37 posts tagged “librarianship”

There are days when I wonder if my profession as a whole has a death wish. Not only do outsiders rail on and on about how libraries need to be closed, how they will "evolve" into new spaces (that have nothing to do with the mission of an actual library), or how no one really needs them, but librarians and library professionals insist on deprofessionalizing their own profession, taking the library apart piece by piece, turn it into an arcade or entertainment center, and pretty much go for the lowest common denominator. Of course, if you mention any of this, and you put your name on it as I am doing now, you risk the ire of your professional brethren who will label you as someone who "does not get it." I am not quite sure what to make of the whole mess. Sure, I have my opinions, but I just don't feel like writing a whole post about it.

I have seen a good number of items that have given me food for thought, so here they go in my notes. Maybe some writing will come out of it, maybe not. But I cannot help but wonder why do my professional brethren insist of self-destruction?

• Two members of ACRL debate about the future of academic libraries, and from the looks of it, take a mild common ground where they toss the ball and say, "who knows what will happen." Not exactly something to inspire confidence. The event is reported by Inside Higher Ed in "Bookless Libraries?" 
• Campus Technology looks at the 21st century library as "A Space to Collaborate." Mostly highlights of a new very elegant digital library in Calgary and a few other places. In other words, an example of what gets done when you have a lot of funding to do it and people who think that electronic will overtake everything else. 
• Here is the Effing Librarian on "The Future of the Library Cafe." He has a way of using jokes and satire to make serious points that I like because often makes issues very accessible to others. This is definitely worth a look. He also has a new advocacy poster to help keep libraries open.
  
• Then again, we need reassurance that "librarians still have vital role in the Web 2.0 era." Good to know that librarians are not headed for the scrap heap and have to start taking Geritol just yet. The article found via Resource Shelf.
  
• And via Inside Higher Ed, here we have another college administrator speaking on "Libraries of the Future" where "the university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas." Funny how administrators who would never dream of doing our front line work with students are the first ones who want to outsource our librarians and library resources.
  
• Stephen Abrams points to an article in the journal New Review of Academic Librarianship. I have to check to see if we carry the journal, then see if I get around to read it. For now, I am using this note to remind myself. Apparently the issue Abrams mentions deals with the ever present topic of the future of the academic library. 
• And speaking of the short-sighted who want to close libraries, there are these folks in Omaha. Found via LISNews, where they have some comments.
  
• And in the quest to make unlibraries (to borrow Effing Librarian's term), the Annoyed Librarian tells us that "Something's Gotta Give." AL also tells us that "the future is now" in the context of school libraries getting rid of book collections for e-books or other online access rental.
  
• Jessamyn West has some thoughts on the Cushing Academy (aka as the school library that got rid of its book collection). A lot of comments over there. Another response on the topic at PhiloBiblos blog.
  

There are other things out there in the librarian sector of the blogosphere, but I can only take so much at one time. I may keep adding more as I get back in the mood.
 

I am posting this here because it seems Blogger is having another one of its "I am not working" days. I need to seriously consider moving my main blog someplace else. Unfortunately, here is not really an option since they restrict comments to registered users, something I dislike. Anyhow, here is the post.

Roy Tennant wrote a list of "The Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology." What caught my eye on this were the items dealing more with people. Maybe it is because I am not a "techie" librarian like a lot of the celebrity libloggers are. Or maybe because I tend to think that your technology is only as good as the people you have running it. The idea of good people managing your library's technology has been on my mind lately, and if I was passing this on to my boss, I would especially highlight the following items from the list:

• "Maximize the effectiveness of your most costly technology investment -- your people." Mr. Tennant makes a good point about making sure you have good resources for your people. Don't bog them down with cheap or less than the best equipment. But I will also say to turn that equation around. Don't go around skimping on good people either. You need to hire good people to manage your technology. Just like library administrators have a specific skill set, which may or not include technological prowess, tech people also have a unique skill set, and it is one not all librarians or library staff have or desire to have (and I say this in terms of temperament, not unwillingness to learn). If you know you are going to need a good systems analyst or similar, hire one. Don't try to skimp by tossing the responsibility to another overworked professional in your library who may not have the full range of skills or the temperament to do it. And don't say "they can learn it" when you define "learning it" as just hand them a folder and hop to it. That's not right.
  
