Off the Mark

Two recent posts addressed the ‘reading habits’ of LIS students (from my perspective, of course):  "Becoming a graduate student" and "Cataloging and Metadata Education."

Jenny commented on both of them and Angel and Laura commented on the first.  I think Jenny read them in reverse order based on the way her comments went, but that makes no matter.  I told her last night, at Beth’s Un-Birthday Party at Crane Alley, that I thought she was either scolding me or had a really bad Thursday going on when she wrote her comments.

I would like to tie together some thoughts on this idea of graduate LIS reading from my commentors, myself, and a post I found this (Sun) morning at Christina’s LIS Rant called "The reference interview in a scientific research setting:  question pairs establish intellectual identity."

Christina is talking about an article:  Tracy, K., & Naughton, J. (1994). The identity work of questioning in intellectual discussion.  Communication Monographs, 61(4), 281-302; which I shall have to get and read.  [EBSCO or the university's proxy server is being stupid at the moment.]  I shall make use of Christina’s comment on this article that I have not yet read to shed some light on how a part of my thinking about reading for a graduate education works.

The authors break down the facets of intellectual identity that are
"made visible through questioning practices" into three parts 1)
knowledgeability 2) originality (are you just reiterating everything
that’s been done) 3) intellectual sophistication ("recognize the
intellectual tradition within which they work, to grant its limitations
while articulating its advantages, and to reveal awareness of what is
entailed by and inconsistent with their framework") (Tracy &
Naughton, 1994). The lexical choices of the questioner and question
recipient place them in a framework (these are smaller than disciplines
– these are what methodologies are used, what schools, what invisible
colleges…).

I believe that something akin to these "facets of intellectual identity" are also important to one’s own standing in relation to one’s discipline/field, not just between one person and another.  If one does not critically read either the literature that is assigned or that which is not, how is one to become knowledgeable, much less gain "intellectual sophistication:" "recognize the
intellectual tradition within which they work, to grant its limitations
while articulating its advantages, and to reveal awareness of what is
entailed by and inconsistent with their framework" (Tracy &
Naughton, 1994)?

That is one reason, of many, that I try to read the literature the way that I do.  To get an understanding of, and to question,  our founding and current assumptions.  To get a grasp for the limitations and strengths of "classic" and "paradigm" cementing studies.  To determine intellectual (and social) linkages betweens the ones we quote, and the ones we actually follow.  And so on.  If one is only skimming then these sorts of understandings are nigh impossible to make. 

I have recently been noticing more and more deep-seated assumptions and beliefs in LIS that are outright wrong, have arisen due to one small and flawed study, and so on.  These are then propogated explicitly and implicitly through the literature and the profession.  I want to be able to tell when I should be hesitant to accept someone’s claims.  These and so many other reasons are why I want to be able to really read "the literature."  And, yes, some things must be re-read several times.

Let me reply to Angel first:

… Most professors do give relevant reading lists, but there are one or
two out there who give more than the fair share. Overall, the
professors do know that you will be skimming some stuff. This is a
given. Some of the stuff is assigned as extra or food for thought. They
also know you may not get to it. How do I know? Well, besides personal
experience, I had one or two professors who were very open about all
this. …

Yes, although I stated that I assume professors give relevant reading, I do know that it is not the case that they always succeed.  I also am well aware that some are completely removed from what it is like to have to read all of that stuff (generally for the 1st time) at once.  Some are just cruel (It is a form of institutionalized hazing).  And, why yes, some is food for thought.  But it is hard to "get full" thinking about something you haven’t "ingested."  On a related note, my professors this semester are doing a pretty good job of (mostly) explicitly or implicitly telling us what to read, what to skim, and what truly is "nice, if you can."

And, Laura, although I most certainly appreciate well-written, life is too short to not read some things that aren’t necessarily a pleasure to read.  :-)  Unfortunately that’s true, in my opinion.

As I said, I told Jenny I thought she was either scolding me or had a really bad Thursday going on when she wrote her comments.  The thing is.  I mostly agree with her. 

Speaking from personal experience, most library students don’t read the literature because:
1. they could care less about the profession.  they need a piece of paper to do the same job they are doing and get 10K more.

2. they are in library school because they have a humanities degree
and nothing to do with it, and again do not care about the profession.

