So far, so good...

De Lange Conference, Day 1.

This is a bit of a re-cap, but also a bit of a rambling rant, so please forgive my going off on tangents. This post is also a day late, my apologies.

So far, so good vis a vis the De Lange conference. Despite a last minute change of speakers, the conference got off to a flying start. It was delightful to see so many familiar library faces, reminds me just what a small world the library world actually is. Even if the familiarity is mostly one way, i.e. people I’ve seen, interacted with. I even ran into a reader of this blog, which was for me a bit stage-fright inducing. I wanted to say “Me? I’m no Michael Stephens, I’m no Shifted Librarian, you’ll never see me in American Libraries, because I’m not a REAL library blogger, I’m just a cranky humanist bibliophile with a computer who spouts off every now and then about libraries…”; But of course I didn’t say that; All I could manage was a weak smile and a dismissive wave of my hand, which probably came across as rather arrogant, which was not my intention at all, but…

The presentations were all very good, very crisp. There were minor technological glitches, but nothing terribly distracting nor detracting from the speakers’ presentations.

One thing about the conference I’ve noted since the beginning is how the scholarly information universes of the Law, and of Science and Technology topics in particular are given emphasis and made to set the tone for the rest of the conference. The watchword is all about the frantic pace of change, about the emphasis on the NOW. It’s sort of déjà vu all over again, as I’m currently reading Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity, wherein they caution about the unprecedented quality of change in their time…change itself changed, they argue, and this is an analysis coming from the 1970s, too, mind you. I’ve no doubt I’m just as fixated on the “rearview mirror”, metaphorically speaking, as Marshall McLuhan warned about in the 1970s.

In President LeeBron’s opening remarks, he noted how something on the order of 95% of contemporary legal research material is available online, but because a book chapter he wrote for a print book was only available in that concrete format, to the contemporary legal researcher, it may as well not exist. Of course, his name would appear in a well indexed OPAC online with copious formatted note information in the 505 field in the bibliographic record for that book, which could then be ordered via ILL if not available in the host institution’s library. Fire up the ol’ Z39.50 and….(yawn). But administrators nowadays probably frown on that as not being good, cost-effective cataloging. Damn catalogers striving for that “perfect” bib record again, what’s a cost-conscious administrator to do…

But of course LeeBron’s book chapter does exist, as do other carefully written monographs on legal theory, legal history, etc. I’m particularly fond of Louis Menand’s writings devoted to Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, tying this American’ jurist’s legal understanding to wider currents in uniquely American Intellectual History and Philosophy. Of course, contemporary law students probably don’t have time to peruse such ancillary material; I wouldn’t know--though considering Rice’s most notable contribution to American jurisprudence has been Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, perhaps it’s high time they did.

While I appreciated the talk on Open Access Education, the telltale problem emerged in the Q&A about MIT’s open courseware being only available in “locked” PDF format, with authors/contributors, still, quite naturally, expecting a royalty stream for their intellectual labor, and somewhat hindering the capacity to create/rip/mix/burn these products in new and innovative ways. It’s a sticking problem that LC’s Thomas Mann has highlighted before, and it won’t be going away anytime soon. Creative Commons is a partial solution I'm eager to hear more about.

One thing encouraging I drew from this first presentation is professors taking scholarly information production into their own hands. It is sort of an unspoken truth in scholarly publication that producing an undergraduate textbook is in some ways the “kiss of death” when it comes to the publish-or-perish nature of the contemporary Academic world. That being acknowledged generally does not obviate the need for such textbooks to be produced, some way some how. I think that Professor Baraniuk has found an innovative way to collectively share the burden of producing good textbooks collaboratively; It’s an endeavor that doesn’t have much going for it for the individual academic author…even if a textbook is successful, it hasn’t tended to garner the author much acclaim in academic circles for his or her efforts. With a more collaborative model, experts can contribute smaller, article-length sections to a collaborative work, and also open the field up to other potential authors, such as community college instructors, who would not otherwise have a venue for getting published at all in the academic publishing marketplace.

