Lower East Side librarian

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I'm just throwing this up here since I'm leaving Barnard and wanted to have a public export. 

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• digital humanities

This and the following two blog posts are for a 40-minute presentation at the "Vulnerability at Work and Beyond: How are We Managing?" themed 2026 LACUNY Institute. 

In the next two posts, I'll share two of my interventions, and then we'll add yours to this post!

But first...here are some of the reasons I began regular downloads of my Google account and took medical leave:

• I was called into the provost's office without an explanation, with my boss clearly on the provost's side, not mine
• 77 of my coworkers were laid off on last day of the month and were immediately cut off from their health insurance. If they signed a promise not to sue, they were given two months free COBRA. Meanwhile, how many executive positions have been added since then?
• I got a call from HR saying that my part-time coworker was fired. That ended up not being true, but COME ON. 
• One of my student zine librarians was suspended from school for a year for having participated in what was meant to be a no-risk protest that was escalated by campus security and the NYPD surrounded and trapping the protestors  
• A coworker of mine was fired for participating in the same protest
• Constant campus surveillance via swipe access and having attendance taken at our staff holiday party
• The violence of the Hinds Hall raid in 2024
• Being forced to remove all DEI references from our website because discrimination against white people? What even is higher ed???
• Approval being required for all purchases, web, and social media posts
• Non-librarian hired as interim dean
• Librarians banned from faculty meetings
• The most beloved member of HR being manipulated and fired
• A hit piece about my special collection in the Washington Free Beacon, a deeply unserious web news outlet that lead to judgment against the zine library and me. Could maybe anyone have thought to offer me a delete.me account or ask how I was doing???
• My department getting defunded/told to rely on endowments, rather than operational money
• Staff across the college being treated with fear and loathing, like the time right after the layoffs when a senior staffer told us she was sorry we were all suffering from group think

All of that took a toll on my mental health ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Suggestions:

• download your last paystub and anything else you might need from HR
• print your files
• download to USB/external drive
• flash drives in a fireproof box
• document any uncomfortable/weird interactions
• describe what you experienced if you are in a disciplinary meeting / have potentially problematic interactions with managers
• analyze a problematic job offer and ask detailed questions (as a stalling tactic)
• find your allies--is there anyone in HR you can trust?
• don't email HR. talk to them in person/on the phone

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• lacuny

nb: my knowledge is limited to New York State and my employer. 

NYS Workers Comp (pdf) - the upshot is that you can get a minimum of 50% of your salary while you are on short-term disability (up to $170/week), but I got my whole salary from my employer! My observations:

• The leave is between you and the insurer, not you and your employer. They have nothing to do with it, decision-making wise
• You can take up to six months, but you are only protected by FMLA for three months--meaning they can't fire you for taking leave until after three months
• Your provider must attest that you cannot perform your job due
• My psych provider was horrible and caused me tremendous stress, so make sure your doctor/nurse/therapist will fill out the form properly and in a timely manner, and check if there's a fee for filling out the form because if they're like my provider, they won't tell you that; they just won't act until you ask what the holdup is

 

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• lacuny

From https://imgflip.com/i/arpue5

How to download your work email, files, contacts, etc. if your employer uses the Goog. 

1. Empty your downloads folder
2. Empty your trash / recycling bin
3. Google Takeout link - I have mine set to download every two months
4. You will be asked to login - no idea if that triggers something with IT 
5. Select data to include - note that items in shared drives are not included. You'll need to download those materials manually
6. Close extraneous applications (this process is finicky--at least it has been for me, so give your computer less to do while it downloads)
7. Tell your computer not to go to sleep: under battery on a Mac laptop
8. Download your files one at a time. Some of them will take a WHILE
9. Some of the files need to be downloaded into the same file (before you transfer from downloads to wherever you have room for giant files). If there are two downloaded at once, e.g., one small file with the ending mbox.part and a giant file that takes a lot of time (for me half an hour, but I've been at my job for >20 years) to download ending .mbox. (btw I get it--must be mailbox. This post is for GUI people). You can move the file once it's turned into one folder. any .part file needs to be with its parent file
10. Moving your files will take a long time, too. Mine take even longer because of how my home network is configured
11. Delete files from your download folder as you go
12. Keep your machine awake (I'm not sure if that's why my mbox download failed. I hope it wasn't that the file was too big!)
13. Refresh the google page if you don't remember which file you just downloaded (please tell me it's not just me)
14. The whole thing takes me about five hours

free:

• google
• work
• lacuny

Photo of Maurice J. Freedman by his daughter, Danna Freedman-Shara

Maurice J. Freedman, Ph.D., known as Moishe to much of his family of origin and his childhood friends and Mitch to the rest of the world throughout his adult life, was born in Newark, NJ to immigrants Max Freedman (Russia) and Sylvia Casif Freedman (Lithuania). He was a proud graduate of Bragaw Avenue Elementary School and Weequahic High School. He graduated from Newark Rutgers before earning his Masters of Library Science at the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. at Rutgers University.

