Category Archives: Opinion

Items, comments, written from my own, personal point of view.

Libraries in a Digital Age

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Royal Astronomical Society, London

The title of this one-day event caught my eye  because of its relevance to the content of our library science masters’ course, and the sessions,  arranged by the Association of Independent Libraries, did not disappoint. An added bonus was that the lectures were delivered at the very lovely Royal Astronomical Society in Mayfair – a significantly motivating factor in persuading me to attend.

The day focused on web 2.0 applications, the fate of public libraries in the face of funding cuts etc., the (apparently) idealistic aspirations of Google Books, changes in the publishing industry and the restrictions on knowledge access resulting from copyright. All topical aspects that any LIS professional, as well as masters student, should find compelling.

Gwyneth Price, Institute of Education, took us through her thoughts on web 2.0 applications and their use in the library and for information literacy. I have been long been an advocate of social media, and was interested to hear Gwyneth’s experience of  introducing blogs, wikis, media-sharing, social-networking and current awareness tools to facilitate new ways for the library to engage with its users. LIS workers have been associated with the promotions of information literacy for many years, now, although I think it is something they have always done. There is a much greater recognition of the role of library professionals as teachers, these days, and Gwyneth highlighted the work of the 9 month LASSIE project (undertaken with Jane Secker, LSE, completed Jan 2008), funded by the Centre for Distance Education at the University of London. This project explored how social software  (used as a synonym for web 2.0 applications) might enhance distance learners’ use of libraries. The resulting case study reports, available from the LASSIE website, suggested ways in which web 2.0 tools could be used in the broader capacity of library engagement and outreach. If you are not familiar with this project, I think it is worth taking a look at as part of any effort to both get to grips with what is meant by web 2.0 tools and to understand library related approaches to their implementation.

Outlining her experience with specific tools, Gwyneth referred to  the overheads in time and effort needed to set up and maintain a library blog – her response to encourage a regular supply of postings was to create a staff blogging rota  – once engaged with the blog, staff enthusiasm rose considerably. With respect to social networking software, Gwyneth felt that this was an area best covered by the VLE – as students tended to use Facebook for social contacts, and the VLE for academic ‘networking’. Mention was made of LinkedIn, for professional use. Wikis were used as a repository for library FAQs – i.e. as a way of capturing the effort made to answer queries to avoid duplication, and media sharing tools were helpful for distributing resources, especially YouTube for training videos, and Delicious for web links. Finally, Gwyneth suggested a viewpoint which I share, in observing a move away from RSS feeds to Twitter . RSS feeds and readers, although entirely workable and useful, somehow always cause the greatest number of puzzled looks in my CPD web 2.0  classes – and I concede that, I too, glean most of my current awareness from Twitter – although in their defense, feed readers are still the best solution if you follow selected blogs or websites for updates. Gwyneth did not mention Netvibes – which is good for pulling all your information sources into one – so I will do so  for completeness. Finally, came a mention for TAGXEDO, a tag cloud generator, and its ability to produce tag clouds in a variety of shapes – find one to suit your mood.

Tim Coates presented his plans to secure the future of our public library service, in which he announced the formation of Library Alliance, a new, not-for-profit, non-governmental body, being launched to help improve the  public library service, funded by charitable donation. (Tim’s speech). Tim is often described as ‘controversial’, and whilst it may be that his views do not always suit everyone, his consistent support for public libraries is undeniable. Tim asks the question “can libraries survive in times of austerity?” and suggests that we should consider the reasons why people use libraries. This is one of the places where differences of opinion can creep in, as the exact reasons why people do or do not use public libraries are not agreed upon anywhere (though doubtless studies aiming to elucidate these reasons exist). Tim’s suggestions as to why people use libraries include reading the books (!) and an appreciation of an inspiring space. It is not just for the technology. Tim emphasizes the need to improve stock,  access and opening hours, and that it is important for public libraries to do what the public wants – but this is another area where controversial opinions enter the arena; not everyone is agreed on what the public wants.  Tim emphasizes the trend to link public library services with the agendas or ambitions of local councils, and ultimately government – he counters this with the 1964 public libraries act, which says that ‘public libraries are for the benefit of those people who wish to use them’. This arguably, does not necessarily link with the ambitions of government targets. Should not public libraries address the needs of the individuals who use them, rather than the state? And whilst co-location of social (and other) services within libraries may be convenient for them, it does not improve the library service per se. Tim is a very well known speaker, and I will not attempt to digest his speech further; please see the link above to his actual words. To end with however, Tim feels that the financial management of public libraries is rather poor, and that with some improvement, libraries can indeed survive.

