Monthly Archives: September 2007

A Student’s View of Second Life

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Some librarians are excited by the prospect of Second Life. I don’t have any strong opinions about it. I’ve been on a few times, played around with my avatar trying to make it look like me except handsome, and watched other neophytes run into obstacles because they couldn’t navigate very well. I can never find any islands with many people on them, but perhaps it’s because I don’t go in for virtual shopping or virtual sex.

Princeton now has a Second Life island. I had to visit it from home, though. Because I don’t have administrative rights on my work machine and we inhabit a culture of distrust when it comes to our computers, I couldn’t download the software. (Cultures of trust and distrust could definitely be another post.) Then when I got someone from systems to download it, my computer crashed, possibly because my graphics card wasn’t powerful enough. Thus, I visited the Princeton island from home. Very pretty, but not much there. And I felt strange being the only person on campus. It was like one of those end of the world movies. I kept waiting for some horrible space monster to leap out of Nassau Hall.

The Daily Princetonian, our school newspaper, published an editorial about the Princeton Second Life island today entitled Second Life and the Soul. From the very first sentence, you can get an idea of what the writer thinks of Second Life. “You are alive. You are reading this newspaper.”

I’ve noted before that I don’t think these kids today are ahead of me technologically, even though I’m getting old enough to be their father, except with less money. I’m not sure I believe the hype about how the “millennials” are all that much different from other generations. The writer for the Prince might agree with me on this, being skeptical about the value of a Princeton on Second Life.

The editorial concludes:

“In fairness, we do not yet know the purpose of this program. Perhaps alumni will be interested in seeing Princeton online and will have fond memories of Chancellor Green. Perhaps perspective students will lie about their age to catch a glimpse of what could be. Maybe if the software is flashier more strangers will download our lectures. To some, these applications may seem trivial, but more importantly they are harmless. Should Second Life begin to intersect or usurp student life, however, this campus will be radically worse off for it.”

This seems to me exactly the kind of skeptical attitude one should take toward social software. Try it, perhaps use it, try to adapt it to good uses if possible, be ready to admit if it doesn’t work very well, and be aware of the dangers.

And all this from one of the millennials.

(You might also be interested in a more hostile reception of Second Life by a Princeton Student.)

UPDATE: I asked my students in class this morning how many had ever visited second life, and none had. One woman said, “We have real lives.”

How about Those METS

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Lately I’ve been working on a slightly different library project than usual, and I’ve learned some important things about digital libraries, my job, and myself. (That sounds a bit like those revelations celebrities always make on the covers of women’s magazines. I always thought it strange that the celebrities learn everything in threes.)

A philosophy professor here wanted the library to acquire and digitize a copy of Histoire Naturelle de Mre. Francois Bacon, a seventeenth-century French translation of Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum, published as far as I can tell just a few years after the English version. The library did manage to acquire a copy, which makes us one of the few libraries in the country to have one. I know you’re jealous. The finding and purchasing was relatively easy. I was pleasantly surprised that the book was under a thousand dollars considering its relative scarcity and decent condition. However, I wasn’t sure about the digitization because I hadn’t worked with the digital projects people before. Partly to get the project going, and partly to learn something new, I agreed to help out with the project if it was accepted into the queue. The project was swiftly approved, and within a couple of weeks of receipt the book was digitized (with excellent images).

I’m hesitant to admit my previous ignorance of what goes on behind the scenes of these digital projects, but I had little idea. I figured it was more than scanning pages and loading the images on the web, but that’s about it. I use these projects all the time, but hadn’t thought much of their creation, much like I’m happy to use the catalog but glad someone else does the cataloging. This may be the only project I’ve followed from selection to the very end, which I hope is near. I watched the digital photographer photographing some of the images. I watched the head rare books cataloger do some minor tweaking of the MARC record.

Then came my part, the METS record, which according to my favorite easily accessible encyclopedia–the Wikipedia–stands for “Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard” and “is a standard for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library, expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium.” That sounds about like what the more knowledgeable programmers and catalogers told me, so I’ll stick with that. My task in this project was to help create the METS record, which among other things creates the points of entry into the digital document. You probably knew that already. I had no idea. I don’t know what I’ve been doing with myself the past few years. If you go to this project and click on the drop down box that marked SHOW, you’ll see one thing the METS record does.

