“A Manifesto for Global Librarianship” Next Library Conference. Berlin, Germany. (via video conference)
Speech Text in English: Read Speaker Script
Speech Text in German: Read Speaker Script in German
Abstract: It is a time for thinking boldly about our profession, the role we play in society, and how we advance an agenda of smarter and more meaningful communities. Librarians must play a crucial role in their communities not as neutral providers of access to materials, but as advocates for the towns, universities, and communities we serve. We must connect to each other in new ways. We must fight for diversity, rationality, and against a society that increasingly preferences data and algorithms over people.
Audio:
Greetings from the University of South Carolina. I apologize that I cannot be there in person, but know that cancer and a bone marrow transplant is about the only thing that could keep me.
Today, I would like to talk about the new reality that we, librarians, find ourselves in. A new reality created by trends in national and international politics that has seen the rise of nationalism in response to globalization. A new reality created by mass migrations brought on by war, poverty, violence, and climate change. A new reality brought on by longer lifespans, a greater concentration of wealth, technological advancement, and, finally, a new reality in understanding the role of learning and information in people’s lives. Continue reading “A Manifesto for Global Librarianship”
Today I finish my conditioning chemotherapy – getting my body ready to receive the new bone marrow. Tomorrow I will have total body radiation for the same purpose. Then on Friday morning my son will have marrow extracted from his pelvis, and in the afternoon, it will be put into me as an IV.
That is the predictable part. What comes next? Typically, about 14 days of waiting for the new bone marrow to “engraft;” populate my bones and start making new blood cells. During that time there will be a lot of checking blood counts and transfusions of red blood cells and platelets and making sure I don’t get an infection (they can’t transfuse white blood cells).
After the two weeks of waiting and watching is when they try and make sure my new blood system (the graft) is working (hopefully to kill any remaining cancer cells and fight infections), but not working too hard (trying to kill the rest of me – the host). This can show up as skin rashes, compromised liver function, compromised lung function, or a very unhappy set of intestines.
I won’t go into the statistics on success, survivability, cancer re-occurrence. Most of the folks who read this blog can find that data in a few seconds. It also, as a patient, doesn’t matter. You can only go into this believing it will work and the best outcome will be my outcome.
What has struck me to this point is not medical. It is social. The generosity of family, neighbors and colleagues has been humbling and inspiring. Meals, gas cards, blood donations, work tasks – it is overwhelming.
I leave you with an interesting fact. When this is all done, and of course a smashing success, I will have two different sets of DNA: I will be a chimera. Which means, fun fact, that if I leave any blood evidence at a scene of a crime, it will point to my son. I think that might keep him in check.
So I’ve got good news, and well, let’s pretend it’s good news, but it is going to mean some big changes for me in the coming year.
tl;dr version:
Chemotherapy is doing its job, but it is not enough to eliminate the underlying cancer.
This fall I will be starting an allogeneic stem cell transplant, a year-long process.
I am stepping back to the faculty for the year and Dick Kawooya will be interim director of SLIS.
The building of the global knowledge school continues.
Working with conference organizers, we have a plan for my fall keynote commitments.
I’m rearranging my social media presence.
There are ways you can help.
Thank you all for your concern and offers of assistance as I’m going through chemotherapy. The good news is that chemo is doing its job and killing the cancer. My most recent PET scan was clean. However, over the past few weeks the consensus of my doctors is the chemo alone will not eliminate the underlying cancer. In essence, chemo will push it back, but in a matter of months or possibly years the cancer will come back and most likely in a more resistant form – plus I’ll be older and have sustained the ongoing damage of chemotherapy.
Stem Cell Process
To truly give me a chance for a cure and long-term remission, I need to get an allogeneic (donor) stem cell transplant. This is an intensive process that involves me living within 20 minutes of the transplant clinic at Duke for at least 3 months, followed up with at least 3-9 more months of semi-isolation until my immune system is strong enough for the public.
For those playing our home game, this will be my second stem cell transplant. The difference is that years ago my transplant to get rid of my Hodgkin’s Lymphoma was autogenetic, i.e., I was my own cell donor. Well, apparently, I was a lousy source since my immune system keeps misbehaving, so it’s time for a new one.
This time, I’ll be getting someone else’s immune system. The bad news is that the normal sources of donors, siblings and the bone marrow registry, don’t have a match (I didn’t match the 19 million people in the registry – I am indeed a unique snowflake). Instead, I’ll be using a 50% match – my son. That’s right, my son is going to save my life. I fear this will lead to awkward holidays where he holds it over me to get extra gravy. On the other hand, at least my blood will be 50% Italian by the end of the year.
