December Days 2022 #6: Informative
Dec. 6th, 2022 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
That's a very nice thing to say about me, that you find me informative. Most of the things that I post are other people's words. If I provide information about them, it's probably in an attempt to be clever and tie things together on the subject. And other things that I post are personal, often opinionated. If I'm dragging cites into it, it's in an attempt to be persuasive. That probably says something, though, about a framing that places information and informative text on one end of a line and persuasion on the other end of the line and assumes they are diametrically opposed. Considering how much of rhetoric and the written word both are about convincing someone to agree with your argument, the abstraction of "informative" is probably intertwined with the concept that people who aren't part of the dominant group (whether due to melanin or wandering uteruses) resort to emotion in their arguments as a sign of logical weakness, and thus, nobody had to listen to someone from those groups is they can't argue from logic, void of emotion and personal experience.
When they do argue from pure logic positions, they're not listened to, either, because it's not about logic and emotions, it's about who has power and who doesn't. And also, the longer we study people and their opinions, the more we learn how much people claim logic and information can persuade them and how so many people who claim that are wrong, if not necessarily consciously lying. The backfire effect is strong with us, unfortunately.
As an information professional, the ideal I am supposed to strive for is to give someone pure information - a complete answer to their query, composed solely of discrete facts, without any editorializing or personal opinion inserted by any of the sources or by me in the delivery of the information. By abstracting out the human element wherever possible, we become "neutral," taking no sides, and therefore we become more authoritative and informative than the partisans. That authority is remarkably fragile, however, and relies on "facts" always aligning with the interests of the hegemon. Once facts start becoming inconvenient to the hegemonic narrative, the dry delivery of facts is seen as pure partisanship and breaking the promise of neutrality.
Because it's still not about logic, or facts, or emotions, but about power. And you can see how quickly that power moves when it feels threatened. Suddenly, because educators and librarians take their responsibilities seriously about preparing children for the world and giving them honest and accurate answers to questions (including questions they might not ask of parents and pastors for fear, or knowledge, of the answers), legislators are scrambling to interfere with what information can be transmitted or acknowledged, what procedures may or may not be performed, what materials and concepts may be stocked or taught, all in the name of "parents' rights", a fringe belief that has found traction as a convenient vehicle for abuse of power. These changes, the marked uptick in book bans, and attempts to once again associate the chosen Other with sexual predation, especially of children, are not about keeping children safe (where you could make phenomenal gains by cracking down on mass shootings and treating the mental and physical health of the students seriously) or giving parents greater insight and input into educational or library processes, decisions, and policies (where great gains could be made by making the working world less terrible so that parents can be involved in school/library board meetings, conferences, and the parent-teacher(-student) organizations that exist for those purposes.)
So now, I'm in an impossible position, where my profession expects me to provide "unbiased" information to anyone who asks, but the person asking expects me to intuit their biases and preferences and give them information that conforms to those expectations, or I'm being "biased" and there needs to be something done by the people who hold power over us so that the only acceptable biases are their biases. A fairly large portion of the profession, especially those in managerial positions, are trying to figure out how to resolve this impossible paradox so they can retain the privilege and authority of being neutral and unbiased and treating all points of view equally (at least, on any subject that might have enough people on both sides of it that only stocking one viewpoint could be seen as non-"neutral".) I have decided the supposedly neutral and unbiased position is not just impossible to achieve but not worth trying to achieve, either. Rather than be concerned about neutrality, I think the library should learn hard into being accurate in the information we provide. We can take into account popularity when it comes to fiction, but if we're going to warrant certain subjects as non-fiction, true and accurate, that's going to mean refusing to carry certain books, no matter how much people clamor for them or think they would be good "balance" for our collection on the subject.
We've got a perfect example of something that should have been refused from purchase sitting on our "popular books we've bought more of to reduce the hold lists" shelf. It's from a person with a recognizable name and an anti-vaccination organization, and the endorsement quotes on the back contain people you would associate with anti-vaccination stances. One of the endorsement quotes itself states plainly that this book is for people who believe the chapter theory that SARS-CoV-2 was planned and released on people so members of the government could massively profit from it, including the specific person this book purports to expose the "real" version of. It's popular enough that we're buying extra copies of it to reduce the hold lists, but I want to know why we're indulging people who believe in conspiracy theories and spending our limited budget on things that are unlikely to contain valid or true information in them. (They'll tell me that we can't possibly pass value judgments on the reading preferences of our populations, that would violate the Library Code of Ethics by substituting our own opinions for theirs. And then lament how so few people understand how Proper Librarianship requires an advanced degree with that same orifice and no awareness at all.)
I sift, I read, I make decisions, I try to show links that may be apparent or that may require a brain like mine to make. I try to be informative, certainly, and give you the tools and resources to draw different conclusions, if that's the way you're heading. I try to be transparent, as much as I'm aware I need to be, about what I'm doing and what my opinions are, and how I see the links. Ultimately, I'm trying to get you to see the world a little bit more from my perspective and to read and consider the same things that I have. With cites and links and appeals to my lived experiences and expertise and the lived experiences and expertise of others when I think my own won't be sufficient. All of you get to learn more about me every time I post, and consider for yourself whether I'm someone sympathetic, or informative, or not.
Because I'm certainly not neutral, personally or professionally. But I only have a limited amount of power to exercise in both of those spheres. And I won't know until I'm faced with the choice as to whether I will pretend and conform or refuse and accept consequences when someone who has more power than I do demands that I no longer be informative.
- informative (comparative more informative, superlative most informative)
- Providing information; especially, providing useful or interesting information.