With 628 images, I suspected the METS record might be a little tedious to create. I also knew that it was in XML, which I have no experience with. I foolishly thought there would be some sort of editor program to help with this. I don’t mean an XML editor, because I had one of those. I mean something more like Dreamweaver, that creates html and css and all that good stuff without having to hand code it. I wanted a Dreamweaver for my METS record. Imagine my shock when I was told there wasn’t one, that some people have been handcoding parts of these projects. I’m always more or less happy I’m not a programmer or a cataloger, but this confirmed my feelings.

Fortunately, another of our catalogers has created a macro that translates an Excel spreadsheet into a proper XML METS record. Though initially thinking this project might be a good way to learn XML, I was counseled by wiser heads to use the spreadsheet method instead. Most of it was me going through the images and creating points of entry on chapters or subchapters, labeling them, matching page and image numbers, etc. Very detailed work. I finished the spreadsheet was told it looked pretty good, and am waiting to hear if it made its miraculous metamorphoses into a workable METS record.

What I learned about digital projects is how complicated they are and how much work goes into even the simplest one. Some of my colleagues have criticized the rate at which the digital projects have been moving, but after seeing how much had to be done, and how many people had to work together just to digitize one book properly, I understand why it’s not the same as scanning and loading onto a website, which some people seem to think. The whole project has given me a better understanding of the behind the scenes work of a lot of my hardworking colleagues.

I can’t say I learned anything new about my job, but I needed a third insight to sound like a celebrity. Still, it was reinforced for me how dependent we all are on other people doing their work well. When I’m doing it, it seems to me that most of my work is independent. I don’t often work in teams, and I can do a lot of my job without interacting with other librarians or being in a particular location. In any given week, I’m much more likely to interact with a professor or student than with a colleague. I like the autonomy, but my autonomy depends on all the teams working behind the scenes making sure that when I click a button ordering a book, that book later shows up on a shelf, or even in a digital project.

What I learned about myself is that I’m still glad I’m not a cataloger or programmer, but now I have more concrete reasons. I’m just not cut out for that detailed work. I’m an end user and proud of it, but I’m even more thankful for the detail-oriented people in the background making all this stuff work for me.

Threat and Communication

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Rhetoricians sometimes talk about the psychologist Carl Rogers, specifically his notion that threat hinders communication and persuasion. The basic idea should be obvious to everyone. If I feel threatened by you, I might listen to you, but I won’t be persuaded. I might be ordered, forced, coerced, or manipulated, and I may have to capitulate to your demands, but I won’t be persuaded and won’t willingly do what you want me to do. In an organization, this means I might very well resist you in cunning ways, especially if I feel I have little power in a direct confrontation.

I say the basic idea should be obvious, but often isn’t, because persuasion isn’t necessarily what some people set out to achieve. Chaim Perelman writes in The Realm of Rhetoric that the aim of argumentation is “to elicit or increase the adherence of the members of an audience to theses that are presented for their consent.”

Communication may be hindered even by relatively mild threats. I don’t need a gun put to my head to feel threatened. I can feel threatened professionally or personally, and this can mean standard arguments might not work. As Maxine Hairston writes:

“Ironically, those situations in which the classical methods of using proof, evidence, and logical deductions are most apt to fail are just the ones we care about most. Such arguments often concern issues that affect us deeply-racial and sexual matters, moral questions, personal and professional standards and behavior. Where there is dispute about this kind of issue, communication often breaks down because both parties are so emotionally involved, so deeply committed to certain values, that they can scarcely listen to each other, much less have a rational exchange of views. ” (Carl Rogers’s Alternative to Traditional Rhetoric, College Composition and Communication 27:4. Link is to JSTOR)

I bring this up because I think it has some relevance to discussions of change, technology, politics and other contentious issues within librarianship. How much do proponents of certain changes or political positions try to persuade reluctant librarians? And how might reluctant librarians feel threatened? And if they feel threatened, how might that perception of threat be reduced? Saying “you just don’t get it” isn’t persuasion.

