Monthly Archives: October 2005

Advantage, mine (this time)

Posted on by

In my previous post I stated that "Your choice of education, just like mine, comes with a whole set of
advantages and disadvantages, many of which overlap or are exactly the
same."  This was in reference to Ms. Glover claiming that her "online degree is more valuable than a traditional one."

Here’s one for me.  Again,  it doesn’t make my on campus degree better, just different.  Different advantages, different disadvantages, along with some that are the same.

I volunteered to drive for a conference this upcoming weekend, along with being responsible for the small amount of computer/AV equipment of our own that we will be taking to the conference.  For this small amount of work I get to go for free and I’m getting put up on site, to include meals.  Damn, life really is fair some days!  [Let's hope we don't have the same sort of AV luck we had in May.  Different venue, and I'm really hoping!]

I’m going to be attending Library History Seminar XI: Libraries in Times of War, Revolution & Social Change.

Louise Robbins, Douglas Raber, Archie Dick, Cheryl Knott Malone, Mary Niles Maack, Wayne Wiegand, Alistair Black, and many other from literally all over the world.  I am practically giddy!

Don’t Discredit My Online Degree

Posted on by

"Don’t Discredit My Online Degree" is an article in Library Journal by Karen Glover.

OK, I agree Ms. Glover, I won’t.  But I’ll ask you the same thing, don’t discredit my on campus degree.

This is an article that had great potential.  It points out that many employers still undervalue and may even devalue online degrees, that distance education students may well possess traits that should be highly valued by employers, and that there are advantages to an online degree.  No argument from me there.

But Ms. Glover crosses a few lines in her exuberance to defend her choice of education.  It is these that I want to address. 

But first, disclaimers and my credentials.  I have sat on academic library search committees.  I did e-reserves for three years, to include ensuring that our distance ed students had access.  I also worked full-time while pursuing portions of my education.  My job at library school is the technical end of distance education.  This includes the broadcasting of the synchronous portion, that is, the actual class, and support of all underlying technologies from the student’s perspective.  In this capacity I am actively involved with our distance ed students every time they come to campus, and, of course, several times a week when doing my job.  I am also taking a distance ed class this semester.  I have also written at the graduate level on the theoretical/philosophical limitations of distance education.  I am, thus, very much well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of distance education in an LIS school.

"That means 60 percent of employers view my degree as second
class, which makes finding a job that much harder for me than someone
with a traditional degree."  Sad but quite probably true.  I do not argue with this point from your view and, unfortunately, I can do nothing to change it.  All I can say is that when I sat on search committees we did not devalue online degrees.  Many of our librarians attended this school and several got their degrees via distance ed, or at least a large part of it.  To devalue an online degree would have meant devaluing their own or their peers own education.

Students don’t socially interact with peers.

"As far as social interaction goes, I found my online program to be better than my traditional undergraduate program."  I’m not convinced that comparing your level of social interaction in graduate compared to undergraduate education is a good one.  Graduate education is something entirely different, and your social interaction is supposed to be of another order completely. 

In my situation as an on campus student I find myself starving for professional social interaction.  I go to the bar, to movies, etc. with my fellow students but that matters none for me as a future librarian.  Most of them do not want to discuss "professional" topics outside of the classroom.  But I do have the alternative of hanging out with the doctoral students who are more likely to be engaging in discussions of professional merit, IMHO.

I have commented to several folks about the level of engagement of the distance students when they come to campus compared to on campus students.  I always try to find a few to hang out with when they are here because I can then find the sort of social engagement that I am looking for.  They are simply incredible to be around when they are here.  During the on campus session for my distance ed class this semester I went to lunch and dinner with several of my classmates and we never once stopped discussing material relevant to our course or librarianship in general.  I wish I could remember half of the conversations I had.

Now lest you think that I am making Ms. Glover’s argument for her, just hold on.  A very wise distance ed friend of mine replied to me when I told her this that it is probably because "we are starving for this kind of interaction and we only get it when we come to campus."  Well, well.  It’s not an everday thing for them either.  Now that I think about it, I am willing to bet that the amount of external class stimulation that I got over the weekend that the distance ed students were here is no more nor less than what I get in a semester from my on campus cohorts.  And that is a shame!  But is does not add up to more social interaction for distance ed students.

