Category: Beyond the Bullet Points

There is a phrase widely used in librarianship that has always bothered me – “recorded knowledge.” It bothers me for a couple reasons, not the least of which it is often invoked by folks who define librarianship as collections and stacks. However, it is much more problematic in the light of participatory librarianship.

At the core of participatory librarianship is conversation theory. It is there, because participatory librarianship envisions the main mission of the library as facilitating learning. Conversation theory states that knowledge, or more precisely, knowing, is achieved through conversation. I won’t bore you with more details (well, a few maybe), but suffice to say, knowledge is an active and dynamic thing. It rests in the heads of the learner, not the object that may prompt a conversation. So the idea that knowledge can be recorded, that is, encoded and transferred as some sort of external stuff, doesn’t work. “Recorded knowledge” is an oxymoron. It would be like saying a recorded person, or archived awareness, or intelligent rock.

To know is to experience and converse. One knows by engaging in a series of dialogs, both internal and external. When you read a book, knowledge is not somehow magically springing from the page and taking residence in your brain. You are in an active process of decoding, remembering, and fitting into what you already know. For example, I was sent an article written in Chinese. I don’t read Chinese. No matter how long I stared at the pages, I was not going to learn BECAUSE THE KNOWLEDGE WASN’T RESIDENT IN THE CHARACTERS.

“But Dave,” you say, “aren’t you attempting to transfer knowledge through a recorded medium right now? You encode what you know (or think), and I decode that at the other end, and knowledge is transferred, right?” Wrong.

Take an extreme example…let’s say that after you read this, you still don’t buy it. You are perfectly fine with recorded knowledge as a phrase and an idea…what exactly did I transfer to you? My words can at best prompt an internal dialog where you decode what I wrote (or more precisely what you read) and have a conversation with yourself, and/or your colleagues, and make your own determination, i.e., creating your own knowledge. That it was my words that started that process might mean that our two understandings will be similar. You may use the same words as I do, or even cite my article in your own encodings, but that’s as close as I will ever get to imparting knowledge.

Regardless of what your theoretical stance is on knowing, however, why limit the field of librarianship to simply organizing and pointing to artifacts? Why ever limit knowledge to what is recorded – ask indigenous people, or the under represented, or the fringe, or even the craftsman. The main goal of librarianship isn’t the orderly distribution and location of stuff. It’s to make our communities smarter, and to make the world a better place. By focusing on recorded knowledge, which I take to mean artifacts like books, DVD’s, web pages, papyrus scrolls, stone tablets, and tapestry (among others), we move our attention away from where it matters – our members/users/patrons.

Oh the wonders I have seen when the focus of compassionate information professionals rest squarely on people and not things. That is where I have seen the best of us. I have seen the homeless find work in our cafes. I have seen an autistic man graduate with a masters degree because his exquisite and complex mind was fed by this profession. I have seen strong women escape abusive relationships when librarians connected them to social services. I have seen the birth of entrepreneurs and the creation of wealth, the explosion of joy in teens who can find common worldviews in the stacks. I have seen medical miracles from library resources, and whole communities revived. The directions of nations have been influenced by the work of librarians. In these days of the possible and a seemingly inexhaustible inventiveness, I have looked under the cloak of innovation and seen librarians peering back.

And I am not alone. Those entrepreneurs, those policy makers, those women, children and communities, they have seen this too. And they don’t see it in stacks and paper, they see it in people and action.

Now we as a profession must recognize it too. We must line the cloak of innovation with a mirror, so that we can all see our own true potential. We must, as a profession, adopt an air of confidence. We, as a profession, must move ever forward, in some cases pulling with us our communities.

And those among us, those who can’t see their own self-worth – those who would define the value of libraries in things that can be recorded? We must first take care to hear them, and to show them the power and value within themselves. If they cannot, or will not see it? Then we must move on and leave them behind.

