more thoughts on the CHE piece

As I confided to some PLG friends, I read some of the CHE comments there and became so frustrated & passionate that I had to post my own.

I don't think I was overly harsh, but I did want to demolish a Library school "catechism" that contains the very stupid, quite unquestioned idea that somehow format does not matter in our daily LIS work.

It is one of the more pernicuous, stupid, harmful, and pervasive memes in all of mainstream LIS, and it always produces a virulent allergic reaction in me, at least.

A King James Bible printed on velum, with gold-inlaid leather binding...versus the same text printed in sharpie ink on a roll of toilet paper. I know it's the same text, yada yada yada, but which is more likely to inspire awe and reverence? There's value to having the KJB or other variants of the bible, for that matter, archived online, or on a searchable CD-ROM, specifically for quick reference, quick textual manipulations and comparisons, etc. The toilet paper bible might even be elevated to an important component in an edgy, contemporary art museum piece. In a practical cataloging sense, no, it does not matter, we can describe each manifestation of the work as needed, distinguishing between them with good descriptive cataloging work. But too many librarians go to far and suspend all critical judgement about appropriateness of format, etc, especially if it comes with lots of electronic bells and whistles. In a corporate library, true, there will be not nearly as many hardbound volumes to circulate--some "collections" may be entirely virtual, depending on corporate needs. But to information managers who work in these settings still stubbornly clinging to the term Librarian (and most are actually all to happy to abandon that title, actually)....when there aren't any more Libros (books) to bibliographically control and lend out...and proscribing this state of affairs as the sublime ideal toward which all libraries should strive...because it's so damn sexy...like I said, I thought we humanistic librarians had beat back that particular form of madness in the late 1990s, but the struggle continues. In all the high tech hoopla, there seems to be an unspoken disdain for those of us who still give a damn about books-in-print, about cultivating a love of reading for its own sake, and critical thinking about that reading. Not always, not a 100%, and yes, there are some interesting technology applications out there that are seeking to reinforce the construction of communities of readers, etc. All to the good. But Humanists, don't let your guard down, not for a minute.

Format DOES matter. Read your McLuhan, read Walt Crawford, Michael Gorman, Neil Postman, etc.

Or LC's Thomas Mann, too, for that matter, who is an L.I.S. Demigod second only to Sandford Berman, in my personal pantheon. I just ordered his Oxford Guide to Library Research off of Amazon.com, because dammit, if I'm going to repackage myself as a reference librarian I might as well learn from the best. Mann is a Reference specialist, but he also displays a deep and abiding understanding of subject cataloging and its uses; he also has a deep and abiding understanding of the folly of current LC Administration, and doesn't shy from letting that knowledge shine forth either. I also happen to like his namesake in the Modern German literary Canon as well, as a footnote.

Mann offers a robust defense of the primacy of printed books-on-paper for all research save the hard sciences (and related fields like Engineering). Mann believes passionately in the continuing mission of the research library in support of scholarly enterprise, and rightly eschews "trendy" concerns and buzzwords about "market-share", "competition with other info providers", etc, dismissing them as inappropriate business metaphors butting in where they truly don't belong.

It's unpopular to say so, but "Information Capitalism" and its affiliated ideology that runs through and is embedded in the very guts of so much contemporary high technology, is very much on the offensive against the ideology of traditional librarianship, because it is part of Capital's wider struggle against public sector/social institutions for supremacy, or as Bill Hicks would say (or rather, softly scream) "...sticking a goddamn dollar sign in front of every fucking thing on this planet."

"It's like I'm caught in a fucking web", Hicks said, in reflection.

And how, brother, and how. Yes, it's fucking maddening, it is complex, and it really IS all interconnected.

Am I the Bill Hicks of Librarianship...?

I swear sometimes it feels like I'm the f*cking Bill Hicks of Librarianship. Or Sam Kinison.