Ms. Glover mentions that she and her classmates communicated "via chat, discussion boards, and email," and that much of it was graded.  Well, the same is true in our on campus courses.  Distance ed classes may ensure that this is in a different ratio, but it is not inherently the case.

Too new?

"Students in the online program take the same exact courses."  Maybe in your program, but not necessarily in ours.  Sometimes on campus students take a course that is only available via distance ed, such as the one I am taking this semester.  In that case they are the same.  But we have many courses that must be offered in both formats.  These are often taught by different instructors, using highly varied material.  I will only provide one example, one which I do feel is vastly different in the different settings, and that is Storytelling.  I broadcast the distance ed version of this class the same semester I took it on campus.  Now let me first stipulate that I believe the distance ed instructor did a wonderful job, and so did the students.  BUT.  There is simply no way that the students in that class had the same quality level of experience as we did.  If the goal was to teach storytelling over the phone then fine.  But that is not the goal of Storytelling.  Telling stories over the phone to be broadcast to others is vastly different than doing it in front of a group of 25 other live persons.  Over the phone storytelling ignores a good 3/4s of everything having to do with knowing/reading your audience.  Plus, being drawn into a story over the phone versus face-to-face is vastly different.  Can it be done?  Sure.  I’m not totally ignorant of, say, old radio serials.  Is face-to-face storytelling vastly different than non-face-to-face, for both teller and audience?  Yes and yes.  And while I believe, again, that the instructor for the distance ed version did a fabulous job, she has a few decades and maybe a few lifetimes before she can, if ever, be another Betsy Hearne.   

"How many traditional instructors demand that you come to their office once a week and ask a question or propose an idea?"  Well, I think that’s the point of all the reading responses/critiques that we do in many of our classes.  So the answer for me is a large portion do.

More value

Those of us who choose to take online courses, or earn an online
degree, do so because we often have jobs, families, and lives that cannot just stop for school. We may be nontraditional, but that does not make us less valuable. In fact, it may even make us more valuable.
We multitask and organize. Our time management skills are impressive, and our commitment to our education is unmatched. Until employers know more about what it takes to succeed in an online program, however, the stigma will remain.

OK, I’ll agree with the first two and the last sentences.  But I’m also going to call "snarky."  First off, I and I am sure many of my on campus cohort would be glad to know that we don’t have jobs, families, or lives.  Many of these people have all of those Ms. Glover.  Many have quit well paying jobs and uprooted their families, even including a spouse quitting their job too, to move here to attend school as they best see fit.  Many of fellow on campus students, and their families, are making huge sacrifices for their educations.  The multitasking, organization, and time management skills of many distance ed students is impressive.  But to imply that on campus students neither need nor have these too is simply ignorant.

"If questions about your online degree come up in an interview, be honest and state all of the reasons why your online degree is more valuable than a traditional one."  I concur.  Do be honest.  But your degree is more valuable than mine?  That really is the height of hubris. 

Yes, I understand that you are currently at a disadvantage due to the views of many involved in the hiring process in our field, but that is simply no reason to make shit up.  Your choice of education, just like mine, comes with a whole set of advantages and disadvantages, many of which overlap or are exactly the same.  So, certainly downplay the disadvantages and highlight the advantages of your edcuation in an interview.  But to claim that online education as a whole is "more valuable than a traditional one" is complete bullshit. 

Notice I am not claiming the opposite here.  What is relevant is the quality of your education for you and how well it prepared you for the jobs you are seeking.  What is not relevant is how it was acquired, as long as it is from an accredited source when that is required.

So, one last time Ms. Glover, I’ll ask you to not discredit my on campus degree.

Credit:  Article found at Wanderings of a Student Librarian. 

Don’t You Think?

Posted on by

This song is dedicated to the views behind a recent comment that was made to me in a class. 

I know that it was made in the spirit of well-meant, constructive criticism but it made me very mad nonetheless.  I was told that my "posts, while insightful, at times have been highly provocative."

