explodedlibrary.info

my return to law library land

A lot has happened in the last couple of months. My normal inclination is to write one humungous post where I try to make sense of everything, but I don’t think that such a post will ever be finished - at least not before my life has moved on and I’m thinking about other things.

So here’s one part of it. My new job.

For some reason this job seems totally different, even if it’s not. After all, I’ve worked as a law librarian before - that’s what I did when I first started blogging. Being a law librarian was my initial goal when I decided to become a librarian.

The difference is that my previous law library position was in an academic law library. The majority of my career has been in academic libraries, but this new job is with a big law firm.

In Australia, law firm blogging doesn’t seem to have taken off in the same way that it has in the US. For the time being, I’d rather not mention the particular firm where I work. It’s no dark secret (actually I am really glad to be working for this particular firm), but once I mention that word here, my name and my employers become inextricably linked through Google and other search engines. Later on I may change my mind and provide those details. That’s fine and I’d rather err by being over-cautious in the beginning. After all, if I say everything now, I can’t unsay that later on.

My initial impression is that being a law firm librarian is very different from being an academic law librarian and it’s also different from non-legal special library positions I’ve had.

One big difference from being an academic law librarian, is that in the law firms, information is not meant to be free. It is expensive and it is power and there are some boundaries which it is not permitted to cross.

The most obvious boundary is attorney-client privilege.

Another way that information is constrained are by Chinese Walls, to use the un-PC Australian colloquial term. Other words include firewalls and cones of silence. Whatever you call them, these are used when one firm represents different parties with different interests about something. It would not be a good idea to have information flowing freely between the lawyers representing these different interests.

I’ve noticed another aspect of this information exchange issue. When I receive a research request, I don’t usually receive a whole lot of background or contextual information. It was very different in academic libraries, where I saw reference interviews which resembled interrogations. It is true that more contextual information usually helped the research process.

The more I’ve started to think about this, I wonder if maybe this lack of context is a mercy. After all, it would be quite disturbing for me to to hear detailed information about how my work was facilitating behaviour by individuals or companies which were at odds with my own personal values.

This leads to the next big issue on my mind, which will be the topic of my next post. It is important for me to go to work knowing that I am doing good of some sort in the world. At the very least, I don’t want to be causing harm.

How are these concerns resolved in the law firm environment?

different ways of dealing with obstacles

A few months back I went on a short walk to see Terrace Falls in the Blue Mountains. I wanted to try some different tracks in the area, a wish which led me to a track which was little better than a kangaroo pad along a steep hillside. Maybe it was once a good track and has slowly been going back to nature. Then there were all the fallen trees in my way. After scrambling over the third or fourth such obstacle in the space of fifteen minutes, I started thinking about we deal with obstacles on the path - and in work and life.

These are just six responses, I'm sure there are more ways than this, but this is all that came to me at the time. In no particular order:

- Climb over the obstacle or go under it. There are some problems which can be fixed if  enough people dedicate sufficient time and effort to solving the solution. This seems like climbing over the obstacle. There are other obstacles which appear imposing at first, but when analyzed calmly, it's easy enough to find a good and non-disruptive workaround, which could be liked to squeezing under the obstacle.

- Leave the track and go around the obstacle. Sometimes the only way to solve a problem is to take an unorthodox approach that is not in the procedures book. The danger is when you have to depart too far from the track. If you're not careful about returning to the track as soon as possible, you may get lost. Last year I helped somebody who had been lost in Sassafras Gully for seven hours, because he had wandered from the track in dense and confusing terrain, got lost and panicked. Sometimes the danger is not so much the possibility of getting lost, but dealing with hazardous terrain, as depicted in the photo.

- Go through the obstacle. Imagine your obstacle is a deep muddy bog. There have been times I've been able to pick a way through the bog without sinking in. This approach calls for extremely good observation of what you can get away with. Walking on mud without sinking in also demands particular delicacy, but if the obstacle is a mass of leaves and branches from a fallen tree, brute force and tenacity help. This approach can be risky, and it's advisable to have a Plan B. What happens if you do sink into the mud? Sometimes I've tried this approach with office politics, wanting to stay above it - sometimes being successful, sometimes not.

- Remove the obstacle. This can be the heroic option. Not only are you dealing with the obstacle, but you're making sure that nobody else has to. It's easy to do with little obstacles, but larger obstacles require something extra, be it strength or a chainsaw. There are sometimes unforeseen consequences to this. You might remove the obstacle from your path and it throw into somebody else's path or cause some environmental damage. Last week I was walking in Dante's Glen near Lawson and came across some track maintenance workers clearing fallen trees from the path. I was grateful for what they were doing, but I happened to be there when they rolled a huge trunk section off the track. It crushed several small trees and ferns on its way down the gully. I can't help but wonder if there had been a better way.

- Turn back and choose a different path. In the Blue Mountains there are plenty of tracks which look promising in the beginning but then deteriorate into animal pads leading nowhere. Some people turn back too soon, because the ideas of facing any obstacles is too scary. Other people are very reluctant to turn around ever. It seems like admitting defeat, that the initial decision to take this path was wrong. But after facing a huge and seemingly insurmountable obstacle or a depressing series of smaller annoying obstacles, it's worth asking the question if this path is still the right one. This could be the situation when somebody decides to leave a relationship or a job. Once you know that you are on the wrong path, it's better to cut your losses and turn around immediately. This can be quite disheartening, but hopefully the lessons learned from this wrong turn will be helpful in the future

Any of the above five approaches are fundamentally valid, they could be the best approach depending on the person or the circumstances. There's one other response I'd like to mention. This is how it goes: If you reach the obstacle, close your eyes. Close your eyes and try not to think about whatever the obstacle is. After a while - seconds, minutes, or even years later - open your eyes again, hoping that the obstacle has disappeared. If that didn't happen, just repeat and try again until the obstacle does disappear. The hope is that if you try hard enough at ignoring the obstacle, the better the chances of it going away. No, it's not a very effective method, but I'm mentioning it because it's very popular with libraries who don't like how their users have changed lately.

different blogs, different masks

Sometimes I think that if I were starting blogging today, I would choose to write under a pseudonym. I think that I may have wanted that initially, but the blogging software I was using at the time - Radio userland - had a default of displaying the blogger's name. Before I learned how to turn that off, my name was already out there in links from other bloggers. It's interesting how little seemingly random accidents can have a lasting impact.

But I wasn't too worried that my name was out there. At first it seemed that my blogging life would always be quarantined from the rest of my life. It seemed like a long long time before I met any other bloggers face to face or anyone who had read my blog.

Of course everything's different now. I am aware that every word I write is potentially viewable by my past, present and future employers and co-workers, prospective girlfriends, exes, friends and enemies, all sorts of family members, including my mother. When I get an idea for a post, at some point I need to decide whether this is the sort of post I want to have on my blog, given all of this.

If I blogged under a pseudonym, I wouldn't have to worry about this. I could be more controversial and not worry about alienating the prejudiced and easily offended. There would be other things to worry about - namely protecting my secret identity. When writing about specific work or personal things, I couldn't be too detailed, or I would need to fictionalize some of the details (although that can be fun). I would need to keep other bloggers at arm's length, and would be reluctant to attend blogging meetups or be involved in a group like lint.

