Aggie Librarian throws a bone to the techno geeks

Well, I had dismissed it as a silly fad/trend; I believed it was something all the young kids were into but something I had no use for. Then I heard about a colleague at work downloading MP3s of audiobooks from Houston Public Library. I did a little research. I noticed that Deutsche Welle, the German News service, had some of these here "podcasts" available. Some in English, some in German, some in other languages. Then I thought about the possibilities a little. Did some price comparisons, some shopping around online, and made my decision.

Giddy as a schoolgirl in love, I rushed out to my local big box store and up and bought myself an iPod. Specifically the iPod nano. More memory than the iPod shuffle, not quite as big (storage wise) as the latest high end model. Just in the middle, just Goldilocks right. I liked the GUI display, because I needed that interactivity to be sure I knew what the heck I was doing, for good or ill.

It was late Saturday evening when I acquired the thing, so I put it aside and went to bed; next morning I got up like it was Xmas morning to try out my new toy. Shame, too, since it was the first dry, sunny Sunday we've had in awhile in SE Texas...oh well. It took a little while to get things hooked up, charged up, fired up, etc. But with enough time, I downloaded bona fide podcasts from GERMANY. AUF DEUTSCH! EHRLICH! JA, also WIRKLICH!

I do sometimes listen to DW on shortwave radio. Sometimes it's really good, other times, the quality of the signal leaves a lot to be desired--and even when I get a clear signal, the program itself is sometimes boring; pretty mixed bag.

But the podcasts? Goodness! Crystal clear sound quality, and I can pick and choose between various programs...and not just Deutsche Welle, either but also Süddeutsche Rundfunk, and other traditional brodcasters turned "Podcasters". And I can listen at MY leisure, to a whole slew of quality German programming--and the best part? ALL OF IT FOR FREE. NOT ONE RED CENT! Wow.

Let the kids keep paying to download the newest Green Day album or whatever, I'm plugging into Deutsche Welle, et. al. for FREE and LOVING IT.

My only regret? Man, not playing with this sh*t sooner, because I failed to realize the true, non-standard artsy/humanistic possibilities beyond the commercial hip-cool hype.

Now, I remain dubious that there's much call for LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE PODCASTING "an sich", i.e. of and for itself, nor that Libraries can really do much other than podcast short PSAs like commercials, to those who might be remotely interested...brief library news like "the hours this week are...", "the speakers this week are...", or "the Fort Bend County Sierra Club meets upstairs in Room X of Library Y on Wednesday this week", etc.

I guess it's cheaper than real radio adverts, but how many potential users to you HONESTLY think you'd reach? I mean think about it--for the imaginary "typical" library podcast listener, you're talking about A) someone who actually knows what podcasting is, period--that cuts out a large chunk of the population right there. B) not only knows what it is but knows how to subscribe and C) actually cares enough about the local library to SUBSCRIBE to its podcast and listen to it among thousands of other podcast choices round the globe. Which means, basically unemployed librarians like me who are also ravenous bibliophiles AND moderately technophilic to boot. So yeah, *I* would subscribe to my local library's podcasts, if they had one. And maybe the handful of UNT SLIS students who live in the greater Houston Metro area any given academic year--maybe. If you put it on the library's web page, explained it, pushed it in your print newsletter, handed out fliers...maybe that number would inch up a tad, but...

On a different LIS tac, is podcast content worth cataloging? At an entity level, probably not. As a note field in a larger record for a resource, sure, we can catalog the RSS feed and put it as a link in a MARC record or something...maybe even tweak the ILS to make it interactive--give you an "iTunes" button to press, or at least a link to a page where you can do so...not everyone is swift enough to do the manual way of podcast subscribing (cutting & pasting the URL of the feed, etc INTO iTunes or similar software).

Podcasts, like weblogs, are fun because they change frequently. New content is regularly downloaded to iTunes and ready for uploading/synching onto your iPod when you plug it in to recharge the battery, etc. I do need to get a stand-alone charger so I don't have to reformat the iPod every time I want to recharge it. I know I could switch off the automatic update on the thing, but for now I don't bother. I also need to get a car charger. I also need to see if my other portable MP3 player/CD player's "cassette adapter" thingy will fit the iPod or not. If not I'll have to get an iPod compatable cassette adapter so I can listen to iPod content while driving as well; yeah, my car doesn't have an internal CD player, so the only way I can listen to CDs and CD-based audiobooks is by an external, portable CD player designed for use with car cassette tape deck sound systems. It's less than ideal, but it works...or works well enough.

