[AUDIO PLAYBACK] - Excuse me, Dr. Jones. - Yes? - I just had a question on Hargrove's normative culture model. - Forget it. Ugh. Read Vere Gordon Childe On Diffusionism. He spent most of his life in the field. You want to be a good archaeologist, you got to get out of the library. [END PLAYBACK] [THEME MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks-- the Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show. I'm a little offended at Dr. Jones and his get out of the library thing. That dude's locked in the past, man. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with everybody. Fred, Ameet, Wendy, Marlee, and a guest to be named later. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. AMEET DOSHI: That's right, Charlie. Our show today is called The Library Between the Lines. CHARLIE BENNETT: It's about time we got back to some subtext. WENDY HAGENMAIER: We've explored ideas of inherent bias on this show before, but today we're looking at library systems as rhetorical tools. Does bias in something like a library catalog default to a normative view and thus make some scholars feel like outsiders or others. FRED RASCOE: Returning guest producer Marlee Givens is on hand to help us find out. MARLEE GIVENS: We'll be speaking to Dr. Jacqueline Royster, dean of the Ivan Allen College. And we'll find out what she means when she says that when she's doing research, the first voice she hears is not her own. WENDY HAGENMAIER: If you want to join the conversation. The hashtag for this show is LITS428 for Lost in the Stacks episode 428. Feel free to tweet your thoughts, questions, or your own experiences between the lines with that hashtag. AMEET DOSHI: And our songs today are about the power of words, the power of resistance, and the power of barbecue. CHARLIE BENNET: Barbecue? AMEET DOSHI: But for now, let's kick off with a song about listening to what people say, figuring out if you fit in-- CHARLIE BENNET: I'm so hungry. AMEET DOSHI: --and what you can do about it. If you don't fit in. This is "People Say" by The Meters right here on Lost in the Stacks. [THE METERS, "PEOPLE SAY"] (SINGING) Have I got a right to live? People say I'm bad People say Have I got a right me to live? MARLEE GIVENS: You just heard "People Say" by The Meters. Welcome to Lost in the Stacks. Today's show is called The Library Between The Lines. And joining us in the studio is Dr. Jaclyn Royster. She is the dean of Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts here at Georgia Tech, as well as a professor of English in the School of Literature, Media and Communication. She's a scholar of rhetoric, literacy, and women's studies. Dr. Royster, welcome to the show. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Thank you very much. MARLEE GIVENS: So we invited you on the show after having done three shows about bias in our library catalogs and asked if you might want to come and speak a little bit about your experience in academic libraries. And you replied that you had been working between the lines for so long that it seemed second nature. And I was wondering if you might want to comment a little bit more on what working between the lines means to you. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, I think that it starts with being a person who looks at African-American cultures; as a person who looks at women's conditions, contributions and achievements; and as a person who looks at African-American Women's contributions, achievements, and conditions. All of those things push you out of the center of the way that most things are set. And so in order to do that work, I could never think within the circle. I had to think kind of outside and figure out ways to do what I needed to do regardless of that. CHARLIE BENNETT: Is the circle mainstream history, or mainstream criticism, or when you think of outside the circle or away from the center, what are you talking about? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, you could look at it in a more general way and say that, in all communities, you have default ways of thinking about things. The defaults are set so comfortably often until they're transparent to almost anybody. And so it's not just the academic world, but the whole society in which we live has a set of expectations that are not always set with people like me in mind. And so I've just had to disregard that to do the kinds of things that I wanted to do with the people that I wanted to know more about. MARLEE GIVENS: I think you've actually mentioned that it's not just in the library, that you've learned more from your colleagues than you have in the academy or in the library resources of the book publishing resources. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, in the early days, there was no curriculum that allowed me to learn about the people that I wanted to learn. There wasn't a course that you could say, OK, come here if you want to learn about African-American women who did X, Y, or Z. There was no such course. So in many ways, I began learning in the company of friends who knew some things, and who wanted to know more, and who were willing to build a learning community around those desires. I think of one moment that was particularly helpful to me was when we were doing the journal-- SAGE's scholarly journal on Black women. And the four women, including myself, who were the original editors of that essentially learned together from different interdisciplinary perspectives. One was a sociologist, one was a literature person, one was a librarian, a research librarian, and me in rhetorical studies. And so we brought our own strengths to the table. But we literally learned together. There was no such course that we could go to and get trained for what we were doing. FRED RASCOE: Just for the name of the librarian that was the editor. I want to give the librarian a shout out, if you recall. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, I called her Janet. FRED RASCOE: OK. Yay, Janet. So how did the library figure into your learning, when you're learning to navigate outside the circle, as you put it. Where did the library figure in how you were learning and researching in your academic career? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, you have to go back to what becomes the default ways of being as a human being in the world. And I was raised to love books. So I don't remember a time when I didn't enjoy being in library spaces. Even in elementary school, I guess it was, one of my groups that I joined was the SLAGs, if anybody remembers that. Student Library Assistants of Georgia. Wow. I was one of those because I just loved being in the library. My mother was a public school teacher. And I don't know about now because I don't know that much about school schedules anymore. But teachers stayed longer than students back in the day. And I went to school wherever my mother taught. So I waited for her in the library. So libraries have just been a part of who I am, what I do, what I value. And of course, over the course of the last couple of decades, that relationship has evolved. So my favorite people are research librarians. I depend on them to help me find the things that I need in library spaces. I know that they're there. And I have to figure out how to get to them and how to interrogate them in ways that help me learn what I need to learn. WENDY HAGENMAIER: This is Lost in the Stacks, and we'll be back with more from Doctor Royster after a music set final this set under pen 187 R44. (SINGING) Well, I remember-- a word. A word Take a word MARLEE GIVENS: That was "Take a Word" by Marci Joe. And before that, you heard "100 Different Words" by The Enormous Room, songs about what words can do by their presence and by their absence. ["INDIANA JONES MAIN THEME"] CHARLIE BENNETT: I don't know. I hit the bumper button. Something else happened, Fred. FRED RASCOE: Sounded adventurous to me. CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called The Library Between the Lines. Our guest is Dr. Jaclyn Royster, the dean of Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts here at Georgia Tech. MARLEE GIVENS: So we were talking about what a wonderful experience you've had with librarians. I kind of wonder if you walked into the library and couldn't find a librarian if you would have had the same experience, trying to find your way around all the various ways that libraries might describe African-American studies, African-American women, women. We once read a story from a librarian named Emily Dubinsky who was working with a librarian who was conducting a library class. And she was explaining that if you wanted to find a heading for African-American women, you would look under this call number. And a student in the class said, well, if I wanted to look for white women, would I look under white women? And the librarian said yes. And of course, that was not true. And so I think I'd like to stop talking and hear about what it's been like for you walking into the library over the course of your career and trying to find what you need. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: I think one of my advantages was starting within the African-American community at libraries that were populated by African-American women, overwhelmingly, who were very kind in listening to whatever my questions were and willing to be helpful, regardless of whether they actually had answers or not. And with that foundation, I became confident about how research librarians were there to be helpful. So I went into such spaces, even when they were not in the African-American community, with the presumption that I just needed to ask and see what the librarians could do to be helpful or not, and then willing to persevere. I don't give up easily. I try to think and think again because, as you were saying earlier, the systemic ways in which our institutions are organized don't always support the way that I need to ask things. So I can't always expect people to automatically know what I want or what they have that might address it. They have to be willing to work with me to negotiate that space to figure it out. And I've been very lucky in the sense that I've always found people in libraries who were willing to take that time with me to negotiate the space and work it out. So I look at, for example, when I first started looking at African-American women activists back in the '80s when they were not cataloged that way-- certainly not. There was no catalog for African-American women activists. But because I knew some of them, I knew that some of their stories were embedded within the stories of their husbands, their brothers, their fathers. And so if I could not find them by name, I would ask, well, do you have materials related to X gentleman. Do you know whether or not there are family records related to his work or that might be included for whatever reason. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you feel like you were creating context within the catalog through these searches or was there a remnant of your research left over in the catalog, or were you kind of working in the shadows and then disappearing? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: No. I don't disappear. I'm very faithful as the library user. My best example-- CHARLIE BENNETT: That's a t-shirt. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: --was that I like photographs. African-American women, especially women of means or even modest means, have often taken photographs. So there was a moment when I wanted to see what these women looked like, especially when they were presenting themselves at their best. I was in Ohio at the time. So I went to the Ohio Historical Society and asked if they had any photographs of African-American women. And they thought they had some that were filed under a photographer. So I said, well, I'll look through them. And I looked through and found a wonderful collection of turn of the century photographs of African-American women and got copies of all of them for my work. But my remnant in that space was that they ultimately came to value those images and did an exhibition of materials that they had not noticed that they had. So they don't give me credit for finding the photographs. They were already there. But I take considerable joy in knowing that I was a spark for them noticing things that they had not noticed before. CHARLIE BENNETT: Almost like your question was the start of a finding aid for them. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Exactly. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. That's fantastic. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: And the photographs are just gorgeous. So I take pleasure in being one of the first people who valued them in the way that I did. MARLEE GIVENS: Go ahead. FRED RASCOE: You mentioned different ways of finding these hidden records, finding them by associating them with a male that was associated with that name or under the photographer's name when you were doing your research. Do you now see any-- are records still hidden like that, or have you seen any change in how things are findable to researchers? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: There's some improvement. But I think, overwhelmingly, people who do the kind of work that I have to do have to learn to think sideways. I've actually given a paper on what it means to think sideways because the questions always come from angles that, whatever the institution is, it doesn't quite expect. And I'm not put off by that. I'm just persistent. We have to help our institutions to be more responsive to our needs. And just with photographs I was just talking about, you have to feel that your asking sideways questions will permit another group of people after you not needing to be so sideways in the way that the institution responds. So yeah. I think there's a lot of work yet to be done. But it's better. AMEET DOSHI: We'll be back with Dr. Jackie Royster on the left side of the hour. CHARLIE BENNETT: Would you be willing to do a show in station ID? STEVE ALBINI: Sure. I don't know what that means but sure. Hi. This is Steve Albini. I'm a recording engineer. And I'm in the band Shellac of North America. And you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK. CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's Lost in the Stacks is called The Library between the lines, as the show takes our usual pause at this halfway point. I'm going to share a couple of quotes about bias and scholarship. I may even ask one of my colleagues to read one of them. The first is from an article called "Browsing Through Bias" by Sarah Howard and Steven Knowlton. "Both library of Congress classification and library of Congress subject headings exhibit othering tendencies. That is presenting historically marginalized people as fundamentally different from white heterosexual men. Works in African-American studies are not well represented in standard reference works, nor reviewed as frequently as general works. Whether because of lack of representation on the shelves or the very real phenomenon of being othered in library classification systems, Interdisciplinary research and studies of marginalized people is complicated." Our second quote, and Marlee, I'd love for you to read this one, is from an article by our guest which is called "When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own." MARLEE GIVENS: And I quote, "I have spoken, but my voice is still a muted one. I speak, but I cannot be heard. Worse, I am heard, but I am not believed. Worse yet, I speak, but am not believable. These moments of deep disbelief have helped me understand much more clearly that, despite whatever frustration and vulnerability I might feel, despite my fear that no one is listening to me or is curious enough to understand my voice, it is still better to speak." CHARLIE BENNETT: We at Lost in the