ContentReflections

Libraries, Tomatoes, and Transformation

2009-04-25T20:23:00.001-04:00

Tomatoes in winter always make me yearn for the freshly picked ones from my father’s garden, big, red, and juicy, the kind that drip down the chin when bitten. I avoid buying the hard, cottony ones in the supermarket that are shipped in from thousands of miles away, preferring to wait for the opening of the farmer’s market. That’s when I bump into friends and acquaintances as we move from one booth to another, scooping up produce from local farmers.

Academic libraries, whether viewed as facilities, services, or resources, have gone through and need to continue going through their own transformations. Users can get information any time of the day, transmitted in from server farms around the globe. Regardless of the vendor, it all looks pretty similar, just like the supermarket tomatoes. Information seekers prefer to get their answers from people they know, the same as folks looking for a real tomato. Students go on Facebook or tweet a friend and faculty members email a colleague before they consider using the library. University librarians try to shake up the library’s image by adding coffee shops but remain fairly traditional in offering services and resources, not always taking advantage of the transformative power of the Internet. Public libraries seem more willing to experiment with Web 2.0 collaborative technologies that give control to end-users. By incorporating social networking tools into the library catalog they enable patrons to communicate directly with one another, sharing opinions and recommendations, adding videos and content.

How might an academic library look if it took a bite from the juicy tomato instead of the mass-produced cottony one? If we look at the library as physical or virtual space it might be different, perhaps, but not as much as many librarians fear. The public is used to faceted searching and recommender systems when they search Amazon and BestBuy and those features are available in a growing number of library catalogs. Patrons no longer have to walk back in time when they enter the library’s portal. Learning commons are another example of libraries changing to meet their users’ needs by blending information and technology support in one place. Some cutting edge libraries have added presences in virtual environments such as Second Life without compromising their more “real” existences. These are incremental changes that for the most part leave control within the library. It’s a shift from the supermarket to the farmer’s market, far smaller than the earlier transformation of the library as protected repository of precious manuscripts into a place where books are shared.

But what if patrons want the experience of managing their own information seeking just as much I want the flavor that comes from a tomato that I pick off the vine myself? Today conventional publishing paradigms struggle to exist in a world where average people can create and publish content in a variety of formats, disseminating it globally to readers and viewers. Library professionals are well aware of the battles fought by earlier generations to integrate popular fiction and audiovisual materials into their collections even then these were acquired through established distribution channels. Many libraries have embraced the open access movement without fully appreciating its implications. If we want to decrease our dependence on copyright protected, publisher-generated content, then what fills the void? How far will we go in encouraging independent content creation and dissemination? Web 2.0 technologies are all about collaboration and dispersing previously centralized control to the ends. Are we capable of accommodating the rapidly increasing flood of content on our campuses?

Whether because librarians’ expertise is not fully understood on campuses or because of our own awareness of the enormity of the task at hand, librarians are just beginning to acknowledge the role we can play in helping faculty manage their writings and course materials. Libraries regularly license digital journals and e-books and some create their own. Might it be conceivable that as e-books become more common a professor would want to put a required text on reserve embedded with her annotations? Or that a community of practice would request its wiki be added to the library collection? Or a graduate assistant ask that his advisor’s reading recommendations be available on the library website for all students to see? The demands of scholarly communication on the library go far beyond teaching others about intellectual property rights and responsibilities. They require libraries to be much more responsive to faculty and students’ changing patterns of use. Let’s try not to imagine the complications that arise the first time someone uses his mini pen camera to reproduce copyrighted material and share it over the Internet!

Just as academic librarians abandoned or expanded facilities that were designed for an earlier age, now we can utilize our vast knowledge of database structure, indexing, and information access to develop institutional repositories. Web 3.0, or the Semantic Web, is predicted to enhance those capabilities, allowing machines to assume much of the routine work of searching. Students use library buildings to socialize with friends or to catch up on their sleep. The creation of the previously mentioned coffee shops concedes the reality that patrons’ definitions of libraries are more expansive than our own. Why not then increase our interpretation of an institutional repository to include student work as well as student social space? Student papers, presentations, and videos all have the potential to contribute to the corpus of knowledge on any given campus, at least for a while. If librarians recognize the value of cloud computing, then maybe we can imagine ourselves as part of our campus cloud, creating new spaces for university resources.

