Back to it

Never having been in the computer department, I feel safe in saying I am back to it. “It” is this blog from which I took a leave of absence. Well, I’m back!

While libraries will not be a source of remuneration for me in the foreseeable future, I do want to address them probably once a week this year. Someone at church suggested me for the position of parish librarian, so my doing libraries will not cease. Besides, can you really rid yourself of that part of your being?

You see, last May I began my retirement from Library Work – nearly a half-century’s worth when I count the ten-plus years as a student assistant in junior high, college, and graduate school; I even experienced a year as a page in my local public library.

A recent op-ed piece by Bob Herbert in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/opinion/05herbert.html?emc=eta1) entitled “An Uneasy Feeling” worries about many big issues the media are ignoring while they focus on the Christmas Day bomber and Tiger Woods. He begins his piece with “I’m starting the new year with the sinking feeling that important opportunities are slipping from the nation’s grasp.” With most of his concerns I am in agreement.

The one closest to home is “We keep talking about how essential it is to radically improve public education while, at the same time, we’re closing libraries and firing teachers by the tens of thousands for economic reasons.” He doesn’t mention that the “economic reasons” are the public’s refusals to raise taxes. (Actually, his recording of the problems includes predominantly taxation issues which have become the “economic reasons.”) It used to be part of the library’s mission to preserve and to provide access to our culture; while the that mission seems to be changing among today’s library professionals, the budget cuts are accelerating that change.

Though Herbert does not mention the H. P. Wright Library, a branch of the Ventura, Calif., library system, this one got a lot of attention early last summer because of its financial straits – especially did it garner attention when Ray Bradbury did a benefit on its behalf. Of course, after the elections this fall the government (in the person of the taxpayers) said “No, this branch is not worth saving.”

Another disaster waiting to happen is the cutting of the budget for the library where I live (thankfully not the one from which I retired). Somehow, the local government (in this case the city council and mayor) seem to think that this service to the public can be diminished significantly without public harm. While it is true that the population’s physical well-being probably will not be harmed, our intellectual and, dare I say, economic well-being will suffer. I think especially of those dependent upon the computers of the library so that they can file their unemployment claims and search for new jobs.

In the midst of, or should I say in spite of, this negativity there are bright spots – small victories where local voters have said that library service is so important to them that they voted to increase their taxes designated for library service. One such victory was the campaign entered into this year by my FE – they went to the voters for an increase in the library levy, and won. This library system’s approach was not to ask for the full levy to which they are entitled by state constitution, but for about two-thirds of what they could have requested – and that worked.

Every so often I have the doubt: could they have asked for more, even the full levy amount to which they are entitled? Given the current economy and the presence of Tea Party-ites in the county even had they increased their request from ten cents to twelve cents they may have lost. So, it is good that they went for what they did, and thus won!

More about library missions next week.

Dewey have to suffer more ‘bookstore’ assaults?

Dewey overdue for a makeover, librarians say!

What a misleading headline! But I have noticed that not only does journalism strive to mislead but also my profession – librarianship – tends to mislead. Indeed, lately it seems that we are about obfuscation rather than aiding users to find what they desire.

It is true that if you do not like numbers then Dewey Decimal Classification is at best unattractive to you. Also, the DDC (as it is often referred to) has suffered so many changes over the past four decades that it is a wonder its basic scheme resembles that of Melvil Dewey.

But to throw out the numbers almost just because they are numbers, and just what do numbers mean, in order to make the library more like a bookstore is really throwing out any sense of what intellectual life librarianship may still have.

The newspaper article implies a dire need to impart a different organization to the nonfiction collection in the Frankfort library. I dare say the amount of resources expended is more than would have been expended had the library kept its collection up-to-date in the first place.

One wonders about the sophistication (or lack thereof) the Frankfort folks have – do they not know that domestic animals are different from wild animals, or that botany in the wild is different from that in the cultivated garden. Then there is that weird statement - Ironically, this places “cooking” and “heart attacks” in the same 600 category, according to Dewey’s system – really? Frankly, I think such reorganization exhibits not only a dumbing down of service to the public, but also an anti-intellectual attitude to professional service.

