This is a summary of the 511 class in November 13th. In the class, the different assignment groups talked about what they found for the assignment of "How Libraries respond to Hurricane Sandy or the Election". Below are the list talked about in the class:
Hurricane Sandy:
Offering power, heat and Internet
One awesome example is the Princeton Public Library in NJ. People uploaded videos to Youtube; or read this report from School Library Journal.
Offering entertainment
Little Free Library after Hurricane Sandy
For example, this report on BoingBoing talks about a FLF in NJ.
Collaborating with FEMA to offer assistance to the victims
One really serious example is the mock election conducted by The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Besides all these awesome discussions, Dave asked a very interesting question: how can a library do beyond the building, in other word, being proactive? I don't think I can answer this question right now, but I do think it's important that librarians try to act more proactively rather than just respond.
"What if they don't care about library?" For me, this is one of the biggest questions of Participatory Librarianship/New Librarianship.
Based on my old America/China dichotomy, American libraries shouldn't have this problem, because libraries here have a much bigger user base. But after I came here, I realized that this was actually a problem here. I even heard this question in IST511 given by Professor Lankes.
But even so, this is a larger problem in China.
I heard a lot about how Chinese people don't care about libraries, public or academic ones. For example, some people just complain about why the libraries cannot offer some very specific resources, which, in fact, are offered by these libraries. This case is far from the worst. What's worse is that a huge number of people have no idea what a library is; they come to the libraries to buy books. Or worse, they don't know anything about a library.
Chinese libraries are doing marketing, in various ways. But even the best examples may not work effectively, because, guess what, people don't care. That's what I heard from some librarians from Tsinghua University Library, which is one of the best libraries in China and just won the 10th IFLA International Marketing Award earlier this year. Moreover, a large number of Chinese libraries are using Sina Weibo as a way to promote the libraries. Except for few ones, most of these libraries are suffering from either "echo chamber effect" or meaninglessly few followers. In this term, I definitely agree with Dave that marketing itself cannot make a difference.
Back to 511. In class, when one of my classmates asked Dave what if library members don't care about the library. I think Dave made a good point that we should try to find a way to make them care, either by working harder, or by finding what they need or care about, beyond libraries. So here comes the boundary of 511, since it's only about the worldview rather than any real world skills needed by a librarian, I still don't know how to actually make members care, but at least I know there is a direction that may work. That's why I look forward to the "Library Planning, Marketing, and Assessment" class next semester.
I love this sculpture outside the State Library of Victoria, Australia. It always reminds me that the threats faced by each libraries are real and potentially vital.
Even after I bought the theory of Dave that we should not talk about "save the library" any more, I still think these two points are not totally contradictory. We can be positive and awesome, yet we must know all the real problems our libraries are having and try to solve them. It's my "optimist pessimism" (or "pessimist optimism" if you like).
Notes: below are some of my notes in today's IST616 class (Resources Organization and Management) and a little bit of explanations of these pieces of notes:
1. shelving can be improved anyway -- to be not so intimidating or even win the members to use the resources.
As proved by a lot of cases, by offering graphic category signs, rather than the numbers or character-number combinations, library classification can be better understood by library members. "To win the members to use the resources" as mentioned by someone in the class is a beautiful vision.
2. how classification can be beneficial to the community -- by user behavior assessment?
As mentioned in Twitter, my central interest/concern toward cataloging (and classification) is how library cataloging can be more relevant to the library members. In terms of this, you can say that graphic display of categories is a way to make cataloging more relevant; but I feel it's not "good enough". I love the idea of some school librarians to design a classification which is more consistent with the curriculum in the school. This is a perfect example that cataloging can be relevant with the local community. It may not be easy, but it's definitely worthy trying.
Someone in the class said that DDC numbers, by large, were to be used to locate resources rather than to be understood. For me, it's an assumption, and a very dubious one. "Objective users needs assessment" (as put by Marie) is important in this term. But I still doubt how people can perceive their own needs toward library catalog. When I was a cataloger in China, I used to conduct a user needs survey about the OPAC of the library. The most surprising finding was not how awful our OPAC was. It was the fact that a lot of library members did not even use our OPAC! Since we haven't offered print catalog for many years, I wonder how people can find resources (at least effectively). Sure, the library changed a much better OPAC recently, but it's extremely hard to change people's behaviors.
3. what about having the idea that library classification is just to spot the resources
Library classification are still mainly used for physical resources. And since physical resources are becoming less important in all kinds of libraries (academic much more than public though), is it OK to maintain the current usage of classification in physical libraries, and wait for its death? (Sure, classification has a bright future to be used by Internet.)
4. How people find resources in different locations, say, in google and bookstores
Library member cannot find resourced effectively in libraries, which may or may not be because of the current cataloging and classification system. However, as someone said, people cannot find information effectively in bookstores and on the Internet! So what does it need to be a good library discovery mechanism in this term?
