rants
By - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - 10:20pm
October 7, 2011 is Ada Lovelace Day, an annual celebration of women in the STEM disciplines. It was created after a psychological study showed that women need role models to believe that they can do something. I love this day. Obviously, it’s a lot of fun to give props to people and tell them how awesome you think they are, but it’s also so so SO necessary.
Women have been involved in the sciences for years – it’s just that they haven’t always gotten credit for their contributions. (See: Franklin, Rosalind) (This is also true for many things before mid-twentieth century, not just science, of course.) Cultural expectations have also discouraged girls from thinking that they can do science and math. Everyone knows about the Barbie that happily chirped “Math is Class is Tough!” but that was almost 20 years ago. Things have changed, right? Nope. Just this year JCPenney sold a t-shirt aimed at pre-teens that proudly proclaimed, “I”m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”
*twitch*
(One day a defense attorney is going to try to excuse my actions because of temporary insanity. Don’t listen to them. I did that shit on purpose and enjoyed every minute of it.)
Here’s some facts, as laid out by Shankar Vedantam: Less than one in five professors of science and math at top research universities in the United States is a woman. The gender distribution of engineers at top Silicon Valley companies is similar to the gender distribution of the audience at your average strip club. Well, okay then. So on Ada Lovelace Day we try and point out women that have achieved (and are still achieving) great things in the science and technology fields in the hope that it drills down through the noise and more little girls grow up to become happy nerds.
In my little corner of the STEM world – library and information science – it’s always been easy to find women pioneers and successes. Librarianship, after all, has always traditionally been a “woman’s job.” That being said, back when I was a librarian, it was always surprising to me how often I was still the only woman in a meeting, especially when the meeting involved “techie” stuff.
Now my career has shifted slightly and I’m more involved in the tech world. It’s definitely a more masculine environment, but there are still plenty of women to admire and who deserve a kudos. Off the top of my head I can think of Courtney Minick and Cicely Wilson from Justia, Sara Frug from LII, Erika Wayne from Standford and my colleague Deb Quentel from CALI. Actually, up until early this week, I’ve been planning on doing a sort of “Women of Free Law” post for this year’s Ada Lovelace Day.
(Yes, I realize now that this title sounds like a cheesecake calendar or a playboy spread.)
I changed my mind about this post when I got an email report of a Sarah Glassmeyer fan spotted in the wild. I get the occasional fan letter, but more often than not friends and colleagues tell me about the nice things people say about me. It’s always sort of weird when this happens since I don’t really think there’s anything that special or exciting about myself but I am always very touched and flattered when it does.
It also worries me a little. While I agree with the premise of Ada Lovelace Day and that it’s great to have role models (like I said, I definitely have some) there’s a danger when you start to put people on pedestals. You start to think that your heroes have some sort of special talent that only the gifted few get that have allowed them to achieve what they have. Mere mortals like yourself couldn’t possibly do what they do…and so you don’t even try. As someone who is called a “hero” and put on pedestal (and again, thank you so much!), lemme tell you…it’s really not that hard to be a hero. If I can do it, anyone can.
So here’s my thought for Ada Lovelace Day….Be your own hero.
Figure out who you are and what you believe in. Learn to like yourself. Get involved in the things that appeal to you. Spend your days doing things that make it easier to go to sleep at night. Anytime anyone asks you “why” reply “why not.” Don’t do anything to win friends or awards or to become “famous.” Anything given to you can be taken away and besides, external validation is for pussies. Never compromise your beliefs or lose your self-respect. Be your own hero.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/m-c/
By - Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 3:01pm
As I was telling one of my correspondents yesterday, it feels like a weird coincidence somehow that the AALL Vendor Colloquium, The Harvard/Berkman Center Digital Library Project planning meeting, and the Harper Collins Boycott debate all happened at the same time. Each one is touching on just a segment of the larger issue, to wit, dependence of libraries on vendors in the digital age. And each one shows that we’re not entirely sure what to do next.
Right now the main reaction I’m seeing to these events is anger. Anger at professional associations. Anger at vendors. Anger at each other.
Anger is easy. The human brain is a marvel of evolution, but it maintains characteristics of that creature that first crawled out of the primordial goo. After all this time and change, humans still only have three main reactions to stimuli – the Three Fs: Flee, Fight or…..Ffffffornicate. (You thought I was going to say the other F word, didn’t you???Well, after my post on #hcod earlier this week, I have a lot of new eyes on this blog and I don’t want to scare people off just yet.) Everything that humans feel and do is just a nuanced version of these.
Anger and outrage (and most publicity and protest movements, really) owe more to the Flee feeling than Fight one. It manifests itself as outrage. Or pearl clutching. Or disgust. Or annoyance. Or impatience. Anger diffuses fear and makes one feel as if they’ve accomplished something, even if what they’ve done is no more productive than hiding one’s head in the sand.
I find it maddening. Perhaps ironically for a blogger, I’m tired of listening to people talk about things without any follow through or change. It’s why I ignore most library blogs and discussions and try to concentrate my energies on my day job and other things where I can actually make concrete changes. I’m reminded of Howard Beale’s famous speech in Network
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
That makes for a great scene in a movie, but nothing changed as a result of this. Actually, if memory serves correctly, the speaker was eventually killed. Not because of his radical ideas, but because his schtick got old and his ratings dropped.