3. they have to stay in town and get paid and thus they are in library school and don’t care about the profession.

Sadly, she says ‘most’ and I think these explain a large percentage of our students, so I can’t disagree with much of it.

4. it isn’t apparent how the LIS literature is laid out. this may
seem a bit more obvious to you, but through basically my whole
academic/research career, i look for articles in databases. i have not
really had to go to a library and look in individual journals. i think
it’s pretty difficult to realize the trend in your research if all of
the articles you look up come from all different magazines that you
have never seen a paper copy of, or seen in "issue" format. It’s like
an "mp3" vs album idea.

I think Jenny’s on to a bit of something here.  It’s just not very clear to me.  This would be a metaphor that is much more existentially valid for Jenny than for me, although I understand her concept.  But even in my case, I have to learn the structure of the literature, in either paper or electronic form.  Many things are also only available to me electronically (CCQ, anyone) so this issue is beginning to affect me.  But this issue is much larger than Jenny and my discussion here.  We, librarians, structure and order the knowledge of all disciplines.  We may not have much direct influence on the physical production of the materials that we name and declare what they are, but we still must know the structure of that output so that we can "provide access" to it for others.  This is in all disciplines and arenas; not just in our own.  So whatever the fleshed out issue that Jenny is describing here, and I think she has a good point, we still need to overcome it in our own discipline along with in those for which we are responsible to patrons for.

5. Most of us do not care about library research. Sorry, a lot of
library research is 1. way theoretical, 2. on very specific subject
areas which you really don’t get into until you get a job, 3. totally
non-applicable if you are not THE librarian at a library (i.e. you have
no say as a grad assistant), or 4. fake science. Honestly, I can’t
bother with ultra theoretical/philosophical articles. I don’t care. Any
article written by someone who does not work in an actual
library/information center/company that works with books or software is
basically irrelevant to me. Perhaps this is reverse snobbery, but just
because you have to write something to make tenure doesn’t mean I want
to read it.

Hmmm.  I’m going to be careful here as I think Jenny writes like me on-the-fly.  There is a lot packed in these short sentences that might sound a bit harsher than if they were actually unpacked.

I hear a lot of carping about theory from many and varied student quarters.  I understand the words they use to describe their "aversion," I just don’t understand that they feel that way.  Just what is it that a human does that doesn’t involve some sort of "theory," other than jerking their leg when tapped on the knee with a rubber hammer?  Pretty much everything is theory-laden; just as most everything depends on observation.  What is the difference between "way theoretical" and only slightly theoretical?  Yes, many things are on specific subjects.  But many things can be related to others.  So nothing I’m learning is relevant until I’m the boss?  [And yes, I know that is not what Jenny said.] 

"Fake science."  I love this one.  I truly do.  And I agree.  Although I’m not a huge fan of the I-word, I really am not a fan of the S-word in our field [See the 1st paragraph of my About page.]  Fake science sucks.  Granted.  But that is a good reason to know what is being done in the literature.  And much of that bad science is done on both sides of that "reverse snobbery" line that Jenny drew.  I feel her pain on that one in many areas of life.  Someone who is not a practitioner should rarely tell one who is what practice is, does, or should consist in.  But that does not imply that their lack of direct knowledge of something means that they have no knowledge that might bear (even fundamentally) on that topic.  To believe so would completely undermine "library science" and philosophy, among others.  I, for one, do not see this objection as a total deconstruction of what libraries have been practicing for at least a century.  And I most certainly do not believe that philosophy, properly employed, is the slightest bit inconvenienced by such piddle. 

While I will agree that there is some good stuff in all of the "we did it good" practictioner literature in our field, much is also pure crap.  The same holds for the more "scholarly" portions of our literature.  Lots of bad or "fake" science, lots of assumptions, lots of misuse of others’ studies, lots of bad writing, and so on.  Anyway, personally, I see these as things to be aware of, but not as reasons not to read.

6. Most library students (in the UIUC incarnation) work 20+ hours a
week and take 3.5-4 classes. Perhaps for you there is time in there for
reading, but for most of us, even having time to read something for fun
is difficult. True, it is about prioritizing, but if work and school
combined take up 50+ hours a week of your life, you are not going to
want to read about that stuff in your spare time.