5. There should be a way to incorporate user's classification, but is it possible?
One random idea I have is that, library organizes a tag day (or week) in which library encourages members to make tags to library collections they think are relevant to a certain topic (for example, Halloween in this month). And libraries display all the tagged resources in a place to increase the exposure of the collections.
Tag is a dilemma for libraries. Most of the libraries are lack of a big enough member base. However, without this member base, it's hard to form a real online community, since the rate of active members is basically the same in nearly all kinds of websites.
As a cataloger, I have always been a big fan of "Killing Dewey", which doesn't mean that Dewey be eliminated from the library world, because that is both unnecessary and impossible. However, based on the local context, individual libraries should explore other possibilities other than Dewey Decimal Classification (or maybe Library of Congress Classification) or maybe find new ways to use these legacy standards. There was a great article published in the Library Journal in 2009 talking about some of the approaches US libraries had taken to deal with DDC and accompanying discussions. In some of the cases mentioned in the article, DDC was not killed, rather, it was reinforced or mixed with bookstore classification to become more user-friendly.
However, after that, the discussion of replacing/augmenting DDC has not been as active as I expected. Not until recently, did I read another article on the Digital Shift about how an elementary school library gave up Dewey Decimal Classification this summer. The big change in the library was because the librarians realized that "classification is really just a series of compromises that inevitably results in a less than perfect solution". As a result, the library adopted a much broader classification scheme, moreover, the new classification system "group books by how subjects are taught". Kudos to these librarians!
That is definitely one of the examples about "how library catalog can support learning" after this week's 511 class, in which Professor Lankes talked about theories of knowledge creation. I do think philosophical rethinking of classification as what he did is interesting. Though some level of reductionism and objectivism is inevitable and necessary for anyone to understand the world, approaching toward constructionism is good for both the libraries and the members. (Sorry for all these "-ism" words.)
Being flexible and user-friendly (or even user-generated) is always a solution here. Arranging resources by the actual use of these resources, rather than by the classification system is an idea worthy exploring. Just like the "virtue shelves" idea proposed in Professor Lankes' book, maybe a library can form subject groups (like tourism, cooking in public libraries, and anthropology, history in academic libraries), and letting these library members/experts to organize all the resources relevant to this area.
On the other hand, some of the great ideas mentioned in "Everything is Miscellaneous" written by David Weinberger may work here. With more and more virtual resources are subscribed or bought by libraries (Bookless library!), the order for libraries to organize physical resources (aka, library classification) will no longer be relevant in the future. It's not hard to notice the huge differences between the physical library shelves and online catalogs.
I was trying hard not to cross the line of cataloging and classification when I wrote this post. However, I was reminded of the "putting lipstick on pigs" discussion several years ago about whether OPAC 2.0 was necessary. In this term, I do feel that some of the "OPAC 2.0" solutions are awesome. (In case you don't know about the whole "OPAC 2.0" thing, you can see this presentation given by Mr. Dave Pattern. But on the other hand, even if you have never heard about "Library 2.0", I think it's totally fine, because people no longer talk about it. And people are talking about "discovery platform" rather than "OPAC X.0", which for me is basically the same thing.) But I totally agree that pigs with lipstick are still pigs. Like library website ("No one started their information search on a library Web site" as stated by the famous "Library Perception 2010" report), we should try to deliver our metadata in other platform that people actually are using. (Every time I thought about this issue, I was reminded of this blog post written by David Lee King.)
One revolutionary movement in the classification area is the linked data movement. With more and more institutions publishing their subject headings/classification systems as linked data (like Library of Congress' Subject Heading and classification, OCLC's FAST and even Dewey Decimal Classification!), these former library-centered data can be used by a bigger community, especially by the Internet community to truly organize not only resources owned by the libraries, but actually all the resources in the world.
This vision is awesome, though much more works need to be done before we arrive there. One thing that I recommend everyone to pay attention to is the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group. This program suggests that libraries can play a really important role in tomorrow's Internet world. Libraries are no longer the only knowledge center in the world, but we can use our expertise and metadata to become one node in the new knowledge landscape, which is an important one and can make major contributions to everyone.
To borrow the famous sentence: library classification will be dead, long live information organization!
My major as an undergraduate is history. It is interesting to be a history student in a country with a "long and glorious" history. But to be honest, I am not particularly proud of the "5,000 years" of history in China (at least, the number is what is publicized by the government and what is believed by the public). One of the reasons is that I subscribe to post-modern theory. As a result, I think history is construction in nature. Hu Shih, one of the greatest Chinese historians, once said that "history is like a girl's face, subject to makeup as one sees fit." Another reason is that, as what I can see, besides the glorious side in the Chinese history, there is also a dark side, which has been influencing the society until now.
One of the dark events is the burning of books and burying of scholars (I am surprised to know that there is a Wikipedia entry of this event) in the Qin Dynasty, which is the first and is also public seen a great dynasty in Chinese history. This event can be regarded as the starting point of the censorship in China. Here, I don't want to rephrase how censorship went through along the long history in China. But burning book is still happening in China, literally and metaphorically.
