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July 07, 2007
"Hip" Librarians--Give me a Break
Today a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article on hip young librarians who are defying the stereotype, scattering coolness (which includes the making and the sufferance of higher-than-traditional noise levels) wherever they go. The reporter seemed to think he had stumbled upon something new, something rare, something of exotic color and sound. There are a few things of which, however, I might, as a veteran librarian, beg to inform him:
(1) It is all too typical that librarians are pitifully anxious defy their stereotype. Check out the photographs, often published on the Web, of the social life at the ALA conventions. Prepare yourself for the memorable sight of Librarians Defying Their Stereotypes. This means things like, oh, drinking champagne from practical shoes.
(2) The librarian stereotype persists for good reason.
(3) So far as libraries remain places for the private ingestion of information, a Rule of Quiet will naturally assert itself. This includes, I have found--and not surprisingly--the ingestion of digitally presented information. Patrons who are concentrating on their own information generally do not appreciate sound and movement that pertains to the business of others, especially if it is nearby, and still, quite naturally, expect librarians to do something about it.
(4) The more concentrated the patron on serious business--even if it is simply reading his own e-mail, the more this is so. Generally the mid-twenties to early thirties mark the point at which what one is about at the library is more important than the noisy socialization of the younger and/or less responsible, and at which the noise of others' socialization starts to become obnoxious. After retirement, the library again tends to become a place of socialization--and noise, the problem now amplified by hearing loss. Kids and old folks are the noisiest patrons, and the most obnoxious to the more concentrated ones.
(5) The 'pro-noise' librarian is usually (1) young and inexperienced, or (2) an older anti-establishment type for whom the flouting of normal rule patterns, even if they are the products of a natural evolution, is a point of honor.
(6) Serious library users have the same opinion of hip librarians as serious church users have of hip priests and ministers.
Posted by S. M. Hutchens at 01:24 PM | Permalink
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Comments
When I am a librarian, I promise never to be "hip." In fact, as I told my brothers, I can't wait to be able to "shh!" with real authority.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Jul 7, 2007 2:24:07 PM
Well, SMH and Ethan, you too can speak for yourselves, but I'm one hip librarian. ;-) 8-|
Posted by: GL | Jul 7, 2007 7:23:34 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9jPKkqI7n0
Posted by: Adam | Jul 7, 2007 7:33:41 PM
(7) Wherever there's a stereotype, no matter how just or justifiable, there will always be people who want to distinguish themselves by breaking it.
Posted by: DGP | Jul 7, 2007 7:46:43 PM
Adam, I wish that I had not made the choice to watch that load of hippy-trippy, offtopic codswallop you linked to. However, it made me glad that I chose not to be born as a starving African child, which as far as I can tell is the point of the video.
Posted by: Andrea Harris | Jul 8, 2007 9:05:00 AM
Is welcoming an increase in the noise level of the patrons explicitly linked for them to being hip about welcoming noise into the information channels of the culture as well, a la Dada and grunge and ecrasez les gatekeepers and We-Are-Church and conjuring jazz out of randomness and everything else in the hepcat arsenal?
Posted by: Little Gidding | Jul 8, 2007 3:31:47 PM
Must disagree with Dr. Hutchens. I will offer the incapacity to enforce rules likely arises from:
1. Anxiety concerning the continued utility of libraries and those employed in them, a consequence of which is a disinclination to maintain rules that would discomfit a portion of the constituency. Attendance goes down and administrators look to divert funds to other projects (generally some new new thing).
2. The character type which is attracted to the trade and remains within it, a feature of which is a reflexive aversion to the minor risk associated with petty confrontations.
Posted by: Art Deco | Jul 8, 2007 7:47:37 PM
>>>1. Anxiety concerning the continued utility of libraries and those employed in them, a consequence of which is a disinclination to maintain rules that would discomfit a portion of the constituency. Attendance goes down and administrators look to divert funds to other projects (generally some new new thing).
2. The character type which is attracted to the trade and remains within it, a feature of which is a reflexive aversion to the minor risk associated with petty confrontations.<<<
So, are you saying that pastors and librarians have similar personality profiles?
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 8, 2007 8:45:18 PM
I guess I would add, as a young adult librarian, that learning often encompasses more than individual research. It may required communication. Be it a discussion or just asking for help. I think modern libraries, adapting to new sources of information, will work toward accommodating both group learning and individual learning, depending on the needs of the community.
Posted by: Evan | Jul 9, 2007 12:41:50 AM
>>>I guess I would add, as a young adult librarian, that learning often encompasses more than individual research. It may required communication. Be it a discussion or just asking for help. I think modern libraries, adapting to new sources of information, will work toward accommodating both group learning and individual learning, depending on the needs of the community.<<<
A library is, or should be, a repository of BOOKS. Librarians are, or should be, people with the knowledge and skill to acquire, catalogue and manage collections of BOOKS. Everything in a library that is not a BOOK distracts from the library's principal purpose, which is to collect, catalogue and store BOOKS so that people interested in BOOKS and the information contained therein can access the proper BOOKS for their particular purposes, as well as the library's deeper purpose of preserving BOOKS for the use of future generations.
