Professional Associations and the Public Good: Irish Style
Every professional association in existence has some sort of statement about how it exists to ensure that it is fulfilling its mission by enabling it to pursue some sort of public good. Whether this is true or not hardly ever gets tested, because we all so willingly accept the rhetoric and because, as members, we want to believe it. It will be interesting to see how Anthony Clark’s comments about our National Archives will fare in the Society of American Archivists leadership, but given the long-term far too cozy relationship between this government agency and professional association I am not particularly sanguine that it will get much attention at all.
Recent experiences about professional associations often remaining silent are not new, of course, as Pat Walsh’s The Curious Case of the Mayo Librarian (Cork: Mercier Press, 2009), describing a politically charged case about the hiring of librarian in Ireland in 1930. Walsh documents the case of Letitia Dunbar Harrison, a Protestant graduate of Trinity College, who was initially denied employment for the Mayo County librarian position on the grounds that she did not have a working knowledge of the Irish language. As it turned out, the case was being about the hiring of a Protestant and a Trinity grad in a county that was predominately Catholic. As Walsh unfolds it in the book, the intensive media coverage also reflected other matters such as the then new Free State, ongoing tensions between national versus local control, and the efforts to draw on the Carnegie Trust to establish libraries throughout Ireland.
This is an excellent case study of an early controversy, a poignant one in that the central figure in the case, Harrison, has a very brief career and turns her back on the field when it was still one of the only routes for women into professional ranks. It also nearly coincides with the formation of the library profession in Ireland, occurring just two years after the establishment of the Library Association in 1928. Yet, despite this new association, it takes no public stand on the case. Walsh writes, “The most high-profile dispute involving libraries and librarianship passed by without the very organization that represented professional librarians speaking out on it. One could argue that the Library Association had ducked its first big challenge, either from a lack of unity or a lack of nerve” (p. 135). We have seen other professional associations in recent decades not speak out on critical issues, especially when concerning powerful institutions, and we have come to expect silence or statements of little more than general platitudes.
Thanks to Kate Manning for sending the Walsh book as part of my annual Irish Christmas present. I had no idea how timely it would be, and she certainly never thought I would put it to this use. This is a great read, even if current events don't add more relevance for it.
posted by Richard J. Cox @ 4:00 PM
4 Comments:
If you need a worker bee in the fight against NARA's actions, and will accept it from me, I'm on board. What needs to be done?
..."As it turned out, the case was being about the hiring of a Protestant and a Trinity grad in a county that was predominately Catholic. As Walsh unfolds it in the book, the intensive media coverage also reflected other matters such as the then new Free State, ongoing tensions between national versus local control, and the efforts to draw on the Carnegie Trust to establish libraries throughout Ireland."
Mayo was not only predominately Roman Catholic, but also one of the poorest rural counties coming out of the post famine era into the new state era. I know my own grandmother from Clare, up until fairly modern years, the two western counties below Mayo and Galway, and the Gaeltacht regions, used to say "Mayo? God help us." that was where the people had suffered most in Mayo, and certainly it is understandable how they would react to a Protestant librarian. People used to burn the Protestant churches down in those poor rural areas where Catholics could not own land nor practice their religion under the British. They used to drag Catholic men behind British trucks and their families never saw them again. I haven't read the book, but am not surprised. In those years, Parnell was just getting around to letting Catholics own their own land again, letting them speak the Irish language freely and be permitted to read and write without hiding. Catholics could only practice their religion and speak the Irish language in hiding at schools that were called Hedge Schools because they were just that under the hedge in a field somewhere against a stone wall.
THe difference between Dublin and the rest of Ireland esp. Western Ireland is still there, they call it another country.
I have many books from Mercier Press, and will take a look for this one.
Russell, what needs to be done is to mobilize SAA members to send messages to SAA leadership that this is an issue needing to be seriously examined, that the leadership's position that the ethics code is just advisory whitewash is in itself unethical, and that SAA needs to be independent from NARA. We want a strong voice from SAA, not a weak whisper. Thanks.
"This is an excellent case study of an early controversy, a poignant one in that the central figure in the case, Harrison, has a very brief career and turns her back on the field when it was still one of the only routes for women into professional ranks."
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I don't know if this is an accurate comparison say to American librarianship or societal roles for women in Ireland esp in Mayo during these years. When I stop and think about it, these rural parts of Ireland have changed very little today in terms of library services aside from a bookmobile one day a week in most of these same communities. The county center town/city would have a library yes, however the rural families did not and still do not have any expanded library services. I remember asking about this several years ago myself--my cousin in a school principal in rural part of Galway in a one room school, they do have internet but many children do not have a local library still.
Only wealthy people, men and women got any higher education in Ireland outside of the convents and priests in the rural communities esp in the West region.
One example is Carlow University in Pittsburgh, the very same Sisters of Mercy who were founded in Ireland, and emigrated along with how many millions of other women from Ireland seeking a better life. The Sisters of Mercy also founded Mercy Hospital and were a teaching order, particularly for women. My mother emigrated in the 1950s from Western Ireland and was educated for two years by the Sisters of Mercy in Kinvara Galway, until she left on a boat to NY on her grandmothers encouragement not to live the life she did. Women for generations before these years left Ireland even long before 1930 and had very successful careers in the US and around the world, as nurses, some nuns at NotreDame were also medical physicians, they came largely from large families from rural Irish countrysides often in what is called chain migrations to other relatives who crossed the sea before them. Women in Ireland who stayed behind, well they were pretty limited, Dublin or not. The emigration records available these days on Ancestry.com will all show where many thousands of women ended up after emigrating from Ireland, many also went to Canada to be nurses etc. not all were domestics.
In addition to the Mayo Librarian being Protestant, if you've ever seen that movie with Liam Neeson about Michael Collins assassinated in 1922, this gives a good sense of the time then. There is a scene I remember from an archive or something and how they were betrayed by the librarian or the information keeper--its been a while since i've watched it. In rural counties Michael Collins was a hero to the Catholic people and often hid in the mountains with them. People did not trust the information that would be informed against them, its a fascinating history --one which I often listened too from my grandfather who was then living in the same era. Country people also follow only certain newspapers and for particular reasons, they would only trust certain types of "news" or "information" over others. That is also changed now in Ireland as they too live on Facebook accounts and several mobile phones stuck in their ears.
Some interesting women to read about women in rural Ireland meeting modern Ireland I would suggest Edna O'Brian and Nuala O'Faolain who was / is a columnist for The Irish Times.
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