I’m worried that the #hcod, #AALLVC and #ebookrights momentum will be lost to words and no action will ever result. Publishers will still only offer untenable licensing rights for libraries. Professional organizations will still do things the old ways and not embrace transparency initiatives. Demands for rights will be ignored.
(Someone yesterday said that “we don’t need an eBook Bill of Rights. We need a Declaration of Independence.” The history geek in me must note that the Declaration of Independence was only written and signed a year after the actual American Revolutionary War started and was only effective because it had an army (with an assist from allies such as the French) that actually did the fighting and won the war.)
Change will only occur through the fight response. Fighting doesn’t necessarily have to be violent, but does require engaging The Other. That’s hard. Which is why very few people actually choose to take that step.
And here’s where I get stuck and where I have been stuck. I don’t know what form that engagement should take. As I said, I don’t think an economic boycott will work. And I’m not sure that boycotts really are engagement. They may just another form of fleeing. (And as one of my social media shy correspondents shared with me, Harper Collins may choose to play legal hard ball over it and prevent it from starting before it even happens. I’m not saying that HC has a good merit claim..I’m just saying that most people are adverse to being served with legal papers.) I think rallying and educating our patrons and other allies (such as authors) to our cause is a good idea, but libraries are defenders and servants of the defenseless, so our patron allies may have less of a voice than even us. But again, that’s not really engaging the people we need to be engaging – the vendors.
I asked this question not that long ago and got very little response. If you’ve been able to ignore everything up until a few weeks ago, then surely this can be your wake up call. We need a plan B. Something to do after the outrage ends or to do in lieu of outrage.
By - Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 11:34pm
A few weeks ago, I was minding my own business and spending a lovely Winter Saturday antiquing in the Indiana countryside. The owner of one of the shops I like to visit keeps a small dog with her and the person ahead of me in line struck up a conversation about the animal. This then led to them recounting seemingly every dog that either of them had ever owned.
They began listing names and progeny in a manner worthy of a Nordic epic. I soon became bored with my eavesdropping – as any sane person would – and decided to pass the time by checking in on Twitter. Now, I generally try to avoid social media on the weekends, but this was a dire circumstance. It’s sort of good that I did happen to check in because…
SWEET FANCY MOSES, ALL HELL WAS BREAKING LOOSE ON TWITTER.
I mean, not the kind of Hell breaking loose that we saw on election night. Or in the recent Egyptian crisis. Or during the World Cup. Or even when Michael Jackson died. No, I speak of the special kind of Hell that happens when you have a bunch of librarians upset at an organization or vendor. The tweets and retweets fly fast and furious, the messages get lost in the medium and soon you have the virtual version of this (1).
So. Anyway. As it turns out, this particular breaking loose of the Hell was because of an incident that happened at ALA Midwinter. Some livestreaming of a meeting was attempted and the recorder was asked to stop. Cue drama. This was also the day that the shooting in Arizona occurred, so I stopped paying attention. For a more detailed explanation, Meredith Farkas has a summary of the situation and reactions here.
I’m not an ALA member. They don’t collect dues from me and so at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter to me what ALA does. However, I think it’s interesting that ALA is now starting public discussions about streaming at meetings, what does “open meetings” mean, etc. A portion of the membership have indicated that transparency and openess in meetings are important to them, the organization responded yesterday (2), and now the members are responding to this response.
We in AALL are having a bit of a transparency issue ourselves at the present moment. On Tuesday, I read via the Law Librarian Blog that AALL was holding a Vendor Colloquium meeting in few weeks. I got official word of it today via the February e-newsletter/president’s thing. Here are the things that I do not have a problem with w/r/t this upcoming meeting:
- The venue – Sure, it’s a little fancy. And yes, we are in a time of economic crisis. But what are the other options? A Motel 6 by the airport? I personally don’t mind if AALL wants to spend a little money on a nice venue when they host events so that we don’t look like a bunch of rank amateurs. Hopefully (and this is a point that will also come up later) AALL will release the financials so we can all see how much of our money was spent on it.
- The attendees – I wasn’t invited. That’s okay. The format looks to be a lot more interactive than I would feel comfortable doing. However, (and this is a point that will also come up later) that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in what’s happening at the meeting. And, sure, I can think of a couple of people that I think would make interesting contributions to the event that didn’t make the list, but everyone on the list seems to be well qualified to be there and I’m sure that they will all make valuable contributions.
- The format – As I said above, not a way I would want to spend a day, but as I think my participation in unconferences show, I believe there is a lot to be said for getting a bunch of people in a room and seeing what kind of ideas shake out when they are allowed to have free form discussions. Having a professional facilitator is a good idea.
- The timing – Yes, it could be tacked onto the beginning or the end of the Annual Meeting and save some travel money and allow for more open attendance, but perhaps there is a reason for doing it this early – for example, perhaps they are hoping for a document to be created as a result of this to be presented at the meeting. Also, the Annual Meeting is crazy enough – for librarians and vendors – so maybe they thought to give participants the opportunity to direct their full attention to the colloquium.
