Friday 605 class brought about a discussion on the different polices and models for collection development within the libraries.  Casey K. told us about the model one of the universities is adopting for their development of e-book collection.  To summarize, the university library signed contract with database vendor of the e-books, and members of the library with their usage indicate which e-books will be purchased for the collection.  The access to the full list of e-books is available and from members prospective it is transparent.  E-books are initially leased, but if enough requests occur for the e-book, that e-book is automatically purchased for the collection.

                At that time I immediately saw problems with that model, and we had some chuckles about my objection of that time.  I could not formulate precise argument even though I knew something was critically wrong with that model.  I will try to present my case here. 

                As we know process of collecting is a proactive process of acquiring materials to achieve certain goals.  Museums for example collect artifacts which fit aims of those museums, and curators take very active role in what artifacts get included in those collections.  This brings about first issue I see with this hands off approach by librarians.  Librarians choose database (which is true), but they leave decisions of how collections develops exclusively to the members.  Considering amount of the data and the information available to the members, making the best possible decision on what they should be using is hard so they pick based on good enough concept (Paradox of Choice).   The members should be a starting point for librarians in development of the collections, since they can indicate what community needs to have within their collections, but librarians instead of giving their job away to database holders (or Jobbers of the past) should take this a step further.  After initial interest is indicated by members, librarians should be then looking more deeply into the subject to see how the collection can be fleshed out based on that initial indication.  Even experts who might be requesting information through the library do not know all the sources and the research that might be available to them.  That is why leaving collection development purely in hands of member is not really a collection development. 

The second problem which comes out of this is dependence on one database or jobber for the collection development.  Both of these organizations are commercial organizations.  Their list of available resources is limited by many factors.  They might have dispute with some publishers, copyright holders, or their internal bias might conflict in representing some of the materials.  When librarians leave the job in the hands of that chosen database vendor or jobber they give away vital function of their responsibilities.  No curator of major museum will step back and let some third party start providing materials for their collection without their input, and neither should a librarian.  The starting point is database or jobber, but it is just that, a starting point.  Librarians’ job then is to look for resources missed by either of those entities, and to make sure that they make it into the collection with the approval of the community.  I say with approval because librarians when dealing with specialized information still need to keep conversations open with their members to make sure that they find useful additions to the collection. 

                So is the concept presented by Casey bad? Answer is no, it is great if it also is expanded to include librarians heavily involved in process through their research and conversations with the community members.

               I like to try something different this week.  Usually I rant on some subject of the personal interest.  After I voice my opinion on the subject I want to discuss this week I will provide some sources for readers to check.  Hopefully this will initiate some responses from readers, so I might get new ideas and perspectives on this subject.  The subject in question is the importance of fiction to the human development.  In classical understanding you might take fiction as literally works of any genre not classified as non-fiction, but I like to include in this also games, movies, etc. 

 

                From what I perceived in our society based on how funding is distributed to preserve what we value, fiction tends to be classified as an entertainment.  By this implication it has little value if any value at all.  My argument is that fiction is vital to the development of humans as social creatures, not only as children but throughout our lives.  Outside of the entrainment value of the fiction (and remember I am using this term very broadly), I believe that fiction allows us to develop our values and moral understanding of the world.  Now I will not argue that some people tend to learn less, but like anything else learning experience is very personal in its nature.

                If we value fiction’s importance to the human society, then how come we discount it in our everyday lives?  I will argue that the problem is that our society is so materialistically driven that anything which does not immediately equate to dollar value we tend to take for granted.  Outside of distribution of the entrainment, fiction tends to be devalued or at least ignored by a larger portion of the population.  In reality no one is immune from pursuing some type of entrainment, even if only occasionally.  

                Some of sources of study on this subject I found can be followed in following links:

                http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1809

                http://jupiter.plainedgeschools.org/highschool/uploads/Maggie%20Butcher%20paper.doc

                http://www.edusoft.ro/brain/index.php/brain/article/view/47/149

Now obviously this is just a short list, and some of you might have a lot more interesting sources on this subject.  I ask you then to share those sources and your thoughts here if possible on this subject.  The question is: do you think fiction is of a lesser importance?  And bringing it to subjects of librarians and libraries some of the discussion showed how libraries nowadays create business centers which focus on helping people develop business.  Considering that libraries now focus on helping communities in areas of interests like that, what about creation of the entertainment centers which would focus on more ambiguous development of the human nature?

                I was going to write about the gaming in libraries this week, but as you all know we are all very busy, and by the time I sat down to write this down class 618 occurred.  For those of you who are not part of that class this might seem confusing and I do not blame you.  So let me fill you in on what has occurred.   We had a lawyer as guest speaker from JP Morgan, and even now thinking about her presentation makes me angry.  Whole presentation when I had chance to think about afterwards was designed to scare audience into being nice cooperate drones who will take interests of their cooperation before anything else.  She was talking about trade secrets and how they needed to be protected.   This part was ok as long she was talking actual theft.  What was the problem was that she then started to talk about how government is getting stricter with enforcement, and companies now can pursue criminal cases against anyone involved in betraying those trade secrets.   You have to understand trade secrets the way it was described are anything that company wanted to keep secret and gave that company competitive edge (legal or illegal in nature).