Library services may seem very removed from the tomato patch but not if we consider it from the eyes of the individual. Just as I want fresh, juicy tomatoes available at my local store year-round, increasingly library patrons want customized services that reach them wherever they are using whatever device they have at their disposal or in their hands. The walls of the library have to become even more porous so that services and support are available where the need is. This does not have to be excessively burdensome if we make use of existing technologies to develop multimedia pathfinders and online tutorials, resources that can be reused and replicated without a librarian’s intervention. Much of the public has sacrificed privacy for convenience, sharing personally identifiable information to save keystrokes or gain preferred shopper status. Sign on to Amazon and see the titles being recommended, all based upon earlier purchases. As users’ expectations evolve, is this a service they will come to expect from academic libraries and, if so, what will happen to our policies protecting patron privacy and confidentiality? Will Web 3.0 technologies be powerful enough so that when a patron comes into the library he is automatically texted a list of new acquisitions available for his research? Are we looking at the next iteration of Selective Dissemination of Information?

Ultimately, if we really want to serve today’s users, then librarians must allow them into our world to a greater degree than ever before. By recognizing that their needs are our own and their actions very similar if not identical to ours (Does anyone really not use Google as a first resort when answering a question or check Wikipedia to get general information?) we come to an understanding that we are all focused on the same goal -- seeking answers in an age of information overload. The challenge of being user-centered is that we must be willing to let faculty and students define our direction with librarians ceding power in order to be more responsive. Librarians may find that giving up some of our control and allowing our users to work with us is more freeing than frightening. Their participation is critical if we are to transform the library for a new era. After all, the best produce is often right in our own backyard.

2008-05-26T18:45:00.004-04:00

This is a screencast that I did for my Information Policy seminar this summer to get people started using the class wiki.

Students Demand Change!

2007-11-15T20:34:00.000-05:00

Once again the weak professor succumbs to overwhelming student pressure to push the limits of her technological expertise. I am adding a photo here so that the blidget I add on to our class wiki will be as cool as theirs. Here is the link to the wiki:
http://sliss554fa07.wikispaces.com/Links+to+blogs

Now is the Autumn of My DisContent

2007-09-18T22:36:00.000-04:00

After deciding that I was not egocentric enough to blog habitually, I am drawn back to it in order to rant. Rant about computers and the like. My father died in November of 1999 and although he had been very comfortable with technology previously he was happy to sign off before Y2K. During the last months of his life he spoke about how technology was getting in the way of living. Tonight I couldn't agree with him more.

Laura, my daughter innocently approached me about printing photos for a geometry assignment. Now I have a new PC running Vista with a lot of preloaded software, including sales pitches from software vendors I have no interest in. Who knows what happened but it was no less than three hours after I began that I finally succeeded in printing said photos. In between the new PC refused to recognize my camera and demanded a driver that I did not have. I then tried printing directly from camera to fancy schmancy printer/scanner/copier/fax machine only to have it choke. Not to be deterred I took the camera to Laura's PC and downloaded the photos, then pulled out a thumb drive and tried to copy them onto it. The trial version of Corel said it was no longer valid (I didn't know I even had it) but I managed to get the photos on to it anyway. When I went back to my flashy new Vaio it refused to read the thumb drive and subseqently lost track of every USB device I had. Thumb drive directly in printer/scanner/copier/fax machine resulted in an error. Finally, frustrated MAB went back to Laura's machine, which by now had mysteriously lost all connectivity with the outside world. After rebooting it, I uploaded the photos to Flickr and then went back to said Sony and downloaded them and printed them. Did you follow all of that? Did I mention here that I am supposed to be comfortable with computers?!

Are you listening?