So, what’s my problem?
Just one, really. But it’s a big one.
I see no reason why I (and all other AALL members) are being shut out of a meeting paid for with our dues monies and done for our benefit. It’s not like I’m asking to actually attend or have my opinions stated in the discussion. As a practical matter, it would be impossible for the thousands of AALL members to physically attend and I am confident that the selected librarian representatives can adequately represent me. I must admit, however, that it would be nice to have been polled as to what sorts of things I would like the librarian avatars to tell vendors – it’s entirely possible that this has happened and I missed the email or it’s forthcoming. (ETA: I have been informed that messages did go out over SIS listservs in November and I missed them. So everyone did get the opportunity to participate that way.)
All I’m asking to know what happens at the colloquium. Exactly what happens. Not a second hand summary live blogged or a later recollection written by a participant. I want a straight, unfiltered accounting of what happened. And I say this will all due respect to Mark Estes who will be providing the official blog of the proceedings. I’m sure he will provide the best blog possible. But it (and later accountings) will still all be filtered through the author’s experience of the event. Nuances can be missed, comments misheard…all humans are fallible and it can’t be a perfect recreation of the event.
Considering AALL has advocated repeatedly for authentic information sources in other areas, it’s pretty weird that they’d be okay with an imperfect record of such an important event, isn’t it?
So what do I respectfully request of AALL? In a perfect world, I would like the entire event to be livestreamed and recorded for posterity. However, I do understand that some people may be uncomfortable with that and it could inhibit frank discussion during the “dialogue” portions of the day. But why can’t the opening remarks from Roberta Shaffer and the portions of the agenda labeled “presentation” be streamed/recorded? I think those are all pretty straight forward events and recording them wouldn’t change the material presented.
If that’s not possible, I would like a transcript of the presentations and copies of any presentation materials posted on AALLnet for the entirety of the membership to peruse. Again, this may be in the planning, but if it is, it hasn’t been announced. If nothing else, perhaps – as is happening with ALA – this will start a dialogue between the membership of AALL and the people that we have entrusted to operate it for us about the openness we would like to see in future events.
I’ve planned events before and I know it’s pretty much a thankless task. I do want to take the opportunity to thank the planning committee for the work they did planning this Vendor Colloquium. It looks like it’s going to be a great event. I’m just saying it could be better and that more people should be able to experience it.
(1) Just to nip a possible misinterpretation in the bud here, I don’t think there’s anything wrong generally speaking with publicly complaining about or trying to engage an organization or vendor on Twitter or some other public venue. HOWEVER sometimes things do get out of control and/or some situations may be better handled privately. Do what feels right to you.
(2) Rating the quality of this response is not for me to say.
By - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - 2:16pm
I have a guest post coming out next week in the Legal Information Institute’s VoxPopuLII that discusses the culture clashes between librarians and other players in the legal information game. (I’ll link to it when it’s published.) Without giving away too much, it’s sort of a broad think piece that doesn’t really go into specifics, but talks about some the general issues that are arising when librarians and others work together and ends with a plea to work together better.
In light of recent events, I feel like I need to go into specifics now.
Carl Malamud today announced the Legal Bug Tracker, which is a way for law librarians and other interested parties to report problems they find with law that various government entities post on the web. It’s a great idea. Initially my only concern was that it was called a “bug tracker“, which is a bit of a technological term of art and might be confusing to some law librarians. Then I took a closer look…
In no particular order, here are some problems I find with it:
- It’s labeled as the “National Inventory of Legal Materials.” AALL is also currently working on a National Inventory of Legal Materials. I know…I’m the chair of the Indiana State Working Group. I mean, this really isn’t a horrible problem, it’s just awkward as Hell that here we have two similar inventories that almost seem to be pretending that the other doesn’t exist. Which leads me to problem two..
- Upon closer examination of the the Bug Tracker form, it doesn’t seem to be collecting information that wildly different from what the AALL Inventory is collecting. It’s absolutely mind-boggling that we are duplicating effort like this. And speaking as the chair of the Indiana State Working Group, it is not easy to get people to find and enter this information. I’m very annoyed that we’re spreading an already thin manpower base even thinner. I will give it to the Bug Tracker, though…I like that the information is immediately viewable. Slick.
- The announcement gives the following plan of action for the Bug Tracker entries: “As bugs get entered and developed, we’re going to send letters to the relevant jurisdiction calling to their attention the violation of Best Current Practices and any Recommended Corrective Actions. If no response is received, Second Notices and then Third and Final Notices will be transmitted in the hope of providing motivation. Needless to say, we will followup with phone calls and offers to come in and chat and help the clerks and reporters understand how they can make their systems more relevant to the publics they serve.” Again, what the Hell do you think AALL has been doing? Although, who knows…maybe getting a letter from something as quasi-official looking as “Law.gov” may scare some of the less informed civil servants into action.
Come on, folks…this is such an important project that it’s heartbreaking to see all of the players in it not working as a team. Get it together.