Well, provocative maybe?  Highly provocative, no.  And I say no because there is absolutely no intention to be provocative.  My intention is to get people to think, to challenge their assumptions, and to not just uncritically take in something new that sounds promising.  That is the point of this situation I thought.

So, for the viewpoint that lead to that comment, I dedicate "Don’t You Think" by Natalie Imbruglia.

Some people
Don’t worry
‘Bout nothing
Don’t know what’s going on
I’m not one
Who can’t say they’re sorry
I just care what’s going on
There’s more important things
Than making sure your watch look just right
And second hand opinions
Don’t make you look any smarter

Don’t you think
Don’t you think that maybe it’s time, yes it’s time
Time you started thinking

And don’t just sweeten up the taste
Brother shoots brother
But meanwhile your fixing up your face
You’re not affected by the truth
Unless it’s on your doorstep
Deodorise your paradise
No point in getting crazy

Don’t you think
Don’t you think that maybe it’s time, yes it’s time

Time you started thinking ’bout things in the back of your head
Someone said before you turn a blind eye
Hear a bell ring sex sells everything
But I don’t buy it so don’t try it
Sleeping in the small world head in the sand
Better wash your hands, make a new plan
There’s more important things
Than making sure your shoes walk just right
Ignore reality there’s nothing you can do about it
Ignore reality there’s nothing you can do about it
Ignore reality there’s nothing you can do about it
The clothes you wear don’t make the man
It’s just another party

Don’t you think
Don’t you think that maybe it’s time
Time you started thinking

Why did this comment make me so mad?  That’s an easy one.  My entire life I have been told to be quiet, to listen, that my voice does not matter.  There have been a few situations where my voice matters, but they are few and I highly prize them.

Most children, especially those of the 60s, are ‘told’ that there voice does not matter via our child-rearing practices and societal norms.  Even within my peer group as a child I was dismissed.  I was the smallest kid, boy or girl, in my classes until the 4th grade, and then I was the 2nd smallest.  Big step up there.  I was also devilishly smarter than many of my peers, which manifested itself in many behavioral problems that, of course, had to be medicated.  I was diagnosed as a combination of several letters long before there was an H in ADHD.  And, thus, as a "problem child" it was even easier to dismiss my voice. 

Later in school I was never in any sort of in-group.  Even when I participated in sports it was in cross country and as a miler in track.  Distance runners are, or at least were, on the low end of the sports spectrum.  In the military I was an enlisted member.  And while at times one’s voice can matter there it is rare.  You are still following orders from above, and often passing on or enforcing clearly stupid orders that you are then supposed to "own" in your own voice.

Now I am a middle-aged white male.  Thanks to the horrible way that many Western white males have acted over the centuries this is also a voice that needs to be suppressed in our society in the view of many.  Yes, there is a certain kind of institutionalized Western white male voice that needs to be challenged and often corrected for.  But to routinely disenfranchise me, as an individual, from the conversation is just as evil as if I was to actively dismiss the voices of women, or "minorities," or anyone else because they "belong" to a certain demographic.  There is no one else who has had or ever will have the experiences I have had, and thus my voice is unique—just as every individual voice is unique.  This is the quality in a voice that matters, its uniqueness.

This blog is an attempt to find a voice that has been effectively silenced for 40 some odd years.  Much of my online and in person commentary in classes is also an attempt to find my voice.  Do I blow it sometimes?  Certainly!  Do I need to listen more?  Definitely!  That is a skill I am also trying to grow.  I never claimed that my voice has more merit than someone else’s and, in fact, the drawing out of other voices is another skill I am trying to cultivate.  One cannot listen to another who has no voice.

This is, I know, a crude explanation as to why I was highly upset by the feedback I was given.  I do know that it was made in a loving spirit and on the behalf of others, not necessarily on behalf of the one making it.  But it was also made in the almost complete lack of what it might mean to me phrased in the way that it was.  I could almost turn it back reflexively on the one who made it.  Listen.  What is the spirit in which these "highly provocative" posts are made?  And that my friends is the key.  It is also a majority of the content of this course.  So why are we learning it if it isn’t to apply to each other?

"Don’t You Think?"

The truth really is out there

Posted on by

Now here’s a "quiz" that fits me just fine!  How Much Is My Blog Worth? found at The Gypsy Librarian.