• "A major part of good technology implementation is good project management." Indeed. Again, this goes to the idea that everyone has different skills. It also goes back to the idea that you need good planning, and that you need to be proactive, not reactive. In other words, plan ahead and don't wait for the crisis to happen.
  
• "The single biggest threat to any technology project is political in nature." I think what Mr. Tennant wrote here pretty much speaks for itself. To administrators, he asks: "Are you willing to throw your political support behind it? Are you willing to invest the resources required to make it a success? Will you marshall the entire organization to support, promote, and use this new site or service? If not, simply don't bother." As I always say, put your money where your mouth is, otherwise, shut up. 

Anyhow, my quick two cents. I may add to this later, or probably just add it along to another post with a few other things about library managers.

The whole fiasco with Elsevier and their fake journals (and unlike the more polite people, I have no problem calling a spade a spade, and these were basically fake journals sponsored by a big pharmaceutical passing themselves off as serious journals) has been discussed in various librarian blogs. This is why I am just scraping some of my thoughts here and leaving it out of the main blog.

Here are some links for those who may be interested:

• Barbara Fister, writing for ACRLog, on "This Journal Brought to You By. . ." 
• Jessamyn West notes "in case you needed another reason to raise an eyebrow at Elsevier" at librarian.net. 
• And by the way, the Annoyed Librarian had a very nice reply to this whole mess as well. You do have to grant some of AL's points: in this case, Elsevier basically pulled a fast one.
  

The one thing I thought about when I read about the issue is that this just makes our work teaching information literacy that much more harder. As information literacy or instruction librarians, we spent a lot of time teaching our students how to evaluate resources. We spend even more time telling them to rely on "peer reviewed" publications. And now we get that we can't even trust the "peer reviewing" since it is not so much scholars doing it as some big pharma corporation. Let's consider the ethics of the matter, which is about the only thing we can really consider. I mean, we can be angry at Elsevier, but in the end, Elsevier is like any other big corporation, and they did the move that would make them money, ethics be damned. But the larger problem does go back to corporations like Elsevier who take research (often done with federal money, i.e. paid by your taxes) and repackages it and sells it to the libraries. Until those doing the research actually take some control and come up with some better ways to disseminate their information in an ethical way, the corporations will keep doing this, and we as librarians will just have to be that much more wary of information sources. And to be honest, why the heck the federal government (in the U.S. at least) not make it a requirement to make any federally funded research be published for free (put it in PubMed or something like that), since we paid the tab, is simply beyond me.It can be done; there is just a serious lack of spine to do it, but then again, that is politics for you. And let's not even start on why the U.S. government often outsources their information to vendors (can you say Lexis, for example?).

But it is also going to take the scholars to finally get a clue as well. Until academia decides to have the intestinal fortitude to come up with other ways to evaluate for tenure besides how many articles you get in an Elsevier journal (or other big corporate-owned journal), and until scholars basically stop serving on those editorial boards, and instead help create better models of distribution where the information is not held by some conglomerate more interested in the bottom line than some ethics, things will not change. Now, I am not an expert by any stretch; others from advocates for open access to repository librarians to those librarian bloggers with bigger reputations have been saying it. I am just a librarian with a thought or two and a dislike for the way things are currently done. And at the end of the day, I am the librarian in the front lines who has to teach the students how to evaluate sources, and now I have to start making another distinction: that is a real scholarly journal, and that other one is paid for by Merck (or insert your big pharma company here). This publisher seems to have some integrity, and this other one is pretty much open to the highest bidder. Because we often make a big fuss when a student plagiarizes or tries to pass other's work as their own. But when a company like Elsevier basically commits an act of academic dishonesty (or just plain dishonesty), they don't exactly get raked over the coals as they deserve. Then again, we should know better as information professionals to question the sources of information. And we should be noting and be aware that a lot of that information we depend on in academia is coming from a corporate source, the type of source not necessarily interested in things like ethics or integrity. We have to remember that their interest is the bottom line and the investors. If it so happens they provide information products academia can use so much the better. But make no mistake, they are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. This means we should be on our guard and constantly asking questions and demanding accountability. 

