Way to go, Poindexters:

The dissenting librarians plan to present the petition with 600 signatures from staff, former staff and patrons to the library’s board at a Thursday meeting. It asks leaders to reconsider modeling library branches after a popular book or music store while casting off books with lasting value.

So we’re in the business of placing value on content, now. Great, I love the idea of telling our patrons what they want. That way, we don’t have to change at all.

In all seriousness, I wonder if the Sacramento situation may be a harbinger of more backlash against the new library model that they are trying to move toward there. Also, not to harp on unions again, but is it really their place to tell a library what material it should be ordering? I find this to be a perverted use of the union’s mandate. Here’s what they’re doing:

Sacramento library staffers are circulating a petition of no-confidence in management, decrying what they view as a departure from amassing a rich research collection to pandering to the whims of the YouTube generation.

Let’s forget for a moment that “YouTube” didn’t spawn a generation–it was actually the other way around. Let’s just simply look at this and this. Actually, that’s fine, because this is on the shelf, and it’s supposed to be a romp. I’m sure these are highly intelligent librarians that mean well and wish only the best for themselves and their denomination, but in this case, their actions are truly unencumbered by the thought process.

Really though, these guys say it best:

(link)

UPDATE - 6-1-2007

You can hear a California Public Radio broadcast about the issue here.

Steven is right, I’ve been feeling a little feisty lately. There are several reasons that I can think of for that. Part of it is that I’ve had more time to read lately and the things I’ve been reading have been getting my hackles up. So if I come off as a buzz-kill in the coming week or two, feel free to ignore me, write scathing and inflammatory comments, send me key lime cake, or whatever you deem necessary.

Anyway, Steven linked to a WSJ article today while I simultaneously received an email from my Dad who forwarded the same link “in light of” my recent blog post. (Better to read it sooner rather than later, or you’ll have to wait until you can find it on EBSCO)

The main thrust of this short piece is that a) we’re too materialistic to borrow material (we would rather buy it) and b) people are using the internet instead of the library.

I still think that the age disparity that Zaslow talks about in his article is more a function of a fundamental culture shift in our society rather than due to a set of tangible culprits (like the internet and rampant materialism). As a group, we’re actually fairly adept at negotiating the net. The ability to move about in that realm is not our problem. Our problem is that we haven’t come up with a cohesive strategy to prove our worth to society. Zaslow writes:

It’s true that older Internet-phobes are missing out on [the internet]. But many tech-savvy kids never experience the library as a place for serendipitous discovery. “The library is about delayed gratification,” says Dr. Levine. “It’s about browsing through shelves of biographies. ‘Do I want Jackie Robinson? Franklin Roosevelt? What will I do when I grow up?’ The library slows you down and makes you think.”

I’m afraid to say that delayed gratification is not something we can sell and traditional notions of “attention” have been shattered–we are no longer entitled to have our youth “pay” attention. We need to earn their attention. The sooner we realize that, the better. I’ve often thought (and I’m sure I’m not alone) that the future of libraries rest in the hands of our children’s librarians. It’s actually quite poignant how that army of burden has been routed to a group of librarians who probably never considered that they would be given that kind of responsibility.

Of course that doesn’t mean we discount everyone else. It simply means that we have to indoctrinate our youth with a new sense of what the library is, what it does, and what it’s there for. And that will be a radically different set of virtues than the ones our parents enjoyed.

I’ve been holding on to this quote for a couple months now since it appeared on Metacool:

“Our chefs and managers cook and run restaurants as if the word of mouth spread by each and every guest today will determine how full — or empty — our restaurants will be tomorrow. We work hard to hire people whose emotional skills — even more than how they can cook or serve wine — make them predisposed to deriving pleasure from the act of delivering pleasure. Long after our guests have forgotten how much they did or didn’t like the turbot or the lamb shank, they’ll remember how we made them feel.”
- Danny Meyer, WSJ, 3Oct3006

I’m not sure I can add more more to that. How does your library determine who it hires? Conversely, if someone is let go, is it because of a mistake, or lack of passion?

Before you do anything, fill your library with workers who can’t bear to think about doing anything else. Be one of those people.

A few days ago, I asked whether libraries are mainstream. I pointed to popular culture to try to make the point that libraries are no longer considered to be the penultimate (oops) source of knowledge and enlightenment (insomuch as the everyman seeks enlightenment these days). That locus resides elsewhere in the minds of our population.

I was at the doctors office the other day and while I was in the waiting room, I was half-heartedly watching the TV in the corner–the Ellen DeGeneres Show. I wasn’t paying much attention. The sound was off and closed-captioning was scrolling by on the screen. Then I noticed she now has a segment on viral video–selections plucked from the tamest of the tame (dogs doing flips, or some shit). Then I thought about the idiots down in Texas who filmed themselves as they coerced a two and five year-old to smoke marijuana–a video that is in wide circulation both online and in the news (I refuse to link to it).

It’s an entirely new flavor of discourse when video of children being abused like this percolates into our consciousness.