Given my distaste for much of consumer society this is a perfect result!  Hehehee $0.00.  Of course, that should be the answer for 99.9% of all blogs.

I’d be a big sell-out if I scored anything over $0.00 on any scale of measurement that employed anything AOL in its computations.  See one of my early posts on AOL/TimeWarner as Corporate Criminal. 

And I love your writing and most of what you write about Angel, but I think yours is probably due
to your far more southerly location with the onset of fall.  ;->
Maybe if I posted pictures of the colorful leaves….  Naw, I’m proud of my totally worthless blog!
 

“I aim to misbehave.”

Posted on by

I went and saw Serenity tonight.  Yes, for the 1st time.  As an aside, I waited until the 17th week before I went and saw Star Wars in 1977.  I see no need to be in a hurry for something that’ll be around for a while.

OK, I’ll pause while some of you pick yourselves up off of the floor.  You may want to sit down now though before I go any further.

$7 with my student discount; was it worth it?  Hmmm, nope.  See I told you to sit down.   Although it was better than the last few movies I saw at the "regular" theater.

It was a pretty good action movie.  I’ll grant it that.  I enjoyed it.  But I see absolutely no reason for all the fuss!  Except, of course, the immense viral marketing ploy—much of it not even by the studio, but by fans of "Firefly."

Some people love baseball or some other sport, some love opera or some other fine performance art, and many love TV and its spin-offs.

It was a good movie and I may even buy it, eventually, when it comes out on DVD.  But that $7 and 2+ hours could have been spent more productively until it is out on DVD.

Don’t hate me.  We all value different things.  And, for me, this was just another over-valued pop culture phenom.

Fall 2005 Windsor Lecture – Roy Tennant

Posted on by

Updated 8 Nov 2005: Links to audio and video at bottom of post.

Yesterday, Roy Tennant presented the Fall 2005 Phineas L. Windsor Lecture at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.  It was entitled, "The Academic Library in a Googlezon World."

Before the lecture, Roy met with with students in an informal discussion hosted by the student ASIS&T chapter.

I’ll start with my notes from that meeting:

What Roy would like to see in LIS graduates (keep in mind a digital library focus):

  • "Graduates who like any metadata that they see."  That is, know/be able to discern the strengths and weaknesses of each type, and when it is appropriate to use for any particular user need.
  • XML/XLST experience
  • Knowledge of software.  That is, what you can do; how hard it is to do something; basic programming – looping, data structures, etc., so that you know when you are being BSed.  Some will need a deeper knowledge than others of course.  Which langauge?  Impossible to tell.  Learn one or two currently in use, and then learn as much of a new one as you need it.
  • Personality traits:
    • Learn all the time / on-the-fly
    • "Eye on the horizon and and ear to the ground."  Asking "shouldn’t we be looking at this?"
    • Not wedded to job description – exploit your talents

Discussed Web4Lib discussion list as a good resource on the web and libraries, broadly based.  Suggested browsing the archives to determine if fits one’s interests before subscribing.

Talked about what he calls "strategic learning."  Take a brief look at something new to get a quick sense as to whether it is useful to oneself, one’s users, or your library.  If not, then move on for now.  Circle back after a while once it is more developed to look into its current usefulness.  Once it is useful, learn enough to do useful work.

I was very pleased to hear Roy say that his "MARC Must Die" spiel of a few years ago was over the top.  He had identified the wrong solution to the right problem.  He told us that he addressed the "correct solution" in "A bibliographic metadata infrastructure for the twenty-first century."  Library Hi Tech.   Bradford: 2004.   Vol. 22, Iss. 2.  [Sorry, doesn't make any sense to link to it unless you have access to the UIUC Library databases.]  Here’s the short version in Library Journal, "Building a New Bibliographic Infrastructure."  15 January 2004.

Now, on the Windsor Lecture, which I am pleased to say was packed.