And those are my two cents, for what they may be worth.
  

The Taiga and the Darien statements have been making the rounds of the librarian bloggers. I did read them, and to be honest, I had some serious mixed feelings about them. I did not quite feel all warm and fuzzy like a lot of my more prominent colleagues seem to be feeling. Anyhow, while I would like to write some kind of response, as is often the case, I just don't have the time now. So I am making some notes and jotting down some relevant links for my reference, and just in case I do manage to get down to writing something.

• Walt Crawford, of Walt at Random, urges us to go look at the Taiga material. He found them a bit extreme. He himself does not comment, but refers us to a response by John Dupuis, from Confessions of a Science Librarian. Still, this is just the sort of thing Walt could develop for C&I.
  
• Meredith Farkas, of Information Wants to Be Free, says she has been provoked by the Taiga Forum.
  
• Jessamyn West, of librarian.net, urged her readers to discuss and comment the Darien material.
  
• The Effing Librarian took a stab at the Darien statements too.
  
• The Annoyed Librarian had a reply for both the Taiga items and the Darien stuff. I have to admit there were a couple of things here that resonated with me. This is part of the reason I have some mixed feelings about the whole thing.
  
• Here is Laura Crossett, of lis.dom, discussing "On First Looking into the Darien Statements."
  
• Barbara Fister, at ACRLog, gives us "More Provocative (if less provoking) Statements" looking at the Darien materials.
  

OK, these are the things that have come across my feed reader. I am sure in time others may pick up on this; whether they make it to my feeds or not is a different issue since I did prune my feeds a while back. However, given the librarian bloggers echo factor, I am sure anything important will simply get linked by one of the remaining bloggers in my feeds.

Apparently the topic of tenure for academic librarians has been making the rounds in the librarian blogs. I am in the camp of those who do not like the idea of tenure for academic librarians (or any other hybrid idea), and I have my reasons for that, which I would prefer to outline at some later time. Part of it, to give an indication, is that I think it interferes with the extensive work we already have to do as librarians. That one of my colleagues is floating this idea around is not exactly something that pleases me, but let's keep that out of this blog. Anyhow, I have seen a few things that caught my eye related to the topic, so I am making some notes. I may or not develop this into a more substantial post or not.

• While this one is not directly about tenure, it did catch my eye. In the long term, when you think about it, asking for tenure does involve some salesmanship on the part of academic librarians, so maybe the post is relevant. Anyhow, here is Steven Bell (who is tenured and does believe in tenure for librarians) on "Academic Librarians are not Salespeople--But They Should Be."
• The Annoyed Librarian had a series of posts on this, mostly replying to others. If you go to her (I am assuming it is a "her").
  
• "Who gets faculty status?"
• "Academic Librarians: 'Please Love Us.'" Which addresses a bit on the tenure, but also the seemingly constant insecurity a lot of academic librarians seem to have because the academic faculty seem to either not think of them much or just plain disregard them. 
• More on academic librarians taking themselves too seriously in "Thanks for your support." 

