Moreover, I will interview a number of participants to share with everyone what they learn so far. Hope those who cannot present can follow up the conference by this series of interview.
So, if you will attend the conference, talk to me there! If you cannot, follow me on Twitter or this blog.
One assignment in this semester's IST605 is that each of the students visit four libraries (they could be anywhere, but not imaginary) and write a review for each of the libraries. There is a limited scope of the reviews, but basically you can write anything about the "librariness" of the libraries.
You can read my writing online, however, I am not particularly proud of mine. One of the most important reasons is that, compared to my initial enthusiasm, I didn't have a lot of time to actually do the tours, especially given my obsession with routine to do the same thing every day.
However, even just chose a number of really easy targets, I still learnt something about US libraries. As I mentioned before, I had some imaginations of what libraries in the US were like when I was in China. For example, I always imagined US libraries were, highly professional, well-managed, quite noisy, more bookless, etc, most of which are just the opposite to what's happening in China. Well, after the library tours, I realize that something are real for sure, but something are just my imagination.
Maybe the deepest impression I have is that, the libraries are really not that "bookless"; all the libraries I have visited in the US are still somewhat book-centered. Like I mentioned before, I am not saying that book-centered libraries are not good, but I am disappointed to see there are so many books in the libraries, which occupy the spaces that can be used in a more meaningful way otherwise. So it makes me thinking that reinventing a library is never easy, but it is extremely interesting.
In last week's 605, Jill asked an interesting question, what would you include in your library if you were designing/redesigning it? There were a lot of reasonable questions. However, I was thinking that there were so many factors to consider that we can never give the answer so easily. Especially when a library is renovated, one has a whole infrastructure based on which the new library will be constructed. For example, it's almost impossible to change the stacks of Carnegie Library. So what would you do?
Moreover, what the library will look like is highly dependent on what it looks like and how the community perceives the library at present. In short, one actually needs so much more information to make an informed decision. Even though I hope that I am not overstating the value of assessment, because sometimes, grabbing a random idea and try it is something worth trying.
The last impression I have during the tours is that libraries are having totally different policies in terms of noise.
On the one hand, Bird Library is the noisiest library I have ever visited. This is an especially strong cultural shock for someone coming from China, because there is a huge pressure for everyone not to speak nearly in all Chinese libraries. Libraries are supposed to be quiet there. As a result, it's interesting that the percentage of Chinese students in Bird Library's quiet zone is actually much higher than other areas. For myself, I am bothered by all the noises as a library member; however, I think it's good as a library student.
It's equally interesting to see all the signs in Onondaga County Public Library telling people not to make phone calls (or eat and drink) in the library. Actually I am more surprised to see cases like this than those mentioned above, especially when there are so many excellent examples of how libraries divide zones to separate people with different needs, like University of Houston Library. Bird Library does an decent job, but I don't think the policy is implemented well enough. Maybe it's impossible to stop people from talking in the quiet zone if you give them the right to talk in other areas in the library. So I am actually very interested to know more examples about the consequences of such policies.
Just like what Jill said in class, getting familiar with all the libraries is important for all librarians. Library tour should be an habit all librarians have.
Off the topic, Robert Dawson, a photographer, and his son, Walker, have been visiting public libraries across the US since 1994. Their blog is a must read if you want to know more about what libraries are like across the country.
The relationship between LIS education and library practices (what the relationship is, what the relationship should be, et al.) is one of the most heavily discussed topics in this field.
Andy Woodworth's blog post "Ten Things You Won’t Find On Your LIS Class Syllabus" is the last article I have ever read and made me think a lot about this topic. You can say that I have been thinking about the gaps between LIS education and the every day practices until now. And this blog post is kind of a brief reflection on this topic. In his post, Andy offered a lot of his suggestions to LIS students about the aspects that LIS education fails to cover, for example, the "new vs. old librarians" meme, many of which are very interesting in the light of New Librarianship.
Several days ago, I posted this question on Facebook. My question was:
There is definitely a gap between library science education and every day practices. But what's that?
A number of replies were received, including:
Business/financial training
Management
Actual hands on practice
Conversations/collaboration with practitioners and marketing
There is a disconnection with what the field actually needs right now
Community engagement/public affairs
From this list, you can see the inputs from both library students and library practitioners. You can say that all these ideas are very important. I interviewed a manager in Bird Library several weeks ago. The lack of management training is one of the topics he mentioned during the interview. And I have been wondering about the business model (economics) of libraries, behind the huge dispute around eBooks and other topics. However,\ the most interesting reply I got was from Aaron Tay, a senior librarian from Singapore. He asked, was there really a gap?