I can easily imagine this scene in other LIS people's head:

AggieLibrarian (as played by Sam Kinison): "...@#)*$@!$$@!!!!"

Casual mainstream LIS observer or Average Library patron (as played by Rodney Dangerfield): " He really seems to care!! (whispering) ...about what I have NO idea...."

Sam K. died too young, but I do think he was at peace when he went. He regretted his earlier homophobia and apologized. I had it to, until someone close to me came out of their closet and changed my life for the better, forever, giving me the courage to cast off old hatreds and prejudices through the power of love I had for a friend whom I loved like a brother, and without whom I probably wouldn't be here right now.

Like Bill Hicks, though, I rant, scream, try to get people to laugh AND think at the same time, and probably end up just pissing half the people off.

I bring Bill up for a number of reasons; One, although like me, he wasn't born in this city of Houston, he was profoundly shaped by his living here. He got his start here. He's one of us, always and forever.

Two, like Bill Hicks, I too have been approached by someone and asked "What are you readin' for?"; Not "what are you reading?", which is a reasonable question, but "What are you readin' for?" (actually, I was specifically asked in fewer words..."why are you reading?"). My reaction was much like Bill's. Bill relates that he was asked this question by a pancake house waitress, who added "you can just flip on the 'tube..."; Bill looked back with disdain and disgust and said "It's not the same". "Part of why I read is...so I don't end up a waitress in a Pancake House."; My response, just about as cruel, "...because this book is probably more interesting to me than you are."; Of course, I used to read in bars, which is admittedly a little bit eccentric. I try to stick to venues where caffeine & nicotine are the drugs of choice offered instead. Things tend to go smoother for us readers there. "Looks like we got ourselves a READER", said a burly Trucker to Bill Hicks, in the same aforementioned Pancake House. Nobody ever said that to me, admittedly, and it's a good thing, too, because that's about the creepiest declaration I can imagine ever hearing about myself. My ears would definitely be pricking up listening for the dueling banjos at that point.

Three, because I've been watching a lot of the best of Bill Hicks lovingly archived on YouTube lately, and it's been a true Zen bliss experience, in the midst of laughing my ass off, and of just plain feeling the rage, along with Bill, at his angriest moments. He died so young. But you can't say he didn't live life to the fullest, when he did speak, he spoke/lectured...no SCREAMED FROM HIS HEAARRRRTTT!!!

That's your barbaric yawlp right there, my fellow Dead Poets' Society members; He was a man of passion who died young. As the Billy Joel song says, only the Good Die Young. But even if you do make it to a ripe old age, despair not--for if you remain young in your HEART, you too, shall die YOUNG. Only the GOOD die young, regardless of physical age. You dig?

Peace, bro.

CHE excerpt & my rant, er, response (comment #5)

Excerpted from the Chronicle on Higher Education...

(sidebar: the original editorial referenced here appeared first in the Washington Post and was reprinted in the Houston Chronicle in the past few days, which is where I read it; It depressed the crap out of me. I think it was an accurate depiction of the way things are and are going, but as I remarked to my mom, that doesn't mean I have to like it...)

=====================================================

January 23, 2007

Wanted: Librarian. Book Lovers Need Not Apply.

As more and more librarians become "media specialists" or "information technologists," what happens to librarians who remain chiefly interested in collecting books, not in promoting information literacy? They get a bit jaundiced, writes Thomas Washington, the librarian at a school in the Washington area.

In an editorial for The Washington Post, Mr. Washington bristles at the notion that libraries should be helping students navigate "the digital forest of information overload" instead of getting people to the stacks:

The buzzword in the trade is "information literacy," a misnomer, because what it is really about is mastering computer skills, not promoting a love of reading and books. These days, librarians measure the quality of returns in data-mining stints. We teach students how to maximize a database search, about successful retrieval rates. What usually gets lost in the scramble is a careful reading of the material.