We forever stand at the breach, the frontline between ignorance and enlightenment. We are the kind hand that conveys our communities from the darkness of the uninformed into the light of knowledge. We must stand shoulder to shoulder with our communities to hold back the tide of indifference and intolerance. Through active service, we must not only point the way to better days, but we must live the way.

If you see injustice you make it right – not classify it. If you see ignorance, you teach, not point to textbooks. If you see intolerance, you not only tolerate, you embrace the injured party. Knowledge is alive. It is what we do, and act, and say. Sometimes that means preserving the memory of an act, or encoding some feat, or, yes, providing better access to evidence and documentation. But it always means the value lies in people, not what they record.

Today I had a bad today. It wasn’t from some horrible event, or some terrible injustice. In fact it was from a meeting. It was a meeting that should have been dull, and uninteresting, but instead surprisingly had a lot of substance. It was the surprise part that was bad, not the substance. I won’t get into the details of the meeting, but suffice to say I had a choice to make – be silent or speak.

You may imagine the choice would be easy for me, but it was not. I too face decisions between easy discontent and uncomfortable action. To stand up invites more work, or derision, and in either case courts conflict. It is just easier sometimes to let things pass.

I know I am not alone in having these choices to make. As I go around the country I encounter too many librarians who see the vision, who embrace change, but have grown too tired and discouraged to hope again. They are quieted by the scars of past optimism. These are the conversations that I have the hardest time with. I want to “go all inspirational” and call them to action, but I too have those scars, and have plenty of times when I tried and failed. It is not a good feeling. I would like to avoid it too. So I never want to fault others for their decisions.

When I was in Denver, someone asked me how anyone can stay optimistic. Between the Annoyed Librarians of the world and the perceived resistance to change in the field, isn’t it all just a lost cause? How can we overcome? How can we continue to step over the rubble of past initiatives, and broken momentum, and ignore the anticipation of disappointment while once again stepping into the firing line of positive change?

It may sound simplistic, but for me it comes down to needing some encouragement. We need to know that we are not alone. We are not. There is a whole pool of fellow librarians that “get it.” We also need to realize that those who get it aren’t just new librarians, but directors, managers, and policy makers. We have a lot of good examples to show the way as well. When I have those bad days, the first thing I have to do is decide to speak up. Then I have to do something. Even if whatever I decide to do is wrong, it is something. Finally, I listen to Shakespeare. Seriously.

For some people when they need to get a pick me up it is music, for others a movie, for still others it is “the story” I’ve talked about before (that time that you as a librarian changed someone’s life for the better). But for me, Shakespeare … Henry V’s St. Crispen’s Day Speech. I have to thank George Needham for introducing me to it.

I’ve said before we live in Shakespearian times. I know it sounds grandiose. However, the issues we face today from economic disaster to terrorism, to attacks on civil liberties, to uninformed policy makers, to simple apathy and ignorance are so great they rival any other time in history. Think about the issues raised in this past presidential election. Global warming, the cost of energy, salary disparities as great as the gilded age of the 20’s, and all of it showing up right at the doorstep of our public libraries, schools, and colleges. If you don’t know someone who has been laid off, you will soon. These themes and issues are not just fodder for book club conversations, they are real and now – and your problems to wrestle with as an essential social good. To think that somehow what we do today is of any less impact on the future of our children than anything in the past is simply wrong.

As I have said before, we too often undersell the importance and raw power of what we do. We are a noble profession. We don’t shelve books, and change toner cartridges – we maintain an infrastructure for social action. We don’t reference resources, and catalog artifacts – we teach and inspire. While Henry’s men were cloaked in armor and carried swords, we are wrapped in the trappings of intellect and wield the passion of knowledge. Henry faced an overwhelming and arrogant force, a seemingly insurmountable legion. Henry’s men despaired. Yet, Henry’s army won – they won through superior technology (the long bow), experience, and superior tactics. They won also, because they believed that they could. So too can librarians overcome the crushing forces of mediocrity and cynicism – but we must believe that we can.