The talk centered around what Roy called his "trite truisms":

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

  • Open WorldCat records in Google and Yahoo
  • Google maps will be able to show the local libraries holding the items in these Open WorldCat records
  • Google Scholar showing OpenURLs to content you have access to

Take the concept and run

  • Redlightgreen.com simple user interface much like Google.  Provides citations in multiple formats to drop right into a bibliography. …

Stop putting lipstick on pigs

Be user-focused

  • Make the machines perform like a librarian, not the user. 
  • "Only librarians like to search, everyone else likes to find."
  • 2 parts:
    • Needs assessment
    • Usability testing (does not need to be high overhead)

Keep what works

  • OpenURL resolvers – not perfect, but do one thing well
  • Interoperable components

Fix what’s broken

  • Our finding tools suck – catalogs, databases
  • Focus on specific user groups
  • Ask our users AND listen

Strive for efficiencies

  • Must streamline where we can:
    • Materials acquisition
    • Circulation

Exploit new opportunities

  • Institutional repositories
  • Digital publishing; esp. university presses
  • XTF – extensible text format (for instance see 2000 titles from the Univ of California Press backlist with approx. 500 free) [Sorry for no links, but the whole UCP site seems to be down at the moment]
  • Robust full-text searching across and within titles

Play to our strengths

Foster agility

  • Need for agility stems from uncertainty
  • Must have imaginative problem-solving from employees
  • Mentioned "
    The Dis-Integrating World of Library Automation," by Dietz and Grant. Library Journal. 15 June 2005.  This is an article co-written by Presidents of two competing ILS vendors.

United we stand, divided we fall

  • Internet provides unprecedented opportunity to collaborate:
    • Share digital TOCs from books sent to storage
    • ONIX data from publishers
    • …

Building the academic library our users deserve – modern, professional academic library services.

"We are fully capable of turning these challenges into opportunities."

Questions:

We need "empowering tools for librarians."  That is, not tools that do everything, but tools that do the heavy lifting.

As regards OpenURL:  It is a good model, but does not like that it puts another window between the user and the item.

I apologize that these are so sketchy, but I was trying to pay attention.

PS.  There should be links to RealAudio streams of these talks.  I’ll link to them when they’re up if I’m able.

Update: 8 Nov 2005  RealMedia here.

RealAudio for Roy’s Windsor Lecture.  RealVideo of Roy’s Windsor Lecture.  RealAudio of Roy’s discussion with the ASIS&T student chapter.

Confessor or confessor?

Posted on by

It looks like I struck out on a ‘definitive’ (pun intended) explication of ‘confessor.’

It seems that ‘confessor’ is used for both the one confessing, as in the normal use of the -or in English, and as the one, usually a priest, to whom confession is made.  I discovered this Sunday evening when I was replying to a comment by Angel at my "Librarianship as Penance?" post.  What, I asked, is up with that?

My initial foray for an answer is at my post, "Dictionary Day, now this is a holiday that I can get behind."  Feel free to take a look, I’ll wait.  I initially looked in the OED online to verify that it was used in both ways.  I looked at etymologies, first uses (descriptive), and spellings.  Unless I’m missing something in some Latin tense that isn’t fully explained, I don’t see why it is used both ways.

So Wednesday I hit the main reference room, the LIS Library, the Modern Languages Library, and then the History and Philosophy (Religion) Library.

But first, here is what I found in the main reference room.  I began with verifying what I found in the online OED with the print version.  I decided to check ‘confessee’ and discovered the following:

confessee  rare.  [f. CONFESS v. + -EE]
a. One who is confessed (by a priest).    b. One to whom confession is made.  (Ambiguous and to be avoided.)
[OK, do they mean these uses are ambiguous, or their definition is, or both?]

1601 F. GODWIN Bps. Eng. 377 Either the Confessor, or the Confessee, or the reporter, lied I doubt not. 1839 J. ROGERS Antipopopr. xiv. §1. 305 Confessor and confitent, or rather confessee and confesser commonly in private.

confesser  [f. CONFESS v. + -ER]  One who confesses or makes confession.

1836-46 in SMART Walker’s Dict. 1839 [see prec.].
[Again, kind of ambiguous.]

I then looked in:

Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed.  Rev. Walter W. Skeat.   Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1898

The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.  C.T. Onions, ed.  Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1966

Origins: a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed.  Eric Partridge  New York : Macmillan, 1966

confess, confession, confessional (adj., n), confessor.
‘To confess‘ derives, via OF-F, from LL confessāre, from L confess-, s of confessus, pp of confitēri, to confess,…

confessor, adopted by OF (whence the F confesseur), passes into E.

