library semantics

 

The world of libraries seems to have a real on-going problem with semantics. Why is this? Perhaps it is a profession that naturally attracts a group of people to whom the detail is very important...

The Special Libraries Association are going through an apparently tortuous process in order to rename themselves - the current choice is ASKPro (swiftly and inevitably colloqualised as ASSPro) and this has caused quite the amount of fuss. I can understand the rationale (the old name no longer reflected what they do, and people didn't understand what it meant) but all modern name changes ever seem to do is show that, these days, it's almost impossible to think of a decent name.

Another semantic debate rears its head at regular intervals - what to call library users. Patrons, customers, or just users? Clients, even? We've heard it all before so I won't go into detail here - basically a lot of people are phobic of the term 'customer' and all that implies, as I was once; these people often prefer patron. But now I work for a forward-thinking academic library, I've come round to thinking that customer is essential terminology - it marks a shift in the way we used to treat our users (austerely) to the way we do now (with enthusiasm, and a level of customer-service which implies we'll bend over backwards to help rather than just tell them to shush all the time). I believe a customer expects a higher quality of service than a patron does, and we should be aiming to provide the former. Helene Blowers makes a good point also that traditionally patrons support institutions, whereas institutions support customers... All this stuff is important because, as I've now said lots of times before, libraries have undergone a seismic shift in what they do and the way they do it, but public perception is struggling to catch up.

Then there is the well-worn issue of what we should call ourselves. The rationale is similar to the SLA's - 'librarian' seems inadequate as a moniker, because what we do is so diverse these days. We could of course just accept that librarian now covers a greater number of bases, but so entrenched are the stereotypes about librarians (don't get me started on this) that there is a feeling we need a clean break - librarian will always mean 'old maid in an austere and joyless place of silence' however much we move in new directions, so we need a term for ourselves which shakes off the old associations and reflects our broader roles. I'd always been happy with Information Professional to cover the myriad things we do these days, until a recent conversation with a Norwegian friend who knew nothing of my job. I told him I was an Information Professional and, not being familiar with the term, he looked it up. He found this (the italics are my own):

An information professional or an information specialist is a person who works with information science, libraries, museums, or archives, although the field is changing rapidly to include other disciplines. [So far so good] Typically, an Information Professional is deemed as such only after receiving the degree of Master of Science in Information (or Library) Science from a university accredited by the American Library Association (ALA), the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), or comparable regional body. [Seriously?!]

For some reason, this requirement of a degree had passed me by. I've always been slightly confused about what paraprofessional meant, and all that stuff - now I'm starting to understand. I think it's a real shame that a good catch-all term for what we do gives off a slight aroma of elitism and has something of the 'us and them' about it. Not least because loads of otherwise excellent library staff (who are professional in every other sense of the word) are suddenly ruled out from being part of the group - perhaps they are every bit as able (and often more so) than those who have their Masters, but are unable to afford to do the qualification? I've been calling myself an Information Professional for ages - I didn't realise that it was only actually last Thursday, when I got confirmation of my MSc, that I became one...

For my money, Information Professional should just be a term referring to all those who work in the Information Profession. I want to know what others think about this too. Do you agree, disagree, or do you think we should all stop worrying about semantics entirely, for own mental health..?

the future of humans in a self-service library world

At the CILIP Graduate Day last month, a couple of questions came up both in the panel discussion and after my own presentation, about the future of actual living breathing staff in libraries. It’s a fair enough thing to ask about on a day designed to some degree to attract people into the profession – will there even be a profession to be a part of in 20 years time?  I answered positively at the time - I’ve since given my off-the-cuff analogy with drum-machines a bit more thought, so I figured it was time to make the great drumming and librarianship connection in a blog post…  

