James V. Carmichael

James V Carmichael, Jr. (Jim) is a Professor of Library and Information Studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he has taught on the tenure-track since 1989. He was born in Marietta, Georgia on November 27, 1946. He was educated in a grade-school military school, a New England prep school, with a year at College Cévenol in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France for “emotional maturity” in 1963-64, and received his A. B. (French, 1969) and MLn. (1977) degrees from Emory University. He received his Ph. D. from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1988. The subject of his dissertation was “Tommie Dora Barker and Southern Librarianship,” and concerned Barker’s role in reconciling sectional feeling with national professional goals in the difficult years of The Great Depression. Carmichael has written widely on the history of southern libraries, and in particular the role of different library education programs in influencing the spread of professional librarianship throughout the southern region. A secondary interest, derived from a male librarian survey on which he was advised by an older scholar not to ask the sexual orientation of survey respondents, is gay library history—not so much the history of particular figures and events as the context through which gay liberation, gay literature, and professional gay identity emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Carmichael himself has been publicly out since 1978, although his sexual orientation was suspect to most people who knew him prior to that date. He maintains, however, that gay history is secondary in intellectual importance to the history of gender in that the assignment of social --and professional--roles is usually based on the way that male and female roles are socially defined, whatever other verbal or surgical enhancements we may add to the mix.

There are 44 included publications by James V. Carmichael :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Ahistoricity in Librarianship: Perceptions of Practitioners of Biographical Research 1991 1286 The ALA Library History Roundtable recently adopted a resolution charging schools of library and information science (LIS) to strengthen historical components in all parts of LIS curricula and to encourage historical studies among faculty and graduat...
Art: Towards a Broader Definition of Expertise 2010 1359 A powerpoint presentation on the discipline of art as a social science. Audio included.
Atlanta's Female Librarians, 1883-1915 1986 3149 It is commonly assumed that female librarians at the turn of the century lacked autonomy, were paid less than their male contemporaries because the male establishment was exploiting them, and served in their librarian roles largely as cultural adornm...
Correspondence 1996 688 I agree with Robert Hauptman-certainly a champion of intellectual freedom if ever there was one-that we live in an age of linguistic vulgarity and decline (July 1995, p. 359), although I would take the Freudian course and argue with D. H. Lawrence...
Correspondence 2000 716 Forgive me for resorting to the Nether Ether1 for this communication. Scandalous things were said of Mme. Blavatsky and her followers before I was even a dimple in my mother's cheek (well, almost before then, but I've never corrected tha...
The Cover Design 2002 1153 The existence and number of private antebellum southern libraries remains a matter of contention among American social historians-particularly historians of reading and education. Apologists maintain that the flower of colonial intellectualism lay...
A “Despised” “Semi-Profession”: Perceptions of Curricular Content Relating to Gender and Social Issues among 1993 MLIS/MLS Graduates. 1997 1939 Describes a survey of graduates from master's in library and information studies programs concerning social responsibility and gender issues and the treatment that these subjects received in their classes. Results are discussed that indicate that lib...
Effects of the Gay Publishing Boom on Classes of Titles Retrieved Under the Subject Headings “Homosexuality,” “Gay Men,” and “Gays” in the OCLC WorldCat Database 2002 3856 What do searchers find when they look for literature on homosexuality? This question has profound implications for older as well as younger gays in their coming out, as well as in their subsequent identity development. Library records provide credibl...
The Future of the Past 1991 1428 he recent specter of missile launchers looming over the deserts of Iraq and Kuwait, near the site of Susa where Alexander the Great in 324 B.C. performed a mass marriage between himself, and his soldiers and Eastern princesses in order to affect a un...
The Gay Librarian: A Comparative Analysis of Attitudes Towards Professional Gender Issues 1996 5747 Librarianship is a feminized profession, and like teaching, nursing, and social work with which it shares the occupational traits of a “semi-profession,” its low status and prestige have been attributed to a negative feminine image. To date, discussi...
Gender Issues in the Workplace: Male Librarians Tell Their Side. 1994 5214 Looks at results of a survey of male librarians conducted in 1991 to capture male sentiments about gender issues. Tasks they felt implicitly expected to perform because they are male; Assumptions about male and female librarians; Women as administrat...
Hands-Off Instruction: A Study of the Effectiveness of a Media-Based Library Instruction Module 1981 1036 Georgia College, a four-year senior college in the University System, offers only limited informal library instruction to its students. In the past, with the exception of English 102 classes, it has been offered on an ad hoc basis as individual facu...