Stem cell transplants are intensive processes and they come with plenty of risk. The same benefits of a transplant (fighting cancer cells that my new immune system will see as foreign pathogens) can turn into big problems (seeing my entire body as a foreign invader called graft vs host disease). These risks are only amplified by the fact that this is my second transplant. Given the reality of transplant, I am stepping back as director of the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina and returning to the faculty for the year.
Dr. Dick Kawooya
SLIS has made too much progress and is making too many gains for a part time director. Dr. Dick Kawooya has agreed to serve as interim director for the year to continue the progress the faculty, students, staff, and alums have made. I will continue to push forward the agenda of the global knowledge school as a professor in my bubble. Special thanks to Dean Tom Reichert and the university for being so supportive during this whole thing.
Which brings me to some upcoming changes. I’ve been working with the conference organizers of my fall keynotes. Some will seek another speaker, but several have agreed to go with video keynotes. This has the advantage of giving organizers a chance to get my remarks translated for the audience. I still want to be out there pushing forward an agenda of librarianship grounded in knowledge and built around the community. While I may not be able to be there in person, I will connect online as I am able.
Speaking of online, I am making some changes to my online presence; particularly Facebook. Every day I get friend requests from librarians and allies around the globe. It is a diversity I truly cherish. However, Facebook is also the place I use to keep up to date with friends and family, and this will increasingly include more and more personal information. To keep my Facebook connections with the library community, I’ve created a public Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/rdavidlankes/
Much of the content on my personal profile and this page will be the same. However, on the public page I will focus more on library and information science stuff, and a bit less on family photos (though some of those will end up here as well). If you are interested in the work I do, please connect at this page.
In the coming weeks I’ll begin to prune back the connections on my private page. Please don’t be insulted if I unfriend you…it is more a matter of keeping one site for my work and one for those whom I have a personal connection. My public site will also have updates on my treatment.
In closing, everyone has been amazingly generous in asking how they can help. Please please please sign up as a donor at bethematch.org as a potential donor. It is easy to sign up (a cheek swab), and donating stem cells is about as tough as donating blood. And donors that don’t look like me (middle aged white guys) are particularly needed. Your donation won’t save me, but it can save a life!
Please give blood if you are able. Every pint saves lives and one of those may well be mine.
If you know of a good sublet or housing option in Durham for 3 months let me know.
Lastly, please continue to support colleagues that are dealing with their own medical journeys. Every day I read about librarians bravely facing cancer, many with more grim prospects than my own. I also know of many professionals dealing with invisible ailments, too often stigmatized because of a chemical imbalance in the brain instead of the breast or lymph system.
As professional educators and librarians (the same thing), we seek to serve our communities with compassion and empathy. We must also extend that empathy to ourselves. We may disagree, but we must create a diverse and welcoming environment that supports intense dialogue without creating toxic environments. This isn’t about civility – too often a code word for suppressing dissent. Our conversations should be loud and frank and passionate. This is about staying true to our values of learning and service. Learning – literally changing one’s view of the world – is hard and it can be painful to embrace new understandings at the cost of the old. However, it is our duty not to relieve the labor of learning, but rather the pain associated with the recognition of former ignorance.
Some Resources if You Want to Know More:
https://bethematch.org to put your name on the registry and a great resource on transplants in general
The HTML is very basic which is great for low bandwidth and is nice and clean, but I know it could be much better (prettier, more features, etc.). If you are interested in helping and have some HTML skills, let me know.
Since the Atlas was first published in 2011 it has won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature, been adopted as a text book, and generated numerous conversations (and let’s be honest, arguments) around the world.
The Atlas was the first in a loose trilogy of books focused on the role of librarians and libraries in communities and centered on knowledge. Expect More was written for supporters of libraries from board members to provosts to community members. The New Librarianship Field Guide, also published by MIT Press, was written as a text book for library students and people looking for a more linear introduction to New Librarianship.
We hope by making the Atlas free online we can expand the conversation on the value and future of the profession internationally.
Yesterday was a hard day – a low day. I think those in treatment for cancer need to acknowledge these. It was also a hard day for me in considering the directions and actions in my country and I think we need to acknowledge those as well.
Yesterday was my last infusion on chemo before a PET scan to see what effect it has been having. The infusions with mega steroids left me bone tired where just blinking seemed like work. Leaving the plan of chemo treatments to await a PET scan is not a comforting feeling – it takes a set schedule and direction forward and replaces it with a host of possibilities allowing you to go to the worst-case scenario – did the chemo work? Is it still growing? What’s next? It can get pretty dark in your head.