Anyway, the librarian in me is mildly curious about podcasts, while the ex-German Studies Master's student in me... ist TOTAL BEGEISTERT! SUPERGEIL! MENSCH, TOLL!

Apple, Inc. probably never strongly considered, or at best only vaguely considered, as good advertising fluff, this particular, peculiarly transnational use of iPod...because it's not a monetized area of the Info-Economy (yet), but it is a profound tool for promoting the understanding, learning, and appreciation of foreign languages and cultures...while we can still keep industrial/hi-tech society running, that is, before the next, quite inevitable, dark ages of post cheap Petroleum. Petroleum Man's days are very numbered indeed. International Podcasting literally is a "last chance to see/experience/hear/feel", so don't miss out!

Another Quite Nice Thing about Podcasting is, unlike Ham radio and "pirate" radio, Podcasting is completely legal, basically free (once the requisite equipment is purchased, high speed internet connection set up, and correct software installed), completely unregulated, and basically an anarchic commune unspoilt by commercial diktat. I suppose among the Podcast cognocenti, if you're good enough, interesting enough, word of mouth gets around and your subscribers will come to you. Like blogs, though, you have to keep up the output or people lose interest and go elsewhere. Sure, if you were good enough--professional enough--people *might* pay for that content; But the thing I love about the Blogosphere, and about the Podcast universe, is that it often shows the proverbial emperor with no clothes on, i.e. the so-called Experts may be well paid and have a bigger megaphone, but reduced to a level playing field, their actual intellectual prowess next to autodidactically-inclined "amateurs" isn't as stunning as you might in fact imagine, and in fact are sometimes embarrassingly cut down to size. It shows up the real operation of illegitimate POWER in the world, revealing a bit more iron fist through the velvet glove than most of the elites are comfortable with. This is something, I admit, that my hero Michael Gorman doesn't quite get, doesn't seem to recognize the glass-half-full side of the argument. We Librarians by training tend almost instinctively to genuflect to "authorized sources of information" as a kind of Holy Grail. It's been the long term mission goals of PLG and SRRT to disabuse Librarians of that ultimately misguided reflex; We've had mixed results, but keep on trying. Sure, it's still a worthwhile yardstick, and a good rule of thumb, but practiced blindly it blinds one, too, to the role of (illegitimate) Power in the world. That's what we have to be on guard against.

Anyway, sure, there's a commercial side of MP3 production & sale, etc, but there's also a lot of content out there of high quality that is just given away out of love by those producing the material, whose primary purpose is to spread knowledge and enlighten rather than make money. It's a damn beautiful thing, so let's enjoy the heck out of it while it lasts. It's very much in the spirit of what Librarianship is about, after all. This instrument (the iPod) can teach, but only to the extent that we use it for such ends.

Crisis in Public Librarianship - some local stories.

There's been a good discussion on SRRT and PLG circles about an ongoing crisis in Public Librarianship, and luckily for me, I was able to contribute something to that discussion from our local media, specifically our local mass market "indy" rag, The Houston Press.

here is the original local Houston story I contributed to the discussion:

Houston Public Library, Fondren Southwest gets a mini-library

As told to Richard Connelly

Published: June 21, 2007 (The Houston Press)

The Morris Frank branch of the Houston Public Library sits near the intersection of West Bellfort and Fondren, an area that's been ground zero for Katrina evacuees and ensuing problems with violence.

It's a tough environment for a kid — or anyone who likes reading, we guess — to grow up in, but the city has good news: You're getting a new library!!

Umm, just don't expect many books in it.

The library system was planning a renovation of the Frank branch, which has foundation problems. They discovered, unfortunately, that new studies now place the building squarely within the 100-year flood plain.

"We'd either have to lift the building up 18 inches or build a two-foot berm all the way around it, and there wasn't enough money to do that," says Tim Douglass, chief of staff for city council member Anne Clutterbuck.

There wasn't enough money to build a completely new similarly sized branch, so the neighborhood is getting what the Houston Public Library System is calling "an exciting concept" known as "HPL Express."

What's an HPL Express? It's a rented storefront that holds about half the 90,000 items that the Frank branch currently has.

"It'll have all the popular books, it just won't have a plethora of books," Douglass says.

But there'll be plenty of computers, says the HPL's Greg Simpson, and anyone who wants a book that isn't on the shelves can order it and pick it up a couple of days later.

On the one hand, this idea sounds like an innovative way to stretch scarce dollars. On the other hand, it sounds awfully like Metro, which promised light rail to low-income neighborhoods but is now instead offering special buses that kinda, sorta look like trains.