I do think that there are advantages and disadvantages to both kinds of authorship.

I don't buy into the "named bloggers are inherently more ethical and accurate" argument either. For me, the potential readership of this blog does make me feel personally accountable for my blogging - to play nice with others and not be sloppy in my research or writing. But just because it's like this for me, I can't assume that it's like this for everyone or that the converse is true - that anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers don't care about playing nice or checking their facts. Recently at MPOW I was put in a very unusual situation - of needing to find a shortlist of blogs in a subject I didn't know a lot about, project management. Although I feel very reticent about rating blogs, I devised a quick & dirty way that I could live with. Whether the blog was written under a pseudonym or by a named author was irrelevant. It's possible that under my criteria, a named blog by somebody who really has made a name for themselves may receive bonus points, but that's as far as it would go. If a blog - be it named or pseudonymous - contained mean-spirited ad hominem attacks, I'd probably rate it low for "quality" and give it negative bonus points.

Before I finish, I should probably mention that this post is my indirect response to the Annoyed Librarian's post on this. I have a lot of time for the Annoyed Librarian. We have a couple of things in common: we are both skeptics about the librarian shortage and we have both made fun of 2.0 stuff. I still think that the Library 2.0 label has done more harm than good. I care deeply about the components, which existed quite happily before anyone made up the lame Library 2.0 term. It still annoys me that these pre-existing technologies and ideas have been co-opted by Library 2.0, when I think they would have been better off left on their own. Mark my words, it won't be long before Library 2.0 sounds as cringe worthy as that mid-1990s gem "information superhighway." Where I differ from the Annoyed Librarian is that I do care about advancing much of what has been labelled Library 2.0. Because of this, I have been willing to jump on the Library 2.0 bandwagon when it's helped me communicate and work with colleagues, and then I jump off again and it's been ok.

See also

the power and/or vulnerability of named and anonymous bloggers (July 2005)

why I choose blogging

This post is the somewhat delayed sequel to my writing games post, but it's also about five years of blogging.

Before in my writing games post, I stated that different forms of writing - blogging, journalism, academic writing - each have their place in the world, serving different functions and attracting different types of people. Now I want to say why for me, I choose blogging.

When I write, I want my words to be findable. Not just for me, not just for my professional peers, but for anyone who for whatever random or serendipitous reason might be interested.

There was a very interesting exchange the other week between Lorcan Dempsey and Walt Crawford over Walt's description of blogs as "grey literature" in Cites & Insights 7:9. I don't want to misquote Walt, while he also described blogs as grey literature, he also said that grey literature represented the most compelling and worthwhile literature in the library field today. For the person who doesn't have the information retrieval resources or skills of a librarian, it is the professional library literature which is closer to what is usually known as grey literature - that which is difficult to impossible to find in full-text, and when it is available, prohibitively expensive.

It is a valid point that because blogs are not indexed and systematically archived, they may be very difficult to find in the future, even more difficult to find than a peer reviewed article published in an obscure library journal. I think it's likely that as the blog medium develops and matures, more blogs will be indexed and archived in some form, if only on a selective basis (thus requiring the involvement of some sort of gatekeeper). This has already happened with projects like the Internet Archive and projects like PANDORA in Australia. My other response to this, is to trust that if a blog post had any impact, it may have been noticed by someone else - and that even if the blog disappears, some of the traces which the blog left on the blogosphere during its time may remain. That answer might not be be satisfying to a researcher, but as a writer, it suffices for me. It's not quite the same as producing a physical item, such as a book or a printed journal article, and knowing that the physical item will be around long after I'm gone. But there's more to posterity than physical objects - what is the point of being published if it means that you are less likely to be read in the present and short-term future than if your words were available online right now? Which reminds me that I don't care much for posterity - I care more about what I'm writing now than what has happened to what I wrote five years ago.

I'd rather my words be scattered in the gigantic haystack where most people are playing than held in a closed stack where only the elite are allowed in.

There are other reasons why I choose blogging - I'm not going into them all here, but the medium of academic writing increasingly seems broken in the twenty-first century. Rising serial costs are making these sources even more inaccessible and obscure. There's also the problem of the unacceptable delays between submission and publication (even up to five years!). It's a game which has zero appeal to me, which is ok, because I probably wouldn't play it very well anyway. And so I finish where I began, each to her or his own.

see also:
Stephanie Willen Brown, Blog- or Print Publishing?, CogSci Librarian
Mark Lindner, Keeping up, why is it always forward-thinking?, Off the Mark
Dani Rodrik, Why publish in a journal if you can disseminate online?, Dani Rodrik's weblog

Currently playing in iTunes: We're Good People But Why Don't We Show It? by Holly Throsby

recommendations from the investigation of the UCLA library taser incident

As mentioned in Library Stuff and elsewhere on the web, the investigation of last year's taser incident at UCLA has been completed. The entire report is viewable at the UCLA Newsroom, the report is 117 pages and 6 MB in size.

I haven't had time to read the report in detail, but I did find the recommendations. Here they are:

RECOMMENDATION 1: UCLAPD should distinguish use of the Taser in drive stun mode from cartridge, or “probe,” mode. The device should primarily be used in cartridge mode, with the drive stun mode restricted to being a backup or when there is no alternative to using the device at close range.

RECOMMENDATION 2: UCLA should prohibit the use of Tasers against passive or mildly resistant persons , thereby restricting its use to violent, actively aggressive or imminently violent subjects, currently engaged in physical or active resistance, where the suspect has been given a warning and a reasonable opportunity to comply, and where milder uses of force could be reasonably judged as likely ineffective.

RECOMMENDATION 3: The department should define the terms “violent,” “active aggression,” “active physical resistance,” and “passive resistance.”

RECOMMENDATION 4: UCLAPD should develop and implement a “force options” or “force continuum” system that provides an explicit range of appropriate responses for each level of subject resistance or threat.

RECOMMENDATION 5: The UCLA Taser policy should discourage repeated use of the Taser. Following each five-second application of the Taser, officers should reevaluate the totality of the circumstances. Each additional Taser firing cycle should be subject to the same criteria for use as the first. The number of Taser applications should be restricted to the minimum number necessary to place the subject in custody.

RECOMMENDATION 6: The UCLA Taser policy should prohibit the brandishing of the Taser by officers unless there is an objective reason to believe that the use of the Taser is imminent.

RECOMMENDATION 7: The criteria for use of a Taser should include a requirement that the officer give the subject a verbal warning of the intended use of the Taser followed, it is safe to do so, by a reasonable opportunity to voluntarily comply.

RECOMMENDATION 8: UCLAPD should prohibit the use of the Taser against persons who are handcuffed or otherwise restrained absent a continuing threat and present capacity by the suspect to carry out violent or actively aggressive actions.

RECOMMENDATION 9: UCLAPD should prohibit the use of the Taser against vulnerable persons absent a continuing credible threat and present capacity by the suspect to carry out violent or actively aggressive actions. [printed pages 68-77]

I am particularly glad about recommendation 2, that tasers be prohibited against people providing only passive resistance. I wish that they had made more of recommendation 6, that brandishing a taser by offcers be curtailed. As the report says when discussing recommendation 6, "The display of a Taser is, in itself, a use of force." I was surprised that the allegations of officers threatening to tase other students who were concerned at the treatment of Tabatabainejad were not addressed in the report, so far as I have seen in my skim.