Faced with the enormities of these tasks – terrorism, economic disaster, apathy – standing up at a meeting and speaking truth to power? Simple. Faced with the real issues we must face – I can take on the added committee assignment, or backhand comment. How do I stay optimistic? I realize first the issues I face are miniscule to the good I can do. How do I get inspired to face intransigence, or laziness, or ineptitude? I look right past them at the real goal, and those who really need me.

Block me, and I will go around you. Build a wall, and I will build a door. Lock the door and I will break a window. And if I don’t have have a leader to inspire me, I will lead. If I don’t have a team that will support me, I will recruit a team from beyond the organizational boundaries – every policy has a loophole, every system has a hidden reward.

That’s how I stay optimistic. As Henry said

“Let me speak proudly: tell the constable
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch’d
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There’s not a piece of feather in our host–
…
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;”

This is what inspires me. Let me speak proudly – we are librarians, and we have struggled and some dismiss us. We fight with meager budgets, and out-moded structures. But our hearts are in the trim. This time, this information age? This is our age. Credibility, expertise, and compassion are our weapons, and we will fight ferociously for knowledge, for compassion, for better communities in our towns, states, colleges, schools, and businesses. Every day we will fight in the hospitals, and law firms, and classrooms. On the web, or in the halls of power we are the soldiers for a better day.

What inspires you?

Henry’s Speech:

Jeff Penka sent me this link, and while it is a bit of a spoof, it certainly does a good job too:

Under the rubric “there is nothing new under the sun,” see the excellent article on Participatory Digital Libraries from 1999 by Diane H. Sonnenwald, Gary Marchionini, Barbara M. Wildemuth, Bert J. Dempsey, Charles L. Viles, Helen R. Tibbo, and John B. Smith of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

http://sils.unc.edu/research/publications/reports/TR-2001-03.pdf

OK, I never got all the work up with the Annoyed Librarian at Library Journal’s site. Of course, that was before I was written up. It appears the Annoyed Librarian isn’t a big proponent of Reference Extract. That’s fine. Saying that I don’t get it – no problem, not the first time. If it were just as simple as criticizing the idea, or even me, I would leave it alone. What really got me was the unrelenting negativism and belief that librarians are incapable of anything other than shelving books. And the comments simply make me sad. I can’t let it pass.

So breaking all the advice about good blogging, I can’t help but do a quote and react post. Once again, I’m not reacting to the Reference Extract comments. The project can stand on its own, and reasonable people can disagree. I’m going to focus on the kinds of attitudes that I think seriously jeopardize the profession.

By the way, before I jump into this, go read the article AND COMMENT. Don’t let the anti-library rhetoric stand unanswered.

OK, on to the quotes:

“The first thing that caught my attention was the call to move beyond bullet points and slogans. Fat chance. Lankes and I see the same futile inaction from librarians. The difference is it’s exactly what I expect and I don’t mind a bit.”

Let me be clear, I don’t see all librarians as inactive. Quite the opposite. This is why I rail and prod and work. I see our promise in the best of the profession. I simply want the whole field to hold itself to the higher standard of making a positive and proactive change in our communities. Not minding that there are librarians who cannot move past slogans into action is beyond cynical, it is flat out lazy.

Annoyed Librarian then goes on to argue about why librarians can’t beat Google. Please note: I’m on record as saying that if we can’t beat them we should work hard to make them better – after all reinventing search doesn’t mean changing all the players. But, I digress, Let’s see what the good and pacified librarians should content themselves with. Why Google is more worthy than librarians by Annoyed Librarian:

“Consider the competition, which for the most part is Google. Google makes a boatload of money. They can afford to pay the best software engineers and programmers in the country and give them a lot of support in their work. Their revenue is based on competitively creating products that people want to use because they work so darn well. They’ve been enormously successful, and within a few years have outstripped all their rivals. Some of their rivals also make a lot of money, and they also hire good engineers and programmers.”