2007-08-29T18:47:00.000-04:00

I was running errands today and had the radio tuned to NPR. Dick Gordon's The Story was on and he was interviewing this amazing couple, Scott and Tiffany Smiley. Scott is a Captain in the U.S. Army who lost his eyesight to a suicide bomber in Iraq. He has continued to serve in the military, is currently pursuing an MBA at Duke, after which he will teach at West Point, his alma mater.

Scott is not an average guy. Okay, he's extraordinary. It's a wonderful interview (I tuned in late but am listening to the whole thing as I type) and I encourage you all to listen to it at http://thestory.org/. At one point Scott was talking about how he has had not trouble keeping up in his classes and, in fact, seems to be able to get the required reading done more quickly than his classmates. Scott listens to his readings and has been able to speed them up to the point where most people wouldn't be able to comprehend the material but he can. Sort of the speed listening counterpart to speed reading. He demonstrates his technique (about forty minutes into the fifty minute interview) and I was astounded by it. Television would work but there are many more distractions with video than audio. I was struck by what he does in a way that would be impossible to appreciate simply by reading about it.

Not all librarians, but the majority, concentrate on printed content in spite of using materials in other forms on a daily basis. There is a comforting elitism about print that isn't there with radio or television, unless we're talking NPR, PBS, or the British equivalents. So now you can listen to me say the same thing I've written above and reflect on whether you respond differently.

Words, words, words

2007-08-28T23:32:00.000-04:00

Blame it on the heat - I'll come right to the point. What effect does the format of information have on the manner in which it is absorbed? Certainly high school kids understand the different impact of breaking up with someone in person, over the phone, via a Dear John letter, or, as a last resort, an email message. Even when the words are exactly the same the person on the receiving end perceives them differently.

What is the difference then if we read a book, listen to an audio version of it, or watch the film version? Do we pay better attention to one format than to another? I've been listening to Wikinomics as I drive back and forth between Evanston and Indianapolis. I knew that I didn't like the narrator but I had no idea how much until I found that after touching my iPod in an unmentionable way I repeated almost an hour of the book. Every once in a while certain sections would strike me as familiar. After a few minutes I would think that I finally had made it to new material only to hear something old again. I know I am inattentive when watching television (maybe that is why I don't do it more often) but it got me to wondering about comprehension and multitasking and lack of focus... Here I sit having a conversation with my daughter while I type (please don't tell her she doesn't have my undivided attention). Guess I better sign off before I'm revealed. Maybe I'll go read a book.

2007-08-27T22:57:00.000-04:00

I emphasize reflection in my classes because when I was working a standard 9 to 5 library systems job I rarely took time out to think about what I was doing. I was under a lot of pressure to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. And yet it was those rare moments of reflection that were the most meaningful. It was during those times that I became concerned about equitable access to technology and information. As I think about it now, I think how straightforward life was in the early days of the Internet before the explosion of content. Now all of us, trained librarians and our patrons, are inundated by the quantity of information available to us and it's easy to lose track of what we are seeking. Fortunately, wise men like Stephen Harter remind us that when we're retrieving information the bottom line is that we want to capture the good stuff and weed out the rest.

For a long time, academics have viewed the good stuff as printed publications that have gone through the peer review process of scholarly communication. But at a time when much worthy content is created and disseminated outside this process is this a valid approach? Scholars around the world are experimenting with different forms of publication and finding that some of them engage new audiences. My blogging is an attempt to see how it works for me, to see if I can reflect on this process and emerge with a clearer understanding of where we might be heading so that I can be a better librarian and teacher of new librarians.

Moving outside our comfort zones

2007-08-27T00:11:00.000-04:00

So what is the role of librarians in a highly but inequitably networked world? We traditionally have seen ourselves as closely tied to content, and our work as its protector, controller and disseminator. A key component of our professional identity is service to others. Still it often seems as if we only want to serve those who walk through our doors, people who already have bought into the allure of books. In a blog posting this week, Karen Coyle writes of the insularity of librarianship and “our tendency to only speak to each other.” It’s a valid point but one that probably could be made of any profession or group. The birds of a feather phenomenon…

This becomes problematic if we believe that the library plays a special role within society as an opportunity equalizer but are not actively involved in reaching out to those who could benefit most from its resources and services. What are we doing about all the people who never come into libraries and never read books? A number of my students are teen services librarians and even as they express their frustration with the limited success of their blogs, wikis, or gaming nights, I have been so proud of their courage in trying something new. It’s hard to be on the cutting edge and they are. But they are moving into this new and uncomfortable terrain because of their commitment to engage teens who normally would never come into the library; to engage teens who prefer a screen to a page.