I also looked for discussion about the role of the library access policies requiring students to have student cards on their person when in the library during extended hours. The closest I could find was on printed pages 43 and 44:

The instant case was not the first interaction between a student and Community Service Officers that inspired complaint and discussion. In 2005, for example, a fourth-year UCLA student sent library personnel an email that complained about “extremely rude and mean spirited (sic)” treatment by a “security guard.” The security employee, who library staff assumed to have been a CSO, “asked to see” the student’s ID, but the student “politely told him that I had forgotten it at my apartment.” According to the student, the CSO “sternly looked at me as if I was a criminal using…intimidation tactics [and] telling me to leave.” The student offered to log into the UCLA computer system to establish status as a student, but the CSO “refused to reason with me,” “got right in my face trying to intimidate me,” and “escorted me out as if I was a common criminal there to vandalize or steal something.” The student, expressing “hope [that] this incident will result in change that will improve UCLA,” complained that the CSO was “disrespectful, callous and seemed to enjoy humiliating students.” According to internal email correspondence among library staff, the student ’s email complaint “sparked some discussion about the access procedures,” though we cannot determine whether the student ’s concerns were directly addressed via policy changes at that time. [footnotes omitted]

professional hunters & gatherers of information

"Well if you don't have what I'm looking for, what's the use of you?"

I've been dreading words like these for some time, and the other day, I heard them. I'm pleased to say that I was able to help the upset student who said these words, and afterwards, he was very appreciative. Some people are just more effusive, whether they're expressing gratitude or irritation. I am grateful for what happened because it made these things that I've been thinking about for the past few years seem that much more real.

People (and I guess here I'm talking about people in their late 20s and early 30s who seem to be the bulk of my business school students) have gotten out of the habit of using the library as the first place to go to find information. Many users have a strong perception that most of time, they'll be able to find what they need without using the library - whether as a place or as a collection of electronic resources. I'm not going to address the accuracy of that perception because that will get me side-tracked and is best left for a different post, but today I'm just accepting the existence of this perception as a fact.

The consequence of this perception is that most of my users use the library as a last resort, when they have tried searching for something and have failed.

This is a huge change from the pre-internet days, which I can just vaguely remember from my first years as an undergraduate, where research meant using a library in some shape or form, most often going into the library.

Searching often contains plenty of traps and deadends, which can make it quite frustrating at times. I think that this is a constant - the specific sorts of research frustrations might be different today than they were in 1990 - but the effect of the pitfalls is the same, to cause irritation.

The difference is that in 1990, the searcher was most often inside the library when encountering these difficulties, and from there, it was not such a leap to walk up to the reference desk and ask for help. Once as a student I remember feeling a little embarrassed because a diligent librarian noticed that I looked confunded (and I use this Harry Potter word deliberately, I think that all searchers are vulnerable to this) and asked if I needed any help. I said, "No, I'm fine thanks" and pretended to look at a journal for a few minutes longer and then walked out of the library. Later on I learned that I could have handled that better :) No, it wasn't a perfect system, and I certainly don't wish to return to it, but the library was optimized for this way of searching and supported it quite well.

Compare that with today. Our users are pretty much on their own at the beginning. Maybe they're lucky and they found something kinda ok early on, because if they didn't they're in trouble. The search techniques of amateurs (I use this word without being condescending - I am a proud to be an amateur blogger/writer and think that professionals ignore or look down upon the amateur at their peril, particularly in the area of search) seem particularly subject to diminishing returns. In this context, I think that professional searching can have three strengths -
1. A better understanding of how effective searches work, leading to better decisions about when a strategy should be persevered with, modified or abandoned.
2. A bigger bag of tricks - greater knowledge of the different search engines, proprietary databases, web resources, being familiar with the complexity and power (sometimes) of advanced search interfaces, chasing the target from sideways etc. 
3. Respect for the quarry - sometimes the hunt may not be easy, sometimes the hunt may even fail. If it were always easy, there definitely would never be any need for professional hunters & gatherers of information.
(Before I end this digression, I just want to emphasize that wasn't an exhaustive list, but the other things wouldn't be relevant to this post)

Anyway, as I was mentioning, most potential library users search on their own, without going through the library or dealing with librarians until it's too late. It's very easy for somebody to waste an hour or two on an unproductive search on Google. Then out of desperation, that same person might try the library's electronic collection and will get even worse results - because a) it's so easy to muck up that crucial step of which particular database you try first and b) the search techniques which will work ok in Google generally don't work well in the proprietary databases provided by the library.

If such a person does approach the library reference desk after this ordeal, they deserve better than to be subjected to a reference interview which assumes that they've hardly thought about their subject at all. I'm not against the reference interview per se, but the sort of interview which worked in 1990 is not what we need in the twenty-first century. The whole interview-research transaction is stilted and obsolete (unless you're a special librarian and your job is to do research for somebody else, with no pretensions that you're teaching research skills). I think it better to sit with somebody, listen to them, see how they search, gauge their technique and then suggest an alternative which will point them towards what they're looking for as well as demonstrate a better way of searching which they can use in future searches.

I'll end this by restating the situation. In the past 20 years, the way that people look for information has been turned on its head. How have libraries responded to this? For the most part, it's all been by improving the library resources - we've worked hard to improve online catalogues (yes, they're not great, but they used to be much worse), create websites, provide access to electronic resources such as journals, directories and databases, and more recently, things like federated search. But improved resources alone are not enough to stop people from wondering what we're useful for. While paying attention to improving resources, we've neglected services. Before, a well-maintained collection was the service. It's different now because people have access to tremendous information resources, what they're lacking is someone to help them use these resources effectively to find what they're looking. What is needed a fundamental repositioning of what librarians are about, we provide services to help people find, evaluate and use information effectively. Maintaining a collection and providing resources are still relevant, but only in so far as they support the main purpose.

chaos and order in libraries - initial musings

Does chaos have any place in a library – other than as a negative or entropic force which must be subdued by the librarian?

The traditional view is that libraries are places of order, where we organize information and hence give it meaning and make it more usable. I vaguely remember the days before the internet and each library was its own closed system. Then it was obvious that each library had to apply order to its collection, otherwise, what was it for?

With the internet and online databases and search engines, all that changed. There is still a need for order in libraries, there always will be. Even if there were no books or physical items, online information still needs to be interacted with in some shape or form.

But now there’s another need. It’s not a need for chaos, that would just cancel out the need for order. It’s the ability to work with chaotic systems, which requires some tolerance and ease with chaos.

Please indulge me with this little allegory. Once upon a time, all libraries existed on solid orderly land. With the internet, there has been a thawing and now chaotic waters are encroaching on our space. I can only think of 3 ways of responding to this. One way is the flight response – accept the loss of our territory. Retreat to the mountain tops where the flood will never reach. Another way is to fight the flood. Using whatever tools available, build dikes to protect the traditional library from the chaotic waters which are an anathema to us.

