There’s an interesting post at Jenica Rogers’ Attempting Elegance blog entitled Killing Fear part 1: The Problem, in which the problem seems to be that “there’s a contradiction between these faculty expectations and emergent and clearly evident trends in information, libraries, and our future. This particular stakeholder group seems to want the very traditional services and roles that others are pointing out are now part of a legacy model.” The “faculty expectations” are that the most important role libraries play is to purchase and archive stuff, with research support, teaching support, and being gateways to information being strong but distant goals. The “clearly evident” trend is that “Information literacy is our future; anyone who’s paying attention to accrediting bodies, professional organizations, and where our professional excitement is positioned knows we staked the farm on it.” So the problem is that there’s a contradiction between how faculty view, and presumably use, libraries, and how we believe they should view and use libraries. I agree that there’s a contradiction between how faculty view libraries and how some librarians believe faculty should view libraries, but that’s a different contradiction than presented in the blog post, and it’s not a problem with reality so much as with the expectations of some librarians.

We can look at this contradiction and its alleged problem in a couple of different ways. First, there’s the issue of librarian expectations versus faculty reality. Second, there’s the differences between libraries designed to support teaching and libraries designed to support research.

For the first, believing that it’s wrong for faculty to believe that the chief, but far from only, function of libraries is to buy and archive stuff is to misunderstand the role of the library in the life of the professional researcher. By the time people have finished their PhDs and gotten jobs at colleges and universities that require research and publication for tenure, they hardly need librarians to teach them how to do research, which is why they rarely ask for research help, and almost never within their fields of expertise. They don’t need “information literacy,” they need stuff. It would be a little arrogant to claim that librarians know better than researching and publishing faculty how they should be using the library. The proof is in the publication. Librarians treating faculty as if they had the same needs as undergraduate researchers is an inappropriate strategy for understanding what libraries are for. The question is, if faculty perceptions of the library are discordant with the perceptions of librarians, why would it make sense to assume the faculty are wrong? Libraries are there to serve researchers, not the other way around. If our professional organizations and our professional excitement aren’t about supporting faculty research, then perhaps we’re excited about the wrong things.

Second, there’s a question of the size of the library and the institution it serves. In bigger libraries, the amount of stuff available is more important than in smaller libraries, and that benefits everyone. One conclusion of a study she quotes says that collection size is rapidly losing importance. Well, maybe for a lot of libraries, but certainly not for all. Rogers explains her perspective: “I freely acknowledge that my reactions to this data are certainly based in my small liberal arts college experiences.” I understand that perspective. I worked  for two years as a reference librarians and subject liaison for a small liberal arts college. Compared to a large research library, we didn’t have much stuff, so the stuff didn’t matter much. When faculty wanted really expensive material for research, we had to send them elsewhere. However, I spent several years as a student, instructor, and library GA at a huge research library, and having lots of stuff mattered. I’ve now worked for over ten years as a subject selector for a another large research library, and from that perspective I also have to say that collection size matters. Since I can’t find the information online, I assume our acquisitions budget isn’t public. [Correction: a friend sent me the link to the info at ARL (tab eexp1 of the spreadsheet), which should have been the first place I looked. Princeton spent close to $23 million in whatever year is being measured. By rough count it looks like there are about 60 libraries on the list with eight-figure acquisitions budgets in the ARL. That’s a lot of money to spend.] We buy a lot of stuff, and it’s not just ebooks and ejournals. In addition to the digital collections, which probably account for most of the current scholarly journal collections, we still collect over 100,000 physical items each year.

