. I was a dime a dozen. They had plenty of people with two masters and three masters. One was nothing. And I just decided I wasn’t going to sell myself that cheap. I had worked too hard for that and made too many sacrifices, as my family had. In essence, Louise became a corporate librarian by accident. At the urging of her husband to “get some practice interviewing,” she applied for the position of librarian at a small aerospace engineering firm. She was offered the position, but she turned it down because it was a 40-hour a week job and she wanted to work part time. There was no way in the world I would work 40 hours a week. I had four kids in elementary school. I was looking for a 20 hour a week job. But I went to the interview and I was, of course, completely relaxed. I had nothing to lose. . . . And, um, they offered me the job and I was so surprised. The president of the company thought she was negotiating for more flexible working conditions when she turned down the job.

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The president . . . called me back and offered to cut the job from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week and to make my hours 8:30 to 3:00, so I could be home until my children left for school, and then come home when they came home and just take a half hour lunch and then he offered me more money. And I was so flattered that somebody really wanted me like that. Gender relations: family and work. It is apparent that Louise took her family’s needs into account while preparing for a professional career. But these were her needs as well: she did not consider part-time work to be a sacrifice on her part. When her children were grown she continued to work part time by choice. Louise had the support of her husband when she re-entered the workforce in 1981. And when I first started there, my dear husband who was so proud of me for getting my master’s, gave me this beautiful Samsonite briefcase. And I knew that no one else at [company] carried anything like that. But I carried it dutifully for a long time. And I’ll bet they laughed at me. I didn’t want to hurt my husband’s feelings. Her husband also helped with childcare so that she did not have to miss work when the children were sick. This was important to Louise as she worked in a predominantly male engineering environment where she wanted to be seen as a professional, not primarily as a mother. Here is her account of what it was like being a woman in a professional position in an all-male work environment in the 1980s: [SL: How has being a woman figured in or affected your career as a librarian or information professional? Well, when I first started in the early 1980s, I was very conscious of not only being a woman, but being a mother. And I did not want to be seen as primarily a mother. I wanted to be seen as a professional. And at that time, none of the engineers had small children. . . . And I was lucky to have a very supportive husband who was aware of my position and who was able to do childcare and did do childcare whenever possible, so I didn’t have to say, “I can't come to work today because this kid is sick or that kid is sick.” But yes, I was definitely aware of it. Louise was subjected to sexist comments from one engineer about her reduced work hours, but she treated these incidents with humor rather than her true feelings of anger.

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[SL: But back in the ‘80s you didn’t want to draw attention to yourself?] No, no, no, not at all. . . . Yes, and I had one engineer who whenever I was leaving at 3:00 said, "Time to go home and cook for your hubby, huh?” Just irritated me. [SL: What was your reaction?] Well, I was irritated and angry, but I tried to make a joke out of it every time. [SL: You didn't tell him off, in other words.] Oh no, I don't tell people off. By the 1990s, she said, the work environment had changed. But boy, how different it is today! In the ‘90s. When these engineers now have their kids in elementary school and they routinely stay home and do childcare and nobody thinks anything of it. It should be noted that most of the engineers referred to here are male. Gender relations: a sexual harassment incident. Although in the account above Louise said that she’s not the kind of person who tells people off, she related another experience in which she assertively dealt with what she considered to be an incident of sexual harassment. It involved a co-worker and a work environment that she viewed as hostile to the few women employees in the firm. The incident in question was a good-bye party for a secretary. Here is Louise’s account: So it was in the late ‘80s. And, um, they had just started to depend on me more to get involved in company things like hiring. Interviewing and hiring. And, um, our current secretary, I guess she was office manager, was leaving and they had me . . . develop the interview questions and do the initial screening of candidates who came. And at her farewell party, um, I had selected her gift and it was a beautiful, fuzzy, white sweater from Nordstroms. And there were all these crude comments made by some of the engineers about how she would fill it out and how her husband would like it. I don’t know. I can't even remember. This is the ‘80s . . . it was a different time. Louise made sense of this incident by positioning it in the past. It took place over ten years ago when gender relations from her perspective were different, when things like this happened as a matter of course in the masculinized environment of aerospace engineers and technicians. But the comments made at the secretary’s party, which she apparently had helped to organize, sickened her. Louise decided she

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needed to talk to the vice-president, who was her supervisor, and to the president of the firm, who she said “was one of the worst perpetrators of that kind of behavior.” I mean, I was just horrified. I was just sickened. All weekend, I stewed about it. We had one candidate in particular we were very interested in hiring. . . . And I came in Monday morning and I just went to the president and vice-president and said, “I cannot in all good conscience tell this woman that we are a progressive company and an intellectual company and all this, and then have her subjected to that kind of sexual harassment. That is just totally inappropriate. And besides, all those pictures of the naked women in the shop and the posters in this person’s office and that person’s office, those constitute sexual harassment.” And I brought them some information, pamphlets that [the county] had put out about sexual harassment, and showed it to them. And I said, “Read this and you decide what you want to do.” Louise concluded her story by referring to the small firm’s organizational culture, implying that the firm’s “casual and informal” environment facilitated a behavioral change among the male employees. So I don’t know what they . . . said to each other when I wasn’t there, but I was assured that that kind of behavior would not happen again. Oh, what did we do? All those posters came down and all those nudie calendars came down in the shop and in people’s offices. And, gosh, it seems to me we had some sort of information sheet, a pamphlet I got a hold of and passed around to people. It was done in a fairly low-key way. Because that’s the kind of company we are, kind of casual and informal, but it was done and it worked and it stuck. From Louise’s perspective, the “low-key” approach worked. However, she also said that she “didn’t get along with” this company president, and that this incident “might have been the start of [her] not getting along with him.” She mentioned that during this time—between the late 1980s and early 1990s—she had “toy[ed] with the idea of looking for another job,” but that every time I talked to other librarians and saw how hard they had to work to keep their jobs and how little they were valued by their companies, I thought I was nuts to look anywhere else. Because even though I didn’t like or respect this fellow who was the president, he always valued what I did. So I could put my personal dislike aside.

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There’s just never been a time at [company] when I have not felt valued.2 Importance of being valued. For Louise, being valued for her contributions was more important than personal dislikes. She was able to separate out the president’s sexist behavior from the value he and other engineers in the company placed on her work. They’ve given me nice raises, they’ve given me wonderful verbal appreciation when it couldn’t be financial and they’ve always supported the library and supported me. . . . I feel so lucky. . . . [SL: Because I’ve heard so many stories where people have launched all these public relations campaigns and sometimes it’s just like beating your head against the wall.] I know. That’s what I would hear from other librarians and that’s why I would think, “Fool! Stay where you are. They want you.” From Louise’s perspective, the entire company works together as a team, each with his or her area of responsibility, and all are respected for their contributions to the enterprise. She feels she is valued because her contribution is seen as a vital part of the entire research process. I really think because we’re a research organization, that’s why I’m still there. They, that’s what they do is research. That’s what they value is research. And the person who does much of the preliminary research is me. And they just count on me to do it for them. Louise’s firm would probably be viewed on the outside as too small to support a library. Computer services are outsourced but library-information services are not. The company has kept its library and librarian during down cycles in the defense industry. Louise mentioned that in the 1980s she had organized a government / defense librarians group that met once a month for lunch and networking, an activity she considered to be a key event in her career. But this group disbanded in the early 1990s “when all the defense money disappeared, [and] the defense librarians also disappeared.” Louise’s solo-practitioner library, however, “was not affected at all.”

2 See chapter 5 on being valued as a librarian-information professional, where Louise Mayfield and Olivia Chambers’ experiences are compared to those of the undervalued-modality participants.

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Louise thinks she has been “incredibly lucky” to be in the kind of organization where her skills are appreciated. She did not have to find a jurisdictional niche in information management; it was already there, apparently put in place by the founder of the company who valued libraries and library services.3 [SL: Could you describe a time when you questioned your choice of career?] No. I have not been sorry, and as a matter of fact, it’s gotten more and more interesting. . . . I think I have been incredibly lucky to go into a career that I thought was going to bring me to rare books or an academic—well, I did kind of get the academic part, though. Because [current company] in many ways has a very academic atmosphere. Because they are research scientists and it’s a very collegial sort of atmosphere. High-tech competencies. Although she considers herself an early adopter of the Internet, Louise does not think of herself as all that technically advanced. In answer to the question, “Would you describe your relationships with the folks who do your computer work as cordial or competitive?”, Louise replied that her relationship with them is “cordial,” but then qualified her response: I don’t have enough, um, confidence in my computer skills to be competitive with them and they haven't tried to do anything that I violently disagreed with. The computer people at Louise’s firm are contract workers and may not be viewed as part of the company. She does not need to compete with them. It appears that in her organization research expertise is considered a core competency but IT skills are contracted out. Louise provided an account of an event the previous summer regarding the creation of an in-house database in which she convinced the engineers to use the library’s InMagic software rather than Microsoft Access. Last summer, there actually was, oh, a period where one of the engineers wanted to create a database of customers using Microsoft Access and I thought we should instead create a database from the library’s InMagic software. That’s probably the only time in all the

3 See chapter 5, Organizational Environment subsection, for Louise’s account of her work environment.

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years I’ve been there, where I felt like I needed to do a little research and push my arguments and show why. [SL: And what happened?] We’re doing it with InMagic. . . . When he saw the comparisons that I was able to show him, what InMagic could do and what Access could do, he could see that InMagic was by far the more flexible program. This was an environment where she felt more comfortable. Her skills and experience are in information management, which includes the library’s InMagic information-management system. She mentioned that she does not do the technical work involved in system upgrades; rather, she works with outside computer consultants to implement and debug new applications and web-based enhancements. Unlike some of the other research participants, it is not her technical skills but the information work and the personal qualities that she brings to the organization that are important. Forming relationships. From Louise’s accounts, it is her library-information management skills combined with her personal qualities that facilitate her participation in the organization on a par with the other professionals—the research engineers and scientists. Relationships and collegiality are important to her. She considers building relationships one of her core values, along with loyalty, honesty and professionalism. [SL: What values do you think you bring to your profession?] Indirectly to my profession but directly to my company, I bring them good information, a way to find current information, authoritative information. I bring them loyalty, as they know, and honesty. Enthusiasm for my job and my profession. And my husband says I have a function, but this has nothing to do with me being a librarian, but me being me—people just come to the library and talk. I don’t ever have to go to anyone else’s office. Sometimes I have trouble getting work done. But I like to make the library a place that’s welcoming, I like people coming to the library just to talk. And so I like to stop what I’m doing and talk to whomever comes in. The ability to grow in her job is also important. She defines career success in terms of learning new things, intellectual growth, and interacting with people—all within the context of her family, which she emphasizes, “comes before my career.”

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[SL: what is a successful career to you?] Well, actually, my family comes before my career and so first I have to have that. But then to have a career that is always challenging and letting me learn new things, keeping me interested. And I need lots of people involvement. I need interaction with people. And I need it to have an intellectual component. Louise’s friendliness and collegiality, coupled with her willingness to taken on responsibilities outside the domain of information management, may have contributed to her effectiveness and her longevity with the firm. She has learned how to function within a masculine environment without allowing herself to become marginalized. As she stated at one point during her interview: I certainly had to learn how to handle myself in a company of all engineers, in a very casual, let’s see… a company whose corporate culture consisted of slamming each other. If you know what I mean. Making jokes out of everything. . . . Using sarcasm and irony. One of four women in the organization at the time of her interview, Louise may be providing a counterpoint to the masculine engineering culture of this defense-industry research contractor. Professional identity. Louise prefers the term information professional rather than librarian to describe her professional self. Although her position title is “library manager,” she mentioned that the title “doesn’t hold much significance” because the company is “so small and we know each other so well as individuals.” She considers an information professional to be broader in scope and include more information- management functions than a librarian. She stated that when she started her career as a librarian in 1982, I saw myself as just the librarian and just responsible for running the library but now I see myself more as the information source for people at [company]. For Louise, being an information professional means being someone who’s involved in the explosion of information, being a part of one of the most exciting events occurring today. And being part of the profession which allows this enormous ocean of information to be effectively gathered, evaluated, and used.

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When asked whether she would have gotten a master’s degree in library science if she “could do it all over again,” she replied: “Oh, of course. Definitely! [SL: Why?] Because it’s so interesting! Because it’s so exciting today. It gives you the key to so many different subjects.” She considers the field an exciting one to be in, particularly for those “just starting out.” In some ways, I wish I were just starting out. In many ways. I think this is such an exciting time to be starting your career in librarianship or as an information professional. So many different ways to go and things to do.

Reflections on Louise’s Story The predominant themes in Louise Mayfield’s work narrative are Theme 1 (career progression conceptualized as enhancement and growth rather than advancement); Theme 2 (a holistic, life-centered view of work); Theme 3 (emphasis on teamwork, cooperation and relationship building rather than conflict and competition); and Theme 6 (professional identity as situational and work directed). Louise has a holistic, life-centered approach to work. It is obvious from her accounts that she loves her work, but she is not a workaholic. She appears to have successfully merged her personal and professional lives, integrating private and public spheres into a coherent identity (Bell & Nkomo, 1992). Family oriented from the start, Louise chose librarianship as a second career because she considered it a profession where she could balance family and professional work, not just because she liked to read (Theme 2). When her children were small she saw herself as both a professional woman and a mother, and both were important to her. She had also developed community-based interests, which contributed to her identity as an educated woman, a professional, and as a mother. Even after her children were grown she continued to work part time as an information professional in a company where she felt valued and appreciated.

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The lack of organizational bureaucracy is also an important factor in Louise’s career as a corporate librarian. She works in a small, non-bureaucratic organization where the employees work together as a team (Theme 3). Although computer support is outsourced, the library-based information work is not. With a total workforce of about 20 people, a company of this size would be considered too small to have a corporate library, yet it does. The corporate culture appears to be supportive of the library. Evidence from her accounts indicates that she is not marginalized—she has stated that the president and vice-president value her work and that she is valued for both her information work and her personal qualities. She considers herself lucky to be in such an environment—it was not something she had planned. Louise rejected a higher status research library position with perhaps more opportunities for advancement because of the low salary they had offered her as a part-time employee. She is working at her company on her own terms. She has confronted male workplace cultural practices and from her perspective effected change in this area. Abbott (1988) and Acker’s (1990) theoretical frameworks may not apply in non-bureaucratic environments such as the one in which Louise works. Gender relations are personalized rather than embedded in organizational bureaucracy. Louise appears to have held her own in a male-dominated workplace. She assertively dealt with a work environment that was hostile to women employees and in so doing, helped to reshape the organization’s culture. Family-first-modality participants like Louise may deal with the gendered organization by opting out of it. They choose both family and career, balancing the two within a holistic life-centered view of work (Theme 2). It is possible that they gravitate toward professions like librarianship in which they can have both. Louise is not interested in advancement. Her value system is different—she knows who she is and what she wants, and she does not want to play the corporate game. She has chosen a small family-like company to practice her profession where she feels valued for her contributions, which in an organization this small are not limited to librarianship (Theme 1).

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Louise did not have to carve out a jurisdictional niche for herself. It was already there, part of the organizational culture established by the founder of the company. Although her job title is “library manager,” Louise considers herself an information professional, not a librarian, but titles mean little in her firm because it is so small. She does not have a strong professional identity; rather, she sees herself as the “information source” for the people in her company (Theme 6). She is valued for her own set of skills—she can float, much like the computer professionals Abbott (1988) describes, “free to move to available tasks” (pp.83-84). Louise has found her niche as the information source for a small group of professional engineers and research scientists. Like the found-my-spot participants, she loves her job and has no desire to leave. Unlike the found-my-spotters, though, she has expressly positioned her career within the larger context of her life as a wife and mother.4 Although her first priority is her family, she also wants to have an intellectually challenging professional career. Librarianship provides this for her. Louise does not feel the need to work full time to have a successful career, which she defines has having challenging and interesting work and the opportunity to learn new things.

Janet Logan: Found-My-Spot Modality

Janet Logan is one of five participants in the found-my-spot career modality. The salient feature of the found-my-spot modality is a strong emphasis on job satisfaction and personal growth within the job rather than ascension up a career ladder. Intrinsic rewards are paramount. Participants in this group articulated these qualities with expressions such as “I love my job” or “I love coming to work every day.” Found-my-spot participants have been in their present positions for 10 years or more and see themselves in these positions until they retire. With an average age of

4 The found-my-spot participants may also do this, but it is not a defining characteristic of the modality.

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55 years these participants are older on average than participants in the other four career modalities. Janet began her professional career as a school librarian upon graduation from college in 1962, a position she held for three years. Her first child was born in 1966, and for the next few years she held several part-time positions in school, public and academic libraries in different cities while her first husband was in medical school and doing an internship. She remarried in the early 1970s, and in 1975 she became the assistant librarian for an independent astronomical observatory. She began using the Internet in 1983 through the observatory’s ARPANET link. Janet was promoted to senior librarian in 1983, responsible for the main library and four branch libraries located throughout the U.S. In 2001 she was reclassified as observatory librarian, her current position, with the same administrative responsibilities. She was 60 years old at the time of her interview and like Louise Mayfield would be considered late career. Table 7.2 lists the major features of Janet’s work history.

Table 7.2 Janet Logan’s Work History Age at interview 60 (late career) Marital / family status Married, two children Undergraduate major English Year (age) graduated from college 1962 (age 21) Year (age) of MLS degree 1966 (age 25) Year (age) first used Internet 1983 (age 42) Number of positions, 1991-2001 1 Organizational environment, 1991-2001 Type of organization Not-for-profit Number of employees About 450 Management structure of library unit Small library (2-3 librarians plus support staff) Subject focus Science-technology (astronomy) Salary Below participant average; below average for specialized librarians (see Table 7.1) Professional identity Librarian Would seek MLS again Yes

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As an astronomy librarian, Janet is a member of a cohesive and highly collaborative group of specialized subject librarians. Astronomy librarians have been integral to information management in the discipline, working collaboratively with both astronomers and publishers to organize and provide access to the astronomical literature (Boyce, 2000; Corbin, 2003; Grothkopf, 2000). They were among the first librarians to use the Internet, accessing preprints and technical documents and transferring data via Internet protocols. By the late 1980s astronomy librarians had established several Internet discussion lists specifically for librarians in astronomy and related disciplines.5 Janet provides specialized library services to scientists and other research personnel in the observatory’s headquarters location and oversees satellite libraries in three other states, one of which is managed by a professional librarian. She currently reports to the director of the observatory, but according to Janet this is more a matter of convenience than status within the organization: “If you had to draw an organizational chart, the library would be this stray box sticking out on its own.” In previous years she has reported to the assistant director or someone two levels down from the director, depending on the administrative structure at the time. There are about 450 people in Janet’s organization: about 100 scientific staff, computing people and technicians are located in the administrative headquarters; the other employees are located in the satellite locations and at an array of telescopes in remote locations. She described her library services operation as similar to a branch library system, but instead of being in one town or county or one campus, it’s strewn across the country and this has presented some interesting problems and in many ways is responsible for the interest of the library very early on in the Internet. Because we needed to have things available to people at multiple sites and we weren't on the same campus where you could just run a phone line to connect the buildings.

5 These include PAMNET, a discussion list for physics, astronomy, and mathematics librarians organized by the Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division of SLA, and ASTROLIB.

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Like a traditional branch library system, the ordering, processing, and cataloging of materials is centralized in the headquarters library. Janet is also responsible for the library’s InMagic integrated library system and the library’s web page. The latter includes managing the full-text content for the staff preprints database and the staff and visitor publications bibliography and providing links to a variety of external astronomy electronic bibliographic and data resources. Janet has two part-time staff in the headquarters library and three additional employees in the three branch libraries, which she visits several times each year. Three of her five employees have degrees in library science.