Moving outside our comfort zone and revealing our technological shortcomings in front of others is not a strategy most people embrace. As a professor, I have had colleagues encourage me to maintain my distance and standing as an expert when in front of a class. Teaching technology, an area that undergoes continuous change, I think it would be disingenuous if not disastrous to do so. Certainly it would be transparent to my students when I did not have complete mastery of the latest tool. Again, the breakneck cycle of innovation in a Web 2.0 world would result in my regular humiliation. I find it much easier to confess my deficiencies while simultaneously accepting my students’. I try to model how to learn, how to move forward in spite of fear and discomfort. This may be the most important lesson I can teach them because it is one that they will have to repeat many times throughout their careers. It is also one that practicing librarians, even those with many years experience, must be mindful of if we are to move outside the familiar circle of traditional book lovers and library users to engage new communities and share the opportunities that our knowledge can enable.

Putting things in perspective

2007-08-25T18:17:00.001-04:00

I just got an email from my nephew, Tim, who is just finishing up two years with the Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. He cannot open this blog on the computer in his village, something he says is not surprising because "There is always something wrong with technology over here." Those of us in developed countries take so much for granted, basic services such as water, utilities, and broadband access among them. Tim used to be in a much smaller village (a two hour bike ride away) and considers himself lucky to have spent the last year where he is for many reasons, one being intermittent Internet access at a local cafe.

I lived in Korea back in the late 1970s as a Peace Corps volunteer, then a graduate student, and finally a working stiff. I taught at a university and cut my dittos and reproduced them by hand. It was easy and cheap to get a hold of printed publications and music because copyright was pretty much ignored. Libraries, when they existed at all, were pretty dreary places. Last year when I returned to give a paper at the IFLA Conference I was amazed at the transformation that had taken place in twenty-five years. Koreans have better and cheaper access to the Internet than people in the U.S. Bookstores there were filled with publications in many languages and it was easy but expensive to get more books for Laura, my voracious reader of a daughter.

At the IFLA Conference I attended a session where a number of Africans presented and spoke of libraries filled with discarded books that had no relevance to the local populations. The books were donated by westerners who were more intent on clearing off their shelves than in providing reading materials that would engage African readers. They spoke of the tremendous challenges of literacy education and inadequate Internet access.

We live in a world where information is a commodity valued in the marketplace. Companies hold on to their intellectual property and corporate intelligence tightly as they vie for a dominant market share. Yet information/content also can be magical on an individual level. Reading and access to the world of printed matter, audio and video content have the power to transform a person's life. Today that access is increasingly via the Internet. The United States Government, in an attempt to increase efficiency and reduce costs, has stopped printing many documents and only offers digital versions. We do not have to go around the world to small villages in underdeveloped countries to find inequities in information access. Citizens of the United States confront many of the same problems as Tim if they live in rural areas. It's a sad story.

Information overload and turning off on reading

2007-08-23T13:09:00.000-04:00

Concerns about information overload are not new although in the age of the Internet people may be gaining a greater appreciation for its implications. Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune reported on the results of an Associated Press-Ipsos poll that found 27% of Americans had not read one book in the past year. At this past ALA Annual meeting Eli Nieburger of the Ann Arbor District Library quoted a frightening statistic about the number of people who never read another book after high school: 58%. I tried to track down the source (in a quick Googlish way) and found it at ParaPublishing’s website, which quotes research by Jerrold Jenkins. Now, I have no idea who Jenkins is and I am much more inclined to view the AP statistic as more authoritative. Still, they are both pretty unsettling to a librarian who loves to read.