Flight is a defeatist response which will leave librarians a diminished shadow of what we used to be. There will still be some librarians, in the same way that there are still some stonemasons and blacksmiths. Fight is even more dangerous. It may seem to work for a time, but there is no way of controlling the flood. Should the strategy fail, should the dikes be breached, we will all be swept away.

The third way, the only viable response is learn how to swim, build boats and navigate the chaotic waters. This is the other need, the ability to navigate chaotic systems.

mobile phones in libraries question

The new MBA students are having their orientation week at MPOW. My question is: Do I come down hard on them whenever I see one using a mobile phone in the library, so that they get used to this policy from the beginning? Or do I follow my inclination to reinterpret this policy to be against disruptive noise in general and so excuse brief and quiet mobile phone conversations?

librarian reactions to the taser incident in UCLA's Powell Library

[6 August 2007: Follow-up post about the independent investigation of this incident]

ALA President Leslie Burger has written an open letter to UCLA Acting Chancellor, Norman Abrams, expressing her concern and alarm at the taser incident which happened in the Powell Library on November 14, 2006. This follows condemnation by ACRLog and the Progressive Librarians Guild.

I am not going to focus on the specifics of the taser incident here. You can view it and read about it in a number of places. It was one of the most viewed items on YouTube a month ago [the footage is quite disturbing, not so much for you see but for what you hear]. It was also written up in LISnews (something which I thought had good reach amongst librar* bloggers) and Library Journal, Slashdot and Boing Boing Boing.

I waited for the inevitable reaction from the librar* blogosphere. There was some. Welcome contributions from the Baby Boomer Librarian, into the stacks, the Invisible Library, LibraryCrunch, Pattern Recognition and See Also..., but otherwise not that much. I know it's inevitable that some posts escaped my notice. Please let me know and I'll post them here. I'm only interested in the initial responses, not the later and meta responses such as mine.

But generally, the silence was deafening, compared with the outrage I was expecting. I even saw posts in two other blogs calling for a reaction from librarians - one from a paraprofessional and another from an academic. I managed to find a different response from a librarian in the discussion of this incident in Salon.com [registration required]:

... It's not just dangerous for us, it's also dangerous for our patrons. Students should not be afraid to use the library in the wee hours.

So what do we do to keep safe? Usually we close off part of the space late at night because we can't police the whole area. Also we require that people prove they have a right to be in the library via ID checks and we have campus police to support us if there is a problem.

If the patron can't comply with our simple request that he help everyone remain safe by showing his ID, then he must leave. It's not just the safety factor - the students have paid a lot of money to have exclusive access to our expensive library. We must maintain that integrity as well. This person refused to do comply with a simple ID check and was quite roughed up as a result. I don't like to see patrons tazed but in this case I think the campus police handled this correctly.

I wonder if this is the reason why librarians have been reluctant to comment on this issue - because many librarians might agree with these views, or we are reluctant to get into arguments our colleagues who hold these thoughts?

This is an incident which seems able to strike a chord with different people for different reasons. I think this is a travesty of police brutality, while a conservative might think the incident an example of political correctness out of control, while others might view this as evidence for limiting the usage of tasers. I think it's fair to say that this incident was caused by the belligerence of both the student and the University Police. That doesn't excuse the behaviour of the police, because they were ones entrusted with authority and weapons, and so they should be held to a higher standard.

I would like to ask, what role did the library policies have in creating this incident? Specifically, is it a good policy for students to be forcibly ejected from a library without any consent, or knowledge or involvement whatsoever from library staff? Although I can understand why a library might have a policy requiring the possession of ID cards after a particular hour at night, why can't they also have a secondary verification procedure - so that a student without the primary ID might have some way of proving her or his identity?

asymmetric information in libraries

“My research on the economics of information showed that whenever information is imperfect, in particular when there are information asymmetries—where some individuals know something that others do not (in other words, always)—the reason that the invisible hand seems invisible is that it is not there. Without appropriate government regulation and intervention, markets do not lead to economic efficiency.” Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work, W. W. Norton, 2006, quoted by Andrew Leonard, "The perfect imperfection of markets", How the World Works.

This quotation and the rest of that post got me thinking about how asymmetric information might apply in libraries - seeing that the exchange of information is what libraries are about.

1. When the librarian has information which the library user lacks

This is both commonplace and normally a no brainer - in this situation the librarian's job is to make sure that information flows freely to the user. When somebody asks how to use a particular database or how to find a book in the library catalogue, the correct answer is not "that's for me to know and for you to find out."

But sometimes there are complicating factors. For example, if a student comes to me wanting all the answers for a research assignment, I am not going to spoon-feed the answers. I will give appropriate information and advice about how to find the information required by the assignment. Still sometimes it's a murky area because I would like students to learn that librarians can help them find things, but I don't want librarians to be expected to all their work for them (undermining the whole point of the research exercise) and be everybody's underpaid uncredited research assistants.

2. When the library user has information which the librarian lacks

Librarians are trained about their role in the reference interview, but library users are not. Sometimes people only want to provide the bare minimum information, which they think will be enough for the librarian to work with. Sometimes this can work, but other times it can waste everybody's time.

What seems most relevant to the user is not always what is most helpful to the librarian in developing a strategy for finding any given information. This is the reason why librarians need all those extra questions, which sometimes may seem nosey or even judgmental. It is not meant to be an intimidating process - but I can understand how people think that it is. If a librarian asks whether you know a particular piece of information about your search topic, and you don't have this information - remember that we ask these questions not to form opinions about you but to simply do our job, of helping to locate the information.

This aspect of asymmetric information is more acute with faculty, who might have extensive, amazing knowledge of a particular subject area, but only scant knowledge of current research processes. One way around this problem is for the librarian to obtain more knowledge of the actual subject, but that will only alleviate, not remove this knowledge differential. Another option would be for the information to flow in the other way - the general research skills from the librarian to the subject specialist, but this is often complicated by the fact that there is usually a power  differential between the librarian and the member of faculty.

3. When a library vendor has information which the librarian lacks

This may shed some light on the seemingly irrational outcomes which happen in the library services marketplace. In my work, I don't have much direct contact with vendors, so I can only think of two examples of this.

When a database vendor knows more about a how library uses its database than the library. If the usage is low, the vendor will be reluctant to reveal this information. But I am guessing that if the usage is high, the vendor will look into ways of getting more value out of the library - whether by raising prices, reducing services or cross-selling or up-selling additional products.

When libraries are shopping for an ILS (integrated library system), they can never know for sure what they are buying. An ILS is not car which you can take out for a test drive. Even if vendors allowed libraries to have a real test of their software (wait, I imagine that Koha would), I can imagine that those test drives would be so traumatic that after a few of these, the library would have had 90% staff turnover and lost 50% of its users. So basically, the information which the libraries have access to is the marketing from the vendor and word of mouth. This is not a vendor bashing post, but no ILS vendor would be so stupid as to provide information which libraries really need to know - what sucks about your product and what sort of customers are not suited to it. Sometimes word of mouth can be effective and I hope that blogs can have a role here, described as "word of mouth of steroids". But sometimes I wonder how many people would be open about saying that their ILS is a total lemon, that they felt they were conned by the slick sales presentations and that their ILS is holding back their library like a ball and chain. Ranting like that is not going to to solve many problems, it's providing the details which is one way of removing this aspect of asymmetric information in libraries.

link shedding

Today is a day that I’ve been looking forward to. I get to take down my list of Australian librar* blogs.

