What Will Librarians Do in 2020?

Planning ahead? Some librarians provide interesting food for thought about what libraries - and librarians - may be doing down the road, at least in academic libraries. Some things will likely remain the same, some things will change - in ways we can't entirely predict.

Balancing security with access

Here's some food for thought from Slashdot. How will the government's proposed network security plans affect access to government information?

Bad travel guides

Here's an interesting story about some of the Lonely Planet travel guides. Apparently, one of their writers plagiarized some of his material and did not visit some of the places he wrote about. The libraries I have worked in purchase large numbers of travel guides, including those published by Lonely Planet. I wonder if we'll see the guides he wrote being pulled from library shelves?

Good reading

The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review is out, and there a few good articles that would interest academic librarians:

• Conference Connections: Rewiring the Circuit. This article discusses "remaking" conferences with Internet technologies and social networking tools. As the technology becomes more reliable and easier to use, conferences can consider moving away from physical gatherings to online events, reducing costs and enabling wider participation. The extraordinary costs (financial, time, environmental, and more) of attending the semiannual conferences of ALA have been a recent issue of conversation in the library blogosphere.
  
• E-Books in Higher Education: Nearing the End of the Era of Hype? An update on the status of e-books in higher education. I don't know any librarians who really like the kinds of e-books we have available to us now. (NetLibrary, *cough*.) Incompatible devices, digital rights management, poor accessibility and usability, strange licensing agreements, and lack of choice (both titles we want and the ability to customize large packages) are just some of the issues. However, some shrewd people are making use of the e-books we have available to us, such as graduate students using the books accessible through Google Books. (A historian has another perspective.)
• Facebook 2.0. The author, Tracy Mitrano, explains three implications of this popular social networking tool. The first is "user education, especially for adolescents and their parents." She provides an anecdote demonstrating the need for this education. In her particular example, it appears that some young adults may not be completely aware of the importance of privacy, which Siva Vaidhyanathan defines as "reputation management." The second implication (and last I will list here) is the possibility of "connecting higher education's missions to the popular site." She highlights perhaps the central concern with such linking (which Siva explicated in the above post): "Privacy and free speech concerns will always be in tension with commercial interests that seek information about users and their preferences."
  

Is Librarianship a Profession?

Well, Dorothea Salo has some pungent thoughts on that topic - suggesting that, if it is, it's not about what we do, it's about how we set up our boundaries and who we keep out. Provocative reading. So is Rachel Singer Gordon in "Whole Lot of Quacking Going on."

The nub of the issue is the divide between people who work in libraries who don't have the graduate degree and those who do - and how power relationships, respect, and reward for the work a person actually does play into it.

Personally, I work at a library where the day-to-day management of things is done by non-degreed folks who regard their work as a serious career. Librarians teach in classes and at the reference desk, develop the collection to match the curriculum, work on making it as accessible as possible through well-designed portals, and do research. A lot of decisions are made by everyone in the library, a few are made by those without graduate degrees in librarianship, a few are made by the library faculty, and a lot are made by mixed groups tackling a problem. It's not a matter of who's important or who deserves respect, but where it makes the most sense for decisions to be made.

Somehow, the why I teach meme says more about why I'm a librarian than "are we a profession?" debates.

US News and World Report's Best Graduate Schools

The 2009 rankings have been released, but the library and information studies schools have not been updated. The last time US News ranked LIS programs was in 2006.

What we librarians have been doing for years...

A short article at Wired. [Via Library Link of the Day.]

Books meet Web 2.0

Barbara has discussed LibraryThing here, among other places. Today NPR explores social-networking sites for readers, like LibraryThing and similar sites.

(Alec, hope you don't mind but I decided to upload a photo of Sonya, who works with the LibraryThing for Libraries program, who I met at the Public Library Association conference - with the famous rhino. Actually, there were two rhinos, so they're moving up in the world. --Barbara)

Upgrading to Geek 2008

There is a great article in the January issue of Computers in Libraries titled Upgrading to Geek 2008. The author describes how some formal education in computer science really helped him in his library work. For example, he explains how coursework in discrete math, finite automata, and database design, theory, and implementation made him better at what he does. He contends that the best way to learn this material "is to take some classes," such as at the college or university you might work for or at the local community college. If you can't take some classes on the side, he strongly recommends picking up a book and learning the Python or Ruby programming languages.

As a librarian and as someone who completed a minor in computer science, I can't agree more with his advice. Basic coursework in computer science helped me develop better abstract thinking and gave me some knowledge of different computer programming languages, as well as the confidence to play around with code with which I am not immediately familiar. As a result, I have been able to make tech contribution in every library at which I have worked.

So, if you are still in college and thinking of pursuing a library career, consider completing a minor in computer science. It makes a wonderful complement.