I believe it was Herbert Simon, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, who came up with the concept of “satisficing” behavior. Basically the idea when applied to information seeking means that people stop when they find something that is good enough instead of looking for a resource with maximal value. Simon also wrote about the reality that a glut of information results in a lack of attention. Eszter Hargittai (check out her blog) teaches in Communications and Sociology at Northwestern University and has done some fascinating research in this area.

Librarians’ self-perceptions have been so tied to physical books and buildings. We need to question what that means in a world of content that is increasingly online and in multiple formats. Those working in academic libraries have to recognize that classroom instruction is changing and incorporating information technology in ways that are intended to engage students. I’m not just referring to course management systems like Sakai or BlackBoard. Professors are experimenting with using emerging technologies such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts in their classes, tools that many students already are adept at. Is the profession keeping up? If we hold service as a fundamental value of our profession, what are individual librarians doing to keep up with these new expectations?

All the News That's Fit...

2007-08-22T10:56:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning thinking about information overload. We have so many channels of information at our disposal and yet we use only a fraction of them. I don't watch TV much at all and have turned down my usage of the radio. I'd rather listen to what I have on my iPod. There used to be a limited number of media channels and so it was fairly safe to assume that most citizens in the United States were getting a lowest common denominator of information. Different from the single channel of information disseminated by state-controlled media but a similar idea. But now with the proliferation of channels available and the pervasiveness of the Internet (I agree, pervasive to those in highly populated areas not necessarily rural America) expectations of information consumers have changed. It seems like Chris Anderson was right with the whole Long Tail thing. This is the niche generation. More and more of us are opting for tailored news, only looking at our narrow interests. What happens to those serendipitous finds we used to come across in scanning the paper? Right, I am not a big Cubs fan but could always make conversation at the water cooler because I'd seen the headline about the previous games results.

We make assumptions about so many things and the biggest is that people are like us. Perhaps that's because we surround ourselves with like-minded folks and so that assumption is reinforced on a regular basis. We share similar interests and concerns with our friends. We read, listen to, view the same types of news and entertainment sources.

Can you believe it but I used to assume that everyone used libraries?! How could I be so naive? Anyway, one day in 1986 or so I was talking to a colleague, Bruce Foster, at Northwestern in Academic Computing. He was the man who enabled me to get every NOTIS employee an email account on Bitnet. Bruce destroyed my innocence (okay, I exaggerate!) by telling me that there was this whole group of people on campus who never darkened the doors of the library, preferring to work at their computers day and night. Now, in many ways I have become one of those people. I use the library more via the computer than in person, often grateful that I can go online and conduct a search when the library building is closed. My library school office is in the IUPUI library and so I am there at the end of each week. I also am a big user of the Evanston Public Library but more as a quiet place to write than to do research.

So what is it with control of the information I am consuming? I now have the capability to retrieve customized content on an up-to-the-minute basis but I have lost the peace and calm I used to associate with reading the paper or browsing shelves in the library. It seems as if by gaining more control over the information I consume that I have lost part of the gift that I associated with libraries and reading. This morning is just seems like All That News Is Giving Me Fits!!

News, news, news

2007-08-21T10:42:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning thinking about news and how I get it. Do you know how much I fight the urge to say “ingest” when I talk about content? A lot! Talk about professional jargon. But I digress… I grew up with two parents who always read newspapers: the New York Times and the Newark News. As an adult I, too, read the news but I do it in different ways. The Times used to be a must for me but after I became a parent it was abandoned because it required too much time. I stuck with the Chicago Tribune, a paper I sneered at until I spent five years in Tucson and had to settle for the Arizona Daily Star. Now I’m back to the Trib and appreciate it more. I read it from cover to cover (okay I just skim sports) and get the details of life in Chicagoland. I also read the weekly paper, The Evanston Review, and find out what it going on with the local schools city council and the like. That’s just print.

I used to have cable TV (something easily forsaken when unemployed) basically because my ex-partner was a sports fiend. I would tune in to CNN and the Weather Channel (only in Chicago – no one bothers in Tucson), often obsessively, and ingested (sorry, it slipped out) the news in sound bites. I also listen to NPR quite often, just not as much as I used to when I worked a 9 to 5 job.