                This might seem like not big issue in itself, after all if someone steals they should be prosecuted, but that was not the whole story.  Questions were asked about whistleblowers and situations when companies might try to sit on ‘trade secret’ while it is not beneficial to communities at large.  Our presenter being a lawyer tried to give quick answers and redirect attention from those topics while still trying to stick to her scare tactics.  The problem was she has slipped up during her presentation.  She started talking about Personal Information Identifiers (PII).  She presented a case example where a company while sticking to the law violated intent of the agreement they had with their customers.  The company sold customers PIIs during bankruptcy to another company.  To clarify company which sold that information has posted on their website that they would never sell that information.  The presenter actually got excited at this blatant misuse of power to bypass the intent of the agreement through use of the fancy legal manipulations.   When questioned about rights of people who might not like their information being sold, her first response was that they might not benefit if they try to have their information removed, and when that failed she tried to redirect the question.  When she was pressed she ultimately admitted that if precedent was set and people were able to remove their information then the information sold would become worthless.  Which she then admitted would not benefit the companies involved.

                This might not seem like topic associated with libraries, but it is.  If you plan to work within special libraries attached to companies this will affect you in aspect of the enforcement.   To me there seems a bigger issue at play here.  This concept of keeping secrets seems to be opposite of what most librarians stand for.  Hiding of the knowledge and misdeeds of companies for benefit of few flies in the face what librarians often work towards.  I am not against people making profit and improving their lot in the world, but that presentation was just rhetoric trying to influence future professionals to toe the line the way companies like JP Morgan want you to.   Based on her talk my take on the whole thing was that JP Morgan and other companies while adhering to the law want you to shut up and keep their interest at heart.  While the part of talk about illegal activities that should be stopped was vital, and I agree totally with that part, the other part which dealt with cover up of misdeeds of those companies insulted me.

                All the joking about socialism made me think about that concept, and I decided to make sure I had my terminology down correctly.  I quickly realized I am no socialist, but I am very strong follower of concept of the Welfare State Democracy.  Living within USA all these years has taught me the dark side of government which does not care about its people.  Not sure how much you have heard about welfare state democracy, but it is not government which taxes people to death, but a government whose mission is the welfare of its citizens.  Some of the more successful examples of democratic welfare states are the Nordic countries.

                Now you might wonder what all of this has to do with the libraries.   A lot of our talk lately revolved around ownership and building collections, as well as how librarians should be service to the communities.  The idea of making libraries future publishers was brought up, but that model just pulls us into the world of the commercial venue.  There is nothing wrong with that concept, but the concept I was struggling with is how to free libraries from above constrain and make them again true service to the community.  Being the person I am, I started to think how to break the system.  That does not mean on how to break the law, but how to break the current dependant state of the libraries. 

                In the past libraries in part have achieved at least some independence from the commercial venues by patrons and community’s donation to the collections of those libraries, but this day when digitization of the world is occurring at rapid rate this is not enough.  We do no deal just with physical artifacts anymore, but with the intangible data bits.  My idea for libraries to get free from publishers, distributers and all that commercial side of the world which is not in business of service to the communities (they are in business of making profit) is to bypass them.  Librarians need to start organizing and going directly to authors to get right of access to their works for the libraries.  Once the independent collections are secured it makes it easier to pursue our primary goal of knowledge generation.  Too much time these days librarians spend it on worrying about Amazon, Google, etc and how they should compete with them.  We are not here to compete, because we have a job which they cannot perform.  They sell stuff (or more often lease nowadays), we promote generation of the new knowledge.  They do not care if new stuff is created and if the communities are empowered, they only care about maximization of their profits.  So let’s stop trying playing in their world and create our own rules so we can achieve our own goals.

                Between writing quick response on publishing industry changes, and last couple visits to libraries with IST 605 thought occurred to me.  It might not be most original thought, but it is important thought.  Libraries and more specifically librarians need to change just like music and publish industry had to.  To be complacent is to be outdated.  Reason I am saying this is because after looking at librarians who gave tours of their libraries (Moon and Bird), even though they were nice people they still were stuck in the past.   

The Librarians provided a lot interesting information about how their libraries operate, and even talked of new technology implementation within libraries to keep their libraries up to date, but what did not change was those librarians.  They held on to their old selves.  They were very much stereotypical librarians (another word for it is boring).   Librarians are educators.  Some of you might argue, but that is very important part of our identity.  Educator who does not know how to effectively educate people is doomed to fail.  We talked in classes about pathfinders, online help, and so on.  All those things are effective tools, but if librarians cannot effectively engage his students they fail. 

When we did both tours librarians just bombarded us with information.  It was mind numbing experience.  During second tour I finally started to watch my classmates.   We all were interested in the information, but because librarian lacked good teaching techniques people faded in and out.  To dump information on people is not to educate.  Education is interactive process.  Librarians to stay viable need to keep all their skills current, and not just adapt to new emerging technology.  Hopefully new librarians and existing librarians start working on acquiring more skills outside of just how to use this new fancy toy (facebook, computer, etc), so people do not react to us like we are just some dried out outdated relics who are just there to push books or other information storage artifacts at people.  This is what outsiders often think of us and even instructors in IST school are not immune from perceiving us like that as I realized during last 618 class on Monday.