This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All: a book review

A portrait of contemporary librarianship told in a warm and highly engaging fashion is one way to describe this book. By any measure, I would have to say I loved this book; thanks Marilyn Johnson (I hope she goes on a book tour!). I would recommend it to any librarians out there. In fact, I’d even suggest it is a good book for librarians to give to their non-librarian friends since it explains the challenges and variety of the profession as it is now practiced. There have also been a number of reviews and comments on the book around the Web and these seem to focus mainly on Johnson’s discussion of the intersection between librarians and technology. It amuses me in some ways to see how the mainstream media is just catching up and noticing what librarians have accomplished in the past ten years. When I got to the end of the book, I wanted there to be more chapters; maybe exploring librarianship in outside the United States to a greater degree? I’d also like an index, but to be fair, many non-fiction books lack an index so I can hardly make that into a critique. I’m aiming to keep this review under a thousand words and discuss those aspects of the book which have been somewhat neglected in reviews I’ve seen elsewhere.

The chapter on archivists – “What’s Worth Saving?” – is particularly interesting for how it weaves together personal stories and the principles of archival work. Johnson attended a workshop on literary archives and leads the reader through the difficulties of working with this type of material. Johnson also grapples with the philosophy question posed by archival work; what to say and how? She does this, in part, by telling the story of a large archive of materials relating to the sport of boxing and how they came to find a safe home in an archive. Johnson also probes the question of individual digital archives – how can individual people save parts of the Web or even their own production safely so that it can be accessed in the future? I view this as an opportunity for archivists to provide advice to individuals.

As a long time fan of New York City, I was delighted to see an entire chapter (“Gotham City”) dedicated to discussing the city’s libraries. New York has the world’s largest dog library (the American Kennel Club Library) but also one of the world’s most famous and important public library systems, the New York Public Library (NYPL). I learned a lot here about the politics and problems that have been swirling around this institution lately, including the apparent shift away from research collections and librarians (e.g. no more Persian language cataloguers/librarians) toward what I might call a conventional public library model with circulating collections, Internet access terminals and the like. All those services and programs are immensely valuable and I do not mean to disparage them in any way, but I struggle to see why NYPL appears to have moved away from the collections and resources that made it unique and famous around the world. On the other hand, Johnson introduces us to Joshua Greenberg, the mastermind behind much of NYPL’s digital projects (note to self: explore the riches of NYPL.org more deeply!) which shows a vision of the institution’s future.

This review would be remiss if I didn’t discuss the chapters on blogging and Second Life which have attracted so much interest elsewhere. In reading the chapter on library bloggers (“The Blog People”), many of the writers discussed were familiar to me but I still learned something here. Sometimes, one forgets that there is something of a cleavage between the hyper-connected blogging section of librarianship and those that do not engage in such practices. That said, I think Johnson rightly points out that library bloggers interest in pursuing innovation and experimentation is preferable to simply complaining about social media and related technologies as the Annoyed Librarian does. The chapter on Second Life (“Wizards of Odd”) was a revelation in some ways. I knew that librarians use Second Life (I’ve used it a couple of times myself), but I didn’t know about the extent of librarian participation. There are whole libraries, collections and even historical towns curated and managed in Second Life by librarians. Simulated reality tools like Second Life still strike me as a bit experimental and ahead of the curve for widespread usage but this approach may ultimately prove to be very important.

If you’re looking for a book to show people what librarians actually do and the challenges they face today, this is the book to look at. For me, it was also inspiring to see the range of librarian work and activity. It is the kind of book that leaves you wanting more and I hope that Johnson considers a second, expanded edition at some point down the road. Over the coming weeks, I will be returning to the book to learn more about the profession. I’ve studied the field and worked in it for several years already and I’m always pleasantly surprised with how much there is to learn.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.