It’s also great that Professor Baraniuk wants to save community college students money by producing textbooks more cheaply. We could also offer more scholarships and grants, but that’s evidently not an option. In activist circles we call this mainstream outlook of resignation “TINA” = there is no alternative.

I also got to thinking, that, on the other hand, traditional publishing is no less an exercise in creating, ripping, mixing and burning…quoting primary as well as secondary sources, current articles, and drawing connections between them not previously established, etc. It hasn’t been that long ago since I finished and defended my MA thesis. I didn’t burn CD ROMs, true, I was still using quaint floppy discs in those days. Nowadays I’d probably use a USB Flash drive.

But I do appreciate what Connexions can do for textbook publishing in particular, and I agree with him that more academic recognition is due to those academics who take time to contribute to collaborative works that become widely used and generally successful. It’s a good way of spreading the risk around for an academic author, who is thus able to do his or her part to ensure there remain up-to-date, quality teaching materials in his or her field, while at the same time perhaps having more time to devote to individual research leading to the production of the individual research monograph in his or her field.

I myself make modest contributions to LISwiki, when the mood strikes me and I don’t have anything much else better to do.

Michael A. Keller’s talk went from imminently reasonable to—for me at least--seemingly half-crazy so fast it was disorienting. His talk proceeded at such a breakneck pace I really do have trouble recalling it now. He started to loose me, I think, when he talked of reducing on-site staff to a few paraprofessionals to handle the shrinking books collection and only needing a few “Cybrarians” to manage the digital resources, make linkages, etc. Once they got to the 2^nd Life Demonstration, I was already tuning out and burying my head in my copy of the Winter issue of Progressive Librarian. I’ve played too many games of Quake to care much about 2^nd Life. Keller himself noted while 2^nd Life is “interesting”, it wasn’t his conception of what a digital library would look like either.

I was deeply impressed by the presentation on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, looks like they’re doing wonderful work over there, and I wish them great success, especially in promoting more universal literacy, building civil society, etc. We in the West all retain a soft spot in our hearts for the original library at Alexandria. Part of me had the nagging thought of “yes, but how are you going to keep this thing running in an age of post-Peak Oil energy scarcity? It’s a situation that is not going to be kind to a library like this…”, but then again, it’s a situation that’s not going to be kind to ANY of us, and part of me can’t help but say “since this is pretty much a one shot deal, and we are at the maximal productive capacity for humanity, why NOT go for broke while it lasts...”

I overheard a snippet of conversation at lunch that I think, incidentally, captured quite well the overall theme of the conference. A person at my table remarked something to the effect of: “I barely have time to read things in my field, much less anything for pleasure or personal interest.”

More time-crunching, narrowing specialization, causing perhaps a more pronounced tunnel vision effect. I read somewhere recently that a good definition of a fanatic is someone who, having forgot his aim, redoubles his efforts.

I certainly wish I’d taken more time to prepare for this conference myself. I crammed in between sessions during breaks and it still wasn’t enough.

Now, it’s certainly true that in fields like the natural sciences, engineering, information science and computer science, legal studies, etc. the pace of change is so rapid that staying current in one’s field means keeping abreast of the latest scholarly journal publications, etc, and so much of that completely of necessity online because anything we stopped to print in large numbers would already be obsolete before the ink was even dry.

This is not so much the case in the Humanities, however. Not so for History, nor Fine Arts, nor Foreign Language instruction, nor general Cultural Studies, etc. There is some spillover speed-up effect in some sections of these broad research areas, but in the main these disciplines more with slower, more deliberative, more contemplative speed.

