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A grab bag of books and libraries related material for those who like hearing about it:
Borders is closing the rest of its stores in liquidation, after nobody stepped forward with a formal offer to buy and run the place...and it seems that Amazon has eaten Borders in the way that it ate smaller bookshops.
Elsewhere, a book suggests that we return toward apprenticeships, Socratic questions, and embracing the digital revolution to prepare students for the fact that the job they will be doing for their careers doesn't exist yet - not to mention that even the very worst students in school are turning out quality materials that they release on the Internet and let others critique (and critique themselves).
A warning to schools to beware replacing print books with e-books, because e-books have interface problems that make them less than ideal for school and scholarly work - you can't skip through them easily, they don't skim well, flashing back and forth between books and pages to knit ideas together is fairly cumbersome, and a lot of other things that a codex form does well, compared to our electronic versions of the scrolls of the previous era. And then there are all the people who do not have access to electronic readers because they're under the poverty level, or under the real poverty level. Print is still important, as is the need to be certain everyone can afford or have access to their education and entertainment. Guess who does that? Public libraries.
Rory Litwin argues that Banned Books Week, as presented by the ALA, is an exercise in propaganda that fails to raise the level of the discourse and doesn't address the actual issue - that the educational institutions in many of these challenge locations are following their process for community comment on curriculum, rather than attempting to prevent the sale or access to books in the community at large. It's not a book banning as historically done, and so saying "Banned Books Week" is misleading.
Rory also Facebook interviewed Dan Kleinman, the creator of SafeLibraries, an organization that claims the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom is pushing inappropriate books on children and believes in the free access of pornography in libraries as well, as well as several other claims that libraries and librarians are directly or indirectly responsible for consequences like the molestation of a toddler by an adult in a library bathroom or the sexual harassment of library staff by users. The interview here is, admittedly, here for contrast, as Dan could use some work in tightening up his prose to stay focused on his central theme and present a well-articulated argument (and avoiding pitfalls like invoking the name of George Soros and the ACLU, which serve as derailment bait), but it's also here because the way the argument unfolds doesn't appear to follow out to its logical conclusion. If one is arguing that ALA-OIF is advising librarians to push inappropriate materials, one should have a definition of inappropriate ready, and be able to defend accusations of why their point of view matters more than anyone else's. Saying "I am but the messenger, my views are not important" then also makes a requirement of needing to go "Straight from the horse's mouth", as it were - and Dan does do that, but he tends to focus on Judith Krug, long time director of OIF, as the representative there. When making statements that ALA-OIF believes "anything goes" in public schools, there had better be proof with some very direct quotations handy. (And no, statements that the ALA punts on the issue don't count.) And then there's the continued characterization of ALA as a national organization (linked to the ACLU, no less) that is wresting away control of libraries from where it should be, the communities, only helps to solidify the ALA as a dangerous foreign entity instead of a national organization of professionals who have internal debates and encompass a wide variety of opinions, many of them flagrantly contradictory to each other. I wonder if anyone has invited him to the major conferences so he can see what ALA is like, and where he may, at his leisure, attempt to find the agents of Soros, the ACLU, or any other organization that he believes dirties the hands of the ALA.
Checking out some of the pages linked to by Dan, the idea of "barriers to access as a chilling effect" is apparently "outdated dogma" to be ignored when it comes to porn in libraries and making them "safer". While chronicling relevant decisions and the path one library took to ensure that the filters would only be removed at the request of an adult, the issue is conveniently framed as protecting children from pornography and preventing it from coming into the library. What's missing? The idea of access for materials that are not pornographic but would be blocked by filters. Saying "if your filter sucks, get a better one" sidesteps the greater issue - more often than not, the public library is the place where one can find accurate but heterodox information. I would hazard a guess that most librarians don't particularly want members of the public accessing pornography on their computers. What they do want, however, is the availability of information about sexually transmitted infections (including pictures of what infected genitals look like) to persons who might believe they have one, but are trying to decide whether to go see a doctor about it. Or people looking for information about political candidate Rick Santorum, who has, as Ms. Maddow puts it, "a Google problem".
What's also missing is a discussion on whether or not the library as a code of conduct for its users. If it does, it probably contains language about conduct disturbing to other users, harassment, and other things that would get you thrown out of a public or private building. It might take a couple goes at it, but there's a high probability that you can achieve the desired result (people not accessing porn in the library) without having to demand the imposition of filters that will never be 100 per cent accurate, and that will require adults to have sufficient courage to verbalize their request, in the audible range of others, to a staff person and community members, that may or may not judge them for that request. Or move out of that audible range, which looks suspicious, And if they're a teenager or young adult? Add an additional helping of social shame and judgment.