Again, I have some more eloquent thoughts about similar issues coming out next week in Vox Populii. I just couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
By - Sunday, September 12, 2010 - 1:05pm
I love libraries. I love being a librarian. It’s an amazing honor, duty and privilege to work in and support one of the most valuable and noble public cultural institutions ever conceived by humankind. I stumbled into librarianship quite accidentally, and like anyone with a new love, I’ve been happy to gush and talk and discuss everything about it for as long as people will listen.
And as a world-class navel gazer, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that many in LibraryLand are the same way. There’s a healthy portion of the biblioblogosphere that could be classified as “essayist bloggers” such as myself. There’s also listservs and FriendFeed groups and twitter and Facebook and podcasts…basically, anywhere you get a couple of librarians together online, they will eventually start talking about The State of the Profession. It’s wonderful that so many are active and engaged and care about their careers.
That being said, I’d rather shoot myself in the face than have another conversation about the value of an MLS.
In. The. Face.
Similarly, you can file conversations about management, vendors, professionalism, library schools, professional associations, Web 2.0 and the identity of the Annoyed Librarian somewhere between a novocaine-free root canal and listening to Sarah Palin read the complete works of Ayn Rand in my list of preferred activities.
I try to avoid talking religion or politics in any of my public conversations. But I’d like to take a moment to testify and proclaim that I’ve accepted Elvis Presley as my personal Lord and Savior. So, I’m not saying that these libraryland navel gazing conversations are completely without value. I’m just saying that, in the words of The King, I’d like a little less conversation and a little more action.
Much like slapping a ribbon magnet on the back of your car doesn’t solve any world problems, talking about an issue only goes so far. Especially if they just devolve into complain-a-thons and martyrdom contests. The fact that these conversations are so repetitive somewhat shows that they’re not changing anything. But maybe it also shows that new voices are entering the profession and need to work these things out for themselves and did you hear that San Jose State is pumping out 100s of new MLS graduates every year and how are all these people going to get jobs because the boomers aren’t retiring which makes for some dicey issues in a multigenerational workplace which reminds me how are we supposed to deal with Digital Native patrons and OMG SOOPRIZE NAVEL GAZING SOMEBODY STOP ME.
Sorry about that.
So. Once you’ve established what your main LibraryLand concerns are, now what? I thought Mary Carmen Chimato framed the questions to ask yourself really well in this Friend Feed conversation. Namely: “What do you want from your organization? What about it is making you frustrated? What would you like to see different or change? If it was burned to the ground tomorrow, what would the rebuild look like?” And then once you’ve figured that out you may decide that your personal situation isn’t as bad as all that. If it is, as commentators in that thread pointed out…do something.
That’s another thing that works my nerves about some of these conversations…the defeatist attitude that people have that their job sucks/their manager sucks/their co-workers suck/the vendors suck/EVERYTHING SUCKS but their hands are tied and can’t fix it and can’t leave. Something can always be done. “But…” No. But nothing. Something can always be done.
You may have to look outside of your organization to be satisfied. For example, I wanted to gain some experience using web technologies. The setup at MFPOW made that impossible. (Our IT staff very capably handled that.) So I volunteered to be the webmaster for a professional organization. I learned a lot and got a nice resume line to point to when I applied for my current job. Everyone’s situation is different and my solution probably won’t work for you exactly. I usually think that people who say “think outside the box” do neither, but…think outside the box if you want to change things professionally
I’m not going to stop being a navel gazing essayist biblioblogger. It’s not going to be the only thing I write about, but at the end of the day, overthinking things and then talking them to death is just who I am and how I roll. I hope others continue having these conversations in various media outlets too. Librarianship is as much as an art as it is a science and I think – as tedious as these conversations can be – they provide the Open Notebook Science portion for the philosophy parts of this profession as much as me describing how I’m changing my library’s blog does for the science part. It’s important to remember that the conversations are just the means to the end, a way of figuring out how to best serve the mission of libraries and not the end itself.
By - Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - 12:21pm
Over the past day, I’ve probably seen at least a dozen links via Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed to NPR blogger Linda Holmes’ recent assertion that Libraries may be the next big pop-culture wave. And just last week, spurred by Andy Woodworth, the “Old Spice Guy” made a short video promoting libraries. It even got picked up by the Huffington Post! Yes, libraries may just be having their moment as a pop-culture phenomenon. Everyone’s thrilled.
Except me.
Listen, I’m really not trying to be a Buzz Killington here. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the Old Spice Guy’s video. Nor is there anything bad about creating and encouraging other pro-library “fluff” like a library themed Ben and Jerry ice cream (a movement also spear-headed by Mr. Woodworth, who I swear I am not trying to pick on and actually respect quite a lot), the Librarians Go Gaga video or book truck drill teams. I can appreciate and enjoy those types of things. Not everything that publicizes libraries or gets librarians excited and active has to be serious or weighty. Hell, I even participated in and liked the Library 101 video.
My fear is that by becoming just another pop-culture icon, libraries and their advocates will, in the long run, lose out on assistance and support they could be getting from people. I guess I just don’t want “Save the Libraries” to become another “Save the Whales” type cultural event where everyone gets really excited for a hot second and then they move on the next thing. Fortunately for libraries, we’re sort of used to being uncool, so the shock won’t be too great.
