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.

It's official, I'm headed to De Lange...

I am officially paid up and registered for the De Lange conference at Rice U, and have been approved the necessary vacation time from work....woohooo this is gonna be fun. I need the break from work anyway and I'm just gettin' over being sick as a dawg the past few days.

I'm not trendy enough to be "blogging live" from the conference...yes, I have a laptop, but no, I won't be toting it along with me all day. I gotta walk all the way from Rice Stadium free parking, anyway...ain't draggin' that laptop along. Besides, my dad enjoys using it too much to keep up with CSPAN, CNN, and the latest dreadful MSM stuff of the day. He gets more use out of it than I ever would...I'm proud of my old man for that. He used to not go near my laptop with a 10-foot pole, but he just got too frustrated with his antiquated desktop unit, so he asked if he could maybe use my laptop in the house, and I said "sure".

Me, I thought I'd get more use out of it than I ultimately did when I first got it. But I just found I had to go out of my way to bring it to a Cafe or other wireless access point, I felt paranoid about leaving my laptop in my car (so I never did), and I found that I really hate typing on Laptop style keyboards...and do so only when I have to. I used it some down in Galveston, because it was also faster than MY cheap-ass desktop down there...plus I had an odd situation once where a couple of Anime DVDs I was trying to watch would NOT play properly on my PS2 machine (whose DVD functionality is about the ONLY reason I gave up my PSX, by the way)...anyway, I loaded the recalcitrant DVDs onto my laptop and viola, they played like a charm. The Anime was Gunslinger Girl , if any of you were curious, by the way. Henrietta rules! Triella's pretty kick-a, too.

Houston Public Library actually holds pretty decent Anime series in their YA Audiovisual collection at the central library. They got me hooked on Anime after a long hiatus...

As much as a printed books fanatic as I am, I've always harbored a secret desire to be an AV librarian, too. I used to positively LOVE browsing the AV library at UNT, while I was still in Library school...and the best thing was, graduate students (and I was one at the time) had checkout privileges for DVDs and VHS tapes just like professors did (for undergrads, the AV materials were in-library-use only)...the UNT A.V. library had some really unique/weird documentaries, artsy films, etc. It was awesome. I'd love to do collection development for an AV library, too. There's lots of very intelligently done, non-commercial AV material out there that will NEVER grace the shelves of BLOCKBUSTER or HOLLYWOOD VIDEO, but *ought* to be collected and preserved by Libraries great and small. Libraries that pander to popular tastes in AV selection are really doing everyone a disservice in the end. It gives the privatizers more ammo to go after libraries, ticks off the big vid chains for cutting into their business, etc.
Artistically outstanding but not-commercially-viable should be our guideposts to selection in my semi-professional, underemployed opinion.

De Lange = DE-pressing

...Sorry for the short notice, but if anyone's interested, this conference is going on in my area very soon.
I'm considering taking off 3 days from work to attend, though with some mixed feelings and reservations which i'll detail
below. First the full announcement, then dissected with commentary below.

-JJR, aka The Aggie Librarian.

==================================================================================================================
De Lange Conference VI
Emerging Libraries
link: http://www.delange.rice.edu/conferenceVI.cfm

Date: March 5-7, 2007
Host: Rice University via the Fondren Library and Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI)
Site: Alice Pratt Brown Auditorium, Shepherd School, Rice University, 6100 Main St., Houston, Texas

Rice University's 2007 De Lange Conference Aims to Describe How Knowledge Will Be Accessed, Discovered, and Disseminated in the Age of Digital Information

The traditional concept of a library has been rendered obsolescent by the unprecedented confluence of the Internet, changes in scholarly publication models, increasing alliances between the humanities and the sciences, and the rise of large-scale digital library projects. The old ways of organizing and preserving knowledge to transmit our cultural and intellectual heritage have converged with the most advanced technologies of science and engineering and research methodologies. Such rapid and overwhelming changes to a millennia-old tradition pose significant challenges not only to university research libraries but to every citizen. If the traditional library is undergoing a profound metamorphosis, it is not clear what new model will take its place. More information has been produced in the last several years than in the entire previous history of humanity, and most of this has been in digital format. Libraries are not storage places any more; they are less and less a place. The critical issues now include: How can that information be efficiently accessed and used? How do we extract knowledge from such an abundance of often poorly organized information? How might these enormous digital resources affect our concept of identity, our privacy, and the way we conduct business in the new century? Insight from many disciplines and perspectives is requisite to begin to understand this phenomenon to identify ways to help chart a future course.

