University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

"Being in time": New public management, academic librarians, and the temporal labor of pink-collar public service work

Nicholson, Karen P.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/106085

Description

Title
"Being in time": New public management, academic librarians, and the temporal labor of pink-collar public service work
Author(s)
Nicholson, Karen P.
Issue Date
2019
Keyword(s)
  • Academic librarians
  • Temporal labor
  • Pink-collar public service
Abstract
Time is a site of power, one that enacts particular subjectivities and relationships. In the workplace, time enables and constrains performance, attitudes, and behaviors. In this qualitative research study, I examine the impact of the values and practices of new public management on academic librarians' experiences of time when engaged in pink-collar public service (reference and information literacy) work. Data gathered during semi-structured interviews with twenty-four public service librarians in Canadian public research-intensive universities, members of the U15 Group, serve as a site of analysis for this study. Interview data were first analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) within a constructionist framework. Sharma's (2014) theory of power-chronography—time as power—was then used as an analytical framework. Findings suggest that, in keeping with research on the temporal experiences of faculty, academic librarians' temporal labor is structured and controlled by the logics and institutional arrangements of new public management. Moreover, like their faculty counterparts, academic librarians experience temporal intensification and acceleration. However, as marginal educators and members of a feminized profession, librarians also encounter "recalibration" (Sharma 2014), the need to modify the tempo of their own labor to be "in time" with the dominant temporalities of faculty and students.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 68 (2). Fall 2019
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106085
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2019.0034
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2019 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 68 (2) Fall 2019: Labor in Academic Libraries PRIMARY
Library Trends 68 (2) Fall 2019: Labor in Academic Libraries. Edited by Emily Drabinski, Aliqae Geraci, and Roxanne Shirazi.