Steven Bell had an interesting post over at the DBL Blog asking "Does UX Still Matter in Tough Economic Times." He looks at Starbucks as an example. I have to wonder about that example because, if one looks at the company, at the end of the day Starbucks is simply the case of a company that got away from their user experience. They tried to be a lot of different things to different people, and they lost their way. That, at least based on studies and tests, their coffee gets beaten by the likes of McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts certainly sends the wrong message. Starbucks, as I understand it, grew on the basis of providing a unique exclusive coffee experience where baristas would actually make your luxurious coffee right then and there. Once the company started doing things like using a push button machine instead of a more traditional espresso machine, it was down hill from there. I mean, the kid at Mickey D's can push a button just as well as the guy at Starbucks. I mean, there is a reason why no Starbucks barista has ever won at the barista world competitions, as this story from the NYT points out.Then came the breakfast sandwiches to compete with Dunkin Donuts, sandwiches which were pretty much panned and then Starbucks got rid of them to stem the bleeding. The point is not to slam Starbucks. The point is that their woes, while partially due to the economy, are mostly due because they got away from their core user experience. Once their cheaper competition was able to offer something comparable, Starbucks lost what made them unique. Why would I pay $4-$6 for a decent cup of coffee when I can get it for less at the Dunkin Donuts or Mickey D's? In the interest of disclosure, I will say that I don't get my coffee at either Starbucks or the fast food joints. I prefer to make my own at home. If I buy coffee to drink then and there, I prefer to go to some local place where I know an actual barista will put some work on making a special drink.

The point eventually is to ask if UX (user experience, for those who may wonder) is relevant to libraries. I would say the answer is yes, and I would say we can very easily fall victim to the mistakes Starbucks has made that they are now paying for dearly. And given the tight economy, and the fact that funding for libraries is shrinking at abysmal rates at a time when we need libraries the most, a good service experience will probably make some difference. Notice I say some difference. You can have the greatest service experience, but if you still lack materials and resources inside your pretty building with the very helpful staff, you will end up on the losing end. Yes, you have to provide a good experience, but you also need to have a good product. For libraries, that is pretty much the dual need: good service and items people want. We can leave the "want or need" debate for another time. The reason I say that is because news are often filled with the feel-good stories about libraries providing free books, A/V, computers, etc. for their patrons, like this story out of the Boston Globe or this one from MSNBC (via Libraries and Life). That is all nice and dandy but you have to have the products (good books in good condition, A/V that people actually want to check out and watch, so on. This could be a separate rant, but I will restrain myself). So, is UX relevant? Yes, but being nice alone is not going to do it. Much like Starbucks now trying to sell instant coffee. Instant? Really? Maybe they need to get back to basics and concentrate on what they once did well: creating a good experience around a good cup of coffee. And maybe some libraries need to get back to basics as well instead of worrying over the frills. Just a thought.  

While I do have a healthy respect for some of the elders in the library profession, once in a while I have to wonder if they have been out of the trenches a bit too long. Steven Bell, who is an acknowledged advocate of minimal library instruction for information literacy, has a new piece out on faculty involvement. It all seems pretty good until he gets to this part:

But I can imagine some information literacy and instruction librarians asking themselves “if faculty do ever fully integrate this into their courses and teach it without me - what will I do for a living?” The possibility of librarians being made obsolete by faculty following the examples described above, I think, is highly unlikely. But even if the majority of faculty did, I think that academic librarians would still be needed to support the development and design of instructional activity and digital-learning materials. Our new opportunity would be back-end support - making sure faculty were up-to-date on the e-resources and well equipped with the tools to integrate them into their courses. This could be a whole new growth area for librarian educators. That’s where I’ve advocated the growing importance of instructional design and technology in the work of librarians. I don’t know exactly where academic librarians will be in the future, but if it wasn’t at the front of the classroom that would be fine with me - as long as we play a role in what happens there.