Janet’s Story Becoming a special librarian. Louise said that she became a librarian in large part because her mother had been a school librarian for many years, having started out as a public librarian in the 1930s. Librarianship, however, was not something she had planned but a decision she made rather abruptly in 1962 during her senior year in college. I was an English major, and my senior year in college the cold hard reality dawned on me that I would have to think about finding a job. And I didn’t want to teach and what in the world was I going to do? And it took about 24 hours for it to dawn on me—well, of course, dummy, you’ll be a librarian! So I had my first job straight out of college in an independent school for boys, grades one through twelve. She worked in several part time positions off and on in the late 1960s and early 1970s when her children were small. In 1974, following a divorce and remarriage, she worked part time in an academic law library to help prepare for a move to a new building. After the move, she continued to work part time in technical services. The following year her boss left the law library to take the job as head librarian at the observatory, which was located in the same city. She said to me when she left, “I understand there’s a part time assistant position there, that there’s been a lot of turnover, and if it comes open, are you interested?” And I said, “Sure.” So along about July, she

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called me up and said, “The position’s open. Come interview.” And so I started here in August of ’75 and I’ve been here ever since. Like Louise Mayfield, Janet became a special librarian by chance. She had majored in school librarianship in library school but then worked in a variety of libraries—school, public, and academic—in part-time positions during the first decade after earning her MLS degree. Unlike Louise, however, Janet never referred to making career decisions within the context of her family’s needs during her interview. It is not known, for example, whether she worked part time during the early part of her career because her children were young or because these were the only positions available to someone who in the late 1960s followed her first husband’s career-related relocations. High-tech competencies. Janet considers her status as an early adopter of the Internet to be a function of her “fascinating” high-tech organizational setting. My use of the Internet and technology and so on is certainly a function of the setting I’m in. Because here I was in this high-tech setting where everybody was using computers all the time and pushing the boundaries and being, as one of our computer people says, on the bleeding edge all the time. That certainly has been a huge piece of doing what I do and how I do it. . . . And I just found it fascinating and interesting and not particularly intimidating. Why that’s true, I don’t know. I can't answer that. She acquired her computer skills on the job by asking questions of experts in her organization and then experimenting on her own within in a collaborative work environment. This has worked well for Janet as she is recognized as an expert in her own area of information access and web applications. It’s a function of the kind of organization I’m in that everybody is really nice. And everybody’s willing to help and you go and ask questions and get the answer and go back and so on. And so the fact that I would ask questions, learn from it, could solve problems myself and so on, once you can do that then people are really much more willing to help and so on. . . . So now I’m somebody that the scientific staff will come to if they’re having problems with web stuff or access to something or how to do something. They come to me: “do you know how to do this, or can you find this?” or whatever.

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Janet stated that selecting the InMagic ILS in the mid-1980s was a key event not only because of what access to an online catalog could offer to far-flung astronomical research sites but also in terms of her own learning experience. Figuring out what we should buy, . . . and back in 1985, it was hard because there were these monster things . . . aimed at big university libraries. And the things that were . . . aimed for small libraries tended to be PC-based and didn’t have the capability of being something that could be accessed from other locations like we needed. Not only did an ILS enhance information access, Janet also understood that the process involved in selecting the InMagic system was “that first leap” in her acquisition of technological knowledge and competence. So the whole process of . . . figuring out what we needed to get and so on was a huge step, as I say, not just for the library but . . . for myself, in terms of knowledge and growth. The fact that I’ve just been interested in doing this kind of stuff and have done a lot of it—once you get started down something and realize you can do it, . . . then you just take it and run. . . . I would look back at that process of choosing an online catalog as kind of the thing that started me down that road. Janet considers her early work in the development of the Astrophysics Data System (ADS), a resource that “indexes pretty much all of the astronomy literature,” another key event in her career. She was part of a group of astronomers and librarians who developed an innovative online resource that included images and full text in the mid-1990s, years before the advent of publisher-driven full-text databases and electronic journals. Here is Janet’s account of how this happened: Back in the early ‘90s, like 1991, there was a group of astronomers and librarians that met to talk about the possibility of doing something like this and I was part of that group. . . . ADS is NASA-funded. So as part of the people that brainstormed what has become an indispensable thing in the astronomy community worldwide, that’s something that’s also kind of neat. The development of the ADS is part of the collaborative culture of astronomy. Developed by a cross-functional team of scientists and librarians, it can be seen as an exemplar of a “product” developed by the community for the community. As Janet concluded her account, she remarked:

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[It’s] because of the field I’m in that I’m doing a lot of what I’m doing. And other disciplines are only much more recently catching up to what astronomy is doing, and astronomy has been the “this is the way it ought to be done” sort of thing. “So why would I ever do anything else!” In this statement is the embodiment of the found-my-spot career modality: Janet has found her niche in astronomy librarianship. [SL: You found your niche.] Yes. . . . And, of course, if you look at the changes in libraries from the time I came here from 1975 to now, it’s a whole different world. There were all these changes. The wide variety of tasks, the people here are great. And then there’s all the Internet stuff, which is endlessly fascinating and exciting. So why would I ever do anything else! As an astronomy librarian, she is a member of a cohesive and highly collaborative group of specialized librarians. She has found her niche not only within a specialized information profession, but also within the organization where she has worked for over 25 years, an organization which itself is engaged in the work of a niche science. Janet defines career success in terms of service—providing quality information service to both the scientific and engineering staff in her organization and to the worldwide astronomy community. That good service is a core value is evident in the following passages: [SL: What is a successful career to you? What is success to you?] I suppose its two pieces. It’s providing for your clientele what they want and need. Sometimes even before they want and need it. And certainly feeling that you’re doing a good job. That’s a big piece of success. You can't feel successful if you don’t feel you’re doing a good job. . . . I know I’m able to provide . . . what the observatory needs, inside the observatory and outside users, because we do have people from around the worldwide astronomy community that come to us as a library of last resort. And then she said, after a pause, But we also provide—I mean we have people who just call me up, astronomers will call me up or email me from who knows where in the world and say, “I can't find—I think this exists, I can't find it. Do you

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have it, do you know where it is, do you know where to find it? . . . Can you help me?” These are astronomers that are not affiliated with Janet’s organization, but who know of her reputation for locating that elusive bit of information they need. And they come to her for help—she does not have to market her services. For Janet, salary is less important than the satisfaction she receives from working in a collaborative and collegial environment with colleagues around the world. She showed a remarkable lack of concern about her salary in an account of how her request to change her title from “senior librarian” to “observatory librarian” had inadvertently resulted in “a big pay raise” because it moved her into a different job classification. She had requested the change because she felt that senior librarian did not adequately describe her responsibilities as “the person in charge of the whole operation.” And I suggested they change the title to observatory librarian, which they did, and then they decided if they changed the title to observatory librarian—this is the director, who’s my boss, and the human resources guy—they decided that if they changed the title that I was in the wrong . . . job classification, so that got changed. Then I got this big pay raise. I thought, that’s nice—but I was really dealing with the semantics. That she is “perfectly happy” at her organization is evidence that job satisfaction is paramount. She simply wanted to correct her job title to more accurately reflect her work responsibilities; she was not interested in correcting a salary inequity. Well, the only thing I was thinking of correcting was the semantics with which they described the job. And it never occurred to me that this would change my job class. Given the fact that I am the person in charge of all our libraries and library functions, I’m at the top in the organization. I have no desire to leave the organization, and so that’s that. I’m perfectly happy in terms of—there’s other things that I’ve sort of evolved that I’ve done over the years for the observatory . . . they’re not part of the regular job description but that I’ve been asked to do because it’s perceived that my contribution is valuable.

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Even with her pay raise, though, Janet’s salary is below the participant median of $64,375 and less than the average reported for special librarians in the 2001 SLA Annual Salary Survey (see Table 7.1). Organizational culture. Janet described her organization as friendly and cooperative. Based on her account of how she acquired her computer skills, she is working in a team-based environment in which professionals share expertise and value the contributions of their colleagues. Astronomy, according to Janet, is a very collaborative discipline, as opposed to a competitive one. For example, the biological sciences, where heaven forbid anybody knows what you’re working on. They’ll steal your ideas. And there [is] . . . a long history in astronomy of papers written with people from widely dispersed geographically institutions. And so the advent of email was a wonderful thing for astronomers because it allowed them to communicate with their colleagues and co-workers very early on. Janet stated that top management understands the value that her library contributes to the organization and attributes this to the fact that they are engaged in scientific research. I think because we’re basic research, everybody is very aware that they can't operate without the library and the library is crucial to being able to do the research we do. She compared her experience with those of specialized librarians in other industries who she has talked to at professional conferences: And so, I’m always struck, have been struck over the years at SLA meetings and various programs of the number of people that have to constantly justify their existence. I have never, ever had to justify my existence. If we have a bad budget year then the library gets cut but so does everybody else, and my cuts aren't any deeper than anybody else’s. Her observations are similar to comments made by Louise Mayfield, above, about the reasons for her own longevity at her small engineering research firm. Gender relations. Janet does not believe that that gender has “made the least bit of difference,” and she feels she has encountered “absolutely no prejudice” in being a female professional in a predominantly male scientific research environment.

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[SL: How has being a woman figured in or affected your career as an information professional?] Well, I don’t think it’s made the least bit of difference. Human resources in our organization loves me because they get to count me as a woman professional on the staff. And particularly in the sciences, women are hard to come by. Um, but in terms of what I’ve done and where I’ve been and so on, I don’t think it’s made a whit of difference. Janet’s dismissal of gender as a factor in her career progression must be considered within the context of her perception that her library and library services are valued by members of the scientific community in which she works. Evidence for the value placed upon her specialized services comes from various statements made during her interview: that she does not have to promote or market her services; that during lean funding years her budget gets cut to the same degree (no more or no less) as other departments; that her astronomy-librarian colleagues tend to stay in their positions for a long time, compared to librarians in other specialized areas or industries; that she is not treated like a secretary. Evidence also comes from the information management literature in astronomy in which articles are written by astronomers and astronomy librarians alike in the same publications (see, for example, Heck, 2000; 2003). There is another aspect to Janet’s response to this question that can be seen in her remark that “human resources . . . loves me because they get to count me.” This implies that the organizational bureaucracy recognizes that the field is gender biased—women are underrepresented in the field of astronomy. But Janet is not competing against astronomers. She has found her niche as a competent astronomy librarian in an organization that values her services. Professional identity. Janet identifies with the term librarian rather than information professional to describe her profession. Unlike Louise Mayfield, who considers information professional to be broader in scope than librarian, Janet’s definition expands librarian to incorporate information management in all formats. All the furor about whether you’re a librarian or information manager, to me librarian is an infinitely expandable term. Librarian is what I do

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and the fact that it’s Internet, high tech and all that kind of stuff, well, that’s over the years librarians have dealt in all sorts of formats and this just happens to be the current one.6 She qualifies her statement by couching it in the context of age and years of experience, stating that perhaps she prefers the term librarian because she is part of “the older generation of librarians.” She also feels that being identified as a librarian in the workplace is not a disadvantage; on the contrary, “The people that I work with think that libraries and librarians are wonderful.” When asked whether she would have gotten a master’s degree in library science, if she “could do it all over again,” Janet replied in the affirmative, “because . . . on a purely practical level, I couldn’t have gotten the job I have without it.” She also mentioned, in her response to this question, that although the specifics of her education are no longer relevant (she majored in school libraries and school library administration), “the basic principles of reference, book selection, library administration, of cataloging are still the same.” She reiterated that the MLS is necessary “if for no other reason [than] to get the interesting jobs” because for astronomy librarian the MLS is a prerequisite. This is quite different from the situation in other subject areas and industries, especially in the corporate world. It is, however, congruent with Janet’s strong identification with the field of astronomy librarianship and the “tightly knit group of colleagues” that comprises the profession.

Reflections on Janet’s Story The predominant themes in Janet Logan’s work narrative are Theme 1 (career progression conceptualized as enhancement and growth rather than advancement); Theme 3 (emphasis on teamwork, cooperation and relationship building rather than conflict and competition); Theme 4 (inarticulating gender relations in the workplace);

6 Janet’s statement that librarian is an “infinitely expandable” term is also discussed in chapter 4, How Membership in a Feminized Profession Has Affected Participants’ Career Progression subsection; and in chapter 6, Still a Librarian subsection.

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and Theme 7 (content management as a jurisdictional niche—within the field of astronomy). Janet’s reference group is a highly skilled group of specialized librarians that incorporates the foundational strength, values, and philosophies of librarianship (see Gorman, 2000) with the unique focus of specialized librarianship that John Cotton Dana described in the early part of the 20th century, when special librarianship created its own niche within the emerging professional domain of librarianship (Dana, 1914/1991; see also Wiegand, 1986b). Not all of the found-my-spot participants exhibit this combination of professional qualities, but this is Janet’s focus—as it is the focus of other astronomy librarians. But Janet and her astronomy-librarian colleagues are not “traditional” librarians; they have from the start embraced new technologies as tools to enhance their work. They were among the first to observe, understand, and embrace the potential of the Internet, for both enhanced communication through email and for scholarly document publication and management (Stern, 1988). Janet’s key events all involve using technology as a tool to enhance service and foster networking within the astronomical community. The culture of her organization and the subject discipline in which she practices are important factors in her career. Although high tech, her organizational environment appears to be stable and unremarkable: innovation may be found in the research conducted, not in the organizational environment. Janet considers astronomy to be a collaborative discipline compared, for example, to the biological sciences. She considers her work environment collaborative also (Theme 3). From Janet’s perspective not only librarians but also astronomers seem to have found their niche; neither appears to be in a battle for jurisdictional control of the management of this particular area of scientific information. Janet has found a niche in what appears to be a well-bounded scientific discipline, in both its research and its literature (Theme 7). She perceives that her library services are valued because library resources (and librarians) are valued by her user group— the library is “crucial

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to being able to do the research we do.” It is not just Janet’s individual competencies, but also her specialized brand of librarianship that is valued. Janet works in a predominantly male scientific research environment, but she does not see gender as an issue (Theme 4). From her perspective it has not affected her, yet her salary is below the participant median. From Acker’s perspective gender is not acknowledged in the workplace because organizations are seen as gender neutral, so it is not surprising that she does not consider gender to have affected her career. Janet’s statement that “HR likes her” makes visible the gender subtext in her organization (and the predominantly male discipline of astronomy). Janet’s perception that gender has not affected her career could be explained by the fact that she believes that libraries and library services are valued by the scientists and researchers with whom she works. She is not devalued as a librarian because librarians in her reference group are not devalued. For Janet salary is less important than doing meaningful work. Like the other found-my-spot librarians, Janet has no desire to leave either her current organization or astronomy librarianship. Janet considers her perceived value to her organization to be an important component of her work (“The people that I work with think that libraries and librarians are wonderful”). She derives great satisfaction from being a part of the worldwide network of astronomy librarians (Theme 1). Since Janet does not consider salary a measure of career success or value, the possibility that she earns substantially less than male researchers would not suggest the existence of gender bias to Janet. Janet sees herself as one of the “older generation” of librarians. She identifies strongly with the profession of librarianship and what it has evolved into—she considers herself a librarian and sees no need to change the name just because the tools and technologies are different. She and Louise Mayfield are both late-career- stage participants. Whereas Louise has abandoned the librarian label for the broader term of information professional, Janet has expanded the profession of librarianship to encompass the high-tech information management skills she uses in her work. For Janet, “librarian is what I do.” It is an “infinitely expandable” profession.

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Linda Jacobs: Manager Modality

Linda Jacobs is one of three participants in the manager career modality. These participants tend to define themselves as managers rather than as librarians or information professionals, indicating a shift in their self-image (as well as actual job duties) that reflects management and administration rather than direct service. They look at their careers more strategically than other participants in terms of a traditional up-the-ladder career-advancement model, setting goals and planning for future outcomes. Participants assigned to the manager modality have a greater span of managerial control in terms of budget and personnel compared to other participants who may have the word manager in their titles but who manage smaller enterprises. The average salary for this group was $92,860, the highest of the five career modalities. Linda received her undergraduate degree in 1969, majoring in English literature and minoring in foreign languages. She received her MLS in 1971 and began her professional career working as a librarian in Europe. She returned to the United States in the mid-1970s where she worked as a branch manager and children’s librarian in an urban public library system for the next 10 years. She left the public library in 1984 for a position as documents librarian in a defense-industry firm that helped to build the ARPANET. She has held five different positions between 1984 and 2001, four of which were with the defense-industry firm or its spin-offs. In 1997 she became the manager of the library at a federally funded research and development laboratory that provides high-level advisory services on technical issues involving national security. She began using the Internet in 1984 in her position as documents librarian. She is married to an artist. She was 54 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted and would be considered mid-career. Table 7.3 lists the major features of Linda’s work history.

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Table 7.3 Linda Jacobs’ Work History Age at interview 54 (mid-career) Marital / family status Married, no children Undergraduate major English literature Year (age) graduated from college 1969 (age 22) Year (age) of MLS degree 1971 (age 24) Year (age) first used Internet 1984 (age37) Number of positions, 1991-2001 4 Organizational environment, 1991 Type of organization For-profit corporation Number of employees 2,400 Management structure of library unit Small library (2-3 librarians plus support staff) Subject focus Science-technology Organizational environment, 2001 Type of organization Not-for-profit Number of employees 2,300 Management structure of library unit Large library (10+ librarians and support staff) Subject focus Science-technology Salary Above participant average; above average for specialized librarians (see Table 7.1) Professional identity Manager Would seek MLS again Yes

Linda currently manages a large special library with 24 permanent staff and about six contract workers. She has six direct reports, including an assistant manager in charge of systems and related functions and the web content manager for the organization’s intranet. She manages traditional library functions (reference, circulation, technical processing, online searching, archives), leads information- related project teams such as a recent task force for electronic data management of both born digital and paper documents, and works with cross-functional teams outside the library that assess new technology initiatives. Her library maintains a web portal that “provides both internal and external information, including information about the laboratory’s archives, delivered to the desktop of properly authenticated users.” There are about 2,300 employees who work in the R&D laboratory. Linda reports to a division head, a position she said would be equivalent to a vice president

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in other organizations (the division head reports to the chief financial officer who reports to the director of the organization). She is in the administrative services division, along with publications, facilities, and other corporate services.

Linda’s Story Becoming a special librarian. Linda became a librarian because she wanted to work in Europe after she graduated from college. Not knowing “what to do with my life after I got my English degree,” she said that someone told me that as a librarian I would be more likely to get a job abroad than as a teacher. So I went and applied for my master’s in library science and got my master’s in library science. Lo and behold, I got a job in [country]. . . . I wanted to go abroad. I wanted to be really fluent in another language. I wanted . . . to be sophisticated, international. And so when they told me that being a librarian could get me that—which is kind of weird—I did it. And it worked out for me. . . . It was my first job. Tired of being a “foreigner,” she returned to the United States in 1975 and went to work in a public library branch located in an ethnic neighborhood that wanted a bilingual librarian. As head of the branch, she worked primarily as a children’s librarian. She left the public library in 1984 to become documents librarian for a division of a defense-industry research and development company because she wanted to “develop [her] own understanding of technology and its impact on information delivery,” skills she did not feel she could acquire within a traditional public library environment.7 This company, which had built components of the original ARPANET, would become a major provider of Internet services in the 1990s. During her two years as documents librarian she built a UNIX-based database to handle the Internet and ARPANET documents collection and developed several

7 Linda found this position through a friend who worked at the company. In her interview she mentioned the importance of networking for her: “I really got every important job in my career because of people and my relationships with people.”