Some might argue that all that stuff can’t possibly get used, that we’re collecting on the “just in case” not “just in time” philosophy. There are a couple of responses to that. First, if your library’s mission is purely to support the current curriculum, then “just in time” makes sense. That’s great teaching support, but it’s not great research support because there are some things that can’t be gotten “just in time.” After a certain point, they’re gone. If a library didn’t collect and archive them, you won’t get them. That might not be true in some distant future if everything is digitized, available, and affordable, but it’s true now. In the humanities and social sciences, researchers need collections. The way the current higher education system works creates a cruel irony for many faculty at smaller institutions. They’re still expected to do research, but their libraries aren’t funded accordingly. ILL and visiting larger research libraries can help mitigate that problem, but it’s still a problem that surprises some professors as they move from the R1 university where they completed their PhD to a small college.

However, and here’s the second response, even though they’re not adequately funded to support advanced research, there is a system of academic libraries to rely upon. Research libraries are never collecting just for their own institutions, which is why the stuff they buy helps serve all researchers, including ones at other research universities. The stuff my library buys helps researchers at lots of other institutions, and vice versa. My library lends a lot of items to other libraries, but the faculty and students here also request a lot of items. While services are important, so it stuff. We don’t need to ask faculty whether collections matter, because they’ve spoken in the survey quoted in the blog post. They speak in the amount of material they borrow from their library or request from other libraries. So collections might not be of central importance in your library, but they’re important to your faculty. Fortunately, collectively, we do a pretty good job of supplying them, too.

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Sympathy and the “Academic” in Academic Librarian is my latest contribution to the Library Journal Peer to Peer Review Column.

Despite being repeatedly told so by some prominent and even not so prominent librarians, I’m still skeptical that the future is mobile, at least for academic research. This is not to say that I don’t think libraries should do what they can to make things easier for mobile users. It’s just that whatever we do, mobile use of the library and of tools designed to create the products of academe will always face severe limitations.

If you want a depressing exposition of what you can and can’t do as a college student armed only with a mobile phone, read this article: Smartphones Bring Hope, Frustration as Substitute for Computers. It details all the limitations with smartphones as computers, a situation many poorer students with either no computer or no Internet access face. And let’s face it, without Internet access, a laptop might as well be a brick when it comes to research. Sure, many of us wrote numerous college essays on computers with no Internet access (and probably even some typewriters), but that was before most of the research material was online, back with journals and indexes were in print. With a wifi-less laptop, you could still do a lot of reading and writing, but finding and getting to that reading would be a lot more difficult. Imagine trying to all your college research and writing on a smartphone.

One could also argue that “mobile” should include other devices besides mobile phones. However, some of those restrictions are also faced by other mobile devices, especially small tablet computers, which seem to me to be great for consumption of information but not so much for creation. (And please don’t comment, “you just haven’t tried one!” I’ve tried one. I have one. I know what I’m talking about.) Though I do see plenty of librarians carrying iPads around, when it comes time to do anything productive with them out comes the keyboard. Once you have the keyboard, you’re not any more mobile than you would be with a netbook, and still possibly less productive depending on what software you need to use and how long or complicated the thing is you want to create. If you don’t have the keyboard, have fun writing anything longer that a few paragraphs with that virtual keyboard. Imagine doing all of your college research and writing with nothing but a keyboard-less iPad. It would be an improvement over the phone, but not much.

While I have seen some research on the adoption of mobile technology among college students, I’ve seen nothing that shows students relying primarily on mobile phones or even tablets for their work. One article* talks about what services students  want. “These included the ability to check PC availability, search the library databases and catalogue, view their library record and reserve items on loan.” I’m sure there are many more. For my complicated library building, I’d love a library app that would let me scan a QR code embedded in the OPAC and launch a map that would provide me physical directions to the book on the shelf. But none of the great mobile services libraries can and are providing mean that the bulk of student work isn’t done on larger, more powerful, and more adaptable devices.