Mr. Washington's skeptical take on information-literacy training is debatable. But the piece is worth reading because of its underlying point: that bibliophiles may find modern library jobs unrewarding. Have the requirements for library work changed over the past decade, or is Mr. Washington romanticizing the past? --Brock Read

Posted on Tuesday January 23, 2007 | Permalink |

Comments

1. Mr. Washington is forgetting that books are just a vehicle for getting ideas and information to others. There is nothing wrong with being a lover of books but I bet the monks that wrote on parchment felt much the same way as Mr. Washington
   when Gutenberg printed his first books. It is the information that is important, not the medium!

   — Bill Drew Jan 23, 05:01 PM #

2. As a parent, I think it is my job to promote a love of lifelong learning which for me includes “a love of reading and books”.

   As a librarian, it is my job to help others find the books, information and data that promote their love of lifelong learning. That love of learning may be enriched in the laboratory, in the field, in a national park, in the coffee shop or in library stacks.

   “Information literacy” may be jargon, but it is also a necessary set of skills that will enable lifelong learners of this century to pursue their passion in a world that is very different from the 20th century. “Information literacy” refers to a set of skills that will prepare our children to participate in a 21st century global workforce.

   — Terry B Jan 23, 05:38 PM #

3. I think the key phrase that I took away from Washington’s article is the following: “ What usually gets lost in the scramble is a careful reading of the material.” My own perceptions of working in the academic library field has been that the newer technologies, unlike the more traditional monograph, make it far easier to deal in snippets-“paper soundbites”, if you will-rather than truly wrestling with academic content. Utilizing the book format is more likely to force a student to devote the time to understanding their work topic; the newer web technologies of the past decade have definitely made it easier to be distracted, to click on that next embedded link, to not read the whole document, etc-in short, to not really follow through with the “guts” of research that are often needed for true mastery.

   — Shannon R. Jan 23, 06:00 PM #

4. My job, as librarian, is to facilitate access to information…in any format. It’s exciting to discover what else we have access to electronically every day. It’s equally thrilling to find just the right article or book for a patron.

   It would be better if students and the public in general did not believe that “everything they need, information wise, is available on the Internet for free.” Not everything is available on the Internet and the scholarly databases are not free. Sometimes patrons have to find information “the old fashioned way”; in a book. There again, formats have changed with the evolution of ebooks. They’re great resources.

   After finding the information, it’s important to read the material and then apply critical thinking skills to determine how the information fits into essays and term papers.

   I agree with the author of comment #1, it’s the ideas that are presented that are important. The format is irrelevant.

   Electronic formats facilitate access to more information for more people. It’s a win win situation and just as exciting and rewarding for this librarian.

   — P A Martin Jan 23, 06:18 PM #

5. (THIS IS MINE, aka AggieLibrarian: ) Reader & commenter #4 wrote:“I agree with the author of comment #1, it’s the ideas that are presented that are important. The format is irrelevant.” No! No! No! Marshall McLuhan must be rolling in his grave! and Neil Postman with him! Anyone remember this observation of his: “The Medium is the Message” Responses like #1’s and #4’s are typical mainstream LIS “received wisdom” that everybody learns to regurgitate on command from Library school onward, but it reminds me immediately of one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotes: “For every difficult and complicated question there is an answer that is simple, easily understood, and WRONG.” Books, that is to say, the Codex, is not just another vehicle, it is the BEST vehicle for extended, expository prose writing. Electronic has its place, but the last library I was in was so head-in-the-clouds about the latest and greatest electronic wicky-boo, that their physical collection, when I examined it, was horribly outdated. I struggled mightily to fix that during my time there, with limited success, but was still looked upon as being utterly quixotic for worrying about the physical collection so. I’m a humanist librarian, I could not do otherwise. Libraries should not be complicit in the dumbing down of Americans…even AV materials we ought to be collecting titles first and foremost that DON’T have high market draw at Blockbuster because of their superior quality…top notch documentary film, educational titles, historical studies, etc. Call me nostalgic, call me a dreamer, call me an idealist, but I stick by the core educative mission of the library. Do you? -JJR
   

Technology Newspeak & Humanistic Librarianship

I got this on another ALA-related discussion list and I couldn't help being taken aback by the rhetoric and tone.

start original blurb here:


==========================================================================================
Subject: ACRL ULS Campus Administration and Leadership Discussion Group

Colleagues -- FYI.