I also fear that this sort of popularity makes possible advocates lazy. For example, there are few things that annoy me more than ribbons that people wear on their lapels, cars, etc. Wearing a colored ribbon doesn’t mean that you are helping to fight the battle against anything. It means that you pinned a ribbon to yourself and are letting people know what cause you support. This has its uses, but it’s nowhere equal to writing legislators, donating money or volunteering time. Likewise, watching the Old Spice video and getting its YouTube hit numbers up doesn’t do anything to support libraries. These are good steps to introduce people to the issues, but we need to make sure we don’t leave people out on the stoop once we open the door.
By - Monday, February 1, 2010 - 7:12pm
Ten days ago or so I received an email from someone at Westlaw. It said, “Just wanted to send you a quick note… We’ll be revealing the new Westlaw on Feb. 1 at LegalTech New York… I’d like to get you some information about it… What’s the best address to FedEx you something?“ I sent my work address and didn’t think too much about it.
Flash forward to today.
My package from West arrived. There was some paper and a nice letter from someone, the details of which I don’t remember, because also included was what you see to the left. An iPod Nano, 8GB with video capabilities, retail value $149. I guess there’s a video or something on the iPod detailing the WestlawNext features, but I wouldn’t know as I couldn’t bring myself to open it.
Here’s the thing, y’all: I was absolutely livid when I opened this.
I’ve briefly mentioned before my feelings about accepting vendor swag. It’s advertising, I understand that. It’s built into their budgets and it’s not like they would charge less if they weren’t giving out the pens. However, I also don’t feel comfortable being a billboard for the legal information duopoly in front of my students who expect me to speak freely about the pluses and negatives of each service, so I don’t accept the little gifts of pens, coffee mugs, note pads, etc.
But an iPod? I don’t really like to take pens and here they’ve gone and sent me an iPod? As I said to one of my correspondents today, “this is just re-goddamn-diculous.” (Pardon my language, but I was really mad.) It does have “Compliments of WestlawNext” written on, but in super-tiny font. It feels like a bribe, frankly. Gross.
I guess I was expected to tweet/blog my “Thank you, Westlaw!” for it? Well, thanks but no thanks, Westlaw. I hate to seem rude or ungrateful, but I simply cannot accept this gift. (1) I’m an employee of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and we have rules about the monetary value of gifts. (2) Even if I disclose the iPod receipt before blogging about the info sent to me, I still wouldn’t ever feel right about saying positive things about WestlawNext. As I said to another one of my correspondents, “Congratulations, Westlaw, you just bought my silence.” (3) My usual rules of swag acceptance are in effect, no matter how much I love the way it looks or the fact that it shoots video or that my Zune seems to be dying and ZOMG IT’S SO PRETTY AND SHINY AND I LOVE NEW TOYS.
*sigh*
So, here’s the thing: I’m not keeping it. I’m auctioning my WestlawNext iPod and donating the proceeds to an appropriate organization or two. The details are still being worked out (my legal obligations as an public employee, whether or not my target charities will accept the donation, how to set up an auction, if other law librarians want to donate their iPods as well…details, people, details.) So, basically: WATCH THIS SPACE. I’ll have something hammered out by the end of the week. If you received a WestlawNext iPod and would like to get in on this action, contact me at Sarah dot Glassmeyer at gmail and we’ll work it out. And if you are Westlaw reading this (and I know at least someone at West does) and you’d rather that I not do this, I will gladly ship your iPod back to you. Seriously, I’m not trying to be rude about this.
I know my standards are higher than others when it comes to accepting swag from vendors. I have to admit to being a little weirded out by the trip to Minnesota some of my colleagues were offered. (Of course, I also wasn’t sure if there was some jealously on my part that I wasn’t asked to go, so I held my tongue. Some of us are just kinda bigger deals than others, I guess…. I KID BECAUSE I LOVE, JASON AND TOM.) I’m not entirely sure where to draw the line…coffee mugs? iPods? Drinks at the Bender Baby Dinner/Westlaw party? Trips to Minnesota? It not an easy line to figure out. Where does the appearance of impropriety show up? When does one start to feel a little like a corporate whore?
Despite all of my cheerleading for Free Law and complaints about pricing, duopolies, etc., I really don’t believe that vendors are the enemies. But I also realize that they are in business to make a profit and that will always take precedence for them. The vendor-librarian relationship is complicated enough…..please stop clouding the issue with over the top gifts of swag.
By - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 6:41pm
In Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 philosophies, there is a concept called “Radical Trust.” The idea behind Radical Trust is pretty simple: trust your patrons. Trust them to leave comments on your blogs. Trust them to edit wikis. Trust them to add tags to your Flickr photos or OPACs. Yes, there will always be jerks and 12 year old hackers with nothing better to do than vandalize the materials that you have so lovingly placed out in the Internet for people to interact with. But guess what? You also have to trust that the community will step up and re-edit out the wiki mis-edits and/or trust that are users are savvy enough to ignore a trollish comment on a blog.