I don't think there is a standard answer to this question. People from different backgrounds definitely have different opinions. His answer kind of reminded me of the blog post written by Prof. Lankes about how librarians should be positive about our expertise and future. In this sense, I feel so lucky that I am in SU. I can see people around me are trying the best to engage with libraries and library practitioners in the real world. Prof. Lankes himself has a close relationship with the practitioners. Moreover, 511, which is like the most realist class I have ever taken (or a "worldview" class as what Prof. Lankes calls it), is also a very practical one, in which we need to finish all kind of tasks in groups, some of which are tied closely with the real world, like MOOC.
But I do think that, even in here, there may still be a gap between what we are doing as a student and what we are going to do as a librarian. Last week's 605 was one of the few cases where I have sensed the gap. Mallory and I gave this presentation about database for the reference class. I think this class is very practice-based; however, when I read the textbook, I cannot stop doubting that some of the information is out-of-date or maybe too idealist. So we tried to make this presentation practice-based rather than textbook-based. There were some differences we can observe, which I hope I can talk about in the future.
I have been a librarian. However, sadly, my past experiences cannot help me a lot in this issue. First, I worked in China. Second, the librarianship in China is not as professional as in the US.
I think this question will be one of the questions that will haunt me a lot in the future. However, hopefully, I can become a better librarian in the future after I try all the means to answer it.
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.
My last blog post talked about the idea that you don't have to hold an MLIS degree to become a true librarian. But even after proposing this quite heretic idea, in most of the cases, I do believe it's a really good thing that all the librarians hold an MLIS degree.
When I was a librarian in China, I was actually very surprised that most of the Chinese librarians did not have an MLIS degree (including me for sure). In my library (which is the major public library in Beijing, in case you don't know), the percentage of the librarians with an MLIS degree is lower than 10%. For a number of good academic libraries and top public libraries, the number may be higher. But for most of the public libraries, this number is even lower than us. During the last five years, I found a lot of reasons to explain this phenomenon.
I think the most important reason here is that the library science education in China is largely seen as unrelated with library practices. When I talked to other librarians in the Chinese library community, one comment I heard a lot was that, those library professors did not understand what was going on in libraries. As a result, for library practitioners, the ideas proposed by library science professors are unrealistic in many cases. While on the other hand, for many professors, the developments of most of the libraries are not satisfactory at all. The point here is not which side is right, which side is wrong. They are both right and wrong. I think the point is that, unlike the landscape in the US, there is a lack of communication and trust between the two sides because of some really profound reasons. (In China, you can hear people talking about "profound reasons" a lot. This expression is largely an excuse of people's "having no choice", like an article in Lonely Planet said. So I think I should try to avoid this cynicism, and think deeper about this issue.)
I have not attended any library school in China. As a result, I have little knowledge about what's REALLY going on there. But I do have some connections (which is another expression in the article mentioned above) with library students or people working in library schools. Moreover, my library once had a training session for librarians in cooperation with the library school in Beijing Normal University. I attended this project, and had some really bad experiences.
One the one hand, compared with the curriculum in American library schools, the courses in China are much further away from practices. In the project organized by my library and iSchool, BNU, there was even a course about database. However, the course was taught poorly. The teacher just talked about what elements did a database normally have, and how did they look like, and things like this, without any exercises. I understand the project was only an ad hoc project rather than a real course in the school. However, I still don't think the knowledge taught in a real course had strong connections with what's going on in libraries. This partly explains why many directors in public libraries (again, including the library I used to work) like recruiting students from other professions rather than library schools. One of the comments I heard our director saying a lot was that, librarians need expertise of other professions; what you do in a library is easily to be learnt. Is that so easy? I certainly don't think so. However, this is a popular mindset among library directors in China.
But on the other hand, there are even more problems in the libraries. It's hard to talk about Chinese libraries as a whole, because there are big differences between public libraries, academic libraries and special libraries. There are even greater differences between individual libraries in these categories. But it's a fact that Chinese libraries, especially public libraries, are not doing a good job. They should have done a better job as expected by the public and the professors. But in this case, the "having no choice" expression comes out again. We have some many limitations in terms of management structure and the governance. I don't want to make this issue too complex (which is really complex though). In short, all the Chinese public libraries belong to the government; and in China, the power of the government is so strong and omnipresent, especially in the "culture industry" (in China, the library is categorized into the broader term "culture industry"). The government tends to censor everything in this area. Sometimes, even new ideas come out from librarians, they cannot be implemented because the government is afraid of these ideas; or at least librarian directors think so. Moreover, in most of the cities, like Beijing, public libraries on different levels belong to different levels of governments. For example, the library I used to work, the Public Library of Chinese is part of the Government of Beijing Municipality; while district libraries in Beijing belong to different district governments. It makes extremely hard to harmonize the efforts of different library entities in the same city, and present a uniform brand to the public.
