Avi and Leah with the blindfolded mannequin

Avi Silberstein, the Outreach Librarian for Greater Victoria Regional Library describes their provocative and engaging Freedom to Read Week display.

We thought it would be fun to have a mannequin – blindfolded – at the entrance to the library.  So we made a few phone calls and visited a few stores, and after some persistence were able to convince the owner of a local consignment shop to loan us a mannequin.

We picked out a mannequin that was lying on her stomach with her hands near her face, dressed her up in clothes from the consignment store, and propped a book up in her hands.  Then we tied on a blindfold.  We put her up on a table, and filled an adjacent table with banned/challenged books.  We also made sure to put up some signage explaining the display and that the books were there to be borrowed.

The response we received was overwhelmingly positive.  Patrons loved it, staff loved it, and more than anything it got people to stop in their tracks and walk up to the display for a closer look.

A couple of years ago I heard about Scandinavian libraries where you could “check out” a person and talk to them about their life. It seemed like an interesting way for people to develop empathy for people who are not like themselves.

The living library concept has been adopted by libraries all over the world. The hope is that the information passed on by a human book will help counter ignorance, prejudice and discrimination.

The living library concept has been incorporated into the Olympic homeless pavilion. This pavillion has been set up to explain the poverty in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to journalists, spectators and tourists from around the world. Visitors can listen to a Real Homeless Person from the Downtown Eastside talk about their experiences. I agree with the Vancouver Sun article that argues that this idea is contrived.

Nobody needs publicity shots of smiling politicians, pre-canned 200-word testimonials or human books to find out about life in the city’s poorest neighbourhood.

You just need to go outside.

The homeless and destitute still fill our streets. And they will be there in their unnatural habitat, whether you like it or not, for the world to see, during the Games.

I am angry and frustrated that so much money has been spent on a spectacle, while there have been cuts to social services like education, libraries, and legal aid. The homeless need homes, not to be books in a living library.

I haven’t written anything here since the fall. This was partly because I was frantically learning a bunch of new things at work, but mostly because now that I have a normal library job I’m not sure how to talk publicly about what I’m learning at work and some of the challenges that have come up.

I think there’s a broader culture in libraries of only talking about the good things outside one’s library or institution. Conference sessions are rife with “how we done it good here” sessions that present positive success stories. I learn more from stories about how things went horribly wrong, or the hiccups and mess ups that happened along the way.

Starting a new job, I knew it was going to be full-on for the first 6 months. There’s new policies and procedures, formal and informal things about the organizational culture, new people to work with, and in this case for me, completely new subject matter.

I’ve had a casual but uninformed appreciation for art. On the reference desk I often have to ask users what medium a specific artist works in, what country they are from, and if they are alive or dead. Thankfully most of the users are generous, inquisitive and kind. Provinding reference services is collaborative affair—I’ve got some skills on how to find stuff and an ability to teach, and the user has useful information and is often keen to learn. This semester I’d like to learn more about art reference.

I’ve been thinking about and reading quite a bit of management literature. This has surprised me. Some of the other unlikely things that I’ve been thinking about include: organizational culture, community development in an academic setting, supervision and management styles, the library as place, and time management.

In the fall, I started writing about different issues. I either wrote things that I knew would get me into trouble, or posts that were extremely vague, over generalized and uninteresting . This semester I hope I can find an appropriate balance and find my voice again. For me blogging is a way to reflect on the things that I’m doing and learning. I hope to find the words to talk about the things that that are broken at MPOW, or things that have gone wrong during various implementations.

Kandou (感動) is one of those Japanese emotions that I’ve felt a couple of times in the past year. It translates as “to be deeply moved emotionally or excited” but that doesn’t quite capture the meaning. It’s a noun, generally used with the verb to do or to make: suru (する). Colloquially people often say kandou shimashita.

Yayoi Kusama

At the tail end of my vacation in New Zealand, I went to the Wellington Art Gallery to see an exhibition of Yayoi Kusama’s work. I’ve admired her work for a long time, and this was the first time I saw her art in person. When I went into the mirrored room with the dangling lights that reflected forever in the mirrors and the water on the floor, I was deeply moved. I talked to one of the gallery staff and learned that the day before  a woman who had recently a brain aneurysm wanted to see this room, but was anxious and worried about the potential effect. The staff person reassured her,  showed her that she could open the door to let herself out at any time, and explained that the water was only a few inches deep. Apparently she spent a long time experiencing this room and came out with tears streaming down her face. She too, had been deeply moved by the experience. Kandou shimashita.

I asked if I could lie on the floor of the day room, a room painted in bright yellow with black polka dots, with many large peanut shaped yellow and black polka dotted inflatables. Some were propped up against the wall and a few were suspended from the ceiling. One was moving slightly. I lay under it watching the giant polka dotted object gently move. It was an utterly wonderful experience. Kandou shimashita.

In August, I got to see Jodaiko, an all star group of international female taiko performers brought together by  taiko legend Tiffany Tamaribuchi. From year to year the members of this group shift a little bit, and in 2009 two professional musicians from Okinawa joined them. The concert is always amazing—everyone is extremely skilled (most are professional musicians), they drum with intense joy and passion, and that is communicated to the audience. For me, it’s also exciting to see a lot of fierce queer Asian women perform in such a skilled and powerful way. Jodaiko explodes the stereotype that Japanese women are quiet, subservient, delicate and weak. I suppose I was a bit emotional to be home in Vancouver, and Pride weekend/Powell St. Festival always are exciting and a bit of an overload. When Tiffany and one of the women from Okinawa were playing on a drum together, their intensity, passion, and joy were so intense. Until then I’d never been moved to tears by music. The only words that came close to expressing how I felt was kandou shimashita.

One of the things I love about working at an art school is that I’m surrounded by creative people who are always making stuff. I’ve been surprised at how politically minded most of the students seem to be. I’m not at all excited about the Olympics coming to Vancouver, but I’ve been moved and impressed by the political art that’s been happening to express resistance to the Olympics, as well as the recent cuts to arts funding. These creative responses give me hope. Kandou shimashita.