Radical trust really isn’t that radical..it’s just trust. It only feels radical to us because librarians and other gatekeepers of information have spent centuries trying our damndest to preserve, protect and defend information resources from theft, loss and corruptions. As I’ve said before, this is a noble and just raison d’etre. However, the digital age has changed the game in many ways. We don’t need to keep materials chained up and out of patrons hands because they may destroy them…now we can digitize and allow many more users access to them. And if they do somehow corrupt the digital versions? Well, it’s easy enough to have master copies locked away that can replace the corrupted versions.
In Law LibraryLand, there is currently a major issue of conflict between librarians and information providers in the area of authentication of digital legal materials. I don’t claim to be an expert on the issue and I haven’t entirely decided what is the best solution to the conflict between the two camps. However, John Joergenson, the digital services librarian at Rutgers University School of Law – Camden, wrote an excellent blog post last year which breaks down much of the conflict.
The American Association of Law Libraries has recently issued a report on Authentication of State Documents which outlines the concerns of the librarian community. If I’m reading it correctly, here’s the problem. (1) Digital materials are vulnerable to lapses in management and control, corruption and tampering. (2) To make up for these vulnerabilities, the digital materials need to equivalent to the official print versions. (3) To become equivalent, they must become “authentic.” (4) To be “authentic”, they must be capable of being “authenticated.” (Um…yeah.) There is no standard or endorsed method of authentication, but it can involve things like digital water marks, chain of custody, certification, etc.
Currently no state-provided (i.e. FREE) digital legal materials are “authentic” and as such, “citizens and law researchers may reasonably doubt their authority and should approach such resources critically.” I guess these researchers are supposed to try and get a hold of a print resource (assuming a library is close by, the state still issues a print verison and/or the library hasn’t canceled its order) OR utilize Wexis (which also isn’t “authentic” and is quite costly)?
This makes no sense to me.
Can someone please explain to me what steps that free information providers like Justia, the Legal Information Institute and Public Resource – or even Google Scholar – need to be taking so that they are given the same respect as Lexis and Westlaw?
I propose it’s time we extend the concept of radical trust upwards…not only should we trust our users to take the information we safeguard and remix and run with it, but also maybe we should start trusting people who want to provide the information to our patrons.I could also put in a plea for open source ILSes, but that’s another blog post for another day.
If an entity like the Legal Information Institute wants to take raw data from the government and put it up on the web in a more easily navigable way than what the government provides on the GPO website, maybe we should trust that they are not altering the text of the materials or even being sloppy in the updating of them? If enough providers get in the game, there will be plenty of copies to compare against to make sure they are accurate. Why is accuracy not enough?
Perhaps if librarians can learn to radically trust information brokers, we will be able to work together and start to see new ways to use and manipulate legal information. Input from the librarian community will allow the information providers to make more useful tools and provide stability, which in turn, will lead to better donor funding for long term preservation and maintenance of the information. And finally, patrons will be able to access accurate legal information much more easily, which ultimately, is what everyone wants.
Like I said, I have no answers. Personally, in my ideal world, the various state and federal governments would step up and provide stable and easily navigable law for free. However, as my mother always says, “…and people in Hell want ice water.” Clearly, we as librarians are going to have to choose between forever being at the mercy of Wexis or working with the free legal information providers. I’m hoping that by writing this, a dialog can be opened between the library camp and the legal information world and some solutions can be negotiated.
By - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 4:59pm
I like Seth Godin. His book Tribes (which I admittedly haven’t read yet) was quite the talk of SLA 2009. I also like his blog, which generally always gives me something to think about and wonder how I can apply to libraries. So when I saw that Mr. Godin – who is not a librarian – actually wrote about libraries, I was really excited to see what he had to say.
Aw, crud.
Aw. Crud.
It’s…not good. His idea of what libraries are, what they should be doing…I disagree with most of it. I want to unpack his post, but before I do, I want to make clear (and make sure it doesn’t get lost in the bottom of this post) that the main problem with this post lies with libraries and librarians. If someone like Seth Godin, who has met with librarians and has so many fans in the community, can get it so wrong, what does Joe Q. Public think of libraries? This should definitely be (yet another) wake up call that libraries need to think about how we market ourselves.
Okay, on to Mr. Godin’s post…
What should libraries do to become relevant in the digital age?
No problem here. I could be pedantic and harp on the “become relevant” verb usage which implies that libraries currently aren’t relevant, but pedantry helps no cause. I believe that it’s extremely useful and proper, especially when you are in a public service industry like libraries are, to periodically evaluate yourself and change course as necessary. And I don’t mind when non-librarians poke their head into our self-evaluations and offer suggestions – after all, they are our users.
So, one sentence in, we’re okay! Then the wheels fall off.
They can’t survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don’t want to own (or for reference books we can’t afford to own.)
What? Wow. So much wrong with this sentence. I mean, obviously for the purposes of his post, Mr. Grodin seems to be talking about public libraries, which is sort of the first problem. If you are reading this, then you are likely aware that there are dozens of types of libraries (many not even called libraries) with as many types of librarians. But, again, that’s really a minor quibble. All libraries are “community funded.” My academic law library is funded by tax dollars and student tuition – the community we serve. Corporate libraries/knowledge management centers are funded by the company whose employees they are expected to serve. There’s just no such thing as an independent library.
