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Bullet Point: “The North Winning the Civil War Lead to the Modern Computer Revolution”

Today I have to retract an example I have used in several presentations. The retraction is personally an embarrassment, but I think also a great example of the power of conversation in learning.

In several presentations I have referred to James Burke, and attributed to him an example of how the North winning the US Civil War is related to the development of modern computers. The problem is, he didn’t actually say that (at least I can’t find where he said it), and, the example is wrong. It was the Union Army that had the advantage of more men in the battlefield (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/19407/American-Civil-War). The problem is, I used an example and attribution from memory, and it looks like both memories were wrong. I am very sorry for that. It was a case of quickly adding an example, and then copying it from one presentation to another, and never going back and checking it. That is sloppy of me.

The reason I feel this episode demonstrates the power of conversation is in how I discovered this mistake. I gave a presentation in Boston yesterday where I used the Civil War example. Today, I got an email from someone in the audience who pointed out the error. This made me go back to find the original citation…or in this case, not find it. Aside from making it clear to me that I am not a professor of history, it also showed me the power and importance of conversation. I said something, someone else took up the conversation and through that process we came to an agreement. I learned (about history and relearned the importance of citing the source).

I have said several times in my presentations that I may well be wrong. It is my responsibility to try and get it right, and your responsibility to keep me honest. Just because a speaker is loud, doesn’t make him right. Our future is a collaborative conversation. It is the responsibility of all of us – speaker and audience, administration and staff, teacher and student – to educate and innovate. That only works if, when we hear something that is wrong or doesn’t make sense, we stand up and say so. Sure speaking out loud and in public is destined to lead to some embarrassing moments, but not speaking at all leads to irrelevance. That is a big part of doing these beyond the bullet points posts.

I am not proud of my mistake, but I am VERY proud of our profession for pointing it out.

By the way, I can’t leave without a pointer to Burke’s work. You can see just about the entirety of The Day the Universe Changed on YouTube these days. Here’s one to get you started:

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The Times They are a-Changin’

“The Times They are a-Changin'” NMRLS Annual Meeting, North Andover, MA

Abstract: A discussion of how library service should match how people build knowledge. It also discusses the obligation and power of libraries participating in their communities and society as a whole.
Slides: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/Presentations/2008/BosAfter.pdf
Audio: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/pod/2008/BosAft.mp3
Video: http://ptbed.org/downloads/BosAfter.mp4

Screencast:

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Conversations: 2 Grand Pianos on a Stage

“Conversations: 2 Grand Pianos on a Stage” Joint Metrowest and SEMLS Annual Council of Members, Ashland, MA.

Abstract: An integration of how the concepts of participatory librarianship integrate into real tools and changes.
Slides: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/Presentations/2008/BostonMorning.pdf
Audio: https://davidlankes.org/rdlankes/pod/2008/BosMorning.mp3
Video: http://ptbed.org/downloads/Boston-Record.mp4

Screencast:

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OCLC, Syracuse University and University of Washington to help develop a new Web search experience based on expertise from librarians

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 7 November 2008—Researchers and developers from OCLC, the world’s largest library cooperative, and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington today announced their participation in a new international effort to explore the creation of a more credible Web search experience based on input from librarians around the globe. Called the “Reference Extract,” the planning phase of this project is funded through a $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

“Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most powerful,” said Dr. Mike Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Information School of the University of Washington and a lead on the project. “The best search engines are great for basic search, but sometimes the Web site results lack credibility in terms of trust, accuracy and reliability. So, who can help? Librarians. If a librarian recommends a Web site, you can be pretty sure that it’s credible. RefEx will take hundreds of thousands of librarian recommendations and use them in a full-scale search engine.”

Reference Extract is envisioned as a Web search experience similar to those provided by the world’s most popular search engines. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extract will be built for maximum credibility of search results by relying on the expertise of librarians. Users will enter a search term and receive results weighted toward sites most often used by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State Library of Maryland, and over 2,000 other libraries worldwide.

As part of the planning process, participants are reaching out to partners in libraries, technology organizations and research institutions. “The only way this will work is by making a project of an entire community,” said Dr. R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and Associate Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. “Web searchers get to tap into the incredible skill and knowledge of the library community, while librarians will be able to serve users on a whole new scale. This work follows on previous credibility work supported by the MacArthur Foundation, most notably the Credibility Commons (http://credibilitycommons.org/).”