The end of the print encyclopedia?

The online encyclopedia is a great example of an e-book done well. Read more about the possible end of the print encyclopedia at the NY Times.

Shake, Shake, Shake!

If you want to get a peek at how much fun librarianship can be - and how librarians can be innovative, check out Library Journal's current crop of "movers and shakers."

One of my favorites on the list is not a librarian by training, but Tim Spalding is one of those bibliophile hackers who is doing very cool stuff with cataloging. And now some of it can be integrated into library catalogs, too.

Why I am a Librarian - more responses

I loved the Other Librarian's response to the "why I am a librarian" meme - starting from infancy and proceeding through the career. Six months into the first professional job, she finds these are what convinces her it was the right choice:

• teen patrons saying hello out of a library context
• helped someone through a serious health information inquiry
• got a procrastinating student through a project due next weekend
• found a weird object to classify and got it fixed nice and easy-like
• saw a navigation issue with the website and found a logical way to fix it

Another great contribution to the meme is from Iris, the Pegasus Librarian. (Her blog is an excellent one to read if you're interested in academic librarianship.)

Slightly more prosaic is the twitter-style response that Julian provides - in only 140 characters.

The Vanishing Librarians

When the business models and practices invades every aspect of our lives, from our public services to our colleges and universities, this is what happens to a profession.

Here's one snippet:

The success of the enterprise is measured in the number of products collected by patrons, now called “customers.” It is no longer measured in the usefulness or impact of the service on the quality of life in the community served.

I had the experience of working briefly in a public library where my manager called all library patrons "customers" and I spent a lot of my time, a professional librarian, showing people how to use the self-checkout station. I didn't stay there long.

Libraries have distinct missions separate from those of bookstores and other businesses. Such distinctions can be found in the ALA Library Bill of Rights and the Code of Ethics. Examples:

• "Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation."
• "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval."
• "Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment."
• "Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas."
• "A person's right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views."
• "We [librarians] provide... equitable access..."
• "We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom..."
• "We protect each library user's right to privacy..."

Bookstores and other businesses are not obligated to:

• provide resources for enlightenment,
• serve all people in its community,
• provide materials providing all points of view,
• challenge censorship,
• resist abridgment of free expression,
• provide equitable access to information,
• uphold principles of intellectual freedom, or
• protect their customers' right to privacy.

As long as businesses are beholden to shareholders, their primary mission is making money. Yes, business models and practices can bring tremendous cost savings and efficiency to enterprises, but the values listed above are neither cheap nor efficient to provide. That is why libraries exist as public entities. The community makes available to itself a place where individuals can access the world of information and find a broad range of resources free from censorship with multiple points of view and can read and use those materials privately.

A big part of professional library education is becoming acculturated to and conversant in these values. John Berry's article behooves us to fight for these values and against the business creep into our libraries, whether they be public or academic.

Privacy

Privacy has been a core value in librarianship for some time because, as Barbara has recently explained, "it’s a necessary condition for the freedom to read whatever you want without risk of penalty." It's a topic that is being reconsidered in the profession, because strict privacy "makes it harder to offer the kind of personalization, such as recommendations based on previous book choices, that the public increasingly expects from online systems. After all, it’s what they get from Amazon."

So it's timely that Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses the state of privacy in our society in a recent review article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Privacy is important, but why? He explains:

When we complain about infringements of privacy, what we really demand is some measure of control over our reputation in the world. Who should have the power to collect, cross-reference, publicize, or share information about us, regardless of what that information might be? ... Through a combination of weak policies, vapid public discussions, and some remarkable technologies like camera phones and the Internet, we have less and less control over our reputations every day. ... Rehabilitation demands substantial autonomy and control over one's record — or at least forgiveness. As long as we are held highly accountable for youthful indiscretions that are easily Googled by potential employers or U.S. customs agents, we limit social, intellectual, and actual mobility. And we deny everyone second chances.

Because privacy "is not a clear and common set of traits," Siva defines four types of privacy domains:

• Person-to-peer
• Person-to-firm ("the flow of information to companies from and about consumers")
• Person-to-state ("Because the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence, imprisonment, and deportation, the cost of being falsely caught in a dragnet is worth considering no matter how unlikely it seems to be.")
• Person-to-public ("the ways we regulate what those around us know or assume about us")

Moving from defining privacy to examining its invasions, Siva contends that we work in a "Nonopticon," which is the "state of being watched without knowing it, or at least the extent of it." Indeed, "[t]he most pervasive surveillance does not reveal itself or remains completely clandestine... We don't know all the ways we are being recorded or profiled. We are not supposed to understand that we are the product of marketers as much as we are the market. And we are not supposed to consider the extent to which the state tracks our behavior and considers us all suspects in crimes yet to be imagined, let alone committed."