I notice, with some dismay, that many of the libraries I visit seem to have fewer and fewer BOOKS, less shelf space to store BOOKS, and more space for multimedia distractions, whether these are computer workstations for internet access or DVD players for the viewing of movies and other forms of visual entertainment. Worse, still, more and more librarians seem to know less and less about BOOKS--even the books in their own collections.
Computers and the internet are nice. I use them all the time. But, as someone who conducts research on a regular basis as part of my profession, I insist that there is no substitute for BOOKS when it comes to storing knowledge in depth. Knowing how to find, read, evaluate and use BOOKS to synthesize knowledge is at the heart of the mission of the library. Everything else is bull.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 6:15:10 AM
>>>It is all too typical that librarians are pitifully anxious defy their stereotype. <<<
Ever since I saw Shirley Jones in "The Music Man", I have thought that librarians are hot.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 6:15:59 AM
***
>>>It is all too typical that librarians are pitifully anxious defy their stereotype. <<<
Ever since I saw Shirley Jones in "The Music Man", I have thought that librarians are hot.
***
I'm married to one; I KNOW they are hot.
Posted by: Bobby Winters | Jul 9, 2007 7:00:31 AM
A library is, or should be, a repository of BOOKS.
No, a library is, and should be, about providing access to information. Books are a medium. It is about content, not the container. A public library may be and may remain more book oriented than other types of libraries. Law and medical libraries, for example, are becoming more online oriented. They are not about repositories for a medium as much as they are about providing access to professionals who need information to do their job. In most cases, the medium is irrelevant. Collecting books, which take up a lot of real estate, is a luxury which cost conscious law firms, law schools, medical practices, hospitals, and medical schools can no longer afford. Its about the bottom line, the cost of information per unit and, for information needed by professionals, books are an expensive source per unit of information.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 7:07:22 AM
As libraries lose focus on books, and aim at generalized information provision, I wonder if they aren't hastening their institutional doom. There is less and less which can't simply be done at home...when I go to the library, it's for a book or, rarely, a video.
Or to contemplate cultural decline in the juvenile section. The juvenile biography selection (which seems to consist of a shelf of Eleanor Roosevelt, a shelf of Harriet Tubman, and a couple of shelves of modern celebrities) is a sure remedy for any optimism which has crept into my outlook.
Posted by: Joe Long | Jul 9, 2007 7:41:34 AM
>>>No, a library is, and should be, about providing access to information.<<<
Sorry, but that definition is so vague as to be meaningless--and is also so broad as to include a wide range of facilities that are not commonly considered libraries. Libraries provide access to information through one specific medium--the book. If it ain't books, it ain't a library.
>>>Collecting books, which take up a lot of real estate, is a luxury which cost conscious law firms, law schools, medical practices, hospitals, and medical schools can no longer afford.<<<
Penny-wise, pound foolish.
I also submit that acquiring information through books is a different process from that of acquring it through other media, particularly video and internet. The prevalence of superficial knowledge among those who get their information primarily through the latter, as opposed to those who actually sit down and read real books has become ever more obvious to me over the last several years.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 8:26:49 AM
>>>'m married to one; I KNOW they are hot.<<<
It's the glasses. Once they take them off, there's just something about that slightly unfocused, myopic look.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 8:28:46 AM
I agree with Stuart to a point, but it is not always a matter of "penny-wise, pound-foolish" to have good online resources available. We could not possibly provide all the books our students need and also pay our faculty to teach. E-books and data-bases which supply access to many journals, magazines, and newspapers we couldn't possibly afford have been a tremendous boon to our ability to have our students do decent research; these are available to us at low cost through a coalition of similiar very small, tuition-driven private colleges in our area. (At the same time, we do insist on our students using actual hold-in-their-hands print sources as much as possible. And our librarians give excellent seminars to the students on using the online resources to find the truly good information.)
One thing our library was designed with is a couple of sound-proof study rooms so that if students preparing a group project, say, need references that can't be taken from the library, they can talk with each other without disturbing the rest of the patrons. I have never seen them being used frivolously; I expect our very stereotypical librarians keep a close watch on them, as well as keeping everyone else quiet!
Posted by: Beth | Jul 9, 2007 9:15:11 AM
I suppose I fall somewhere between Stuart and GL on thisa matter. I do think the uniqueness of a library is in the possession of books, which by their nature convey different information than other resources (thanks, Marshall McLuhan!). However, I think the best practice of a library will be to intergrate book study into a wide variety of other information-seeking technologies.
Some of these technologies will interfere with the centrality of book study more than others. For example, the "technology" of conversation is disturbing to the reading environment by creating aural distraction. Internet usage, however, is less interfering, as at worst it only takes up space that could be used for shelving or studying (with free wifi, books study space and internet study space can freely overlap). As with all things, the balancing of various types of potentially competing, potentially cooperating activities is a matter of prudence and response to specific situations. However, librarians should still sustain the overall rule that the core of a library is its book collection.
In sum, I think I have just discovered what I'm going to write for my library science MA application essay! Thanks, Mere Comments! :)
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Jul 9, 2007 9:54:16 AM
Actually, the "technology of conversation" would be text-messaging now, right?! Should cut down on the "shush" factor...