“We look forward to working with Syracuse University and the University of Washington in developing this credibility focused search capability, which holds the promise of providing powerful new access to information based on professionally delivered library reference services,” said Jay Jordan, OCLC President and CEO. “We are grateful for support from the MacArthur Foundation in this planning phase, and we are hopeful that this effort will lay the necessary groundwork for implementing a large-scale, general user service.”

The Reference Extract project will hold a series of meetings and consultations over the coming months. The team is eager to build a business plan and technology architecture to benefit users and the library community alike. Those interested in providing input on the project and learning more can visit the project Web site at http://digref.org.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is available at www.macfound.org.

The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University
The School of Information Studies is The Original Information School in the nation. It is a leading center for innovative programs in information policy, information behavior, information management, information systems, information technology and information services. The nationally ranked school (U.S. News and World Report) has professional degree programs at the undergraduate and master’s levels and a research degree at the doctoral level. The school offers its master’s programs in campus and distance learning formats. For more information, visit www.ischool.syr.edu/about/.

The University of Washington Information School
Each year, the world creates more than 161 exabytes of new information—enough to fill 2 billion 80GB iPods. So much information can be overwhelming. Rigorous study of the users and uses of information conducted at the UW Information School helps answer important questions. By tackling key social and technical problems in the information field, the UW iSchool has become an important link between users of information and designers of information systems, connecting society with the information it needs. For more information, visit www.ischool.washington.edu/.

About OCLC
Founded in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC is a nonprofit library service and research organization that has provided computer-based cataloging, reference, resource sharing, eContent, preservation, library management and Web services to 60,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories. OCLC and its member libraries worldwide have created and maintain WorldCat, the world’s richest online resource for finding library materials. For more information, visit www.oclc.org

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Bullet Point: “Facilitation Not Access”

There is, believe it or not, a whole genre of balloon jokes. Here’s an example:

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a man below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below replied, “You are in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You are between 40 and 42 degrees north latitude and between 58 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be an engineer,” said the balloonist.

“I am,” replied the man, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost.”

The man below responded, “You must be a manager.”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “how did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are exactly in the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my fault.”

Variations on this pick on democrats and republicans, Microsoft users and so on. The point is, that simply having access to something, doesn’t mean it is useful. Think about the way we teach kids to read. We don’t walk 5 year olds into the stacks and let them figure it out. There is a process, a curriculum, and a role for a guide. The same is true in our libraries.

A great deal of the professional canon of librarianship is centered on access. From our tools (catalogs, indices, metadata schema), to our services (collections, reference, inter-library loan), to our values (intellectual freedom) we emphasize getting people to the information they need. A lot of that canon also talks about what to do once we get them there. Common practice in reference for the past century has been to get the patron to an item, but no further save you bias their information gathering as an example. Yet, is this any different than leading the child into the stacks and hoping for the best?

This point came home to me when talking with business leaders in Philadelphia about plans for an expanded central library. They said they had little use for the public library in their current positions, but that the library was essential when starting out. They credited the library for being one of the prime information resources they had for business success. It would be easy to stop the story here and claim success for libraries, but the next part of the conversation is even more telling.

When asked how the library could help the next generation of entrepreneur, they developed a strikingly similar answer…make it like Kinkos (or FedEx Business Center these days). Small businesses may well need access to materials, but they normally have no idea what to do with materials at the beginning of their business process. Start ups need to develop a business plan, but few know how to do this (not only what they look like, but the process to develop one). They need a place to work, and basic computing and presentation instruction. They need access to a network of lawyers, accountants, and bankers. They need field trips to successful start-ups, and mentors. In essence, they need a curriculum and process to take them from wanting to start up a business to understanding how to start one up.

If libraries are in the thing business, than they can provide access to materials for the entrepreneur. If they are in the conversation business, they need to facilitate knowledge, which may include access materials, but more often than not involves helping decode the materials for the library member/user/patron and helping them put this into action. You can see this at the British Museum’s Business Collection where they are having every reference librarian get certified as a business planner. It also explains why the library is at times over run by school tutors…access to lots of examples plus the person power to make sense of it for the student.