OLA 2010 Conference: Day Two

The second day of the OLA conference had plenty of interesting sessions on all manner of topics. I attended two sessions on academic libraries and one on reference practice. That last session was particularly thought provoking as I ponder how to implement those insights in the context of virtual reference work. The conference has also been a good opportunity to meet and see librarians from across Ontario and other places including some friends from my graduate program that I haven’t seen in a few months.

The first session I attended, There’s a Library Here? Student outreach at the University of Guelph-Humber College, was a review and assessment of the marketing and outreach services recently employed at this Toronto institution. Guelph-Humber, founded in 2002,  has approximately three thousand students and faces the particular challenge of not having a dedicated library space. Nonetheless, Jennifer Easter and Caroline Stewart described Guelph-Humber’s outreach successes. One of the library’s strongest moves was to set up a student advisory committee which advises librarians on a variety of topics including how best to communicate with students. The decision to embed librarians in the institution’s Writing Centre has also been a great success as it allows for extended (30-60 minutes) consultations with students. The more I think about, the more I see a natural partnership between writing centres and librarians. The presenters also covered what didn’t succeed as well was the reference in student residence service; this came as no surprise since most library efforts to do this have not been highly successful. There was also a lively discussion of questions from those in the audience, including some from yours truly. I have written previously about marketing academic libraries; it is a topic of long standing interest for me.

During the extended lunch break, I went to see some of the poster presentations being provided. The sheer scope of projects undertaken was impressive; everything from research databases to developing cataloguing standards for video games was shown here. Of course, I went to see Meghan Eccelstone and Angela Hamilton, of York University, present on screencasting. They’ve found that videos over about five minutes tend to lose student interest. As I have something of an interest in German history and culture, it was also fun to see the German Canadiana in Ontario Bibliography project presented by Helena Calogeridis, Jane Forgay and William Oldfield of the University of Waterloo; it covers books, family histories, newspapers and other kinds of materials by and about this community. Two librarians from Queen’s University, Sylvia Andrychuk and Elizabeth Gibson, presented on some recent innovations that they have participated in. Their poster, From Annotated Bibliographies to Zines: Alternatives to the Research Paper, showed that humanities and social sciences teaching can go beyond the standard essay assignment. For example, there have been course assignments where students have been assigned the task of assessing and improving Wikipedia entries. I love the idea of actually having students improve the state of the world’s knowledge. They also told me that students tend to put more effort into their work, whether it be posters, zines or Wikipedia pages, when they knew it would be publicly displayed. The final poster I looked into was called, “Preserving PAc-Mac: Creating a Metadata Schema for Video Games,” by Max Dionisio and Sheila Mallahi Karai of the University of Toronto and it was enlightening. Unlike book cataloguing, describing and cataloguing video games is up for debate. There are many questions about what to include in catalogue records and how to organize it.

The attractions and challenges of providing 24/7 access to library services was discussed in another session I attended. Presented by Catherine Devion (University of Toronto Scarborough), Mark Robertson (York University) and Martha Whitehead (York University)) have all launched late night library programs over the last few years. In the case of York, student politicians actually campaigned for 24 hour library access and the library responded. In each case, it looks like late night library usage peaks between 11pm and 1am. From my perspective, it looks like academic libraries could justify closing from 2am-6am based on usage. In the Q&A part of the discussion, there were questions raised about whether it is wise to offer this kind of service since it may encourage students to adopt unhealthy work habits; indeed, some health staff at Queen’s expressed just this concern. From an administrative standpoint, it looks like the only real difficulty was keeping libraries clean; security was carefully thought out and there did not appear to be any problems on that front.

I ended the day by attending a stimulating session on reference called, “No Longer Just An Interview: Reference as a Relationship” given by Professor Mary Cavanagh and Luanna Freund. They both emphasized the importance of moving past the reference as transaction model that is suggested by library statistics. Indeed, Cavanagh points out that some library statistics claim that only about 20% of interactions are “real” reference questions but this is misleading. Many of the other interactions are necessary to build rapport and trust between librarian and library user in her view. Freund, who teaches aspiring librarians at UBC, approaches reference from a different angle; how can we teach a set of skills that is notoriously difficult to convey in any other way besides experience? She had some interesting ideas including encouraging people to study human-computer interaction more and learn more about information behaviour. In the Q&A portion, I asked about how one can build reference relationships using virtual reference or chat services. They both agreed it was a great challenge to do this; I think there are ways to change virtual reference technology to make it more conducive to relationships.