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other databases for the division. In 1986 Linda applied for the position of corporate library director, a position she held until 1995. She managed a headquarters library and two branches, bringing the division library that held the Internet documents under her span of control. Becoming an Internet training services manager. Business declined in the early 1990s, and Linda was asked to lay off three of her seven employees. Although she was able to save one of these positions, this was a demoralizing experience for her, and she planned to accept a special library position at another organization for which she had been recruited by a colleague. The president of the company, however, made her a counteroffer. Linda reported that the president persuaded me that a librarian would be crazy to leave [company] because the Internet was just about to explode. And he thought I had a lot of ability not being used in the library and that the whole issue of training—both [company] how to roll out the Internet to the end user and how to roll it out internally hadn’t been explored. And he saw that as my role, and he was incredibly persuasive. So Linda stayed. In 1994, in addition to managing the corporate library system for the parent company, she became the manager of Internet training services for a new subsidiary, reporting to the president of the subsidiary. The parent company was one of the first and soon the biggest commercial Internet providers in the country. She said that they felt they needed to have somebody there that could explain to naive people what the Internet was going to do for them. So that put me into kind of a marketing, sales and training role for Internet deployment for [the new subsidiary]. Linda felt that this was a key event in her career. She loved selling Internet services and training courses to the marketing departments of large corporations who were curious about the Internet and what it would do for them. Here is her account: I would essentially sell a corporate Internet training course, typically to the marketing departments of large corporations. So I would go, for example, into [Big Company A] or [Big Company B] . . . and deliver a full day sort of combination training and focus group on how that organization should take advantage of this new media. And that was

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really, really fun. . . . [Company] had just launched . . . probably the first hosting services available on the Internet, for example, and that became real relevant obviously to companies that didn’t yet understand how to do any of that World Wide Web hosting. And I might be the first person that would go out to the customer and gather their people together and talk about how they could use the Internet. The parent company, however, decided that the training services business was not sufficiently profitable, and dissolved the Internet training services subsidiary in 1995. Linda then moved to another division as a manager of computer learning systems. Moving back into special library management. Linda reported that by the mid-1990s “it was obvious” that the corporate environment had become chaotic: “I had six managers in my last two years at [company].” She also said that she had become distraught because she had failed to make the Internet training services program sufficiently profitable. So it was just chaotic . . . and it wasn’t clear to me that there would be an opportunity for me to have fun there again and really use my skills well. I actually became so distraught—there really was a lot of stress involved with being involved with a profit center and . . . knowing I had failed in the organization’s eyes. Not in everyone’s eyes, but in some part of the organization. In 1997 Linda decided to apply for the library director position at the research and development laboratory, and she was offered the position. Once again the company wanted to make a counter offer, but this time she refused. And I said no, I really want to go somewhere where I understand what I have to do and where I can contribute meaningfully, and it’s not clear to me that I can at [company]. . . . And money has nothing to do with it really. Two weeks later [company] was sold. After I gave notice. She believes she was hired by the R&D laboratory because they wanted somebody that could move the library from its more traditional orientation to a more technical and global reach using technology. . . . The fact that I worked at [company] was a really important credential for them. . . . And my storytelling skills [laughing] . . . I’m a great salesperson and I can sell myself just as well as any other thing.

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Linda feels there have been “a lot of lucky moments” in her career: from working as a librarian in Europe, to finding a public library position that required fluency in a language in which she was fluent, to joining a high-tech company whose internal network was TCP/IP based, to managing Internet services training for a new corporate subsidiary, to moving to her present position as head of the R&D laboratory library when the high-tech company was floundering. Coming to [company] was a really, really lucky, lucky, lucky event. And no one, I don’t think, could have anticipated what . . . influence it would have on our profession and on information delivery. . . . And I can confirm that because when I applied for the corporate library job, almost nobody externally applied for it. Nobody knew what [the company did]. Linda’s career progression, though, has involved more than luck. She made good choices, took advantage of learning opportunities, and took risks as she progressed in her career in information management. She defines career success, in fact, in terms of learning opportunities—for herself, her staff, and the people with whom she works: [SL: What is a successful career for you?] Probably always having things to learn. Always working with people I respect and find interesting. Always having new people in the career that I can identify and help to move faster. I actually also really love working in cross- functional teams. . . . Whenever I get to integrate either myself or a member of my staff into a group of people doing something that they didn’t know they needed our skills in order to get it done well, I find that incredibly fulfilling. I enjoy surprising people with what I or my skill-set can contribute. Linda also believes that her experience with storytelling as a children’s librarian contributed to her successful career as a manager of Internet training services and two special libraries. I still think that the storytelling and presentation skills I developed as a children’s librarian probably were a bigger factor in my success, aside from I’m good at technology. And obviously that was another big piece. But I really think the presentation skills were even more important in developing as a manager. Otherwise, I could have been an individual contributor forever. But I think being able to tell stories so

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people understand things is really important to me . . . and I really think I developed that in the public library. High-tech competencies. Linda is one of the most technologically knowledgeable of all the participants, having developed her computer-based information management skills in an organization that helped to build the ARPANET. She still corresponds with some of the Internet “technical guys” that she worked with in the 1980s and early 1990s. And a lot of the technical guys at [company] were important to me. . . . I remember the first guy that showed me the World Wide Web. He said, “I’ve just seen the future of the Internet. Come here!” So he showed me using [a] browser that worked on some workstation. . . . It was pre-Mosaic. He said, “Look what they can do now!” I thought it was stupid. I didn’t understand instantly. He kept making me understand. So they were great . . . and I‘m still in touch with them. Linda took advantage of learning opportunities in the various organizations where she worked as an information professional, particularly in the learning of new technology skills. [Company] really was wonderful for developing technology skills. And obviously the place to be in terms of what was going to become the dominant influence on how information is delivered. . . . So it was a really powerful combination and a great, great learning experience. You always want to understand the technology of your organization just to serve your customers. But for me it was also a technology that was so relevant to my profession. Like Janet Logan, Linda considers her status as an early adopter of the Internet as a function of where she happened to have fallen in her work life. She said that the engineers helped her “get up to speed, versus me introducing the Internet in my organization.” She does, however, consider herself an early adopter in terms of the library community. She conducted Internet CE courses at library association conferences in the early 1990s and was sometimes frustrated because of the lack of understanding displayed by some of the participants: I always found it very amusing that I could go in and deliver a course to senior managers at [Big Company A] and they would all be in awe of my expertise, and my [librarian] colleagues just were totally

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doubting and annoyed in the early Internet years. I just remember that very strikingly. . . . You could really see there were people that absolutely didn’t understand at all why were doing this, what importance it had and were kind of annoyed. Her accounts demonstrate the depth of her technical knowledge and expertise. For example, she has upgraded positions in her library as people retired or left and implemented a technical training program in order to modernize a “very, very, traditional” library. We’ve retooled to get us in that skill-set we needed. So for example, a job that was a document security administrator became the electronic resources librarian. . . . There is no professional staff member now that can’t do a perfectly good home page and quite a lot of them understand how to interact with databases and a few of them know how to do java script. We’ve really worked hard on that, and that’s taken a lot of my time. I’ve done a lot of internal training and internal training plan development to try to get the skill-set to where I wanted it and it’s almost there. Linda recently created a position of web content manager for the organization’s Internet to make it “easier for people in the lab to find all lab information.” The story of how Linda succeeded in having this position report to the library is detailed below. Hiring a web content manager. This is an account of a jurisdictional dispute that involved both risk-taking and persuasiveness on Linda’s part. This conflict did not involve other information-providing units in her organization—the peer-level managers of the library and publications department had agreed that the position should report to the library. It was a conflict involving a higher level of management that was exacerbated by her organization’s hierarchical chain of command and her manager’s reluctance to support a proposal that was questioned by the director of the organization. That Linda actually considered resigning her position over this conflict is an indication of how strongly she felt about the inequity of the decision, had it not been reversed.

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Linda reported that the web content manager position came about because the organization was hiring more scientific and technical staff, and they felt it was necessary to update their antiquated web presence “so when they told people how exciting it was to work here, it might look slightly exciting on the Internet.” She said that the library was enlisted because they provide some content to the organization’s external web. So we were pulled into this team with publications having a major role because the web graphic artists are in publications. . . . And so we pulled together a new extranet quite quickly and during that process, everyone said, “This is nice, I wonder if it’ll ever get updated again, and if it does get updated again, who will do it?” The team agreed that they needed to hire someone in charge of the extranet, and a director who had been part of the process thought that the position could reside either in publications or in the library. Linda thought the position should report to the library because she had other people that could back that person up with appropriate related skills, whereas it would be a unique person within publications. So I drew up the job description and posted it to everyone and I was very careful about how I described the job in a way that made complete sense, but also pointed out that it fitted in nicely with an information professional background, rather than a publications background or an editor background or graphics background. And that position was approved, and I was also able to work with the head of publications to get him to agree that the position should report to the library. Linda and the head of publications then recommended to their manager (they both reported to the same person) that the new position should report to the library. This is her account of what happened next: They revised the nature of the job to be primarily Internet, rather than primarily extranet, and in my mind that even made it more clear it should be someone in the library, rather than someone in publications. But at the last minute, the director [of the organization] said—this being a very hierarchical organization—the director actually said, “I don’t understand why it’s reporting to the library. Why isn't it

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reporting to publications?” The director said that to the chief financial officer, and the CFO said it to my manager, and my manager called me into his office the day before a bunch of people were coming to interview and said, “We think it should report to publications.” And I was just furious. [laughs] I had developed the job description, the whole interview process, publications wasn’t even involved, all these people were coming in the next day and I’ve never been so angry. So I actually was able to persuade my manager to go back up the chain and explain why it should report to the library. Linda said that afterwards some of her peer managers told her that getting her manager to change his mind was “practically a miracle.” She “considered leaving if he didn’t change his mind,” she was so angry at his unwillingness to “make waves“: He did have the possibility of saying [to the director], “Oh no, publications and the library have worked it out and they all agree it should report to the library.” He preferred to just sort of roll over. . . . So it was his desire not to make any waves that I was able to persuade him that he should make waves. So he went back up and said, “No, it will report to the library.” Convincing her management to give the web content manager position to the library was for Linda an important accomplishment, one that advanced her mission to transform a traditional technical library into a modern information agency: I was really pleased that we succeeded in getting that position to come into the library. There was actually a lot of political negotiating to finally cause that to happen. Linda knew the importance of understanding power relations in an organization and how to communicate her needs within this context.8 Gender relations. Linda has worked in predominately male research and technology environments since leaving the public library in 1984. Her accounts indicate she is aware of gender relations in the workplace. She understands that being a woman affects how people think of you. For example, she referred to her frustration about not being listened to in meetings, which she attributed to being female.

8 Earlier in her interview Linda had responded that, for her, the most important thing to do to advance or get promoted, “is trying to understand the language of people who have power over you. And understand how to convey what you do in language they can understand.”

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I certainly am sometimes frustrated. Even recently I was on a team with my peers developing a proposal to change some HR practices. . . . I felt that my peers listened more respectfully to a person I view as almost an idiot than they did to me and continually interrupted me. But she feels that she has earned the respect of the scientists with whom she has worked over the years: I really do think I have been extremely respected, surprisingly well respected despite [being ignored in meetings]. I really am still grateful and proud that I’ve earned the respect of people like . . . some of those early Internet people that are still corresponding with me. She mentioned that “you learn how to deal with” the primary male environment “of Ph.D.’s in physics.” One way she does that is by speaking rapidly: And I actually think one of the reasons I speak so quickly has to do with just getting in what I have to say in a male environment. So at least I can get whatever I’m thinking out onto the table. While Linda recognizes that self-promotion of one’s competencies and abilities is necessary to let people know you want certain male-identified positions, she also uses gendered assumptions in the work environment to her advantage.9 I do think that being a woman does certainly affect people imagining you in certain [male-identified] positions and . . . if you really want to get them you have to push yourself out there. It just won't occur to people. Being a library manager is relatively traditional, but as soon as you leave that, I think it gets harder. And people do underestimate you and you can use that to your advantage. I really don’t mind being underestimated as long as I can get what I want done. In essence Linda looks at gender relations in the organization strategically, taking into account the inherent power differential and using it to make better decisions. And like I said, I don’t mind being underestimated. That’s a pretty powerful position to be in. . . . You can actually say things that sound incredibly naïve but which are important to bring up. Really important. I do that all the time. It’s just the most obvious things people are generally scared to mention sometimes. And you can sound really stupid bringing them up, but I think later you realize that if you don’t bring it up you’ll make a really bad decision.

9 See also chapter 4, subsection Gender Relations.

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Linda does not think that “being a librarian has that much of a downside” in “the intensely research and development organizations” in which she has worked— “the libraries are in some ways core to doing R&D.” Yet at the same time she acknowledged that the libraries are sometimes overlooked as an information resource, resulting in “lost money and duplication of effort” either in the development process or in the purchasing of costly information-technology systems. For example, she reported that the library had been overlooked in the purchasing of two expensive document management systems that turned out badly, costs that could have been avoided had they been part of the project: The IT department has just run through two systems they purchased that they thought would be document management systems. And they don’t do it. You could’ve figured that out with just a little research. . . . They wasted many man-hours trying to customize them to a solution they weren't really designed for. I think that had we been part of the process, we could’ve helped that not happen. Now we are part of the process, by the way. That the library is now “part of the process” is indicative of Linda’s proactive response to this situation. Nevertheless, the fact that, in Linda’s words, their “input wasn’t solicited soon enough” could be seen as an example of marginalization of librarianship in a gendered organization. Professional identity. Linda considers herself a manager “of certain kinds of delivery of information” rather than either a librarian or information professional. She differentiates manager from librarian in terms of level of service delivery—i.e., she manages the people who provide information to their customers, rather than providing the information herself: I suppose it’s the distinction between being a factory worker and a factory manager. And I’ve also managed other things and I know that I can so my identity has become that of a manager. I feel like it’s of information related things. Her values also incorporate the perspective of a manager: I believe in honesty and basing decisions on really good information . . . and furthering people’s professions and making sure they don’t feel

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inadequate in the eyes of the customer or in their own eyes. I really do believe strongly that people should have self-respect and not have that violated, but you sometimes have to work with people to help them understand who they are and what they need to do to have some of the skills they need. Like many other participants, Linda is less concerned about labels than what she and her staff can contribute to the organization. She believes she can provide excellent service by developing excellence in her people, defining success as making people that I work with be productive and enjoy their work and understand the value of their work and have the skills they need to do a really terrific job and get the recognition they deserve. When asked whether she would have gotten a master’s degree in library science, if she “could do it all over again,” Linda replied in the affirmative. She thinks, however, that the degree itself, because she got it so long ago, is irrelevant, but that the “concepts and service orientation things” are important: It’s primarily those human contacts and contact with the institution that has been important to me. . . . The content of the material I studied is probably the least important thing.

Reflections on Linda’s story The predominant themes in Linda Jacobs’ work narrative are Theme 3 (emphasis on teamwork, cooperation and relationship building);10 Theme 5 (an individualistic, competency-based response to situations of undervaluation); Theme 6 (professional identity as situational and work directed); and Theme 7 (content management as a jurisdictional niche). Linda represents the librarian-educated information professional who seeks out and embraces new technological tools to support her organization’s mission and accomplish its goals. Like Janet Logan, she was an early user of the Internet who understood its potential for revolutionizing librarianship and information-

10 Unlike Louise Mayfield or Janet Logan who valued teamwork, cooperation and relationship building rather than conflict and competition (Theme 3), Linda does not avoid conflict when it is part of doing business—i.e., of managing her library to further the mission and goals of her organization.

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management functions. She actively promoted the Internet for information- management and content applications within the special library community. Unlike Janet, she is not part of a community of practice of specialized subject librarians. Whereas Janet draws strength from her astronomy-librarian reference group, Linda is more independent and more instrumental in her approach to information management. Linda was hired by her current organization for both her technological expertise and library-management abilities to modernize a traditional sci-tech research library. She is both strategic and tactical, using the process of team-based management to accomplish her own goals as well as the goals of the team. She places high value on building relationships and working in cross-functional teams with people in other departments in the various organizations in which she has worked (Theme 3).11 She knows that she contributes value to the teams on which she has served, and she is not reluctant to promote either her own competencies or the competencies of her staff within her organization (Theme 5). Her success in creating the web content manager position and convincing top management that it should report to the library is a visible statement to the organization at large that she is succeeding in her goal of transforming a traditional technical library into a modern information agency. Her account of this event incorporates three interrelated themes: (a) she is carving out a niche in content management in her organization by creating a web content manager position that reports to her (Theme 7); (b) she is addressing through her own actions the implied undervaluation of librarianship as a modern information profession expressed in the reaction of the organization’s director as to why the position should report to the library and not to publications (Theme 5); and (c) she is working as a member of a cross-functional team to update the organization’s web presence and collaborating

11 Linda mentioned that she has kept alive these relationships through email contact throughout her career.

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with the head of the publications department to develop the position description and reporting responsibilities (Theme 3). On the surface this event looks like an example of a jurisdictional dispute involving the library and another information agency, the publications department. But it is multidimensional as it also incorporates the devaluation of librarianship as a “modern” information profession through the reactions of the director, who wonders why the new position of web content manager should not report to publications (Did he not understand Linda’s justification for the position reporting to the library? Did he stereotype library services?) This is not a conflict between two or three information units fighting for control but a conflict within a bureaucratic hierarchy, where assumptions may have been made by people at the top about what libraries are and what they do; and because they have power, their decisions are not challenged by people at lower levels who may have a better understanding of the situation. Linda has worked in predominantly male environments since 1984. She is aware of gender relations and uses the condition of “being underestimated”—as a woman and as a librarian-identified professional—to her advantage. By so doing she manipulates the gender subtext both strategically and tactically in these organizational environments to accomplish her personal and organizational goals. Linda employs an individualistic, competency-based response to gender relations that could otherwise constrain her opportunities for advancement within her organization. Manager-modality participants most closely conform to the traditional (male) concept of career progression, at the other end of a career-progression continuum from participants in the found-my-spot or family-first modalities. Yet Linda is not interested so much in moving up a promotional career ladder than in moving into positions that provide greater responsibility and opportunities for growth. Her career moves appear more strategic than those of participants in other career modalities. Her professional identity is situational, crossing the boundary between direct service and management. What she is called is secondary to the work she does as manager of a 30+ person information agency that just happens to be called a “library”

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(Theme 6). She considers herself a manager rather than a librarian or an information professional because she manages the people who provide library-based information services, rather than providing these services herself.

Marty Roberts: Multiple Positions Modality

Marty Roberts is one of six participants in the multiple-positions career modality. This modality is characterized by movement within various types of librarianship as well as movement into and out of other information-related work. Participants in the multiple-positions career modality have held on average 4.5 positions within the past 10 years, substantially more than the average of 2.8 positions held by the participants as a whole. These participants have relocated more often and are more likely to be childless than participants in the other four career modalities. With an average age of 48 they are tied with the family-first-modality participants as the “youngest” modality. Marty received a BA in philosophy-religion and English in 1979. After college she worked in radio for several years. She entered library school in 1981, receiving her MLS degree in 1983. She began her professional career in information work at a multinational industrial corporation, first as a computer software training coordinator, then as a business systems analyst. In 1989 she became supervisor of the corporation’s business support library. She began using the Internet in 1991 or 1992 as part of the corporate network.12 In 1993 she relocated to another city where she was hired as the research librarian for a financial services firm; two years later she became the project manager for a new information services subsidiary. She left the company in 1998 to form her own independent information consultancy. In 2000 she taught several distance-education courses at an MLS-degree granting university as a member of the adjunct faculty. In 2001 she began a two-year full-time appointment as

12 It is not known whether the company was connected to the Internet via the NSFNET or through an early commercial service.