Posted by: Joe Long | Jul 9, 2007 10:13:24 AM
>>>No, a library is, and should be, about providing access to information.<<<
Sorry, but that definition is so vague as to be meaningless--and is also so broad as to include a wide range of facilities that are not commonly considered libraries. Libraries provide access to information through one specific medium--the book. If it ain't books, it ain't a library.
That's the mindset that killed the railroads. They thought they were in the railroad business rather than the transportation business. The result, start-ups ended up taking over the over-the-road and air transport business. Burlington Northern should have been FedEx, but the folks an BN couldn't see what business they were in and so Fred Smith seized the moment. Same thing happened to IBM vis-a-vis Microsoft.
know a lot about this. I do it for a living.
Book most certainly have a place, but it is not the best resource for information in all cases. For recreational reading and for lengthy reading, books are probably still the best resource. Where surrounding context matters (in my area, statutory and administrative law), books still have advantages. But in many other areas they do not.
There is nothing vague about saying the business of a library in the 21st century (as it has always been) is to provide access to information. Hard copies (e.g., books) are without a doubt the best medium to supply some information -- recreational reading, scholarly monographs, statutory and administrative codes. (Just as rail still has its strengths in the transportation business.) It is not the best medium for other types of information -- encyclopedias, short scholarly articles, news. If libraries see themselves as only repositories for books, they will slowly die and new players will fill the void. If they realize (as most now do) that they are about providing access to information, they will prosper.
As to ebooks, the technological advances here show promise, but there are still issues to be resolved before they become anything more than a niche player. I have a Sony eReader. It has strengths and it has weaknesses. Sony's problem is that it does not recognize the real market here and has, therefore, not designed a product for that market. The market is college textbooks, which requires a reader with robust search, annotating, and highlighting functions, none of which are in its current product. It has instead built a product for the recreational reader, who, at least for now, still prefers words on paper, the feel of the binding and the smell of ink on paper.
And, by the way, this has little, if anything, with the issue of whether patrons should be quiet. Someone doing research on an online database still wants quiet so he can concentrate. And it has nothing to do with being hip, any more than using a car to transport oneself and one's family instead of a horse drawn wagon was hip in the 1910s and using an automatic rifles or machine gun was hip in WWI instead of using a sword. Tools change; the ultimate task is what stays the same. With cars versus horse, the task is transportation. If I am seeking transport to and from work, a car may be the best tool; if I am seeking transport for recreation, a horse might be better. With machine guns and swords, the task is fighting. If I am fighting a war, the machine gun might be better; if I am fighting in an aikido tournament, the sword is the appropriate weapon. With books and online databases, the task is accessing information. If I am reading for recreation or a lengthy scholarly monograph, books are probably my best tool. If I am seeking information one has found traditionally in an encyclopedia or a law case book, online is the best tool.
Stuart, by your reasoning, the army should disband its cavalry divisions since they no longer use horses. Instead, they reworked those divisions based on the new tools of warfare.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 10:31:29 AM
Good for you Ethan. Just avoid getting sucked into either camp. It is not either/or, it is both/and. You will meet book-only librarians, who are akin to someone in 1920 who insisted that horses and buggies were still and always would be the best form of transportation -- and they are still best -- for a romantic ride as part of a date. You will also meet folks who insist that the book is dead and everything should be online, akin to those who thought flying cars were the next big thing in the 1950s. Both are wrong.
The trick is to figure out what the best tool is given all the variables for a particular task. Had the cavalry commanders remained adamant in favor of the continued use of horses, we would not see heavy armor and helicopter divisions designated cavalry today -- or they all would have been axed and new commanders willing to change with the times would have been put in their place -- a fate awaiting librarians who refuse to realize that libraries are about provide access to information and not just a repository for books. Change with the times and the tools or die. Someone else will be there to take your place.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 10:44:41 AM
I also submit that acquiring information through books is a different process from that of acquring it through other media, particularly video and internet. The prevalence of superficial knowledge among those who get their information primarily through the latter, as opposed to those who actually sit down and read real books has become ever more obvious to me over the last several years.
On this point, you are correct. The point is that some information should be acquired this way and other information need not be and doing so, in fact, would be a waste of time and, in business, money. Again, the question is why do you need the information, that is, how are you going to use it and for how long do you need it. How much context do you need as opposed to how much would be nice to have, but unnecessary? Not every problem is a nail and, so, a hammer is not the best tool for all problems. Not every information problem requires a book for its solution. When the book is the best tool, use it; when not, use the tool that is best. And remember, books cost a lot of money after they are acquired, most particularly storage space (i.e., real estate). Space ain't free.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 10:51:41 AM
>>>That's the mindset that killed the railroads.<<<
Actually, the railroads are alive and well. Just spent a day travelling by rail between DC and Chicago, very pleasant, too. For me, the tradeoff was between time spent travelling and the tension of going through two busy airports. Since I was under no time constraints, I chose rail for the more enjoyable mode of transport.