The De Lange 2007 Conference will examine the transformational influences these astonishing emerging libraries may entail. A planning committee, led by Rice University's Fondren Library and Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI), now seeks a rich mix of subject specialists with unique perspectives who will enliven and enrich this exploration. The De Lange Conference will also have a historical perspective as well as be forward-looking and self-reflective; the conference will reveal that the emerging library is of enormous consequence and relevant to the rethinking of fundamental assumptions that structure our understanding of the world and facilitate new discovery.

The following topics will be addressed by some of the world's foremost thinkers:

1. The history of knowledge organization; major periods during which the organization of knowledge substantially changed, and the implications of those changes
2. The rise and evolution of academic disciplines and their structure during the last 150 years: Why does the university look like it does today? Why is the library organized like it is today?
3. Current disciplinary changes in method and practice: how knowledge is acquired, transmitted, and used in fields such as genomics, proteomics and computational biology
4. The emergence of genuinely hybrid disciplines (archaerometrics; archaeogenetics; music informatics; 3-D laser capture/analysis of art history objects)
5. Large-scale (global) collaborative research (Sloan Digital Sky Survey; Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO); Fermilab particle research; Large Hadron project)
6. Large-scale digital library projects (US, Australia, UK, EU, China): goals and implications
7. Does the current organization of departments and programs inhibit progress?
8. Copyright and intellectual property in the digital age
9. The emerging library as the new (virtual) campus
10. The rise of undergraduate research and its effects on libraries and curricula
11. Exemplary innovation: digital libraries and teaching (Connexions)
12. What the future might hold (wide-open possibilities, pro and con)
13. The end of traditional scholarly publishing
14. The economics of information: Who will pay for these major changes in tradition?

It is expected that this conference will appeal to an audience representing a very broad range of background and interests.

Conference Dates

Day One: Monday, March 5, 2007
Day Two: Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Day Three: Wednesday, March 7, 2007
=========================================================================================================================================

It...looks important, so part of me feels the need to go; but like I said, lots of mixed feelings for me about what the above says:

Things like:
>> The traditional concept of a library has been rendered obsolescent by the unprecedented confluence of the Internet, changes in scholarly publication models, increasing alliances between the humanities and the sciences, and the rise of large-scale digital library projects.<<

Oh really? Quite a few VERY sweeping assertions there (without evidence offered to back it up, notice)....

>>The old ways of organizing and preserving knowledge to transmit our cultural and intellectual heritage...<<

That would be, um, printed books-in-libraries, for the most part. Other media to a lesser extent, but mostly printed books & manuscripts.

>>have converged with the most advanced technologies of science and engineering and research methodologies. Such rapid and overwhelming changes to a millennia-old tradition pose significant challenges not only to university research libraries but to every citizen. If the traditional library is undergoing a profound metamorphosis, it is not clear what new model will take its place. More information has been produced in the last several years than in the entire previous history of humanity, and most of this has been in digital format.<<<

Information mass-production does NOT necessarily equal a net increase in human WISDOM, however.

>>Libraries are not storage places any more; they are less and less a place.<<

Like Hell they aren't!

>> The critical issues now include: How can that information be efficiently accessed and used? How do we extract knowledge from such an abundance of often poorly organized information? How might these enormous digital resources affect our concept of identity, our privacy, and the way we conduct business in the new century? Insight from many disciplines and perspectives is requisite to begin to understand this phenomenon to identify ways to help chart a future course.<<

As a side note, I notice that very few actual librarians are presenting at this thing, except, of course, for "visionary" administrators...