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a visiting instructor while continuing her consultancy. She was 44 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted and would be considered mid-career. Table 7.4 lists the major features of Marty’s work history.

Table 7.4 Marty Roberts’ Work History Age at interview 44 (mid-career) Marital / family status Unmarried, no children Undergraduate major Philosophy and Religion Year (age) graduated from college 1979 (age 22) Year (age) of MLS degree 1983 (age 26) Year (age) first used Internet 1992 (age 35) Number of positions, 1991-2001 6 Organizational environment,1991 Type of organization For-profit corporation Number of employees 26,000 Management structure of library unit One-professional library (“solo” librarian) Subject focus Business Organizational environment, 2001 Type of organization Sole proprietor Number of employees 1 Management structure of library unit Not in library or information center (information consultant) Subject focus Business Salary Not provided Professional identity Both librarian and information professional Would seek MLS again Yes

As an independent information consultant, Marty does business research, including background research on companies or industries; competitive intelligence; intellectual property research; and research to support litigation. Her product is generally a customized report, ranging from a few pages to over 100 pages. Her clients are both regional and located elsewhere in the United States. Her consultancy has its own website, and she runs her business via the Internet, using it for gathering information, connecting to fee-based services, communicating with clients, and delivering information (and invoices) to them. Since April 2001 her company has

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been what Marty refers to as a “virtual company”: independent of place, it exists wherever she happens to be located at the time. She has chosen not to have employees; instead, she relies on sub-contractors located throughout the world for specialized information research. In addition to her work as a consultant, Marty writes articles and columns for practitioner-oriented LIS periodicals. She also teaches courses in business information resources, competitive intelligence and related areas for an ALA- accredited LIS program at a nearby university.

Marty’s Story Becoming a special librarian. Marty held seven professional positions in information-related work between 1983 when she earned her MLS degree and 1998 when she formed her own information consultancy. She worked for a multinational industrial corporation (hereafter referred to as company #1 in this narrative) for 10 years and a financial services firm (referred to as company #2) for four and a half years. Although she had always wanted to be a librarian, Marty did not work in or manage a library immediately upon completion of her MLS. She was initially hired as an information systems training coordinator by company #1 because of her experience as a teaching assistant for several library computer classes while in graduate school. Only after she had been there six years did she engage in any form of library work. How she got her first job with this company was, according to Marty, “a very strange event.” She had gone home for a funeral, and a friend of the family asked her what she would be doing after she got her MLS. She told him that she didn’t know, but that she would be looking for a job. He called a friend of his who had a computer program going on at a local youth center for children, and it was staffed by volunteers and they were looking for funding to make it a bigger program. And so I ended up having a very informal meeting with that person. I gave him my resume.

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A few months later she received a call from someone in the information systems division of the multinational corporation, who asked her whether she was interested in interviewing for a job. So the guy who I met with at this youth organization, his partner in that endeavor was a manager for the information services division [of company #1], and he got my resume and he held it until he saw an opening, then he circulated it. And so they called, flew me up, I interviewed all day. . . . So it was really kind of a very strange event that I got that opportunity. Marty said that she accepted the position without knowing the job description or the salary “because I knew who I would work for and what he told me sounded cool.” Although she did not actively seek this position, she was glad she made the decision to work for company #1. [Company #1’s] information center was really unique in the business world back in 1983. They had a group of six people in the corporate data center who focused on end-user computing back when end-user computing was on an IBM mainframe. And that’s the group I went to work for. . . . So I did end-user support, problem solving, end-user training. I wrote computer courses that we gave, which may have been four hour or three day classes. Word processing, spreadsheets, SAS. I did training both in the [headquarters] area and plant locations. She considers being offered and then taking this position a key event. It was “happenstance,” a term she used to characterize in general the key events in her career. You know, I think the key events have been happenstance. . . . I wasn’t looking to work for [company #1]. I never would have applied to [company #1]. And so that series of events that got me there, I think was very key for me. It took me, I think, in a really good direction. And one I definitely don’t regret. Marty moved to the company’s international division as a business systems analyst in 1987. Working with the sales and marketing people for the division, she supported international sales offices in the use of a global marketing information

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system. In 1989 she was approached by someone in corporate marketing who knew she had “a background in libraries” to manage the moribund business library.13 Well, it turns out corporate marketing was going to take over the business library . . . the internal library. The library was unstaffed, had no budget, but had a collection. And it was housed with the technical library at [company #1]. And so I [was] transferred to corporate marketing to become the supervisor of the business support library. Marty had not worked in a library since 1979, when she was an undergraduate. My last library experience, actually working physically in a library, was 1979—working in technical services in a college library. I had gotten my library degree, but I had not worked professionally in any library, and so now I’m a supervisor of a library. I had to hire staff, build services. My first job was to pack and move the library. . . . And I did that for four and a half years. I actually moved the library three times. Looking for a different library experience and to be closer to someone she was involved with at the time, Marty relocated to another city in 1993. She was hired by a financial services firm (company #2) as their first “research librarian” to develop information resources in support of the firm’s equity analysts. She remained in this position for two years. Developing a new information product. Marty also wrote and evaluated proposals for the firm’s owners on new business ideas, including proposals for information products, while serving as research librarian. In 1995 she left this position to become project manager for an online search system based on natural language processing, working in a new subsidiary that was formed to develop and market the product. Marty participated in the creation of the new subsidiary. The principal owner . . . was approached by someone who had natural language processing technology and was looking for funding. And so, because of my background, I was in on the first meeting with that and then became involved with this new business idea that became [subsidiary]. So most of my time at [company #2] was really with

13 This was similar to Linda’s experience, where the corporate library had been neglected and they upgraded the position to require a professional librarian: both corporations had moribund library services units: Marty was recruited; with Linda it was a competitive position.

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[subsidiary]. . . . It was marketed to a different set of external clients than the financial advisory clients. She said that they wanted to make the technology function as an online system they could develop into their own online retrieval system, as well as perhaps market some of the technology to people like Dialog or Lexis Nexis or Dow Jones. Marty considers the experience of working in a company that was trying to develop an online search system another key event in her career. It was interesting work with interesting people, and it combined her technical expertise with her library experience: “It gave me a different view of the online systems that I think will serve me well for a long time.” Although she found her work on the project interesting and a wonderful learning experience, she also described the company as “dysfunctional” and found her reporting relationship “confusing.” During the two and a half years she worked for the subsidiary she held three different positions: for the first six months she was “project manager,” then she was “database product manager,” and finally for the last ten months she was “director of intelligence” for a new competitive intelligence department. The entire time that she worked for the subsidiary, however, she remained a headquarters employee because the company president wanted access to her and her information-gathering abilities. This placed her in an awkward position because she felt her allegiance was with the president of the holding company, even though the work she did was for the subsidiary. They would not transfer me over to the other company because [company #2 president] and his right hand person wanted me to be able to act on their behalf or to be able to give them information. So I had a very odd relationship. If [company #2 president] wanted to know what was going on and wanted to ask me or his right hand man person, my allegiance was more with them . . . because they were the investors. Than with the people I actually reported to. It is likely, given this dual reporting relationship, that the CEO of the subsidiary might not have trusted her because of her connection with the company president and his second in command.

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Although she values her experience in developing the new online search system, Marty has bitter feelings toward company #2. She resents the fact that she did not benefit financially from being on the ground floor of the new company. She also feels that she was passed over for promotion into top management, and that this is “part of the reason [she] left” the company in 1998. Generally people who come in on the ground floor of a start up do very well. So I came in literally—I was there at the first meeting. . . . I worked with the lawyers, I worked on the business plan, the milestones document, made lots of trips . . . to meet with prospective customers, partners, all that happy stuff. And financially, I did squat. And so, being in on the ground floor didn’t buy me anything. . . . I think it . . . should have benefited me differently than it did. [SL: There was an opportunity to move up, but you weren’t given that opportunity?] Um, right. A layer formed above me instead of me being included in that layer. Marty’s story of how she made the decision to go out on her own as an independent information consultant is presented below. Breaking away. By 1997 Marty had come to the conclusion that company #2 was a dysfunctional organization, and she knew that she “needed to leave.” But she did not feel she could leave that abruptly. She had invested a lot of time and effort into making the natural language processing system functional and did not want to abandon the project or her colleagues. In addition, the subsidiary had recently “started a new department that would do competitive intelligence” for external clients and she was “a key person in that area.” This event, however, gave Marty the wherewithal to leave because she “learned how to build a business” while still working for company #2. Here is the account of her “aha moment” when it all came together for her. And I also learned how to build a business. Because [subsidiary] decided they wanted to do competitive intelligence for clients, so we went through the process of trying to develop this new business. And we had to go through all the business stuff of how much will this cost, what do we need for phones, and online services, doing somewhat of a business plan, although probably not organized as well as a business plan, but also the cost structure. And I remember sitting in a meeting one day and I remember thinking, “They’re teaching me how to start a

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business. This is so cool!” . . . [SL: An aha! moment?] It was an aha! moment. At that point she started the process of planning her own information business. And so I started keeping notes. I’d go home at night, got a notebook and wrote things down, made lists of potential clients, people I’d contact, things I would do, costs of different things, and even though I never did a business plan, it’s like all the things you’d put into a business plan. And . . . because of turmoil in the area, waited until January of 1998 to give notice. And then started my own business. Marty was ready to go out on her own. She could apply what she had learned at company #2 about starting a business to her own information consultancy. I think everyone who left would say the same thing.14 We learned a lot. So even though it was like the worst company to work for, we all walked out with great knowledge and I made wonderful contacts through that company. Marty did not leave company #2 on unfavorable terms. At the time of her interview, they were one of her clients. I actually got [company #2] as a client because what I was doing for them, I was the only person doing it. And so when I walked away, they had projects that still needed to be done for their clients. And so I became a sub-contractor. In 2001 Marty decided that she “wanted to go virtual for a while.” Through this action she was not only breaking away from any remaining organizational structure (she had no employees, preferring to subcontract work she could not do herself), she was also leaving behind location, becoming independent of place. During her virtual period, she conducted business exclusively via mobile telephone and the Internet. Since early April, I’ve been traveling. And my company has been a virtual company. It exists wherever I am and my clients don’t know that. So the Internet has been really important to me because that’s how they generally communicate to me or they call my cell phone and they don’t realize that’s a cell phone number. So I could be just about anywhere and the phone will ring and they’ll want to talk about

14 Marty mentioned that 32 people left that year, about one-third of the company.

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something or I’ll get an email request. . . . By virtual, I’m saying that wherever I am, my company is. So I’m not in one spot. . . . It’s like telecommuting on a different scale. Marty was also able to continue her LIS adjunct faculty work because the distance-education courses she was teaching were, like her business, managed via the Internet. “You have to enjoy the hunt!” Marty succinctly defines career success in terms of job satisfaction and collegial relationships. [SL: What is success to you? What do you think a successful career is?] Liking what I do, enjoying who I work for and who I work with.” Her conceptualization of what it means to be a successful information professional is captured by her response to an interview question about how she developed competencies in her staff at the business support library. In the following excerpt, she moves from describing the inherent qualities she looked for in her staff and students to what motivates her: What I looked for in staff were people who were curious. Who were curious about finding information and wanted to give good customer service. And if they were curious and capable of learning and wanted to give good customer service, then I could teach them how to do good searches and deliver information to their clients. I talk to students about enjoying the hunt. You have to enjoy the hunt. And if you don’t—for what I do, if I don’t enjoy the hunt, then I can't do it. This account implies that Marty relishes the process as much as the outcome, that she wants it to be hands-on, rather than managing others to accomplish the work. She likes to provide information services and information products to clients contractually rather than working within a corporate structure. Marty advanced in her career through developing expertise—by keeping her knowledge current to stay valuable—rather than by playing the corporate advancement game. She initially responded to the question, “What are some of the things you did to advance or get promoted?”, by stating that “I think I just keep learning.” As she continued, it became obvious that Marty neither enjoys nor wants to play the corporate advancement game:

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And so in a corporation, you can get promotions by—it’s not always just knowledge. It’s who do you have working for you, how many people work for you, what level are those people at. And then if you play the game right, and I wasn’t trying to play a game, it just happened [at company #1] . . . you can push yourself up by who you bring in underneath you. At [company #2] . . . people got promoted by screaming a lot. . . . and I am not a person to scream a lot to get noticed, so I didn't get noticed and didn't get the promotions I deserved. . . . I understand the game and I can play it. Whether or not I want to play it is different. She then returned to the focus of the question—what has she done to advance in her career? For me, over the years, it’s been—and I think about with my own business and other things I’ve done—it’s just been staying on top of things and being able to keep my knowledge current to stay valuable. Marty also sees herself as a risk taker, something she perceived early in her career. I think one thing I learned from a couple bosses was taking risks and realizing that I’m a risk taker. . . . Didn’t realize I was. I mean, in grad school, I took a new position without even knowing the job description or the salary. From the time she graduated from library school, Marty has taken risks regarding her career. By abandoning the bureaucratic organization and taking risks she exhibits the qualities of an entrepreneur—as well as an information professional who enjoys the hunt. Gender relations. Marty did not think that “being a woman” had affected her career as an information professional except at company #2, which she described as “an old-boy, male-dominated firm” where “being a woman was detrimental.” She gave as an example her lower salary in comparison to one of her colleagues. This account, first presented in chapter 4 and summarized below, concerned her discovery after she left the company that a male colleague had earned a substantially higher salary for similar work.15

15 See Gender Relations subsection of chapter 4.

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And we got talking about salaries. And I told him what I made . . . and he was shocked. Because he knew I should’ve been making a lot more. . . . He knew what he was making and what he was doing and what I was doing when I told him what I was making. Yet Marty, in response to a direct question about workplace discrimination, did not feel that she had ever experienced gender discrimination in her career.16 This is curious given her accounts about gender-based salary differentials, being passed over for promotion into top management, and not benefiting financially from her work for the company #2 startup venture, events that could have been affected by gender relations in the organization.17 As first posited in chapter 4, her negative response to the question about gender discrimination suggests a reluctance to acknowledge gender as a constraining factor in her career progression at company #1 and a general ambivalence about the role of gender in her career. A follow-up email from Marty regarding a posting she had made on the web-based discussion forum during the second phase of the research18 provide additional data to support this interpretation. Marty wrote: I don’t think of my work as being “gendered.” Nor do I see lots of gender-related issues in what I do. I do know that more women become librarians and more men go into IT. I see that in the school19 and in the workforce. I know that women generally get paid less. But in how we practice, I don’t see gender. High-tech competencies. Marty’s experience as a teaching assistant for library computer classes helped her land her first professional position in 1983. She stated that her 20-year history with computers had helped her when she was working at company #2 when she was loading content into their online product. In the following account the programmers she was supervising did not understand the

16 The interview question was: “Throughout your work history and all your different work experiences, would you say you’ve ever experienced gender or age discrimination?” 17 Marty’s reporting relationship, in which she remained a headquarters company employee while reporting to the startup company management, could also have been a contributing factor. 18 The discussion forum took place eight months after the telephone interviews were completed. See chapter 2, Phase 2 Data Collection: Web-Based Discussion Forum subsection, for more information. 19 Marty is referring to the university where she teaches LIS classes in this excerpt.

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sequential nature of the newswire content that had to be loaded into the online databases—it simply did not make sense to them because they did not have the experience working with computers with small storage capacity, or with the Associated Press wire service machines she used when she worked in radio. What I saw when we’d load tapes of news wires made sense to me. It didn’t make sense to programmers. Why would you have a five minute summary and repeat it every hour or your headlines every hour? . . . It doesn’t make sense because now we have computers and can store the information and you can search it without repeating things. But if you go back to the old machines with paper spewing out the back and you rip it off and read it or trash it or hang it on the wall, you have to keep repeating. . . . And so knowing how those things looked 20 years ago or how you search Dialog on a paper CRT or all those different things, I can look at the data streams now and they make more sense to me. . . . I knew the history. Marty reflected about her career in terms of her technological expertise and experience, from using teletype machines, to providing end-user support in the mainframe era, to exchanging information and ideas over the Internet in the early 1990s at company #1, and loading content into online databases in 1996: I did hit the computer side very early on. And I’ve been using computers for almost 20 years. I’m old in computer age. And I do think about the technology differently and perhaps do some things differently. Professional identity. As an information consultant, Marty defines herself by what she can do for her clients rather than identifying herself as a librarian or an information professional. [SL: How do you conceptualize what you are today?] I tell people I’m an information consultant. . . . I help companies have information for intelligent decisions. And what does that mean? That means competitive intelligence, business research, intellectual property research. I can rattle off all these things that may be of interest to the person I’m talking to. I rarely will say I’m a librarian. Because it doesn’t mean anything to my clients. She will let her prospective clients know she is a librarian if they happen to mention it in conversation. But she emphasized that it is not the fact that she is a librarian-

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educated information professional that is important, but what she can do for her clients: Sometimes I’ll have people say, “Oh, a librarian would be really good at that.” Then it’s like, “Well, I am a librarian.” But it’s not something I—What I’ve found over the years is that people don’t care about what my degree is or anything like that. As long as I can tell them what I can do and how they’ll benefit, then that’s what matters. Marty tells her library school students that she had always wanted to be a librarian, that she fell in love with libraries in the fifth grade. Looking back, though, she said: Honestly, as I look back, I don’t think I had a real good clue about what library science really was. Because all I saw were school and academic libraries. But I knew I liked working around information. The concept of “working around information” may be a key to understanding Marty’s professional identity. She sees herself as both librarian and information professional: as a librarian because of the customer service orientation and high work ethic and as an information professional because “you’ve broadened your choices . . . no one knows what an information professional is.” Yet she is uncomfortable with these labels, preferring to define herself by what she can do for her clients rather than what “profession” she belongs to. Her professional identity is fluid—she likes working around information; she enjoys the hunt. Marty sees herself as a consultant who provides specialized information service to clients, but what she calls herself depends on the situation, the client, her environment. Although Marty said that she still would have gotten the MLS degree if she could do it all over again, she found it difficult to respond to the question, “How has being identified as a librarian figured in or affected your career as an information professional?” Unlike Linda Jacobs, who felt that in scientific research environment being a librarian did not have much of a downside, Marty, coming from a corporate business environment, simply could not answer the question: “I don’t know if it has, she said. “I don’t know.” This is not surprising, given Marty’s ambivalence about her professional identification and her belief that labels are not important—that it’s what

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you can do for your clients that counts. That libraries and librarians are not as highly valued in business as they are in scientific research environments may also have influenced her response (Koenig, 2000; 2002). As her interview wound down, she ruminated about her career: I tell you, one thing I realize—and I have a cousin who points this out to me every once in awhile—is that I’ve had a very strange career. . . . And I do think about the technology differently and perhaps do some things differently.

Reflections on Marty’s Story The predominant themes in Marty Roberts’ work narrative are Theme 1 (career progression conceptualized as enhancement and growth rather than advancement); Theme 4 (inarticulating gender relations in the workplace); Theme 5 (an individualistic, competency-based response to situations of undervaluation); and Theme 6 (professional identity as situational and work related). Marty has held six different positions in two organizations since 1991, eight since 1981 when she received her MLS degree. None of her job changes were the result of downsizing or layoffs. Marty’s reasons for changing jobs usually involved enhancement and growth rather than advancement into higher level positions (Theme 1). Although she left the investment services firm in 1998 because she had been passed over for promotion and not rewarded financially for being part of a start-up company, she left not to move to another position but to strike out on her own, to become an information consultant. This was another opportunity for her to gain valuable experience running her own business using knowledge she had gained at the organization she had just left.20 Marty appears to be ambivalent about the role of gender in her career progression and reluctant to acknowledge gender bias at her previous organization.

