If you’re not familiar with the thought of Jesse Shera, you should be, and an easy place to begin that familiarity is Jesse Shera, Librarianship, and Information Science by H. Curtis Wright. This was originally published as Occasional Research Paper no. 5 by the School of Library and Information Science, Brigham Young University in 1988, and is now reprinted with a new introduction and index by the Library Juice Press.* Since the library school at BYU has been closed for 20 years, I’m assuming this has been out of print for a long time. Welcome back.

Some might call it a biography, and a review of the first edition in 1988 criticized it as a “run in attempt” at a biography. However, biography is the wrong word to describe the book. Yes, we find out a little bit about Shera’s childhood history and early manhood and a little bit more about his early career in libraries. However, the bulk of the study isn’t about Shera’s life, but his thought, specifically his intellectual journey from believing information science provided the theoretical foundation of librarianship to his belief that “symbolic interactionism” instead provides that foundation. This is combined with an extensive, possibly exhaustive, bibliography of Shera’s 57 years of publications. Of the 120-or-so page book, roughly half is the lengthy essay on Shera’s thought and half the bibliography. The combination makes this an indispensable volume to begin a serious study of Shera.

Early exposure to librarianship in the 1920s convinced Shera that librarianship as it had traditionally been practiced was a cramped and overly practical affair, and he spent the rest of his career trying to reform the profession, at first from the inside, later as a professor of library science at Chicago, and finally as the Dean of the library school at Case Western Reserve. During the 1940s and 1950s, Shera came to believe that the theoretical salvation lay with information science and technology. He was a cofounder of the reorganized American Documentation Institute, and cheered on the impressive gains of information science during the period. Eventually he changed his mind, saying much later that “twenty years ago, I thought of what is now called information science as providing the intellectual and theoretical foundations of librarianship, but I am now convinced that I was wrong” (41).

He changed his mind because he came to believe that librarianship is a humanistic affair involved with human communication, knowledge, and ideas. Information science is no such thing. While information science can provide useful tools and improve processes, it can never be the theoretical foundation of a field primarily involved with humans communicating ideas. “Information science . . . deals with only a part of what the librarian does” (45). Regardless of the prevalence of information science and technology useful to librarians, Shera believed that “the social purpose of the library remains unchanged–to bring the human mind and the graphic record together in a fruitful relation” (44). Thus, while librarianship might make use of science, it isn’t itself a science, and it has little to do with the information in information science.

At this point in the argument it might be useful to define terms for those unfamiliar with the debate. Most librarians believe we’re in the information business. We even have desks that say “information” on them, so that everyone knows what we do. And, in a sense, we are in the information business. However, the “information” in information science isn’t the same thing as the “information” that librarians trade in. (For a lengthy discussion of what “information” means to information scientists, I recommend James Gleick’s The Information. For a totally unrelated adventure story about a woman who trades in information in the sense librarians deal with, you might try Taylor Stevens’ The Informationist.) Here’s a key paragraph from Wright:

It was librarians, Shera reminds us, who “eagerly seized information science as potential supports to their . . . professionalism.” But information science, he says, has “misinterpreted [Claude] Shannon and [Warren] Weaver’s specialized use of the noun information and assumed that it related to the communication of knowledge rather than the transmission of signals.” This has created a genuine problem for libraianship, because Shannon was interested solely in creating a theory of pyhysical signals for describing “the message-carrying capacity of a symbol, a telephone wire, or any other medium or channel of communication.” (47)

Information science is concerned, according to Shera, purely with the transmission of signals, while librarianship is founded in human interactions and is concerned with ideas and knowledge as well as information. While the efficient transmission of signals or the storage of information in the IS sense is a necessary part of librarianship, it’s not as sufficient part.

Shera’s finally believed that “symbolic interactionism” should provide the theoretical foundation of librarianship. Symbolic interactionism is a theory borrowed from George Herbert Mead. Supposedly, unlike information science or systems theory, symbolic interactionism “investigates the psychophysical interaction of the empirical order and the ideative order in human beings by studying the relationship between the physical symbol and its symbolic referent” (55). While I accept the humanistic nature of librarianship, I wasn’t convinced that symbolic interactionism as such provides a theoretical foundation of the profession, and there wasn’t sufficient argument in the book to persuade me. It is perhaps the one flaw in the book that Wright, a friend and former student, provides little critical distance from Shera, because precisely at this point I would have preferred a little critical analysis in addition to the clear explanation of Shera’s thought.

However, that wasn’t the purpose of the book. There was enough to explain what Shera believed and to some extent why, and ample resources in the bibliography to follow Shera further if I cared to argue with him. So, overall, a satisfying volume, a quick read, and a passionate introduction to Shera’s thinking. Anyone concerned with what librarianship is or should be would profit from reading the book.