"Could somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about, who doesn't understand the concept, who doesn't see the betterness they're getting, could they complain?" says Douglass. "Maybe, but the alternative is nothing. The alternative is closing the Frank branch completely."

"I think it's just going to be a matter of us educating our customers how to use the facility," Simpson says. "But we're excited about it and think it's going to work great."

Future HPL Expresses — including one in the similarly troubled Gulfton neighborhood — might offer only a "very small collection" of books. Future sites might be entirely book-free. But those sites will be in addition to existing libraries, not replacing full facilities like the Frank branch.

Ah, what the hell — it's not like kids today are reading anyway. Maybe HPL should just set up a Facebook page and be done with it.

A colleague and close friend responded with these observations:

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Thanks for posting. This is something to be concerned about. We might call this HPL Express a Library Lite or a Fast Food Library. It appears it will function in a similar way that fast food functions to real food. I don't need to remind people on this list that customers love fast food, unfortunately it is not good for their health. And a library without intelligent books is not good for democracy.

This is a good illustration of a library getting out of the knowledge and education venue and moving to solely focus on entertaining (pacifying?) their "customers" with only popular works (known in some circles as crap or fluff). In theory, this HPL Express will feed the mind but it is really only full of empty calories. It will look like a library, but will most likely have none of those awkward resources that might actual assist a person in becoming an engaged citizen. I am betting that they will be sure to order a copy of Paris Hilton's autobiography as soon as it is published
-M

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I responded thus:
Thanks, M! It is also an illustration of our disposable consumer-culture mentality....there is no longer a willingness, as there was in the age of the great Carnegie Libraries, which coincided with the historical Beautiful City* (?) movement of the late 19th and early 20th century (now championed by the New Urbanism school of architecture, of which James Howard Kunstler is a passionate devotee)...there is no longer that willingness to build structures intended to last beyond the lifetimes of those building it, to pass down that permanent building as a legacy for the ages, etc....

There was money enough in HPL's budget to utterly renovate the downtown main Branch library (still ongoing as of this writing)...but the Main Branch library is in the heart of the downtown Business district, and has a not inconsiderable business clientelle, with a considerable ECON/BUSINESS section taking up most of the entire 2nd floor. So there are race and class issues that intersect here as well. The "either/or" choice posited is utterly false & misleading.

I suppose it would be also impertinent to ask if there is any Gates Foundation seed money propping up McLibrary projects like HPL Express storefronts, etc, since they will have "plenty of computers". Inquiring minds want to know.

There used to be a provocative show on KPFT 90.1, locally produced by some University of Houston faculty, called "Class Notes", which tackled local issues from a class perspective. Since its content was very intellectual, it did not have a broad appeal and perhaps because of its inability to raise more funding dollars compared to other programming (like World Music or Lone Star Jukebox or Democracy Now!), it was eventually dropped from the lineup. This Houston Press story would've been perfect for the "Class Notes" show to treat at length. I suppose we should be glad the Houston Press at least gave the blurb it did. I don't think the story even made it in the Houston Chronicle.

--JJR

*sorry, don't have a copy of GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE or HOME FROM NOWHERE handy to look this up and verify the name.

Incidentally, my own posting of the Houston Press story was inspired by an SRRT contributor who reposted this story to PLG/SRRT circles:

==============================================
"...Someone recently posted this article about Sacramento librarians
concerned that the Sacramento Public Library is becoming too 'pop-
fixated' :

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/190564.html

I am reposting it because what is happening at SPL is not an isolated
phenomenon. I have seen the same sort of restructuring taking place
at public libraries in PA..." [snip]

(-from a concerned SRRT member)
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POST-SCRIPT: The "Give 'em what they want" vs. "Give 'em what they need" argument goes as far back as Socrates/Plato, who expressed dismay at the position of the philosopher in society, comparing his position vis a vis the huckstering sophist to that of the nutritionist versus the confectionery-maker in trying to sway little children. The Confectionery-maker has what the kids ostensibly want ("sweets and treats" ) but the nutritionist knows what the children need (a well-balanced diet, with sweets only in moderation). And yet the nutritionist very much has an uphill battle to persuade the children to take what he's offering versus what the candy-man has.

-JJR, aka "Aggie Librarian"

PPS: All of this is bound up with issues discussed at length by the latest books from John Buschman (Dismantling the Public Sphere) and Ed D'Angelo (Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library). One wonders if HPL Express would be a hip/new "innovation" *shudder* of the sort that ISC's otherwise sensible John Pateman approves of, rather than fuddy-duddy "old fashioned" libraries serving only "narrow middle class interests".

More "Let them Eat Pixels!", In my view. (-jjr)