20 According to research conducted by the Center for Women’s Business Research (2003), “the growth of women’s entrepreneurship is one of the defining economic and social trends in the U.S. over the past decade”; 23% of the women in the study reported that “they left job situations in which they were limited by a ‘glass ceiling’” (para. 2).

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Although her accounts indicate otherwise, she does not feel that she has experienced gender discrimination during her career (Theme 4). Chase (1995) refers to an unwillingness to situate gender as a central issue in women’s career accounts, which she found in her narrative analysis of women public school superintendents, as discursive disjunction: “the disjunction between discourse about professional work and discourse about inequality as a significant cultural phenomenon shaping professional women’s work narratives and self-understandings” (p. 178). She left a gendered bureaucratic organization for the independence of her own information consultancy. When she “went virtual” in 2001, she also left behind location, becoming independent of place as well. Like Louise Mayfield she opted out, choosing instead to work in non-bureaucratic work environments where gender relations are personalized rather than embedded in organizational structure. Marty’s strengths include her risk-taking and entrepreneurial approach to her career. She is supremely confident in her own abilities as an independent information consultant in providing specialized information services to her clients (Theme 5). When she became an information entrepreneur in 1998 she made herself a niche outside the structure of bureaucratic organization. Her professional identity is fluid: what she calls herself depends on the situation, the needs of her clients, and her clients’ organizational environments. In a sense she is a professional without strong professional identification but who at the same embodies professionalism in the original sense of the term (Theme 7). Like Linda Jacobs, Marty left a dysfunctional company in the mid-1990s, but she chose a different path. Whereas Linda became manager of a large technical library at another bureaucratic organization, Marty wanted to be independent, make her own rules, rely on her own competencies and apply what she had learned to help outside clients (including her former company) with their business information needs. She also wanted to try out some new things—like writing and teaching—outside the confines of bureaucratic constraints. Linda, on the other hand, relished the challenges of working within the bureaucratic structure, of working the system to her advantage,

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to accomplish her goals. Whereas Linda likes to “manage,” Marty likes the hands-on aspects of information services provision—she enjoys the hunt. Marty thinks about librarianship differently than do most of the other research participants. She does not consider an MLS essential to be a professional librarian, yet she teaches future MLS-degreed librarians in an ALA-accredited LIS program. She personifies the ambiguous professional identity of a librarian-educated information professional in mid-career who has chosen to work both inside and outside of libraries and inside and outside of organizational structure. As mentioned earlier, the concept of “working around information” –of enjoying the hunt—may be a key to understanding Marty’s professional identity. She sees herself as both librarian and information professional but is uncomfortable with labels. At mid-career Marty is experimenting with multiple ways to work around information—as a consultant not tied to either organization or location, as an LIS educator, and as a writer for several LIS magazines.

Summary and Discussion

Chapter 7 has presented the career narratives of four research participants— Louise Mayfield, Janet Logan, Linda Jacobs, and Marty Roberts—each one representing one of four career modalities first introduced in chapter 4. The career stories of these four women are interpreted within the context of themes identified in the previous three chapters and the theoretical perspectives of Abbott (1988) and Acker (1990). These career narratives lend credence to Riessman’s (1993) observation that “gender inequalities . . . and other practices of power that may be taken for granted by individual speakers” can be explicated through analysis of individuals’ stories: “Narrators speak in terms that seem natural, but we can analyze how culturally and historically contingent these terms are” (p. 5).

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In her narratives of women public school superintendents Chase (1995) concluded that a common thread is that “these superintendents employ narrative strategies that partially dismantle and partially preserve the individualistic, gender- and race-neutral character of the discursive realm of professional work” (p. xiii, emphasis in original). She also found that these women superintendents “devote themselves primarily to their professional commitments and manage to deal with the persistent inequalities they face in ways that do not distract them from their work” (p. xiii). The four women librarians whose work narratives are presented in this chapter can be seen to employ similar “narrative strategies” in their career progression accounts. Although the narrative analysis presented in this chapter is more superficial than Chase’s speech and discourse analysis of her women superintendents, it appears that these women librarians display similar actions. Chase further asserts that “the larger story is about individual solutions to the collective problem of inequality” (p. xiii). In this study the individual solutions of these librarians to the collective problem of inequality can be summarized as follows: 1. Louise Mayfield has chosen to work in a small family-like company where gender relations are personalized rather than embedded in organizational bureaucracy. 2. Marty Roberts left a dysfunctional (gendered) organization to open her own one-person information consultancy where she establishes her own rules for the conduct of business. 3. Linda Jacobs uses the condition of being underestimated in her (gendered) organization to accomplish her personal and organizational goals—i.e., she employs an individualistic, competency-based response to gender relations that could otherwise constrain her actions. 4. Although Janet Logan does not acknowledge gender as a factor in her career, her reference group is not necessarily her organization but other astronomy librarians, a highly specialized group of librarians who

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incorporate the foundational values of the niche profession of special librarianship. Chapter 7 has presented the career narratives of four representative research participants within an interpretive framework. Next, the final chapter presents the conclusions and discusses the implications of this exploratory research on the career patterns and career progression experiences of 20 women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Introduction

This chapter presents the conclusions and discusses the implications of this exploratory research on the career patterns and career progression experiences of women librarians who were early adopters of the Internet. It is comprised of five sections. The first section summarizes the research findings. This section is followed by an interpretation of the findings based on the two theoretical perspectives that inform the study. The next section is a discussion of some methodological issues identified during data collection and analysis. This is followed by suggestions for future research. The chapter ends with concluding remarks.

Summary of Findings

The findings presented below provide insight on how 20 high-tech women special librarians experience and make sense of their work and their careers in terms of five processes, framed within Abbott’s (1988) conceptual model of a contested information task area and Acker’s (1990) theory of gendered organizations: 1. modes of professional practice, 2. career progression, 3. jurisdictional conflict and competition, 4. undervaluation as librarians, and 5. professional identity.

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These processes were investigated in this study through three research questions, the findings to which are presented in chapters 4 through 6, respectively.1 In the section below these findings are summarized in terms of the five processes listed above. This section ends with brief descriptions of seven interrelated themes identified through an analysis of these findings.

Modes of Professional Practice Five inductively constructed career pattern modalities describe the modes of professional practice exhibited by the participants in this study. These modalities, summarized below, form the basis for addressing issues arising from the study’s theoretical framework and the larger research problem—the marginalization of librarianship in the information age. 1. The family-first modality is a pattern of career activity based on family considerations rather than personal career advancement. The balance of family and work is paramount: family considerations are the major factor in work-related decisions. 2. The main feature of the found-my-spot modality is a strong emphasis on personal job satisfaction, combined with longevity in the organization or position, an emphasis on growth and enhancement within the job rather than ascension up a career ladder. 3. Manager-modality participants conceptualized themselves as managers first and librarians or information professionals second, indicating a shift in self-image and responsibilities that reflects management and administration rather than direct service. The average salary for the women in this group was the highest of any of the career modalities.

1 The research questions are: (1) What are the career patterns of high-tech women special librarians?; (2) How do high-tech women special librarians experience the undervaluation of the library profession in competition with other information professions?; and (3) How have the work experiences of these librarians affected their professional identity? See chapter 1, Research Questions section, for a listing of the subquestions for each of the three main questions.

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4. The multiple-positions modality is characterized by the presence of one or both of the following career elements, regardless of other factors: (a) having held at least one professional position in a field outside librarianship, or (b) having held a variety of library- or information-related positions over the course of one’s career. 5. The undervalued modality characterizes participants whose accounts provided evidence of structural organizational indicators of undervaluation (e.g., low salary, targeted downsizing, or reduced budgets in comparison with other units in the information task area) or who had made specific comments indicating they were undervalued or underappreciated. The average salary for this group was the lowest of the modalities. It should be pointed out that participants do not necessarily seek out these modes of practice. These are constructions, created from participants’ own accounts of career events and choices; they incorporate greater or lesser intentionality. Whereas participants in the family-first or manager modalities may have decided to incorporate these career qualities as part of their decision making process, none intended to have a career in which their work is undervalued. These are modalities, not categories of practice, and they are fluid—an individual could (and does) incorporate the qualities of several modalities to a greater or lesser extent over the course of her career. Research findings are discussed below in terms of four focal issues of the study: career progression, jurisdictional conflict and competition, undervaluation as librarians, and professional identity.

Career Progression Participants’ perceptions of their careers. A priori assumptions about career progression were not directly reflected in participant accounts. Participants’ concepts of career progression do not conform to a career advancement model. Participants on the whole seemed to be motivated and to describe their career

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progression in terms of increases in job satisfaction, broadened opportunities for professional enhancement and learning, and recognition of their contributions to the organization, rather than by the desire to progress to higher levels of management or to measure their progress in terms of increases in salary, responsibility, power, budget, or staff size. They viewed their careers as opportunities to engage in intellectually challenging work, to contribute their expertise to further the goals of the organizations in which they work, and to balance work and family life. Most looked at their careers as librarians or information professionals as ends in themselves and not a stop on the way to something else. They chose to stay within the broadly conceptualized domain of librarianship even if they called what they did by another name. These participants could very well be replacing a male model of career progression as advancement with an alternative model of professional growth and enhancement, where career success is understood not in terms of upward mobility but in the opportunity to be engaged in fulfilling and satisfying professional work in organizations where their contributions are acknowledged. On the other hand, they could be defining success downward—i.e., not wanting to move up too far—so they do not have to acknowledge that as librarians they are limited as to how far they can go in their organizations that are not libraries. Participants in the manager modality, however, do tend to conceptualize career progression as advancement. These participants viewed their careers more strategically than most of the other participants. They looked for opportunities for advancement not so much within their own organizations in terms of advancement up a career ladder, but advancement by moving into higher-level library-related positions or positions with greater responsibilities or span of control in other organizations. Most participants did not perceive that their membership in the feminized profession of librarianship has negatively affected their career progression in the information-age workplace. There may be several reasons for this. For one thing, they may not have considered their librarian identification a career constraint because (a) they felt their high-tech information management skills made them competitive in the

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information marketplace; (b) they could move into better positions in larger library organizations with more opportunities for advancement; or (c) they did not see themselves in competition with members of other information professions, having found their niche in content management. Another reason, perhaps more likely, is that because most participants did not define career progression in terms of advancement but in terms of enhancement or growth, they were less likely to consider their title or professional label an important career factor. Identification as a librarian in the workplace simply was not relevant— it was not an issue for them. The fact that one quarter of the participants found it difficult to respond to an interview question about their identification as a librarian lends credence to this interpretation. Organizational factors affecting career progression. Three interrelated organizational factors appear to affect participants’ career progression: (a) type of library or information services unit; (b) size of the organization of which the library or information services unit is a part; and (c) size and composition (management structure) of the library or information services unit. Participants in large libraries and those who are solo librarians expressed more satisfaction with their careers than participants managing small special libraries. All three participants in the undervalued modality manage small libraries in mid-size or large organization, and they expressed the least satisfaction with their careers. Participants in the found-my-spot and family- first modalities, who expressed high levels of job satisfaction, tended to be solo librarians. Gender. Participants generally did not associate gender with their career progression, either in terms of gender relations in the workplace or work and family issues. They viewed balancing work and family life not as gender-related but as a work-related problem. Just as most did not think that being identified as a librarian had negatively affected their career progression, neither did they think that being female had negatively affected their careers. Although some participants reported instances in which being a woman was a disadvantage, they did not see themselves as

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having been discriminated against because of gender. They viewed workplace gender issues more in terms of annoyances than as career factors. It may also be the case that participants’ technological expertise mitigates gender and other structural factors as constraints on their careers.

Jurisdictional Conflict and Competition The research participants, except for the three identified as “undervalued,” did not see themselves in conflict with members of other information professions— competition for status, resources, and visibility is simply not an issue for most participants. The reasons for this may come from participants’ proactive efforts in the workplace such as developing technological expertise, carving out a niche as managers of information content, building relationships, and joining cross-functional teams. Structural factors such as reporting relationships and organizational culture could also be salient. Their perceived lack of competition with other information professionals may also stem from the value women place on relationships in their work and non-work lives. Jurisdictional control of a professional task area may be less important for these participants than sharing the responsibility for information work and contributing a unique area of expertise in information management to the enterprise. They may not see the task area as contested but as a domain to be shared where all contributors work together collaboratively to achieve their organizations’ goals. Participants in general do not appear to play the competition game: instead, they join cross- functional work teams; they collaborate with colleagues; they carve out a niche in content management and leave the information infrastructure to their peers in information-technology or information-systems units. In sum, they view the information task area as a win-win rather than zero-sum environment in their outlook and attitude. The question needs to be asked, however, as to why only the participants who are classified as “undervalued” perceive that they are in conflict-producing situations.

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The answer may have something to do with the industry sector and culture of the organizations in which they work. Corporate culture—the personality of the organization—is a key factor affecting the degree to which competition and conflict are experienced within the workplace. In organizations where competition is encouraged and in industries that are highly competitive, there are winners and losers: it can be seen as a zero-sum environment. What value is place on centralized information services in an environment where competition is encouraged and information is controlled? How does this compare to a win-win organizational environment where cooperation and information-sharing is encouraged? These are questions for future research.

Undervaluation as Librarians How do participants experience the undervaluation—the low status—of librarianship in the information domain? For the most part, they ignore it. Participants promote their individual competencies rather than their profession in the workplace. They are less concerned with what they are called than demonstrating the value they contribute to their organizations. They also leave organizations in which they feel their contributions are undervalued. Participants in the undervalued modality provided longer and more complex examples of undervaluation than participants in the other career modalities. They did not, however, generally associate these events or experiences with the undervaluation of librarianship or refer to themselves or their information-services units as being undervalued. Like participants in the other career modalities, they described their “undervalued” experiences as situations to be overcome through self-marketing, public relations, and promotion of their services to their constituencies. They seemed reluctant to label these experiences as arising from the undervaluation of their role as professional librarians in the larger work environment. It could be argued that these research participants do not directly experience the undervaluation of librarianship because of their high-tech expertise.

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Technological expertise could also explain why participants in general do not acknowledge their undervaluation as librarians in the workplace: they believe that through their marketing and public relations efforts they can make evident their technological expertise and competencies to stakeholders. Accounts from the three participants in the manager modality, for example, indicate that technological expertise may be a mitigating factor in more library-friendly organizational environments—these participants mentioned that their technological knowledge was an important factor in their being hired into the positions they held at the time of their interviews. The accounts of the undervalued participants, however, suggest that technological expertise may not be a mitigating factor in an organizational environment in which the library function is undervalued. Although technological expertise may play a role in a participant’s continued employment, analysis of undervalued participant accounts suggests that organizational culture is a primary determinant of the experienced value of library-based information services. The small special library in mid-size and large organizations may be especially vulnerable to undervaluation. The organizational units these participants manage are large enough to look like libraries—and they may carry with them the baggage of the stereotype. The talents of these special librarians may be buried within their organizations’ bureaucratic structure and the identified-with-books library stereotype. Small special libraries run the risk of obsolescence and further downsizing if their levels of funding and technical support are not sufficient to provide convenient and seamless access to the kinds of digital resources their users will soon come to expect. Participants’ accounts may indicate gaps in perception between the value they place on their libraries’ contributions to their organizations’ bottom line, the value they perceive their clientele and stakeholders place on their contributions, and the value those to whom they provide information or they report actually place on their library-information services. Since the study does not include data on the perceptions

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of persons other than the research participants, this issue cannot be explored empirically but is a question for future research.

Professional Identity Participants’ work experiences and the types of organizations where they have been employed over the course of their careers have helped to shape their identity as librarians or information professionals. Those with corporate library experience tend to identify themselves as information professionals or as both librarians and information professionals, whereas participants whose careers have been spent primarily in public agencies or not-for-profit organizations are more likely to call themselves librarians. Participants, however, do not disassociate themselves from the profession of librarianship even if they choose to identify themselves as information professionals or as managers. For most participants their professional identity remains within a broadly defined professional domain of librarianship even if they prefer to call themselves information professionals or managers of information services. Participants who refer to themselves as information professionals rather than librarians tend to define the term based on the type of information management work they do. Others expand the concept of librarian to encompass the same type of information-management functions as those who call themselves information professionals. In other words, those who call themselves librarians and those who call themselves information professionals are describing similar professional work but just labeling it differently. They may in fact be describing the same profession. One participant’s comment—that as soon as we stopped calling ourselves librarians we became ambiguous—sums up the quandary for LIS-educated professionals who consider themselves to be beyond what they think people think librarians are but who are also uncomfortable with the vague “information professional” appellation. The participants who identify themselves solely as librarians do not seem to experience this ambiguity. These participants reject the title of information

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professional because its very broadness and lack of specificity dilutes its relevance for their professional lives. They conceptually broaden the definition of librarianship to be comparable to the type of information profession that participants who call themselves both librarians and information professionals conceptualize. Some participants who consider themselves both librarians and information professionals, on the other hand, differentiate the two “professions” by asserting that librarianship is more narrowly delimited—focused on books and other printed materials, or on a building called a library. They revert to the common definition, the traditional image of librarian, as a differentiator. These participants do not relinquish the librarian title in favor of information professional because like “librarian,” “information professional” does not describe who they are professionally: it is too broad and ambiguous a term. So they combine the two concepts, defining themselves as both librarians and information professionals. It is important to note that the participants in this study have not moved into other categories of computer-based information work. Although one participant left information work altogether, none of the other participants left the broadly defined LIS field for occupations classified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as “computer and mathematical occupations” (U. S. Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d.). They may have incorporated other information functions into their work during the course of their careers, yet their accounts indicate that their core identity is with a professional domain of information content management broadly referred to as librarianship.

Themes Seven interrelated themes, summarized below, were identified from the analysis of findings presented in chapters 4 through 6. 1. Career progression as enhancement and growth, not advancement— participants’ concepts of career progression and success differ from the (male) norm;

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2. Balance of career and work life with family and home life— participants aspire to a holistic, life-centered view of work, expressed as a desire to balance family and home life with their work and career; 3. Teamwork and cooperation rather than conflict or competition— participants engage in teamwork, cooperation, and relationship building, rather than conflict or competition in the workplace; 4. “Inarticulating” gender—participants do not acknowledge gender relations in the workplace or the effects of gender on their careers; 5. Individualistic responses to undervaluation of librarianship— participants view experiences of undervaluation in the workplace as situations to be overcome through self-marketing, expanded public relations and other efforts to demonstrate the value of their services, rather than an acknowledgement of the cultural undervaluation of librarianship; 6. Professional identity as situational—participants consider the work they perform and value they contribute to be more important than their title or the name of their profession; and 7. Content management as jurisdictional niche—participants consider their area of expertise in the information domain to be that of content management (they see themselves as the “content queens” of the information domain).

Theoretical Implications

This research is informed by two theoretical perspectives: Abbott’s jurisdictional conflict model of professions occupying a task area, and Acker’s theory of the gendered organization. There are, therefore, two components to this section on theoretical implications. First, the findings are examined in the context of Abbott’s jurisdictional conflict model. Second, the findings are examined in the context of

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Acker’s theory of the gendered organization. The two theories provide an interpretive framework for the findings presented in chapters 3 through 7 and summarized above.

