USF SLIS: East Coast Connection

School serves many purposes. Arguably the most important of which is to develop the skills needed to be able to perform well on the job, but i think school has a more subtle, and possibly equally important role to play. School is an opportunity for us to develop our ideals and ideas. It forces us into a mindset where we must think about the meaning of our profession, and our potential role in it. For better or worse, I spend a lot of time daydreaming about the library I would like to work in. I like to think about how it would look, how it would function, and what role it would play in the community. The problem is that the library I see didn't exist in the past, doesn't exist now, and won't exist in the future. Sure, aspects of my fantasy library have, do, and will exist, but my utopic vision will never come to fruition. Furthermore, I don't have any desire to fight to make it happen, because it can't. I could use all my intelligence, and all my effort, and the end product will never look like the library that lives in my head. I am both saddened and liberated by this line of thinking. Like the way I feel after reading Kafka or Dostoyevsky. I know this to be true, but the dream refuses to die. Whether I want to or not, every day that perfect library is going to formulate in my head, and every day, I will be jarred back into reality by the screaming ringtone of a cell phone; Left to fantasize about the library that could be.

 On March 26, I attended the DCLA  Library Fair http://library1.fiu.edu/DCLA. It was held at Carlos Abizu University, and I was able to attend 3 out of the 5 lectures. I saw Engaging the User to Help Build Your Website, Designing Library Spaces to Enhance Learning, and Burn the OPAC.

 Three FIU librarians told us about how they used students to help redesign their website. First of all, they had to get students involved. In order to do that, they have to be bribed, usually with a Starbucks coupon. After getting 5-10 students to form a focus group, the study can begin. Throughout the course of the webdesign process, numerous focus groups will be necessary. The focus groups have different responsibilities based on the stage of the project. The first group works on brainstorming. They throwout ideas in order to tell the designers what they want. The next group provides feedback on the website, and the last group gives a more detailed feedback. Two people take notes as individuals attempt to use the website. The users are given tasks to complete, and as they are completing them, the designers encourage them to discuss what they are doing and why. These days it is essential to have user input when designing a website, and with a little bit of effort, and a couple hundred dollars worth of Starbucks coupons, the library can get a website that it's users can use.

 Glendora Phipps is the directory of the Miami Dade College Library at the Hialeah Campus. We talked about a number of design trends in libraries. One interesting one she wants to try in her library is "deskless" reference. This encourges the reference librarians to be more interactive with the students and to play a more interactive role. She is also a big fan of mobile furniture, and most importantly slat walls. I could not agree more with the last one. Slat walls, are basically book displays. I've never understood why libraries do not capitalize on the beauty of the books in their collection. Fortunately, this trend is beginning to take hold, and I would like to see more of it.

Finally George Pearson presented Burn the Catalog. Most of what he told us we've all heard or thought by now, but he did it in a fun way. Like most of us, his criticisms create more questions than they provide answers, but it is important that we get the momentum rolling on our outdated OPACs. We talked about some of the current trends in library catalog. Some of the more important ones are simple searching, incorporating folksonomies, more forgiveness in spelling, organizing the internet, and integrating web resources into the catalog.

 The whole thing was a positive experience. My only complaints are that I wish it was longer, so I could have attended all of the lectures, and I also thought it was disproportionately geared towards academic libraries. I was very encouraged by the enthusiastic response of the attendees, and I look forward to attending many more professional conferences.

 

David Weinberger dedicates his new book, Everything is Miscellaneous to the librarians, and it has the librarian blogosphere buzzing, and is being hailed as a must read by those who agree and disagree alike.

Weinberger argues that the world of information is undergoing a transformation from the physical world to the digital world, and the knowledge classification schemes we use need to catch up to this new reality. Back when all information had to exist in a place, and when it's surrogates had to be organized in a place, hierarchies were a necessary way to classify information, but now that our information has freed itself from the physical world, hierarchical classification schemes are no longer necessary. Like many others, Weinberger seems to be in favor of developing faceted classification schemes, which allow people to construct their own hierarchies, which will lead them to the information they are looking for. He is also in favor of organizing information through tagging. The more tags an item has, the more people tagging, the messier the information gets, the more miscellaneous it gets, the more valuable and accurate it becomes. His love of social knowledge doesn't stop with tagging. He also has a lot of great things to say about wikipedia (aka the scourge of every librarian). He speaks of the advantages wikipedia has over encyclopedias. First of all, breadth. Wikipedia can cover many more topics than encylopedias, because they don't have to be as concerned about one topic taking space from another. He also defends wikipedia's accuracy, and suggests it will get better with time, as some of the more controversial posts sort themselves out through compromise.

I think his main argument is that we are no longer forced to impose false order or rankings upon information, or at least as a society we don't have to attempt to agree, we can now recognize that everything doesn't fit neatly into categories. We don't have to decide if capris are pants our shorts. We no longer have to fight over how to order things, we can each order them our own way, and by doing this we add to the meta-data ourselves, helping others find what they are looking for. This new information environment continues to soak up information, and to correct poor information. We have a great opportunity to take advantage of information like never before, but we can't continue to interact with it the way we did when we still needed card catalogs.