>>The De Lange 2007 Conference will examine the transformational influences these astonishing emerging libraries may entail. A planning committee, led by Rice University's Fondren Library and Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI), now seeks a rich mix of subject specialists with unique perspectives who will enliven and enrich this exploration.<<

Subtext: But those Humanistic librarians emphasizing the continued importance of print literacy decidedly NOT welcome, however.

>> The De Lange Conference will also have a historical perspective as well as be forward-looking and self-reflective; the conference will reveal that the emerging library is of enormous consequence and relevant to the rethinking of fundamental assumptions that structure our understanding of the world and facilitate new discovery.<<

Code wording for renewed Neoliberal assault on public sector/public service libraries, I think, buried behind nice, flowery, euphemistic language.

>>The following topics will be addressed by some of the world's foremost thinkers:
1. The history of knowledge organization; major periods during which the organization of knowledge substantially changed, and the implications of those changes<<

It's really too bad Neil Postman is no longer around to address (harangue, symbolically eviscerate) these people.

>> 2. The rise and evolution of academic disciplines and their structure during the last 150 years: Why does the university look like it does today? Why is the library organized like it is today?<<

Any chance of a discussion about Class struggle emerging here? Somehow I kind of doubt it. Anyone wanting to discuss Paulo Freire please exit the building now.

>> 7. Does the current organization of departments and programs inhibit progress?<<

Progress as defined by whom? Progress toward what, exactly? One of the GOOD things Postmodernism DID teach me was to be more attentive to asking questions like this and taking fewer things at face value.

>> 12. What the future might hold (wide-open possibilities, pro and con)<<

That's "Con" in the double entendre sense, mind you.

>> 13. The end of traditional scholarly publishing

Read: Neoliberal ideological assault redux.

>> 14. The economics of information: Who will pay for these major changes in tradition?

Why the public of course. Socialize risk, privatize gain, as in the usual Neoliberal paradigm. We pay, they profit. Do you get it already?


...Now, in fairness, there probably are some worthwile talks being given in the midst off all the technology hype.
For example, I freely admit, I don't know nearly enough about any of these to have much of anything to say:
-------------------
3. Current disciplinary changes in method and practice: how knowledge is acquired, transmitted, and used in fields such as genomics, proteomics and computational biology
4. The emergence of genuinely hybrid disciplines (archaerometrics; archaeogenetics; music informatics; 3-D laser capture/analysis of art history objects)
5. Large-scale (global) collaborative research (Sloan Digital Sky Survey; Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO); Fermilab particle research; Large Hadron project)
6. Large-scale digital library projects (US, Australia, UK, EU, China): goals and implications
=======================

...Thus I don't want to come across as a total Luddite curmudgeon, but with the exception of the few talking points directly above, I generally don't like the whole tone of this conference. Maybe I was naive, but it seemed like for a brief, bright, shining moment in the late 1990s we humanistic librarians had pushed back hard enough against the all-digital, all-the-time crowd, showed them up for the foolish extremists they were, and that library discourse moved away from the patently insane talk of "paperless societies", etc.

I guess with Bush's 2nd term well underway, it was only a matter of time before those forces regrouped and renewed their blustery assault.

There's no separating the technology being pushed from the ideologies doing the pushing, and those come from information-capitalist entities, seeking to undermine social(ist) formations like public-service libraries, even traditional academic libraries in universities....all part of the larger general assault on higher education.

Part of me wants to go and ask akward and embarassing questions of some of the more blatant presenters...but on the whole I wonder if going at all is kind of an exercise in sado-masochism...since it's likely to mainly depress the hell out of me. And I'm likely to be dismissed outright I get to heavy with the Class analysis and critique of sacred cow capitalism. Plus considering all of the above in light of the implications of post-peak oil production energy scarcity, renders nearly all of what will be said at the conference quite irrelevant in the long term.

My dad, when he read the conference intro above said "all of that is so true...." (I wanted to pull my hair out); he also joked "why bother going, it says you (as librarian) are obsolete.."