I am a lover of the printed book, that’s for sure, but I’ll be the first one to stand up and cheer for innovative teaching methods, where students don’t just read, they DO something. I had the very good fortune to participate during my undergraduate college career, in a German-language drama production at Texas A&M, which put on plays every Spring semester in Rudder Theater. The first time I participated, I had a limited speaking role. I progressed through more and more complex roles, finally winning the lead role in the main play my final year. It was an innovative living language laboratory, insofar as it permitted students of all levels, from beginners with non-speaking walk-on roles, to intermediate students with minor speaking roles, to advanced students with the leading roles all participating and collaborating together in the production of the stage drama. We did all of our own set design, tech booth work, etc. It was a labor of love, mostly driven by the passion and charisma of the professors involved.

A quick and dirty Google search using the terms “drama as language teaching tool” yielded some interesting results, but mostly about drama in the context of EFL classrooms, and only a few pertaining to use in foreign language instruction besides English. Perhaps there are ways to offer innovative electronic resources to enhance such instruction, but what it boils down to is having the available theatre space and allotted time to use it, having plain old books on how to do set-design on a budget, then actually doing the sets; books on how to do proper stage lighting, filters, etc. Perhaps some virtual reality could come into play on set-design, especially visualizing lighting effects, though the real proof comes out in rehearsal in the actual theatre space. The library also has to have the original text of the drama for students to memorize their lines and the overall stage directions. A really in-depth study would also incorporate a bibliography of secondary literature/criticism of the drama itself in English, especially to give first year students a better sense of what the play is about.

It was far and above one of the most rewarding educational experiences I ever went through, and it had been done a few years prior to my participation, and a few years after, but once the key professors involved in the play production moved on, retired, etc, and once the core of interested students graduated and moved on, the project ceased operation.

Call me cynical, but I don’t see much institutional support being forthcoming for such innovative educational projects in the Humanities. Morover, the ever anticipated great electronic resources for the Humanities are always just round the corner, ever lagging behind, since I started paying attention to these things in the late 1990s. Yes, there are some wonderful things out there, but in comparison to what is out there for the natural sciences and engineering disciplines...To borrow a line from one of my favorite films of recent years it’s a “Long wait for a train don’t never come.”; The fact is, the bulk of work in the humanities remains bound to printed works, extended expository prose in book form, and deep readings and discussions of said works. Knowledge “production” is admittedly slower in our fields than in the natural sciences and engineering, much to the consternation of the previous Malcolm Gillis administration towards my former department, which no longer offers advanced degrees in my field. One of their chief complaints was that our production of PhDs was far too slow, but such is simply the nature of the beast. Our work is more artisan, more individual. We don’t just set up experiments in a lab, then do a write-up of the results. And to those who do produce knowledge in that way, it’s hard to understand those of us who don’t, and to understand why we don’t. One of the reasons I found Edward O. Wilson’s book Consilience so infuriating was because it demonstrated to me clearly the mindset of a Natural Scientist who really just didn’t “get it” about how we do our work in the Humanities and why.

I had the same impression my first time in graduate school, prior to library school, hanging out with fellow graduate students, most of whom were brilliant microbiologists. When they talked shop, I could only vaguely follow at best. Often I was completely lost. I also enjoyed just talking about day to day life, pop culture, life experiences, etc. But when they began to intrude on my turf, and pontificate on history, political economy, etc, I began to stop feeling so inferior to natural scientists, because I realized my own field(s) of knowledge had value, because I realized however distinguished these folks were in biological sciences, they were babbling the most utterly inane horsesh*t when it came to any reasonable understanding of history, sociology, etc.