OF Old French / F French / LL Late Latin (c A.D. 180-600) / L Latin / s stem / pp past participle

Suffixes and Other Word-Final Elements of English  Laurence Urdang, ed.  Detroit, MI : Gale Research Company, 1982

1273 -or  A noun-forming word-final element, derived through Middle English -or, -our and Old French -eor, -eur from the Latin agentive suffix -or, -ator, used to denote ‘a person or thing that performs and action’ specified by the combining root: councillor, sailor, elevator.  Related forms: -ors (plural).

1274  -or  A noun-forming word-final element, derived through Middle English -or, -our and Old French -eor, -eur from the Latin abstract-noun-forming suffix -or, used in combinations denoting ‘an action, state, condition, result, quality, or characteristic’ specified by the combining root: labor, candor, misdemeanor.  Also, -our (British). Related forms: -ors (plural). [I don't think this applies here, but wanted to be inclusive.]

I also looked in several other "standard" unabridged dictionaries.  None gave me any insight.  So I headed off to the LIS Library to ask my friends their recommendations on which "experts" to go bug.  I went on my merry way to the English Library but decided to bypass it based on staffing and headed to the Modern Languages Library.  There I talked with a nice gentleman librarian with some sort of British Empire accent.  We decided that I had tried all of the standard routes and that it is probably some combination of my two theses (I’m getting there!) or in other words, an accident of language.  He suggested I go talk to the religious folks over in History and Philosophy so off I trundled.  Luckily, all of these libraries are in the Main Library Building.  A staffer there helped me but did much of the same sort of work I had already done, although I’m happy to let someone verify I’m not missing something obvious or even not so obvious.  Again, we decided on some sort of sociological, accident of language answer.

This is not the answer I want.  But seeing as it is human language, there may well be no "definitive" answer.

But before I give you my "answers," if anyone has any other ideas or, better yet, "the answer," please feel free to let me know.  Also, if anyone can think of any other words in English that use the same word form of the -ee and -or family to designate the doer and recipient of an action, please let me know.

I am (currently) left with a sociological/accident of language answer, for which I have no real evidence.  So, yes, I’m guessing.

The earliest sense in English per the OED, is "One who avows his religion in the face of danger, and adheres to it under persecution and torture, but does not suffer martyrdom; spec. one who has been recognized by the church in this character."  The first recorded use of this sense, is c1000.  This is also the first English usage.  King Edward the Confessor fits this sense.

Then, (prior to) a1300 we get the first usage of the more general sense of "One who makes confession or public acknowledgement or avowal of anything" (OED).

And then in 1340 we get this use, "One who hears confessions: a priest who hears confession of sin, prescribes penance, and grants absolution; the private spiritual director of a king or other great personage" and this note, from the OED:  [In med.L. better confessarius; but confessor in this sense is quoted by Du Cange from Walafrid Strabo (ob. 849).]

That note may be the one clue that I (or the others I consulted) am unable to interpret.

So my first idea is that both uses come from different word forms in Latin.  The first use had a few hundred years to make its way from Latin to Late Latin to Old French and Middle English and get vernacularized from the more narrow technical meaning to the more general meaning.  Then the Church decided to use another but related Latin word form, to which they were theoretically much closer as Latin scholars, which ended up as "the same word," or word form, in English and French.  Accident of history.

My second idea is that the Church decided 300+ years later to use the same technical word to also refer to the one confessed to.  The Church was still fairly strong in the 1300s and could well have imposed a 2nd use of the word on the faithful.  Sociological explanation.

And that, my friends, is the best I’ve been able to come up with for now.

What to Do Today?

Posted on by

It seems I have 5 draft posts already in the queue, although one has been there for months and doesn’t really count.  I should try to get some of them out into the wild.

I also have several other ideas already.  For one, I want to say a few things about Jacob Nielsen’s thoughts on weblog usability.  Luckily, Angel and Joy have made it easier for me.

I did a few hours research yesterday on the whole "confessor" conundrum which I need to finish writing up.