Why go indeed. Well, might make for good blog fodder anyway--I don't know.
But it can't be healthy for (non-Systems) librarians to attend too many of these kinds of conferences. To have it reinforced into your head "you are outmoded and irrelevant unless you are high-tech 24-7..."; Bollocks to that.

I just haven't made up my mind yet, if I'm going or not. "Emerging Libraries"?--more like "Submerging & Subverting Libraries"

--The Aggie Librarian

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.

Documentary on Salvador Allende/Rice Media Center

I love the Rice Media Center; I loved it as a student, I love it as a Houston-area resident. They always bring such consistently high-quality cultural offerings to this city, as does MFAH.

Last night I saw a moving documentary on the life and tragic death of Salvador Allende, the former President of Chile, before the Military Coup'd'Etat (materially assisted at some level by the Central Intelligence Agency) which ended his presidency, his life, and Chilean democracy for a couple of generations and installed the brutal fascist dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. It was a very moving film, but also very sad. Here was a man, a medical doctor by training, a truly decent human being, a self-described militant socialist, yes, but almost Gandhi-like in his demeanor. In truth he was a classic Fabian (Utopian) Socialist, who believed Socialism can be voted in at the ballot box. As he is described in the narrative of Guzman's documentary of him, he strikes me as a man who was a pure idealist, who really did believe in the power of ideas, that the pen was mightier than the sword, that the upper classes would lay down their opposition because he could out debate them. He insisted always on the pacifist's path, to a fault.

Douglas MacArthur is reputed to have said "whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword never had to contend with automatic weapons"; and that is the lesson Allende learned tragically too late. He would also have done well to remember Mao Tse Tung's dictum about political power flowing out of the barrel of a gun. Allende seemed to like to give aggressive, determinedly militant speeches. The US State Department claims Allende was a deep admirer of Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-Tung, and of course every US nationalist's favorite bete noir in Latin America, Fidel Castro. He did invite Castro to Chile, which scandalized and mobilized the Right wing in Chile in reaction. And some of the recorded speeches Guzman assembled for his film seem very determined and defiant. But Guzman himself catches the kernel of the problem by noting that Castro himself once told Allende that he would need to break the army and sieze it as his own instrument (a lesson not lost on Hugo Chavez today, by the way, who rose up through the ranks of Venezuela's military). He failed to do so, in the same way the Social Democrats in 1918 left the Junker-dominated military in place after the Armistice (and sickeningly relied on right-wing paramilitaries like the Freikorps to do their dirty work against their rivals in the German Communist movements--but that's another story). The only reason Lenin's revolutionary movement succeeded is because the Tsar's army was itself broken and disillusioned by World War 1, and when Kerensky ordered them back to the trenches, back to the front, the Bolshevik promise of "Bread and Peace" became unstoppable. Enough of the Tsar's common soldiers went over to the Reds, bringing their valuable military equipment with them.

My point is, if you're going to talk the talk, like Allende clearly relished in doing--and man o man did he have the popular support of the masses, too...you've got to be willing and able to walk the walk as Mao, Ho, Fidel, Lenin, et. al. did. Allende surely remembered the fate of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954...or Mossadegh in Iran. But because his movement was not sufficiently armed and militant, it was doomed when the forces of reaction began their backlash and asserted their traditional class power.

Michael Parenti offers an excellent analysis of the problem of a path like Allende's by noting, with analogues also to the situation around John F. Kennedy...that actually there are 2 centers of power in most countries today...there is the formal, civil, elected government that is (or is supposed to be) relatively open, transparent, democratic, etc. But there is also the vast National Security State, with men and women in appointed, largely unaccountable positions...it is comprised of the nation's armed forces and its intelligence agencies and national police forces and the agencies, corporations, and private interests that nurture and support them and often provide the leadership for. As one prominent investigative journalist has demonstrated, the CIA is Wallstreet, and Wallstreet is the CIA. The same people, in the same small circles, all defending their mutual class interest(s) around the world. These are people who live off of trust funds and use their modest government salary as purely discretionary income. They are the sort of people, both in this country and in their proxies abroad drawn from the elites of third world nations, who support brutal men like Agusto Pinochet, and see to it that men like Salvador Allende meet with an early grave. Allende seized the reins of power of the formal civil government, but learned too late that the real power was in the internal Chilean National Security State, where Pinochet had his base.