OLA 2010 Conference: Day One

The OLA SuperConference has a special place in my professional life and history since it was the first ever library conference I attended. The event is dominated by librarians from all over Ontario, but there are some people from elsewhere in North America as well. Choosing which sessions to attend is always a problem, but it is one of the best kind of problems to have (the professional equivalent of deciding which chocolate to buy). In the end, I attended four events on various aspects of library work. My focus was mainly on the academic library context.

The first session I attended, given by Janice Mutz of Lakehead and John Dupuis of York, led a stimulating session on the future of academic libraries. Some of the presentation was familiar to me from Dupuis’s other writings on the topic but the discussion was lively. One of the most challenging points raised is the perception or brand problem that students and faculty tend to think the library is for print books and little else despite the fact that libraries have many other services and collections. Other debates were a bit more theoretical but still interesting; what happens if the trend toward consolidation and monopoly in academic publishing continues and continues? Is it impossible to imagine a day where Google owns all the major academic publishers? It could certainly afford to do that. In my view, most of the challenges to academic libraries in the next ten years or so are solvable but it will require some unusual thinking. For example, I think there is an opportunity for librarians to take on a publisher role by running and maintaining open access journals.

The next session I attended was all about using the Census, a tremendously valuable resource by any measure but also a difficult one to use effectively. I’ve always wanted to know more about how to use the census better and this session helped. The presenters -  Sue Giles and Dan Jakubek from Ryerson  – demonstrated how the census can be used to answer questions such as “Is it true that many Toronto taxi drivers have PhDs?” (In short: no. About 10% of Toronto taxi drivers have university degrees but only about 0.05% have PhDs) and “What is the average rent in my neighbourhood?” The presenters also explained the complexities of access to Statistics Canada and the relative precision of what you can kind.

The third session I attended, “The Role of the Library in Student Retention,” was interesting and provoked me to think of questions. The central question posed by the session is whether or not the library/librarians have an effect on student retention. Student retention can mean a few different things; keeping students enrolled until they graduate, preventing drop outs, that sort of thing. The speaker, Lorelei Harris of the University of Lethbridge Library, introduced us to the different theories that explain how and why students stay and succeed at college and university. Evidence that the library plays a critical or definitive role is still inconclusive at this point. There are some tantalizing possibilities though; providing student jobs at the library may improve student retention, for example. This session, like the other two above, left me wanting more and what higher praise can you ask from a curious librarian?

Do School Libraries Need Books? (NY Times Blog)

Earlier this month, there was a debate over at the NY Times Room for Debate blog about whether school libraries should have print books or not. For me, the library of the present and the future is not bound with print books. Print books are important and valuable but I think it is reasonable to say that it is on the decline as a communications medium. On some viseral level, this strikes me as sad and misguided. I would find myself nodding as I read Nicholas Carr’s argument that, “The pages of a book shield us from the distractions that bombard us during most of our waking hours. As an informational medium, the book focuses our attention, encouraging the kind of immersion in a story or an argument that promotes deep comprehension and deep learning.” I wonder how that compares to reading manuscript books from centuries ago? The kind of books that could take months or more to produce by hand? Likewise, my studies in book history have incline me to agree with William Powers who argues that we tend to overestimate the speed of technological shifts

Debating whether or not libraries should continue to focus on print books is ultimately about a deeper debate; what are school libraries for? The rationale behind Carr’s and Power’s arguments for books seems to be about encouraging thoughtful and reflective reading practices. You might say that books are a means to other ends: developing skills and acquiring knowledge. As librarians continue to evaluate new technologies and consider how to balance our collections development between print books, databases, DVDs, audiobooks and other resources, reflecting on our ultimate goals is worthwhile. If Carr and Powers are right about digital technology being opposed to deep reading and thoughtfulness, I wonder if there are other ways librarians and libraries can foster that experience? An elementary school I attended used to periodically observe USSR time (i.e. United Silent Sustained Reading), a practice that was quite helpful in helping children to focus.