Michael Popham, Oxford Digital Library, talked about Oxford’s collaboration with Google Books, and the lessons learned from their combined efforts to digitize the Bodleian’s estimated 1 million holdings of out-of copyright, and mostly out-of-print 19th century material (this arrangement was different from Google’s projects with Harvard and Michigan). The project stemmed from the desire to widen access; currently 60% of those who use and work in the Bodliean Libraries have no direct connection with the university.  The card catalogue offers only limited information to readers, and  access would be greatly enhanced by digitizing and indexing entire books.

Michael reminded us that Oxford’s “digital library” began in the 1960s, when machine readable text was made available for scholarly research purposes. The Oxford Text Archive was founded in the 1970s.

The project built on work  with Proquest  to convert Early English Books Online, from microfilm images, into fully-searchable texts. This effort proved  slow and  expensive, so the offer from Google to assist with digitization was viewed as a chance to cut the waiting time and costs for improved access. Once digitized by Google, one copy of the item files go into Google Books, and a second into the Oxford Digital Asset Management System. There is a link from the Oxford Libraries Information Service (OLIS)  catalogue to the copy in the management system.

The details of the project revealed that digitization relies on good planning and a lot of work, requiring effort from all the staff concerned. Google provides the metadata checks, the digitization, quality assurance, OCR and indexing, reprocessing, mounting of  files in Google Books and preservation of the master files. Bodleian staff carriy out the item selection (33% of the items are too fragile to scan and a further 33% are the wrong size.), handling and re-shelving. Google retains the master files as the images are large, and storage requirements are onerous. Google committed to the project (commencing in 2005) for 20 years, and for now the content is free – what happens after 20 years is as yet undecided; so far 388,000 of the 1 million items have been digitized.

The process of digitization is a craft – with highly specialized equipment being used by skilled operators to obtain accurate images, whilst not damaging the original works in any way. Devices that hold pages in place using gentle air pressure for example – but still not every item is suitable for digitization.

There are some issues, one of which is that Oxford has no control over how Google uses the images; Google aims to promote the material to end-users, not just scholars. The digitization process itself can have hiccups, resulting in images of the operators hands and blank pages in odd places. There  are things that cannot be digitized, including fold-out pages and missing pages. Copyright is another minefield, as laws between countries differ. Whilst the UK has the 70 year rule (i.e. copyright ends 70 years after author’s death), other parts of the world (e.g. the US) do not. For the moment Google attempts to determine where in the world a reader is situated, and to apply copyright restrictions accordingly – not always with the greatest accuracy as sometimes the date of the author’s death is not known. However, despite the drawbacks, there is now the potential to analyse texts linguistically, and to find things beyond the possibilities offered by print on paper. Michael gave the example of attempting to locate an early use of the phrase “.. beginning of the end and the end of the beginning ..”. Google’s skill at marketing also helps to draw attention to special items in the collection including first editions (Emma, Origin of the Species) which can be seen be anyone all over the world.

Moving on to publishing, John B Thompson, Professor of Sociology at Cambridge University,  considered the changes in the industry between the 1960s and the present day. Publishing has an intrinsic link with libraries; how authors disseminate their work and how users find it. LIS is concerned with both scholarly publishing and with what John Thompson refers to as ‘general trade publishing’ – i.e. book publishing in general. The talk focused on changes brought about by the dual action of the economic downturn, and the digital revolution. Both these aspects are well known as drivers for change within the LIS field too, and the consequences for the publishing industry echo throughout the information industry as a whole. The talk centered around John’s research into the book trade, detailed in his new publication “Merchants of Culture“, which I have added to my reading list for our library science masters. Whilst John’s previous book, Books in the Digital Age, (also on our reading list), considered scholarly book publishing in today’s society, Merchants of Culture considers the wider world of “general trade publishing”,

“..that is the world of general interest books that are aimed at a wider public and sold through high street bookstores”

how it is organised and how it is changing. John introduced “the logic of the field” as his model for how US/UK publishing works –  emphasizing that publishing in other locations works to different rules. His fluid and engaging presentation summarized his book very well in a short space of time – starting with changes from the 1960s including A) the growth of retail chains, leading to a decrease in independent booksellers and the number of people in the trade choosing books, a shift in the way books are stocked and sold, and the hardback revolution as mass marketing increases sales, B) the rise of literary agents (not seen in Europe) and C) the emergence of publishing corporations. This has all lead to a polarization of the field, where there are no medium sized publishing houses, just very large enterprises and very small ‘indy’ presses. You either have a lot of money to fund winners, or a very small amount to fund esoteric chancers. Once a book is a success, major funding will be required to publish a second tome. We face a preoccupation with ‘big books’ – the hoped for best sellers.