I’m a drummer, so this is a subject I know something about. In the early 80s, the advent of the drum machine seemed to sound a death-knell for drummers. Not only were drum machines cheaper by the hour than humans, they were part of a trend towards new technology which had the effect of making those artists clinging to the old ways look old-fashioned. (In the end, very few groups I can think of survived the 80s without taking on some drum-machine action, and partly as a result of this and largely as a result of the whole musical culture of the time, a hell of a lot of God-awful music was produced during the period. Even proper rock bands like Led Zep were determined to embrace the new technologies and not been seen as dinosaurs as the new decade dawned – I’ve convinced that only the end of the group caused by the death of their drummer, the great John Bonham, prevented them from taking a path into naff 80s technology led musical hell which would have been entirely prohibitive to the legendary status they enjoy today. But I digress…) A lot of drummers panicked, and many quit the music business entirely, to get proper jobs.

Two things emerged from this. Firstly, the smart drummers learned to programme drum machines, and were able to continue to earn a living by using the new technology rather than fighting it. Secondly, after the initial rush to use programmed beats, many people eventually missed the human element and went right back to employing real humans to play real drums. (There’s also a third aspect, which is that there is a big trend at the moment towards the live reproduction of programmed drums during gigs; through the usual ‘knowing someone who knows someone’ type sequence of events, I’ve been lucky enough to play drums as part of a house band at a live Hip-Hop night for the likes of Roots Manuva, Estelle, Omar and many other people who use programming on their records and a full-band live).

So the net result is a relatively happy coexistence between the technology and the human input, with many of those session drummers who stuck at it in the 80s still able to make a good living today. Now, I’m not saying we in the library industry should be learning to programme self-issue machines. But there is a clear parallel in that we can either beat a hasty retreat and lock ourselves in a cupboard, or we can work with the technology and trust in the fact that there is nothing quite like taking away human interaction to show how much it is ultimately valued by customers / patrons / users. If self-service machines are good for the library, we should embrace them – even if jobs are at stake in the short-term, what is right for the customer is right for the customer and should be seen as a positive thing. If it turns out that an all self-service model is not right for many customers (as I suspect will be the case) then we need to be ready to work either instead of or with the machines and the technology.

My all-time favourite drummer Vinnie Colaiuta was asked: In many situations , has the role of the studio drummer been reduced to simply to the "overdub guy" replacing pre-recorded parts? His answer could just as well have been to the question, In many situations has the role of librarians been reduced to simply ‘the person who offers help when the self-service machinery doesn’t suffice'?:

Yes- and just why should that be considered a "reduction"? What kind of attitude is that? It's still a job to be done, and either you do it or you don't. What's the big whoop?

In the context of the article, he expands upon this theme and talks about learning to work with the technology. Which is why you’ll find the name of this incredibly virtuosic musician, who has played with Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell and Herbie Hancock and so on, listed on the liner notes of the Pussycat Dolls album, and the Destiny’s Child LP. He was able to be flexible, to adapt, and to carry on providing a service – just as we Information Professionals will have to do.

-   thewikiman

Library Routes hits 50!

The Library Routes Project is still in its first month and has already passed the 50 contributions mark (with over 3,500 people having accessed it) – I think that’s pretty good for a new project like this, and it means the Wiki really does provide a useful resource for aspiring or current Information Professionals, wondering how and why people got into the job. Thank you very much to everyone who has contributed so far! And if you've been wondering about writing your own post on the subject and haven't quite got around to it, then now is as good a time as any.

Woodsiegirl has been promoting the Project via the latest issue of Gazette (see page 12), and there may also be an article relating to the subject forthcoming in one of the CILIP Career Development Group newsletters.

There’s a couple of things still to sort out, though. The first is how to make the Wiki more international in terms of contributors – it is fantastic to have so many people from the UK getting involved, but it would be great to broaden the scope to other countries too. The second is how to make this whole thing some kind of annual event, much in the same way as Library Day in the Life is; a resource like this needs the value of annual exposure in order to draw in contributions from new professionals, and to expand, and to generally retain its relevance. Any thoughts on how we can achieve these? Let me know.