But passenger rail, for most people, is a non-starter in the U.S. because our rail lines are optimized to move freight, which is a high capacity, high latency business. The idea is to move a lot of stuff in a reasonable amount of time. If you are a few hours late with a freight train, nobody really cares. Passenger service, on the other hand, is low capacity, low latency--you aren't moving a lot of people, but they like to move quickly and on time. Because of the distance between U.S. cities, this is not economically viable. And so, U.S. railways thrive by moving freight very economically. In Europe, on the other hand, the rail lines are optimized to move people, not freight, and the bulk of freight in Europe moves on roads by heavy truck. Consider that, next time someone says we should have a European-style rail system.
>>>Where surrounding context matters (in my area, statutory and administrative law), books still have advantages. But in many other areas they do not.<<<
Surrounding context always matters. People forget this at their peril. Which is why the world is full of semi-educated morons armed with a little bit of (non-contextual) knowledge--which, as we all know, is a very dangerous thing.
I do not need a LIBRARY to acccess a database. I can do that from Starbucks. I do not need a library to download a movie. I can do that from my living room. I DO need a library to store BOOKS, precisely because they take up space.
>>>As to ebooks, the technological advances here show promise, but there are still issues to be resolved before they become anything more than a niche player. I have a Sony eReader. It has strengths and it has weaknesses. Sony's problem is that it does not recognize the real market here and has, therefore, not designed a product for that market. The market is college textbooks, which requires a reader with robust search, annotating, and highlighting functions, none of which are in its current product. It has instead built a product for the recreational reader, who, at least for now, still prefers words on paper, the feel of the binding and the smell of ink on paper.<<<
Been playing with e-books in the miltiary for more than a decade now. They put most of their tech manuals on disk and give their maintenance guys a reader (or even a "wearable computer). For interactive troubleshooting and repair work, they're pretty good--but, as I keep pointing out to my customers, no match for in-depth knowledge of the system on which you are working. After all, what if the power goes out, the batteries go flat, or you drop the damned reader?
>>> if I am fighting in an aikido tournament, the sword is the appropriate weapon. <<<
Since everyone else has a bamboo stave, you will probably win every match, only to be disqualified for cheating, and then arrested for inflicting harm on your opponents with a deadly weapon.
>>>Stuart, by your reasoning, the army should disband its cavalry divisions since they no longer use horses. Instead, they reworked those divisions based on the new tools of warfare.<<<
Actually, those armies which DID abolish their cavalry divisions found a much better way of using tanks than those which merely swapped horses for tanks and armored cars. It had to do with a mental rather than a material transformation. At the same time, those armies which had abolished their horse cavalry sometimes found that horses worked a lot better than tanks in certain situations. Thus, e.g., the Germans had to form two horse cavalry divisions in 1942 for fighting in the marshes and forests of the USSR. And in 2002, the U.S. found it a lot easier to get around Afghanistan on horses and mules than in helos and HMMWVs. Context, it turns out, is very important.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 10:54:12 AM
For anyone interested in a good belly laugh, here's a PDF of a powerpoint presentation by a designer for my local library's expansion plans. Quite the classic example of the smoke-blowing art, especially using pseudo-profound expert quotes and crazy graphs. Professional librarians: can you make heads or tails of slide 9? It has defeated every person I have ever shown it to.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Jul 9, 2007 11:06:59 AM
Stuart,
On this one, my friend, you and I will have to disagree.
But, if I brought a sword to an aikido tournament when everyone else brought a bamboo stave (a good observation, by the way), I would probably win. But then who would I have to fight the next time. ;-)
You will note, I did mention that railroads still have a business -- they transport more than 40% of the cargo measured by weight. But most of the railroad companies went out of business and none of them are as profitable as FedEx. A missed opportunity because they thought they were in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The same can -- and will -- happen the libraries if they insist that they are only in the book business.
And, finally, I'd bet you use online resources for some of your research. You know when a book is the best tool and when another source is better or good enough given the cost and time factors. If you need an encyclopedia article on baseball's soon-to-be displaced homerun king, having an article on aardvarks next to one on Henry Aaron doesn't do much to add to the meaning of the latter. That is what I mean about context. Does the surrounding material add to the understanding of the material being read? In novels it does; in statutory codes it does; in encyclopedias and case reporters, it does not. The latter two are not usually organized based on common themes, but in a manner so that one entry does not usually have anything to do with the entries which immediately surround it.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 11:11:25 AM
Ethan,
You'd have to have a Ph.D. to understand slide 9. Fortunately, I don't. ;-)
Is the new library being built on the grounds on the old state prison? I made a visit there many years ago when it was still in use as a prison -- not on the command of a judge. ;-) I thought they were preserving the site.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 11:22:48 AM
>>>And, finally, I'd bet you use online resources for some of your research. <<<
I use tons of online resources. They are useful for finding vrey narrow, specific facts. But putting the facts together into useful information requires the context that comes only from reading books--many books, over many years. There are no shortcuts, I'm afraid, for all that people talk about the internet creating "instant experts". But the fact still remains that I do not go to a library to access an online source. I can do that from anyplace that has a WiFi connection--home, office, hotel room, airport, and, of course, Starbucks. But even that is old hat: the wireless revolution proceeds apace, and stuff like the iPhone will allow people to download all sorts of information as they walk down the street. And as the cost of these devices falls, they will become ubiquitous (as they already are in places like Japan and Scandinavia). Every five year old will have his own Crackberry (a scary thought!).