I am pleased that there are now two places on the web which I can turn to when I want to find Australian blogs.

First is the list on lint. If I ever miss maintaining my list, I can be happy because I can always do so as a contributor at lint.

Second is something I have only recently noticed. The Australian Index has a very worthy list of Australian librar* blogs.

I made that list because there wasn’t anything like that around which was managed by Australians, and I thought there should be. Now that two good Australian-made alternatives have appeared, I can happily drop the responsibility of maintaining my list.

While I’m at it, I’ve decided that it’s time to overhaul all the other external links on this blog. This time I want to try something different. Instead of tinkering with what’s already there, I’m dumping them all and will then gradually rebuild. I'm sure that many of the blogs which used to be there will return. But for the moment I'm enjoying this moment where my sidebar feels light and uncluttered.

[27 September 2006 update: The old links are available here]

back blogging

It's been nice to have a break. It's been a real break - I haven't even been reading  all but a handful of blogs. I'm now looking forward to getting back into my regular blogging habit. The complication is that nothing stays the same, and resuming normal service cannot meant the same thing today that it meant a month ago.

I'm quite excited to see that librariesinteract.info is up and running. I've been curious about being involved in a group blog for some time, and am looking forward to contributing to this one. I've been thinking about how my contributions to  librariesinteract.info will be different from what I do here. I'm pretty sure that the explodedlibrary is a place where I'll discuss (sometimes rant about) things in more detail. I expect that in the group blog, I'll be announcing things more succinctly and with a little more objectivity - or least less bias. This also means that I'll have somewhere to palm off my collection of Australian library-related blogs.

Another difference is that I'm still quite happily experimenting with Vox - sorry, I'm out of invites right now, but I'm sure that will change. It's likely that I'll be doing most of my more personal blogging in there, which includes my photos and books that I've read. This explodedlibrary blog will refocus slightly to be both more practical (refining information that's useful for me in my work) and theoretical (pondering ideas that I'm interested in).

Breaking news and being an earlyish adopter of tech toys is not really my thing, but I do have a little of this tonight. I've been mucking around with some of  the widgets I can use with TypePad. One of the more interesting ones is the Rollyo widget which is current near the top of my left sidebar. It allows you to search the Australian library blogosphere. Use the drop down menu to access the custom search, ozliblog search, which searches this blog and most of the other more active Australian library blogs. It still needs a bit of tweaking, I set up the current configuration in less than five minutes. It will be helpful to me if no one else, because it will help me refind old posts when I only have the vauguest idea of what I had written.

I'm also trying the category cloud, which I like so far and will probably keep. There's also the opinmind widget, which shows little quotes from this blog. I wasn't sure if it's more interesting or annoying, so I'm testing it here.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: "employment of librarians is expected to grow more slowly than the average for all occupations over the 2004–14 period"

The Lethal Librarian wrote this post back in March referring to the Occupational Outlook for Librarians written by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. I missed it at the time, but because it's relevant to the librarian shortage debate, I've decided to repost some of it.

It’s also interesting to note the language they [U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics] use - they say in the March 2005 version of the page, “However, job opportunities are expected to be very good because a large number of librarians are expected to retire in the coming decade, creating many job openings.” In the version I saw today, it says “More than 3 in 5 librarians are aged 45 or older and will become eligible for retirement in the next 10 years, which will result in many job openings.” The difference is between “eligible to retire” versus “expected to retire” speaks to me, despite their identical claims about many job openings.

updates to my Australian library bloggers sidebar

[18 August 2006: This post has been updated here]

Thank you for everyone who has let me know about Australian library worker and library blogs. Please excuse me for taking so long to update the list. I suspect that this is the last time that I shall be publishing this list of Australian library-type blogs. The numbers are increasing and the list is getting more cumbersome to maintain, and thanks to things like the ever-helpful LibDex and Frappr (although the way Frappr works for Australian bloggers leaves a lot to be desired) it's a bit redundant. Next time I'll probably just have a list of my favourite Aussie LIS blogs and new discoveries.

Anyway, here are the new inclusions:

• Bronwyn's Library Blog
• Dive into Information
• Dunn & Wilson Scholarship 2005
• Innovate
• Issues and Challenges of a Small School Library
• Jenelle.net
• the lateral literal librarian
• Library clips
• Shelter.nu
• TLNewsau

I also want to draw attention to the institutional blog which I'm adding here - (Melbourne) Eastern Regional Libraries.

The problem, as far as I see it, is that for Australian bloggers, Frappr only allows you to zoom to a city level. When there are 4 bloggers in a city like Melbourne, they are all clumped together and it is impossible to zoom further, it can be very difficult to view each of the four. Is there something very basic about Frappr that I'm missing here? Has anybody else noticed this?

Currently playing in iTunes: Flame Trees by Sarah Blasko

research, decision-making and bullshit detection

The following is adapted from some presentations to our Executive MBA group. It's a combination of what I actually said and what I wished I had said. I spoke equally on all four points, but tonight I'm only writing about the fourth one.

Why the research skills you learn in the library are important -

• Authoritative information
• Save time with more precise searching
• Getting a competitive edge with your information
• Bullshit detection

Some people might be thinking, yeah I need to learn this stuff while I'm a student and have these research assignments, but I know that when I'm finished with business school, I can safely forget about it. The reason why I'm taking this course is to prepare me for a leadership position in the company. If I need research, I'll just pay a consultant or somebody else to do it for me. I won't need to do it myself.

For one thing, it is impossible to be in a leadership in business without making decisions. Decision-making has two essential ingredients - information and a brain which processes and analyzes the information. It is possible to make decisions without information but these are invariably poor decisions. To gather the information needed for decision-making, there is no escaping the fact that you need to do research. What I am saying is that the decision-maker has the responsibility to research. As a matter of practicality, the research work is often delegated to an information professional. I am very aware of distinction involved in researching and gathering information to make a decision. I am more than happy to research all the facets of an issue, and giving reasons for and against the various positions. But don't ask me to tell you what to do - you don't pay me enough for that. Giving advice is something I happily eschew, except in a strictly obiter capacity. There are some decisions which only the CEO is placed to make. This is why you need research skills - to identify what you need to know and have an idea of how to find them, or who to ask.

This leads to my other point here. The research skills which you learn in a library will serve you well in your career as a form of bullshit detector. Even if you delegate the research work, as the decision-maker you are still responsible for gathering the information you need. This means you need to be able to critically evaluate the research that is done on your behalf. You need to understand what was done and determine if it's acceptable. One of the best ways of learning how to evaluate the quality of research is to do your own research and learn how the process should work. In your Executive MBA you won't be able to get away with limiting your research to the top 10 hits of a Google search. One of the goals of the course is that you will develop a sense of what is and isn't solid research, so that the next time one of your departments or a consultant tries to palm off some filmsy "research", you will recognize the danger signs.  In these days when information seems so abundant, research is not just about locating information, it's also about filtering and excluding information.

rant: neurotic pedantic librarians

Earlier this week, I attended a presentation by a vendor which was held in a nearby academic library. It was about a product which is not used too much in our business school library, but still, it was good to learn about this in case I do need it. It was interesting to see how this particular product is developing.