(some Librarian)
(An Academic Library)



What Do You Do When . . . ?




Your library agenda is 21st Century

with dreams of institutional repositories,

open access, digital preservation, Google and Library 2.0.



But your provost's, president's, and chancellor's agendas

are stuck in the 20th Century

with tired old worries about tuition, faculty productivity, and student credit hours.



First, You've Got to Get Their Attention!



Join the ALA Midwinter meeting of the

ACRL ULS Campus Administration and Leadership Discussion Group as we talk about successes and failures

in getting the attention of our bosses and in transforming their agendas into our agenda.



Saturday, January 20, 2007

10:30 am - 12:30 pm

Westin Seattle Room: St. Helens



For more information, e-mail

(same Librarian as above)

Discussion Group Chair


===================================================================================================================
Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

...Anyhow, it's the kind of rhetoric that, after reading critical LIS lit by Thomas Mann of LC, or John Buschman, Rory Litwin, et. al. of PLG, that I'm now quite suspicious of.

I'm a little hesitant to post my "WTF!?" reaction to the original list as a whole, for fear of coming across as a reactionary fuddy-duddy, but...

I read the blurb below..."stuck in the 20th century with 'tired old worries' about tuition, faculty productivity, and student credit hours".

Now, I can only speak about tuition, but with the way it's spiraling upwards, and becoming ever more out of reach for ordinary people, it's still a worry, and quite a 'trendy', 'cutting edge' worry at that!

"...stuck in the 20th Century with tired old worries about tuition, faculty productivity, and student credit hours."

the subtext practically sneers: "and heaven help you if you still care about those even more passe 19th and 18th century ideas about universal literacy, informed citizenry educated to fully participate in democratic life, moral self-improvement, etc, sheeesh...."

>>....with dreams of institutional repositories,
um, okay.

>> open access, <<
empty feel-good buzzword--sounds lovely, but what do you really MEAN?

>>digital preservation,<<
...still highly problematic.

>> Google <<
ditto

and Library 2.0. <<<
--and I still don't fully know what the hell this means, either, precisely.


On a side note, I really enjoyed the hell out of John Buschman's last book, and Ed D'Angelo's new book too, from Library Juice Press; Ed's is a real page turner and packs a lot of good stuff into a tightly bundled package; We (Progressive Librarians) make our arguments forcefully and passionately. But we seem to talk past our opponents in mainstream Library practice, and they politely ignore us. For a change, I'd like to see a well written polemical dust-up, where one of us takes on any one of the more mainstream, uncritical techno-consensus writers and really tries to engage them head on, challenge them and their vision over what librarianship is and ought to be explicitly. I'm not talking about the few self-described "right wing" librarians out there. Screw them. They're willfully stupid. No, I'm talking about more mainstream opinion makers, respectable LITA members all.

I've also come across some of the buzz about the "Second Life Library". My gut reaction is "uh, my first life is quite full & busy enough, thanks."

I'm equally dismayed about "Gaming in Libraries", etc, including some recent articles in American Libraries on the topic that had me pulling my hair out.

I want to sarcastically write...."aw, shit, if only this research had come out earlier, I wouldn't have wasted all that time reading, I would've spent even MORE time goofing off playing Atari 2600, Zork, Ultima III, etc."; Given my age, I keep insisting, sort of against the grain of conventional wisdom, that the 1970s and early 1980s were also part of the "Digital Age".