Thus, the idea of the library as a place to access the internet or view multimedia stuff is already obsolete--the invariable fate of those who try, too consciously, to be "cool". When I don't need a carrel with a monitor, what will the hip, multi-media librarian do to justify her position? On the other hand, compiling, managing, and maintaining collections of books is a never-ending task, simply because of the physicality of books. Even I cannot own all of the books I want (if I ever do move to a McMansion, it will be in order to use one of the surplus bedrooms as a book repository, instead of spreading them out over three offices in Virginia and DC).
Regarding readers as a replacement for textbooks, while the idea is superficially attractive (it's a lot cheaper to download a file than to buy a textbook, especially once you realize that changing one line in one chapter allows the publisher to reissue a new edition at 20% more than the old one), there are real limitations. First, I can see no way of making a book reader as flexible to use or comfortable to read as a book. Readers are hard on the eyes, and even the best ones I've ever tried are not as easy to read as a book. And a book has a very intuitive interface. And I can read my book in the bathtub (and even get it a little wet) without worrying that it will pack up and stop working. Of course, I can buy a MIL-STD ruggedized reader, but the $2000 it costs could buy a LOT of books.
On railroads missing out on the intermodal/internodal freight revolution, I think the situation is much more complex than you let on. For instance, the railroads had a sunk investment in a very expensive and immobile infrastructure, and worked (until the late 1970s) in a highly regulated environment that prevented them from either branching out or operating more efficiently. FEDEX and UPS are not so much in the transport business as they are in the information management business--their "total asset visibility" is the key to their success: they always know where the package is at every step of the process, and can bypass bottlenecks. FEDEX buys some airplanes, but mostly it leases them. It does not have to own an airport. It leases containers to put on leased trucks; it does not build and maintain highways. It puts the containers on ships that it charters, it does not run ports or shipyards. Railroads, on the other hand, have to own their tracks and engines and rolling stock. FEDEX does not want to be in the business of owning infrastructure, but the railroad business is about owning and maintaining infrastructure (which is why we don't have super-high-speed inter-city passenger trains: Who will build and maintain the special tracks needed? What about the NIMBYs?). Railroads thus are stuck in a particular niche, partly by circumstance, partly by design. That there are few railroads today reflects the costs of owning and maintaining an expensive infrastructure, which requires consolidation of operations and overhead. But the surviving freight railroads are profitable, and indispensible.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 11:35:04 AM
Actually, those armies which DID abolish their cavalry divisions found a much better way of using tanks than those which merely swapped horses for tanks and armored cars. It had to do with a mental rather than a material transformation. At the same time, those armies which had abolished their horse cavalry sometimes found that horses worked a lot better than tanks in certain situations. Thus, e.g., the Germans had to form two horse cavalry divisions in 1942 for fighting in the marshes and forests of the USSR. And in 2002, the U.S. found it a lot easier to get around Afghanistan on horses and mules than in helos and HMMWVs. Context, it turns out, is very important.
Which proves my point. A library with just books is like a military with just horse cavalry. It can handle those information for which books are best very well, but is very inadequate for problems when other media are better. A library with no books is like a military with no horse cavalry. It lacks just the tool needed when a book is what is needed. A library with both, selected for when it is the most appropriate tool, is like a military that has mechanized units and animals available to serve when that particular tool is most appropriate. Context matters indeed.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 11:36:10 AM
>>>For anyone interested in a good belly laugh, here's a PDF of a powerpoint presentation by a designer for my local library's expansion plans. Quite the classic example of the smoke-blowing art, especially using pseudo-profound expert quotes and crazy graphs. Professional librarians: can you make heads or tails of slide 9? It has defeated every person I have ever shown it to.<<<
It is powerful and promotes growth. Google those words, just as written.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 11:37:45 AM
>>>A library with just books is like a military with just horse cavalry.<<<
But the library is just one "unit" of the information army. And a useful one, within its limits. Just as horse cavalry did not thrive when it tried to convert to tanks, but was still useful within its context as horse cavalry, so the library will not thrive trying to be an "information portal" (which is a mental construct that does not need a building, or people for that matter), but will retain its utility as a place where one can find, touch, and read books, and speak with people who are experts on the subject of . . . books.
Face it--if all law books can be put online, then even the biggest lawfirm doesn't need a law library, just a subscription to various legal databases. Every lawyer, every paralegal, becomes his own law library. If all medical texts are online, then you no longer need medical libraries, for the same reason. Just as brick-and-mortar record stores like Tower could not compete with online downloading, so libraries cannot compete with desktops and portable wireless devices for the conveyance of bit-based information.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 11:43:23 AM
Actually, the expansion plans are have all fallen through. Their first chosen site was given to a new federal courthouse, and their second choice collapsed when it was learned that they would be responsible for maintaining a section of the crumbling prison wall on the property.