- (in standards and specifications) Not specifying requirements, but merely providing information.
That's a very nice thing to say about me, that you find me informative. Most of the things that I post are other people's words. If I provide information about them, it's probably in an attempt to be clever and tie things together on the subject. And other things that I post are personal, often opinionated. If I'm dragging cites into it, it's in an attempt to be persuasive. That probably says something, though, about a framing that places information and informative text on one end of a line and persuasion on the other end of the line and assumes they are diametrically opposed. Considering how much of rhetoric and the written word both are about convincing someone to agree with your argument, the abstraction of "informative" is probably intertwined with the concept that people who aren't part of the dominant group (whether due to melanin or wandering uteruses) resort to emotion in their arguments as a sign of logical weakness, and thus, nobody had to listen to someone from those groups is they can't argue from logic, void of emotion and personal experience.
When they do argue from pure logic positions, they're not listened to, either, because it's not about logic and emotions, it's about who has power and who doesn't. And also, the longer we study people and their opinions, the more we learn how much people claim logic and information can persuade them and how so many people who claim that are wrong, if not necessarily consciously lying. The backfire effect is strong with us, unfortunately.
As an information professional, the ideal I am supposed to strive for is to give someone pure information - a complete answer to their query, composed solely of discrete facts, without any editorializing or personal opinion inserted by any of the sources or by me in the delivery of the information. By abstracting out the human element wherever possible, we become "neutral," taking no sides, and therefore we become more authoritative and informative than the partisans. That authority is remarkably fragile, however, and relies on "facts" always aligning with the interests of the hegemon. Once facts start becoming inconvenient to the hegemonic narrative, the dry delivery of facts is seen as pure partisanship and breaking the promise of neutrality.
Because it's still not about logic, or facts, or emotions, but about power. And you can see how quickly that power moves when it feels threatened. Suddenly, because educators and librarians take their responsibilities seriously about preparing children for the world and giving them honest and accurate answers to questions (including questions they might not ask of parents and pastors for fear, or knowledge, of the answers), legislators are scrambling to interfere with what information can be transmitted or acknowledged, what procedures may or may not be performed, what materials and concepts may be stocked or taught, all in the name of "parents' rights", a fringe belief that has found traction as a convenient vehicle for abuse of power. These changes, the marked uptick in book bans, and attempts to once again associate the chosen Other with sexual predation, especially of children, are not about keeping children safe (where you could make phenomenal gains by cracking down on mass shootings and treating the mental and physical health of the students seriously) or giving parents greater insight and input into educational or library processes, decisions, and policies (where great gains could be made by making the working world less terrible so that parents can be involved in school/library board meetings, conferences, and the parent-teacher(-student) organizations that exist for those purposes.)
So now, I'm in an impossible position, where my profession expects me to provide "unbiased" information to anyone who asks, but the person asking expects me to intuit their biases and preferences and give them information that conforms to those expectations, or I'm being "biased" and there needs to be something done by the people who hold power over us so that the only acceptable biases are their biases. A fairly large portion of the profession, especially those in managerial positions, are trying to figure out how to resolve this impossible paradox so they can retain the privilege and authority of being neutral and unbiased and treating all points of view equally (at least, on any subject that might have enough people on both sides of it that only stocking one viewpoint could be seen as non-"neutral".) I have decided the supposedly neutral and unbiased position is not just impossible to achieve but not worth trying to achieve, either. Rather than be concerned about neutrality, I think the library should learn hard into being accurate in the information we provide. We can take into account popularity when it comes to fiction, but if we're going to warrant certain subjects as non-fiction, true and accurate, that's going to mean refusing to carry certain books, no matter how much people clamor for them or think they would be good "balance" for our collection on the subject.
We've got a perfect example of something that should have been refused from purchase sitting on our "popular books we've bought more of to reduce the hold lists" shelf. It's from a person with a recognizable name and an anti-vaccination organization, and the endorsement quotes on the back contain people you would associate with anti-vaccination stances. One of the endorsement quotes itself states plainly that this book is for people who believe the chapter theory that SARS-CoV-2 was planned and released on people so members of the government could massively profit from it, including the specific person this book purports to expose the "real" version of. It's popular enough that we're buying extra copies of it to reduce the hold lists, but I want to know why we're indulging people who believe in conspiracy theories and spending our limited budget on things that are unlikely to contain valid or true information in them. (They'll tell me that we can't possibly pass value judgments on the reading preferences of our populations, that would violate the Library Code of Ethics by substituting our own opinions for theirs. And then lament how so few people understand how Proper Librarianship requires an advanced degree with that same orifice and no awareness at all.)
I sift, I read, I make decisions, I try to show links that may be apparent or that may require a brain like mine to make. I try to be informative, certainly, and give you the tools and resources to draw different conclusions, if that's the way you're heading. I try to be transparent, as much as I'm aware I need to be, about what I'm doing and what my opinions are, and how I see the links. Ultimately, I'm trying to get you to see the world a little bit more from my perspective and to read and consider the same things that I have. With cites and links and appeals to my lived experiences and expertise and the lived experiences and expertise of others when I think my own won't be sufficient. All of you get to learn more about me every time I post, and consider for yourself whether I'm someone sympathetic, or informative, or not.
Because I'm certainly not neutral, personally or professionally. But I only have a limited amount of power to exercise in both of those spheres. And I won't know until I'm faced with the choice as to whether I will pretend and conform or refuse and accept consequences when someone who has more power than I do demands that I no longer be informative.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-07 08:38 pm (UTC)