Mitch is survived by his wife of 42 years, Paula Mazer Freedman, his four children, Jenna Freedman (Eric Freedman Goldhagen), Susan Freedman, Danna Freedman-Shara (Michael Smith), Jesse Freedman (Julia Matallana Freedman), granddaughter Ella and brother Bernard Freedman (Tina). He was pre-deceased by his sister Leah Pariser (Jack Pariser) and his parents. 

 

Mitch was a man who loved. He loved his family, his friends, acquaintances, children's librarians celebrating the Newbery award, jazz music, the Mets, the Knicks, the Brooklyn Dodgers, books, movies, photography, travel, and public libraries. One of the things that made Mitch a wonderful father was that each of his children was his favorite. His granddaughter Ella transformed his life, bringing him impossible joy every time she walked through his door. Even in his final hours he found the strength to call Ella "baby" and kiss her on the head. 

 

At the time of his passing, Mitch was retired from several stints as an interim library director (New City, Nyack, Pound Ridge, and Purchase, all in NY) after his retirement from the Westchester Library System, which he led as Executive Director for 22 years. He is, perhaps, best known for his service as president of the American Library Association 2002/2003, for which he was a petition candidate. Mitch’s presidential initiative was labor-focused, including a push for better salaries for library workers with the message that just because librarians love their jobs, it doesn’t mean they should be paid like volunteers.  As ALA president, he also launched National Library Workers Day and established the ALA-APA (Allied Professional Association) to enable lobbying without jeopardizing ALA's nonprofit status. A political activist since his library school days at UC Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement of the early 1960s, Mitch hosted anti-authoritarian left speakers at ALA, including Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore. 

 

Mitch's first job out of library school was an internship at the Library of Congress where he discovered he was a natural administrator. His leadership philosophy was to hire great people and determine how to get to "yes" for whatever they needed. Mitch also described his leadership style as "walking around." He knew the power of relationships, connection, and how that built a cohesive team. From there, Mitch moved on to Information Dynamics Corp in Andover, MA, his one job in the private sector, and then to the Hennepin County Public Library (HCPL) in Minneapolis where he hired cataloger Sanford Berman, facilitating the technical framework for Sandy's alternate subject headings that challenged the white, male, Christian, heterosexual default in library description. Another HCPL hire was Michael McConnell, who had had a job offer rescinded by the University of Minnesota when they found out he was gay. 

 

Mitch (and Sandy and many of their friends, including E.J. Josey, Patricia Glass Schuman, Miriam Braverman, and others) channeled their activism into the American Library Association (ALA), establishing the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT) in 1968. The members considered themselves to be the conscience of the ALA, moving the organization to take stands on civil rights in the US, the Vietnam war, and later the repressive USA PATRIOT Act. Mitch won two prestigious ALA awards: Achievement in Library and Information Technology (1981) and the Lippincott award that recognizes distinguished service to the profession. He was also a founding member of the Progressive Librarians Guild. In 1999, Mitch organized a protest at an ALA conference in Philadelphia in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He participated in many other ALA demonstrations, including one protesting a speech about volunteerism made at the conference by Colin Powell, for which Powell was paid $70,000. 

 

In 1977, Mitch joined the faculty of the Columbia University School of Library Service, the premier library school at the time, since closed, where he taught technical services and mentored a generation of librarians in the classroom and outside it. The library school community partied in the same apartment on 100th and Broadway in NYC where the Beastie Boys hung out, since it was the home of editor-in-chief of Library Journal John N. Berry and Louise Parker Berry and John's son, also John, an original member of the band. In order to keep his job at Columbia, Mitch, who at the time had only his Berkeley MLS, had to earn a Ph.D, which he achieved after some departmental strife at Rutgers University in 1982. That was also the year he met his wife, Paula Mazer Shara, with whom he shared 42 years and two children. His children by his first marriage, to Hermene Terry, stood for the couple at their wedding in 1983. 

 

By the time he completed his Ph.D, Mitch had been appointed Executive Director of the Westchester Library System (WLS), a cooperative organization. WLS wasn't one library system, but rather 38 member libraries that each had their own collections and policies. He was at WLS for 22 years, retiring in 2005. During his tenure at WLS, he facilitated an intralibrary loan system connecting the collections of the independent libraries. But the first thing he did was raise the salaries of the children's and young adult librarians at WLS so they would be on par with the staff roles that are more typically highly valued and paid. 

 

In retirement, Mitch and Paula (a former nurse and psychologist) followed their granddaughter to Rhode Island, where they built a loving community in their home in a renovated luggage factory. It was there that Mitch drew his last breaths. 

 

Mitch had a tremendous heart: as a family friend put it, "his love was never in question. It was everywhere." At the age of 86 after a year in and out of the hospital, that tremendous heart failed. He was surrounded by his wife, children, granddaughter, and the young nurse who had helped care for him and who was crying as hard as the family, on Thursday, March 5 with Billie Holiday singing him off to whatever comes next. 

 

If you wish to make a donation in his memory, please consider 

Newark Public Library Mitch's first library and where he worked in high school

Louis Armstrong House Museum an institution he long supported

 

There will be a memorial on May 15. Please RSVP. (We're looking into options for streaming. No promises.)

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• mitch freedman
• librarians