Although careless right-wingers might (mis-)label me an "extremist liberal", in fact I'm a radical populist, a socialist with anarchist leanings. Allende could've taken a page from Patrick Henry who rightly insisted "that every man be armed". Although I don't deny the Leftist lable, I'm intelligent enough to know that the Right-Left dichotomy is often chimerical and illusory, and that the real struggle is actually Top versus Bottom, and this does NOT always neatly map the same territory as Right versus Left....lot of overlap? Sure there is--but it's not a perfect overlay, which means there are a few right-wing populists running around that I may actually have more respect for than some centrist and more mainstream "limousine liberals" who mostly focus on "cultural" issues and obfuscate or just plain ignore true class realities and honest class struggle. Michael Parenti has written in a very general way that any Third world leader who starts a socialist revolution will have to beef up his military almost immediately to prepare for the inevitable capitalist backlash and counter-revolution. Nice, inoffensive Fabian Social Democracy might not be possible right away because of these inherent dangers...Allende was right in that genuine democracy IS a road to socialism, but that's why genuine democracy is usually attacked and subverted by ruling classes the world over whenever possible. De Toqueville records the opinions of American oligarchs who privately express their genuine distaste for American democracy at bottom. Point is, they still feel that way...and some of them ever more openly than before. Did you know there was actually a plot to remove FDR from office by possible military coup? The problem is, the conspirators approached a man with far more integrity than they realized and who knew very well that he had been, in his distinguished military career, a "gangster for capitalism"---I speak of none other than General Smedly Butler, author of War is a Racket whose message is as poignant now as then. He would not work with the plotters.

Does Patricio Guzman's Salvador Allende have any lessons for our present moment? Of course it does. But they are not lessons many Norteamericanos either want to hear or learn from or even acknowledge in their own hearts, and so it goes. I'm not talking about US complicity in the Chilean coup, that much is obvious. I'm talking about the lesson of the reaction of the Chilean people to the destruction of their precious democracy by the brutal fascist regime of Agusto Pinochet. I'm not so sure it would be comfortable for many Norteamericanos to walk around in the shoes of Chileans from that generation. There are some important words to know in Spanish if you wish to count yourself as remotely politically aware about what goes on in the world, words like "los deceparicidos", "guerra sucia", "golpe militar". Guzman's film is a documentary, but I can also point to a fictional film, based on real life, that could be set in very nearly any Latin American country (which is why the country goes unnamed in the film); I refer, of course, to the film Hombres Con Armas , "Men with Guns". Also still painfully, ever relevant, Eduard Galeano's classic book Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina , the "Open Veins of Latin America". The United States, with ever increasing gulfs between the super-rich and the rest of us, is structurally becoming ever more like the stereotypical Latin American government(s) that snobbish (and ingnorant) Norteamericanos used to feel vastly superior to. Return of the Repressed? Baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Ben Franklin was once asked by an esteemed lady what sort of government he hoped for America. His reply was "a Republic, madam, if you can keep it." He did not mean a "Banana Republic", either.

WTF? or Pleasantly Surprised!