Rogers contribution adds more understanding of the person to traditional rhetoric. Rhetoric isn’t just about argument, it’s about persuasion. Arguments sometimes don’t work. An argument may be sound, but if people aren’t persuaded, it still fails. To persuade, those arguing need to treat their opponents with respect and understanding, to try to see the world as the other sees it. Hairston outlines 5 rhetorical actions based on Rogerian theory:

1. Give a brief, objective statement of the issue under discussion.

2. Summarize in impartial language what you perceive the case for the opposition to be; the summary should demonstrate that you understand their interests and concerns and should avoid any hint of hostility.

3. Make an objective statement of your own side of the issue, listing your concerns and interests, but avoiding loaded language or any hint of moral superiority.

4. Outline what common ground or mutual concerns you and the other person or group seem to share; if you see irreconcilable interests, specify what they are.

5. Outline the solution you propose, pointing out what both sides may gain from it.

If we all followed these guidelines, there might be fewer librarians who feel threatened by change. Frustration and hostility never persuade anyone.

Student Banned from the Internet

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I’d like to find more information about this story from the Chronicle: College Student Banned from Internet.
A University of Connecticut-Torrington student arrested for sending harassing emails to another student has been told by a judge to stay away from the other student and her friends, but also told to stay off the Internet. There’s a link through to a Connecticut paper, but it requires a subscription for details, and I’m not that curious. Still, I’d like to know if that Internet ban is for all use, or only non-academic use. How long is it for?
I wonder if the judge realizes what this means for a college student. Can a college student even do the required work anymore without access to the Internet? That would mean no access to the university’s WebCT system, the library catalog, library online databases, any online readings or lectures, and most university information.
It’s hard to feel too much sympathy for a guy sending creepy emails, but this seems a bit harsh. The judge might have just ordered the student to drop out of college.

Are the Users Ahead of Us?

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Inside Higher education had an article a couple of days ago about a new study on technology use among undergraduates. As we’ve been hearing for a while, students are using more information technology than ever. This certainly comes as no surprise. They use social networking sites. Everyone has a cell phone, a laptop, and an iPod. The study noted that many students are comfortable with a variety of information technologies, but don’t necessarily want them everywhere. “Over half of laptop owners don’t bring them to class at all,” the article says. And, “the study finds ‘themes of skepticism and moderation alongside enthusiasm,’ such that 59 percent preferred a ‘moderate rather than extensive use of IT in courses.'” And as much as it might frustrate some librarians trying to make contact with students, some places they want to be left alone. “Students appear to segment different modes of communication for different purposes. E-mail, Web sites, message boards and Blackboard? Viable ways of connecting with professors and peers. Same for chat, instant messaging, Facebook and text messages? Not necessarily, the authors write, because students may ‘want to protect these tools’ personal nature.'”

That more or less confirms my experience with students. Technologically, they’re usually not ahead of me. After all, I have an iPod, a smartphone (only 12% of students have one of those), a laptop, a blog, an rss reader, a Facebook site (which I rarely use), and a Blackboard site (which I use intensively for my class). I use some of those Firefox extensions. I made a toolbar for the Princeton library that the library ignores but that some students and colleagues use. I just made a wiki for my reference department and am giving a demo on it tomorrow. I’ve even been on Second Life a few times, and found it mightily boring, though the new Princeton island is nice. Just to get a reaction, I told the students I’d looked them all up on Facebook, and commented on the great parties it looked like they’d attended. They were appalled until they realized I was joking.

Yesterday, I asked my students about their IT knowledge. Since we have a class blog that becomes an integral writing assignment for the course, I wanted to know who had blogged before. Only one student, who had signed up for the course partly because he liked the idea of the blog. A few students read blogs, but mostly those of their friends. Most of the students didn’t really know what an rss feed was, and only a couple used them. I doubt they’d spent much time on Second Life. They use a lot of IT, but have gaps in their knowledge, gaps they might never want to fill.