Regarding all the hype surrounding the “net” generation, I also like to be a little contrarian and point out that when I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, it was already a digital age. I never used DIALOG personally, but it was around in those days. The Atari 2600 is unspeakably crude by today’s standards of the Wii and Playstation 3, but it was no less eye catching and distracting from homework and chores back then as its latter day game consoles are today. But I was also nerdy kid whose parents had the foresight to buy an actual World Book encyclopedia set. It became my best friend and I spent many hours of some days chasing down various threads from topic to related topic. Today I do similarly play with Wikipedia sometimes, but it’s not quite the same. My point is, I did learn to value reading, despite the usual distractions of youth. I took mostly advanced courses in High School, just shy of Honors level courses, but my senior year I found myself so bored by my advanced history class that I petitioned to join Honors History. I actually had to sit down and interview with the teacher, had to talk about the most recent book I’d read, which was American historian William Manchester’s Goodbye, Darkness , his memoir of the Pacific War as a US Marine. I must’ve impressed the teacher sufficiently, because I was admitted to the class. It was a very hard class, and I really struggled all throughout, and only wound up with a B- for the course, but I was more proud of that B- than I ever would’ve been of the A+ I could have gotten sleeping through the Advanced class.

So I’m afraid I don’t much buy arguments about pandering to the learning styles of today’s high tech kids, and don’t get me started about “gaming in libraries”. Yes, we do need to move beyond “read this so you can pass a test about it later”, or “read this because it’s an important part of the cultural heritage—never mind what that means, just trust us.”; The latter justification I faced a lot in high school. Truth is, yes, I do appreciate Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in ways now that I never did as a teenager. But it took a long time for me to reach that level of appreciation, perhaps longer than would have been necessary if it had been taught differently to begin with. There’s moreover plenty wrong with the way education is done today, both in schools and at university. A lot of what Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner wrote about the problems in American education in the 1970s, and Jonathan Kozol wrote of in the 1990s still persist to this day. And much of it has so precious little to do with the availability or lack thereof of high quality, on-demand electronic resources in libraries...though per Kozol, some of it could have something to do with a lack of libraries altogether in some inner city K-12 schools.

Regarding Deanna Marcum’s LC lecture, I can only say that my “library of first stop” remains Houston Public Library, and for more specialized topics, Fondren Library, since the Friends of Fondren yearly fees are just barely affordable to me with my alumni discount. Though I’m also a former student of UH, where I earned my teaching certification slightly less than a decade ago, I find their “Friends of the Library” fees for limited borrowing privileges to be prohibitively expensive. Anyway, LC remains for me the library of last resort, the library of record, what have you. LC copy remains--for now--the gold standard for copy-catalogers all over the English speaking world. I admit, I had a hard time paying close attention to Dr. Marcum’s lecture, as I was only half-listening while skimming Thomas Mann’s latest article in Progressive Librarian, wherein he rakes Dr. Marcum over the proverbial coals. I found it hard not to giggle myself silly, actually, since I firmly agree with Mann, having more recently read in full his critique of the Calhoun Report, while attending EndUser 2006 last year in Chicago, hosted by Endeavor InfoSystems. I pretty much knew the ground Dr. Marcum intended to cover, so as such I was predisposed to be hostile to her presentation. Not very fair minded of me, I freely admit.

The British Library presentation was quite good, though again, with all of these presentations, the material is presented fast and furiously, and if you’re not paying attention you will miss some key (sticking) points that the presenters are usually trying to skim over. Ms. Brindley noted in passing that it was very easy to get initial monies to start digital projects, but much harder to procure additional government monies to sustain the projects over the long haul, necessitating creative use of fees, etc. She then jumped quickly on to the original mandate for the British Library to provide information access to all Britons…a mandate which would be undermined by potentially onerous fees passed on to end-users, etc, but that’s detrimental to the overall Library “marketing” message, so quickly passed over without discussion. In both the LC talk and the British Library discussion, the unspoken attitude of TINA (There Is No Alternative) towards existing political economy arrangements vis a vis these public resources was ever present, taken as a given. Public Service Libraries are indeed a public service worthy of public, that is, government support via taxation. They are still about collective ownership of recorded information, held in common for all.

By the end of this lecture, I’d had my intellectual fill for the day and sauntered over to El Meson for a fine dish of Ropa Vieja and some iced tea. After a leisurely meal, I simply didn’t have the stamina to stick around for the after-dinner keynote address at 19:30 hours, and so I called it a night and headed back to the suburbs.