Some educator wrote an article that my mom, who is a school librarian herself, showed to me not long ago (and now I can't find it, damn it) ...the article was going on and on about the dichtomy between what it termed "digital immigrants" and "digital natives"...contrasting older gen educators & librarians having to learn technology in their later years, to younger people who've always known it, because they were "born" into it. It played on the metaphor of the American immigration experience & cultural assimilation, etc. I wrote a creative response to this (as an email), riffing on the fact that although I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, this was still part of the Digital Age, and thus, people of my age group were like first generation immigrants; we may have been born in "the old country" (pre-high tech age), but we came to "America" (hi-technology) very young; We have a foot in the old and in the new. We learned English (technospeak) but are also familiar with the native language of the "home country" (humanistic, non-technical discourse). We like the new, but still have respect for the old ways...It was an email I sent to my mom, and no, I didn't save it, nor did she. I do that too much. I write very philosophical, introspective emails then never save them.

It seemed as though, for a bright shining moment, from, say, 1998 thru 2002, the Humanists had won the battle, made the All-Digital Brigades look foolish, and achieved a truce recognizing the need to balance out viable print collections with augmented, cutting edge electronic resources, especially in the area of serials and serials management, or high-demand, high-circulation monographic items being augmented with their Ebook equivalent as needed.

But with the two successive Bush administrations, the Digital/Info-Capitalistic barbarians are renewing their assault.

One of the ironic things about PLG, SRRT, and all the so-called "Left/radical" library groupings is that, although in the realm of Politics we are all Liberals, Radicals, Leftists, Populists, etc.
in the realm of Librarianship, narrowly defined, we are indeed the TRUE CONSERVATIVES of Librarianship...in the best sense of the term, in the same sense that Neil Postman declared himself a conservative and further declared that in comparison, Ronald Reagan was not.

Conservative in the sense of "to conserve", to fight for the best of the Humanistic (& largely Anglo-American) library tradition in opposition to the crass, vulgarizing, "market-based", hi-tech/technocratic approach to libraries. That Humanistic tradition of libraries which is a socialism that-dare-not-speak-its-name. And the force behind the assault on that tradition is the ideology of free market fundamentalism, inextricably bound up with high technology, transforming from the paper society to the "pay-per" society as Vincent Mosco so neatly puts it.

Soneone recently coined a valuable turn of phrase...."the new Digital Dark Ages", bemoaning declining real, informed literacy despite burgeoning electronic resources. Of course, it's not all bad...some of my best news and info comes from the web, especially from Alternative and Independent sources. My dad watches CNN, FOX and MSNBC nearly every day for hours, while I get my info from emailed alternative news aggregators and websites and blogs. Guess who's better informed. My dad will continually come up to me with "new" breaking stories in the MSM that I've known about for months, in some cases. Even when using just MSM sources, I don't restrict myself to US sources. I regularly read CBC, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Moscow Times, Liberacion, L'Humanite, Australian Broadcasting Corp, Asia Times, etc.

Of course, the move against "Net Neutrality" is a ham-firsted attempt to "ghetto-ize" alternative/independent, uncontrollable sources of news and information.

Well, anyway, enough babbling from me. Peace.

-JJR

Intellectual Property run amok, or a DMCA-inspired Aggie Joke

Why I hate intellectual property lawyers and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act….Exhibit A

This is the kind of crap that Siva Vaidhyanathan, Jessica Litman & others are warning us about. This is the kind of actions that are emboldened by legal raw deals like the DMCA.

I'm normally a 2%'er WHEN IT COMES TO AGGIELAND, but this story makes my blood run boiling MAROON.

-JJR '93

===================================================================================

UT sues Aggie retailer over
'saw em off'

10:27 AM CST on Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Associated Press

COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- The University of Texas is countering a jab from an Aggie business owner by taking him to court over his “saw em off” variation of the familiar Longhorn logo.

'Saw em off' lawsuit

The UT System Board of Regents claims in its lawsuit that Fadi Kalaouze’s merchandise adorned with an inverted Longhorn logo with its horns detached is a trademark infringement.

