Monthly Archives: August 2008

Research Libraries Support Research

Posted on by

I’ve long thought that the concept of “library” isn’t a very coherent one. The small town (pop. 300 or so) public library that serves my grandmother and the very large research library I work in are both called libraries, and yet their staff, collections, and mission couldn’t be more different. There are also often large differences in outlook even among academic librarians. Sometimes this is a teaching versus research difference, and sometimes a service versus collections difference. Few librarians seem to move completely to one side or another, and I certainly don’t, but the tensions are undoubtedly there in the profession, and often in the same library.

I’m thinking about this because of the juxtaposition of topics I’ve encountered so far today. This morning I attended a presentation by Bernard Reilly, President of the Center for Research Libraries. He discussed a lot of the initiatives currently underway at CRL, including a number of their digitization projects. One of them involves Latin American newspapers, and as part of an effort to make the materials more useful to the libraries in the region digital copies will be made available to those libraries as well as to CRL libraries, though not freely on the Internet. My favorite quote was that this project is “built on the assumption that an Internet cafe is not a library.” Though the CRL hopes to digitize a lot of material in the coming years, I seriously doubt that everything they have will ever be digitized. I wasn’t aware until today of how much of it isn’t even cataloged yet.

To the undigitized, and possibly never digitized collections of CRL, add the archives scattered across the globe. Then the book collections that aren’t now, and may never be digitized. That’s a lot of material that will never be freely available from an Internet cafe or your laptop, or even your university should they have the money to pay for such things.

Now let us turn to a blog post at ACRLog I read just after the presentation–Library as Place–For Air Conditioning Books. In it Steven Bell comments on a presentation by Adrian Sannier, Chief Technology Officer at Arizona State University. Bell excerpts a couple of tasty quotes. Here’s part of one:

If you were starting [an educational institution] today, how many books would you have? I know what I would do. I’d have none. I’d have zero. Well that would change my cost picture relevant to you and that would make my university’s knowledge so much more accessible to you both when you’re there and when you weren’t there. That kind of reinvention is what we’re talking about.

About that, I’m not sure what to say, except it wouldn’t be much of an educational institution, but more on that later.

Here’s part of another juicy one:

Burn down the library. C’mon, all the books in the world are already digitized….Stop air conditioning the books. Enough already. None of us has the Alexandria Library. Michigan, Stanford, Oxford, Indiana. Those guys have digitized their collections. What have you got that they haven’t got? Why are you buying a new book? Buy digitial….How many people are using the indicies we’re all paying so much for….

Bell certainly realizes how ignorant (or perhaps deliberately provocative) Sannier is about book digitization and higher education, though he opines that maybe some IT people have it in for us librarians. Bell’s response is that If “academic libraries are being dismissed as one big book air conditioner then we better start doing some of our own transforming to make sure our operations are lean yet productive, and that we have the data to prove to the top administrators that our libraries deliver the best service for the tuition dollar. It must be shown that academic libraries directly contribute to students achieving learning outcomes and persistence to graduation.” That’s certainly a sensible approach, but there are other considerations to make about Sannier’s poorly informed presentation.

First of all, I find it difficult to take even remotely seriously. Dr. Sannier is no doubt a bright and competent man. He has a PhD in computer science, and before going to ASU worked with computer systems both in academia and private industry, according to his bio. My assertion isn’t that I don’t take him seriously as a professional, only that I can’t take him seriously as an expert on university research or teaching more broadly, that is, outside of the technological and digital portions of it. Obviously Google has not digitized all the books in the Google Book project libraries, and just as obviously the copyrighted ones they have digitized are not freely available online. Obviously also, as Bell note, curricula differ widely among educational institutions, and it’s not at all clear that even the complete collections available freely online at some of these libraries would satisfy all comers, which of course we know isn’t going to happen anyway.

I’d like to watch the entire presentation, but unfortunately right now I have a spreadsheet of 38,000 nondigitized book titles I have to go through line by line to make location decisions, plus I’m going on vacation next week, so I can barely break away to blog. Perhaps next time I have a free moment, which at this point will probably be New Year’s Day. Still, based on the excerpts as well as Bell’s reaction, neither of them are necessarily taking into account the larger mission of the research library. Bell’s response is to recommend that libraries make the case that tuition dollars are used wisely and student learning outcomes are met and they graduate. That’s all good stuff, and I think natural from a public services AUL at an urban state university.

