Anita Schiller 1926-2021
Once in very great while someone comes along and helps us to look at our profession through whole new lens. Anita Schiller's was one if those amazing people. Her 1968 study, Characteristics of Professional Personnel in College and University Libraries, documented a pervasive pattern of gender inequality withinthe library profession.
Anita did more than report her research; she eloquently articulated the problem, encouraged others to examine gender inequality more fully in different types of libraries, and offeredbenchmarks for measuring change. In her subsequent work she continued to examine gender discrimination and identify possible ways to transform the status quo. Her findings and analysis became clarion calls which inspired others totake concrete action.
Through her speaking and writing Anita became been a mentor – even an icon – to many. She was not the first researcher to call attention to gender. inequality in libraries. She was the first to quantify and describe the status of women in librarianship in a way that he inspired a movement within the profession and empowered it with the facts.
Anita's research also focused on privatization. Writing with her husband Herbert Schiller in The Nation in 1982, she presciently warned against the assault on public access to information: She and Herb, a renowned sociologist, media critic and scholar, together won the 1982 Gold Pen Prize by the Los Angeles-based Pen Center for their article about the privatizing of government information, "Who Can Own What America Knows?"
Anita was a founder of the ALA SRRT Feminist Task Force and an active member of SRRT. She received the ALA Equality Award in 1985 and ALA honorary membership in 2007.
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