Category: Beyond the Bullet Points

It is hard in an hour long presentation to explore all the implications and aspects of participatory librarianship. Often times big ideas must fit into a single bullet point on a slide. I’m planning to post some deeper explorations of the pithy points. If there are some you like to make, or some that made you scratch your head, let me know.

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Beyond the Bullet Points: Blind in a Mine

So a politician, a nun, and a librarian are trapped in a collapsed mine.

After the initial shock they decide to tie themselves together and as a group to venture down the remaining shaft for some means of escape. Soon they bump into a smooth and clearly man made object. They gather around it trying to feel what it is.

The politician says “I think it is a piece of faulty mine equipment. Once I am on the surface I shall hold hearings and find those accountable.”

The nun says “I believe it a door sent by God to save us. Librarian, what do you think it feels like?”

“Let’s see a group of people without a leader groping around in the dark looking either for someone to blame or a miracle? Feels like a library committee to me.”

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Bullet Point: Senator Joke

A state senator was driving home late one night when he realized he forgot to pick up a book his wife had needed the next day for an event. Having already passed several closed book stores he spied an open public library.

He was nervous entering the library because he had gained some fame in proposing library budget cuts, and had once called for the outright elimination of public libraries. He was quickly put at ease when the library director greeted him warmly and asked how she could be of assistance. The senator told her the name of the book he needed, and the director looked up the call number, ushered him to the book, and then checked it out and sent him on his to his wife with a smile.

Afterwards a librarian approached the director and asked “do you know who that was?”

“Yes” said the director.

“Then how could you be so nice and help him?” asked the librarian.

“I didn’t help him.” said the director.

“Of course you did, you found the book and helped him check it out.”

“If I really was helping him,” said the director “I would have told him about the lipstick on his collar.”

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Beyond the Bullet Point: Information Organization and Non-Linearity

OK, so I want you to watch this cool video from Pandora. But before you do, a bit about why.

I talk a lot about how how people organize things is unique. How i would put ten books on the shelf, or songs into my play lists, or CD’s in my car, are not necessarily the same way you would. That’s because the way things are related is not prescribed by the things being organized, but by my way of thinking, which is influenced by how I know things. It’s why organizational schema like DDC and LC just aren’t universal. You have to learn them, and even then, it can be VERY confusing.

Furthermore it is the relationship between items that is as if not more important than the way we describe things themselves. So the fact that Mt. Everest is 29,029 feet tall only takes on real meaning when related to the fact that the plane I am using to fly over it only goes up to 29,000 feet. This is why keywords and tags are so problematic…they lack connective tissue.

These ideas are behind things like Scapes and Reference Extract and play a big role in the whole New Librarianship thing. It is also why I say we should scrap catalogs and start fresh not with inventory systems, but with knowledge discovery and building systems.

Anyway, the video. I’m always looking for good examples of this sort of organziationa nd discovery by relation. I think Pandora has done a brilliant job:

By the way, this is also an excellent example of why cataloging is not the ony way to organize information. These are the kind of tools and connections that librarians should be making…or at the very least aware of. Imagine how your music collection might look using these kind of tools. Take all your music, plug it into Pandora and see what kind of recommendations it pops out for your next acquisition.

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Bullet Point: Dear Google, you too need to talk to librarians

So the Buzz on Google Buzz is decidedly not so good. I’m not going to spend any time on features, or impact, or the idea of integrating social networks with email. This has all been nicely covered elsewhere. Instead, what caught my eye was a decidedly and deservedly profane piece I read on Gizmodo titled “F*ck You, Google.” Be warned, the * is not used throughout the piece, but read it anyway.

The gist of the piece is a mid-twenties woman who has worked hard to protect her identity as she blogs about issues she cares deeply about, and can draw some very unwanted attention from the wrong people. Buzz is thrust upon her and her first friend, automatically now seeing her other friends, and RSS annotations through Google Reader. Worse still she now is friends with commentors on her “anonymous” blog because she routed mail to her blog to her GMail account.