Librarians are the intermediaries charged with training our patrons how to find materials skillfully. Many a time patrons have returned to my desk to thank me for showing them how to navigate the system so that they can do it on their own.

Online NW 02222008 – Thinking Summarily

Today was the 25th annual conference originally called ‘Oregon Online’ – it is now well known as Online Northwest. Besides Corvallis, Portland and Eugene have also hosted it; today’s version was the 13th in Corvallis. (It seems that the Oregon attendees much prefer the central location of Corvallis.)  

From what I know the format of the conference has been the same – it opens with a keynote speaker; then follow two ‘breakout’ sessions each about an hour long; then lunch with some door prize drawings (the first one I attended I won one); and then two more breakout sessions. This makes for a comfortably long, informative, and entertaining day with many opportunities for networking with colleagues in the Northwest.  

If there were a theme to this year’s conference, it has to How do we help the user? From Jared Spool’s keynote through the four breakout sessions I attended (I would guess from the descriptions of the other sessions they too) the users were the focus. Spool’s keynote “Why Good Content Must Suck: Designing for the Scent of Information” highlighted his company’s research into good design for Web sites which discovered that one’s ability to use the Web does not predict one’s ability to find information on a particular site – design components are the predictors.  

“Building a Future for Remote Public Services” had as its primary assumption that public service is essential to every library’s mission. Caleb Tucker-Raymond explored his model for simplifying the librarians’ work in responding to the multiplicity of technologies now being used to communicate between and among people. And then he set technology aside to stress that the most important aspect of public service is that communication between user and the human being called ‘librarian’.  

Kyle Banerjee and Terry Reese presented what they foresee coming down the pike in their session, “Next Generation Catalogs: Issues and Opportunities” wherein they discussed  how we must not stop with changing the facade of our catalogs and their eye-catching displays; we must go beyond that to the true integration of all our especially electronic resources with the ILS in truly an interoperable context. 

Two UW librarians presented their two ways of introducing Web 2.0 to their colleagues – A Tale of 2.0 Workshops: Two Approaches to Introducing Emerging Technologies. Alyssa Deutscher presented the way her campus did it over a summer quarter as a series of loosely linked exercises with discussion. Laura Barrett presented how her campus had a one-day workshop that covered those topics of most interest to the attendees. These sessions came out of a larger picture whose purpose was to prepare librarians to be able to guide users in the applications of the new technologies.   

The concluding session was presented by three principals of the blog Infodoodads, who talked about how librarians can stay aware of the new Web gizmos out there. 

Online NW 02222008s2 – “Next Generation” Catalogs

This session was very informative vis-a-vis what seems to be the prevailing hopes for what the new ILS versions will be like. Terry Reese and Kyle Banerjee reminded us that the ILS is merely a specialized inventory control system and makes up a small segment of our electronic resources, especially in academic libraries.  

Both Terry and Kyle preferred an emendation to their topic’s title – instead of catalog, platform. This change allows us to talk about interoperability and standardization across vendors. For example, MARC format has been a standard in the library business for decades, yet even some ILS vendors still do not produce as if they understood the format. (I wonder how much of that is due to the vendors’ proprietary instincts.) One basic problem with most of the platforms is accessibility – can your Iphone give you access to your library’s catalog? 

Kyle did a dog and pony show of some of the attempts currently on the Web – most of them depend upon an underlying ILS for the data. Among those he showed us were Evergreen, AquaBrowser, VuFind, Endeca, Primo, WorldCat Local, and Encore. A side criticism of all of them he made is that rarely on their respective facades could you find any identifying marks of the host library.  

They concluded their presentation with about ten questions to ask of ourselves and our vendors, the necessity of identifying the details involved, and  acknowledging the limits. One very important thing to remember – continuing on the current route will lead many libraries into consortia that will become nothing more than server farms (not exactly what libraries are about).