That's not what I wanted to write about tonight. The real eye-opener for me was the behaviour of some of the librarians at this meeting. They interrupted with the most unreasonable pendantic questions, finding fault just for the sake of finding fault. At the time I remember thinking, "What a bunch of crotchety curmudgeons!" I asked myself, do libraries have more than their fair share of neurotic and pedantic people?

I chatted about this over lunch with a coworker and she had an interesting insight. A lot of the work that's done in a library is about being critical and accurate. These skills are often needed to do the work, but some librarians and library techs/assistants are unable to turn them off and they become nitpicky and pedantic as people.

Is the pedantic and neurotic librarian a similar species to the stereotypical brusque but brilliant surgeon? I'm doubting it. There seem to be two different skill-sets to library work - which aren't always complementary. One set is concerned with accuracy and technical competency. The other set are people skills, understanding what our users really want and need, building necessary relationships with vendors, IT, administration.

One other thing. Has anyone else ever noticed that some librarians feel entitled to treat vendors like crap? I've heard it justified by the fact that librarians who work for vendors are usually paid much more, so they should accept this treatment as the downside to their larger salaries. I'm not sure that this is true, or even if it were, that I would agree. It seems wrong to feel entitled to treat anybody badly because of their salary - whether it's  higher or lower. After all, I know that I would not want to be judged and evaluated according to what somebody else reckons to be my salary.

New Librarians' Symposium call for papers

Something I would definitely like to do in the next 12 months is submit, write and present a paper at a library conference. If I weren't involved in organizing it, I would definitely be interested in presenting a paper at the ALIA New Librarians' Symposium, being held in Sydney in December 2006.

Although I'm approaching the margins of what is a new librarian, I definitely feel that I am a new librarian in Australia. The new librarians/grads activities have been a great way to meet people who are in similar places in their career, with similar issues. It's quite possible that I'll be rubbing shoulders with many of these new librarian peers for the rest of my career, in some shape or form, so it's good to get know them in the more relaxed environment that is new librarian activities.

A similar thing applies with conferences and papers. Activities like the New Librarian's Symposium are an ideal way of testing the waters with presenting papers at conferences. It's a great opportunity to see if you have the skills  and interest to do this, in a friendlier and less intimidating environment than some of the major conferences.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that the actual topics are going to be bland and unremarkable. Activities that are run by and for new librarians usually have a characteristic edge. We know that we have things to say about this career which we're contemplating investing the next 30 or so years of our working life, and we expect to be listened to.

Although blogging is one outlet which allows me to exercise my reading, writing and analytical skills, it is not the same and cannot replace that direct and immediate contact with one's peers in a real life audience. Sometimes it just doesn't seem possible to attend conferences - sadly this has often been my situation. But remember, unless you have an extremely stingy employer, you are more likely to get funding to attend these conferences if you are presenting a paper.

The call for papers for the ALIA New Librarians' Symposium closes on March 31.

information prices and information rights

I will play Devil's Advocate for a moment and argue that it is a good thing that information can be so expensive - especially the business and legal information which I am somewhat familiar with. After all, if people are accustomed to paying a premium to receive expensive information quickly, they will be more willing to pay a librarian who is adept at finding this information quickly and efficiently. It is probably a good thing if the price of information increases, because then the size of this information marketplace will increase, eventually leading to more jobs in the field and/or better salaries for people with the necessary skills.

On the other hand, I believe that sometimes information is a fundamental human right. In the same way that a child has a right to an education irrespective of the finances of her/his parents, people need access to certain information (and have basic information finding and evaluating skills) to be able to function in today's society. If I were a public librarian or a school librarian, my job would be directly about helping people in this way. As a special librarian who works in a non-public library, my contribution must necessarily be less direct. My first duty is to my particular library and its users (neglecting this duty would lead to me soon not being any librarian at all!). Although I may not able assist with providing access to my library's physical or electronic resources, there is nothing to prevent me from sharing whatever research know how I may have, limited as it may be~

Currently playing in iTunes: Sweet November by Sarah Blasko

presentation for our MBA (Executive) students

Well, this was something different for a Saturday. I just gave two presentations to our MBA (Executive) students, giving an introduction to the Library and what electronic resources it has for off-campus users.

I used to give these presentations more frequently when I lived in Minnesota - but it's been over 2 years now. So I was a little rusty, but I still feel ok about the whole thing.

My notes and slides are available here.

This blog has got off to a fairly slow start in 2006, but I think I've found a theme for the year - some practical posts on business research. I'll still write about other things, and do the occasional rant, but I like the idea of having this topic to return to.

using Gmail as a research cache

For some people, the process of research is very organized and methodical. For me research is something creative and instinctive, slightly chaotic and usually a bit messy. I am not saying that one way is better. I know that there are distinct disadvantages to my method, such as the possibility of finding a really good source through some odd combination of luck and insight - only to lose it, never to find it again because of being disorganized. So I've been looking at better ways to be organized - but not in a way which slows me down and causes me to lose my momentum. For me, research is the closest that I'll ever get to hunting. One of the things I like about it is the chase, which is why I hate things which slow me down

I have set up a separate Gmail account for my work and use it as a cache of my research. As I come across articles and sources which seem promising, what I do is compose a new email, paste in the full text and citation/URL of the article and then save it as a draft. It's a very quick process, and so I'm able to move on. The nice thing is that because Gmail is searchable, everything in this research cache is searchable - making it easy to return to the documents to dig more deeply and hone in on what is useful. It doesn't work so well with pdfs, but I can still upload the pdf and store the citation and/or URL. The other nice thing is that I can add to and search this cache whether I'm in my office or at the shared computer on our reference desk.

I am quite confident that because this research cache is personal - and can only be used by me - and because it's do with my work which is for academic purposes, that in most cases, it would be all right. To be absolutely sure, I would need to check all of the license agreements of all of the database which I am likely to use.

Currently playing in iTunes: Benzin by Rammstein

to run ahead

I'm sorry for not replying earlier to the comments on my previous post. I've been wanting to, but then some other things happened. Enough time has passed and this comment has lengthened to the extent that it might as well be another post.

CW: I almost wrote something in my final paragraph about the presentation which you did last week. As an illustration of a good thing. People who are enthusiastic and try to educate and get people excited about using these services are of are absolutely vital to the profession. This opinion is so widespread amongst librarian bloggers that it barely needs saying, but I want to say it anyway. On the other hand, I'm more interested a point that is slightly more controversial. I think that we also need the contrary voices. It should be ok to be sceptical without being called obstructionist or luddite. It should  be ok to say, "Yes, but what about this problem?" This dialogue can be extremely difficult, but it has to happen. I'm learning in my new job is that when implementing new technology in the workplace, the technology is the easier stuff (even when it's being very difficult). The harder stuff is working with people to accept and actually support the changes. A part of me would like to run ahead and be in the revolution, leaving these slow coaches behind - but that's neither possible nor desirable for me. So I decide that I might as well welcome this challenge, knowing that this collaboration will make the final result more solid and better supported in the workplace - and probably prevent me from making some dreadful mistakes.

