Category: Libraries

I get annoyed when I read library blogs that say things like “users shouldn’t have to see this” or “this is a completely broken and useless system”. That may in fact be true, but this is usually followed by “is this really the message we want to be sending?” rather than some sort of reasoning about why the system might have been developed that way, and what potential improvements might be. Systems are generally not perfect, including natural ones (see: natural selection and evolution). Lack of perfection in a system of human devising does not, in my opinion, indicate malice. It indicates humanity. Things also take time. Even if you have lots of money, you might develop something that doesn’t work that well for most people (for instance, Google Wave, though I used it), and after time you decide that it’s not worth using any more, or that it needs to be adapted. No matter how much you test something, reality will probably work a little differently. That’s ok. If a vendor doesn’t make a perfect product the first time out, are we fools for purchasing it anyway? It depends. Is there a better way to do something that we are not doing because it would be inconvenient to switch? That might be foolish if we wait so long that switching is impossible. But if the service generally works, and there isn’t a much better way to do it, then working with the vendor to ask for critical improvements is probably going to be more productive. Open source products have the added advantage that you can, in theory, fix the problems yourself. My feeling with those is that if I don’t know how to fix the problem, then I better limit my complaining about it, as usually a little research will show that people are already thinking about it but the problem isn’t trivial.

In any event, library jeremiads may release tension in the blogger, but as far as I know, that’s about it. They also lend credence to the idea that most library users aren’t very capable. “Don’t Make Me Think” isn’t saying “don’t let me ever use my intellectual abilities”, just “make it obvious how I start using this thing”. But that’s getting started on another thing entirely. In my experience, many people, if given half a chance, will be able to figure out how to use something and use it well. So it’s true that downloading electronic books from the library takes a few steps. If you have a mobile device and reliable wireless internet, it actually needn’t take that many steps and becomes about as easy as downloading books from Amazon or the iTunes store. If you don’t have those things, all of them will become about the same amount of work. And once you have items from those places, you still have licensing issues and DRM issues.

On the other hand, I also get annoyed when I read blogs that are all sweetness and light and full of buzzwords. In that case I wonder if people aren’t being critical enough. Or sometimes they seem to indicate that some new system or theory is a panacea. There are no panaceas, in medicine or in reality, so that’s out right there. They can be helpful, or they might improve one area. “Raising awareness” of an issue tends to lead to facile considerations of issues, and reminds me of my extracurricular activities in college which led to a lot of spouting of pseudoscience with only a few grains of truth. Later on I could see where I was right and where I was wrong, but when immersed in it and lacking critical awareness I said some dumb stuff.

And, in a related note, let’s not get Oprah involved in “saving” libraries. That’s another thing touted in some quarters as another library panacea, but how could it possibly help? She could mention on her show that libraries are important and show clips of heartwarming scenes of kids learning to read. Ok, great, awareness has been raised. Now the citizenry go to the polls. Do they vote for money for the library? That’s where I’m not convinced. Nor, give what else Oprah gives time to am I sure it would help the cause of critical thinking and an informed populace that (at least should be) the basic goals for libraries.

The problem with not having a portable computer that is also easy to type on is that I take copious notes at conferences and send lots of notes to Twitter, but then find the act of typing up notes for my blog not exactly my number one thing I want to do. Nevertheless, I did get much that was useful from the Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science a few weeks ago.

The main reason I was there was so that Nell and I could present a poster on the latest iteration of the Chicago Underground Library catalog. The idea of this catalog is to make it extremely easy for people who aren’t librarians or particularly technically inclined to help capture the CUL’s collection.  I say capture because the collection and the catalog is so much a living thing that we can’t ever expect that one day we will complete it. The idea is that as we get comments on records from community members that we will draw that information back into the record to make it richer. What really struck me during the course of the conference–particularly during the Google Books presentation– is that the data we are creating and then collecting needs to be captured on a regular basis so that we can understand how it’s changed over time. That will be a priority for me over winter “break”, as I somehow imagine that a few weeks without many students around will lead to an ability to finish all my big projects.

The session called E-science, Digital Humanities, and the Role of the Library was partly a description of how various digital humanities labs function, and partly a discussion on how librarians function in those settings. There is a discussion at my institution on how standards of retention (and possibly promotion) for faculty librarians might change, and so hearing the types of issues at other institutions was instructive. Basically, while it may be the case that librarians “staff” digital humanities research labs (or really, “staff” research help in general), it is not useful when they are treated as research assistants. Rather, in a sense they need to be co-researchers, though I am not sure if that extends to actually being listed as an author or what. I guess that depends. The point was made that in science it has long been the case that staff (such as lab techs) do research, but this is only fairly recent in the humanities. Now, I can’t say that most lab techs I have known get a high level of satisfaction from their work even if the project they are apart of is very interesting. I guess the point is that librarians want to be on the PI level of work, not the lab tech level.

This is but a pale shadow of the excitement I felt while actually at the conference, but perhaps more will follow in terms of production of content. It confirmed for me the suspicion I’d had for awhile about my actual research interests, and they are somewhat different than what I’d assumed I would end up doing as an academic librarian. That is to say, I don’t really want to do the type of qualitative social science research so often seen in library science journals. You know what I mean, if you read those journals. Not that I can never ever do it–it’s just not what will get me truly excited.

There has got to be some irony in a scholarship of pedagogy symposium leaving me too tired to plan lessons.

My position, while certainly focused on technology, does require (and I enjoy) some amount of instruction. If nothing else, we don’t have enough staff to not have everyone pitch in for instruction. I will also be teaching a liberal arts seminar in the spring, which will explore how technological innovations throughout time have affected work and leisure. The seminars emphasize integrative learning across the disciplines, which is ideal for a “generalist” who often feels jack of all trades, master of none.

For me instruction provides a forum in which I can understand how technology decisions I make for the library actually affect the people who use it for their academic lives. I don’t think I could do my job half as well if I didn’t have to spend a lot of time working with the library’s resources to perform non-theoretical activities.

In a related vein, I was able to finally get some real world help with the website redesign process. Today my boss rounded up some student workers to come help out with website brainstorming, and it was just as helpful as I hoped it would be. They came up with some great non-librarian ideas, and completely shot down some “innovative” ideas I’d read on library technology blogs.

I seem to be lacking a cohesive theme and/or unity in this, but let’s just take it as given that I am tired, work too many hours, but love what I do.