Still, my real window on the world beyond Chicago is through my computer. I usually look at the news online before I sit down to read the printed Tribune. I subscribe to a bunch of news feeds and start off back at the NYT, scanning its headlines and digging in occasionally (more this morning on 1st Amendment and regulating video game violence). I also glance at the online Tribune, CNN (Madeline Albright’s interview), Wired, CNet (ten seconds on Bacn today), ZDNet, and some blogs. Why this morning I even found myself reading an article from Military Information Technology on implementing Internet Protocol version 6 that I found because I have a Google Alert set up for "telecommunications infrastructure and policy". Who would've thunk it?!

I grew up with print newspapers and three basic TV channels. Even without cable or satellite TV, I still feel like I’m drowning in news. The Pew Research Center has found that news readership/viewership is declining and online news consumption is growing. I am trying to set my homepage up to make this all more efficient (thanks for pushing me, Simon) but still don’t feel as if I have a handle on the news. I’m definitely feeling overwhelmed, how about you?

Beginning to Blog

2007-08-20T12:49:00.000-04:00

After two years of resisting, I have finally concluded that it’s time to start blogging myself instead of just telling my students to do it. I already do a fair amount with wikis and podcasts so jumping in to the blogosphere is not so farfetched. My reasons for blogging vary but all come back to attempting to better understand this phenomenon called Web 2.0 and its impact on content. Writing is very much tied to voice and when I started to read blogs I was put off by what I took to be people with too little experience claiming too much space. I have come to view this more as a generational and cultural gap and see that my assumptions about others were misplaced. The blogosphere appears to be more a state of mind, and a relaxed, informal one at that, than a statement of voice. As a library school professor I am uncomfortable with the level of authority that my students give me, perhaps they do so because of my age, experience, or the fact that I have a Ph.D. Any one of these may have contributed to a voice that sounds authoritative. Still, underneath I question and doubt myself just as they do. I enter the world of blogging with trepidation and request that more experienced folks send advice rather than criticism.

So why “ContentReflections” you may ask? Where is the accent in the first word – on which syllable? Is content an adjective or a noun? Forgive me the joke but it’s part of a greater point. I am very much interested in content, printed and digital, and how people use it. The recent, tumultuous, years of my life (finally get the Ph.D., work in the dotcom world for nine glorious months, experience employer’s bankruptcy and unemployment, grant-funded job and more unemployment, and now work as an academic) have left me somewhat discontented but have forced me to look at and reflect on content much more than I would have otherwise.

I had worked as a practicing librarian for more than a decade when I decided to return to school and pursue a doctorate. I was motivated to do so because of concerns about technological disparities and inequities surrounding access to information. One thing that my doctoral program drilled into me was the importance of critical thinking. It may not be surprising that when I finished my degree and started working with a team that was developing a content tagging business this became a critical skill. As I created taxonomies I thought about how people approach content. We were partnering with RR Donnelley and so in large part I thought way too much about mundane content such as mail order catalogs. But later when I managed the development of a digital book repository at the University of Chicago Press I had the same questions but about more esoteric publications. Well, okay, maybe not all of the publications were that esoteric – as I recall, some of the titles were regional cookbooks or about fishing in one state or another. Still, the questions remained. How do people use content and what impact do formats or delivery mechanisms have on that usage? Do they promote and facilitate use or discourage it? As an academic I wonder what the impact is on learning.

I teach and distribute reading lists that I joke would be more aptly named reading, listening and viewing lists. I want future librarians and information professionals to analyze their experiences as they interact with this content so they better understand the perspective of library users and non-users. I require students to create podcasts and to collaborate using wikis to force them to move beyond the familiar image of librarian as manager and disseminator of information. Although the traditional model of publishing still exists it is being given a run for its money by upstart individuals who are creating and distributing content independently in the Web 2.0 world. Librarians count as some of those upstart individuals, including me.

Which brings me to the end of this initial posting. I hope to use ContentReflections to talk about content in an informal way, and to reflect on how I or others use it or abuse it on a daily basis. I’d welcome your participation and thoughts on the subject.