The lawsuit argues that Kalaouze, a 1991 Texas A&M University graduate and the owner of two College Station stores, is illegally using a design that tarnishes and mutilates the trademarked Longhorn logo.

“This is not a dispute with Texas A&M. It is a dispute with a private company that is unfairly profiting from use of the UT logo and at the same time mutilating the logo,” said Craig Westemeirer, director of the University of Texas Office of Trademark Licensing.

Kalaouze contends that his emblem is a parody and is protected by the First Amendment. He said in court filings that the lawsuit is a “legally baseless display of poor sportsmanship.”

The lawsuit filed last month names Kalcorp, which is owned by Kalaouze and is the parent company for both of his stores. It seeks a permanent injunction to stop the company from selling the symbol, as well as attorneys fees, damages and the company’s profits from selling the emblem.

UT’s lawsuit says that the “saw em off” logo, which has been placed on merchandise such as T-shirts and bumper stickers, could confuse consumers because of its similarity to the Longhorn logo.

Kalaouze said nobody would mistake his emblem for the actual Longhorn logo, and he doesn’t believe any Longhorn supporters have accidentally purchased one of his shirts or stickers. He has established a Web site to raise money for his legal fight.

“We honestly don’t believe anyone is confusing this logo with their logo. We have been sawing their horns off for many years,” Kalaouze said. “We just want to make sure the tradition lives on.”

Westemeirer said the UT logo is “one of the most recognized brands in America” and must be protected.

“We want to present the logo as a consistent image to the public — that is not possible if others, such as the defendants, modify or mutilate the logo,” he said.

Mike Huddleston, Texas A&M’s vice president for business development, said Texas A&M would likely have taken similar action if it faced the same scenario as UT.

“I’m just surprised it took them so long,” Huddleston said.

Oh, Really, Mr. Huddleston!? Way to boof your buddies there, as we used to say in the Corps. They (UT) don't have a case, this is clearly SATIRE and PARODY, and I hope this case gets laughed out of court. I hope this case is NOT heard by a judge who graduated from either school--lest accusations of bias come in...give us a Rice judge or a Baylor judge. A Rice judge especially, since PARODY and SATIRE are the lifeblood of the Marching Owl Band ("M.O.B.").

The UT "brand" isn't diminished by these parodies, though stupid lawsuits like this only reinforce the negative "T(ea)-sip" stereotype. It's not diminished anymore than a parody of the TAMU logo, like the clever " E-aTm-E " (eat me) graffiti I've sometimes seen in Austin. I wouldn't be offended if this was put on a T-shirt. I'd laugh. Hell, the Aggie "mascot", Rock a.k.a. "Ol' Sarge", is in large measure SELF-parody. Everyone knows Aggies write the best Aggie jokes. The A&M "brand" capitalizes on a kind of "aw, shucks" self-parody, as does this blog, for that matter ;-) Rice U has some of the self-deprecating humor, like putting upside down the bumper stickers that read "I must be smart, I go to Rice".

I remember during library school there was earnest and quite serious discussion about reinventing the UNT "Brand", what it symbolized, etc. etc. I could not take any of it seriously, no matter how hard I tried (which, admittedly, wasn't very), no matter how much these pontificators DEMANDED to be taken seriously, and took seriously their own project.

It is just another sad symbol of how powerfully the ideology of Marketing, Spin, and PR and extreme hyper-capitalism have corrupted what remains of the already corroded and anemic Realm of Ideas in these United States. No idea, no matter how ridiculous, will be dismissed or ignored so long as it invokes the ideology and language of marketing and the nostalgia for stalwart American business mytholgies.

One of the last films hosted by the currently defunct Texas Film Festival on the A&M campus was the documentary on Ron English, the subversive Pop-o-ganda rebel artist. Ron would make an excellent "expert witness" for a case like this.

More ramblings later. Gig 'em.