OK, so this would seem like a straight line that Google needs to talk about librarians because we care about privacy. But the real thing I’d like you to think about is that librarians need to talk about privacy to our members in a much more forceful and complex way. How many workshops and discussions do you have with members about Facebook’s privacy filters (probably a bunch), and how many do you have with them about the potential dangers of this kind of information in the hand of third parties and the long term implications of cloud computing (probably fewer)? Do you ever help members do a privacy audit where you walk them through their online life and point out potential issues and problems? Are you ready to do that?

I have met too many librarians who take a myopic approach to privacy. That is, privacy is so important to our members that we don’t even let them decide what information to keep or share. We just wipe all our records after some time so they don’t get caught up in the Patriot Act web. What’s worse, we feel that by creating an environment that protects privacy (by eliminating choice) we are protecting the members, when in fact the information they would expose to us is so inconsequential compared to their other activities it almost doesn’t matter.

Does it matter that we delete any identifying information on our systems when every keystroke they send to our sites can be captured by their Internet service providers? In fact we may be creating an illusion of privacy that does our members a disservice. We must not have a black and white approach to privacy – either you have it or you don’t. Instead we need to learn from Google Buzz that the best of intensions, without a matched deep understanding of the complexities of interconnected systems, can lead to disaster.

This also means that you need to have a pretty sophisticated technical understanding of cloud computing and interconnected systems…not to be a techy, but to implement your values.

Rather than waiting for Google to provide object lessons, we need to see our environments (physical spaces, online services, etc.) as a place that protects privacy by exposing complexities and education, not by creating an air of anonymity. By being active and activists in the area of privacy (not removing the choice) we do our members more good. We also have a stronger position to knock on the door of Google and say we are nervous and here to help.

So while I’m on the Buzz subject I have some more unrelated questions:

1. As a librarian when you heard about Buzz did you first ask yourself how can I use it to promote the library instead of, what are the implications of this tool for my members?

2. When you look at Buzz do you ask yourself how can Google make this better, or how can librarians do it better?

Just some thoughts for a winter day.

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Bullet Point: Dear Steve Jobs, iBooks has me Nervous

…or, Why Apple should talk to librarians about iBooks.

What makes me nervous about iBooks, the new eBook app from Apple targeted for their iPad, is not what you might expect. DRM, cost models doesn’t worry me. These are mostly imposed by the publishers, and we saw how this played out in music and MP3’s. It is certainly not that eReaders or the move away from physical books in some way endangers the future of the library. Libraries are about knowledge and facilitation, not artifacts and stuff.

No, what worries me about iBooks is that it is so damn boring. I actually found myself angry and disappointed after the big iPad announcement. I expected so much more. I was a little apprehensive about posting these thoughts because I haven’t actually seen the iBooks software. So for all I know, everything I am about to say is there, but there just wasn’t enough time to talk about them. So if that is the case, Apple, my bad. If not, what were you thinking?!

You have a reputation for reinventing things. The iPod, iPhone, etc were amazing because they did things I always wanted and didn’t know, or they did something I had been doing, and suddenly realized there was a much better way. Cool.

So ebooks… apparently I was missing color and a really cool page turning animation? Really? I still look at the promo video and say to myself, it is like watching a video of someone reading a hardcover book, and calling it digital. I can buy a book with a click of button and download it in real time. Cool, and then it goes on, wait for it, a little wooden bookshelf that can’t show more than 15 or so books? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me there is more there.

Here’s where talking with a librarian would help. First, we understand that books are inherently social things (to be precise the act of reading, not the books themselves). We pick the next book based on recommendations, or from talking with other folks. Also, we pass them around to stimulate discussions. We highlight them for ourselves and for others. Librarians also understand that you need to arrange these books by something more than title. This is not about Dewey and classifications, it is about people and their bookshelves. I put science fiction together, sure, but I also put together a bunch of books and papers together that I’m reading for a class.

Pardon my bluntness, but after a few centuries can we just go ahead and say that there are better ways to organize books than book shelves!

Also, as an author I am trying to stimulate conversations with my books. These may be conversations within the reader, and/or with a community. What excites me about ebooks is not that they are easier to carry around, but that they are digital documents. Couple that with a digital network, and now we are talking about reinventing reading.