At the same time, I watched my social media feeds with stories of migrant camps on military bases; separated migrant children with little prospects for reuniting with their parents; potential roll backs of social safety nets and basic human rights; roll back of what little insurance protection people with pre-existing conditions have; the fact that our national policies seem to be an embrace of tyrants over our European and Canadian allies; and finally deaths in a newsroom shooting made worse by a direct linkage to a national dialog that demonizes those that do not agree with us.
Tired and sad and pessimistic is not an image I project. It is the opposite of the projection I want in my life and career…a fact that many of my critics are happy to point out (“library apologist” and “library cheerleader” being my favorite repeatable phrases). But even a pragmatic utopian gets tired.
So, I went with it. I moped, and I despaired, and I read the damn comments.
Then, I slept. I took the sleeping pill. This morning I woke up and read about librarians working collaboratively to track separated migrant children. I read about libraries improving communities around the globe. I read about female library directors speaking out about their right to be professionally respected and seeing men step up to acknowledge that right and their obligations to support these great directors. I read about the increase in first time candidates for public office who in the face of the same depressing news went to do something.
I saw my journalist colleagues call the public discourse to task and celebrate their own bravery. I have seen light in local politics that seek to make life better for students and citizens regardless with the gridlock at the national level. I re-read the letters my colleagues at the University of Washington condemning family separations and saw the social impact and responsibility mission of the LIS field is still there.
I chose to seek the way forward and not focus on all the obstacles…not to ignore those, but not to surrender to the hopelessness. It takes work. I have read many people talk about fatigue in the face of the constant negativism. For some that means needing regular escapes to reading or fiction or time off online. I respect those choices. As a profession and as human beings we must acknowledge that self-care is part of being a good professional. But for me, I have to do something.
So today I will get my sleep. I will acknowledge that I have options in my health (and acknowledge that that is a privilege I need to fight to expand to all). I need to acknowledge my past mistakes and re-evaluate past actions in light of new learning (let us all acknowledge the difficult irony that being a life-long learner means acknowledging that you are also to a degree ignorant for your entire past life). And I will make a plan to make a difference. I will seek out allies and be an ally. I will call out the bad, but also sing out the good. And I will rest. Elections matter, but so do daily calls to politicians. Tweets can express outrage, but programs and curriculum make changes.
I have cancer, but I also have power. I work in a profession that is awakening to the true difficulties of taking diversity of ideas and creeds, and people, and social classes into itself and what that means for neutrality. These are essential and difficult conversations and I need to be ready for them. Yesterday I was mad for what I lost. I was depressed. I have to allow myself to be there. Today? Today I chose to create something new in place of those losses.
Today I finished my first week of chemo. I hadn’t planned on posting much about my treatments because I didn’t want to distract from the important work going on at the School of Library and Information Science and the amazing progress we are making with the Knowledge School across the globe. Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but I do truly love my job and work with the most amazing set of faculty, staff, and students in the field.
However, I realize now, that we are all facing challenges as we pursue our missions in this life. It doesn’t detract from that work but enriches our understanding and appreciation of others. I struggle with balancing cancer and a job, but everyone is balancing something: illness, family obligations, financial issues, social pressures, discrimination…unfortunately a very long list.
In our LIS program we have full time teachers studying to be school librarians. Many of our doctoral students are becoming scholars while working in libraries. To hide one’s struggles simply ignores reality and ignores the honest concern and generosity of those who help us through.
So, I’ll let you know how things are going from time to time – no doubt focusing on the funny and absurd. I don’t see another book or anything so dramatic emerging from it. We caught a very treatable cancer early and I am very optimistic. There are plenty of more important things for folks to pay attention to and plenty of people more deserving of your generosity. But I want you to know I do treasure your support and kind words.
On Thursday we held the School of Library and Information Science’s Hooding ceremony leading into weekend graduations. The following are my prepared remarks for the event. It starts off a little heavy, just warning you:
On Tuesday a nurse will hook me up to an IV pump and begin the slow injection of toxic chemicals into my body in an effort to kill the cancer that grows in my immune system. My job is to simply sit. And yet, for this act some will call me brave. Friends and neighbors have sent me thoughts and prayers and offered their support. It was not so a century ago.
It may be hard to imagine in these days of pink ribbons, runs for life, and blood drives, but at the turn of the century cancer was a shame. In the absence of viable treatments those with cancer were seen us unfit and a drag on families and societies. Cancer was a sign of bad character or wrong living, or simply weakness. Thousands upon thousands died hidden away in back rooms and hopeless hospital wards.