From what I see in the library, it will be a while before even tablets make much of a dent. While a number of my colleagues tote their iPads to meetings, I’ve yet to see a student in the library using anything other than a library computer or a personal laptop. Even the ones I see in the lobby making phone calls are usually Skyping through their laptops rather than talking on a mobile phone. I’d be surprised if they also started carrying iPads around. The librarians all have office computers to rely on, and they carry the lightweight iPad to meetings. For the students living out of their backpacks all day, their entire life is like going to a meeting, only they also have to maximize their productivity. So while libraries should do what we can to help mobile users, I still think it’s important to remember that the bulk of the real work that people are doing for research and writing can’t be done easily or well on strictly mobile devices. Academic research and writing: where mobile can’t go.

*Lorraine Paterson, Boon Low, (2011) “Student attitudes towards mobile library services for smartphones”, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 29 Iss: 3, pp.412 – 423. DOI: 10.1108/07378831111174387

I’ll be signing copies of Libraries and the Enlightenment in Anaheim at the Library Juice Press booth (2769) at the Convention Center from 10-11am on Saturday, June 23.

The publisher is offering a discount on the book if you buy it before the conference and bring it to the signing.

It will be well worth your time and money because I have lovely handwriting, and the book is pretty good, too.

There’s a petition at Whitehouse.gov to require open access for the results of publicly funded research. There’s more about it at the site itself and at Confessions of a Science Librarian (which is where I first read about it).

The procedure from Confessions:

To sign the petition:

• Have to be 13 years or older
• Have to create an account on whitehouse.gov, https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions
• This first requires giving a name and an email address and then clicking the validation link sent to that address
• Click to sign the petition

I signed it. It takes about two minutes, most of which was waiting for the email confirmation of my new account. Probably the most worthwhile two minutes I’ve spent all day.

If you’re interested, my latest contribution to the Library Journal Peer-to-Peer Review column is Libraries as Indoctrination Mills.

Several incidents in the past few weeks have sparked ideas for posts, but they’re not coming together as coherently as I’d like. Hence, a few thoughts related, if at all, by their occurrence outside my usual academic milieu.

People who don’t write think writing is easy. Is there any other activity that the general public treats this way? Does anyone think they have a few good tennis games in them even if they’ve never picked up a racket? Or that they could solve a few calculus equations even if they haven’t done any math since high school algebra?

Recently over drinks, someone who doesn’t write–but plans to, someday, really, when she gets around to it–asked my advice on writing. My main comment was, writers write, after which I tried to change the subject. Following some more persistent requests for advice, I may also have added something like, they don’t just sit around in bars talking about what a fascinating story their lives would make if they ever found the discipline to sit down and actually write. The person didn’t like my advice. Maybe it was my tone. Whiskey might have been involved.

Skepticism is an acquired trait most people don’t acquire. Perhaps it’s not a trait conducive to human flourishing. It didn’t help Socrates much.

Same bar, different evening, I inadvertently stumbled into a political argument with someone whose statements I should have ignored out of friendship and kindness. It was a bizarre conversation very unlike the political discussions I’m most used to, those in a classroom. Eventually, I realized the pointlessness of the debate and gave up, though I learned an important lesson: saying “Do you really believe that nonsense or are you just fucking with me?” is an ineffective rhetorical strategy.

Dialectic isn’t popular outside the academy. When challenged about their beliefs, people often avoid answering direct questions. If you ask, “what about this,” they will almost inevitably reply, “well, what about this other tenuously related thing instead?” When someone can’t or won’t answer a direct and easily answered question, I sense both victory and stalemate. People panic. They sense the conversation is going in an uncomfortable direction for them. They probably think I’m trying to get them to admit they believe something which contradicts something else they’ve already claimed to believe. To be fair, I am.

Political and religious disagreements are often about method, not belief. Some people are disturbed that other people don’t believe what they do. In contrast, I’m more concerned with the way people arrive at their beliefs. The two points of view don’t mix well.