So what should iBooks look like?

With a ubiquitous network connection, not only could I take notes, but bring them up with cited passages online, and send them to colleagues and friends. Imagine if I could do this in real time. In fact, right now I can look up a word in a dictionary as I am reading, but imagine that I am struggling with a passage beyond a simple definition. I could bring in a colleague in real time to work through my confusion. Not by going home, and then into mail, and blah blah blah, but right there in the “book.”

Imagine reading a book on the iPad, and having a conversations with the author, or friends, or co-workers as you are reading? Imagine a device that was more of a social access mechanism through text than a display reader.

Now, ask yourself, in that environment, is an e-book really a book at all? By turning printed text into 1s and 0s, are we not in fact making a much more profound change? Is an e-journal that allows real time per paragraph commenting and annotating the same thing as a printed journal on a screen?

The answer is no.

When we transform books, journals and traditional documents into a digital sphere, we use the terms “book” and “journal” as metaphors. They are book-like, or journal-like. It took centuries for the book as we know it to evolve. Introduction of things like titles, tables of contents, page numbers, glossaries, indexes and such emerged as people discovered new technical and use possibilities for the newly mass-produced bound book. Where once the goal of the printer was to mimic the illuminated manuscripts as closely as possible, now we have a whole new beast with its own conventions.

In fact, almost any book you read today (as in 99.999%) is in fact an electronic document that has been bound to paper. Even if an author hand writes (or draws) out their texts, they are transcribed and laid out as digital items. We maintain the physical form for convenience and to perpetuate a business model centered on items with hard boundaries among other reasons.

Why, for example, do I ever have to finish writing my book? I could release it as I am writing it, and continually add to it, edit and prune it. I could open it up for you to do the same. Is it still a book? Why wait for editions when I could use Wiki-style edit histories? Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to finish the book, and make editions (citations, version control, etc.), but they are now choices, not rules dictated by the medium.

This is the reinvention we need from eBooks, not pretty pages and a new store. We need a community! You want to reinvent reading? You want the iPad to truly be a revolutionary third product? See reading for what it truly is, a conversation! A conversation that is supported by a text, but open to communities.

Let me scribble in the margins, and have those scribbles appear in real-time on my friend’s copy. Sure, the color pictures will be great, but IM in the margin would be amazing. Make my next book a sort of bibliocast, where, like podcasts, new episodes are automatically downloaded and synced. And throw away the bookshelf and replace it with a table top where I can make piles of “books” I like, and piles of books I hate, and let me share those piles with my social network.

Give me a way in the new bookstore to put together “course packs” of books and materials tied together with a multimedia lecture and an online discussion. Let me show my friends and my students not only what I am reading, but why, and how they are tied together.

I know, I know, if I feel so strongly, I can just write an app to do it…except I can’t. My Objective C is a little, well, non-existent. You want to rock the world of books, give me a Pages iBooks edition (not Pages I can use on the iPad). Make Pages useful for more than pretty report and stuff to print, and make it easy to author amazing social book experiences. You know what, forget pages and word processors, give me Garage Band iBooks edition. Make writing a book an experience that both releases writers from the tyranny of typesetters and galleys, AND allows the curious amateur to come up with the new thing (reanimate HyperCard as HyperPad and stand back).

I love my eBooks. I read on the Kindle, I read on the iPhone, I had a Sony eBook, and before that a Rocket eBook. I actually prefer eBooks for fiction. The iPad will be great to finally be able to read my professional literature and technical work on (please please please let PDF’s work). But it is time for someone with vision to step up and see what eBooks can become, and it is NOT pretty page animations and a faux wood bookshelf.

I feel better.

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Beyond the Bullet Points: New Years Resolution

Let us make a resolution together. Let’s make 2010 the year of the librarian – not the library. As librarians we have become so consumed with an institutional focus that we all too often lose our personal responsibility and our power – it’s about librarians not libraries! I think all too often librarians get lost in some institutional identity and forget that they are the ones that make things happen. The library is not some large all encompassing and abstract entity resistant to change, it is just a group of people making decisions together. If the library is slow to change, that means that we are. If the library is not customer focused, that means we are not.