But teaching students is but one mission of a research university, and not necessarily the most important one, if we judge by what professors get the most rewards for. The purpose of a research university is to research, to create knowledge, to contribute to the scholarly record, etc. This differs by field, naturally. In the sciences, engineering, computer science, and other areas, this may not require anything that can’t be accessed by a computer. In the humanities, area studies, and some of the social sciences, it does, and it most likely will for decades to come, if not forever. Yes, it’s possible that eventually every archive and book collection in the world will be digitized and available to researchers, even if not for free, like some of the collections coming out of the CRL are now available to research libraries. It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem very likely.

Another possibility is that enough material will be digitized that future researchers will just be content with what is digitally available and not worry about the rest. That’s pretty sloppy research, but as we know everyone, scholars included, prefer the good but easily available to the best but difficult to obtain. This could happen, but it wouldn’t negate the ideal of the research university or research library; it would just cheapen it.

It’s this perspective that makes it difficult for research libraries. Sannier rightly notes that no library is a universal library. No one has everything. That’s been the case for decades, though. The CRL, for example, was founded in 1949 to address this issue. That’s why we have cooperative agreements with other libraries. This is not even remotely a new issue. It might seem like a new issue now only if you think everything is digitized. Since most books, archives, etc., aren’t digitized, there’s nothing new being said about the issue. Just claiming it’s true doesn’t make it so.

I don’t think every institution of higher education should be a research university or every library a research library. I also don’t think that large libraries are necessary for most undergraduate education. It’s clear some fields hardly need library resources. Despite its dependence on monographs, a strong liberal arts education could probably be supported by a library of 10,000 books or so, if they were, for example, the 10,000 or so that Peter Briscoe in Reading the Map of Knowledge considers the “core.” And perhaps all those books would be digitally available to a new college today, or at least relatively soon. So, if we’re talking about starting up a new community college, or business school, or liberal arts college, this get-rid-of-the-print-books approach has at least a chance of working, though what liberal arts college would feel satisfied with a library so small I don’t know. Thomas Aquinas College, perhaps. But still, if one wanted to trim the collection to the absolute minimum necessary for a decent liberal arts college, it just might be barely possible. (That’s a lot of qualification, I know).

However, once we turn away from undergraduate education, the whole notion breaks down completely, and for any research university worth the name such a scheme is unthinkable if the library is actually designed to support any research. And the argument that no library is universal only goes so far. No library is a universal library, but it seems clear to me that the top 25 libraries or so plus places like CRL together constitute about as universal library as we are about to get. We can measure “top” anyway we please, whether it’s the number of items, amount of digital content, or financial resources. Regardless, there have to be a number of libraries that do their best to build just-in-case research collections for some fields so that we can all satisfy our otherwise insatiable just-in-time research needs.

A “research library” without print materials and climate control to protect them is an oxymoron. That might not always be the case, and I wouldn’t feel at all bad if the situation went away, but it’s here to stay for a long time to come. Print materials are still needed for research, and the purpose of a research library is to support research. I suppose some would consider me an excessive technophobe or bibliophile for saying that, but such is far from the case. I just want to protect research libraries and the universities they support from the excessive technophiles and bibliophobes that could destroy them if given a chance.

Get to Know Me

Posted on by

Lately I’ve been wanting to get to know myself better, to really explore who I am, and there’s no better way to do that than by taking quizzes at Blogthings or some other such site. I took a lot of them so that I would know more about myself, and I thought I would share them with you, so you can get to know me, too. If you don’t want to know more about me, don’t read on.

I don’t think I’m the main demographic for these quizzes, because most of them seemed aimed at unmarried young women. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find out if I was a vain girl, or a fit girl, or an “it” girl. I’ll never find out if my boyfriend is cheating on me, or if I have him hooked, or if he loves me only for my body (probably not).

