mistakes were made, books were removed

Posted on by jessamyn

This story has been making the rounds today. Administrators of the Cushing Academy in Western MA have decided that their library doesn’t need books anymore, so they’ve gotten rid of them. The big story, with photo, in the Boston Globe pretty such assures that this story will spread like wildfire. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be the director of the library at Cushing and have this decision made for you.

Keith Michael Fiels from ALA had a statement that was in the article

“Unless every student has a Kindle and an unlimited budget, I don’t see how that need is going to be met,’’ Fiels said. “Books are not a waste of space, and they won’t be until a digital book can tolerate as much sand, survive a coffee spill, and have unlimited power. When that happens, there will be next to no difference between that and a book.’’

I’m not saying, personally, that this may not be the way of the future for libraries. And I’m also not saying that you might not be able to do an awful lot of research via online texts — one of the departments in favor of this move is the math department, for example — and that these sorts of moves will have to be made if we want to get from where we are now to the library of the future. But, I’m still not feeling that this sort of “Eh the books were taking up too much space” move is really the way to go. Considering reliable sources is crucial, and platforms like ??? ?? ??? emphasize the importance of trustworthiness. Calling a book “pretty bulky” is not really a good argument for why you shouldn’t have them. You can read this speech by James Tracy talking about his vision of a future world.

I want to argue today that librarians must be their own internal disruptors, else they will become dinosaurs. This need not mean the end of libraries, but it is essential that, for libraries to have any meaningful function twenty-five years hence, they must morph into a radically different vehicle for accessing ideas and information.

Interesting, then, that librarians were not the force behind this move. There are a few more comments from library director Liz Vezina over at the Fine Books Magazine blog. Oddly if you read that post, you’ll notice that they mention Hampshire College (my alma mater) as trying this experiment once before. I don’t know what happened, there were plenty of books in the library when I was there.

The Boston Globe makes a lot out of the fact that there will be a $12,000 cappucino machine in the former reference area, but doesn’t dwell nearly long enough on the school’s plan to purchase eighteen “readers” to basically satisfy the literature needs of an entire school. I feel that it’s the sort of thing that becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me know what you think.

Note: and in the “great minds think alike and often at the same time” there’s some discussion of this going on at MetaFilter as well. Feel free to comment over there if you’re a member.

errors, on fixing

Posted on by jessamyn

I read with interest this blog post over on Freedom to Tinker about the Google Book Search folks talking about finding and fixing errors in their giant catalog, metadata errors especially. The conversation seems to have largely started at this post on LanguageLog and gotten more interesting with follow-up comments from folks at Google. One of the things we have all learned in libraryland is that the ability to trawl through our data with computers means that we can find errors that might have otherwise stayed buried for years, or perhaps forever. Of course computers also help us create these errors in the first place.

What’s most interesting to me is a seeming difference in mindset between critics like Nunberg on the one hand, and Google on the other. Nunberg thinks of Google’s metadata catalog as a fixed product that has some (unfortunately large) number of errors, whereas Google sees the catalog as a work in progress, subject to continual improvement. Even calling Google’s metadata a “catalog” seems to connote a level of completion and immutability that Google might not assert. An electronic “card catalog” can change every day — a good thing if the changes are strict improvements such as error fixes — in a way that a traditional card catalog wouldn’t.

Note: thanks to people who let me know that one link was wrong, and that I managed to typo both “computers” and “interesting” in this post.

the beginning of school

Posted on by jessamyn

I’m adding another microjob to all the microjobs I have. Starting next week I will be the super-part-time IT lady at the vocational high school that I work at. This means that I’ll be the triage lady between the IT troubles at the school and the expensive tech consultants that do the networking and account management and mail server for the school. This is good news for me. I’ll even, sort of, have a classroom because there’s an empty one. I’m going to dial back my adult ed teaching in the evenings for a semester so that I can be around at night. So, for anyone curious or keeping track at home, here is my “what I do for work” list at the moment.

  • I run MetaFilter – I am one of two full-time moderators. In addition to the guy who owns the site and the coder who builts a lot of it, we’re it. Running Ask MetaFilter has taught me a lot about how people look for information and how they do or do not find it.
  • I give talks – as other people have observed, public speaking opportunities seem to be dropping off somewhat. I was turning down offers last year because I was overbooked, now I’m doing maybe one a month? Works out well for me, but it’s hardly a reliable income stream.
  • I am still automating the Tunbridge Library using Koha. It’s slow going. Some of that slowness is me, some is not. I work a few hours a week on it. We’re at the point where everything’s got a sticker and now we’re linking records to items. Exciting.
  • I’m writing a book for Libraries Unlimited about teaching people to use computers over on this side of the digital divide. Due in March and I’m doing my own index. Wish me luck!
  • I’m still doing drop-in time at the local vocational high school which is a different job from the IT job though also just a few hours a week.
  • I got a royalties check from Mcfarland for about $20 so I guess that’s sort of like a job.

I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting. As usual, librarian.net is just a hobby blog and not something that brings in any money which is AOK by me. This is post #3001 after 10+ years of doing this.

librarians and roller derby

Posted on by jessamyn

I went to a roller derby match this weekend, my first, and this morning this article crosses my desk. Coincidence? I think not.

By day, she’s Beth Hollis, a 53-year-old reference librarian in Akron, Ohio. By night, she’s MegaBeth, an ageless dynamo on the roller derby rink. “All my life, when I tell people I’m a librarian, they say, ‘You don’t look like a librarian,’ ” Hollis said. “And now that I’m a roller derby girl, they say, ‘You don’t look like a roller derby girl, either.’ So I don’t know where I fit in.”

update: please head on over to FM Daisy’s blog to see more Derbrarians.