“Hype is the talking up of books by those who have an interest in generating excitement about them…. buzz exists when the recipients of hype respond with affirmative talk backed up by money.”

It matters what people think. But we now have “extreme publishing” and “shrinking windows” where a book has six weeks to sell or face withdrawal. High returns though – 30% on average.

The day ended with Martyn Everett, former librarian and Chairman of Saffron Waldon Town Library Society, talking about how re-interpretation of copyright is restricting access to information.

“Knowledge is stifled by restriction and censorship”

Martyn drew a comparison between today’s knowledge commons and the historical commons where land was shared for the general good, highlighting the desire to share underlying the ethos behind many of today’s information workers. Businesses such as Amazon and Abe Books offer realistic alternatives to public libraries as books can be sourced cheaply and quickly. The “long tail” purpose of libraries is eroded by such services, as they are often quicker than ILL. Where does this leave libraries ? Furthermore, research collections are often denied to members of the public  – what is the role of open access here ? And what of copyright held by organizations rather than the individual authors ? Should not publicly funded research by readily and freely available to the public? Good question and one which is regularly in the discussion forums. And what of the content of public libraries ? Martyn noted the lack of books on anthropology available on shelves for public browsing – is this true ?

Library at the Royal Astronomical Society, London

I was fortunate to be able to have a look around the library before I left – amazing collection including star charts and paintings of comets, and very early photos of the solar eclipse.

As I was leaving, we returned to the comment that there are no anthropology books in the public libraries anymore – I suggested that dumbing down was reason – ‘no’ replied our speaker – it was a more complex issue than merely dumbing down – this issue deserves more exploration – however, I do wonder whether the public gets what the public asks for from its libraries, which is clearly not anthropology. There is a feeling that librarians should protect the public from their own failings, stocking the Times Literary Supplement recommendations just in case someone has an epiphany. (What does the public library act say?) Should they though? Do people want to chance upon something life-changing, improving, inspirational or even just useful from the library ? I hope so. I mean isn’t that why we do this?

 

My Absolutely Fabulous Life

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Note: I refer to a Facebook profile in this post; I removed my Facebook account several years ago. 19/07/2016

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August. The month for writing. And my attention is caught by the recent PEW Internet Report which suggests that US millenials will continue to share information as they get older and take on more responsible roles. In other words – privacy is what people did in the past. ‘Sharing’ is the new black.

Hmmm – but what to share? Reality? The endless repetition of school, college, work, kids, cleaning and credit card bills?? Of course not. When did someone you follow last tweet about cleaning the oven? They didn’t. Social media requires us all to airbrush our lives into the kind of unreality mirrored on the covers of magazines – the ones where Madonna looks younger than her daughter and you are left feeling short and fat. Social media demands that we all use a special effects filter before uploading ourselves. We only tweet the nice things – specially chosen for their wit, charm, educational value and sheer brilliance. Are you sitting on the sofa watching a soap opera whilst eating mostly carbohydrate? No. Bet you are reading something on your college reading list, attending the ballet, practising the violin or spending quality time with the children – and for certain you are writing a book – an article at the very least – and that’s what it says on your Facebook status. It’s a bit exhausting – keeping up the charade. Hoping that no one you know ever sees the real you – the un-airbrushed horror. That, of course, is why I work as an academic from the seclusion of my attic. Ha! And at least having entered adulthood before computers were invented networked, (not a day over 28) I have escaped the need to drag around all the people who attended primary school with me (except Clare x). Nor do I have any idea what happened to those with whom I went to high school (except Sara and Karen xx). At least I have been able to move on – and quietly forget all those ‘friends’ who were never interested in me in the first place. But what of the millenials? Will it be easy to act as a managing director, when everyone on your friend list remembers you having a desperate crush on your French teacher when you were 11? Perhaps we will enter into a kind of bartering system, where no one mentions your bad calls, and you, in return, do not mention theirs. But …. oooh – the temptation. Remember all the times you thought you looked great/funky/clever/sexy/amusing? Well 30 years later those photos have a very different value. Only instead of fading in a box in the attic they are freely available on the net. And you don’t have to be a politician or a lecturer to squirm and flinch – anyone can experience the toe curling embarrassment at being reunited with their past. Pointed shoes/pink hair/rocky horror/snogging the guy who married your best friend  –  all give your followers cheap thrills. I have written previously on the niceties of ‘deleting’ (see Delete by Viktor Mayer Schonberger…) – where stuff you upload has an expiry date, after which it self-implodes. But the technology is not quite there yet. So if you upload it – it stays for good. For the amusement of all. Especially your children. And anyone who works for you.  And what of de-friending? Will it become as socially acceptable as de-cluttering your wardrobe? Carthartic perhaps? But can you ever be invisible to someone just by de-friending them? Nah … go Google …. or friend a mutual friend.