Companies, Siva writes, "want us to relax and be ourselves. ... They are devoted to tracking our eccentricities because they understand that the ways we set ourselves apart from the mass are the things about which we are most passionate. Our passions, predilections, fancies, and fetishes are what we are likely to spend our surplus cash on." And "[e]ven the state wants us to be ourselves": "It wants subversive and potentially dangerous people to reveal themselves through their habits and social connections, not slink away in the dark to avoid obvious surveillance."

Siva believes nothing will really change from small changes, "like better privacy policies." Instead:

We must demand to know the terms of surveillance by our state and its partners in the private sector. We must be allowed to be agents in the construction of our reputations. We must insist on fairness, openness, and accountability in those institutions that commit such widespread surveillance. Otherwise we will cease being citizens. We will be subjects...

Thinking about academic librarianship?

If you are pondering a possible career in academic librarianship or have graduated from library school and are preparing for interviews, read up on issues facing our profession in two important reports:

The Association of College and Research Libraries' Environmental Scan 2007. [PDF]

The EDUCAUSE 2008 Horizon Report.

Librarians ahead of the curve...

For our Minnesotan readers, you might enjoy this post over at the MINITEX Reference blog. Turns out Minnesota librarians are already providing their residents with the Governor's proposed "world-class, digitally stored, always available, anywhere, anytime, jaw-dropping, eye-popping teaching toolbox accessible to all our teachers and students."

Stand out as a librarian

I found this post, Nine Simple Ways to Stand Out in Your Career, at the blog The Simple Dollar, to really ring true to me. I have practiced these suggestions to different degrees and have found all have advanced my career in various ways during my first three years as a professional librarian. But these are good to keep in mind whatever year we're at in the career.

Don't take our word for it...

U.S. News and World Report names librarianship one of the top careers in 2008!

Their narrative description is a bit simplistic, but I do agree that it is an underrated career.

Why I am a Librarian

Free Exchange on Campus started a meme on "why I teach." I weighed in on "why I am a librarian" and tagged some others. I hope we'll collect a few more, since they offer some real insight into both the daily pleasures and the philosophical reasons for being in this profession.

Free Exchange (Barbara Fister)

Info-fetishist (Anne-Marie Dietering)

Karen Munro, E-Learning Librarian

All of the "Why" posts can be found here if you scroll down a bit.

Librarians and classroom faculty: Defining roles in information literacy

For you academic librarians and wannabes on the list.

I appreciated the article "A Discipline-Based Approach to Information Literacy," by Ann Grafstein, published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship (July 2002, pgs. 197-204). I think there is a lot of confusion, especially among classroom faculty and young librarians, about the roles of each in teaching information literacy.

Grafstein first highlights a key assumption in the information literacy literature:

"The [information literacy] literature conveys a widely held belief that because the content of disciplines is constantly changing, subject content cannot be taught effectively; therefore, teaching should focus on process." (200)

But Grafstein goes on to argue that we must distinguish between different types of content: information and knowledge. This leads her to argue:

"Bearing in mind the distinctions between knowledge and information, it can be truly stated that information--not knowledge--is constantly changing. ... The paradigms and knowledge-base of a discipline are a conservative force, and are not subject to rapid, sudden changes." (200) (emphasis mine)

(This, of course, is a reference to Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.)

We librarians, then, must respect that subject-based knowledge is just as important as "information retrieval" in helping to develop an information literate person, i.e. one who has the skills of "analytical reasoning, critical thinking, and learning to learn" (200). Indeed, there is "a substantial body of research that supports the view that prior related knowledge is an essential element in the acquisition of new knowledge" (200).

All this is Grafstein's long way of coming to define what she sees as the appropriate roles for librarians and classroom faculty in teaching the skills needed for information literacy. Librarians should teach the following:

• Searching skills
• Generic critical thinking skills, such as the evaluation of information using the criteria of timeliness, authority, bias, verifiability, and logical consistency. (This list looks awfully familiar to those who teach evaluation of Web information.)
  

Classroom faculty, one the other hand, should focus on the following "evaluative skills... within the context of [their respective] discipline[s]" (202):

• Evaluating the content of arguments
• Assessing the validity of evidence
• Proposing original solutions

I think if we librarians can keep these distinctions in mind, we might be able to better reach out to those classroom faculty who think we librarians want to come into their classrooms and take over teaching the content of their courses. We just have to remind them what we do well and praise them for their own subject expertise. I have faculty time and again tell me that they are amazed by the search strategies they learn from me when they bring their classes into the library. This makes sense; we librarians have search skills. I, on the other hand, am always amazed by what I learn from faculty when I sit in in their classes. So, let's work hand in hand, each with our own expertise complementing the other's, and teach our students to work critically with information.