Stacks hope that you heard that the challenges outlined in the first quote are found to be very real in the second. File this set under PE1405.U6R65. WENDY HAGENMAIER: That was "If you don't get it the first time, back up and try again" by Fred Wesley and the JBs, and before that, "Get Back in Line" By Nervous Twitch, songs about being put into a category and breaking out of it. ["INDIANA JONES THEME"] CHARLIE BENNETT: There is something weird going on with this audio vault. MARLEE GIVENS: Well, our show today is called The Library Between the Lines. And our guest is Dr. Jackie Royster. We're talking about the sense of bias inherent in library systems and services and, frankly, in the higher ed system. So one of the tenets that cataloging librarians hold is it's called literary warrant. And it's the fact that we base our cataloging practices on the literature that is there to cite. And going back to the article that Charlie was quoting earlier, "Browsing Through Bias," the authors mentioned that works of on and about African-American studies or authored by African-American scholars have been, as they say, grudgingly admitted into the academic landscape and are often not collected and acquired at the same pace as other materials. And so they're not well represented in libraries. But we were just talking to you during the break about a project that you did during grad school where you went in search of these materials. Would you talk about that for a minute? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Sure. When I was in graduate school at the University of Michigan, I had a summer job. And my job was behind the stacks in the card catalog. And it was in the early days of the African-American studies program there at Michigan. And it was my job to find every volume that I could find related to African-American culture in the Graduate Library and identify them. So it was so much fun to me because I got to discover what was there, and to get a sense of what was not there, and to leave that as a part of the legacy from which that program was able to build as one of the nation's strong African-American studies programs. MARLEE GIVENS: And do you know what the librarians did with what you found? Did they change the cards in the card catalog? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: That was above my pay grade so I don't know what happened. But I faithfully gave them what I found. And I felt very proud of being a part of that process. MARLEE GIVENS: That is one great but arduous task that we could potentially take as libraries. And the article that we've been quoting actually goes on for over 160 pages. And most of that is appendices of call numbers and subject headings for these interdisciplinary studies. And they show how they cross the entire library catalog. And so someone trying to do that kind of work, I mean, you were looking at the card catalog. But a scholar coming in might have to crisscross the entire library to find all of the books. CHARLIE BENNETT: It's extraordinary to think that a field of study can be created or lost depending on whether there is a catalog, a core collection, or a list of resources. MARLEE GIVENS: So the other thing that some librarians are discussing now is whether this is more a matter of changing the catalog or introducing instructional practices. One of the examples was one that I mentioned before of the students who wanted to know where they could find white women in the catalog. But going in and being educators-- and it sounds like you've been very proactive in seeking that education-- is there something that the library could do more to encourage that? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, I think all of the practices have to change because part of the problem in even doing what I did is that the volumes had to be in the library in the first place. And because of common academic practices, a lot of the work in research and scholarship in African-American culture never quite made it to the library. It was not authorized to be published in standard publishing venues. It was not valued in the venues where it was published so it did not get authorized or acknowledged as worthy of being in a collection to begin with. So our practices have to change. All of what we've been talking about today is a part of a collective effort. We have to realize that we're just beginning to tell the full story of what history, culture, conditions, contributions, achievements have been like for a full range of individuals regardless of race, or gender, or class, or any other kinds of identity markers. And we've got a lot of work to do. MARLEE GIVENS: And I love how, in your article, you talk about working across boundaries with others and having a conversation. But you also talk about-- well, you tell the story of where you reference Alex Haley's roots of the teacher saying your name is Toby. And that's kind of what we're doing in our catalog sometimes is the library is saying, this is what we're calling this person, this subject. Your name is. In what ways can the library mitigate that experience? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: You could help to raise the question of what is valuable here. What is the story here? Whose story is it? Whose story is it not? What is left out? One of the best definitions of critical thinking that I've ever come across is the ability for us to see what is there and not there, and that other piece, what could be there instead? And so at this point in our history, in academic circles, we're looking for what could be there instead and trying to find ways to capture that, to respect it, and to value it. CHARLIE BENNETT: I feel like this is a moment that we're going to have to go from the sublime to the gastronomical. FRED RASCOE: Oh, right. Yeah. We've got about 30 seconds left in the segment, Marlee, so we've got to talk about barbecue for just a brief moment. MARLEE GIVENS: I think that's good. So what barbecue place in Atlanta can you just not live without? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: My kitchen. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, nice one. FRED RASCOE: Marlee, you and Dr. Royster, like, exchanged a lot of barbecue restaurants and recommendations on the side. MARLEE GIVENS: We did. We did. I will say I was instrumental in making a plug for barbecue places that are not on the east side of Atlanta, looking more at the west and the south. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Yeah. Well, I'm more of a west side person so I look for west side places. And I look for places that can live up to my family's high standard. My grandfather was the best barbecuer in Georgia during his day. MARLEE GIVENS: Oh. CHARLIE BENNETT: It's a throw down. I hear it happening right now. MARLEE GIVENS: I think so. FRED RASCOE: Man, Charlie, I'm hungry too now. Man. Ugh. All right. This is Lost in the Stacks. And we've been speaking today with Dr. Jacqueline Royster. She is dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts here at Georgia Tech. Dr. Royster, thank you so much for being on our show today. JACQUELINE ROYSTER: My pleasure. ["INDIANA JONES THEME"] You know, as it happens, I've got this set here that you can file under TX840.B3. Guess what it's about, Fred. You just heard "Bar-B-Q" by ZZ Top. Put an extra P on there. And before that, "Ribs Tips," parts 1 and 2 by Andre Williams. Songs about cooking up something good. ["INDIANA JONES THEME"] CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. Our show today is called The Library Between the Lines. And Marlee, I think it might be your fault that all of my bumpers had Indiana Jones music. MARLEE GIVENS: It could be. CHARLIE BENNETT: Can you explain yourself? MARLEE GIVENS: Well, when Dr. Royster and I were prepping for the interview, she requested that we play some theme music from Indiana Jones. But I don't know why. Dr. Royster. Can you tell us a little bit about why Indiana Jones resonates with you? JACQUELINE ROYSTER: Well, a lot of people think of Indiana Jones as just a movie, a fun movie. But what I appreciate most about it is that Indiana Jones is an archaeologist. He values the past and the small stories that are in every little bit of thing that can be found related to our past. And he goes and digs them out of the ground. I dig my things out of the library, but it's OK because we both appreciate that there are things from our past that we need to know, value, appreciate, celebrate. And it's so much fun finding them. So the adventure of it all is what I wanted to capture with that music. I consider the work that I do to be adventurous. MARLEE GIVENS: That really warms my librarian heart. CHARLIE BENNETT: All right. Now we can roll these credits. ["INDIANA JONES MAIN THEME"] Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library. This feels very different than normal. Produced by me, Charlie Bennett, Ameet Doshi, Wendy Hagenmaier, and Fred Rascoe. FRED RASCOE: It feels weird because Charlie was our engineer today. CHARLIE BENNETT: Hello. FRED RASCOE: And the show was brought to you in part by the Library Collective, which has opened its presentation submission process for next year's conference. You can learn more at TheLibrariansCollective.org. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Legal counsel and a cool sable fedora were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. MARLEE GIVENS: All-Star Co-production credit for this episode goes to Sonya Slutskaya, who put in a lot of work in framing the show idea and providing her cataloging expertise. She couldn't be here today, but she was an essential part of the show. CHARLIE BENNETT: Special thanks to Dr. Royster for being on the show, to Spielberg, Lucas and Ford for all that stuff they did. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. AMEET DOSHI: Find us online at Lost in the Stacks org and you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix. WENDY HAGENMAIER: Next week on Lost in the Stacks, you'll hear our raw data is an oxymoron again. CHARLIE BENNETT: Shimmy shimmy ya ya. AMEET DOSHI: It's time for our last song today. In Dr. Royster's paper, "When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own," she talks about realizing the power and authority of systems that define and enforce meaning of marginalized identities. So let's close with a song about a woman realizing her power and authority and defining her own meaning. This is "Woman" by Neneh Cherry right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody. [NENEH CHERRY, "WOMAN"] (SINGING) You got to be fortunate You got to be lucky now