If libraries continue to move away from books, how does that affect our mission and goals?

Innovations in geographical information: NYPL’s Map Rectifier

New York Public Library’s staff continue to do excellent work; this week, I learned about the the NYPL Map Rectifier tool. The premise of this tool is to connect historical maps of the city to modern maps. The project is still in the early stages, but I gather the long term idea is to make it possible to go back through mapping history. For example, you can see how Central Park and the surrounding area has been depicted differently in maps over time. I have done some work with historical maps and I always find it interesting how older maps sometimes follow different conventions: giving prominent attention to local businesses, for example, rather than cartographic precision. That often makes the maps more interesting for historical research, but it does raise problems when legal disputes have to be resolved using imprecise maps.

The map librarians at NYPL have also created videos to demonstrate how to use the service:

Trends in Scholarly Communications in Seven Disciplines (report)

For all those interested in academic libraries and how scholars work, a recent study from UC Berkeley will be of interest: Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines. The disciplines covered in the work are: archaeology, astrophysics, biology, economics, history, music and political science. Overall trends found include a tendency toward conservative publishing (i.e. publishing articles in famous journals is highly desired), recognition of non-textual communication (e.g. curation activity, designs and multimedia work) exist but these are generally accorded little weight and there is a general lack of interest in sharing ideas or circulating drafts in  social media or Web 2.0 forums. Another finding of importance for librarian is that academics often poorly organize their data and research; this could be an opportunity to provide training or other supports for scholars.

The authors of the report explain that traditional modes of scholarly communication are likely to persist for quite some time as academic work environment tends to be conservative:

In all fields, many young scholars, and particularly graduate students, are especially leery of putting ideas and data out too soon for fear of thefy and/or misinterpretation. Given these findings, we caution against assumptions that “millenials” will change the social landscape of scholarship by virtue of their facility with cell phones and social networking sites. There is ample evidence, once initiated into the profession, newer scholars – be they graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, or assistant professors – adopt the behaviors, norms and recommendations of their mentors in order to advance their careers.

These are difficult questions to face if you are generally enthusiastic about the sharing ethic. The very unpopularity of putting ideas out there makes examples of it all the more interesting. For example, you can read all the papers, data and other materials that Chris Blattman, professor of political science at Yale, produces (sidenote: his website is also very well designed and appealing). Ultimately, it looks like not much will change until tenure decisions are modernized to recognize other forms of worthwhile academic activity besides publication in a high prestige periodical. Change will come but it may take a long time and it will likely be very uneven. Academic librarians need to understand the current environment and identify ways to improve it. I expect I will come back to this report several times to read it through more deeply.

Europeana: Europe’s Digital Library

I first read about Europeana almost a year ago and it seemed promising but not ready for prime time. In reading a fascinating and critical discussion of the project by Ricky Erway at OCLC Research in Liber Quarterly that points out the website’s shortcomings. I would have to second the concern about uneven participation; not all members of the EU are represented. That said, they are off to a strong start. As of today, there are contributions from: the UK, France, Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Poland, Italy, Spain and others. Of course, I had some fun browsing around the service and running searches to see what I could find. The search results are a little confusing since you get text (which apparently includes library catalogue records but not the actual item), audio, video and images. Based on some previous experimentation, it looks like this service is best at obtaining images. The search interface is top notch when it comes to providing faceted search; you can drill down on date, country, contributor and so forth.

Online communities and a timeline browsing tool are two of Europeana’s more promising aspects but they leave something to be desired. Compared to the World Digital Library, Europeana’s timeline browsing tool is not well implemented. I also wonder about the communities idea; there are six groups with less than four hundred members in total. Would it not make more sense to make connections to establishes social networks like Facebook rather than trying to get people to participate in Europeana broad topic based communities dedicated to classical music, museums and other cultural subjects. If you are interested in European culture and libraries, this is a website to check in on periodically.