To shift the subject slightly, the library just started hosting blogs, and I created one for the philosophy department, partly just to see how WordPress works since I use Blogger for the course blog and Movable Type for this one. However, I don’t think I’m going to use the blog for a while, because I don’t think it will be read by my target audience, in this case philosophy professors and graduate students. I’ve talked to some, and while some are very cutting edge, most are very traditional is their approach to information. They read scholarly journals, not library blogs. They’re happy emailing me with problems; they don’t need to IM me. The graduate students may be different, but not necessarily. I oversee the philosophy department’s private library, and a couple of years ago I caved in to some grad student demand to leave the print journal collection intact, even though every one of the journals was available online through the university library.

This brings me in a very roundabout way to the question in my title. I often read library blogs that argue we should be adopting new information technologies because that’s where our users are at. I’m not so sure. I think that those librarians are ahead of their users in this respect, as I believe I’m ahead of most of my users. As a reason to change, catching up with the users might not be a very good one, because I suspect most of the users might not be caught up with us.

Does this mean we shouldn’t play around with new modes of communication and information technology? Certainly not. It just means that some of the urgency of calls to change ring hollow for me. We must change QUICKLY and NOW! But that urgency doesn’t seem to fit the facts.

To be honest, most of the techie blogs I read are by public librarians. It’s been a long time since I worked in a public library, but I would think the typical undergraduate at a four-year college is technologically ahead of the average public library user. And I would also suspect that members of the public who are the most technologically advanced, who have smartphones and laptops and read blogs and keep up with information technology, are probably the least likely to use public libraries for anything other than leisure reading. I use our public library for my daughter to get books, period, and not even that often, since we buy her a lot of books.

So is it the case that in either academic or public libraries the users are ahead of the techies? Or are they just ahead of the luddite librarians, if there be such? How wired is the general populace or the average student population? Are they really ahead of us?

Teaching and Learning

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Today I taught my first class of the semester, 80 minutes on political rhetoric. The first day of class always wears me out because it’s me talking almost the whole time, which isn’t usually the case. Come November and research paper time I’ll really be worn out, and sometimes I wonder why I keep doing it every year. I guess I like teaching because it makes me feel slightly more a part of the intellectual community on campus and gives me an opportunity to develop relationships with students that I never could as a librarian. I also like discussing rhetoric and political philosophy with smart students, too. Oh, and I get extra pay. A semester’s teaching pay is a semester’s tuition for my daughter’s school. Every little bit helps.

I get something out of teaching personally and professionally, but I don’t often ponder what I get as a librarian out of teaching a regular seminar, or what other librarians might get out of teaching regular courses. That’s something I plan to do here more often as the semester progresses, but I have some preliminary thoughts.

First, I get a very different view of what the students are doing in their classes, or at least one of their classes. As a librarian, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the importance of the library. The library is important for freshman rhetoric, and we have an intensive research essay, but the library and research aren’t the center of the course. The intellectual engagement with the readings and the writing are the take up the bulk of the time. Writing with sources is an important part of the course, but for much of that writing the sources are provided by the instructor.

I remember this being true for me during most of college. I majored in English and Philosophy, and hardly ever went to the library, though I read constantly. In my humanistic education, learning to read difficult texts carefully and craft strong essays were more important than library research.

By the time the students are juniors and seniors, or especially graduate students, this obviously changes. Then they use and appreciate the importance of research collections, depending on their field. But in the humanities the library, except as a place to get the core texts they need, isn’t necessarily important to students until they’re advanced.

When it comes to the research essay, I also get an improved view of student work. When I teach a library instruction session, I rarely see the end result, but in my own seminar I get to see the students progress from vague research topic to working thesis to final draft. I see the results of the library instruction and the research consultation in a way I usually don’t. Did it work? Are the sources scholarly enough? Did they explore the research on this topic, or just take the first five articles that popped up on Proquest? Did they immerse themselves in a scholarly conversation, or just make a claim and then try to find a few sources that agree with them?

All the writing seminars here are assigned a librarian to work with. I’m my own librarian, and I work with the students on every part of the process, both the writing and the research. After several years of this, I’ve come to believe that it would be ideal if the instructor and the librarian were the same person. Never can I address research needs as effectively as when I’m also the one teaching the course. I know exactly what the students need and when. I know exactly what advice to give them. And I’m never in the position of having to say, “well, I might do it this way, but you should probably check with your instructor,” as I sometimes do when I’m just the consulting librarian. The research/writing process is seamless.