I have resumed my jobsearch in earnest, and the feedback has been astonishing...I've been called back and conducted telephone interviews already twice now within less than a month of starting my jobsearch...Guess the old showbiz cliche about "no bad publicity" is also partly true about "library experience"...professional library experience is still experience, even if you f*cked up in your last job. Actually the f*ck up in my last job really was just as much my clueless, ditzy director's fault as it was my own, but anyway. I'm serious, though, I NEVER expected the 2nd time on the job search path to be like this...suddenly I'm like a hot commodity or something where fresh out of library school it was a pretty tough sell. I'm getting called back by mid-sized universities...all of them bigger than TAMUG, thank goodness. I got called by one just north of Houston (cataloging) , one in extreme South Texas affiliated with the t-sips (reference!), and now one in far northeastern Missouri (cataloging). I've interviewed for the first two by phone already, and have a phone interview for the third on Wednesday. The NE Missouri school is a premier liberal arts institution in that region and they teach A LOT of foreign languages there, which means I might actually get to deal with German and other Foreign Language Monographs quite a lot more than I ever would've anywhere else so far. I'm really hopeful about this one. Maybe a chance to really learn Cataloging properly, the way it's supposed to be learned/done, e.g. hands on with a mentor always at hand, working with subject matter I truly love. They just may make a decent cataloger out of me yet. Wish me luck.

I felt strangely ambivalent about the position in South Texas, mostly because I don't know much about South Texas or what it would be like to live there. My gut reaction was negative, then looking at photos on flickr of the town, its environs, etc, reinforced some of that negativity. But then looking at their book holdings, and their curriculum...I felt a little better--and at least it would be a Reference job, which despite my best efforts at Cataloging, is probably still my forte in the long run. The phone interview went alright, but I know it was rougher and less prepared sounding that I probably would've liked. I had really just applied to the position on a lark, I didn't seriously believe they'd actually call me back...and so I guess I was caught a little of guard when they actually did. Another thing I like, I happen to know the Socialist Party of Texas (such as it is) is active down in the Rio Grande Valley (I get their emails), so it would be something I could hook up with if I felt like it. Reynosa, Mexico, is the nearest town across the border from where I'd probably move to if this t-sip library actually did make an offer and I accepted...and I would accept, no bones about it. I had my reservations before the interview, but now that I've had more time to think about it, absolutely I'd go to South Texas, no matter what, if they promised me a decent professional library job at a fair salary. I'm single, no girlfriend, no kids, no car payments, no mortgage payments--I'm free as a bird--Have MLS, Will Travel, baby. I could always fly in and out of Harlingen, TX on Southwest Airlines if I got homesick for Houston. Besides, they do teach French at this place, and the Rio Grande Valley has an organisation simliar to Alliance Francais, promoting French language and culture. Vive la difference, vive la France!!

The other library just north of Houston would be alright, too. It's a decent sized college, again better than my last one. I'd not plan on staying there long term, mind you, but it would be another good place to pick up experience, even if the materials I'd be cataloging weren't nearly so interesting as the potential items I might get to work with in Missouri. Although I'm familiar with Missouri, and my parents are both from there, neither one of them has been to this particular part of extreme Northeast Missouri...it's further North than St. Louis...quite a bit further North, in fact. Snow would be a definite reality every winter up there. It'd be a real test whether or not I really do like more northern climates like I say I do. But I do know that at least as far as weather goes, I definitely preferred Denton, Tx, where I went most of my time in library school, to my (semi-)native Houston. People are a different question, but I liked Denton, with its cooler fall temperatures, prettier leaves, and guaranteeed at least 1 or 2 perfect "snow days"...just enough to be beautiful without being annoying.

This part of Missouri is a small college town....rural, yes, but also seat of a major (if small) state university focused on liberal arts. It would be reminiscent of College Station. It's depressingly saturated with churches, of course, and not a UU congregation among them, either. And good ol' St. Louis, with the fabulous Saint Louis Rationalist Society, is over 100 miles away, much much further away than Mineral Area College would have been (one of the schools I actually did a face-to-face interview with but didn't get the job). Still, the town...or at least the campus, sounds like it would be an oasis of liberal-minded thinking in an otherwise more conservative area. The University itself sounds very cool and I like the way they organize their curriculm, especially for foreign languages. I mean WOW, they have RUSSIAN! In Missouri!! Amazing. As much as I'd like to pick up French, maintaining and building on my Russian skills would be even better.