Google is now 10 years old…it didn’t start as one of the largest corporations on the planet…it made itself that. The BIGGEST mistake that librarians or anyone else in the world can make is to see what is, and assume it will always be or that it is somehow a product of powers beyond our collective control.

Just think back three years ago and ask yourself if the way the world as it was foretold a black man as president, the U.S. Government in the banking business, and major corporations, hat in hand, asking for bailouts. I remember at the beginning of virtual reference movement those saying that it was impossible to answer questions over the Internet.

Anyway, so how do engineers stack up against librarians?

“And libraries? They hire library school graduates. In case the penny hasn’t dropped, let’s do the comparison in our heads. On the one hand, we have the best engineers and programmers in the country, and on the other hand we have…library school graduates. Unless the ALA can lobby successfully for some anti-competitive labor standards favoring librarians, I don’t see how libraries are going to compete.”

Go ahead and picture steam coming out of my ears. Apparently the best engineers in the country are simply born. Funny, I thought they graduated from colleges and universities just like librarians. Also the idea that somehow a computer scientist is blessed with some unique perspective on information is at best challenging. This is not to say that I don’t think librarians need more technical skills. If there has been one consistent note I have hit my entire career it is that librarians need more technical skill. My problem is that somehow computer programming is the benchmark we must all look to and librarians have nothing to offer. Now back to the quotes:

“They’re not businesses. They don’t have cadres of programmers working in the bowels of the library developing neat stuff. If they’ve got someone who can build a decent website and make a wiki they feel like they’ve achieved some sort of technological wonder. If some librarians feel like they’re hot stuff at creating search engines, let them apply to work at Google and see how far they get.”

This is an obvious place for all those technical librarians to stand up and ask the Annoyed Librarian where he or she has been working. Certainly not at the University of Pennsylvania, or the Ann Arbor District Library, or Evergreen, or OCLC, or North Carolina State University or… oh you get the point. Can we assume that Annoyed (I feel like we can be on a first name basis) has never been to LITA, or Computers in Libraries or…once again you get the point. For me this comment talks much more about Annoyed’s place of work than the profession. As for librarians working at Google, Annoyed should have a conversation with the Information Schools about their grads’ jobs.

OK, Annoyed then goes back at Reference Extract. Makes some REAL broad generalizations that no one cares about credibility (other than the MacArthur Foundation, the press, all of education, and a few folks in the health care field I suppose.

“Let’s return to the original question, are libraries losing the search war. The answer is no, because libraries were never fighting the search war. The history of search hasn’t been a history of libraries competing with commercial enterprises to improve search. The major search engines and indexes that most librarians use weren’t created by librarians. Other people create them and libraries use them. Just like other people create books and magazines andvideogames and the Internet and whatever else libraries provide access to. Libraries have rarely actively created information; instead they acquire, organize, and disseminate what others have done. Even if we consider all the social software the twopointopians get so worked up over. Libraries didn’t invent any of these tools. Creative non-librarians did, and librarians just use them.”

This is a VERY 20th century American viewpoint. Libraries throughout history have been places of scholarship and creation. But I’m going to agree that a culture of consumerism and adoption has become the norm in libraries…that was the point of my post that Annoyed was responding to. I think it is time for this to stop. Enough. Before I go on to my rant, here’s more:

“Why is this so shocking? Why should anyone get worked up about losing a war we were never fighting in the first place? Librarians have been early adopters and expert users of all sorts of information technology for decades, and somehow this has evolved into a feeling of ownership, as if librarians had a creative stake in these tools when they’ve merely been better at using them than the general populace.”

I agree here. The real place we diverge is Annoyed’s conclusions:

“Librarians should just relax, because they’re not going to reinvent anything. They never have. They never will. That’s not what libraries are for, but a lot of librarians like to get all hot and bothered that they can’t compete in a field they never entered in the first place.”