*[Disclosure: Library Juice Press published my book Libraries and the Enlightenment.]

Back from a long vacation, caught up with work that piled up while I was gone, and ready to catch up on my library lit reading. So I started reading, backwards from this to this to this to this. I can say one thing for Rick Anderson, he knows how to get a debate going.

The debate concerns an Ithaka “issue brief” by Anderson called Can’t Buy Us Love. The basic thesis, as I understand it, is that research libraries should devote more resources to digitizing their special collections and making them discoverable. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that claim, which is probably why there’s not much discussion of it. This increased emphasis on special collections will require a shift of resources away from something, and for Anderson that something is “commodity documents,” by which he means documents easily available cheaply elsewhere, especially “trade books that are produced in large print runs.” The recurring example is a 1975 printing of East of Eden. If I’m reading it right, he’s saying that research libraries should maybe buy fewer popular books published in America, devote fewer resources to housing them indefinitely, and devote more of that money to special collections processing and digitization. That seems to me a plausible interpretation of the basic argument, which isn’t especially provocative even if one disagrees with it.

The controversy seems to be about two issues: the question of what constitutes commodity documents and their relationship to the mission of research libraries, and the claim that focusing on special collections and moving away from “commodity documents” somehow opts out of the so-called scholarly communications wars, because digitizing our own special collections “is neither undermining the existing scholarly communication system (except to the extent that it pulls collections money away from commercial purchases) nor supporting it.”

Anderson claims that, “With the advent of such internet-based outlets as Amazon Marketplace and Bookfinder.com, however, every home with an internet connection has direct access to the holdings of thousands and thousands of bookstores around the world, and the likelihood of finding a remaindered or used copy—often at a price of literally pennies, plus a few dollars in shipping—is very high.” It seems to me that the scope of “commodity documents” is pretty small compared to the breadth of research library collections. Anderson already eliminates the budget busting scholarly journals. University press publications aren’t nearly as cheap and readily available as old bestselling novels. Foreign publications aren’t so accessible after a while. Trade books in large print runs aren’t a huge percentage of a lot of research libraries’ expenditures, but possibly buying fewer of them, or perhaps keeping fewer of them as they get older and less used, would provide some savings that could be devoted to special collections. So what if it might be true, as Anderson claims, that “the library’s role as a broker, curator, and organizer of commodity documents is fading,” if commodity documents as such are a relatively small part of research library collections, which I believe to be the case. On this one, I could agree with his basic claim without thinking it particularly radical or controversial.

The other controversy about “opting out” of the scholarly communications wars could be puzzling, because as it’s framed the proposal has nothing to do with the scholarly communication wars. Whatever wars there are concern commercial scholarly journals, almost all STEM titles, and these are deliberately left out of the scope of discussion. That claim is simply irrelevant to the main argument about special collections versus commodity documents.  Reread Anderson’s article without the “Opting out of the scholarly communications wars” section, and see if that harms the piece at all. The key, though, is that the argument is framed to avoid problems in scholarly communications, except that can’t really be done.

Instead of being an unnecessary diversion, the section about scholarly communications wars is more a sleight of hand. It’s pulling a rabbit out of a hat while ignoring the elephant in the room, if I can mix my cliches. The basic claim is that libraries should digitize and make available more of their unique content, which, of course, lots of libraries are already doing. The resources to do more of that have to come from somewhere. Libraries could buy even fewer popular books than they already do. Or, maybe, they could opt into the scholarly communication wars, do their best to promote green OA, and reduce the stranglehold of commercial STEM publishers, because that’s where most of the money goes. When it comes to discussing where resources go within libraries, nothing escapes the scholarly communications wars. You can simply refuse to talk about it. You can claim that librarians doing so are putting politics above patrons. You can pretend that budgets for books and other resources just gut themselves. But you can’t have an honest discussion about where scarce resources in libraries should go without talking about problems in scholarly communication, whichever side of the issue you’re on.

Another part of historical change rhetoric I’m looking at is the persistence of themes. Read these quotes and see if you could tell when they were written purely based on the language:

Applying technology is not a “one time” event, it is a continuing activity, since technology, whatever form it takes, is constantly changing. This reality is a key aspect of librarianship today and helps explain why our profession is clearly in transition….

Even without our deliberate choice, changes are being imposed on our working environment by technology as well as by other pressures external to and within our profession. In the past decade librarians have discovered that we must either initiate change or adapt to it. We simply can’t ignore new developments and hope they will leave us untouched. An ostrich-like attitude is downright dangerous….