October in Houston has been an amazing month for cultural stimulation...so many great films recently, both at Rice Media Center and MFAH; I've been so caught up in things I actually missed one of the ones I was dying to see, the new Jan Svankmajer film Lunacy (Sileni). At least I got to see the pair of American animators who draw their greatest inspiration from this Czech master, namely the Brothers Quay, who contributed heavily to the new film The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes...a poetic science fantasy horror-suspense art film, kind of. You just have to see it, there's no adequate label for it. It's strange, it's fun, it's classic Brothers Quay expanded to feature length movie making, much the same way Svankmajer broke new ground with his retelling of FAUST, etc, after doing animated shorts for many years.

Last night I caught a documentary in Spanish on the life and death of Salvador Allende, former President of Chile. I'll post more at length later; it was a powerful film, but deeply saddening.

Aside from the flooding rains of last week, we have had a couple of cold fronts lately in Houston that have given us some wonderful and genuinely Fall weather. It doesn't last, of course, but it's nice when it happens. Makes me get out and walk more...I love the smell in the air when the air is cool and crisp. Love wearing sweatshirts and jeans...wish it was like this a whole lot more often, y'know?

That's it for now for the Aggie Librarian; I'm just pleased as a peach to get so many phone interviews so quickly this time around...makes me hopeful I'll be getting back in the game a whole lot sooner than I expected. I was anticipating a tough slog, but I'll take a quick, decisive victory if it's within my grasp!

All's Well that Ends Well

Happy Ending to my quest to get books on Cowboy Action Shooting into Fort Bend County Libraries:


-----Original Message-----
From: AskALibrarian
Sent: Fri, September 22, 2006 8:28 AM
To: (AggieLibrarian)
Subject: Library Question - Answer [Question #XXXXXX]

Dear Mr. (Aggie Librarian)
Thank you for your suggestions.
I have found a book on the subject in which you are interested that is available through our vendors. The book is "Cowboy Action Shooting," by Hunter Scott Anderson. I will place this title on our next order list.
We appreciate your input as the library system is always interested in patron recommendations. If you have further questions, you may e-mail me, or you may telephone the Reference desk at 281-XXX-XXXX.
I hope this information is helpful.

(another Helpful Librarian)
Fort Bend County Libraries
somebody[at]fortbend.lib.tx.us

-----------------------
Question History:
Patron: -----Original Message-----
From: Aggie Librarian
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 1:30 PM
To: (original librarian)
Subject: RE2: Cowboy action shooting
Importance: Low

Are there any books on this particular SUBJECT available from your vendors?

The Aggie Librarian, MA, MLS
Alumnus, 200X
School of Library & Information Sciences
University of North Texas
Personal Email: TheAggieLibrarian[at]myisp.com
Resume/CV Page: http://people.unt.edu/.... (snip)

(sometimes doesn't hurt to show a little Library cred...)

The upshot was, I was persistent without going all Saklad on their *sses. ;-) An equitable solution was reached, and the library found books at least on the subject I wanted, if not the specific book I was after. I'm sometimes pretty hit or miss with Public Libraries and my suggestions...sometimes the things I request are declined because they're too advanced, e.g. better suited for an academic library. Sometimes the sources are too old, reportedly, even though I think the topic is timeless and the book in question is still the best book out there dealing with the subject matter. Anyway, I guess the lesson here is, if the library's vendor can't get you the specific book you want, but you'd be satisfied with ANYTHING else on the topic, it doesn't hurt to ask. They just might come through for you, like they did with me.

Why relying on Vendor Approval Plans only SUCKS

Sorry for the long silence, folks, my personal life has been unusually turbulent lately. Not to be too gossipy, but the Aggie Librarian recently admitted to himself that he's an alcoholic, has been attending AA, and doing a lot of introspection and self examination lately.

But this really got my gander up today and I had to blog about it. The following is a real email exchange; names have been changed to protect the guilty:

-----Original Message-----
From: {Fort Bend County Libraries}
Sent: Tue, August 29, 2006 3:41 PM
To: {me, i.e., the Aggie Librarian}
Subject: RE: Cowboy action shooting

Dear {Aggie Librarian--actually it was my real name--you get the idea},

We received your requests for the titles, Cowboy Action Shooting, by Kevin Michalowski, and All About Cowboy Action Shooting, by Ronald Harris. Unfortunately, the books you requested are not available for purchase from our vendors. If you still wish to obtain the books, you may call the branch of the Fort Bend libraries where you would like to pick up the books and request they be obtained through Inter-Library loan. Postage cost to you for this service is $1.50 per book, if the ILL librarian is able to obtain the books from another library system. Any further questions you have will gladly be answered at any of our branches. Thank you for using the Suggest-a-Title service.

