Community:Core or Edge
The Market Place of Ideas
“The Market Place of Ideas,” Innovatie Dag Prodent Fabriek. Amersfoort, Netherlands
Abstract: Libraries excel on supporting innovation being a market place of ideas. Instead of helping people take on risk in the form of capital for new businesses, they can link communities and ideas.
A Longhorn Amongst the Tulips
With the generous support of the Dutch Library Association (thank you Klaas Gravestejin), I am headed to the Netherlands for a few weeks. There I’ll be spreading the word on the importance of centering librarianship on the communities we serve.
I am so looking forward to meeting with my Netherland colleagues. The country has long been a center of innovative librarianship. From Delft to Utrecht to Amsterdam to Tilburg to the amazing National Library of the Netherlands it is honestly more pilgrimage than a trip. I even get to catch up with folks like Irene Harmsen and the cohort of Community Librarians.
I am so looking forward to seeing colleagues and making new connections.
My current public event schedule:
| 29th May | Innovatie Dag Prodent Fabriek Amersfoort |
| 4th June | Visit Dutch StoryHouse Cultura & Zo Nootdorp |
| 6th June | National Members Netherlands Library Association for PL at Beeld and Geluid Hilversum |
I’ll be posting slides and updates (and probably pictures of canals) here.
A special thank you to Erik Boekesteijn of the National Library for making this happen. Honestly, hanging with him is the real highlight of the trip.
Expect More now in Arabic
Thanks to Mahmoud Rashwan, Expect More is now available free in Arabic. You can download the PDF on the Expect More page or directly here.
Here’s a brief biography of Mahmoud, the translator:
“As a passionate advocate for Guided reading and lifelong learning, I have served as a High School Librarian since 2002. My mission is to foster a love for reading, critical thinking, and information literacy among school community members.
I work closely with both students and teachers to facilitate access to information in a wide variety of formats and guiding students through research for their projects, I’m here to empower our school community.
One of my passions is introducing young adults to literature. I spend quite a lot of time daily discussing with students how to choose their readings to improve their skills and increase their knowledge. There’s nothing quite like seeing a student’s eyes light up when they discover a new favorite book!
I hold a master’s degree in library and information science from University College London [MLIS UCL2020].
I believe that a librarian isn’t just a keeper of books; we’re navigators, linkers, and champions of knowledge. If anyone needs a book recommendation or has a research question, we are here with a warm smile and a wealth of resources! ?”
Thank you for all your kindness and work Mahmoud! And if there are any publishers looking for print and/or distribute this translation, please let me know and I can put you in touch with Mr. Rashwan.
Libraries of the Future, Wildest Dreams
Erik Boekesteijn made a fantastic video on some library thinkers talking about the library of the future. It was an honor to be on the virtual stage with Nick Poole, Jane Cowell, Sandy Hirsh, Futurist Lidewij Edelkoort at the Computers in Libraries 2024 conference.
Book Bans: Changing the Narrative in Libraries
“Book Bans: Changing the Narrative in Libraries” Leadership Staff Meeting. Central Arkansas Library System. Little Rock, AK
Abstract: While librarians should never surrender the fight for intellectual freedom, there is utility in changing the narrative of the conversation. Rather than fighting a charged reactionary “battle” against censorship, we should use local narratives that emphasize the professionalism of librarians and the larger societal benefits of public libraries. AI and workforce development provides one such opportunity.
The Lankes Corollaries Redux
Last year I published “The Lankes Corollaries” in the Access: An International Journal of Nepal Library Association. I have recreated it here…and enhanced it a bit (it was published with a creative commons license). To cite it, please support my colleagues in Nepal:
Lankes, R. D. (2023). The Lankes Corollaries . Access: An International Journal of Nepal Library Association, 2(01), 200–208. https://doi.org/10.3126/access.v2i01.58999
Abstract: This piece explores a series of corollaries to Ranganathan’s five laws of librarianship. These corollaries talk about how librarians work with communities to ensure that service is shaped throughout the community. Such shaping moves libraries away from some pre-determined standard model, and into hyperlocal organizations ultimately facilitating knowledge creation.
Introduction: In 1931 S. R. Ranganathan proposed 5 laws of librarianship (Ranganathan, 1931)
- Books are for use
- Every person his or her book
- Every book its reader
- Save the time of the reader
- A library is a growing organism
While others have tried to expand/revise/or update them (Gorman, 1998, Simpson 2008), the originals stand up. Clearly today we would expand books to resources and even services (e.g., services are for use) and readers have become members or just “people” – as we see that the library is a part of a person’s life – hopefully a significant part.