By teaching the whole course, I also get to show students that librarians know about things besides card catalogs and shushing. That in itself might be worth the effort.

Conceptual Incommensurability and Video Games

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One of my long term projects is to explore the purpose of a research library. In library school I wrote, and recently revised for publication, an essay where I speculated about the end of the library, arguing that librarians should examine potential changes in libraries from a teleological perspective, that is, determine what to do now based on the end, or telos, toward which the library is heading. We’ll know what we need to do when we know what end we aim at.

Sometimes I think the discussion on the end of the library is pointless, though, because of the conceptual incommensurabilities involved. I’m not sure there can ever be any consensus on what a particular kind of library or even a specific library should be. We have conceptual incommensurability when those involved in the discussion cannot even agree on the terms of the debate. The result is that libraries move forward by responding to crises, adapting to change through ad hoc solutions that rarely serve a coherent purpose.

I just read a post by Brian Matthews about gaming in academic libraries that reminded me of one incommensurability in some discussions of service in libraries. Brian writes about a librarian who wants to purchase gaming consoles for the library, but concludes that gaming may ultimately be at odds with the purpose of academic libraries. Dorms and frat houses provide places to game, but “a stronger position for the academic library is to aspire to offer the premiere productivity and study space on campus. We should provide something that isn’t offered elsewhere and that fills a stated need.”

This seems to me like a more appropriate purpose for the academic library as place, and as a concept the purpose should also be to preserve the historical and scholarly record and make it accessible. I know there’s an effort to push video-gaming in public libraries, and a good argument out there for purchasing gaming machines and games to preserve them for future historical research. I don’t have an opinion about public library video-gaming, but I could support purchasing gaming consoles and games for preservation purposes, though I wonder if a museum rather than an library would be the appropriate place to preserve this part of popular culture.

I speak of a conceptual incommensurability because it may be difficult for two sides in a debate like this to agree on anything. I can’t understand why anyone would want to make an academic library a location for non-academic play, especially when there are so many other places on most campuses to play. Academic libraries don’t always have to be serious places, but they should be scholarly. Public libraries have some incentive to act as community centers, and that makes sense for their mission.

But college campuses are different. On my campus, there are many locations for students to gather for all sorts of purposes. The library should be the place they gather for study and scholarship. I think sometimes that librarians are guilty of thinking the library as a place is as important to the students and faculty as it obviously is to the librarians. But the students don’t consider the library as central to their being as librarians do. They know what other opportunities are available. To serve students well, the library should provide them a place to discover the joys of study and scholarship, and let the campus centers, the greek houses, the dorms, or the eating clubs provide places for socializing and gaming.

If we really wanted to attract students and make the library fun, perhaps we should use library space for pubs. To me, it seems as appropriate to open a pub in an academic library as it does to create space for video-gaming. I fear that an effort to make the library “fun” distracts from that purpose. The message it could send to students is, even the librarians think study and scholarship are dull.

Extroverts and Introverts

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Walking across campus today, I spotted the new easy way to tell the extroverts from the introverts.
The extroverts are chatting on their cell phones loudly sharing their intimate conversations with the world.
The introverts are listening to their iPods trying to drown out the sound of the phone conversations.
I’m not sure what to think of the people with their cell phones up to one ear and iPod earbuds hanging out of the other, especially if they’re walking along with a friend.
I made this observation while listening to contemplative music on my iPod.

My Freshman Orientation

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Classes begin this week on campus and for the past two days the library has been participating in the freshman orientation process. Just the usual stuff. Giving tours, handing out food, teaching people how to find a book (harder than you might think in the Firestone Library).

After work yesterday I was walking to the parking garage (conveniently located a mere 15-minute walk from my office) when I came upon a new student lugging two large suitcases and a heavy backpack from the train station to her dorm. One of the suitcases was almost as large as she was. She was standing still and looking around, which didn’t surprise me because it’s a new residential college and even I’m not sure where much is.

