The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts exacerbated existing problems for workers within libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs). Before COVID's outbreak, independent scholar Fobazi Ettarh's Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves (2018) argued that the paradigm of vocational awe among LAM workers resulted "in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good ... and therefore beyond critique," especially critiques that focus on "problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary." In the years since the publication of Ettarh's article, the situation deteriorated. Some of us have been categorized as essential workers and forced to put our bodies and immune systems in harm's way. A number of us have reached critical points of professional and technological burnout, all the while being called upon to serve on diversity committees in the wake of the murder of countless Black people. Entire organizational groups of workers, especially those working in temporary or other precarious positions, have been furloughed indefinitely or laid off. The pandemic has demonstrated forcibly that no library, museum or archive is immune to the pitfalls of living within (and often acting as an arm of) capitalist society.
Mutual aid represents a pathway forward for LAM workers to connect with one another and build support networks throughout the current crisis, as well as prepare us for the next inevitable crisis. It allows workers to identify those systems, recognize specific symptoms suffered beneath those systems, and support and provide for each others' basic needs.
Mutual aid can support the struggle for fair and equitable conditions of LAM labor. As LAM workers, the authors and others are fighting:
To create the conditions to thrive as LAM workers, especially those who are BIPOC, queer, disabled, neurodiverse, immigrant, undocumented, and/or poor.
To demolish barriers to participating fully and creatively in LAM work, and to define LAM work expansively and generously.
To make space for ourselves, as well as others who cannot thrive under current conditions of LAM labor. We don't even know the full extent of who is excluded!
For abundance in the face of scarcity and against the omnipresent "doing more with less."
To make our work visible, not necessarily to those with entrenched power, but rather to those with whom we seek solidarity as LAM workers and people marginalized within the current conditions of LAM work.
To belong in libraries, archives, and museums and among LAM workers despite significant challenges and barriers.
Mutual aid at work will inherently be a criticism of the failure of the employer to provide a living wage; people can't afford to get through a crisis. Be prepared to have these long-term conversations. Mutual aid could also go beyond workplaces to include professional organizations.
Consider how institutional backing may or not benefit your mutual aid efforts. You can be intentional about your relationships (for example, the AWE Fund ad hoc Organizing Committee maintains its own blog while the SAA Foundation maintains the Fund’s application site). What can you learn from the mutual aid organizations with institutional backing?
For recent examples of mutual aid in LAM workplaces, please refer to the Examples and Inspiration section.