While Jenny is right that many of my fellow students take more classes than me (being in a hurry for assorted (often valid) reasons), I do "want to read about that stuff in your spare time" but I can accept that I’m somewhat of a freak.  It is the depth to which this hints that worries me.  How big of a freak am I?

7. No one requires it, encourages it, or even shows you how to find
articles/journals that might be appealing. Honestly, the current
awareness here kinda sucks, and isn’t directed at students. It’s
difficult to do digitally and except for going to the LIS library once
a month and bumbling about their in print copies, unless someone points
out the major journals in your area of interest, you would be wasting
your time.

There is too much here that I would want to have Jenny unpack before I took it on on its merits.  I do agree with the gist of what she says.  There is little encouragement, few who show you how [hell, some of us could teach many of the faculty a few tricks on keeping up], communication and current awareness within the department and university could be better, and students are left out of some loops.  So.  Work at it.  It goes hand-in-hand with numbers 4 and 5 above. 

8. More of us read blogs about LIS. A prominent, young, technical
faculty member at UIUC asked me what podcasting was LAST MONTH. I think
our faculty read traditional journals, but if you want to know up to
date info about actual events, blogs are way more useful. I think a lot
of new graduates are also looking outside of LIS into tech blogs as
well, since academic journals haven’t really caught up. It’s also what [stops abruptly in original.]

Agreed that blogs are useful, and in some ways more useful than the more formal "literature," but only in some ways.

9. A lot of academic journals just seem to be the same argument over
and over: technology good! no technology BAD! I already have an opinion
and it’s always somewhere in the middle. I do not care to reread the
same arguments with minor tweaks over and over again.

Agreed.  So be on the lookout for such crap and skip those.

10. Perhaps I will refute this point by placing it here at number
10. I don’t like reading long things. Again perhaps this is just my MTV
generation thing, but if you can’t say something in under 5 pages, it’s
totally irrelevant to me. And I read way more than your average human,
but still, boring technical articles? Do not care. This is why, when I
go to meetings where people cry "we can’t put it online, then everyone
will get lazy an there will be no true scholars." Sorry, that’s already
true. I am not reading something if I have to go physically somewhere
and xerox it, let alone travelling 2000 miles to an archive. It
basically doesn’t exist unless you cam deliver it to my house or
office. This is why I choose to live across the street from a library
and work in another. I know there are some academics that this will
never apply to, but for 90%+ of humans, we just don’t care that much.
Sorry.

I don’t buy into the definition of "true scholar" that is implicit in the above, but that is a whole lot of other discussions.  Jenny, I know you read books well over five pages, so what exactly are you saying?  Are you just complaining about "boring technical articles"?  If so, OK.  They do exist.  And yes, I do skim things like ANSI/NISO Z 39.19-2005 "Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies."  Because while parts of it are brilliantly intruiging, the thing as a whole is a real sleeper.  But then I’d make a special case for all of us reading even more standards, boring or not. 

As for the "MTV Generation thing," I don’t know.  Possibly.  But honestly, I think it’s just a cop-out; even if causally true.  We are not determined by our society.  Overcome the limitations imposed on you by your environment.  Be human.  But only if you want to.  Or if the demands of your profession should require it.

Jenny finished by putting an addendum on my intitial post addressing this topic:

Yes of course everyone can learn somethign from reading everything.
But my first semester of college I had an old school history professor
who laughed at me when he realized I was attempting to read everything
he assigned. This was a man who, on the first day of class, announced
that everyone was behind because there was reading for that day and no
one had come to his office the week before asking for the syllabus so
none of us could have done the reading. While you may assume that all
the professors "Instructors are assigning relevant readings" I totally
do not. I think all things assigned are meant to be skimmed.

Yes, I had one of those this semester, except for he’s too young to be "old school."  But he has a bit of that instiitutionalized hazing mentality of making it hard on us because it was made hard for him.  And, yes, a comment was made on the 1st day that we were all behind in our readings already.  But so what?  Recognize those pathetic souls for what they are?  They are not true educators.

Clearly, other people survive and even thrive by "reading" the literature of our field in various manners and with vastly different assumptions.  I think that is good. 

But I also don’t think that it is good considering what it is we are supposedly doing as librarians.

But maybe, it is really the lack of questioning that I find most appalling (27 Feb pre-8 AM ).  To be continued….