In other words, don’t bother your pretty little heads. It’s OK not to be creative. It is OK not to innovate, it is OK not to compete or strive. Be happy with reading and the stacks. Be content that you are the products of second-class academic programs that will never muster resources.

Well, I’m NOT OK with that. I have spent a great deal of time over the past months with the business world. I have been on boards with bankers, and CIO’s. I have talked with entrepreneurs and sales executives. What’s amazing is in almost every meeting, they all conclude that the world needs more librarians, but they always talk of librarians in the future tense. In other words, the world is going to need more experts in organizing information, providing credible information (that’s not librarians saying it by the way), and that library science is the place to build upon. But not the librarians of today. Almost to a person they see librarians as a stereotype of bookish introverts. What really gets my blood boiling when I read Annoyed Librarian is that all too often librarians also see and perpetuate this stereotype.

We as a profession are not living up to our potential. The potential that we see and others see. Why did Google partner with librarians? They saw the potential. Why did HP partner with the MIT libraries on DSpace? They saw the potential. Why did Microsoft partner with the British Library? They saw potential. Why were libraries where the Gates Foundation started? THEY SAW POTENTIAL.

The Annoyed Librarian’s post is not about Reference Extract, or me. This post is first a concession to the ways things are, and a call for mediocrity. Annoyed dismisses librarians as professionals with second rate credentials who can’t create, and have no place in technology.

That potential rests in all of our hands. To see it, and simply conceded that we will never meet it, I’ll say it again, is beyond cynical it is lazy. To simply declare librarians can never have resources to compete with Google means you will not work to do so. To say that library schools are inadequate and then simply throw up your hands is lazy. To believe that something cannot be done because something has not happened is not being realistic, it is creating a safe cocoon of defeat.

Our world, our society, our communities are in too great of need for libraries to sit back and wait for their fate. Our patrons/members/users deserve our full potential. Annoyed Librarian may simply dismiss this post and this rant as words, or me as out of touch, or deluded. But I have seen our potential. I have seen our words and our deeds lift people out of poverty, get people jobs, start the career of brilliant writers, and launch the business of entrepreneurs. That potential is not in our books, or buildings or web sites – it is in the librarians who hold the ideal of knowledge in their hearts. It is in the passion of librarians wanting to make a change.

There was an interesting comment posted to the Reference Extract Planning site. I thought I would share it and my response because, to me, it goes right to the heart of what I have been saying about the need for librarians to be innovators and leaders.

Here is the comment:

Good Lord. The wheel already having been invented, why feel that we can do better? It’s hard to see how this amounts to much more than a vanity project for the participants- likely to produce a welter if invitations to conferences, but with a snowball’s chance in hell of ever amounting to a product that will be embraced by librarians and certainly never by the public. This week Google announced that it topped 75% of the search engine market share! Presuming that this project produces anything at any point within the next 5-7 years, which seems like the model for this type of committee-driven development project, it stands little chance of being in sync with wherever search engine technology will be then. Hakia.com has already tried to claim this area of the search engine spectrum, and they’re lovely, helpful people, but their engine came (and went?) with nary a ripple.

Here is my original replay:

I would first refer you to the other comments about this not being an attempt to put Google out of business. I suppose we are being optimistic that there is still room for improvement in Internet search. After all, as you say, the area will continue to evolve over the next 5-7 years. The hope of this project is that the experiences of libraries accumulated over – well -centuries, may play a part in how that evolution takes place.

Take the holy grail of “local” in the search world. Search engines want to be able to take advantage of location to offer better results. Libraries are built on a distributed local model. While many have seen this as a disadvantage in the past, these days it begins to look like an asset. Is there a way to take advantage of the over 120,000 libraries in the US alone to identify unique local resources, conversations, and thinking, and then bring that to a network scale? Add to this the benefit of libraries being seen as a credible and trusted source as well, and one can easily see partnerships with Google, and Yahoo! and Hakia that benefit them and the user alike.

