Opening the book on academic librarians: an agenda for investigating gender and professional status in a feminized profession
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Date
2005
Authors
Jacobs, Leona
Mellow, Muriel
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Abstract
Librarians, as an occupational group, appear to have received surprisingly little attention
from those who study work and gender. Like other feminized occupations, such as midwives
and nurses, this group is of interest for how they have engaged in a project of professionalization
in recent decades. Academic librarians have faced challenges to fully realizing a professional
status because of their traditional organizational position as helpers or handmaidens to the
professoriate. In order to more thoroughly outline a research agenda for examining this
occupational group, this paper will present a review of the literature on the organization of
librarians’ work from a sociological and library science perspective, using Sociological Abstracts
and Library Literature to identify resources. The co-authors on this paper contribute their
individual expertise by examining the literature that emerges from their respective disciplines and by entering into a cross-discipline discussion that will articulate the potential theoretical and
practical outcomes of such a research agenda.
Description
Keywords
Feminized profession , Female-dominated professions , Work and gender , Professional status , Literature review , Sociological literature , Library literature
Citation
Jacobs, L., & Mellow, M. (2005, June). Opening the book on academic librarians: An agenda for investigating gender and professional status in a feminized profession. Paper presented at the 40th annual meeting of the Canadian Sociological and Anthropological Association, London, ON.