Indeed, this stigma still remains for certain cancers. Where funding and fund raising for most cancers has increased over the decades, lung cancer remains far behind. Too many people look at lung cancer as a self-inflicted wound seeing the choice to smoke as the only path to this devastating disease. And here begins the point of this lecture.
Today you are graduating into a missionary corps of library and information professionals seeking to serve our communities. Some of you will serve in libraries, some in banks, some in government, and some in the academy. Your mission is to make our communities smarter, and the lives of those we serve more meaningful.
You would not hesitate to serve cancer patients, but what about those who suffer in quiet because society has not yet change in their views of different challenges? Those who struggle with mental health whose only fault is that their chemical imbalance is in the brain instead of the thyroid or immune system. Or the addict whose struggle with opioids is too often attributed to a lack of will power over genetics or an out-of-control pill culture.
The point is that as an information scientist, librarian, or archivist, you are called to serve. We don’t serve cancer or addiction of depression – we serve people – not users or customers, but neighbors and mothers and colleagues. And when society doesn’t give them a voice and support in their challenges we must.
There has been a lot of interest and use of my book Expect More globally. In 2015 Expect More was updated into a second edition with the support of some fabulous library partners. Today we’re making this new edition freely available to download. You can still purchase paper copies of the print book.
In addition to the free online text (and links to translated versions) I have put together a series of videos talking about using each chapter in the context of community conversations.
A VERY big thank you to the partners who made this possible:
Lead Library Partners
Cuyahoga County Public Library (Ohio)
The Northeast Kansas Library System
RAILS (Reaching Across Illinois Library System)
Library Partners
New York State Library
ILEAD USA
Maine State Library
Topeka Public Library (Kansas)
Chattanooga Public Library (Tennessee)
Fairfield Public Library (Connecticut)
Enoch Pratt Free Library (Maryland)
F. Franklin Moon Memorial Library, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
The Califa Library Group
Fayetteville Free Library (New York)
State Library of Pennsylvania
Toronto Public Library
California Library Association
Commercial Partners
Tech Logic
Education Partner
Syracuse University iSchool
Dominican University’s School of Information Studies
University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science.
The end of the academic year here at SLIS is upon us, and it has been quite the year. Here are just some of our accomplishments:
In the Fall we hosted a meeting for the Institute for Museum and Library Services that gathered nearly all of the accredited library and information science programs in the country.
This lead to a fantastic effort by the faculty and our doctoral students to submit proposals to IMLS. We put in 9, and 5 have been invited into the second round of proposals. Some big congratulations to Jennifer Arns, Liz Hartnett, Clayton Copeland, Vanessa Kitzie, Lucy Green and Edward Blessing!
Karen Gavigan is on her third round of Library of Congress grants for teaching with primary sources.
We hired on 3 new members of the faculty in the areas of international librarians, youth services, and school librarianship.
We brought on 4 new staff members.
We made major progress on renewing our library science curriculum, an effort you will be hearing more about in the coming months.
We experienced double digit growth in our undergraduate program.
We put in place a new curriculum of the undergraduate information science major and an undergraduate minor in informatics.
We submitted a manuscript written by numerous SLIS faculty, students, and staff on the Knowledge School concepts.
We started a cohort program to fill the urgent need for school librarians in South Carolina. We have partnered with the Charleston County Schools in the Spring for the first cohort, and will be beginning the second cohort with the Florence 1 School District this week.
We have seen a major uptick in applicants to our doctoral program.
In addition to these, we are working closely with our colleagues in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications to develop new academic and research programs along the theme of Data, Media, and Society. These programs will marry excellence in data with knowledge of the communications industries. The knowledge school of thought will also be strongly present with an emphasis on ethics and positive community impacts in the use of data and algorithms.
Overall, we are seeing growth in students, research, and ultimately in reputation. The word is out that SLIS is creating the next evolution of library and information science education. Faculty are working in South Carolina schools, libraries across Europe, governments in Africa, and with associations in Asia. We are supporting literacy at home, and redefining librarianship globally.
This is nothing new for SLIS of course. You have been a part of inventing distance education and marrying impact and service with scholarship. We want you to be part of the next evolution of SLIS innovation. We are looking for your ideas, your stories, your feedback as we expand. Let us know your success stories. Let us know your ideas. Connect and be part of the new school of thought that seeks smarter communities and more meaningful lives.