Innovation in Library Education: Historical X-Files on Technology, People, and Change 1998 1586 In spite of the random accolade occasionally tossed to the unusually prominent professor, most practitioners regard library educators with distrust, disdain, or at best, strained tolerance. Academicians generally are viewed as self-serving, indulgent...
Introduction: The Continuing Depression 2011 1960 Margaret Herdman's study of the impact of the Depression on public libraries is unflinching and unemotional, whereas R. L. Duffus's study of libraries in ten metropolises gives more of the color of the era, even if it is more anecdotal than statistic...
It Only Hurts When I Flame: Civil Rights vs. Civility Rights on the Information Superhighway 1994 744 The current gender and language debates represent in part old battles fought on new ground. The etiquette of letter-writing was surely an antecedent, or at least a corollary, to the current discussion of gender equality in academic discourse. Gender ...
'The Last Socially Acceptable Prejudice:' Gay and Lesbian Issues, Social Responsibilities and Coverage of These Topics in MLIS/MLS Programs. 1996 5361 A survey of 465 U.S. (90.5 percent) and Canadian (9.5 percent) 1993 graduates of master's (M.L.I.S. and M.L.S.) programs accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) addressed lesbigay issues within the context of professional social respo...
Library History without Walls: Clio's Decalogue Revamp'd for the Untenur'd. 1995 1035 The neglect of library history is taken for granted, even if it is undeserved, and even if proposals have been regularly advanced for improving its status. One of the most prevalent salvos proposed focuses on interdisciplinarity and publishing outsid...
The Male Librarian and the Feminine Image: Stereotypes and Reality 2007 1299 A presentation on gender issues in librarianship, specifically stereotypes regarding male librarians.
The Male Librarian and the Feminine Image: A Survey of Stereotype, Status, and Gender Perceptions 1992 14525 Although the literature of librarianship is replete with personality studies, which purport to link the psychological characteristics of librarians with problems of stereotype, professional image, professional status, and occupational prestige, most ...
Memorial Tribute to Edward G. Holley 2010 914 I represent some of Ed Holley’s students, those that occupied part of his waking hours from 1982 to 1988 and became something less than his biological children but something more than those who encountered him only in class. My clearest memory of him...
Music: The Most Specialized Humanities Field 2010 971 Presentation on music as a humanities subject. Audio included.
North Carolina Libraries Face the Depression: A Regional Field Agent and the "Bell Cow" State, 1930-36 1992 1326 Librarians, like other professionals, flatter themselves with the notion that their problems are unique. The generational arrogance that comes with an expanded knowledge base, new technology, and professional respectability often obscures the similar...
Private Support of Library and Information Science Education 1986 1004 As the national administration has encouraged greater voluntary support of educational and cultural institutions, many universities have launched major fundraising efforts among alumni and friends. This paper examines endowment funds and annual gifts...
Reclaiming <i>the Library Past: Writing the Women In,</i> edited by Suzanne Hildenbrand [Review] 1996 2000 For nearly a decade, feminist writers have been calling for a more radical analysis of women in the work force, and nowhere does the need seem to be greater than in librarianship, Nel Noddings' review of feminist thought in education, social work, te...
[Review] .Libraries in Times of Utopian Thoughts and Social Protests—the Libraries of the Late 1960s and early 1970s, . 2004 978 Young twenty-and thirty-somethings now wear garb from the sixties and seventies to costumed events, little aware that to persons of a certain age (including their own parents) these clothes were a political statement as well as fashion. Similarly, am...
[Review] Academic Libraries: Their Rationale and Role in American Higher Education, edited by Gerald B. McCabe and Ruth J. Person. 1996 1192 Another book of essays on the dysfunctions of academic libraries? Hardly. There is certainly no paucity of books on the subject, nor of ephemera which addresses the technological revolution (the real thrust of this volume), but none to date achieves ...
[Review] Battles, David M. The History of Public Library Access for African Americans in the South, or, Leaving Behind the Plow (Metuchen, NJ; Scarecrow Press, 2009) 2010 1626 For at least thirty-five years and probably since the formation of the Library History Round Table in 1947, library historians have been exhorted to broaden their narrative appeal to a wider range of publishers, to the public, and most of all to othe...
[Review] Instruction and Amusement: Papers from the Sixth Australian Library History Forum, edited by B.J. McMullin. 1998 1169 The most recent set of papers to issue from Australia's biennial library history conference reflects the uniqueness of the Australian situation at the same time that it resonates with concerns central to American library history, namely, the origin...