Just some librarians may ask themselves? You just pretty much said that our new role will be in the back-end support. You know, with the IT people and the others in the backrooms who never see real people? Is that really an area of growth, or are we looking at yet another way to de-professionalize and get rid of a few more librarians in the process? I do ask because, for example, here we have what is called an instructional designer who does, well, instructional technology and design. The person is not a librarian by degree or trade, but she would certainly be the sort of person that Professor Bell seems to have in mind. And why is it that being in the front of a classroom seems to be such a bad thing? Some of the best work we do is working with students and in front of their classes. And while educating faculty on things like e-resources is important, we do have a role as well in helping educate students and in the larger educational mission of the university. And statements like the one above can certainly be used to eliminate, or at the very least, keep librarians from the educational roles we should be engaging. Maybe the back-end is good enough for some people. It is not good enough for me, and I am sure it is not good enough for a few of my colleagues. Our instruction librarian would be a good example. Spent the last two years or so building an information literacy program from the ground up with extensive involvement with faculty in what was then known as the Freshman Seminar program. University decides to scrap the program, for some fairly dubious reasons, and we are back to zero pretty much. And while we could document our successes in reaching students, the university pretty much saw us as "the back-end" support anyhow. I am sure she would have a thing or two to say about taking librarians out of the front of the classroom to let the faculty do it, so to speak. I have seen the faculty do it, and it is not always as ideal as the selected examples Professor Bell cites in his post. At the end of the day, that is much of the problem with the library literature: you only see the positives, which at times are exceptions rather than representations of the rule. But hey, we can all just go work in the back-end.

One of the candidates for the Assistant Director for Research and Instructional Services position gave a small presentation as part of the campus visit process. The candidate declined the job offer, and I will not go into why because it is the kind of conversation better had in a bar late at night after a few beers (preferably with the local politicos out of sight). Anyhow, I did like some of what he had to say, and I took down some notes. The topic was on balancing library services for undergraduate and graduate students. This is mostly going to be bullet points for me to recall what was presented. Comments in parenthesis are mine:

• Undergraduates.
  
• Difference between 1st year students and upper division. Skill sets and desires differ (this is something that very often is not discussed or considered in discussing services for undergraduates. And I don't recall seeing a lot of it in the literature either.)
• Concentration on required courses. Ex. the ENG 101.
  
• Attitude of "for the grade" and "give 'em what they want--not what they need."
  
• Graduates:
  
• Have advanced research needs.
  
• Emphasis on projects and scholarship. Trying to emulate their faculty. More rigorous expectations and concern with publishing.
  
• They place high demands on ILL and Document Delivery.
• Grad students often have dual roles: as instructor and student.
  
• "Give them what they need, not what they want."
  
• Balancing the issues:
  
• Alignment of library services with the [campus] academic plan. There has to be services' suitability to objectives and achievements of undergraduate programs.
  
• Utilization of resources (referring to human, physical, and financial).
  
• Appropriateness of program's structure (a curriculum for educational objectives).
• Appropriateness of delivery mode and assessment practices.
  
• Possible solutions:
  
• Complete an assessment. Figure out what's going on. Where are the students going? This gives a grounding for program building. (I am glad he did speak on assessment. For one, assessment seems to be the big trend now, but it is an important tool. One thing we do need to be finding out here is where the students are going. Recently I took a walk to the new Student Center complex. I saw lots of soft seating and gathering areas, good for study groups, and I thought to myself, "here is our competition, and serious competition it is." Now if I could get some others to listen, but that is a separate deal).
  
• Use the ACRL Best Practices for Information Literacy (this is kind of a given). 
• Importance of the library liaison/subject specialist. This is where the advocates are. This is very important, but it is difficult at times to explain and support. There is a need to get faculty to see past their agendas (tell me about it).
  
• Virtual reference and additional reference resources (we recently started providing virtual reference, with mixed results, but we may need to give it more time).
  
• Additional staffing (we are in the middle of trying to remedy this. Results are mixed so far). 

Presentation took place on February 6.
 

This idea that libraries will gradually become arcades and internet stations has been around for a while, but it seems to be gaining some more steam recently. On the one hand, you get all sorts of headlines about libraries being wonderful places where people can get Internet access for free so they can do constructive things like job seeking, especially now in a bad economy. On the other hand, you get the sort of headlines of people doing anything but constructive stuff on the Internet while at the library, which leads to a whole new round of hysterics from some segments of society. This could probably make a longer piece for my main blog, but for now I am just pondering ideas.