Perhaps, as is already true in some specialized library service assignments, advanced degree studies in addition to MLS/information science type training will be frequently expected. Position ads in current library journals already show quite a variety of preferred background qualities….

Those are from an article in the Library Journal from 1985, “Managing Change: Technology and the Profession” by Karen L. Horny. The “past decade” in which librarians discovered they had to change was a big decade for library automation, although Horny also does a pretty good job of predicting how the rise of personal computers, the digitization of content, and the ability to do things “online” will change libraries and information. (“Perhaps electronic readers will become so compact and legible that it will be possible to curl up with a good online novel!”)

Statements almost identical to this appear in the current library literature all the time. The age of such themes–combined the significant changes that have occurred in libraries over the last 30 years–seems to me an indication that angry or frustrated attacks on current librarians as hopelessly resistant to change don’t have much evidence to support them. The elder librarians around today were the very ones implementing all the significant technological changes that resulted not from the Internet or the rise of social media, but from the initial automation of catalogs and indexes starting in the 1960s. It seems to me that wave of technological change was much more shocking for librarians of the time than our current situation, which is more or less a steady development building upon the drastic and rapid change that really happened 30 or so years ago. As people get older, perhaps they get more resistant to change, or perhaps not, but the retiring generation of librarians certainly lived through and implemented significant and rapid change.

Here’s another quote I left out because of the date:

It has been especially rewarding to see that some of a library’s longer-term employees have the greatest sense of the new technology’s benefits, since they can recall, often quite vividly, the limitations of former manual operations. It is also true that for most people who have entered the library field since the early 1970s, change is the accepted norm.

I’ve encountered plenty of examples of the exact same sentiment among librarians writing today, except the time frame is since the beginning of the 21st century or some such. Librarians without a historical knowledge of how technology has affected librarianship for the past 45 years or so are always in danger of making foolish claims about the current state of the profession.

For a possible research project, I’m reading around in the historical library literature about change in libraries. Here’s a great quote from John Berry in a Library Journal editorial from 10/15/83 about the first LITA conference:

The usual band of cheerleaders delivered typical, often condescending, pleas for everyone to get on this or that automation bandwagon, and the usual “experts” delivered typical indictments of working librarians who offered any resistance to the cosmic imperatives of the new age.

I’m trying to get an idea of just how long hyperbolic change rhetoric in librarianship has generated a specific kind of criticism, not of the change, but of the rhetoric. Now I know it’s been at least 30 years.

For some reason a couple of older posts have been getting some recent traffic, one from a few months ago where I wrote about big name librarians and another much older one where I meditated upon my lack of fame. That last one is almost five years old, and while I’m probably better known among librarians than I was then, I don’t think I’m any more famous in any of the ways I wrote about. Still, after rereading those posts I felt like there was at least one more thing to say.

Some things have changed for me since I started this blog six years ago. My first post came on the day I officially received a promotion to “librarian with continuing appointment.” That’s our non-faculty-status equivalent of associate professor with tenure, and comes with more or less the same benefits. This month I officially received promotion to “senior librarian,” which is our equivalent to full professor. It was a nice honor, plus I got a higher percentage raise than usual. All to the good.

Also, since I started the blog, I’ve had a lot more opportunities to write and speak than before, and I’d have to credit this blog for leading to a lot of them. A blog post here inadvertently led to the book deal with Library Juice Press, and writing Libraries and the Enlightenment was the most professional fun I’ve had. It probably had something to do with being invited to join the great group of Peer to Peer Review columnists at the Library Journal. Possibly the name recognition has helped me win some elections within ALA that have been beneficial for my career. Good things have flowed from it. However, although I’ve done the writing, even the blog has benefitted from the person in OIT who supports WordPress and from all the other people I’ve interacted with online over the years.

I could focus on the me, me, me part of all this. I’ve had some success and I’ve also done a lot of work for it. In a sense, whatever success I have managed to have I’ve deserved, one could say. And I’m not saying I don’t deserve it. Those who know me well know that modesty isn’t exactly one of my strengths. Earning this recent promotion took a lot of work on my part. Some things I did deliberately over the years with the chances of promotion in mind, and some things just sort of happened, but nevertheless I wasn’t slacking. Just gathering up materials for my dossier took a lot of time.

On the other hand, what has struck me most about the whole process was how much the responsibility for it rested in other people’s hands, in fact a lot of other people’s hands. The more I consider it, the wider the circle of people and institutions that contributed gets. It’s kind of staggering when I start to think about it.

Just considering the promotion process directly, my supervisor had to write on my behalf. Somewhere between 10-20 other people in the library, a couple of academic departments, and across the profession wrote positive letters of reference for me (at least I’m assuming they were positive). That alone was one of the best parts of the process, knowing that so many people were willing to write on my behalf, and I’m very grateful to them. A group of my colleagues had to read all that stuff and make a decision, which other people had to approve.