Interpreting the Findings through the Lens of Abbott Abbott (1988) focused on professions in the information task area to examine the effect of external sources of system disturbances created by new technologies. He concluded from his historical analysis of the information domain that as of 1970 no single group was capable of general jurisdiction: that the task area “continues to be extremely permeable . . . with careers following wildly diverging patterns” (p. 245). In 1998 Abbott reexamined librarianship and found it existing in a “wildly dynamic world” (1998, p. 431): “To think about the future of librarianship . . . is to think about the likely evolution of librarians’ work and to ask what the consequences of that evolution might be for the occupation” (432). The current research looks at the dynamic world of contemporary librarianship from the perspective of a specialized group of its practitioners. Since at some point in their careers they have worked outside the confines of a traditional library organizational structure, these librarian-educated information professionals can provide insights into the evolution of librarians’ work unhindered by traditional library work environments. Their high-tech work experiences also provide insight into how their incorporation of new information technologies has affected their careers. Looking at individual professionals, however, is not Abbott’s theoretical focus.2 His is a structural theory in which professions occupying a common task area are examined within the contexts of social and cultural forces, other competing professions, and other ways of providing expertise. Abbott’s assertion that

2 Abbott (1988), however, recognized the connection between theories of professionalization and professional practice in his statement about the origins of his theory of the system of professions in his fieldwork at the Manteno State mental hospital in Illinois: “My Manteno years . . . forced me towards a theory that could reconcile the historical continuity of professional appearances with the day-to-day discontinuities of professional reality” (p. xii). Theories can arise from empirical research, but they do not predict individual behavior.

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“professional work is usually work contested by other environing professions” and that “the system of professions is thus a world of pushing and shoving, of contests won and lost” (1998, p. 433) does not apply to the actions of the individual librarian. Professions are assumed to be in conflict, but individual members of a profession may not be. Can we then observe what is happening to the profession of librarianship today through the experiences of these research participants within the context of Abbott’s theoretical perspective? The answer to this question is “perhaps”—it depends on how the question is asked. Can we understand what is happening to librarianship in relation to other professions in an assumed-to-be-contested information domain? The answer here is “no,” because this is a systems-level question. What we can come to understand is how individual librarians act and respond to structural forces—the internal and external events that affect their profession and their work—within a theorized-as-contested work domain, and what this may suggest for the future of their profession. Four areas in which Abbott’s theoretical perspective informs the research are discussed below. Jurisdictional conflict and competition. First, Abbott asserts that professions sharing a task area are in conflict and competition for jurisdiction. The participants in this research, however, do not seek out competitive environments, nor do they seek to dominate and control information tasks. Instead, they look for and seem to flourish in environments that are collaborative rather than competitive and where they have evidence that their contributions are valued. Participants who did not report experiences of conflict with other information professions tend to work in environments with any of these three characteristics: (a) a positive structural niche for library services within the organization, (b) an organizational culture that fosters teamwork and collaboration, and (c) an organization that is too small for jurisdictional conflict. Conversely, the participants who did report experiences of

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conflict with members of other information professions worked in environments that did not embody these characteristics. The observation that most participants do not seek competitive environments, that they prefer collaboration and niche-making, could be seen as a conflict-avoiding adaptation arising from a professional culture grounded in information empowerment as opposed to information control (Maack, 1997). It could also be the case that participants did not perceive conflict because their career goals were not oriented toward career advancement in the traditional sense but in terms of career enhancement and growth. This does not mean that competition for control of the information task area is not present—under Abbott’s model this is assumed—but that the participants in this study did not experience it on the individual level. The following must also be considered, however, since conflict with members of other information professions was reported by participants in the undervalued career modality. Based on their accounts (see chapter 5), jurisdictional conflict seems most pronounced in organizations in which these two structural factors are present together: (a) an identified library unit in the larger organization, and (b) an organizational culture that does not inherently value (or understand the value of) libraries. All three undervalued participants worked in small special libraries where the library unit was identified as a library and the organizational culture (or stakeholders) either did not value library services (as in the case of undervalued participant Joanne Dalton) or appeared to give lip service to library services (as in the case of undervalued participants Laura Henderson and Audrey Rosen). By contrast, jurisdictional conflict seems least pronounced in small non- bureaucratic organizations where the organization itself can be seen as a team (as in the case of solo librarians Louise Mayfield and Olivia Chambers; see chapter 5). It could be the case that Abbott’s model of jurisdictional conflict does not apply to small non-bureaucratic organizations where the personality of the organization is more often a function of the company founder, and individual characteristics take precedence over the structural characteristics of bureaucracy.

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Jurisdictional conflict is also less visible in larger organizations where the library services unit, regardless of size, has a positive structural niche within the organization (as in the case of Janet Logan’s small astronomy library or Linda Jacob’s large research and development library; see chapter 7 narratives). Technological change and librarianship. Second, Abbott asserts that changes in technologies and changes in organizations provide new professional opportunities as the nature of professional work changes and serve as the “central destroyers of professional work” (1988, p. 92). Advances in information technology alter the information task area as the nature of professional work changes, allowing for new professions and occupations to compete for or share jurisdiction as new specialties for managing new modes of information come into existence: “The most obvious and possibly the most important social force affecting librarianship now is technological change” (1998, p. 435). It could be argued that participants perceive relatively little conflict and competition because the information task area is expanding through advances in information-computer technologies (ICTs) including the Internet. As Abbott (1988) observed, the information domain is more permeable and the professions related to computers and information technology less well defined. Less well organized professions have weaker professional identities and can move to where the work needs to be done. Librarians with technological expertise could be blurring the boundaries today in the same way as the emerging computer professionals did 40 years ago. In professional domains where there are no well-established boundaries individual efforts and individuals with desired competencies may have a better chance for success than in bounded professional domains. This premise could explain why the solo librarians in this research (who may or may not be called librarians) expressed more satisfaction with their careers than managers of small special libraries. The solo librarian may be seen not so much as a librarian managing a little library but as a competent individual adding value to the team. This research also

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indicates that in some organizations participants are nominally dissociating their identification with the profession of librarianship by referring to themselves by the more ambiguous information professional appellation, even though they still consider themselves librarians (for example, Portia Hughes, Shirley Levine, and Louise Mayfield; see chapter 6). In the expanded information task domain some participants claim jurisdiction for a niche area they refer to as content management. They do not see themselves in conflict with members of other information professions such as the computer support and information technology units in their organizations because they serve different functions. They readily relinquish control of the information infrastructure to these information units because they see themselves as having carved out a niche as the information content experts in their organizations (for example, Laura Henderson, Portia Hughes, and Diana Baker; see chapter 4). They have established jurisdiction over a specialized task area through what Abbott refers to as “workplace negotiation” (p. 84). Participants who manage larger, well-established libraries also engage in workplace negotiation for control of information content; the most notable example here is Linda Jacobs’ account of how she achieved jurisdiction over her organization’s web content function (see chapter 7 narrative). Information content as contested task area. However, the area of content management—the niche that many of the research participants identify as their own information domain—is itself contested. Abbott (1998) conceptualizes this conflict in terms of “competing sources of expertise” (p. 435). This is a third area where Abbott’s theory informs the research, and it concerns the commercialization of knowledge systems. The production of “content” has always been outside the domain of librarianship. Whereas early in its evolution librarians engaged in the bibliographic control of information in various formats, librarians soon relinquished much of this function to commercial publishers or commoditized it through, for example, shared- cataloging consortia. With an ever-increasing number of full-text and image information resources accessible via web-based commercial distribution, librarians

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are competing with an increasing number of commercial information providers for the management and provision of content to their clientele. Abbott asserts that the resolution of this conflict between librarians and the producers and vendors of information content “depends for the most part on the stance of the organizations that employ librarians and not on the librarians themselves” (p. 436, emphasis added). How this process takes place can be seen in participant accounts concerning their perceived value. Participants appear to flourish in environments that are collaborative and where they perceive that their contributions are valued. They face conflict and discouragement in environments where they feel they must constantly self-market and promote their services. Analysis of undervalued-modality participant accounts suggests that organizational culture is a primary determinant of the value ascribed to library-based information services. Placing jurisdiction of content management within the larger arena of knowledge production and organizational forces suggests that librarians may have less control than they think over the management of information content in the organizations in which they work if the organizational culture does not value libraries. Abbott’s perspective helps to explain the constant need felt by many participants to market and promote their services or to demonstrate their value, often to no avail (as in the case of the closing of Joanne Dalton’s library by a new CEO; see chapter 4). Librarianship as a federated profession. The fourth area in which Abbott’s (1998) perspective informs the findings is in his assertion that librarianship, like engineering, is a “federated” profession. A federated profession “consists of a loose aggregation of groups doing relatively different kinds of work but sharing a common orientation,” a profession with multiple types of credentials, and whose members have historically worked in organizations (p. 441). Federated professions, according to Abbott, give up clarity of identity, monopoly of service, and the possibility of high status in exchange for the ability to survive in rapidly changing environments and quick response to new developments in knowledge. Abbott thinks that librarianship’s future lies in this form of professional organization.

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The idea of a federated profession helps to provide insight into the research participants’ struggles over their professional identity. Their professional identity is ambiguous and situational—what they call themselves depends to a large part on the types of organizations in which they work. The participants also display in their attitudes toward their work other characteristics of a federated profession. What they do is more important than what they are called—i.e., their identification with a specific profession. They use new technological advances as tools, not as ends in themselves. They do not consider themselves to have a monopoly of services; on the contrary, they want to collaborate and build relationships with members of other information professions to further the goals of the organizations in which they work. Abbott’s theoretical perspective informs the findings in areas pertaining to participants’ work and career experiences in terms of jurisdictional conflict and competition, technological change, information content as a contested task area, and librarianship as a federated profession. It does not provide insight into the participants’ experiences in terms of the marginalization of librarianship.

Interpreting the Findings through the Lens of Acker Although Abbott acknowledges gender as a factor that historically assigned the feminized professions to the status of “semi-professions,” he argues that professional status is not the issue, that the focus should be on the control of work, not the degree of professionalization a profession has. Abbott, however, does not acknowledge gender as an analytical construct although he does acknowledge that gender affects professional status. What Acker (1990) brings to the table is gender as a societal-level construct. This is the reason why Abbott’s theoretical perspective cannot address the marginalization of librarianship. For Abbott competition for control of professional tasks takes place on a level playing field independent of gender or class. For Acker the playing field is not level—it is gendered. The issue of gender. The research findings indicate that these special librarians do not see gender as an issue in their career development, career

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progression, and for the most part, in their workplace experiences. They consider workplace events involving gender more in terms of annoyances than as career factors. Neither do they associate work-and-family issues with gender. Like Abbott, the research participants do not conceptualize their organizations as being gendered but as gender neutral, even though they may at times use phrases such as “old-boy network” or “male-dominated firm” to explain organizational events. Many indeed have not given much thought about the effect of gender on their careers: interview questions about being a woman and being identified as a librarian as factors in their careers generated some confusion and indecision with comments such as, “I really haven’t thought about this much,” “I’m not sure,” or “I don’t know.” Gender is simply not an issue (on the surface) for these participants—they are “inarticulating” gender in the workplace and in their careers. Acker’s theoretical perspective, like Abbott’s, is structural, not focused on individual actors but on relations and practices of power in the organizations in which they work. Acker’s assertion that organizations—and the social institutions of which they are a part—“are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference” (1990, p. 139) extends Abbott’s perspective. It positions the research participants’ career patterns and career progression within a gendered culture in which librarianship is assumed to be marginalized because it is a gendered-female profession. In the same way that Acker’s perspective explains the persistence of gendered organizational practices—e.g., gender stratification and segregation, salary differentials, etc., it contributes to an understanding of the persistence of the marginalization of librarianship. The discussion below takes the previous interpretation done through the lens of Abbott (1988; 1998) and examines it through the lens of Acker (1990). Three interrelated issues are examined, all of which are viewed within the context of the gendered organization: 1. Ambiguous professional identity; 2. Small special library as endangered species; and

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3. Non-bureaucratic organization. Ambiguous professional identity. From Abbott’s perspective the research participants’ ambiguous and situational professional identity is a characteristic of librarianship as a federated profession, a feature of which is diminished clarity of identity. Abbott assumes a contested professional task area; the participants’ ambiguous professional identity can be explained through the type of profession he sees librarianship is becoming. From Acker’s theoretical perspective, however, participants’ struggles over their professional identity could be seen as an attempt to dissociate themselves from identification with a marginalized female profession. Professional identity is ambiguous at least partly for these librarian-educated information professionals because librarianship as a profession is marginalized. Participants tend to focus on what they do, as individuals, to contribute to the missions and goals of their organizations. Many see themselves as neither librarians nor information professionals but as individuals with competencies their organizations need. Evidence for this individualistic approach can be seen in how participants have dealt with the image of the librarian as reflected in its stereotype (see chapter 4). Several participants, for example, attempted to distance themselves from the librarian stereotype through their own individual competencies, particularly through their technological expertise or through disassociation with the librarian label itself. These kinds of responses may be viewed as individualistic solutions to the collective problem of inequality (Chase, 1995), in this case the inequality inherent in being a member of a feminized profession. Small special library as endangered species. Participants who manage small special libraries are less satisfied with their careers than participants who are solo librarians (see chapter 4) and exhibit more characteristics of undervaluation (see chapter 5). The small special library in mid-size or large organizations may be especially vulnerable to undervaluation because these information-services units are large enough to look like libraries. These organizational units may carry the baggage

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of an identified-with-books-library and be seen more as overhead and expendable compared to the more flexible and solo librarian. Acker’s theory addresses the plight of the small special library as an endangered species—and conversely, the relative success of the solo librarian—more completely than does Abbott’s. As discussed above, from Abbott’s perspective the solo librarian’s success could be viewed within the context of blurred professional boundaries: individuals without strong professional identification—in terms of what they call themselves or what their units are called—may find it easier to fill niches in their organizations. From Acker’s perspective, in which marginalization of librarianship is assumed, the solo practitioner’s success would be viewed not so much in terms of blurred boundaries but in terms of the relinquishing of a gendered professional label. This professional, although still identified as female, is no longer identified as a female member of a feminized profession. Dolores Peral (manager) understood this implication when she stated that being identified as a librarian could have negatively affected her career (see chapter 4). She reported that it was in graduate school when she had first become aware of the disadvantages of being in “a female-dominated, service-oriented profession,” which she referred to as a “loser profession.” For Dolores, being a woman was not an issue, but being a member of a female-dominated profession was. She was the only research participant out of 20 to make this distinction. Her solution was to defy the stereotype of the bookish bun-headed librarian by developing her own technological competencies: My job is to simply defy the stereotype. That’s the most powerful thing I could do. I could tell people, “Call me this and this and this.” But as long as they don’t see the substance underneath that, it’s all just words. An ambiguous professional identity is a way to avoid gender stereotyping or labeling. Any constraints on her career that being identified as a member of a feminized profession could impose would be nullified from Dolores’ perspective by her technological expertise and the value she provides to her organization.

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Acker’s perspective, however, would place the solo woman information professional at a disadvantage as well in the organization compared to male information professionals—just not so great a disadvantage as if she were identified as a female librarian managing an information-services unit called a library (or identified by others as a library). The playing field is still not level, just not as steep. Is a library-identified unit more vulnerable because it is identified or understood as a library? Acker’s perspective, in which marginalization of librarianship as a feminized profession is assumed, says “yes.” The finding that participants who manage small special libraries are less satisfied with their careers and exhibit more characteristics of undervaluation makes visible this marginalization. Acker’s theoretical perspective contextualizes this finding as an outcome of gendered organizational practices. Non-bureaucratic organization. In the discussion above it is asserted that Abbott’s model may not apply to small non-bureaucratic organizations where the personality of the organization, its culture, is more a function of its founder along with the individuals who work there. The same observation could be made about Acker’s perspective. The small organizations in which several research participants work may be gendered work environments also, but the individuals who work there interact as individuals. Gender issues can be addressed on the individual level; it is not part of organizational logic. The sexual harassment account of participant Louise Mayfield is a good example (see chapter 7 narrative). This incident involved a secretary’s good-bye party and a masculinized work environment of aerospace engineers and technicians that she considered hostile to the few women employees in the firm. She informed the president and vice-president (her supervisor) that the sexist and suggestive comments made at the party as well as the nudie calendars and posters in the shop and offices constituted sexual harassment. She was able to convince the executives to have these materials removed and attributed the behavioral change among the male employees to the firm’s “casual and informal” environment.

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Louise was instrumental in changing the culture of the aerospace research firm where she has worked for the past 20 years. Of course, she could not have accomplished this transformation if the company president and vice-president did not see the logic of her argument. There is still a power differential in small organizations, based on who is in charge. The point here is that gender is not embedded in her organization’s bureaucracy—because there is less bureaucracy. This is not to say that gendered practices are not prevalent in her firm— Louise referred to issues of child care and the male cultural practice of slamming— but she dealt successfully with these events as well. In the 1980s she was “very conscious of not only being a woman, but being a mother” so she did not take time off to care for her children when they were sick (her husband helped with childcare). In the 1990s she said it is different: the male engineers “routinely stay home and do childcare and nobody thinks anything of it.” Louise’s accounts suggest that it may be easier to effect change in small entrepreneurial organizations. Acker’s perspective may not be as relevant for small non-bureaucratic organizations where individual personalities and actions are more influential than structural constraints, including gender. Although gendered practices are not absent in small firms, it may be easier to overcome them when dealing with individuals rather than the gendered organizational logic of bureaucracy. By foregrounding gender in organizational processes and practices, Acker’s theoretical perspective enhances and augments Abbott’s model. This perspective provides a richer interpretation of findings concerning participants’ professional identity and their experiences as solo librarians and managers of small special libraries. Abbott’s model of the contested information domain as applied to the jurisdiction of content management helps to explain why most of the research participants need repeatedly to market and promote their services and demonstrate their value. Acker’s perspective reinforces and extends this interpretation by interpreting these actions as responses to gendered organizational practices. For Abbott the playing field is level—it is the work that is accomplished in a system of

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professions that is important. For Acker the playing field is not level—it is not only the work that is accomplished but also which gender does it.

Methodological Issues

The following methodological issues and problem areas are discussed below: (a) using Abbott for contemporary analysis; (b) the juxtaposition of thematic and narrative analyses; (c) connecting the individual to the organizational; (d) the lack of private sphere data; and (e) a singular perspective.

Using Abbott for Contemporary Analysis This research attempts to look at changes taking place in the information workplace from the perspective of members of one information profession and within the conceptual framework of Abbott’s system of professions, an approach that may not work well when studying contemporary events from the perspective of individual participants. Abbott (1988) approached his study of changes taking place in the information domain historically: his analysis stopped at 1970 and was based on a review of secondary resources, not primary documents or personal contact with individuals who were part of the environment he was studying. It may not be possible to identify jurisdictional changes taking place in the information domain because one is too close to the subject. Distance may be required in order for the analysis to work well—distance both in terms of time, and distance in terms of source material. By the same token, there are problems with Abbott’s historical approach as well. First, secondary sources are themselves interpretations, presenting their own authors’ points of view. One of the sources Abbott (1988) used to assess librarianship’s position in the information task area is Dee Garrison’s (1979) Apostles of Culture, itself a contested work. Second, looking backwards on a subject from a perspective in which 15 years have elapsed does not permit analysis of more contemporary events. Using the perspective of time to identify and document areas of

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conflict and contestation, the disappearance of professions, can become an empty intellectual exercise, in effect saying “this is what happened, too bad for the professions that lost out.” Nevertheless, conducting research on contemporary processes presents problems because one is too close to the ecology under investigation. This means that certain things can only be hinted at, raising questions for future research instead of drawing conclusions from incomplete contemporary data.