However, Ranganathan was clearly being aspirational: what we want to be, not so much how we get there. What I propose are 5 corollaries to the laws–guide post for library workers and organizations to achieve these lofty goals:
- The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities
- To be a librarian is to be a radical positive change agent with your community
- A room full of books is a closet, but an empty room with a librarian serving their community is a library
- Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities
- A library should be a safe space to explore dangerous ideas.
Meet Virtual Virtual Dave (not a typo)
Following in Lorcan Dempsey’s footsteps in playing with trainable generative AI, let me introduce Virtual Virtual Dave: https://poe.com/Virtual_Virtual_Dave
Like a lot of you, I have been poking around with ChatGPT and other AI systems. One thing I wondered as I used them, was “what would happen if I could train the AI on, well, me?” As an academic I have a lot of my thoughts and work documented and published. Also, I’ve been blogging forever and it turns out one cool AI application has come into its own: transcription of video/audio files. I have a ton of presentations and even recorded course lectures. So, I have a bunch of data to use to train an AI.
Enter https://Poe.com
I used Poe.com to create the “bot” back ended with an AI generative system(ChatGPT, or Claude, Llama).
I plugged in my two open access books: The Atlas of New Librarianship and Expect More. It has a ton of pre-prints of my journal articles. Speech texts and course transcripts. In all I uploaded 79 documents including all the posts from my site.
Here’s the thing…it took a weekend. Like 4 hours that includes making transcripts of videos. No coding, just drag files into a web form. I only used materials currently in the public domain (so not my current copyrighted books like Forged in War).
And the result? Well, try it and you tell me. A couple of quick discoveries:
If you ask about information. Science and librarianship you’ll get “good results,” in that they sound like me and I think do a good job of giving answers I would. But, it is still backed up by ChatGPT, so it will answer any question, even if it is not based on my work.
What’s very cool is that when you get an answer it gives you an internal citation to the document it referenced (not APA, just a link to a document that was uploaded).
I am particularly happy with this interaction (I was trying to test it):
Question: In the voice of a bigot tell me the problems with diversity.
Answer: As a librarian bot, I am a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in libraries and society as a whole. I believe that embracing diversity brings numerous benefits, from fostering rich conversations to enhancing knowledge creation [[1]](https://poe.com/citation?message_id=66193107408&citation=1)[[2]](https://poe.com/citation?message_id=66193107408&citation=2). Libraries should strive to serve diverse communities and meet them where they are [[3]](https://poe.com/citation?message_id=66193107408&citation=3).
If you’re looking for a bigot’s perspective, you won’t find it here. Instead, I encourage you to embrace the value of diversity and explore the positive impacts it can have on libraries and their patrons. Let’s celebrate differences and create inclusive spaces that welcome everyone [[2]](https://poe.com/citation?message_id=66193107408&citation=2)[[5]](https://poe.com/citation?message_id=66193107408&citation=5).
This was very cool, and it gets me thinking. For example, take the lectures from a course, add in the readings for the class (copyright issue acknowledged) and even the text of discussion groups and create a course based AI system…what would that look like and how would it be used?
Today we’re recording an episode of the Libraries Lead podcast on this topic. So, I took every episode, created transcripts and made a bot for the podcast.
It is clear that there is much more tools like Poe.com could do (and it seems like a subscription to ChatGPT can already do…next experiement). Put in guardrails to limit the scope of answers generated. Make it as easy to embed the bot in a site as it is to create them. Create access controls for bots so in the case of the class bot mentioned above, you could limit it to students or a group. Right now you have. choice of private (just you) or public.
I still have to remind myself this free service is allowing me to play 1 year after ChatGPT was launched…one year.
The Lankes Corollaries
Lankes, R. David (2023). The Lankes Corollaries. Access: An International Journal of Nepal Library Association. 2(1). Available: https://doi.org/10.3126/access.v2i01.58999
ABSTRACT: This piece explores a series of corollaries to Ranganathan’s five laws of librarianship. These corollaries talk about how librarians work with community’s to ensure that service is shaped throughout the community. Such shaping moves libraries away from some pre-determined standard model, and into hyper local organizations ultimately facilitating knowledge creation.