In fact, all the development of the former prison has entered a glacial state as preservationists (whom I usually support) seem bent on saving as close to all of the wall as possible. Of course, parts of it have already been knocked down, in addition to the section that fell down before the prison had even ceased operations...it's a bit strange, and even the local newspaper has ceased talking about it.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Jul 9, 2007 11:46:43 AM
"With machine guns and swords, the task is fighting. If I am fighting a war, the machine gun might be better; if I am fighting in an aikido tournament, the sword is the appropriate weapon."
GL and Stuart - metaphor alert: aikido does not (other than the small and heretical Tomiki style which blended with judo) have tournaments, though we do train with the bokken (wooden sword)in formalized patterns. (Even the Tomiki people don't use swords or facsimiles at their tournaments.) A purist would in fact insist we don't have "fighting" either, actually. The kendo people whack one another with bamboo mock-swords. In aikido we just wear the same skirts they do.
Stuart - but wasn't Patton the quintessential cavalryman? I thought a couple of his essays at pattonhq.com, particularly the one where he rhapsodizes about the saber charge, were tremendous examples of cavalry continuity - the horse-soldier mindset he would carry into his use of armor.
Posted by: Joe Long | Jul 9, 2007 11:46:49 AM
Thus, the idea of the library as a place to access the internet or view multimedia stuff is already obsolete
To some extent I agree with this. The job of a librarian is to provide access to the information, not necessarily in a given place. I am current chairing the building committee for our new law school building. One of the things I have worked on is planning a library which provides access outside the space designated as the library. It's about providing access to the needed information, not about limiting the media available with which to access it or the place where the information is accessed. It's also about providing security for the space and its collection while maximizing ease of access to that space and its collection.
And, of course, the railroad vs. FedEx is complicated. The railroads, however, could have changed, sold off assets and redirected them. Your point about the problems of railroad proves my point. They didn't change. They were stuck with infrastructure because they had invested in it and couldn't let it go when doing so would have been the thing to do. Fred Smith started FedEx from scratch. Had the railroads -- even one of them -- been able to think outside their boxcars, the opportunity was there for the taking. Instead, the missed it. Had IBM realized that the future was in software, not hardware, they could have changed to become Microsoft. Instead, they are still IBM and Microsoft passed them by a long time ago.
Access will be provided to those who demand it by someone and by some means. The question is who will provide it and how. The latter is answered by figuring out the best means for each of the variety of information resources available. The former will be the one who figures out best how to do the latter. If librarians insist that books are the only means, the former will not be librarians.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 11:49:07 AM
>>>In fact, all the development of the former prison has entered a glacial state as preservationists (whom I usually support) seem bent on saving as close to all of the wall as possible. <<<
Maintain the prison intact and convert the cells to condos. Then call it "A Gated Community with a Structured Lifestyle", and watch the units sell like hotcakes.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 11:49:47 AM
>>But even that is old hat: the wireless revolution proceeds apace, and stuff like the iPhone will allow people to download all sorts of information as they walk down the street. And as the cost of these devices falls, they will become ubiquitous (as they already are in places like Japan and Scandinavia). Every five year old will have his own Crackberry (a scary thought!).<<
Oh, c'mon, Stuart. You of all people know that the success of mobile media in the Scandinavian and Asian countries is a result of a lack of copper wire infrastructure at the dawn of the mobile "revolution." If Japan, Korea, Finland, et al. had a cable and telephone network on par with Ma Bell, it wouldn't have been cost-effective to route information over-the-air since it would amount to making their in-place networks instantly obsolete.
But the US does have a strong copper wire infrastructure, and the distances it covers, even given the price of copper, is what has maintained our stationary landlines for a long time and will continue to do so. It's just not cost-effective to scale a cellular network out to the farms of Nebraska to cover one or two people in a family with one tower instead of covering hundreds of users with a tower in the 'burbs. But Japan and Scandinavia are densely packed, and instead of taking more lines and physical switchboards in a high-population area, it was efficient for them to go digital.
Not to mention that the major cell manufacturers are Scandinavian (Nokia, Ericsson) or east Asian (Sony, Samsung, LG, Motorola), thus resulting in rapidly available tech.
It is indeed a scary thought--everyone with a Crackberry. I have a phone. You know what it does? It makes and receives calls, the occasional txt message for which a verbal communication isn't cost-effective (I can communicate via txt message what would amount to a thirty-second conversation and still get charged a whole minute on my account) and maybe once a week checks the Mariners' baseball score online. And I'd like to keep it that way.
That is why library's, dealing in information, as GL says, not just books, will survive quite a while in the US: we don't have a wireless infrastructure, and reliable data resources and Internet connections at the library will satisfy our need. Thank God for AT&T's monopoly...copper infrastructure for the masses.