Still, I can find out the really important things about myself. For example, I’m a sexually powerful brainiac with a very high independence level who is incredibly logical and bold when it counts. How many librarians can say that, I ask you.

Those all sound pretty good to me, but sometimes one finds out unpleasant things about oneself. For example, I’m a little anal retentive and 32% gross. Oh, and I’m only an okay listener.

And then there are the things one never really thinks about. For example, I’m not prissy. In fact, I’m “the furthest thing from a princess.” It’s something I’ve never really thought about before, but it’s good to know. Also, it seems I make a good first impression. That’s nice to know as well.

Then there are the things I already suspected. My movie buff quotient is 84%. I’m “a movie buff of the most obsessive variety. If a movie exists, chances are that [I’ve] seen it.” Doesn’t surprise me at all.

There are also the little random things one can find out about oneself, such as from the shortest personality quiz, where choosing which picture you like most tells you a lot about your personality. That sounds pretty scientific to me. According to that quiz, I am “elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. [My] mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. [I am] also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs.” Hmm. That could be.

And there are the things people can find out about me from, for example, my musical taste. My “musical tastes are reflective and complex. [I am] intellectual to the point of being cerebral. [I am] very open to new experiences, and even more open to new ideas and theories. Wisdom and personal accomplishment are important to [me]. [I am] naturally sophisticated. [I am} drawn to art, especially art by independent artists. [I am] likely to be financially well off… and not because [I was] born that way.” I was sure this was correct until that last sentence. So much for science.

Fortunately, I haven’t been ruined by American culture, whatever that is. The quizmasters think I may not be American at all. I feel pretty American, though, so I just don’t know what to believe. Maybe it’s because I “take a more global philosophy with [my] politics, taste, and life.” The problem is, when I start to unpack that sentence, I’m not exactly sure what it would mean to take a philosophy with my taste. Sometimes going through these quizzes I think it’s just possible not only that the makers don’t know what they’re talking about, but that they don’t express themselves very well.

To wrap things up, I’ll just let you know a couple of random things. I’m disturbingly profound rather than profoundly disturbing and my seduction style is the charmer. I just thought you should know.

To Read or Not to Read

Posted on by

I seem to be reading a lot lately about how people don’t read anymore, especially these young people. On my recent flights, there sure seemed to be a lot of people reading books, but maybe airline travel is restricted to the especially literate, though that wouldn’t explain the four hours I once had to spend listening to the woman next to me extol the virtues of Boyd’s Bears as she traveled to a Boyd’s Bears convention. And you thought library conventions were bad.

It’s a good thing I’m not worried about the kids not reading today, because I’m putting together my syllabus for my writing seminar, which begins all too soon. The reading list isn’t especially heavy in terms of page count. I always considered such courses torture because I’m such a slow reader. In a Victorian novel course I took in graduate school, I’m not sure I finished any of the novels except The Mill on the Floss, and that’s because I had to present on it. It seemed I’d get a third of the way through one of Dickens’ interminable tomes and we’d start on yet another one. Even The Mill on the Floss I had to read so quickly I remember almost nothing about it. I think someone dies.

So the pages are relatively small in number, but dense, especially the Rawls. If you’ve ever read any Rawls (John, not Lou), then you know what a tedious writer he can be. It’s a pity someone so brilliant couldn’t write more gracefully. Still, if the prevailing views of students are correct, whatever are we to do with them? Just now I was trying to decide between a Philip Pettit or a Quentin Skinner essay to represent the republican position. I decided on both, but if these kids today don’t read, perhaps I should just teach neither. Perhaps we should abandon research and writing altogether. Why bother if the kids are so incorrigibly dumb?

From a professor at Illinois who’d obviously been around a while even then I heard about some of the protesting hippie teaching assistants teaching rhetoric in the late sixties. Instead of essays, they’d have the students make collages and such. Maybe we could abandon reading and writing completely and just do that in class. Collages have the advantage not only of looking prettier than essays, they’re also much easier to grade while stoned.

The touchstone of the new aliteracy for some seems to be that the kids today aren’t reading literature anymore. Capital L Literature apparently used to be important to the culture, and everyone who was anyone ran around discussing T.S. Eliot or Allen Ginsberg while drinking cocktails or smoking pot (respectively), or ruminating on the supposed complexities of Beckett or Sartre. The kids just don’t do this anymore, and it bothers some people.