Please excuse this American western pioneer analogy. Like an annoying song, it won't leave my head until I've written it down. There are some people are make good scouts, they're quick and they can explore these strange new lands we're heading into, understand what's going on and then communicate this to the rest of us. Other people are better at maintaining the wagons and the horses and keeping everything alive and moving - albeit much slower than the scouts. Others are more in touch with the past than the future - their role is to remind us of who we are and how we came to be in this situation. ((I wouldn't be able to say which I would be, maybe a hybrid, like a short-range scout)) Problems only happen when somebody decides that their role is the most important. At one extreme is deciding that the scouts should stop their scouting and be forced to do all their work around the camps, that the future doesn't matter any more. The other extreme is the scouts declaring that everybody should be just like them, ditch the wagons and sprint into the wilderness where the promised land awaits, ready to solve all their problems.

Angel: Like you, I never planned on writing another post about this, but it just happened. Your point about Generation X as a bridge generation was very well made. Of course, it's a given that any statement about generational differences involves over generalizations - but that doesn't mean the topic should be taboo. I had been wondering if this web 2.0 backlash might be more of a Generation X reaction - we were fairly cynical to start with. Then came the dot com bubble and crash - and we now we are seeing similarities between the hype from the late 1990s and Web 2.0, and this worries us.

Walt: Thanks for your comment. Speaking for myself, I think that my positions have become less confrontational as this discussion has continued here and in other places. From sarcastic satire, to a serious rant to why can't we all just get along? My views are often a moving target. That's why I'm better off blogging. I imagine if I wrote a book, my thoughts at the end of the process would be totally different from what I was thinking at the beginning.

why I don't like these labels

Let's ignore the Web and Library 2.0 labels for just a moment. If I think about the individual applications and services which tend to be associated with this technology, I can say that like Fiona on her Blisspix blog, I use a lot of them and generally appreciate what they can do.

My main issue is with the 2.0 labels themselves. Why is it necessary to lump all these disparate things together? After all many of them pre-date the popularity of the 2.0 labels and they did ok before this started. I think being labelled with a contrived 2.0 term actually detracts from what each one of these ideas has to offer.

What I really object to is the language suggesting that Web 2.0 (or Library 2.0) is a revolution which people must either believe in entirely or be a clueless luddite. No, I would rather pick and choose. After all, isn't that one of the common threads in all this technology - empowering people to pick and choose?

The interesting thing about the Web 2.0 backlash is that it's not coming so much from people like Michael Gorman. It's from people who know and use the technology, and are sick of the hype and enjoy a bit of a laugh. Will the backlash take hold? I'm doubting it because when evangelists and cynics clash, the evangelists eventually win because the cynics get bored and move on to question something else. But even so, Web 2.0 will eventually run its course. When it does, Library 2.0 is going to look ridiculously 2005 and librarians will look daggy (definition for people who aren't Australians) for embracing it. ~

Marketing libraries is important and necessary - but this Library 2.0 concept is the wrong message at the wrong time.

Just to make it absolutely clear, I don't hate all things associated with Library 2.0, just the term itself. When librarians implement things commonly under this banner, it is usually a good thing - for the library and its users. It's just got the wrong name - actually any name at all causes more harm than good.

Currently playing in iTunes: A punchup at a wedding by Radiohead

a year in Sydney

At first it was to be temporary thing - I'd move to Sydney, but still keep an eye on the job situation in Tasmania. If something good came up, and if (definitely the more uncertain if, given my experience of unexpectedly brutal job market in Tasmania) I got the job, I'd move back in a heartbeat.

Now I see that my time in Sydney is not so going to be so temporary. I'm likely to be here for at least 3 more years. I'm not going to be looking at jobs in Tasmania anymore. My new job in Sydney is just what I've been looking for, and I have no pipedreams that there might be an equivalent job available in Tasmania which could entice me back. This isn't to put down Tasmania, it's just stating the fact that the way my career has developed, I am most competitive in legal and special library positions - of which there are very few in Tasmania. Although I'd be willing to work in just about any sort of library position, in most situations employers would prefer somebody with a background in their particular sort of library - whether it be public, school, academic science / humanities etc. This hasn't changed.

I can't just breeze into a public library position feeling all superior because of my academic or legal or special library experience, and expect a public library to fall over itself to hire me.

Yes, some specialties are generally paid more than others. Others might be more comfortable places to work - or provide access to more expensive resources/toys or be more intellectually interesting. While others may be rewarding in other ways. How is it possible to quantify the knowledge that one's work is clearly and unambiguously furthering one's goals in politics and social justice? The best or most ideal sub-specialty will vary according to each individual's priorities and situation.

I have made the decision although Tasmania is a beautiful place, and although I miss family and friends who are there, I cannot be sustained by these alone if I am miserable because I am unemployed or underemployed. I'm better off living in Sydney, where I have far superior employment options, and deal with feeling homesick for Tasmania. I can alleviate these symptoms by participating in the annual or bi-annual pilgrimage rites observed by other Gen-X members of the Tasmanian diaspora. I've already booked my trip back to Hobart for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day.

A few words about my current home in Sydney. Sydney gets a very bad rap amongst the rest of Australia. It is viewed as the epitome of the excesses of Australia's urbanization. Most Australians live in cities, and for the majority who don't live in Sydney, it's comforting to think, well at least my place is not as crazy and frantic as Sydney. In some ways it's true. Nowhere else in Australia can you see the extremes and chasms in Australian society than in Sydney, where the beggars and derelict haunt the same streets frequented by the Armani and Prada-clad beautiful and successful people. I've never seen people as hurried and stressed as certain people in Sydney - but having lived here for a year, I understand how people can stress out here. You can't really judge Sydneysiders until you've stood in their shoes and can see what it's like to live here. I've also found people in Sydney refreshingly accepting of people from different places, as many are from other places themselves. After all the negatives, why would any one move to this huge city which seems to be choking its own growth and expensive real estate? The bleak view is that people move to Sydney when their hopes dry up in their original home. But I prefer to think maybe it's that fairy tale notion of moving to the big city to find one's fortune. I vaguely remember Mary Donaldson from my high school, Taroona High. She certainly found her dreams in Sydney.

Currently playing in iTunes: Confessions on a Dancefloor (Non-Stop Mix) by Madonna

the view from the outside

I find this sort of thing fascinating. It's also nice to see librarians being praised in unlikely places.

Unexpected places to encounter Warcraft geekery: "I was doing some research in the Boston Public Library about management ethics, which at first doesn't sound like it's related to World of Warcraft. I found this book that looked interesting about how librarians were expected to relate to those 'scary' questions from people who want geek-related reading, such as sci-fi or fantasy. In the book was a 'quiz' that was meant to prove to the unsuspecting librarians that they knew more about geek-related subjects than they thought.

