We Are What We Maintain—Including Ourselves: Infrastructure and Interdependence of Library Work in the Midst of Disruption

Library workers need a language and a framework for advocacy that effectively names and makes visible the key elements and interconnected nature of our work. This article proposes Burkholder’s and McGinniss’s (2020) maintenance schema, which consists of resources, platform, energy, and vision, as a viable language and framework for this kind of advocacy. It does this by analyzing several major issues facing academic libraries that were exacerbated by the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic: declining budgets, inequalities in academic libraries, and wide-spread exhaustion among library workers. The application of the maintenance schema to these specific issues demonstrates how the schema can help library workers analyze a library’s current situation, determine what is within our control to change, and consider how we can advocate for libraries going into the future. This type of analysis is especially important for librarians acting as leaders, in both official and unofficial capacities, in order to cultivate compassionate and supportive work structures and to more effectively advocate for necessary investments in libraries and the work that maintains it.