This blog post, "Where do libraries go to die?", by Owen Strachan made me think on this a bit more. The author is pointing to an NYT piece on libraries and how the digital revolution is affecting them (yet another one). Mr. Stracham highlights some pieces from the article and adds some commentary that I think is worth considering:

• "I feel for librarians. This is a tough age. Trained to share a passion for one of the sweetest specimens of common grace, books, today many librarians find themselves as little more than Internet monitors, reduced to pulling up pages of vacuous celebrities to kindle even the slightest spark of interest in their students. This spark, of course, cannot possibly last for more time than it takes a synapse to fire. The librarian–what does that term even mean in this digital age?–is thus a mere custodian of the hyper-short attention spans of her students. Ironically, she was trained to be the very opposite, to be one of the few voices in youth culture that urges “reading” and “thinking”–technical terms, I know–on youth."
  

It is a tough time indeed. While I am all for learning new technologies and helping people with them, I don't particularly recall the class in library school where they told us we would end up as nothing more than glorified Internet monitors or babysitters without a license. Maybe it is because there was no such class.

• "It is not a good sign for a society when children have no interest in books and care only for celebrities, twittering, texting, Facebook, movies, and so on. We are, I think, producing a stupid society. Our children are going to be dumber and dumber as times goes on, and it is no one’s fault but our own. So you heard it here: unless something miraculous happens, our children are going to be unmotivated, uninteresting, boring, and dumb, and parents and a ridiculous education culture are to blame."
  

Now, saying something like that will likely inspire the ire of certain techie librarians who worship at the 2.0 altar. These are the people that think we should be online on every possible platform even if it is not practical and/or viable. It's the hip thing to do. In the meantime, the educational mission of libraries is lost along the way. Of course, saying something like "we are producing a stupid society" is deemed as doomsaying or too negative. But let us look at this a moment. The usual objections to someone making the statements above can include:

• "You just are not customer service oriented." This is basically an extreme form of "give them what they want" and damn the consequences.
  
• "You are not open minded" which often goes along with "you just don't get it." This is a favorite of the 2.0 crowd when they do not want to be questioned or confronted.
  

And the thing is we do find ourselves as glorified internet monitors, and we are not even in full control then. The whole nonsense over porn in libraries is a good example. In the interest of disclosure, I will say I have no personal problem with porn. If it is your thing, you go right ahead and enjoy, and I have no problem with it being available. I do have a problem with people who feel a need to go watch their porn on public access computers in the library. Either put those people in some isolated room of the library (and thus out of sight of the squeamish; ever notice that those who complain are often either religious conservatives or busybodies. You never get a libertarian to do said complaining) or simply ban it from public computers: period, no appeal. You would think this is common sense, but not even the fine ALA dares take a stand on this. I am all for the First Amendment, but you have to be responsible for your rights too. When libraries start becoming the place du jour to get your porn fix, you may have a problem. Go do that at home, and while at it, get back to basics.

At this point, I am trying to recall a couple other good posts I have seen on this, so as I find them, I will probably link them in here as well to help flesh things out. We'll see. I am really thinking this over and at the same time worried that a good number of my professional brethren are more than ready to let libraries die in favor of the communal rec room and arcade.

P.S. This post on "Thinking about research" by Matt Ostercamps seemed pretty good too, and I did not want to miss it. It considers the notion of research as asking questions instead of simply finding tons of information. Something else for librarians to consider.

Update note (same day): I found the post I had in mind regarding the role of educators in policing the Internet. The situation described in the post, while very emotional, sounds like an example of what happens when a self-righteous busybody takes it upon herself to denounce someone else she has no business denouncing, especially without context. The discussion does make some good points; I even made a comment on their blog. And it is a discussion we in librarianship should probably have at some point. Post comes from Learning.Now.