Worse still our constant use of the library as a sort of “royal we” leads those outside of the library field to see the library as a place and collection, not a group of expertise, people, and a mission. This makes it all too easy to cut it, or stereotype it, or even ignore it. We need to take back the language, and force ourselves and our communities to realize that it is all about librarians and their skills, not buildings and collections.

A simple shift in our language use, librarians instead of library (the librarians of X University, or the librarian of X city) can have an impact on our community’s and our own perceptions. Sure we use words like hospital or law practice as a normal aggregation. But no one thinks you go to the hospital to get well because of the walls – it is because of the doctors. Law firms don’t help us because they have an outstanding collection of law books. But that is what we perpetuate in our own language and marketing with the library. Go to the library to lose yourself in books, or to get free stuff.

If we want people to appreciate our efforts (our communities, our bosses, even our colleagues) we need to start giving credit where credit is due. You are the library. I am the library. The library is a place of knowledge, and knowledge is active and human and conversation. Andrew Carnegie said it best:

Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.

So my resolution for the New Year is to make it the year of the librarian. To put a face on the building and the services. To take credit, and make sure my community knows me. My resolution for the New Year is to make a brighter future for librarians, and in doing so, making a brighter future for my community. My resolution for the New Year has a name – it is Karen, and Nicholette, and Joe, and Jeff, and Paula…

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Beyond the Bullet Points: Sherlock Holmes

Here’s another joke I wrote for my presentation in Charleston. Enjoy the joke, or watch the Charleston screencast to find out what it says about language use in libraries:

Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate a murder. After examining the scene Holmes announces that the killer was a librarian.

“How can you tell?” asks Dr Watson.

“Elementary my dear Watson. First the murderer not only alphabetized the victims books, but shelved them by genre.

“There is the fact that the murder itself was clearly inspired by a rare Victor Hugo novel recently acquired by the branch library down the street.

“However the real give away is that after the victim was killed the murderer dragged his body over to the toilet and wrote on the body ‘can you find the bathroom now?! can you find the bathroom now?!”

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Beyond the Bullet Points: Job Security

The director of the university library called together her staff. “I’m afraid I have bad news. Tuition revenue is down, fewer parents are sending their kids to our university, and there will have to be budget cuts.”

A few hours later the director decided to walk the building and get a sense of moral among her staff. In rare books area she saw a group of librarians busily scanning books. “What are you scanning all of those books?” the director asked.

“We’re trying to increase the digital collection of the library so we can put a lot of great content on the website and make it more appealing to potential students.”

The director went to the acquisition area and saw the librarians surfing Amazon. “What are you doing?” asked the director.

“We are looking to see if we can save money by buying directly from online retailers.”

Finally the director went to the first floor where se saw the reference librarians pulling books off the shelf, tearing off the covers, and then randomly replacing them.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?” cried the director.

“Job security”

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Beyond the Bullet Points: Einstein Joke

OK, so you enjoyed the first joke so much, I’ve included another I made up for some earlier presentations:

So Albert Einstein goes to a party. The host is keen to show off the world-famous physicist to his friends so he escorts Einstein around, introducing him.

The first guest asks Einstein, “So what is it you do Albert?”

Einstein replies, “I seek to understand time.”

“Wow,” says the guest, “We’re in the same business. I sell watches.”

The host introduces him to the second guest who asks, “So Albert, what is it you do?”

Einstein, trying to impress, replies, “I seek to understand how all the planets and stars in heaven move about the universe.”

“Wow,” says the second guest, “We’re in the same line of work. I build telescopes.”

A third guest asks Einstein, “What is it you do?’

To which Einstein replies, “I have discovered that light, magnetism, and electricity are all the same force.”

“Wow,” says the third guest, “We’re in the same business. I repair TVs!”

The host takes a now depressed and exasperated Einstein to meet a fourth guest.

“What is it you do Albert?” asks the fourth guest.

Now completely deflated Einstein says, “Nothing. I don’t sell anything. I don’t build anything. I can’t even repair anything. I’m useless.”

“Wow,” says the fourth guest, “I’m a tenured professor too!”