http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib49.html

Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians

#49, March 24-31, 2000.



* * * * * * * * *

Guru Interviews

  1. Tara Calishain
  2. Jenny Levine, part I
  3. Jenny Levine, Part II
  4. Reva Basch
  5. Sue Feldman
  6. Jessamyn West
  7. Debbie Abilock
  8. Kathy Schrock
  9. Greg Notess
  10. William Hann
  11. Chris Sherman

* * * * * * * * *

Wanna See Your Name in Lights?

Or at least on this page, anyway? I'd like to print here your contributions as well as mine. As you've noticed, articles are brief, somewhere between 200 and 500 words -- something to jog people's minds and get their own good ideas flowing. I'd also be happy to run other people's contributions to the regular features like Favorite Sites on _____. I'll pay you the same rate I pay me: nothing.

* * * * * * * * *

E-Mail Subscription?

To subscribe to a combined subscription to Neat New Stuff and ExLibris, please click HERE, complete the form, and click on "subscribe." To unsubscribe, use the same form but click on "unsubscribe." To change addresses for an existing subscription, unsubscribe from that form and then return to the page to enter the new address.
PRIVACY POLICY: I don't collect or reveal information about subscribers.

* * * * *

Drop me a Line

Want to comment, ask questions, submit articles, or invite me to speak or do some training? Contact me at: marylaine at netexpress.net.

* * * * * * * * *

Talk Back

Where I will post any comments you want to make public. E-mail me and use the words "talk back" in your subject line.




Visit My Other Sites


BookBytes

My page on all things book-related. NEW STUFF ADDED in January

* * *

Best Information on the Net

The directory I built for O'Keefe Library, St. Ambrose University, still my favorite pit stop on the information highway. http://vweb.sau.edu/bestinfo/.

* * *

My Word's Worth

a weekly column on books, words, libraries, American culture, and whatever happens to interest me.
Subject Index to My Word's Worth. Any of you who have rocketbooks can download volume 1 of My Word's Worth at http://www.rocket-library.com/

* * *

My personal page

* * *




SUBJECT INDEX to Past Issues


* * * * * * * * *

Neat New Stuff I Found This Week
March 24: do-it-yourself guides, low-cal recipes, travel diaries, and more.

* * * * * * * * *

What IS Ex Libris?

The purpose and intended scope of this e-zine -- always keeping in mind that in response to readers, I may add, subtract, and change features.

* * * * * * * * *

Who IS Marylaine Block?

My resume, or why you might want to hire me for speaking engagements or workshops.

* * * * * * * * *

Highlights from Previous Issues:


My Favorite Sites on___:

* * * * * * * * *

My Rules of Information

  1. Go where it is
  2. The answer depends on the question
  3. Research is a multi-stage process
  4. Ask a Librarian
  5. Information is meaningless until queried by human intelligence


LIBRARIAN AND LIBRARY: PERFECTLY GOOD WORDS


As someone who respects words, I am disheartened by our profession's wholesale flight from the words "library" and "librarian," at least in America. In Europe, where the word for librarian is some variant of the charming word "bibliothecaresse," perhaps the old name is good enough, but in this country, in our quest for status and salary we are turning ourselves into information scientists, and our libraries into "Learning Resource Centers" and "Information Centers." Those few remaining schools still offering the master's degree in librarianship have renamed the programs and degrees, and worse, apparently redefined the profession itself, considering it beneath them to offer courses in basic skills like cataloging, reference and selection.

I don't deny the frustrations involved in being part of a poorly paid profession, let alone one whose users don't always seem to distinguish between the professionals at the reference desk and the people at the circulation desk, or understand that what we do requires skill and training and education.

But our users do have a clear notion of what a library is, and what they can expect to get there. My own library was briefly called a Learning Resource Center -- one of those pompous pieces of linguistic flatulence administrators are given to. It was supposed to indicate that the library now included media as well as stuffy old books and journals. But when anybody would tell students to go to the Learning Resource Center, they'd stare blankly until light would dawn and they'd say, "Oh, the LIBRARY." It's far easier to make "library" mean a place that includes media, too, than it is to make Learning Resource Center mean anything at all.

Our users also know that librarians will cheerfully find a recipe for grilled portobello mushrooms for them, or information on presidential candidates, science fair projects, the trip to Jamaica they're planning or the disease they've just been diagnosed with. They know we can tell them who to read when they've finished reading all of Georgette Heyer's books or all the Nero Wolfe mysteries. They come to us to look up the law when they think they've been screwed over, or for philosophy and theology to help them understand and deal with injustice.