There are a few other things rolling around in the back of my head that now and again roll to the front before disappearing again.  Maybe they should stew for a while, although they’re more likely to disappear.

I also have homework that I just am not in the mood to do.  Project stuff for nearer to the end of the semester.  Of course, the smart and diligent thing to do would be to work on it now.

Also have a bunch of HTML/CSS pages to clean up for a class as part my assistantship.  But it’s such a cool, grey, rainy day out there and motivation is hard to come by, especially on 3/4s of a cup of coffee.  But my fellow schoolmates, and an instructor, are counting on me to "hop to," so I’ll just have to hop into the recliner and get busy sometime in the next 4-5 hours.

Roy Tennant’s coming to UIUC tomorrow.  I’ll be going to his lecture, "The Academic Library in a Googlezon World," and also the informal meeting with the ASIS&T student group.

Ah well, off to get more coffee and try to get motivated.  I purposefully committed a few of Nielsen’s "sins" here so maybe I’ll start on that.

Among the Disciplines

Posted on by

Ryan, Michael T. “Among the Disciplines: The Bibliographer in the I World.” In Recruiting, Educating, and Training Librarians for Collection Development, edited by Peggy Johnson and Sheila S. Intner, 99-112. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Read 6 Oct 05.

Abstract/Synopsis

THE I WORLD

The “I word” = interdisciplinarity

  • All-pervasive
  • Consequences everywhere:
    • curriculum,
    • hiring decisions,
    • research,
    • organization of institutions
  • Is a subject in its own right

“Most newcomers want ancestors to validate their legitimacy; thus, pedigrees are researched, histories written, new texts exhumed and examined, new canons formed. Another piece of the past is “recovered,” dusted off, and made to serve the needs of the present” (100).

An epistemological shift: “The isolated Cartesian investigator has been socialized” (101).

Traditional disciplines remain strong; which seems a prerequisite “for the floursiihing of the I world” (101).

THE LIBRARY AND THE I WORLD

Subject/area specialists in the library are probably most “aware of the implications ofthe I word and its world” (101). I would argue that they are most aware of many aspects, particularly the information provision side; and even then, only from the provider side. Unless they are practicing interdisciplinarists they do not really understand the information needs from the user’s perspective.

  • New research vocabularies
  • New methods of investigation
  • New literatures
  • Older, peripheral literatures that become central
  • New formats for information

All of these impact collection development/management issues, along with issues of instruction/navigation (101).

“The contemporary bibliographer is both a specialist and an inveterate transgressor of specialization, working within and among disciplines and fields, literate in a variety of methodologies, and competent in a multitude of research vocabularies” (102). Well, I would hope so anyway, but I wonder where this is being taught or emphasized during education. I’m not saying it isn’t mentioned or touched on in a superficial way, but you don’t get this way superficially.

“He or she knows well the limits of personal experience and appreciates the need to tap that of fellow selectors in adjacent fields” (102). The $64,000 question becomes how is one educated for the demands of the “I world?”

SPECIALISTS NEW AND OLD

“Do new fields require new specialists” (102)? There is no easy answer to this question.

Qualifying issues and considerations:

  • Local
    • Prominence of program and its advocates
    • Position within institution
    • Composition of client group
    • Budgetary consequences of program growth
  • Political
  • Nature of the program
    • Degree-granting? At what level?
    • Curriculum, but no degree
    • Federation of existing faculty, fields, and courses?
    • New billets and new fields?
    • Possible life cycle? Passing fad or here for the long-term?
  • Knowledge and information requirements
  • Structure of the literature(s) (102)

Assorted answers to these questons and their impact on collection development/management are mentioned.

“Searing and Ariel emphasize the need to get inside the hybrid, adopt its identity, understand its point of view; in other words, to approach it as a practitioner” (103). [See: Susan Searing and Joan Ariel, "Women's Studies," in Selection of Library Materials in Applied and Interdisciplinary Fields, ed. by Beth J. Shapiro and John Whaley (Chicago: American Library Association, 1987), 252.]

The new forms of scholarly relationships and sociologies of knowledge should “require a new sociology of collection development and new patterns of socialization among selectors” (105).