So what to do ? How much should we share? How much can we get away with?  (ok – 36 then ..)  and in any case what is everyone else ‘sharing’ about you? Worried who has access to your medical records? How can we stop them? Ever been ‘tagged’ in a photo you didn’t sanction? What about a video of all your lectures, even the ones you haven’t really delivered before and where you look like a troll? Especially those. In high definition.

Sigh. Can’t take on the entire world. Just have to hope that I haven’t said anything *really* bad or worn anything *really* un-photogenic. I am in fact, rather a non-entity when I Google myself, (yeah sad), but nonetheless, I have given some thought to my social media profile. As an academic, I think it is beneficial to project a warm, savvy persona – someone who has  insight into library and information science, and an interesting way of commenting on and interpreting the ideas of others in my field. I would hope to be convincing as someone you feel should be in charge of the class. So everything I tweet, blog or facebook does have a bit of a spin. I don’t mention bad hair days, or who I’m dating right now – I do try to mention anything relevant to LIS, and of course anything which will persuade you that I spend all my time reading, watching science programmes, attending lectures, exhibitions and art galleries, with just the right amount of cookery school classes, 80s pop concerts and walking on the beach in the rain – all to convince you that my life is really absolutely fabulous.

lynxi(ok – 49 then).

I Collector

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Mimi Troll in one of my earliest outfits

So, December 31st, and all the books lying on my attic floor are still there. They have progressively accumulated since last January, and whilst I have every good intention of promoting them to their ‘proper’ place on the shelves, they remain where I first put them, in little huddles on the floor. The reason they are still resident on the carpet, where the Bad Persians spitefully spike their corners, is that I have no more room on my shelves.

I get older painlessly, endlessly absorbed with taking everything off one shelf, dusting, and believing that it will now be possible to squeeze more in than before. As I return the volumes I become distracted by something as I leaf through the pages, and time slips away as I engage with something I have owned for ages, but never focused on before. There is then the dilemma of whether a book should be in place A, with X Y and Z, or in place B with E F and G? Should my books on Lithuanian libraries stay alone in my attic with LIS related material, or should I unite them with their natural co-habitees of books on Lithuanian places, folk tales and cuisine (currently downstairs with travel, fiction and cookery respectively..)? Should my Ladybird book of ballet stay here with the other ladybird books or should I separate it from its same size siblings and put it downstairs with the other books on ballet? Maybe I should have two copies of these things..? No. Definitely no. There is no more room on my shelves.

In his book ‘The Library at Night’, Alberto Manguel devotes a whole chapter to ordering (The library as order). His dilemma in arranging his collection offers me some solace.

He writes that as a boy, he would decide:

… to place them by size so that each shelf contained only volumes of the same height.

But that

… sometimes this order would not satisfy me and I’d reorganize my books by subject: fairy tales on one shelf, adventure stories on another, scientific and travel volumes on a third, poetry on a fourth, biographies on a fifth. And sometimes, just for the sake of change, I would group my books by language, or by colour, or according to my degree of fondness for them.

Once a category is established, it suggests or imposes others, so that no cataloguing method, whether on shelf or on paper, is ever closed unto itself.

And  later, in adulthood, when creating his own library, he writes on the subjective and personal nature of the organization of private collections:

Why stash the works of Saint Agustine in the Christinianity section rather than under Literature in Latin or Early Medieval Civilizations? Why place Carlyle’s French Revolution in Literature in English rather than in European History, and not Simon Schama’s Citizens? Why keep Louis Ginzberg’s seven volumes of Legends of the Jews under Judaism, but Joseph Gaer’s study on the Wandering Jew under Myths? Why place Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho under Carson but Arthur Golding’s Metamorphoses under Ovid? Why keep my two pocket volumes of Chapman’s Homer under Keats?