Juxtaposition of Thematic and Narrative Analyses The dialectical use of thematic (pattern) analysis and narrative analysis incorporated in the design of this study could not be fully explored. The narrative analysis was conducted on a more superficial level than originally envisioned. The voluminous amount of textual material from participant interviews coupled with the felt need to produce a history of each narrative participant’s career in order to provide the context—to position her professional life within a socio-historical context— proved to be counterproductive to a detailed narrative analysis. What the narratives did do was to present a better understanding of participants’ career progression by foregrounding sequence and time, the unfolding of events in an individual’s career and how these events, many of which were unplanned or unanticipated, affected the progression of her career. Constructing the narratives enhanced analysis of the process of career progression. It also showed how themes identified in the pattern analysis were manifested in the lives of individual participants as they progressed through their careers. The narrative analysis, because it remained on a more superficial level than originally planned, did not serve so much as a critical counterweight, in tension with the pattern analysis, as it served to complement it. Although using gender as an organizing principle in the interpretation of narrative accounts in juxtaposition with thematic elements was not fully realized in this study, the interview data provide rich

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content for such an analysis in the future. The findings can also serve as an empirical basis for future critical exploration and interpretation.

Connecting the Individual to the Organizational A limitation inherent in the design involves the difficulty in connecting the individual to the organizational level. Abbott and Acker’s theories are not looking at the individual (micro) but the organizational (macro) level. Some structural factors lend themselves to being treated as variables, but this is not a variables-grounded study. Structural theories have limitations when it comes to individual choices and behavior. How does one flow from the individual to the structural analytically? This transition was incorporated in the research design through the use of gender as an organizing principle since gender can be understood as a relational concept operating at all levels of social life and social analysis (see Alway, 1999). However, because this research does not include data on the organizations in which the research participants have worked, it is not possible to incorporate an organizational-level perspective in the analysis. Although individual responses to structural constraints can be interpreted within the context of the research design’s theoretical frameworks, the interpretation must stop here: it is perhaps logically impossible to incorporate an organizational perspective in this study. It is, however, possible to examine organizational features and look at how these features may affect an individual’s career, which this research has attempted to do.

Lack of Private Sphere Data Because the collection of family demographic data or other data on participants’ non-work lives was not incorporated in the study’s design, findings related to work and family issues are incomplete. Information on participants’ non- work lives, obtained conversationally during their interviews, was identified and coded through review of interview transcripts after data collection had been

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completed. This is a limitation because it became obvious as the analysis progressed that women’s careers cannot be understood without examining their non-work lives (see Powell & Mainiero, 1992; Stroh & Reilly, 1999). There was insufficient data on some participants regarding their lives outside of work.

Singular perspective The last methodological issue that must be dealt with is the fact that this research is based solely on participant accounts. Analysis and interpretation of the findings are bounded by what the participants report they perceive and experience in the workplace, not what is observed by the researcher. It is not possible within the methodological framework of this research, for example, to determine the existence of jurisdictional conflict or ascribe value to participants’ work. Discussion of findings concerning jurisdictional conflict and undervaluation must be couched in terms of participants’ perceptions and self-reported experiences, which can then be interpreted in terms of the study’s theoretical framework or related to the findings from other studies. This section describes some of the methodological limitations of the research. Some were part of the original design and acknowledged up front; other issues of a methodological nature became apparent as the analysis proceeded. Given these limitations, the findings presented in chapters 3 through 7 and the interpretation of these findings presented above suggest rich avenues for further research on gender and the information professions.

Future Research

This exploratory study provides multiple avenues for inquiry. First, the relationship between library management structure, career modality, and size of parent organization raises questions and issues. Why is solo librarianship an attractive career path for certain participants? Why are the found-my-spot and family-first

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participants clustered in the solo librarian category? What is it about working as a solo librarian in a small organization that is so satisfying? Is the solo librarian less vulnerable to downsizing? Is she viewed not so much as a librarian managing a little library but as a functional specialist adding value to the organization independent of a physical library? Does solo librarianship differ by subject area or industry? Recent writings on clinical librarianship (Wolf, Chastain-Warheit, Easterby-Gannett, Chayes, & Long, 2002) and the concept of the “informationist” in the medical literature (Davidoff & Florance, 2000; Detlefsen, 2002; Plutchak, 2002) suggest the solo librarian to be a career pattern of interest to LIS scholars and practitioners. Second, the number of special libraries in North America has decreased by 11% between 2001 and 2003 after a decade of relative stability. Are small special libraries an endangered species? Are they a dead-end career path compared to opportunities presented in solo librarianship? Why are they disappearing? Are there differences by industry or organizational type? What roles do gender and organizational conflict and competition play? Third, organizational culture appears to be a key factor affecting the degree to which competition and conflict are experienced within the workplace. Organizational culture also appears to be related to the value placed on library-information services. What is the relationship between conflict and competition in the workplace, organizational culture, and the value placed on library-based information services? What value is placed on library-information services in an environment where competition is encouraged and information is controlled? How does this compare to an organizational environment where cooperation and information-sharing are the norms? Are there differences by industry or organizational type? Fourth, the participants in this study were selected because they were early adopters of the Internet and because they worked in special libraries at the time of their early Internet use. The majority, therefore, worked in sci-tech rather than business special libraries, which are under-represented in the study. Research participants perceive that libraries are more highly valued in scientific research

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organizations compared to libraries in business organizations. How do the career patterns and career progression experiences of corporate business librarians of both genders compare with the findings from this study? Do they perceive conflict and competition with members of other information professions or providers of information services? How do corporate business librarians experience the gendered organization? What are their professional identities? Fifth, the participants in this study were selected based on criteria that applied to them in the early 1990s. Their average age at the time of their interviews was 51 years, and the youngest participant was 37; all could be considered mid- or late- career. Because of the research design, all had received their MLS degrees prior to 1992, before schools of library and information science had begun to remove the word library from their names and around the time that many had begun the process of broadening their curricula beyond library science. What are the professional identities of more recent MLS graduates of both genders with high-tech information skills working in special or corporate libraries (or their equivalents)? Is their professional identity part of a broadly defined professional domain of librarianship? Do they experience the same ambiguity when it comes to labeling the profession they practice? Do they perceive conflict and competition with members of other information professions or providers of information services? How do they experience the gendered organization? Finally, the question remains as to whether librarian-educated information professionals can successfully compete with other providers—internal and external, producers and distributors—for delivery of information content to their organizational clientele. The participants in this study perceive information content as their jurisdictional niche. How realistic is this perception? Who are their competitors? What role do gender and organizational culture play in this contested corner of the information domain?

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Concluding Remarks

This research raises some questions that may not have been addressed before, questions that arise from the experiences of individuals—in this case women who were educated during a period of time when career opportunities have rapidly expanded for women and who have chosen a career in librarianship, a traditionally female-identified career. These are also women who have also chosen to work in environments that require technologically advanced information skills and competencies. The research participants were selected because they are located at the intersection of several social and professional domains: They are women; they are members of a female-intensive profession; they were early adopters of the Internet; they work in the information domain of an information-age economy; and most of them practice their profession as special librarians in environments in which the library is not a social institution. What do they tell us from their perspective as women information professionals who are active participants in what Abbott (1988) calls the “contested information domain”? The issues and themes that transcend the participants’ local environments must also be positioned in socio-historical context and understood within the context of applicable social theory. In this research I have attempted to do this through the lens of Acker’s (1990) feminist theory of gendered organizations and social institutions. The findings and interpretation presented in these pages should not be considered supportive of an individualistic perspective, an “If I can dream it, I can do it” approach to careers in special librarianship so often seen in the professional literature. There are instances in which the participants in this research have dreamed and done what they wanted. There are also instances in which structural constraints have negated their efforts. It is just as important to understand that there are situations in which goals and dreams and skills are frustrated as there are situations where this is not so. And it is also important to recognize the role that professional socialization into the value system of librarianship has played in providing a resiliency to many of

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the women in this study, so that in the face of organizational frustrations they continue to find meaning in their work. In 2000 I approached this research with a simple definition of career in mind—i.e., as an individual’s job history (Spilerman, 1977, see chapter 1). I did not consider the term career progression to be gendered when I began. This research has caused me to rethink how I conceptualize career—that it cannot be limited to occupational choice or ignore lifestyle issues. Further, as Gallos (1989) points out, “we need more ways of describing, without the negative connotations, career and career choices that reflect the experiences of today’s women” (p. 124). Most of the participants in this research, all professional librarians, do not see the workplace as contested or conflicted but as an opportunity to build relationships to accomplish work. Viewing the domain of information work solely through Abbott’s theoretical perspective is too limited. Acker’s perspective, by recognizing the centrality of gender in organizational processes, augments Abbott’s model, adding necessary depth and complexity to research on feminized professions such as librarianship. The research participants are confident in their technological competencies. They are proud of what they do and the contributions they make to their organizations. Most, however, are not using their competence and contributions as a pathway to power, to move up a so-called career ladder. Their feelings about their careers are reflected in this observation by Gallos (1989): Career for women means expressing their professional selves over a lifetime with commitment to accomplishment and desires for fair treatment and rewards for their efforts—something very different from needing an ongoing organizational affiliation or making life choices that put occupational progress first. (p. 126) Business librarian Ethel Johnson stated essentially the same thing about her career in 1915:3

3 A graduate of Simmons College and Boston University, Ethel Johnson organized the library of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, a collection specializes in material relating to women's vocations and women in industry in the 1910s. She left librarianship sometime before 1920 “to become secretary of the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission.” Around 1920 she “was appointed

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After all, the important thing in choosing one’s work, and the thing that really makes for success in it, is not the stability or instability of the position, venturous spirits challenge change, nor financial reward nor advancement, but opportunity for growth and happiness. . . . That it is our joy in doing a thing that makes that thing worth while and that ‘to miss the joy is to miss all.’ In a very real sense the criterion of our success is in our happiness in our work, irrespective of its tangible rewards. (p. 161) A final observation about this research needs to be made: participants were interviewed in the summer of 2001, just a few months before the terrorist attacks of September 11 in New York City, Washington, D.C., and western Pennsylvania, and before the effects of the dot-com bust had been fully experienced in corporate America. The number of special libraries has decreased by 11% since these events. Would these participants, if interviewed today, express the same optimism about their work and their future as they did in 2001?

Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industries,” responsible for “matters pertaining to the employment of women and minors in the Commonwealth” (Power, 1920, pp.692-693).

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APPENDIX A

HUMAN SUBJECTS MEMORANDA AND FORMS

Table of Contents

Florida State University Human Subjects Approval Memorandum, February 9, 2001

Informed Consent Form, Approved February 9, 2001

Florida State University Human Subjects Reapproval Memorandum, February 19, 2002

Informed Consent Form, Approved February 19, 2002

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APPENDIX B

PARTICIPANT E-MAIL CONTACT LETTERS

Table of Contents

Contact Letter 1: Request to Participate in the Research

Follow-Up Letter 1: Second Request to Participate in the Research

Contact Letter 2: Request to Sign Informed Consent Form

Follow-Up Letter 2: Second Request to Sign Informed Consent form

Contact Letter 3: Instructions for Completing Web-Based Work-History Questionnaire

Follow-Up Letter 3: Second Request to Complete Questionnaire

Letter to Review Interview Transcript

Discussion Forum Request 1: Request to Participate in Discussion Forum

Discussion Forum Request 2: Second Request to Participate in Discussion Forum

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Contact Letter 1

Dear [first name],

About ten years ago, you participated in a research study I did on Internet use by special librarians that was published by the Special Libraries Association in 1993. I am currently doing doctoral dissertation research at Florida State University on the career paths of women librarians and other information professionals.

I would like you to be part of this research. It would involve filling out a web-based questionnaire and being interviewed over the telephone (a total time commitment of about two hours). As a token of my appreciation, I will send you a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com after the interview is completed.

If you think you might like to participate, please reply to this email and I will send you more information about the study and the informed consent form that the university requires. It doesn’t matter if you are still working as a special librarian or are doing something else: I am interested in what you have been doing professionally for the last 10 years.

I hope you will agree to be part of this follow-up study. If you have any questions, comments or are curious to know more, please reply by email, or you can call me at the number below.

Thanks for your (potential) cooperation!

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies voice daytime: 305-284-5254 voice evenings/weekends: 305-443-1122 email: [email protected]

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Follow-Up Letter 1

Dear [first name], I am following up on my earlier invitation to participate in my dissertation research on the career paths of women librarians and other information professionals. Please see below for more information about my research project -- I hope you will agree to be part of it. If you have any questions or would like more information, please reply by email or call me at the number below. Hoping to hear from you soon. Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies cell phone: 305-401-6467 email: [email protected]

On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, Sharyn Ladner wrote:

Dear [first name],

If you think you might like to participate, please reply to this email and I will send you more information about the study and the informed consent form that the university requires. It doesn't matter if you are still working as a special librarian or are doing something else: I am interested in what you have been doing professionally for the last 10 years.

I hope you will agree to be part of this follow-up study. If you have any questions, comments or are curious to know more, please reply by email, or you can call me at the number below.

Thanks for your (potential) cooperation!

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies cell phone: 305-401-6467 email: [email protected]

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Contact Letter 2

Dear [first name],

Thank you for agreeing to participate in my doctoral research study on the career paths of women librarians and other information professionals. Your responses will be confidential, and no identifying information will appear in any publication or report derived from our conversations or your answers to the web survey.

Following the interviewing phase of the research, I will be convening an Internet discussion group among all research participants to discuss issues that are of interest to women information professionals. Your participation in this discussion group would be optional.

I have attached a copy of an Informed Consent Form with additional details of this research project. Please sign the form and mail it by [date] to the following address:

Sharyn J. Ladner 929 Majorca Avenue Coral Gables, FL 33134

Or you may fax it to me at 305-284-4027.

When I receive your signed form, I will email you instructions on how to access the web-based questionnaire and then contact you to schedule the telephone interview. After the interview is completed, I will send you a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com as a personal token of my appreciation.

Thanks again for agreeing to be part of this study. If you have any questions concerning this research, please contact me (telephone: 305-401-6467, email: [email protected]) or my dissertation advisor, Dean Jane Robbins (telephone: 850-644-5772, email: [email protected]). I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies Voice: 305-401-6467 Email: [email protected] attachment: Informed Consent Form

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Follow-Up Letter 2

Hi [first name],

I'm following up to see if you are still interested in participating in my doctoral research study since I have not yet received your informed consent form. I've attached another copy of the form for your convenience (or let me know if you would prefer a print copy instead). You may either fax the completed form to me at 305-284-4027 or send it by postal mail to:

Sharyn Ladner 929 Majorca Avenue Coral Gables, FL 33134

I'll be happy to arrange our interview around your schedule this summer. I'm hoping to hear from you soon.

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies voice daytime: 305-284-5254 voice evenings/weekends: 305-443-1122 email: [email protected]

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Contact Letter 3

Dear [first name],

Thank you for returning the Informed Consent Form for my doctoral research study on the career paths of women librarians and other information professionals.

The first step is for you to complete a Work History Questionnaire. This questionnaire is available at: http://slis-eight.lis.fsu.edu/research/Ladner/WorkHistory/survey/index.cfm. The questionnaire should take less than 20 minutes to complete.

Since much of the information requested is probably already on your resume or curriculum vitae (CV), please have a copy of your CV or resume available while you complete the questionnaire. You will have the opportunity to upload a copy of this document while completing the questionnaire, or if you prefer, you may send it to me as an email attachment instead.

I will contact you to schedule our telephone interview after you complete your Work History Questionnaire.

Please let me know if you encounter any problems while completing the questionnaire. Preliminary testing has identified some display problems by users of Internet Explorer 4.0 so you might want to use Netscape to access the questionnaire.

Thanks again for agreeing to be part of this study. If you have any questions concerning this research or about information requested on the Work History Questionnaire, please contact me by email or call me at the numbers below.

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies Voice: 305-401-6467 Email: [email protected]

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Follow-Up Letter 3

Hi [first name],

I’m following up on when you will be able to submit your Work History Questionnaire. After you complete the questionnaire we can set a date and time for our telephone interview.

The Work History Questionnaire website is available at: http://slis-eight.lis.fsu.edu/research/Ladner/WorkHistory/survey/index.cfm. The questionnaire should take less than 20 minutes to complete.

Thanks again for agreeing to be part of this study. If you have any questions concerning this research or about information requested on the questionnaire, please contact me by email or call me at the number below. Also please let me know if you encounter any problems accessing or completing the questionnaire.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies Voice: 305-401-6467 Email: [email protected]

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Letter to Review Interview Transcript

Hi [first name],

I am attaching a transcript of our telephone interview on your career experiences as a special librarian, in MSWord 2000 format. I’m sorry this took so long, but the transcripts took a lot longer than I anticipated.

If you would rather have the transcript mailed to you in printed form, please provide a mailing address and I will send it out as soon as I hear from you.

Please review the transcript to make sure I have not missed anything. If there are comments you would like to make, or if you would like to expand on your answers to any of my questions, please feel free to add in as much as you would like. If you choose to do so, please write your corrections, additions or comments as underlined text so I will be able to spot them easily. Also note that I have added line numbers to the transcribed text to assist you in making corrections, additions or comments.

I would greatly appreciate hearing back from you by December 10, even if you do not have comments or additions to make. If you would like more time to review your interview transcript, just let me know by December 10.

The next phase of the study will be a web-based threaded discussion group of some of the salient issues raised in the study. This forum will be set up in January, 2002, and I will alert you via email to the topics that will be posted and the URL for the discussion website.

I really appreciate your input in this research project. The diversity of experiences and insights that came from the women I interviewed is remarkable, and the richness of the data go far beyond the boundaries of my dissertation. Thank you so much for your help so far, and I encourage you to share your experiences by participating in the online discussion group.

Best regards,

Sharyn Ladner

Sharyn J. Ladner, Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies email: [email protected]

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Discussion Forum Request 1

Hi [first name],

I'm following up to see if you would like to participate in the second phase of my doctoral research study -- a web-based threaded discussion group of some of the salient issues raised in the study.

The discussion group is located on a web server at the Florida State University School of Information Studies. Access is controlled through a UserID and password unique to each participant. You have the option of using a “screen name” of your own choosing or a default screen name (see below).

Here’s the information you’ll need to access the discussion group:

Website URL: http://slis-eight-lis-fsu.edu/research/ladner/site/ UserID: [userid] Password: [password] Default screen name: Respondent

Your default screen name is linked to your UserID and will appear when you post a message or reply in the discussion group (you do not enter this yourself). To ensure confidentiality, your real name, email address, UserID and password are not be seen by other group participants -- you will be known only by your screen name. If you prefer using a screen name of your own choosing, please email me a screen name of 6-8 characters that I will substitute for the above default screen name.

The URL will open a login screen where you will enter your UserID and password. Click on the “Login” bar to enter the research website. What appears next is the “Schedule” screen where there are brief instructions for navigating the site. Click on the red “Discussions” bar at the bottom of the screen to access the Research Project Discussion Group where I have posted the initial four discussion topics to start the group interaction.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this phase of the research. Thank you so much for your participation thus far, and I encourage you to share your thoughts and experiences by participating in the online discussion group.

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner

Sharyn J. Ladner, Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies email: [email protected]

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Discussion Forum Request 2

Hi [first name]

I'm following up to see if you would like to participate in the second phase of my doctoral research study -- a web-based threaded discussion group of some of the salient issues raised in the study.

