Thanks for your comment, Alex. I really appreciate being able to have a dialogue around this complex topic.

With my post I was trying to open up additional facets of “service” to consideration. I was certainly not trying to throw out any notion of a service ethic in librarianship. My dissatisfaction with some of the framing of the original article stems from the fact that when we assume “service” or even “service ethic” have stable, shared meanings (when really as I argue, these are a complicated and diverse welter of things with different histories) we, as a community, hamper our ability to think and speak clear about either “service” or “not service” (whether that is digital humanities research or some other “new” activity). But I’m not attributing this solely to Barbara—the professional literature is rife with it. So, to take up your metaphor for a moment and then horribly mix it, I’m not sure it’s fair to think of “service” as the baby at risk of being thrown out so much as the 800 lb. gorilla in the room.

There is, as you suggest, a dimension to this that relates to what terms librarians choose for local, political reasons. Perhaps a new thing is framed as a “service” because this is a way to get something started without running into or challenging established prerogatives of other community members. Examination of the power (and gender) dynamics around this question of “service” is another topic to take up. However, certainly in our own professional dialogues I would hope we could be clearer about what is and isn’t a service and the relative values of these different types of activities.

To address your last point, I think there are aspects of libraries and librarians doing digital humanities that can’t and shouldn’t be fitted to the model of “service” except in the broadest sense that the research that other faculty do would also be considered “service.” The digital humanities as a field needs librarian-designed, -driven and -led research projects as much as the library community does. My concern is that trying to fit these to an unarticulated model of service will hold back some of the best creative thinking and making the field can do. I very much agree with you that what we’re after is “nurtur[ing] creativity, growth and professional dignity within and outside the library.”

Thank you Trevor for such a helpful piece. As you know I am a very junior librarian trying to answer the questions that bring us all here to DH+Lib. Your piece was the push and the road map I needed to get my butt in the archives of library history and explore the different genealogies that lead to the world I just joined as an “agent of change.” Heck, I want to know what I’m changing. Wouldn’t want to throw the baby with the bathwater. Wasn’t this the impulse of Barbara’s “the service ethic in librarianship is one of its defining features,” not as an identitarian stake in the ground, but a reminder of the babies?

At the end of your piece you offer that we can “derive energy for more and better work [that comes] from abandoning the false security of “traditional library service” and embracing the unstable, multiple meanings that lie behind that phrase.” Whether we derive our source of inspiration for what to do next from exploring the historical slippages of “traditional.library.service,” or the equally inspiring slippages of “digital humanities,” or an ahistorical appreciation for our other roles as we learn something new, or even just the call-it-what-you-will-it’s-what-we’re-doing-next school of thought, uncertainty and difference abounds. Shouldn’t we remain sensitive and eclectic in our approach? The “frame” can be skinned many ways, not all bad, and I think we need yours as well as Barbara’s depending on the audience.

(To be honest, I prefer conventional over traditional when a distinction is necessary, though I’m still on the market for the sweet spot).

Your third point about the difference internal to the way we use the word service in the phrases “service ethics” and “set of services” is brilliant and very timely (says the newbie). Thank you for clearing the ground for further distinctions. You cristalize a suspicion that’s been bugging me for a while. The phrase “a suite of services” gets bandied about around here like a company motto on training day, and I couldn’t for the life of me conceptually bend many of the things we want to do to fit what is already on offer or previously imaginable (cf. “What Doesn’t Belong?“). Of course, aporias don’t stop us from pushing through anyway (cf. Frogger).

I’m still not sure whether you are suggesting that the DH thing we do should be a new service on the historical menu or whether DH+Lib can be imagined as a space that is outside of all possible connotations of service—the case for leadership in DH projects, for example. I don’t ultimately mind trying to fit everything within the gaps of the word, even as we doggedly attempt to exorcise its demons (servitude, service industry, etc.) I’m game as long as we can nurture creativity, growth and professional dignity within and outside the library, and as long as the word ceases to be an alibi for admin goo.

While we’re on the subject, can we start calling faculty research a service too? Sometimes they can be very helpful in DH projects.