Bottom line: A more colloborative model of collection development/management is required in the “I world.” (105)

ACADEMIC GROUNDINGS

The best preparation for successfully negotiating the I worlds is that which the faculty themselves bring with them: a firm grounding in their primary discipline or field. As important as professional education and certification are, there is no substitute for advance work on the graduate level in providing the selector with the methodological and conceptual basics necessary for meeting the knowledge and inforamtion needs of the primary client group and those of its extended family. Understanding the range of research possible under a disciplinary umbrella and the methodologies that undergird that range will give the selector a good sense of who and where the “kin” may be outside the department and thus of those fellow selectors with whom he or she ought to be prepared to collaborate (105).

Clearly, Ryan is arguing for 2nd graudate-level degrees for selectors.

The I world:

  • Blurs and melds older specializations
  • Promotes relationships among fields
  • Challenges overspecialization and narrow forms of expertise
  • Privileges and rewards discourses among fields
  • Values synthetic vs. merely technical skills
  • Defines excellence as ability to make connections across fields (106)

INFORMATION EXPERTISE

“Online databases, indices, and texts have not only made certain research procedures easier and more convenient, they appear to have the potential to transform the fundamental nature, character, and agenda of research itself” (107). Hmmm. While most of those earlier clauses are fleshed out a bit, I have to wonder about that change in the “agenda of research itself” clause.

“Bibliographer cum information navigator” (107). “Developing and maintaining expertise in a subject area requires the ability to negotiate broad, disparate ranges of sources and materials” (108). “…, and this function will require firm disciplinary grounding as well as good peripheral vision” (108). Well yes, this makes sense, but hasn’t or shouldn’t it have always been the situation? How can one be a good bibliographer/collection developer or manager if one doesn’t know all the various forms that information in their respective fields take?

NEW ROLES FOR LIBRARY SCHOOLS

Need a curriculum that recognizes “functional” and “disciplinary breadth of the activity” (108). Interdisciplinarity and its implications need to be articulated in the goals and objectives of the curriculum (108-9). The boundarylessness and boundedness of contemporary scholarship needs to be highlighted, which could be done in three ways:

  • “Practicums that force students to work outside of their fields of expertise and competence.”
  • Curriculum “needs to pay attention to the diverse information requirements of the I world and the ways in which access needs parallel, but do not displace, ongoing collection-building functions.”
  • “Curriculums should be sensitive to the new, collaborative cultures of knowledge and provide ways in which potential bibliographers can experiment with and adapt to more social modes of selection, access, and collections management” (109).

All of these are fine suggestions, but I don’t see the first one as very practical in our current view of higher education of the student as consumer. Every time one of us more educationally-oriented students brings up why we only have 2 required courses, both of which are overly broad, we are told it is because it is what students demand. Student demand? The only things students should be demanding is a quality education. [OK, that is overly simplistic, but certainly no more so than the other response! Can we find some sort of median?]

Ryan also argues for collaborations, beyond the masters level, with “academic departments, schools, and centers in doctoral and post-doctoral programs” as a “logical and timely way of engaging librarianship with the academy in the new age of information” (110).

CONCLUSION

Collection development is an art, or, rather, several arts.

…

Nowhere is the artfulness of collection development more apparent or better tested than in interdisciplinary work. Idiosyncratic and eclectic, interdisciplinary research is a sort of proving ground on which bibliographers can measure and refine their art. New hybrid programs by definition challenge the established, the conventional, the formal. Their creativity is subversive but not destructive. They reimagine the intellectual landscape, they redraw the scholarly terrain. They are vital and inventive, the energy of the institution. They are also a formidable set of challenges to the bibliographer’s art” (110)

Highly recommended article. My main concern is the author’s way of talking as if the “I world” causes bibliographers to be the way they need to be to function well in this environment. That is not the case, of course. It is what we hope they come to do, but there is no causal connection between the demands of the environment and the individual selector. The will hopefully be a selection taking place that selects for and rewards the bibliographer who can acquire, develop, and hone the required skills to thrive in this environment, but it is not a causal connection.

I have a few more of these articles in the queue, but I don’t know if or when I’ll get them finished. I read this one and started this post 11 days ago.