When you clamor for "Safer Libraries" by putting porn up front, it's the same kind of technique that Rory accuses the ALA of doing in Banned Books Week - appealing to the hindbrain and preventing logical and rational discussion of the real issue. It's not "porn in libraries" - it's "What's appropriate for the public library to have in its collection?" This is not to say that a community shouldn't take an active interest in their library - they should be (as well as active in their politics). But most people hire professionals and trust their judgement on issues in their expertise. You do occasionally get lemons, shysters, and hucksters, and some professions get known for having higher concentrations than normal...but ultimately, for most things in their lives, people leave things in the hands of people who study to know their collections and communities and match the materials in the library to the needs of the community. A community elects politicians to represent their point of view in government. A community has a library to provide them with the information they need and to remind them that there are other points of view in the community, state, nation, and world that have facts and documentation and evidence supporting them as well. And that the people with those points of view have information needs as well.
One of the complaints from the library world is that the users of a library don't believe that it requires advanced schooling and a graduate degree. That's because the skills of the librarian, whether in selection, advisory, or other parts of library operation are mostly skills that have no obvious and visible manifestation. We ask you a couple questions, type something into the catalog computer, and then guide you to a section of the library. Seems pretty easy, right? Well, those questions are deliberately designed to get good and specific information out of you so that we can narrow down your potential subjects down from 100 to 1 or 2. Then, we have to translate what we've learned in human speech to computer subjects and keywords, based on the quirks of our system, so that we can produce results based on those subjects, and then we have to know where in the library (or library electronic resources) those books, articles, and data are and where related subjects might be in case the first look isn't producing anything. Then there's having criteria to evaluate whether a book on the shelves or resource in the database is still relevant to community needs, whether new books and resources being marketed to the library will be appropriate for the community, and how to communicate all of that data to the community so that they feel like the library is investing their tax dollars wisely. And we have to be able to explain our policies in such a way that they are understandable and that people feel like we have good reasons for doing things the way we do, even if we don't agree on whether or not the library should be doing something. And then there's programming. There's a lot of expertise in libraries, and the application thereof is more often than not hidden from the general public.
So I guess that the point is, as with many things, It's More Complicated Than That when it comes to things like "porn in libraries" or "age-appropriateness" challenges to materials. It makes for ideas like "parents are the final arbiters of what their children read, but no parent should have the power to arbitrate what other children read" that appear to be contradictory on their face, but are actually the result of a large amount of discussion and argument between experts of all sorts, including lawyers who make sure that we stay compliant with the law and the court decisions that are still considered good law. Clearly, we need to be better in making those complexities understandable (and, unfortunately, sound-bite-able), and we need to be able to make our expertise known better. The problem is, it's much easier to decry "porn in libraries! They want your child to be able to access porn in libraries!" than it is to say "Well, we don't want porn, but some porn will get through because we want legitimate information needs to be protected, too." So we also need the people who want to talk to us to be willing to accept those complexities instead of being swayed by simple and wrong soundbites.
Borders is closing the rest of its stores in liquidation, after nobody stepped forward with a formal offer to buy and run the place...and it seems that Amazon has eaten Borders in the way that it ate smaller bookshops.
Elsewhere, a book suggests that we return toward apprenticeships, Socratic questions, and embracing the digital revolution to prepare students for the fact that the job they will be doing for their careers doesn't exist yet - not to mention that even the very worst students in school are turning out quality materials that they release on the Internet and let others critique (and critique themselves).
A warning to schools to beware replacing print books with e-books, because e-books have interface problems that make them less than ideal for school and scholarly work - you can't skip through them easily, they don't skim well, flashing back and forth between books and pages to knit ideas together is fairly cumbersome, and a lot of other things that a codex form does well, compared to our electronic versions of the scrolls of the previous era. And then there are all the people who do not have access to electronic readers because they're under the poverty level, or under the real poverty level. Print is still important, as is the need to be certain everyone can afford or have access to their education and entertainment. Guess who does that? Public libraries.
Rory Litwin argues that Banned Books Week, as presented by the ALA, is an exercise in propaganda that fails to raise the level of the discourse and doesn't address the actual issue - that the educational institutions in many of these challenge locations are following their process for community comment on curriculum, rather than attempting to prevent the sale or access to books in the community at large. It's not a book banning as historically done, and so saying "Banned Books Week" is misleading.
Rory also Facebook interviewed Dan Kleinman, the creator of SafeLibraries, an organization that claims the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom is pushing inappropriate books on children and believes in the free access of pornography in libraries as well, as well as several other claims that libraries and librarians are directly or indirectly responsible for consequences like the molestation of a toddler by an adult in a library bathroom or the sexual harassment of library staff by users. The interview here is, admittedly, here for contrast, as Dan could use some work in tightening up his prose to stay focused on his central theme and present a well-articulated argument (and avoiding pitfalls like invoking the name of George Soros and the ACLU, which serve as derailment bait), but it's also here because the way the argument unfolds doesn't appear to follow out to its logical conclusion. If one is arguing that ALA-OIF is advising librarians to push inappropriate materials, one should have a definition of inappropriate ready, and be able to defend accusations of why their point of view matters more than anyone else's. Saying "I am but the messenger, my views are not important" then also makes a requirement of needing to go "Straight from the horse's mouth", as it were - and Dan does do that, but he tends to focus on Judith Krug, long time director of OIF, as the representative there. When making statements that ALA-OIF believes "anything goes" in public schools, there had better be proof with some very direct quotations handy. (And no, statements that the ALA punts on the issue don't count.) And then there's the continued characterization of ALA as a national organization (linked to the ACLU, no less) that is wresting away control of libraries from where it should be, the communities, only helps to solidify the ALA as a dangerous foreign entity instead of a national organization of professionals who have internal debates and encompass a wide variety of opinions, many of them flagrantly contradictory to each other. I wonder if anyone has invited him to the major conferences so he can see what ALA is like, and where he may, at his leisure, attempt to find the agents of Soros, the ACLU, or any other organization that he believes dirties the hands of the ALA.