In other news, my local public library in York is closing for 6 months of major refurbishment, in order to become an Explore centre with all the obligatory cafes etc that modern libraries have. I’m told that during its closure, not only can people take books, CDs and DVDs out for the entire period without incurring any fines, but the limit on how many an individual can take has been rescinded! So you could literally grab 100 books and keep them until April. I think this is brilliant – it is a nifty way of getting some of the stock out of the way, of course, saving on storage costs and logistical nightmares. And, it is a great example of a library doing a decidedly non-stereotypical-libraryish type of thing – not getting uptight about the stock, relaxing the rules, and allowing the customers to benefit from difficult circumstances. Good stuff!

 - thewikiman

Sshhh...! Bags Revisted

Jo Alcock wrote an excellent blog-post today, about marketing and libraries. She suggested 6 ways in which we could apply some retail principles to marketing libraries, including this:

“Wouldn’t it be great if on the edge of the shelves (not at the entrance as people don’t tend to know if they’ll need one until they’ve examined the stock) there were a collection of reusable bags, like supermarket bags for life, that people could use to carry their books around the library (thus enabling them to carry more) and then offer them the option of purchasing when they borrow the books.”

In light of that, it seems pertinent to revisit the story of the Leeds University Library Sshhh…! bags, which I talked about in my CILIP Graduate Day Presentation as an example of getting positive stories about libraries into the Media.

Leeds as a University is big on eco issues, and has won all sorts of awards in that area. The Library had previously given out loads of plastic bags for students to put big stacks of books in, and wanted a greener alternative. The result was the Sshhh…! bag; a library-branded, suitably-sized book bag, made of highly biodegradable jute, by a carbon-neutral company on behalf of the library. Here is a picture of one, in Venice, for reasons I’ll get on to:     

 The bags turned out to be an absolutely extraordinary success, and the Library has now sold well over 15,000 of them. The interesting thing about this is it ties in with both with what Jo was saying, and what Cynthia Shamel says about ‘using the techniques of marketing’ in libraries; the bags were released in many different bright colours, but only in limited numbers so as to increase demand. (Incidentally, I can claim no part in this success, I’m just reporting it; Katy Sidwell, one of our Subject Librarians for the Sciences, came up with the whole thing I believe, and Liz Waller, our former Head of Public Service Strategy, came up with the marketing strategy stuff). This resulted in a huge group of people who automatically bought a new bag as soon as a new colour came out, regardless of how many they already had (in fact many people attempted to collect every single one). A FaceBook group was formed, called I have a Sshhh bag and am therefore amazing!!!  There were also super-limited edition and highly sought-after Graduation versions, and ones which said “My Other Bag Says Sshhh…!” on the side… They continue to sell very well, and be something of a must-have fashion accessory. If you ever come to Leeds, you’ll see them – even if you don’t come on to campus, there’ll be plenty of people in town with a brightly coloured Sshhh bag. 

The ‘positive stories in the media’ bit comes in because the success was picked up by many sections of the media, and also used as examples in various conferences and papers. The Guardian ran a story about it, and there remains a site on which people post photos of their Sshhh bags in unlikely locations around the globe – here is a screen-grab showing the map of the locations (and on the site itself, each time you click on a bag you see the photo of it in situ, hence the Venetian example above):  

 It is a great thing all round – environmentally sound, and a positive library-based story showing how we can indeed learn from retail, and successfully implement a few of that sector’s marketing techniques.

- thewikiman

PS: Incidentally, I used to sit on the Environmental Coordinator’s Group at Leeds, and we were charged with coming up with new versions of the bag: new slogans etc. Genius suggestions from the House of Wikiman that were, shockingly, NOT taken on by the Group included:   

 I’ll be honest, I have about a million more of these (Green Consumerism is a poor substitute for Collective Action. But in the absence of the latter, Buy a Bag!) so maybe I should just set up my own company, perhaps call it Eco-Cynical…