Here’s the information you’ll need to access the discussion group:

Website URL: http://slis-eight-lis-fsu.edu/research/ladner/site/ UserID: [userid] Password: [password] Default screen name: Respondent

Best regards, Sharyn

Sharyn J. Ladner, Doctoral Candidate Florida State University School of Information Studies email: [email protected]

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APPENDIX C

WORK HISTORY QUESTIONNAIRE

Table of Contents

Introduction to Work History Questionnaire (Top-Level Screen)

Undergraduate Education Data Entry Screen

Graduate Education Data Entry Screen

Work History Data Entry Screen

Unemployment Data Entry Screen

Internet History and Use Data Entry Screen

Background Information Data Entry Screen

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Introduction to Work History Questionnaire (Top-Level Screen)

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Undergraduate Education Data Entry Screen

Graduate Education Data Entry Screen

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Work History Data Entry Screen

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Unemployment Data Entry Screen

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Internet History and Use Data Entry Screen

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Background Information Data Entry Screen

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APPENDIX D

INTERVIEW GUIDE

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APPENDIX E

RESEARCH WEBSITE SCREENS

Table of Contents

Schedule Module – Top-Level Screen

Documents Module – Top-Level Screen

Discussions Module – Research Project Discussion Group Screen

Help Module – Top-Level Screen

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Schedule Module – Top-Level Screen

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Documents Module – Top-Level Screen

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Discussion Module – Research Project Discussion Group Screen

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Help Module – Top-Level Screen\

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APPENDIX F

PILOT STUDY DATA

List of Tables

F.1 Pilot Study II Participant Demographics, 2001

F.2 Pilot Study II Participants’ Educational History

F.3 Pilot Study II Participants’ Work History, 1991 – 2001

F.4 Pilot Study II Participants’ Library Size and Management Structure, 2001

F.5 Pilot Study II Participants’ Salaries

F.6 Pilot Study II Participants’ Internet Use

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Table F.1

Pilot Study II Participant Demographics, 2001 Number Item (n = 6)

Age Under 45 1 45 – 54 3 55 – 64 2 Mean 54.2 Median 53.5 Range 41 – 64

Geographic location Canada 1 US census regions New England 1 Middle Atlantic 1 South Atlantic 2 Mountain or Pacific 1 Central 0

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Table F.2

Pilot Study II Participants’ Educational History Number Item (n = 6)

Undergraduate concentration or major Arts or humanities 3 Social sciences 1 Sciences 2

Year undergraduate degree awarded 1960 – 1969 1 1970 – 1979 4 1980 – 1989 1 Mean 1971 Median 1971 Range 1960 – 1981

Year MLS (or equivalent) degree awarded 1960 – 1969 1 1970 – 1979 3 1980 – 1989 2 1990 – 1992a 0 Mean 1977 Median 1976 Range 1963 – 1991 a 1992 was the cut-off date for participation in the study.

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Table F.3

Pilot Study II Participants’ Work History, 1991 - 2001 Number (n = 6) Item 1991 2001

Type of library or information center Corporate 0 1 Not-for-profit or government 0 0 Academic 5 5 Other or none 1 0

Subject area Science-technology, astronomy, or 4 1 engineering Medicine 1 1 Business 0 1 Other or multidisciplinary 1 3

Table F.4

Pilot Study II Participants’ Library Size and Management Structure, 2001 Number Item (n = 6)

One-professional library (“solo” librarian) 1

Small library (2-3 librarians plus support staff) 0

Large library (10+ librarians and support staff ) 4

Not able to determine a 1 a Participant’s area was undergoing reorganization at the time of the interview.

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Table F.5

Pilot Study II Participants’ Salaries Number Annual salary, 2000a (n = 6) Under $50,000 2 $50,000 - $64,999 0 $65,000 - $79,999 0 $80,000 and above 4 Mean $75,569 a Salary data are reported for the calendar year 2000. Part-time salaries were converted to full-time equivalents, and Canadian dollars were converted to US.

Table F.6

Pilot Study II Participants’ Internet Use Number Year first used the Internet (n = 6)

Before 1985 2

1985 – 1989 3

1990 – 1991 0

1992 1

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APPENDIX G

RESEARCH PARTICIPANT VIGNETTES

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Research Participant Vignettes

The following information is provided for each of the 20 research participant in these biographical vignettes:1 1. Year of undergraduate degree date and major area of concentration; 2. Year of MLS (or equivalent) degree; 3. Work history, including first position as a librarian or information professional, type and size of library or other organizational unit where participant has worked, and industry areas of organizations where participant has worked; 4. Marital and family history; 5. Year of and age at first Internet use; and 6. Age in 2001 when interview was conducted and work history data collected.

Audrey Rosen Audrey received her MLS degree in 1980, attending classes part time with two preschool-age children at home. She received her undergraduate degree in 1971, majoring in biology. She taught high school biology for two years, and then worked as a research technician until her first child was born. Her husband is an attorney. She began her professional library career as a part-time medical reference librarian in an allied-health sciences professional school. In 1987 she became assistant librarian at a cancer research institute; two years later she was promoted to director of library services, her present position. She currently supervises two librarians and four support staff. She began using the Internet in 1990 at age 40. She was 51 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Diana Baker Diana received an MS in information studies in 1987. She received a BA in social work in the mid-1970s and an MSW in 1977, working as a community social worker and fundraiser for seven years. She is single. She became a librarian because of her interest in technology and began her professional library career as a corporate librarian in the telecommunications industry in 1987. A year later she moved to

1 Details of employment, including names and geographic locations of employing organizations, are masked for confidentiality. Participants are listed alphabetically by the first name of their pseudonym.

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another company in the same industry. Following a layoff in 1992 due to corporate- wide downsizing, she became director of a hospital library in a city two hours away from her home. Shortly thereafter this library was downsized and she lost her two staff. In 1999 she left to become head of the information center at a multinational consumer products company closer to her home. This is her current position; she has three direct reports. Diana began using the Internet in 1987 in her early 30s while at the telecommunications company. She was 47 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Dolores Peral Dolores received her MS in library and information science in 1990 and a BA in music performance in 1984. Following graduation from college she moved to another state and worked in a clerical position for a year. In 1985 she relocated to another state with her husband and worked as a law librarian for two different firms; while at the second firm she enrolled in library school. After graduation she relocated with her husband to another state where she worked for a year as an information specialist for a company in the biotechnology industry. In 1991 she became the corporate librarian for a company in the information services field, a position she held until 2000. During this time she divorced and remarried. In 2000 she and her husband, a teacher, relocated to another state when she assumed the position of library director at a small liberal arts college. She began using the Internet in 1990 in her late 20s at the biotechnology firm and was instrumental in introducing the Internet to the information services company, a process that took four years. Dolores was 39 years old in 2001 and pregnant with her first child when the research was conducted. She returned to work in April 2002 after eight weeks of maternity leave.

Eileen Norton Eileen received her MSc in library science in 1980 and an AB in sociology in 1978. She began her professional library career as a cataloger for a research and development firm while attending graduate school; she was hired as a reference librarian after completing her degree. In 1983 she was hired as a departmental librarian for another research and development organization. A year and a half later she left to become information specialist for a multinational company in the telecommunications industry; she was promoted to library manager, responsible for three company libraries within the region. In 1993 following a company-wide downsizing and the closing of two of the three libraries, she took a position as research project manager in an investment firm library. In 1994 she changed careers, moving from librarianship into sales, as an account executive for an online information resources vendor. In 1998 following a corporate merger and reorganization, she left to become regional account manager for another information

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resources vendor. She was laid off in 2000 following the acquisition of the company by a global information industry publisher. In 2001 she became a member of the sales team for an information industry research firm, the position she held at the time of the research interview. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks the sales team was disbanded and she was laid off. In the spring of 2002 she reported that she has begun a new career as a law librarian for a commercial firm. Eileen is married and has one child. She began using the Internet in 1992 in her mid-30s while at the telecommunications company. She was 45 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Gwen Jackson Gwen received an MLS in 1975 and a BA in humanities and library science in 1973. She began her professional career as an elementary school librarian upon graduation from college, and the following year began her graduate program in library science in public librarianship and children’s services. She then spent five years as a children’s librarian in an urban public library system. Around 1980 she decided to leave children’s librarianship and became a solo librarian for a public agency in the same state. Wanting to update her technology skills and refocus her career on adult services, she enrolled in a yearlong specialist program in library and information science at the same university where she had received her MLS. She then relocated to another state to become a reference librarian at a small college, a position she held for four years. In 1985 she left to become manager of the business information center for a multinational industrial corporation. In 1989 she moved to another city where she was a solo librarian for an engineering firm and then an information researcher for a large management-consulting firm. She moved to a new consulting firm in 1995 to create and manage their corporate library. Following her marriage in her mid-40s, she left librarianship in 1997 due to burnout and stress. In 1998 she began part-time work as a free-lance event planner for non-profit organizations. She began using the Internet in 1991 in her late 30s while at the engineering firm. She was 49 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted and was between jobs at the time of the interview.

Janet Logan Janet received an MS in library science in 1966 and a BA in English in 1962. She began her professional career as a school librarian upon graduation from college, a position she held for three years. Her first child was born in 1966, and for the next few years during relocations to several different cities with her first husband she held several part-time positions in school, public and academic libraries. She remarried in the early 1970s, and in 1975 she became the assistant librarian for an independent astronomical observatory. She was promoted to senior librarian in 1983, responsible

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for the main library and four branch libraries located in three other states; in 2001 she was reclassified as observatory librarian, her current position, with the same administrative responsibilities. She began using the Internet (when it was the ARPANET) in 1983 at age 42. She was 60 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Joanne Dalton Joanne received her master’s degree in library and information science (MLIS) in 1989. In 1968 she earned a BA in Spanish, in 1969 an MA in Spanish, and in 1977 an MA in creative writing. From the mid-1970s to mid-1980s she and her husband lived in Latin America where he was a philosophy professor and she wrote several genre novels. She began her professional library career while still in the MLIS program, when she was hired to create a special library for a computer industry organization. As manager of strategic information at this organization, she has weathered the volatility of the industry throughout the 1990s, supervising from one to 10 employees and managing several information-related departments. At the time of the interview she supervised five librarians; in February 2002 she reported that the physical library had been disbanded, and currently (summer 2002) she and one other librarian are providing virtual information services to their clientele. Joanne began using the Internet in 1989 in her late 40s. She was 60 years old in 2001when the research was conducted.

Laura Henderson Laura received an MLIS degree in 1989 and a BA in psychology in 1987. She began her professional library career as a reference librarian for a global financial- professional services firm in 1989, the same firm where she had worked during the summer while attending graduate school. In 1993 she accompanied her boss to another global financial-professional services firm in the same city. In 1996 she was promoted to the assistant manager of the business information center, and in 1997, following a corporate merger, she was promoted to manager of knowledge services, her present position. She began using the Internet in 1992 in her late 20s through a university where she was enrolled part time for a certificate in management information systems. She, along with her co-workers in the library, brought the Internet to their company in 1993-94, installing a standalone connection in the library and conducting Internet training for interested clients. Laura was 37 years old in 2001 and pregnant with her first child when the research was conducted. She is married to a computer engineer and currently (summer 2002) on maternity leave.

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Linda Jacobs Linda received her MLS in 1971. She began her professional career working as a librarian in Europe, then returned to the US in the mid-1970s where she worked as a children's librarian in an urban public library system for 10 years. Since 1984 she has worked for research and development organizations in the defense industry and for an Internet service provider. In her current position as manager of the library at a research and development laboratory, she supervises 24 to 30 staff and contract workers. She received her undergraduate degree in 1969, majoring in English literature and minoring in foreign languages. Linda began using the Internet in 1984 in her late 30s at a new job as documents librarian for a subsidiary of an organization that managed the ARPANET and that used TCP/IP for all its internal business applications. She is married to an artist. She was 54 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Louise Mayfield Louise received her MLS degree in 1981, attending classes part time while her children were in school. She began her professional library career as a solo librarian in 1982 at the same company where she is currently employed, a small engineering research firm in the aerospace industry. She has worked part time (30 hours per week) by choice since 1982. She received her undergraduate degree in 1960, majoring in English. She taught high school English for three years, and then worked as a library staff assistant for six years at the university where her husband was studying for his Ph.D. In 1968 she left paid employment to raise her family; she and her husband, a psychologist, have four grown children. Louise began using the Internet in 1991 at age 53. She was 63 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Margaret Taylor Margaret received her MS in library science in 1988 and a BA in English in 1980. She worked part time in the university library while an undergraduate and upon graduation from college became a full-time staff assistant in the engineering and physics branch library at the same university. She continued in this position while attending graduate library school part time. In 1989 she was hired as the librarian for a state agricultural agency; this is her current position. She is a solo librarian with one full-time assistant. She is recently divorced and has two school-aged children. She began using the Internet in 1990 in her early 30s through a connection with the local university with which her agency has a working relationship through the entomology department. She was 43 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

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Montie Roberts Montie received an MLS degree in 1983 and a BA in philosophy-religion and English in 1979. In 1983 she began her professional career as a computer software training coordinator for a multinational industrial corporation, then became a business systems analyst and then supervisor of the business support library for the same company. In 1995 she relocated to another city where she was research librarian for a financial services firm for three years, and then became information services project manager for a new subsidiary. She left in 1998 to form her own independent information consultancy. In addition to running her own business, which she “took virtual”2 for four months in 2001, she also taught distance-education courses at an MLS-degree granting university in another city. In 2001 she relocated to the city where the university is located to begin a two-year appointment as visiting instructor while continuing her consultancy. She began using the Internet around 1991-1992 in her mid-30s. She was 44 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Olivia Chambers Olivia received her MLS in 1963 and a BA in Spanish in 1962. She began her professional library career in 1963 as an NLM fellow and the following year became a cataloger at a new medical library still in the planning stages. In 1967 upon the birth of her daughter she “retired” from paid employment. In 1980 following her divorce she re-entered the workforce as a temporary librarian for a defense contractor; six months later she found permanent employment as a librarian for another defense contractor in the same city. She learned her computer and online searching skills on the job. Weathering the ups and downs of the defense industry during the 1980s, in which she supervised from one to eight library staff, she moved to her present position in 1989 as manager of a solo library for another defense-related research organization in the same geographic area. She began using the Internet in 1990 in her current organization when she was 50. She was 61 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Portia Hughes Portia received an MLIS degree in 1989 and a BA in English and secondary education in 1968. Following graduation from college she taught high school for two years, then left the paid workforce to start her family. She and her husband who has recently retired from the computer industry have two grown children. While in library school she worked as an intern in a local corporate library and decided upon corporate librarianship as a career. In 1990 she was hired as a contractor to set up a library for a computer manufacturer in the same city and eight months later she became the

2 Quoted text is from interview transcripts.

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librarian, her current position. She is a solo librarian with one full-time assistant. She began using the Internet in 1992 in her mid-40s. She was 54 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Roberta Kramer Roberta received her MS in library science in 1985 and a BA in German in 1971. After college she attended graduate school in computer and library science because of her interest in computer processing of non-numerical data, then left and for the next 10 years or so worked at a series of jobs and occupations, including indexing of alternative periodicals and lawnmower repair. In the mid-1980s she enrolled in another library science program, working for a library systems developer while in school. After graduation she worked in catalog maintenance at a research university and a year later became the automation coordinator. In 1990 she became the automation librarian for a federal agency library. Three years later she left to become head of the systems unit for one of the national libraries; this is her current position. She is single. Roberta began using the Internet in 1987 in her late 30s while at the research university; she was responsible for installing Internet connectivity for the university library, and she introduced the Internet to the federal agency. She was 52 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Roxanne Meyer Roxanne received an MS in librarianship in 1975 and a BA in political science and pre-law in 1974. She began her professional career in 1975 as an academic law librarian. Three years later in 1978 she moved to a not-for-profit policy research and analysis organization; within two years she was promoted to head of technical services, responsible for both cataloging and acquisitions units and supervising a staff of 13. In 1992 she left to start a new special library for a start-up company in the computer industry. Following a corporate merger and wanting to work closer to her home and family, she returned to academe in 1998 as a physical sciences librarian and a year later was promoted to the head of the technical services department, her current position. She and her husband, a computer industry consultant, are the parents of two teenage children. She began using the Internet in 1983 at age 30 at an organization that was an ARPANET node; she introduced the Internet to colleagues at the telecommunications firm. She was 48 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Sarah Long Sarah received an MA in library science in 1972 and her undergraduate degree in English in 1970. She began her professional career as a high school librarian, and

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then relocated to a research university with her husband, also a librarian, where she worked as an academic librarian and department head for five years. Another relocation following her husband took her across the country where she worked for one year as a government contractor and a year in academic library administration. She relocated again after her divorce in 1981, accepting a position to create and manage a small corporate library in industry. Nine years later she relocated again and worked in publishing for two years. In 1991 she moved to a trade association in the aerospace industry, holding several different positions, including head of business development where she was responsible for several units and had 10 direct reports. She remarried in the mid-1990s; and she and her husband jointly decided to relocate in 1998, at which time she assumed her present position as the science team leader (administrator) in an academic research library. She currently has 13 librarian subject specialists reporting to her. She began using the Internet in 1992 at age 43. Sarah was 52 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Shirley Levine Shirley received her MLS in 1970 and a BA in biology in 1965. She began her professional career in 1970 as an information specialist for a pharmaceutical company. In 1977 she was recruited to design and construct a corporate research information database for a multinational corporation in the food industry, a precursor of a knowledge management system; in 1983 she was promoted to manager of technical information services, responsible for two corporate libraries and records management. She left in 1988 after a major downsizing of the research facility following a corporate acquisition and merger. Following a brief stint as a sales representative for an information services vendor, she became executive director of a regional multi-type health sciences library consortium, responsible for a $1.6 million budget. This was her current position at the time of the research interview. Within a month she retired as executive director and opened her own consulting practice. She has two grown children from a previous marriage. Shirley “discovered” the Internet in 1991 at the annual SLA conference at age 48 and provided Internet access and email services for consortium members the following year. She was 58 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Susan Maxwell Susan received her MLS in 1991 and a BA in liberal arts and English in 1970. After graduation from college she followed her scientist husband to three different university towns where for four years she worked in support staff positions in the serials department and pharmacy library at the first university, then for ten years was a solo librarian for a state agency at the second location, and in 1985 became supervisor of medical records at the third university where she enrolled in the MLS

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program in the late 1980s. During this time her husband died. In 1991 she moved to another city and began her career in collection development at one of the national libraries; this is her current position. She began using the Internet in 1991 in her current organization when she was in her mid-40s. She was 55 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

Vivian Walton Vivian received an MS in library and information science in 1986 and a BA in psychology in 1981. Upon graduation from college she managed a chain bookstore for several years and as a result of this experience decided to become a librarian. While in library school she followed her husband to Europe where she taught library skills to soldiers in the US military. She returned to the US, finished her degree, and in 1986 began her professional career as a librarian in a defense-industry research and development firm. Three years later she left to become a solo librarian for a supercomputer company and stayed there for nine years; after her second child was born in 1995 and the company declared bankruptcy she worked part time by choice until the company folded in 1999. Wanting another part-time position, she became a solo librarian for an engineering firm in the same area; this is her current position. She began using the Internet in 1986 at the R&D firm in her late 20s. She was 43 years old in 2001 when the research was conducted.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Sharyn J. Ladner has worked in academic, public and special libraries for over 25 years. Since 1987 she has been a member of the library faculty at the University of Miami. She received her M.L.S. degree from Indiana University and her B.A. degree from Gettysburg College. She has given presentations based on her dissertation research at annual meetings of the American Library Association (2003), Special Libraries Association (2003), and Association for Library and Information Science Education (2004). Additional biographical information on Dr. Ladner can be found in chapter 2, Researcher as Instrument (The Researcher in Context).

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