Mr. Godin says “repository” like it’s a bad thing. Someone needs to preserve knowledge. Just because something is not immediately needed, that does not mean future generations won’t need it. I take huge issue with the “books that individuals don’t want to own (or for reference books we can’t afford to own.)” part of that statement. Want? Really? I mean, I guess it’s technically true in that I borrow books from my public library because I want to pay my bills and eat more than I want to buy books, but otherwise I just don’t see libraries as currently taking up the slack for people who just don’t feel like purchasing information resources. Call me a commie, but I have no problem with a community (be it a town, a company or educational institution) pooling resources so that all of its members may share information resources.
More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That’s not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.
I get really nervous when we start judging the relevant “uplifting” value of resources, especially in a public library setting. Every library has a mission and ultimately it’s up for the community to decide what they want from their library. In law libraries, it’s not too hard. We, for the most part, collect the laws and the secondary materials that interpret them. It’s also not super-easy, though, because there are myriad decisions about which jurisdictions to collect, format, duplications, etc. Additionally, some law libraries are branching out from their basic mission and are starting “Popular Media Collections” (Deborah Schander discusses her current efforts in creating one here.) Personally, I would love to work on creating a collection like that, but I can see where some members of our community would have an issue with it.
Similarly, some people may have an issue with public libraries collecting DVDs. Surely these people don’t think that everything in a public library is intellectually stimulating, do they? Should public libraries only collect Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen? Should they chuck out the romance novels, science fiction and graphic novels? If DVDs go, does that mean books on tape have to go too? I have this crazy notion that I like to enjoy what I read. My favorite writers are Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, but I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Why can’t everyone have free enjoyment from the library?
Here’s my proposal: train people to take intellectual initiative.
Here’s my answer: We do. Or try to, anyway. I mean, this is sort of a major component of librarians’ raison d’etre. I don’t just hand out answers like candy at my reference desk. I show people how I found the answer. I teach a handful of bibliographic instruction sessions every semester in addition to CLEs – and what I do is minor in comparison to many that I know. (A quick check shows that my public library has dozens of computer skills classes every month.) Librarians aren’t trying to be gatekeepers of secret knowledge – we love to explain things to people.
Once again, the net turns things upside down. The information is free now. No need to pool tax money to buy reference books.
Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man, I can’t wait to tell our aquisitions department to tell West to take their bills and STUFF THEM because INFORMATION IS FREE NOW. Frankly, this statement is just ignorant. Yes, there is a ton of great information on the web. However, there’s a little thing called copyright law that keep most information sources from being torrented up on the Internet free of charge – you know, legally at least. There’s also the fact that about 80-95% of all information on the Internet is in the Deep Web and therefore unreachable from search engine searches, not the mention that I’m not going to throw over a solid reference resource for a webpage unless I can verify that the source is legit. (I like to show my students this seemigly okay page on Dr. Martin Luther King. Check out the owner of the site and try not to vomit.) And, as I recented noted for my disclipline of law, while the information is free, the indexing and finding aids for it are not. So, while I wish that this would change, for the time being legal information is not free.
What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others.
Like I said, we’re trying. Some of us, at least. There is a definite component of librarians who don’t want to explore all the possibilities of user engagement that are currently available, but I think that there are few out there that don’t want to help users find and use information. Obviously we’re not doing a great job on marketing this fact.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliona/202506372/
By - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 12:41am
I am made weary by the reports of the death of libraries. And by “made weary”, I mean “aggravated to Hell and Gone” by them.
I guess I could understand if it were coming from outside of LibraryLand – and to be sure, there are plenty of those voices, from the strangers that ask me “isn’t everything on the Internet?” when I tell them I’m a librarian to college administrators decreasing library spaces because “all research is electronic now” and every state funding cut of public libraries in between.
No, what I don’t understand is the rush from within LibraryLand to commit hari kiri.
Some wounds are deeper than others. For instance, the Dean of Libraries at Syracuse posited last week at Educause 2009 that “the library, as a place, is dead.” Some are more subtle, such as the Special Library Association proposing to remove the name “libraries” from its name because those who make budget and hiring decisions would better understand what a “strategic knowledge professional” is than a “librarian.” And then there are the 1000s of little ways in which some libraries and librarians slowly ease themselves down the mortal coil…for instance, turning management of our collections over to commercial vendors instead of investing in open source products operated by and for the benefit of the community or refusing to adapt to changes in technology and patron preferences (or being so enamored of technology that we forget about actual patron needs.)
So, Gentle Reader, I am an annoyed librarian. No, I am not THE Annoyed Librarian. The day I publicly state that passion and enthusiasm don’t matter is the day I get out of the game. The Annoyed Librarian is just the type of naysayer and head in the sand type of librarian that is going to kill the profession. Now, admittedly, I have a romantic view of libraries. I believe that we hold a sacred position in society, much like clergy or medical professionals. (I initially included lawyers in this list, but, well…one fight at a time, yanno?) We preserve, protect and defend the units of culture – ideas. From our laws to the classic works of literature, and, yes, even the latest teen romance novel featuring vampires, these are all valuable in their own way. And just as important as preservation, libraries provide access – they make “men’s talents a public possession.”