They have no problem asking a librarian these things, because in practice, librarian has traditionally meant "friendly, helpful knowledgeable person." Would they feel equally comfortable asking them of an information scientist, which is not a term that suggests eager public service? Indeed, the term seems designed to intimidate other people, to exalt ourselves at their expense. Would they feel comfortable asking an information scientist to look up addresses for their Christmas card list? Wouldn't the title increase the public's "I hate to bother you but..." syndrome?

The fact is, over a hundred years worth of tradition and a whole lot of public good will are attached to the words "library" and "librarian," which often lead to a willingness to spend money on new library buildings even as other expensive projects are voted down. We should be cherishing this good will, and cultivating more of it. If we want people to respect us for our mastery of the new technologies, we can start by designing informative web pages that show off all our services, and offer online instruction and reference. We can be the ones who provide our users with internet and database training free of charge. We can enlarge the public understanding of what libraries and librarians do.

But not if librarians are no longer taught basic skills in their professional training. Even if more and more libraries outsource their cataloging, somebody still has to do it. I have this futuristic nightmare vision of the last lone remaining cataloger, dying at her desk at the Library of Congress, with no librarians left to carry on her work, leaving millions of books unclassified and hence unknown to the world.

If people are to find what they need, somebody still has to catalog, and index articles and documents, and provide subject directories of web resources. Librarians have had a key role in the taming and organizing of the web because we were taught these classification skills and the principles of selection. Our contribution to the web is not well-known, to be sure; it is merely vital.

Librarians still need to be trained in the art -- not the science -- of reference, which will continue to involve books and journals for a long time yet. We still need to know what the key reference sources are, on the shelves as well as online. We still need to know how to hear what our patrons are asking, so that we can supply them not with AN answer, but with the BEST answer.

This is not a science, this is human relations. It involves paying attention to our patrons' body language and intonation as well as their words. It requires verbal skill, to negotiate the question and make sure we understand it, and then to translate their questions into the language of the databases and catalogs. It requires paying attention AFTER we deliver an answer, to make sure that what we gave them was what they wanted, and it requires our clear assurance that we want them to come back to us if our answers didn't completely satisfy them.

It is also true that information is not all that people seek in libraries. Children are seeking delight and wonder as well, and children's librarians give them that. They buy wonderful books and put them at child's eye level so children can look at them, touch them, savor them. They tell stories, read books out loud , put on puppet shows and Halloween parties, and sponsor reading programs. Our users want entertainment, so we supply popular novels, videos, and CDs as well as literature and nonfiction. They want to be able to learn about anything that interests them, at their own speed, in the manner of their choosing, whether in private, with books or articles or the internet, or in discussion groups or in public forums, and a good library provides all those opportunities.

It should go without saying that many of our users seek comfort, solace, wisdom in books that may be decades or centuries old but have never stopped being truthful.

But somehow, I don't think budding new information scientists will be taught any of this. I fear they will be taught that all the knowledge anybody could need is online, and all they have to do is manipulate the databases skillfully.

We've had a history of renaming ourselves in hope of gaining respect and money, renaming ourselves after the people we envied. We were library economists once (not a bad notion since God knows we've had to produce a lot of results from a modest amount of money). As science became the new god, we became library scientists, though only since computers came along has there been much resembling science in our profession. And now we are to be information scientists, trying to pretend that skillfully manipulated bytes will satisfy our users' needs more efficiently than oldfashioned libraries ever did.

This is not unlike what's happening in arts programs in universities, where theorists and historians look with contempt upon the artists and playwrights and novelists who merely create art. Theory is more perfect, more orderly than practice; there's so much messiness about the needs of real life human beings.

The information science vision of libraries could eventually eliminate human contact, or for that matter, libraries, altogether. And once the library is nothing more than an information scientist and a collection of databases at the other end of a phone line or internet connection, in what way does it differ from the heartless machines reciting menus at us in every other corner of modern life? I'll take a librarian over a machine anytime -- for one thing, a librarian would never say what I heard one machine say once: "Gender: please select from list."


NOTE: There won't be an ExLibris next week, but there will be a regular installment of Neat New Stuff.

**************


COOL QUOTE

The measure of quality of a college has nothing to do with counting computers or ethernet ports. I believe that a student can turn in a good paper without clip art, hypertext, or internet references. That school art should center on creating, not viewing images of museum masterpieces. That a quality library must be centered on books and periodicals. That librarians -- not information specialists -- should be running our libraries. That in times of shrinking education budgets and librarian layoffs, it's an outrage to pour limited funds into fast obsoleted computers.

Clifford Stoll. High Tech Heretic

**************


You are welcome to copy and distribute or e-mail any of my own articles (but not those by my guest writers) as long as you retain this copyright statement:

Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/
Copyright, Marylaine Block, 2000.