But it keeps on going. One of the factors was probably having a book published. Rory Litwin is responsible for offering me the contract and support through the process, but I could never have gotten the book done on time without two research leaves from the university, which required other people writing on my behalf or agreeing to grant them. Sure I wrote the book, and it was a lot of work, but without Rory and the Dean of the Faculty it wouldn’t have happened.

Another thing I assume played a role was my leadership within ALA. I know I’ve done some good work in the organization, but that wouldn’t have been possible without the generous conference travel support I’ve had my entire career, both at Gettysburg and at Princeton. Without that support, my career would have been very different. I wouldn’t have worked with as many good people over the years and wouldn’t have had the opportunities to do the things I have. There are also all the people within the organization who helped me out, taught me stuff, worked with me, and enabled me to do what I did. I’ve written before on how to run a good ALA committee meeting, but to get anything done you’ve got to have the actual committee. It’s not a one-person operation.

Keeping the faculty and students in the departments I serve happy is one part of my job, and a couple or professors probably wrote on my behalf. Typically that role for the faculty involves either buying stuff or solving problems. Buying stuff is a lot easier when you have generous acquisitions budgets, as I generally have had. Even with the buying, I’m just the middleman. There’s a whole team of people who make the actual purchases, catalog them, link to them, make them accessible, and often quickly so that faculty and students get things as rapidly as possible. It’s unfair that I probably get more of the credit for that than I deserve.

Solving problems presents the same situation. I “solve problems” usually by being a conduit between the professor or student with the problem and the person in the library who actually solves the problem. Database isn’t working right? Well, I can diagnose and troubleshoot, but if there’s a bill to be paid or tech support to be contacted, I’m not the one doing that. OPAC glitch? Um, yes, we have people for that. I’ll contact them. Whatever the problem is, unless it involves a research project of some kind, my role is to find the person who really can solve the problem. I’m not saying that doesn’t take some knowledge and skill and that I’m not a responsive and capable liaison. I’m just saying that without all those other people, I’m pretty useless for a lot of things and I know it. I’m pretty good at what I do, but without a whole bunch of other people being good at what they do, I couldn’t be as good.

There are a lot of things I do more or less on my own and I could write about those things, but my goal here is to remember just how much I can’t. Thus, back to “big name” librarians, or “famous librarians,” or the amusing category of “rock star” librarians. I’ve never met any librarians who seemed especially stoked about their own alleged fame or celebrity status. They’re possibly out there, but we don’t run in the same circles. It’s always like that with me and celebrities, I guess. I’ve lived in New Jersey for eight years and have yet to socialize with Bruce Springsteen or even the cast of Jersey Shore. If they are out there, it would be impossible for me to take them seriously. For one, they’re still just librarians. Mostly, though, I know that however externally successful you are, and no matter how great you might actually be, you’re dependent on opportunities you didn’t necessarily create and a whole network of people who enable you to do what you do. Even real rock stars need great sound engineers.

I’m learning all sorts of new things reading Will Storr Versus the Supernatural. From page 273:

‘Do you believe in heaven and hell,’ I ask [David Vee, the Founder of Ghosts-UK].

‘No,’ he says, ‘people were seeing ghosts BC–Before Christ–so that rules that one out totally. The earth is millions and millions of years old. You know, I think the Bible is a damn good book, but it’s nothing like the original translation. How can we translate that when we still have difficulty translating the original Latin, which is only five hundred years old? It’s very difficult, because it has so many syllabuses and nouns and whatever. It’s like the voices on the EVPs I’ve recorded here. Most of them are in German Latin, which is what people spoke until the nineteenth century. It wasn’t until eighteen-twenty-something that we began to speak English. A lot of people don’t appreciate that fact.

I read through that paragraph a couple of times trying to make sense of it but eventually gave up.

In Praise of Traditional Libraries

I’m working on another library history project and having fun reading through some old library literature. Here’s a good example of librarians trying to predict the future, from a 1933 Jesse Shera article in the Library Quarterly, “Recent Social Trends and Future Library Policy.”

With the older people constituting an increasingly larger percentage of our population, the demand for leisure-time activities and the services of the librarian should increase, while the children’s librarians, relieved of the burden of ever increasing numbers to serve, can shift their attentions from quantity to quality. Further, the curtailing of immigration will not only be reflected in our rapidly falling birth-rate, but our population will more and more become racially homogeneous,* so that library work with the foreign born will become decreasingly important.

*T. J. Woofter, “The Status of racial and ethnic groups,” Social trends, I, 553-60I.

He sure got that one wrong.