Your point is well taken that there are obvious established players in Internet search. Will you also take that there are other well established players in the information industry beyond the Internet itself that may have something to offer? After all, who did Google partner with in their book search project? The point of Reference Extract is not to take down Google, or Yahoo or whomever. It is to ultimately tap the power of centuries of knowledge, skills, and expertise to improve how credible information is found on the web.

I appreciate you keeping us honest. However, I also hope you’ll appreciate that while it may be vanity to think big, it is also very necessary. Remember that Google itself started as two guys with an idea going against established search engines like Alta Vista. The web itself started as a better way to link citations online than gopher. Thinking big is necessary. If we continue to look at big players and assume that their market size equates with a lack of need for innovation, we are in danger of the worst kind of complacency. Do I want to take down Google? No, but I do think it could be better. I also want to be part of lifting up libraries that are a vital social good, and a necessary part of today’s information landscape.

What I really wanted to say was “we go to plenty of conferences thank you” and “you don’t hear too much about Alta Vista and Gopher these days.” However, that would have been snarky.

I suppose what what really got me worked up over this comment was the presumption that any attempts to improve on the norm (like 75% market share) are futile. Even worse, they are a product of vanity and not a desire and need to innovate. We, as a profession MUST constantly be proactive in making positive change – even if there are those who would tell us we cannot do it. We must also be ready to listen to others with good ideas, and not feel territorial or defensive. Let’s face it, LibraryThing is cool, and we need to learn from it, embrace it, and help to improve it. The only way to do this is to be confident in our mission and our skills.

To be a good partner is to know what you do, why you do it, and how well you do it. This comment points out that many do not see innovation in that mix for libraries. That is unacceptable. It is even more unacceptable when it is librarians who doubt this.

It is cliche to talk about librarians no longer being content to sit back and assume everyone knows how useful we are. It is supposed to be general knowledge that, as Anne Lippo so eloquently put it, it is not the user that is remote, but we who are remote from the user. It is a constant drumbeat that we must change and make our libraries relevant. But dammit, we must move beyond bullet points and slogans and translate this drumbeat into real risk, real action, real new thinking.

Why can’t we replace the “Read” posters that portray libraries as places of things with “Ask” posters that show them as places of curiosity? Why do library gaming programs have to be some sort of lost leader to reading when gaming is a literacy unto itself? Who said the catalog has to be the public face of the library on the web? WHY CAN”T LIBRARIES REINVENT SEARCH?

All too often librarians shy away from praise. Humility is a virtue, but let us today set that aside for a moment.

The world is a better place because of librarians. Throughout history – from Alexandria to medieval Spain to the streets of revolutionary America – librarians have stewarded their communities. Today librarians continue their mission to build knowledge and make the world a better place. In our academies, cities, businesses and schools, librarians are trusted partners and facilitators. There are few institutions that provide vital connective tissue across so many areas of society – libraries do.

It is not collections, nor buildings, nor computers that make a library. These are artifacts; outward manifestations of a mission. Librarians collect to care take society’s memory. They build buildings as a gathering place, the modern information watering hole. Librarians network computers to sew together minds across time and space. At the center is the librarian and his or her dedication to knowledge.

I am thankful for the safety net, the researcher, the dedicated guide. I am thankful for the community organizer, the activist, the dedicated teacher. Today, as every day, I am thankful for librarians.

I also ask that librarians not shy away from praise. Humility may be a virtue, but invisibility is not. Librarian are of service, not servants. All too often librarians hide behind the stacks – mask their light behind processes and metadata. It is time for librarians to follow the example of the warrior, the shifted, and free range librarians. It is time to lead and stand up. We must sing our own praises and remind our communities that they need us.

Have a happy Thanksgiving day.