Posted by: Michael | Jul 9, 2007 11:50:33 AM
The topics arising here have been matters of discussion in the library world for years. We do have a technological revolution going on here since the advent of the personal computer and the Internet. The book in paper codex form may eventually become antiquated, but that has not happened yet. If it happens, I think it will be slowly, and since I doubt (for several reasons) whether very much of the contents of old libraries will become digitized--or traditionalists will soon give up publishing in paper--libraries of books in non-electronic form will remain as long as someone is willing to pay for their upkeep, which means, for the foreseeable future. It is likely, however, that they will move out of the mainstream before too many generations pass. Thus the decline in this regard of more "advanced" libraries that some of you have noted.
It is not true that young people are divorced from paper. Children who read, from families that read, are still very much attached to it. But nearly all young people, "readers" or not, are proficient with the use of computers. Many of the people, young and older, I see in the libraries using computers for entertainment and communication--and I would add to this group those who are there for the music CDs and videorecordings--are generally not of the "reading class," if I may put it this way. (Putting this way would be anathema in the library world, which pretends that such classes don't exist.) Public libraries cater to them because they are looking for use-numbers to justify their existence, but they are far from supplanting the people who come to the library for books. It's a very complex, almost fluid, matter which defies easy prediction, and I think the wisest projectors will not attempt to look too far into the future. Public libraries, cleverly handled (according to the principle panem et circenses), will not become obsolete as places where people can go to obtain "information" in the broadest sense, at public expense. But if they are only places where books are kept, then they may have more difficulty as time goes on in finding public money for their sustenence.
What Evan has said about the "needs of the community" is important. The typical public library conforms to its community's perceived needs and self-concept. Most of my life I have found myself in the uncomfortable position of not being able to afford to live in communities whose cultural tastes and aspirations--and libraries--are similar to my own. This is something else not much discussed in the (egalitarian) library world, where it is presumed that the tastes and needs of most communities are the same. If the libraries in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where I work, wish to thrive, they had better not concentrate on the needs of the patrons of Lake Forest, Illinois or Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Very few of the (native born) kids around here are trying to get into Harvard, very few of the adults are interested in studying the Great Books. We have large supplies of rock, rap, and country and western music, auto repair manuals, trashy novels for all ages, and cookbooks. Now and then someone will ask for a copy of Proust in French, but it's rare. When it happens it's interlibrary-loaned.
As far as Art Deco's observations are concerned, I would say that these have substance in some instances, but are not general. When you get rude people out of others' way, you tend to please more than you bother, and timid librarians are balanced out by those who like to throw their weight around.
Administrators are interested in not offending people, to be sure; but they're more interested in pleasing the right people. That interest can favor either chaos or order, depending on where the power lies in the community. If the control is in the hands of left-wingers who don't believe in stifling expressiveness, that's one thing, and the libraries, full of kids and vagrants expressing themselves, will be hell for people who love order and quiet. If it is in more conservative hands, that's another matter.
Posted by: smh | Jul 9, 2007 11:51:07 AM
>>Just as brick-and-mortar record stores like Tower could not compete with online downloading, so libraries cannot compete with desktops and portable wireless devices for the conveyance of bit-based information.<<
There will always be a market for hardcopies of anything. I don't get liner notes when I download an album instead of buying the CD, not to mention that all present audio codecs aren't lossless technologies, so I get better sound quality with a CD than anything else given the proper hardware to play it.
In this respect, you get a point: the library offers hardcopies of texts available online, and there will always be a market for that.
Posted by: Michael | Jul 9, 2007 11:55:20 AM
Too right, Stuart, but again, it's often important to combine various forms of information gathering. Some are not spacially limited, but others are. Even internet access --surprise -- is spacially limited for the poor. I don't think I'm fully on board with the "library as community center" concept, but the physical place of a library should be directed toward allowing multiple media to interact. Otherwise, if it's really just about books, then why not run a library like Amazon.com, with just a warehouse and home delivery? Going to a place for books and other materials creates a different set of study capabilities than isolated consumption of individual volumes.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | Jul 9, 2007 11:57:04 AM
>>>Stuart - but wasn't Patton the quintessential cavalryman? <<<
Patton was. But in World War I he served in the fledgling Tank Corps, and came to view tanks as something separate from cavalry. In this he differed from his fellow American and British cavalrymen, who merely saw the tank as a kind of mechanized horse, and sought a one-for-one substitution of tanks for horses without thinking through the different capabilities of each. Thus, in both Britain and the U.S. (and to a lesser extent in France), tank development in the 1920s and 30s was bifurcated: on the one hand, fast light "cavalry" tanks armed with machineguns for exploitation of breakthroughs; and slow, heavy "infantry" tanks armed with cannon to break through trench lines. To some extent, neither the U.S. nor British armies managed to transcend this distinction during World War II. Hence, we went to war in the M4 Sherman medium tank, with a low-velocity gun intended to blow up trucks, artillery and pillboxes, because tanks were for "exploitation", while a separate "tank destroyer" corps equipped with lighter, more mobile vehicles armed with high velocity guns was supposed to take on the enemy tanks. It didn't quite work out that way.