So why are we throwing in the towel? Because of the Internet? Okay, check it…libraries have been around in one form or another for about 4500 years. In that time, the form of information storage has gone from clay tablets, to papyrus, to parchment, to books and now to digital storage. We gone from being store houses for government records, to being exclusive clubs for the rich and learned, to being a gateway of education and now guides through the forest of information available in the digital age.
Change is constant. Deal with it.
The gentleman here is S.R. Ranganathan. He is widely known as the father of library science and his Five Laws form the basis of everything I do as a librarian. At least I try to make it that way. This picture is actually a copy of the poster I made that hangs over my desk…I like to think that he’s keeping an eye on me and it reminds me to think before acting. (If you want a copy for yourself, I’ve uploaded it here under a creative commons license…go wild.) Although he wrote these long before anyone thought about the Internet, or video games in libraries, or twitter or any of the other things that seem to have librarians confused as to our purposes, his Five Laws can still be used today.
Here’s how I see it:
1. Books are for use.
First of all, scratch the word “books.” Don’t get me wrong, books are great…they’re just not the only game in town anymore, so let’s just say “information.” Okay, so information is for use. What does that mean? Well, for starters, it means that libraries can’t just be repositories like they were 4500 years ago. They shouldn’t even be locked down like they were 200 years ago. The information should be accessible – open stacks and circulating, unless, for example, they are book so rare or fragile that they can’t be risked to loss. Fortunately, we now have ways around this, such as digitization or even scanning to a durable format like fische.
2. Every Reader His Book
This law speaks to the collections in a library. I’m an academic law librarian. My “readers” (or information consumers) are varied. I have law students, undergraduate students, the general public, law professors and members of the bench and bar. All of their information needs are different and my library’s collection needs to meet them.
3. Every Book It’s Reader
If a source of information is not being used, Ranganathan says that we need to make it more accessible. Catalog it so people can find it. Provide book displays, or pathfinders or – dare I say it? – make a LibGuide so that people know about it. Organize your website so it’s user friendly and people can find your digital collections. Make it clear how they can find an article or a book.
Okay, the first three are pretty basic…information should be available to people, libraries need to collect the information that people need, and librarians need to make sure that people find it. Hard to disagree with those. The next two are where things may get a little uncomfortable for some people.
4. Save the Time of the Reader
There are dozens of ways to save the Reader’s time! Why wait to put library news in a monthly printed newsletter, when you can put it in a blog? Why just put it in a blog which they may or may not check, when you can also have it directly sent to the patron’s twitter stream? Staff your reference desk during the hours that patrons need help…or maybe offer virtual reference servcies (email, chat, or maybe even via text message) so that they don’t have to even come into the library. Provide good signage so they can navigate the stacks. Make the language on your OPAC clear so people know they should attempt a keyword search instead of an LOC subject one. The list goes on and on….
Back to my library…in addition to varied information needs, my patrons have different format requirements. It’s not that the 18 year old college freshman can’t be taught to use a book. And the 87 year old attorney could be taught to use a database. I’m just saying that maybe they shouldn’t have to learn if the information is available in a format that they are comfortable with using. Some of this could be put under law two….every Reader has a book, and that book just may be a database. However, I don’t want to confuse content with format. In my library, we have the same piece of information in multiple formats – (e.g. Kentucky Revised Statutes appear in print, microfiche, electronically via commerical vendors, and on the free web in PDF format from the commonwealth.) Clearly we need to have the KRS because of their content, but the differing formats are for preservation and access reasons.
5. The Library is a Growing Organism
Okay, so the library may not be a quiet place with an imposing reference desk and paper card catalog. Well, guess what? It’s also not a closed place with books behind bars and only open to the very wealthy. Nor it is an archive of papyrus rolls. It’s okay! Or in other words….. change is a constant. Deal with it.
Not matter what type of library you’re in or what you do in it, it’s important to remember that you are in a service industry. And, in the words of Karen G. Schneider, the user is not broken. Let me repeat that…THE USER IS NOT BROKEN. Remember that college dean I mentioned at the beginning of this post? She was talking about the physical place of a library. As my colleague at UK Stacey Greenwell pointed out, intellectual commons and in person interactions are still a vital role of libraries. To support her statment, the dean also said, “Cutting-edge scholars in the humanities are building new disciplines and online environments are are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing.” It’s almost like she’s blaming the scientists for leaving…I wonder why libraries weren’t providing or assisting with the creation of these online environments in the first place. Just because students don’t seem to want a quiet study place or scholars want a place with stacks to roam, we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
Broaden your ideas of what a library may be…maybe your reference desk with move to a virtual realm instead of a physical one. Or maybe your library will have mostly digital collections. Or maybe very little will actually change in your day-to-day job duties and environment. As long as the needs of your patrons (both present and future) are being met in a timely manner, it’ll all be okay. If they’re not, perhaps you should check in with Ranganathan and see what needs to change.