She hailed me and asked if I could help her a moment. Thinking she was going to ask directions, I said “sure.” She did ask directions, but first she handed me one of her suitcases and asked if I’d help carry it to her dorm room. I tried not to chuckle and just took the suitcase from her, then led the way to her building.

As we were walking, she asked if I was a grad student. Since this is a not uncommon assumption, I wonder if I look young for my age or if perhaps I should just dress better. The increasing whiteness of my hair and beard means I might reconsider my wardrobe. I told her I was a librarian. I almost said it the way that woman in the Mummy movie says it. I’m a LI-BRARIAN! But that would have been hokey. Fortunately she didn’t say, “you don’t look like a librarian,” because I have no comeback for that other than, “Oh yeah? Well, neither do you!”

I give tours of Firestone for a lot of incoming students each year, but I think that one bedraggled frosh appreciated my help more than any of the students on tour. Maybe next year instead of touring Firestone I’ll set up a sign at one of the residential colleges:

Need Help with Heavy Lifting?
Ask a Librarian!

War Rhetoric

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It’s too serious a day to discuss libraries.

Is there any rhetoric more divisive than war rhetoric? Probably, but it’s too depressing to think about. In my opinion, generally the pro-war and anti-war forces both use divisive rhetoric, but today a particularly irritating essay in the Wall Street Journal brought the point home. In “America the Ugly,” Norman Podhoretz discusses those on the left whom he considers to hold the”negative faith in America the ugly” and their role in the current anti-war movement, essentially equating the two.

This rhetoric both divisive and overly simplistic. It assumes that everyone who is opposed to the War in Iraq thus hates America and loves “Islamofascism.” This is the right-wing version of the simplistic left-wing view that anyone who thinks America is a great country or appreciates the rights and liberties of American citizenship is some sort of fascist (or whatever the current pejorative is for patriots). One can certainly love America and be opposed to both the current government administration and the War in Iraq, but the “love the War or Hate America” dichotomy disguises this obvious fact, and is merely a way to demonize any opposition to the war as a bunch of disgruntled radicals who want America to lose another war because they hate their own country.

Where, I ask, does that leave those who want to end the war not because they hate America, but because they were always opposed to the war? Not everyone was part of the fickle survey crowd who first wanted to go to War and then opposed it when they realized that somehow people actually get killed in wars, and not always the enemy. (My 7-year-old daughter told me one of her male friends said he wanted to grow up and join the army until she told him that sometimes soldiers get killed. That was shocking news to him, but he’s 8).

Podhoretz dislikes the “America is ugly” crowd, but one can find the “America is Ugly” crowd overly simplistic without thus defending the War in Iraq. “Well acquainted though I am with its malignant power, I still believe that it will ultimately be overcome by the forces opposed to it in the war at home. Even so, I cannot deny that this question still hangs ominously in the air and will not be answered before more damage is done to the long struggle against Islamofascism into which we were blasted six years ago and that I persist in calling World War IV.”

This quote is also overly simplistic. For one, it assumes a connection between the War in Iraq and “Islamofascism” that may well exist now, but did not exist prior to invasion. Iraq was not an Islamofascist state, and compared to many of its neighbors wasn’t even much of an Islamic state. The alleged connections to al-Qaeda were tenuous at best, and there no weapons of mass destruction. How could the initial invasion of Iraq have been a justified part of the struggle against “Islamofascism”?

Regardless, this rhetoric also implies that anyone opposed to the War in Iraq is some friend of “Islamofascism.” Yet surely there must be some people who do not want to give up capitalism and democracy and convert to Islam (as Osama bin Laden is supposedly urging Americans to do in his latest video), who love both America and the freedoms it offers, who oppose totalitarianism of any kind and any attempts to infringe American liberties, and yet who also oppose a war that one could argue was never a just war in the first place.

Despite the divisive rhetoric, perhaps it is possible for someone to be an American patriot opposed to terrorism and “Islamofascism,” and yet still be opposed to the War in Iraq. Perhaps it’s just possible not to fall into the trap of false dichotomies in political rhetoric.

It’s just a thought.