By Fobazi Ettarh with back cover text by Anastasia Chiu
Public Collectors, Chicago, IL, 2026
Pages: 24
Dimensions: 5.5 in x 8.5 in
Cover: Paper
Binding: saddle stitched
Process: Risograph
Color: Medium Blue, Purple and Burgundy ink
Edition size: 644
ISBN: none

This booklet of an essay by Fobazi Ettarh was developed through a particularly meaningful and brisk collaboration - created in a little over a month, from start to finish. From the back cover:

This booklet is a standalone print publication of Fobazi Ettarh’s essay, in which she defined vocational awe as the ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique. Fobazi first presented on vocational awe at the Identity, Agency, and Culture in Academic Libraries Conference in 2017. Later on, she fleshed out the idea into this essay, which first appeared in the journal In the Library with the Lead Pipe on January 10, 2018. It sparked immediate rippling conversations about dynamics of systemic underresourcing, undercompensation, job creep, and exploitation across the library profession. It was cited more than 500 times in her lifetime, and she presented dozens of invited presentations and keynotes on it. In 2020, she was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker; true to her own values, she voluntarily revoked the award to protest Library Journal’s awarding of a Library of the Year that had been widely protested for hosting an event with a virulently anti-trans organization earlier in the year. In this time, public scholars and intellectuals in fields such as social work, teaching, nursing, and technology began to engage with vocational awe, including Cory Doctorow in Enshittification, Anne Helen Petersen in Culture Study, Simone Stolzoff in The Good Enough Job, and more. At the time of her passing in January 2026, Fobazi was a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, furthering her research on vocational awe across domains, with a specific focus on tech work. May her memory politicize us all.

— Anastasia Chiu 

The proposal to publish this text as a booklet for distribution at a celebration of Fobazi’s life, held in Chicago in June 2026, came from library workers Mimosa Shah and Jorge López-McKnight. With the cooperation of Fobazi’s widow Elena Maris, Public Collectors has designed, printed and published this essay for that celebration, as well as more widespread readership, and in support of librarians everywhere.

— Marc Fischer / Public Collectors