The point of the participatory library is to get involved. We need to help musicians become better musicians, writers become better writers. Simply pointing to the work of a member’s peers is only one small way of doing that. Connecting them to ongoing conversations and communities of like members is a much stronger way. These communities need infrastructure to thrive. That might mean a place to meet (online as well as in person), or a collection of stuff, or simply recognition.

Returning to the balloon joke, the lost person doesn’t need an answer, they need a solution.

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Bullet Point: “Books, web pages, DVD’s are artifacts, and of secondary importance to the conversation itself”

Some folks may take issue with this statement. Am I advocating getting rid of books? Am I saying that there is no use for materials in libraries? Has the collection ceased to matter? No. Collections and artifacts are very important, just secondary to the real goal: knowledge. Since knowledge is created through conversation, the primary “thing” libraries should be facilitating (collecting adding value to, providing access to) are conversations.

The end result of a conversation (or even the result of parts of a conversation that is ongoing) may well be an artifact. So a scientist may be studying a phenomenon. He is engaged in knowledge creation whereby he has internal conversation, talks with colleagues, and reads the literature (the medium of a long and ongoing conversation within the profession). Along the way, as he comes to conclusions (agreements) he may well publish an article (or book, or blog post). That publication is an artifact of the conversation. Yet, the conversation still continues.

Why does it matter…is this a small point? Well let us take that publication. The author understands that artifact in a given context like its relation to the field, plus a whole host of other factors like: will this will help define a domain; this will mark out a territory I am studying; this will help me get tenure; this will grow my reputation. Someone else reading that article may place it into another context (perhaps a radically different context like “this is an example of good scientific writing”, or “this work on astronomy explains dinosaur extinction”). The point is the artifact hasn’t changed, and it hasn’t brought its context with it. So the same artifact is being applied to very different understandings of the world (knowledge).

Now both the author and the reader need the artifact. It is NOT unimportant. It is, however, only part of the knowledge of the author and reader. Why care? Because the author and the reader may describe the artifact very differently, place it into a larger collection (classify it) very differently, etc. If libraries focus on the artifact, and provide their own contexts (for after all, what is Dewey or LCSH if not simply a shared context) without regard to the contexts of the individual member/patron/user, they will create a disconnect between how a user finds something, and what it means. This in turn creates pressure on the part of the user to utilize their own way of organizing things, which our systems only provide in a small and crude way (tagging, lists).

By the way, since much of what makes up a user’s context is socially derived (through the media, education, peer groups, etc), the contexts within a given user population may be very close. That’s why Dewey and LCSH have worked as well as they have for the library community. That’s also explains why aggregating things like tags and links to pages (like Google Page Rank) work so well. It is not that everyone thinks the same, or that the artifacts are similar, it is that groups of users have a great deal of overlap in their understandings. Participatory systems should build on the overlap for discovery, but allow for the individual context in the individual.

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Bullet Point: “Stop Having ‘Next Generation Catalogs’ Conversations – Commit to this being the Last Generation of Catalogs”

There is a lot of effort and some great innovation going on around library catalogs. The problem is, these great ideas are often crammed in right next to system constraints introduced into catalogs over a hundred years ago.

Catalogs are, at their heart, inventory systems, not really discovery systems. That means they work quite well when you know what you are looking for, and really fall down when your are exploring ideas and concepts. They fail completely in trying to encode “knowledge” that is the context that spans works and people.

Lists, tags, even whiz-bang visualizers have their use, but when we tie them back to an item centric bibliographic warehouse, they loose their effectiveness. Lists are interesting, but without “connective tissue” to say why these items are all on the list together, they don’t represent knowledge, simply groupings. It is more important to know the logic behind a list than just the list itself. An example:

Colossus
Father
Alfie

What is this a lost of? Turns out fictional computer names from the movies (The Forbin Project, Alien, Barbarella). Without this last little line (and for good measure a citation http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080206065106AA7uAQ3 ) the list is meaningless. Worse still if I run across this list in a year will I have any idea what the list was of?

By claiming victory in catalogs as inventory systems, freezing their development and moving on to whole new systems (that can point back to the catalogs) we can invent great new and much more useful systems.

This is not a tirade against ILS vendors, or the open source folks, it is instead a belief that if the ILS vendors and open source folks shifted their focus on innovation instead of incremental evolution great things can happen.

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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.

For those on the FaceBook Participatory Librarianship group (http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=28388299358) I’ll be cross posting these in the Beyond the Bullet Points discussion board.