One of the questions was,

Harry Potter is a student at...
a. Harvard University (where he is studying for an MBA)
b. Hogwart's [sic] School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (where he is studying to be a wizard)
c. The Jedi Academy (where he is studying under Luke Skywalker)
d. Lordaeron University (where he is studying warcraft)

The random Warcraft reference just about killed me in the middle of the BPL. I may be the only person since the original author to have read that book and gotten that reference. Kudos to the author of 'Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader's Advisory' for being a Warcraft geek!"

(Via LiveJournal World of Warcraft community.)

about these Australian library links

I have 2 sidebars items which contain links to some products of the Australian library blogosphere. The first item is my list of blogs by Australian library-type people (and no, I'm not going to be more specific about what this means, but I'll err on the side of being inclusive). Note that the emphasis is on librarians as people, not libraries. This means that if I discover that you're a librarian and keep a blog about something completely unrelated to your work, the link to your blog will end up here. Right now this list aims at being a comprehensive list, in that I'll add any and every blog. If the list ends up becoming too big and unmanageable, that may change

From time to time, I'll highlight a blog which might otherwise be buried in this list, as such C.W.'s Ruminations - which I've been really enjoying lately ~ C.W. is the only Western Australian blogger which I've discovered so far, but I hope that there are more out there. Doubtless if I set my mind to it, I could discover a few more blogs right now, but I'd rather rely on serendipity and let them trickle in.

I've just started another list of Australian library blogs, these are the blogs by and for actual libraries and related organizations. I've only just started looking into this area. I plan to actively find more of these, but until that happens (or somebody passes on a few links to me) RMIT's need2know is there on its own.

Next morning edits: Thanks to my first commentor, I've already added three more blogs to the lists, all from WA. Also, although technically a librarian's LiveJournal would meet my definition of a librarian blog, I'm not adding LJs to this list. Most of them, including my own, were created with the understanding that they'd never end up on a list such as this. Call me biased or inconsistent, but what happens in LJ-land stays in LJ-land. One other thing, this is only going to be a temporary project. I'll do this for as long as it seems helpful, but there will be a time when it will get too big and probably won't be needed anyway. Finally, why do I flout the rules of grammar by listing the names of these blogs entirely in lower case? It's very important that the list be an alphabetical list, and I've learned that in TypePad, the presence of upper case can complicate these alphabetical lists, especially when there is non-standard usage of upper & lower case in the blog titles.

Currently playing in iTunes: Drop The Mirror by Missy Higgins

revisiting linking rights

I have discovered a little contradiction within myself. On the one hand, I am a zealous believer in the right to link. Links have been and remain the lifeblood of the web. The anti-linking policies which seemed fashionable a few years ago were invariably flouted and led to the wide-spread ridicule of the things which they were meant to be “protecting.”

That’s only one aspect of the right to link. In 2005, the issue of the linker’s liability for linking to copyright infringing material hosted by third parties has received some judicial attention in Australia. But I would argue that even the Universal Music Australia v. Cooper case doesn’t yet endanger the right to create a bare link to infringing materials, provided there’s no question of “authorizing” copyright infringement.

A bare link does not provide any endorsement, agreement or authorization of the material being linked to. A bare link to a web site is just a statement of a fact - that at a certain place on the web this information exists. While there is any strength left in the ideas and expression of ideas dichotomy, US National Public Radio (a past offender) can't prevent a blogger from linking to them, no more than it can copyright any other fact, such as 2+2=4. For NPR to prevent anybody linking to them is like claiming copyright in their own physical address.

To use a different analogy, anti-linking policies make as much sense as an author claiming that merely being cited in a journal article infringes on her/his copyright.

It might be different if there’s more than a bare link happening. For example, if I linked directly to a certain image on the illegal-art website and wrote, “Check out this hilarious parody of the Starbucks logo!” That might get me into trouble, so I’m not going to do that.

I believe in the right to link and that if somebody chooses to make their website or blog available to the world, anybody has the right to link to it. On the other hand, in my own personal conduct I had decided that I would prefer being courteous over exercising this right. For example, with the list of Australian librarian blogs on my sidebar, I have often requested permission before adding blogs to this list.

Courtesy is very good and nice, but I have now decided that it is too much of a good thing if it gets in the way of adding new blogs to this list. It has even caused me to temporarily lose some of the blogs which I intended to add. I know, losing a blog is a very embarrassing and silly thing to do.

From now on, I’ll just add the blogs as I find them. If anybody has a problem with being added, they are welcome to email me about it and we can talk about it.

back into blogging

Hawai'i was lovely. I hope to put up an album of some of my photos on my blog. There is something about islands which can be just so relaxing. I also feel that when I visit my parents in Tasmania. When you live & work on an island, it's a different matter, and the best holiday is sometimes to escape the island - whether it's going to the Mainland (the Big Island) or to a smaller island like Maria Island.

I haven't caught up on all of my blog reading, but I did notice Meredith's latest contribution on the librarian shortage debate.

There are a lot of positive things to be said about choosing librarianship as a career - but the hope that you'll be inundated with job offers for librarian positions after graduating, that's not one of them. It's also not a very good reason to choose a career, even if it were true. Imagine this job interview.

Interviewer: Tell me, how did you decide to choose librarianship as your career?
Job applicant: Well I used to think it would be totally boring to work in a library, but then I heard that there's going to be a shortage of librarians, so I thought I might as well give this gig a whirl. Gives me better odds, doesn't it?
Interviewer: Really? Don't you have any other reasons?
Job applicant: Oh, and I really like books. And reading ...

nuanced, not negative

I admire the fact that Walt Crawford doesn't miss very much (with one trivial exception with respect to me, but I'm not going into that here as it's covered in the "Following Up" section of Cites & Insights 5:7). I'm not surprised that he noticed my comments on his investigation of the biblioblogosphere (the first and only time I hope to use this tongue-twister of a term), and mentioned them in Cites & Insights 5:11 (p. 23 of the pdf file) - although I wasn't sure if he would notice my more candid and less polished comments in the extended version of the post. But he did - I've been busted :)

Many of my blog posts are basically arguments with myself, and they don't lend themselves to easy summaries. Because of this, I'd like to clarify a few things which Walt Crawford mentioned while discussing the explodedlibrary's post about his survey.

Walt wondered if it would be overstating my criticisms to call my response to his survey negative. I'm glad that he wasn't certain about that, because I appreciated the survey as much as it made me uncomfortable. As I mentioned in my post, which perhaps I should have emphasized more strongly, I found out about some great blogs because of this - whether it was directly from the blogs which Walt mentioned, or ones which other bloggers mentioned in response to Walt's survey. If blogging is something important, particularly if library blogging matters, it is a subject worthy of study and analysis - and Walt's survey was a very good, albeit flawed (as is everything in the blogosphere, particularly in these early days) first step in this direction. I say all of that as a librarian who is looking at the big picture.

At same time, as an individual who happens to be a blogger and is a potential subject of such studies, I admit to feeling a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. It's something I'll probably get used to in time.

I think that both objective and subjective measures have their uses, but personally (not professionally), I am more interested in the subjective and tend to be skeptical of numbers. If other people prefer more objective bibliometric measures, I can understand that. I just hope that they are aware (as I think Walt is) that most objective measur