{Polite Public Librarian}

George Memorial Library

Adult Services Department

somebody@fort-bend.lib.tx.us

-----Original Message-----
From: suggestatitle@fortbend.lib.tx.us [mailto:suggestatitle@fortbend.lib.tx.us]
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 4:56 PM
To: suggestatitle@fortbend.lib.tx.us
Subject: Cowboy action shooting

{Patron} wrote:

I would like to suggest the following title:

Title : Cowboy Action Shooting: Gear - Guns - Tactics

Author : Kevin Michalowski

Format : Book

Library barcode : 23219004057609

Pickup location : Sugar Land

Additional comments : here is a similar title on Cowboy Action

Shooting...this sport is very popular in Texas!

{The Aggie Librarian}

myname@myreal.address.com

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

I'm not making this up....Cowboy Action Shooting really is very popular in Texas. But seriously, this is why doing Approval Plans and Approval Plans ONLY as a way to save money really can SUCK, because in the end, diversity suffers. This wasn't even a request for "alternative" materials from some radical point of view, either. It damn well has appeal and interest to this local community, not just yours truly. The librarian's response is ultimately a cop-out; they could always special order an item not on their vendor's list if they really wanted to. Unless it's county-wide policy not to...and if so, it's stupid. HPL does this, and, while I partly understand, owing to the scale of the greater Houston Metro community they're trying to service with their limited funds, it still means, in the end, that diversity suffers, because relying on vendor approval plans always produces a mainstreaming effect that shuts out smaller publishers; Maybe the vast majority of patrons would never notice or care, but as librarians, we should be willing to color outside the lines and have the courage to expose our patrons to ideas outside their normal boundaries of thought. We should give comfort even to those with ideas that buck mainstream trends, or provide information about hobbies that are a little unorthodox but rewarding in their own right...like Cowboy Action Shooting. Even if these specific titles were NOT available from the vendor, did the library even bother to look if anything remotely related to this subject WAS available? I really can't tell, but I sort of kind of doubt it. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. My point is, they SHOULD have, and should have reported on their findings..."sorry, our vendor doesn't seem to offer any books even on this topic, let alone the titles you requested" or "but we did find these titles....but we do not have the necessary funds to aquire them at this time,", yada yada yada.

Obviously I'm not going to go all Saklad on their ass, but this interaction was a little irksome, especially since I am a librarian and know a cop-out when I see one. I once turned down a book request for a dual biography of two leading figures/founders of the state of Pakistan for the campus library at TAMUG, noting that the focus of the book was too narrow for our institution and that its subject matter fell outside the scope of our curriculum. (Which isn't to say I didn't sometimes order some titles that could have the same criticism leveled against it, perhaps). But the patron's suggestion did prompt me to look and see what our holdings were for books about Pakistan, the UAE, and other Islamic-World countries. I found that most of our information was woefully out-of-date. The book suggested by the patron was too narrow in focus, but as a result of the suggestion, we DID order 2 very good general accounts of Pakistan and its recent history and politics. I also ordered books on the UAE (since the Dubai Ports scandal was just breaking at that time), as well as less obvious but equally important books on locales like Lybia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and more clearly needed works on Saudi Arabia, and surrounding countries, etc. Of all the books I was instrumental in the acquisition of while at TAMUG, these were by far the ones I'm most proud of, even above and beyond the excellent Naval Science and Maritime Industry books I ordered for the library. Approval plans are great, they have their role, and they can be an efficient way to allocate limited resources, but they shouldn't be a straight-jacket that stifles diversity either. {climbs down off soapbox}