You may want to read my posts on other digital library projects:

• Digital Library of the Caribbean: a review

• The World Digital Library: a review

What does DIY Education Mean for Libraries?

Anya Kamenetz’s newest book, DIY U (to be released April 2010) explores the do-it-yourself model of university and education more generally that is rising in importantce. In a preview article written for Chelsea Green, she explores several trends that are well worth considering. Not all of these trends translate to the Canadian context completely but I think they still matter here. Here’s a quote from the article on the four things Anya Kamenetz knows for sure about the future of higher education:

1. The promise of free or marginal-cost open-source content, techno-hybridization, unbundling of educational functions, and learner-centered educational experiences and paths is too powerful to ignore. These changes are inevitable. They are happening now. Innovative private colleges like Southern New Hampshire and for-profits like Grand Canyon, upstarts like BYU–Idaho and Western Governor’s University, and community colleges like Foothill-De Anza represent the future.
2. However, these changes will not automatically become pervasive. Many existing institutions, especially those with the greatest reserves of wealth and reputation, will manage to remain outwardly, physically the same for decades, and to charge ever-higher tuition, even as enrollment shifts more and more toward the for-profits and community colleges and other places that adopt these changes.
3. In order to short-circuit the cost spiral, and provide access to appropriate education and training for people of all backgrounds, there is much hard work to be done in the way schools are funded and accreditation and transfer policies are set. College leaders need to have the will to change, as Chancellor Kirwan did at the University of Maryland, recognizing the central importance of efficiencies and changing the relationship between universities and their funders. Political leaders need to legislate change, as Senator Dick Durbin is by calling for open textbooks, and Bob Shireman by proposing to link funding for student loans to a college’s proportion of Pell-eligible students. Above all, learners and their families need to recognize that alternatives to the status quo exist and demand change.
4. The one thing that can change dramatically and relatively swiftly is the public perception of where the true value and quality of higher education lies. It’s no longer about the automatic four-year degree for all. Institutions can’t rely any more on history, reputation, exclusivity, and cost; we now have the ability to peer inside the classroom as professors are lecturing and see students’ assignments published to the world. So we have both the ability and the obligation to look at demonstrated results.

From: “Commencement”: An Excerpt from DIY U

Libraries and librarians are not mentioned anywhere, so some interpretative work is needed to make sense of this. Firstly, the prospect of “unbundling of educational functions” could be bad news for libraries. If the academic experience is broken down into a set of experiences unrelated to each other, much will be lost including some of the historical reasons for academic libraries. One possible future of the academic library might be to position itself as a student’s home base through their studies; they may take many different courses with different instructors but they will always have a librarian to turn to. Another option is to seek deeper connections with instructors and make the case that library skills in research and evaluation of information are crucial to both academic study and long term success. Kamenetz sees a future with a greater emphasis on outcomes, skills and projects. I think librarians are well posed to meet that change.

Notes on ” This Book Is Overdue!” By Marilyn Johnson

There are many unsung heroes of ordinary life—nurses, trash collectors, accountants—whose job it is to take care of things that the rest of us take for granted. So too the librarian, that iconic figure who long presided over a sanctuary of books and guided readers, young and old, to the treasures of a vast print culture. But the profession has undergone a dramatic transformation of late because libraries themselves are not what they used to be. Today they have less to do with books per se than with computers, films, community events and children’s activities. – Christine Rosen’s review of Marilyn Johnson’s “This Book is Overdue

I’ve recently been thinking a lot about the perception of the library-as-warehouse and whether this perception works for us. For most of library history, when information and literacy skills were low, the warehouse metaphaor (i.e. the library as a place with books and other information) worked well for us. But that is a difficult place to remain in. There are at least two ways to respond to the library as warehouse problem; admit it and add some qualifications around the edges (as in “Yes, but we also have special collections, rare books and other items you wouldn’t find on the Net!” This is still very true, by the way) or deny it complete and opt for a different approach (“The Library is a place with professionals that help you with information; finding it, interpreting it and making use of it.”I think the latter approach will become more and more important; shifting the emphasis from the object (book, DVD, etc) to the service provided by the professional.