In Chinese social media world, people tend to have fierce debate about certain issues. Unfortunately, in some cases, these debates turned into personal attack. Burning the books is one of the ways some radicalists expressing anger toward some specific targets.
(This is a picture someone uploaded to Sina Weibo, because he is angry about the attitude of the author of this book in the debate between Han Han and Fang Shimin, which is a major social issue in China in recent years.)
Another event happened in 2010. In a "academic" conference about reading held in South China University of Technology, some scholars burned books which are seen by them as "garbage books". The issue of garbage books is more complex, because the quality of some of the books published in China is really low. But the point here is that, it's still our culture to burn books rather than to use conversations to solve a problem.
And what is terrible is that, censorship (a broader sense of burning books) is becoming omnipresent and stronger in China.
Michael Anti (a Chinese journalist, political blogger and dissenter) gave a speech about the recent development of censorship in China in TEDGlobal 2012. It's one of the most insightful and accurate descriptions of what is going on inside the Great Fire Wall I have seen. Based on his observation, the government's censorship and people's enlightenment are both growing, and they are having complex interactions in China. It's really interesting to see what will happen in a couple of years.
It should have been the stage for Chinese librarians, unless it isn't.
Last week, Professor Lankes talked about people should not ask "what is the future of libraries" in America, they should ask "what should be the future of libraries and librarians in a democracy". That's kind of the starting point of this blog post. It was this question that reminded me some of the difficulties of being a librarian in China under the omnipresent censorship, which librarians in America may not encounter, or at least these problems may not be as much serious here. On the other hand, just like my last blog post mentioned, people in China like to say "there is no choice" without actually trying anything. I also feel that we should not blame everything on the political system. Even though it's extremely hard to change a political system, we can do something to make everyone's life better, which, little by little, will eventually change the whole country.
Before anything, I want to share a number of stories I came across when I was a librarian in China.
The Chinese government has been banning a lot of books. Banning books are not unique in China, what makes things unique here is that you never know what books are banned. Because banned books are a sensitive topic which is highly invisible to the public even if you can find a way to talk about it in the media. This fact reminds me of a Chinese American historian, Ray Huang's books, in which he talked a lot about the different ways of the Chinese governments and the Western governments in the history. One differences he emphasized is that the Chinese governments has been lacking the ability to manage the country using statistics, thus they can only rely on moral principles and secrecy. In an environment in which even talking about banned books is sensitive, is threatened by politic forces, it's no wonder that nearly all the libraries in China have to take some sort of self-censorship measures. (Sure, another reason is that, like I have mentioned, nearly all the Chinese public libraries belong to and be managed by the government. And Chinese universities are highly bureaucratic too, which makes Chinese academic libraries' situations equally bad.)
In China, publication is strictly controlled. Every book to be published in this country need to be approved by the government, which means that libraries cannot buy unapproved book published in China, because these books hardly exist. For materials published outside the country, there is only one legit channel for libraries to buy these stuff, which is the National Publication Import and Export Corporate. I was a cataloger dealing with English books. There were several times when I cataloged books about really sensitive topics, like Dalai Lama, but in these books there were notes forbidding these books to be public accessible. There was another time when an organization in the US wanted to donate some English books to us, but to get these books, our library had to get permissions from several government departments and ensure that there was no book with "inappropriate" contents.
Another story I can think of is our library's public lectures. Public lectures are one of the most popular projects in our library. There are basically lectures in the library everyday, but lectures held on weekends are especially well-attended. Once upon, one of my colleagues who's in charge of the lecture project had an idea to invite a very famous Taiwanese talk show host, Kevin Tsai (who has the same number of followers in Sina Weibo as Barack Obama in Twitter) to give a lecture in our library. Because Mr. Tsai is also famous for his love of reading, so it'll be a perfect idea not only to promote reading, attract his fans, but also to attract the eye balls of the mass media. This lecture could have been awesome, however, it was rejected by our director. I heard the reasons our director gave to reject this idea were, first, he is a Taiwanese; second, he is a gay, both of which are kind of sensitive. So the director thought even if she approved this idea, the Bureau of Culture in Beijing would definitely rejected it, and may blame her for not rejecting the idea by himself.
Ironically, there is this "great development and flourishing of socialist culture" policy in China recent years. To achieve this "goal", a large amount of money was invested in Chinese public as well as academic libraries. The results? The results are interesting but definitely beyond the scope of this post. But in short, no matter how much money be invested, there is no reason that great libraries can exist in a undemocratic country. (To be noted, there are some libraries in China doing relatively better jobs in their relatively loose environments.)
As a maybe too simplistic map, Chinese librarians should give up their hope to rely on the government. They should be more brave to make changes, they should embrace the people, and they should try to influence the society more rather than remain socially aloof. Those are the first step before any substantial changes to be made.