Let’s hope the students get a smattering of great literature during their college years, but otherwise, is it so bad if they don’t read novels for fun? Some of them no doubt will go on to be the educated intellectual types who will lament for the future because the next generation will be so ill read. But if most of them grow up reading nothing more substantial than news or blogs or the occasional magazine, will they be that much different from how most people have always been? Did we ever really live through some literary golden age when masses of people read more not because it was what they wanted to do but because there wasn’t much else to do.

The nineteenth century in England and America seemed to be a relatively literate time, but was there not perhaps a large difference between those who for enjoyment read the John Stuart Mill or Matthew Arnold and those who read the serial installments of The Old Curiosity Shop and flocked to Dickens’ celebrity tours of America? When literature was entertainment, were we any better off as a society? Now that literature is less popular, doesn’t there still seem to be a lot of reading going on? And is the person who daily consumes another genre novel somehow more critical and analytical than the rest of us, more fit to be a citizen than those who skim headlines on Google News or read political blogs?

Perhaps, though, the curmudgeons and naysayers are correct, and somehow this year the students will be worse than they were last year. The dumbest generation goes to college. Apparently I’m not even protected here in my ivy league ivory tower, since if William Deresiewicz is to be believed, one of the disadvantages of an elite education is that it is “profoundly anti-intellectual,” and it also offers too many temptations to mediocrity.

I hope I don’t end up with all the mediocre, profoundly anti-intellectual students in my class. No use fretting I suppose, because there’s not much I can do about it anyway.

Reference Renaissance

Posted on by

I attended the Reference Renaissance conference in Denver this week, and got back late Wednesday night. In case anyone is ever thinking of flying with me, don’t. It’s pretty much a guarantee that your bags will get lost, or the flight will be horribly delayed, or there’ll be bad storms, or they won’t have any food you can eat (even for sale), or the plane will develop engine trouble just after takeoff and will have to fly in circles for two hours to burn off enough fuel to land again back at the same airport. It’s no wonder I don’t like to travel anywhere if it means flying. When it comes to flying, I seem to have some bad hoodoo.

However, the Reference Renaissance conference was pretty good. I went to a few informative sessions, learned a bit I didn’t know before, met some nice folks. I’m something of an introvert, and typically don’t feel comfortable around people I don’t know, but I got invited to a lunch with several librarians I didn’t know and enjoyed myself. The only drawback to the conference was that the hotel was about 10 miles from downtown, but I did make it in one night for some excellent seafood (I know, in Denver of all places) and at a martini bar had a drink called a Dean Martini, served in an ashtray with a candy cigarette. I know what you’re thinking. Classy!

I gave a presentation I’m tentatively calling “The Iron Cage of Google,” which isn’t the title on the program. The problem was that I didn’t know specifically what I was going to talk about until the week before I left. Titles are arbitrary, anyway. The presentation seemed to go well. I planned it as infotainment, and I think some people learned about at least a couple of things they didn’t know about, plus the laughs came in all the right places. My Second Life joke went over particularly well, so I’m going to have to try to work that one into another presentation sometime. The room was full, but I suspect the audience came to see the practical stuff after me. I’m never sure why anyone comes to any of my presentations. They just seem so obvious. I wouldn’t go. I already know all that stuff.

One of the best things logistically about the conference was the strict time-keeping. I’d had a discussion with the chief planner after I was accepted to speak about time-keeping. (I know her, so I didn’t feel bad about being blunt.) We discussed how annoying it is to have people go over time and then leave other people without enough. I’ve been burned by that before. So she made me the chair of my own panel, as well as another one, plus made cards reading 5, 2, and 0, to be flashed by the chair when the speaker had 5 minutes left, etc. When the 0 card was flashed, the speaker had one sentence to conclude, and then had to stop. All the presentations I saw were timed well, and I didn’t have to use my 0 card at all when I was chairing.

All in all, it was a very practical conference with a lot of engaged speakers. I hope they put it on again next year, preferably somewhere I can travel by train.