In reading Christine Rosen’s review of Marilyn Johnson’s latest book, “This Book is Overdue” in the Wall Street Journal, my worries were expressed again. The book gives the impression of being a survey of modern American public libraries (academic, government and other libraries don’t seem to be included). The description of what is happening with one of America’s most famous and important public libraries has me wondering: “One of the more disturbing stories in “This Book Is Overdue!” is Ms. Johnson’s description of the New York Public Library’s decision to upgrade its image from that of a stuffy research library, replete with reference librarians whose knowledge and expertise are of incalculable value to researchers, to a place where parents and toddlers might want to pick up a DVD and a latte.” I was last in a New York Public Library in 2006 and it struck me as having it all; sure you could get a coffee, but there was also many reading rooms and exhibitions. If the above quote is accurate – I have this mental image of experienced librarians being laid off to pay for fancy coffee – then this is a turn for the worse. I think it is more likely that the changes at the NYPL are being exaggerated somewhat but I remain open to persuasion on that front.

There is some evidence to suggest that the librarian emphasis on skills rather than books and other materials is appreciated by others. “Eric Schmidt, the head of Google, recently told the Davos World Economic Forum that he worried about the loss of deep reading skills. “As the world looks to these instantaneous devices,” he said, “you spend less time reading all forms of literature, books, magazines, and so forth.” This is not a revelation for those that track the literature on reading, but it is still reassuring to see it understood elsewhere. The question remains; how can librarians help people develop their deep reading skills? Many academic librarians do this well but what about librarians working in other contexts?

Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age (Report)

Produced by Project Information Literacy, the Lessons Learned: How College Students Find Information in the Digital Age report (issued December 2009) has plenty of data for academic librarians to consider. Many of the findings are distressing for they show that students generally avoid librarians and have a very narrow view of the library’s services. Thank you Dr Allison J. Head and Dr Michael B. Eisenberg for doing this important research. Here are some of the key findings worth considering:

• Only about 25% of instructors advise students to recommended a librarian to do course-related research.
• “The relatively consistent pattern of information usage suggests that most students in our study favored a risk-averse and predictable information-seeking strategy. The student approach appears to be learned by rote and reliant on using a small set of resources nearly each and every time.” – page 32
• We see a perfect storm brewing on some campuses: (1) many students have imperatives to graduate in four years or less, because of the weak economy, rising tuition costs, and pressure from the institution and family; (2) many students take a brimming course load each term, which may require more work than they are capable of completing; (3) many students develop a work style that tries to get as much done in as little time as possible and work expands to fill the time allotted; and (4) many studentsʼ information-seeking competencies end up being highly contextual, a set of predictable skills developed for passing courses, not for lifelong literacy and professional goals beyond college… As a result, we see the very important pedagogical goals of deep learning and critical thinking are at risk of being greatly impeded within the academy.” – page 34
• “We see a trend that concerns us: Students in our study developed information strategy that was learned by rote, applied with dogged consistency, and resulted in respectable grades. Many studentsʼ research methods appear to be far from experimental, new, developmental, or innovative.” – page 34

There is much for librarians to think about here, not least of which is the question of student information habits. It strike me as likely that many students form their information habits prior to starting university or college and that they often do little to change. The report also found that students typically start their research process with assigned readings and a handful of other resources. Inspiring students to learn more deeply is part of the challenge that academic librarians face and I’m not sure how that can be achieved. One option is to work more closely with faculty members, many of which no doubt share the concern that students are not learning critical thinking skills in much depth.

Thanks , K.G. Schneider, (author of the excellent Free Range Librarian blog) for pointing this study out.