Checking out some of the pages linked to by Dan, the idea of "barriers to access as a chilling effect" is apparently "outdated dogma" to be ignored when it comes to porn in libraries and making them "safer". While chronicling relevant decisions and the path one library took to ensure that the filters would only be removed at the request of an adult, the issue is conveniently framed as protecting children from pornography and preventing it from coming into the library. What's missing? The idea of access for materials that are not pornographic but would be blocked by filters. Saying "if your filter sucks, get a better one" sidesteps the greater issue - more often than not, the public library is the place where one can find accurate but heterodox information. I would hazard a guess that most librarians don't particularly want members of the public accessing pornography on their computers. What they do want, however, is the availability of information about sexually transmitted infections (including pictures of what infected genitals look like) to persons who might believe they have one, but are trying to decide whether to go see a doctor about it. Or people looking for information about political candidate Rick Santorum, who has, as Ms. Maddow puts it, "a Google problem".
What's also missing is a discussion on whether or not the library as a code of conduct for its users. If it does, it probably contains language about conduct disturbing to other users, harassment, and other things that would get you thrown out of a public or private building. It might take a couple goes at it, but there's a high probability that you can achieve the desired result (people not accessing porn in the library) without having to demand the imposition of filters that will never be 100 per cent accurate, and that will require adults to have sufficient courage to verbalize their request, in the audible range of others, to a staff person and community members, that may or may not judge them for that request. Or move out of that audible range, which looks suspicious, And if they're a teenager or young adult? Add an additional helping of social shame and judgment.
When you clamor for "Safer Libraries" by putting porn up front, it's the same kind of technique that Rory accuses the ALA of doing in Banned Books Week - appealing to the hindbrain and preventing logical and rational discussion of the real issue. It's not "porn in libraries" - it's "What's appropriate for the public library to have in its collection?" This is not to say that a community shouldn't take an active interest in their library - they should be (as well as active in their politics). But most people hire professionals and trust their judgement on issues in their expertise. You do occasionally get lemons, shysters, and hucksters, and some professions get known for having higher concentrations than normal...but ultimately, for most things in their lives, people leave things in the hands of people who study to know their collections and communities and match the materials in the library to the needs of the community. A community elects politicians to represent their point of view in government. A community has a library to provide them with the information they need and to remind them that there are other points of view in the community, state, nation, and world that have facts and documentation and evidence supporting them as well. And that the people with those points of view have information needs as well.
One of the complaints from the library world is that the users of a library don't believe that it requires advanced schooling and a graduate degree. That's because the skills of the librarian, whether in selection, advisory, or other parts of library operation are mostly skills that have no obvious and visible manifestation. We ask you a couple questions, type something into the catalog computer, and then guide you to a section of the library. Seems pretty easy, right? Well, those questions are deliberately designed to get good and specific information out of you so that we can narrow down your potential subjects down from 100 to 1 or 2. Then, we have to translate what we've learned in human speech to computer subjects and keywords, based on the quirks of our system, so that we can produce results based on those subjects, and then we have to know where in the library (or library electronic resources) those books, articles, and data are and where related subjects might be in case the first look isn't producing anything. Then there's having criteria to evaluate whether a book on the shelves or resource in the database is still relevant to community needs, whether new books and resources being marketed to the library will be appropriate for the community, and how to communicate all of that data to the community so that they feel like the library is investing their tax dollars wisely. And we have to be able to explain our policies in such a way that they are understandable and that people feel like we have good reasons for doing things the way we do, even if we don't agree on whether or not the library should be doing something. And then there's programming. There's a lot of expertise in libraries, and the application thereof is more often than not hidden from the general public.
So I guess that the point is, as with many things, It's More Complicated Than That when it comes to things like "porn in libraries" or "age-appropriateness" challenges to materials. It makes for ideas like "parents are the final arbiters of what their children read, but no parent should have the power to arbitrate what other children read" that appear to be contradictory on their face, but are actually the result of a large amount of discussion and argument between experts of all sorts, including lawyers who make sure that we stay compliant with the law and the court decisions that are still considered good law. Clearly, we need to be better in making those complexities understandable (and, unfortunately, sound-bite-able), and we need to be able to make our expertise known better. The problem is, it's much easier to decry "porn in libraries! They want your child to be able to access porn in libraries!" than it is to say "Well, we don't want porn, but some porn will get through because we want legitimate information needs to be protected, too." So we also need the people who want to talk to us to be willing to accept those complexities instead of being swayed by simple and wrong soundbites.