[Review] Louis Shores: Defining Educational Librarianship by Lee Shiflett 1997 1173 Although Louis Shores died as recently as 1981, he is already almost totally forgotten. Even among his living associates, what often comes to mind is the vulgarity of his supposedly self-promoting schemes, and most notably, his self-appointed role as...
[Review] Moo by Jane Smiley. 1997 2660 To dismiss Jane Smiley's mammoth and wickedly funny academic satire, Moo, as an academic satirical novel would be to consign Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel to a similar fate, for like that work, it is really a great deal more than the sum...
[Review] Still a Man's World: Men in ‘Women's Professions’ by Christine L. Williams 1997 4318 Here Christine Williams broadens themes developed in Gender Differences At Work: Women and Men in Non-Traditional Occupations (Berkeley: University of California, 1989), a comparison between the effects on male nurses and female marines of wor...
[Review]. Becoming Visible. 2000 2029 In a community for which social masks always have possessed special ritualistic value (hence, "camp"), and for which personal subterfuge often has been synonymous with survival, only complete nakedness-physical, emotional, and symbolic-can denote ...
[Review]. Gendering Library History, edited by Evelyn Kerslake and Nickianne Moody 2002 1211 In spite of its off-putting title, this important collection, representing papers given by English and American scholars in England in May 1999 at a conference by the same name, at long last answers some questions about the status of women in librari...
The Revolution Is Not Over: Sedition and the Myth of Unisized Library Education 2002 1183 This spring marked the fifth anniversary at my very first opera, which I saw right across the street with my older sister and my parents at the Fox Theatre—it was “Carmen” with Risë Stevens, Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill. Back in those halcyon da...
Segal, Judith. “The Library Association of the City Colleges of New York, 1939-1965,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1991 [Review] 1994 975 It may come as a surprise to these who grew up under the shadow of organizations like Students for a Democratic Society, which flourished on New York City college campuses, to learn that the original city colleges of New York and the city university ...
Sex in Public (Libraries): An Historical Sampler of What Every Librarian Should Know 1995 2650 A s historical and sociological objects of study, public libraries present a mirror to their host societies, not only of those societies' reading tastes and information needs, but also of their predominant social values. From a modem perspective, som...
Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression 2014 2955 Our ability to use words as we see fit is perhaps the primary measure of our intellectual freedom. Otherwise, we would live in a dream world, largely unexpressed. We form hierarchical classifications of value, create laws by which we function as soci...
Southern Librarianship and the Culture of Resentment 2005 7480 The development of library service in the southern states occurred in a supposedly reconciliatory period of American history following the Civil War, but the reforms of Reconstruction, the indigenous remnants of "southern culture," and feelings of is...
The State Library and Archives of Texas: A History, 1835-1962. [Book review] 2011 819 The dust jacket of The State Library and Archives of Texas: A History, 18351962 features a photograph, circa 1946, showing archival worker Marguerite Hester, with one foot perched precariously atop a six-foot ladder and the other on an archives shelf...
"They sure got to prove it on me": millennial thoughts on gay archives, gay biography, and gay library history 2000 2740 The American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Task Force (GLBTRT) * justly takes pride of place as the first professional gay organization in the world. (1) While the ALA itself ended discrimination based on sexual orien...
Walter C. Allen and Robert F. Delzell, eds. Ideals and Standards: The History of the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. 1993 991 Library and Information Science, provides abundant evidence of why the Illinois program has thrived while other equally prestigious schools such as Columbia and Chicago have folded, for while Illinois has remained on the cutting edge of research a...
Where Did We Drop Those Beads? Looking for a Map of Undocumented Feelings 2006 1240 Barbara Gittings was the first among us to notice—in print, anyway—the connection between homophobia and the disease model of gayness: all the (mis)information contained on library shelves. If she had not published “Combating the Lies in Libraries” i...
Women and North Carolina’s Libraries: Promoting the Library Idea 1994 1042 Women have a very special place in the history of North Carolina’s libraries, as well as libraries throughout the United States. Librarians were usually male until after 1876 when female library assistants became more numerous. In 1887 Melvil Dewey e...
Women in Southern Library Education, 1905-1945. 1992 3354 Southern library education was an almost exclusively female enterprise until about 1930, when the first male students were accepted into the region's only ALA-accredited library school. In the formative (ca. 1905-30) and developmental (ca. 1930-45...