FIMS Publications

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 2019

Volume

68

Issue

2

Journal

Library Trends

First Page

130

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1353/lib.2019.0034

Last Page

152

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.

Notes

This article was initially published in Library Trends by Johns Hopkins University Press and is available online at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/746743/pdf

Citation of this paper:

Nicholson, K. P. "Being in time": New public management, academic librarians, and the temporal labor of pink-collar public service work. Library Trends, 68(2), 130-152. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2019.0034

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