Ultimately, every organization is arbitrary.

Not just me then.

Then there is LibraryThing – and the need to not only to add in all my books (scanning in the covers for the more ancient or foreign ones), but to devise a scheme to tag them all according to where they are on the shelves, and consequently to which category I feel they should belong. Although any electronic catalogue allows for the possibility of placing an item in more than one category by adding multiple tags, this does not help in my quest to create the ideal collection, in the ideal order, with all the books on the shelves. And sadly, on the topic of social networks for books, Alberto Manguel is silent.

But, dear reader, there is more to this prose than the story of how I maintain a collection of books rather than just a stash beside my bed. The truth is I collect quite a lot of things. I mean collect them rather than just happen to give them space in my house, because they are obtained specifically in relation to the other things which I possess. They are organized. I organize them. Endlessly, never to my complete satisfaction, and occasionally (designer handbags) to facilitate gloating. And there is never enough space to present my collections on the shelves and in the cupboards, in the way in which I would like.

I have been driven to contemplate my true nature as I read “An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World”, written by Frances Larson, in which she investigates his compulsion to collect just about everything. Whilst the word ‘obsessive’ is not mentioned, the negative consequences of Wellcome’s desire to collect ‘everything’ are painful to read about.

His marriage failed; his need to control not just the objects his buyers found, but any subsequent research ideas that ensued, caused significant friction between Wellcome and his employees, and perhaps most sadly of all, he collected too much. The process of collecting overshadowed the desire to learn from, or enjoy, the things collected. Most of his collection was in storage, destined to be partially dismantled after his death.

Wellcome believed that only a complete collection would be worthy enough to display, one which would truly tell the story of the history of medicine. He believed that by arranging the items in his collection, contrasting and comparing, making connections, previously unknown facts and understanding would be revealed. But in the meantime, he died:

… Wellcome ran out of time. The story that might have emerged from all his frantic collecting – the great history ‘of the art and science of healing’ that he intended to depict through his rarities – was never finished. The collection was never exhibited en masse, polished and consistent, as he intended it to be.

Yet, perusing the fantastic legacy that is now the Wellcome Collection and Library, it is impossible to say anything other than that Henry Wellcome’s activity was worth it.

So what about my collections? Well I don’t think I collect anything with a view to having everything. I think I first thought of this when attempting to compile a list of toxicology resources for my PhD – too many even a decade ago for the most ardent of resource collectors. My approach has evolved to aspire to a representative sample of what is available (e.g. LIS books, colored frock coats and SpaceNK products). After all, there is no more room on the shelves. And I doubt that anyone will consider my collections a legacy.

But I do enjoy being organized and I naturally form collections from the things I have. I have to put like things together and take great pleasure in thinking of ways to do this. My great uncle’s bible and his stereoscope, for example, may seem unlikely shelf sharers, and yet I place them side by side in the cupboard because they are the only things of his that I posses, and so even though I have other bibles, this particular one sits alone on a box of cards intended to generate 3D images at the beginning of the 20th century.

Sometimes I discover new things from arranging the old things. Recipes for example. All the cut out ideas from magazines and newspapers could so easily sit in a heap, good for nothing except artful clutter. Yet when organised according to savoury or sweet, and even crudely subcategorized, I find a pattern in the type of food I felt drawn to, and a renewed interest in cooking something nice to eat. And then who hasn’t enjoyed making playlists from all the CDs which lay forgotten in their rack, as soon as all the tracks are loaded onto iTunes – the software arranging the random pile of sound history into something new and attractive – hateful to those who admire the concept of an entire album, but smashing for those of us who only ever liked one track anyway. And the same for photos, and papers as well as books. What about all those old letters and postcards? Is there anything that cannot become a collection? Cleaning products, the contents of the fridge, knitting patterns, crockery … mmm  I can see where Wellcome had a problem – its all so interesting, placing like things together, establishing differences, seeing what is missing, and what has previously passed unobserved.

My earliest collection was one of books by Enid Blyton – and then when I was eight, I started to collect trolls (see Mimi above) – each named and dressed in clothes I designed and made myself. Easy to see where I came from.

But it is December 31st , and so before another year passes, I am going to the fridge to find cheese and champagne – and yes … the cheeses are stored according to country of origin… but no – I don’t collect champagne – I drink it as soon as it is chilled. Happy New Year.

Bibliography:

Larson F (2009). An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Manguel A (2006). The Library at Night. Yale University Press: New Haven and London.