With all of this talk about the future of the library, I can't help but ponder what the library of the not so distant future will look like, and what the librarian's role will be inside of it. This is an exciting time to be joining the profession, but it's also a time that poses a legitimate threat that libraries will become obsolete, or at least underfunded. I believe one of the questions we are going to have to face is popularity versus purpose. Is it enough to just be popular? A lot of libraries are gaining popularity amongst teens with gaming events. I am not opposed, I think it is a fun idea, and it keeps kids in a safe, supervised environment. Nevertheless, we need to seriously consider what we are trying to achieve. Is our purpose only to increase our statistics, so we can justify budget requests, or are we trying to elevate our communities. I don't think there is a right answer, I just believe that it is important for us to maintain a sense of perspective. We can certainly learn something from gaming activities, people are coming to the library for a new set of reasons. One of which is social interaction. I think there are many ways we can capitalize on that trend; movie viewings, public speakers, poetry readings... I recognize that all of these exist to a certain extent already, but I think the time has come to put a new emphasis on them. The future of the library is a social one.

Now that everyone has election fever, I think it is a good opportunity to envision how the library can play a more active role in the new information environment. As we all know, the way people interact with information is changing. People are much less willing to sit back and be spectators. They want to be able to participate. If the library is serious about being a player in this new information game, it is going to have to recognize different ways it can be a platform that allows people to interact with information the way they have become accustomed to. My idea is that libraries should have a community voice page on their websites. This page could have information about various local, state, and federal candidates and proposals. It could also provide live streaming of the debates, and allow people to post comments in real time. This idea could also be expanded beyond politics; maybe have a local history wiki, a graph that indicates what materials are most popular, or an independent movie database style discussion board. I've always been in love with the idea of library as community forum. I think it may be unrealistic to expect anybody to attend that type of event at the physical library, but I do think people would participate in a virtual forum. I think the library has too much history to become irrelevant, and I think it is our responsibility to envision the library of the 21st century. What does your vision of the 21st century library look like?

In my first blog posting of this young website, I posed the question, why is there so much apathy and bitterness in the workplace? My goals were to figure out if first, is it true that there is an abundance of apathy in the workplace, or am I wrong? Second, why should there be so much apathy and bitterness in the library? It is a great institution with a history of successful service to communities throughout the world. Furthermore, we have access to the greatest works of literature and film ever created. The library should be an intellectual's paradise. I do think there is a problem in the library, and I think we better get it straightened out. I don't think there is an easy solution to the root problems that are causing an atmosphere of negativity in the library, but I do know that diagnosis is the first step. The bureaucratic nature of the library can be seen as a root which many of the library's problems grow. I believe the bureaucracy prevents the library from becoming a meritocracy, which hurts performance and fosters ill will. Doing a good job is not enough to get promoted, and doing a bad job is not enough to get fired. People who work at the library seem to quickly develop a sense of entitlement and lose a sense of responsibility. The problem with diagnosing this problem in a bureaucratic environment is that it would probably just lead to more bloat and ill will. I could see the library saying wow you're right, from now on, we want all employees to fill out a daily log of what they are doing at all times, and it needs to be signed by each of your supervisors, and of course we are going to have to create a new supervisory position to review all of the log entries. Another problem with the library is that it tries to hard to be liked and to be hip. Don't get me wrong, I think the library should be hip, but we've got squares reading books by squares telling us how to make our libraries hip. Then, we want to be liked so bad, and are so afraid to offend, that we allow patrons to completely disrespect the library. I've seen people eating full course meals and wiping their crumbs on the carpet, cell phones ringing non-stop, people talking as loud as they want, people blasting music through their headphones. Word to the hipster wanna be administrators being a doormat is not hip. Nothing is more hip than having an awesome collection of the most important books on the planet and the most interesting films, and taking pride in them and insisting your guests do the same. Mostly, I think the bitterness comes from the discrepancy between what this job could be, and what it is in reality. There are no easy answers, but we are young, idealistic students, and now is our time to develop our vision of what the library of tomorrow is going to look like.

I want to welcome all of the new members to this website. We have twelve members, but hopefully by the end of 2008 we have many more. I want to give a special thanks to Sonia and James Paul who took the time to contribute some content. This site is pointless without it. This gives me an opportunity to point out how users are going to continue to shape the look and feel of this website. I saw on James Paul's bio (if you haven't filled out your bio you can do that by clicking on your account, and then clicking the biography tab) that he gave a link to his del.icio.us bookmarks. I thought wow, that is a good idea I would like to see everyone's bookmarks, so I added a field in the biography section, so everyone can easily post their del.icio.us bookmarks. If you do not have a del.icio.us account, what the hell are you waiting for? Del.icio.us is a simple, yet great way to share information. So, let's see it what are some of your favorite online destinations? Here are mine, del.icio.us/martyr13.

I see that some students have posted their research as web accessible html documents rather than in a downloadable PDF format. How can I do that?

Greetings to all first time users. This is where you can really express yourself. The library is an evolving institution that has been around in some form for thousands of years. We are entering the field in the most exciting and unstable time in its history. The ways people are retrieving and sharing information are changing rapidly, and the library is struggling admirably to find a new identity in the shifting information environment. Guess what? We are going to be the ones who define what the library will be in the 21st century. It is a lot of responsibility, so I expect some passionate ideas about what the library's role in this society is. I love the formal academic environment. It is where we build our knowledge infrastructure. As we become more knowledgeable, we develop more sophisticated opinions, and the classroom environment does not always provide us with an environment where we feel comfortable expressing ourselves. So put your thinking caps on, and help me define the role of the library in the information society. Taboo topics are encouraged, but play nice.