Comments on: The Challenges of Balancing work and home obligations

By: libgrl » Women, libraries, and techies

libgrl » Women, libraries, and techies — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:47:48 +0000

[...] My two-cents worth of input on some posts concerning women techies in libraries: Balancing work and home obligations on the Library Web Chic blog (yes, you can ask for change…it’s probably not even worth the two-cents…) [...]

By: libgrl » My reply to “Balancing work and home obligations”

libgrl » My reply to “Balancing work and home obligations” — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:45:03 +0000

[...] My two-cents worth of input on Balancing work and home obligations on the Library Web Chic blog(yes, you can ask for change…it’s probably not even worth the two-cents…) [...]

By: LibGrl

LibGrl — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 21:57:32 +0000

When I started reading this thread of related posts, I thought I had something to contribute..but when it comes right down to it, I’m just another ’statistic’ about women in tech and specifically women in tech at libraries. Working in a smaller public library (serving 12,500) in a very remote and rural setting, I used to feel that being one of few women in the field was actually a great perk. I often had to deal with men who felt above me, but after a few minutes of conversation, I always managed to gain their respect, and therefore enjoyed a sort of celebrity in and around my community. Now, I find myself very alone with much more responsibility…from being a circulation librarian to the network administrator, to being both the network and system administrator, and now as director, I have all of the financial and management burden, and still must play the role of system/network administrator. The celebrity status now is unwelcome, because I find I do not have enough time or resources to complete any of my duties to MY satisfaction (though everyone else seems happy with it). 60 to 80 hour work weeks are growing old, and I cannot think of a single woman to emulate or learn better work habits from. Add to this the little fact that I’m married with 6 daughters (4 of them teenagers), and I often find myself wondering how much longer I can really do this. Like Joy, I’m always on call, and it becomes a burden even if the phone doesn’t ring…just knowing that you’re never fully ‘away’ from work. How many of us are being forced into having to choose between family and work because there isn’t anyone that understands one simple fact:
no matter how much has changed, most women still have ‘typical’ domestic duties….
I will have to choose my family over my library. And what a sad day that will be… for everyone.

By: Joy Wandrey

Joy Wandrey — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 06:38:20 +0000

This is a piece to the puzzle of why so many of us get out into the field, take the first job we get, and stay there. By my training I should be doing tech stuff, library web sites, pushing access to libraries digitally. However, what I am doing is spending my first year out of school trying to keep up with the expectations of being a children’s librarian in a public library where I am too busy to get my weekly storytime planned effectively before it’s time to perform it. I see lots of good journal articles come and go across my desk (months after they were published) and have to pass them on without doing the reading I so desperately need to do to keep up even with general trends, much less tech trends. Add to that the soccer practice and homework for my son, and everyone gets shortchanged, my career most of all. And I want to move to an academic library? How? When? With what time? Ladies, what can we do to make this work in an era where those who can devote 60 hours a week to work are the only ones who can keep up? I know that a lot of librarians are getting ready to retire, but a lot of us “new to the field” librarians are mid-career and have established families already. It was enough of a struggle to get through library school while balancing work and home life, now to find out that every spare minute out of work must be spent on work stuff, just to stay current? No thanks. This is not why I went to library school. I’m not whining, just looking for solutions to a problem where I know I’m not the only one suffering….Ideas anyone?