In conversation with a conservative fundamentalist Christian minister in rural Mississippi (don’t ask), I was asked what I thought about New Jersey’s current governor, Chris Christie. My opinion is that he’s an improvement on the last two New Jersey governors, but that’s damning with faint praise. He called Christie a rhino. I thought to myself, well, Christie’s got a weight problem, but that hardly seems the Christian thing to say. It turns out he meant RINO, or “Republican in Name Only.” What folly to treat political parties as if they had eternal essences. The party of Lincoln is now the default party for southern racists. Political parties change. For that matter, religions change. To myself, I thought this. To him, I merely nodded and smiled. Some worldviews are so hermetically sealed it’s pointless to engage them.

Trying to see the world from the perspective of someone unlike yourself is difficult. It requires curiosity, imagination, and sympathy. Maybe that’s why so few people try. Maybe that’s why all of us give up sometimes.

Some people question whether you can ever really understand the world from the perspective of others, or perhaps The Other. If that were true, most literature would be impossible. I’m a tall, smart, white, heterosexual man with symmetrical facial features and a full head of hair living in a society that often rewards those arbitrary characteristics. How could I possibly understand what it’s like to be a member of an oppressed group of any kind? Maybe I can’t. But I know what it’s like to be poor, to be unfairly judged, to be ridiculed, to be feared or hated because of a perceived difference, and even to be harassed by the police. If I consider my worst experiences and magnify them considerably, I can imagine what it must be like to be routinely on the receiving end of American oppression. I’ve never been stupid, but I’ve been stoned. I assume being stupid is like being stoned all the time. What I can’t understand is a white southerner who claims to be unaware of racial discrimination in the south. Maybe it’s like being stoned all the time.

All that stuff academic librarians try to teach about searching for evidence, critically evaluating it, and integrating it into your worldview–that’s a lot tougher than it looks. Even tougher than writing.

The editors of the journal Library Philosophy and Practice recently put out a call to the editorial board (of which I am a member) for help editing the journal. Specifically, they “would like to identify people who would like to take on responsibility for receiving submissions, handling the peer review process, and copyediting articles that have been accepted.” The problem is that there are way more submissions than the current editors can deal with effectively. With the editors’ permission, I’m putting the call out to interested readers. If you would like to participate somehow in editing LPP, please email editor Mary Bolin [mbolin2@unl.edu] and let her know.

For those unfamiliar with the journal, I want to say a bit about it and what I like about it. According to the site, LPP “is a peer-reviewed electronic journal that publishes articles exploring the connection between library practice and the philosophy and theory behind it. These include explorations of current, past, and emerging theories of librarianship and library practice, as well as reports of successful, innovative, or experimental library procedures, methods, or projects in all areas of librarianship, set in the context of applied research.” It’s that, and something more. In addition to more philosophical or theoretical articles, it has also emerged as a journal chronicling library thought and practice on an international scale. It publishes articles on much wider range of topics than most LIS journals.

I published a couple of articles in LPP a few years ago and have third coming out in September. Most likely, in the future if I write any lengthy article on my own (as in, not by invitation), LPP will get first crack at it. Why? A couple of reasons. First, LPP doesn’t require that I pretend to know or care about LIS as a social science. While articles like those are accepted, LPP also stretches to accommodate articles about librarianship from a humanistic perspective. I don’t do surveys, charts, graphs, or statistics, because quantitative research doesn’t answer the sorts of questions I’m interested in, and that I know from experience other librarians are interested in as well. LPP has a large number of  mainstream LIS articles, but it’s also a place to publish philosophical or theoretical articles and qualitative research. Speaking as a humanistic writer, if there are librarians who want to find a place to publish peer-reviewed, indexed, non-quantitative articles, LPP is a great journal to submit to.

The other important fact is that LPP is an open access journal housed in the digital repository at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. The content is freely available, permanent, archived, and fully discoverable by search engines. Basically, it’s the kind of academic journal a lot of us would like to see more of. As a librarian, I think LPP embodies the kind of publishing model that is best for the broad dissemination of ideas in the profession.

So if you want to support a wide-ranging, open access LIS journal and get some experience with editing and peer reviewing, this is a good opportunity.