The debate over whether the video should have been released in the first place is, by and large, a journalistic one (and I’m not so sure there is any debate to speak of anyway). Libraries have, however, along with journalists championed the open, transparent flow of information and media. So, perhaps we need to accept the horrifying along with the bizarre, intelligent, and the hilarious. If that’s the case then are we completely divorcing ourselves from content and grafting ourselves to a new model of distribution?

I’m not sure how to answer that, nor do I really know how to answer the question, What does it mean for us? Well, first, I think the job of disseminating and housing the data is taken care of as well as it possibly could be. So what remains? In this feedback loop of viral content and network effects, are there needs being left unattended, are there gaps in the experience where libraries can reside? There are some practical changes to be made, for sure.

The blog, Picturephoning, came onto my radar several weeks ago and since then it’s been holding my attention firmly. Not because of the videos it links to, but because the stories it covers begin, over time, to reveal some very interesting characteristics of this new media and, thus, the profound implications they have for our society and media. The stories range from the superficially humorous to the horrific. All reported with stark impartiality. It’s a gem of a site if what you’re after is a pulse to put your finger on.

It’s from there that I was referred to the Mail & Guardian online who, with their new service, The News in Photos, have begun to actively solicit photos from their readers. Their reasoning?

“This is our most visible step so far to embracing audience participation in the news,” says Vincent Maher, the newly appointed digital media strategist at the Mail & Guardian Online.

“As the power to crystallise reality shifts away from traditional media towards social construction by users of the Web, our role as a media company is shifting from one as a provider to one as a facilitator,”

Bingo. Shifting from provider to facilitator. I mentioned that there were some practical things we can do if we choose to participate in this media, and this is it right here.

I’ve written before that no matter how fabulous our collections are, they will ultimately be unremarkable. Our capacity to allow our users to engage in this new media is what will cement our position as a vital community resource, going forward.

That means many things, like providing the equipment and expertise to let them participate. But it also means, somehow, providing a sense of appropriateness and propriety that befits our institutions and the dignity of the human condition.

I realize that a statement like that flies in the face of library neutrality, but I do feel that we have a responsibility to not just connect our users to this new layer of content, but to also advise them in their endeavors so that they can produce content that is significantly richer than average. We also need to be prepared to stand by them when we will be, inevitably, called to account for what they do.

I was re-reading Dion Hinchcliffes post, “Social Media Goes Mainstream“, yesterday and it occurred to me to ask myself, “are libraries mainstream anymore?”

I don’t know. In so many ways, libraries are still very traditional organizations, entrenched in a very one-dimensional business model–that is, we lend material, answer reference questions, and provide a repository–ok, shelf space–for books that may, or may not, ever be touched (run a report on items that have not been checked-out in over ten years).

I think the library, as an institution, has slid, somewhat, into the periphery of our society’s sight. For example, despite Tom Hanks in the Da Vinci Code (”I need a library, quick!”), references to libraries in popular culture continue to be steeped in iconic images of the shushing librarian and annoyed patrons who glare at an offender who dares raise her voice above a whisper. When a library is portrayed in a movie, we see little old ladies fetching dusty tomes off some hard-to-reach shelf in an effort to help the protagonist track down esoteric knowledge of a demon lost to the annals of time. Contrast that with the number of times we see scenes of hot actors basking in the glow of their LCD panels.

I know these Hollywood generalizations are inaccurate and unfair, but I’m sure I’m not the only one of us that has noticed the characterizations we’ve been given. It’s important to take these into consideration because Hollywood is actually a fairly impartial depiction of America’s psyche (and when it’s not, it’s telling Americans what should be in their psyche). After all, most of our population shapes its world view around what it sees in the movies and on TV, sad as that may be. While we may hold this type of self-actualization in disdain, the American public are the very same people our public libraries serve, and also from whom we receive our funds.

Now, with the rise of Web 2.0, our users have thrust the social media into the mainstream. This has happened because the “networked environment” Hinchcliffe talks about is itself very much mainstream now. In fact, it’s so mainstream that it has begun to help define what aspects of our civilization become mainstream and thus, by default, which do not. and so, we now live in a society where the content that is in high-demand is readily available, pretty much anywhere. I’m talking about content like this:

(Link)

The Candy Mountain video has been circulating for almost a year now and it’s a prime example of how network effects are allowing society to disseminate, in this case, popular culture, and ultimately the bulk of information deemed “important” by our fellow citizens. And so, I’m left scratching my head (just like I was after I watched Charlieee’s adventure) wondering what the heck we’re supposed to be doing with our libraries.

So in the meantime, I’m thrilled to be with one of the libraries that is experimenting. There are a number of radical libraries that are casting about for a new direction. It’s dead reckoning for now. But we’re coming to some new realizations now that are intriguing. We’re thinking about physical space in a whole new way, we’re reaching out to our youth in ways that were never before considered, we’re fiddling around with the chemistry of the net, looking for some new alchemy that may ultimately lead to a new dawn for us. Is your library part of this?