German tank doctrine, on the other hand, grew out of light infantry and "stormtroop" doctrine from the First World War (Rommel, for example, was a light infantryman, not a cavalryman), which emphasized the close interaction of all arms at the lowest levels, infiltration tactics, decentralized command and control, and a balance of protection and mobility. Panzer divisions therefore contained almost from the beginning, a combination of organic tanks, artillery, engineers and mounted infantry, while U.S. and British armored divisions were almost all tanks and hardly any infantry.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 11:59:14 AM
>>>Had IBM realized that the future was in software, not hardware, they could have changed to become Microsoft. <<<
I'm so glad that Apple realized the future was fully integrated hardware and software.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 12:01:13 PM
I'm so glad that Apple realized the future was fully integrated hardware and software.
I bet the Apple shareholders wished they had gone the path of Microsoft.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 12:03:46 PM
>>>But the US does have a strong copper wire infrastructure, and the distances it covers, even given the price of copper, is what has maintained our stationary landlines for a long time and will continue to do so. <<<
Verizon is currently ripping out all of its remaining copper and going to all fibre optic networks (allowing them to jack up the fees for their subscribers).
But you are essentially correct (and indirectly make my point about railroads). The analogy holds most closely to satellite broadband services. I've had the opportunity to do several market studies of that industry, as well as competitor analyses of several proposed systems. My conclusion was none of them could compete with terrestrial systems in the foreseeable future, because there was simply too much infrastructure in the United States. At the time I did the study, fully 25% of all the fiber-optic cable in the U.S. was unlit, which meant that ISPs and telecoms were forced in effect to "give away" bandwidth and compete on content provision. With the bundling of phone, internet and video service, there was no way that a satellite company could provide comparable services for less than $49 per month. Satellite, like wireless, made sense only where there was no infrastructure (though wireless still needs some infrastructure, like towers and nodes)--places like Africa, Central Asia, or Latin America. However, places that didn't have infrastructure likely didn't have money, while places that had money had infrastructure out the wazoo. I see that Hughes is advertising its satellite broadband system on TV--it will be interesting to see whether it survives.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 12:10:31 PM
>>I'm so glad that Apple realized the future was fully integrated hardware and software.<<
I'm so glad Microsoft realized an open hardware environment that let people personalize and customize the machine was the future...
Wow, I am not getting into a Mac-vs-PC debate on Mere Comments. There's something wrong with it.
Posted by: Michael | Jul 9, 2007 12:11:26 PM
>>>It is not true that young people are divorced from paper. <<<
Fossil that I am, I remember all this talk about the "paperless office" brought about by networked computers. I generate tons more paper today than I did back when I had to type everything out on a Selectric.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 12:11:49 PM
>>>I bet the Apple shareholders wished they had gone the path of Microsoft.<<<
Apple trading today at $132, up from $50 one year ago. Microsoft stock largely flat for the past couple of years.
>>>I'm so glad Microsoft realized an open hardware environment that let people personalize and customize the machine was the future...<<<
In the same way that Henry Ford personalized the Model T, right?
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Jul 9, 2007 12:14:08 PM
since I doubt (for several reasons) whether very much of the contents of old libraries will become digitized
Don't tell Google. It has contracts with several very large libraries to digitize their entire collection. Copyright is the only real issue and my guess is that Google will figure out ways to get that resolved, probably a combination of licensing agreements and legislation. The Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild have sued Google, but I have spoken to people associated with this litigation and they view it as simply a matter which can be negotiated in such a way that everyone goes away happy (i.e., with some money in their pocket).
For a recent news article about it, see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/22/digitize
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 12:14:11 PM
In the same way that Henry Ford personalized the Model T, right?
Hey, you could get any color you wanted, couldn't you?
. . .
As long as it was black.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 12:16:01 PM
Apple trading today at $132, up from $50 one year ago. Microsoft stock largely flat for the past couple of years.
Apple (no longer Apple Computer -- they changed the name a year or two ago) has changed into a different business. It realized that it was not in the computer business, but in the IT business. . . . And it turned out that taking a wider view was good for its computer part of its business as well.
Wait a minute, that sounds kind of familiar . . . kind of like libraries not being in the book business, but the information business.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 12:19:36 PM
Joining this thread belatedly....
"A library is, or should be, a repository of BOOKS"
So, Stuart, you don't believe in libraries for sound media, such as recordings and films?
Posted by: James A. Altena | Jul 9, 2007 12:19:58 PM
As to Stuart's point about railroads problem with their investment in infrastructure being a cause of their not morphing into FedEx, he is correct, but the problem was not the investment per se, but the railroad's mindset resulting from the investment. They were so concerned about seeing a good return on that investment that they failed to diversify when the market opportunity presented itself, continuing to invest instead in a business with limited upside potential while entrepreneur's not blindered by such investments saw where the future on transportation is.
It is true that a large part of the FedEx and UPS business is in its information awareness, but the information they are aware of is the location of its assets (planes, pilots, mechanics, etc.) and the goods it is transporting for its customers. To argue that they are not in the transportation business is to ignore where much of its revenue comes from.
But Stuart does have a point. Ray Kroc (founder of McDonald's) reportedly one asked some MBA students what business he was in. When they said hamburgers, he shocked them by saying no and telling them that he was in the real estate business. Again, however, this just proves the point that librarians who think they are in the book business miss the point.
Posted by: GL | Jul 9, 2007 12:33:33 PM