Also, living in Beijing is really hard. Librarians definitely earn much less than people in other professions. So working in Beijing as a librarian is naturally not the best decision an MLIS student can make, who has the ability to take other better paid jobs; not to mention the fact that, many libraries don't like them at all.
Another factor may be that, Chinese libraries (again, especially public libraries) are still publicly seen as the repositories of books. Namely everyone, when they think about libraries, they think about print books. My colleagues used to make a user survey about digital resources. The result of this survey indicates that, many people have no idea what is "digital resource" in the context of a library. This factor, combining the low earning, explains why the social status of librarians is very low in China.
Above is a brief version of this story. For some parts of the story, my narrative is over-simplified. One of these parts is the differences between different libraries in China. There are certainly very good libraries in China, most of which are academic and special ones, like the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Science. One of the reasons is that, it's a library located in a purely academic institution, thus, there are relatively less institutional barriers. Another reason is that, the director of the library, Dr. Xiaolin Zhang, is a truly creative library leader even around the world. You can never underestimate the library leader's influences on a specific library, especially in China.
I used to think the situations in the US are just opposite to China, that most of the librarians hold an MLIS degree. However, last year, when I read Ken Haycock's book Portable MLIS, I was surprised to find that the percentage of American public librarians who hold an MLIS was much lower than I expected too (though much higher than in China). On the other hand, with the increasing importance of subject librarians, American libraries, especially academic libraries, have a stronger need to have librarians with an MLIS degree as well as a doctor's degree in another field. Again, the real world is too complex to fit into any simple schema.
This blog post is supposed to be the first blog post about some of my thoughts about library management after taking IST 600 Collaborating Effectively in the summer. The point I want to make here is that, when I was in China, I always thought that the librarianship in the US was totally different with the one in China. However, I have know that my previous thought was too simple. For sure, there are a lot of differences, especially in terms of political environment, institutional structure and the culture. But there are also a lot of spaces for improvement in Chinese librarianship. From the strategical level, we should keep the confidence that everything can be better. And in the next few posts, I hope I can cover the topics about how to actually turn things better in China and what I (and everyone) can do to achieve the goals.
I have been back from ALA Annual for some days. During these "post-ALA" days, I had a rest (though not very good), started to do all the orientation things in SU (which are so much), had a major dispute about what librarians should be like with some of my Chinese colleagues (which proved my words in the presentation in ALA Annual was right!). And finally, I decided to brag about my trip to Anaheim, California and my experience there. (BTW, I am in Ohio, which is so hot!)
As an ALA Annual newbie, I am extremely excited about this conference. Not only because it's so huge (there seem to be two different versions about the number of participants of this conference, either 20,000 or 16,000), not only because I will give a presentation about RDA (or, Resource Description and Access) in China, not only because there are over 2000 panels to attend, in which I can learn so many things, but the most important reason may be that the conference is so important in the American library land which I am eager to understand and join. As a first time attendee, I made many mistakes. I mean, yes, I did some homework. For example, I even made business cards(hereandhere) through Vistaprint just before I went to Anaheim, and got them just before the conference through a friend. But on the other hands, I did a poor job in planning the schedule(I am really regretful for using Google Calendar, which became a mess when I arrived at California from New York; and I failed to realize that ALA Scheduler had this functionality), preparing for my presentation (if I had more time, I could have had the time to visit Disneyland Park, rather than Disney Downtown alone), not to mention the fact that, I haven't fitted in the American librarians' culture for 100% percent yet. But as a starting point, I think it's a great experience for me. I learnt a lot, I experienced a lot. I got some friends in the conference, and talked to even more librarians. In a word, this conference is AWESOME! I attended many panels (even though, sadly, most of them are about cataloging and RDA), got some really interesting ideas about everything. I talked with many great librarians in the conference, including those whose blog I have read in China, like David Lee King, Roy Tennant and Jason Griffey, and those I knew for the first time (like Topher, Shannon, Henry and Erenst). I am especially excited to attend a panel organized by Hacklibschool, which is extremely useful for me to start my Master degree's study. I also attended one of the parties in Tiki Bar in the third day. It was great, even though actually, I have never attended any parties in China (cannot believe that, huh?) and is an introvert (I am trying to work on that), as a result, I guess maybe I was the most aloof person in that party. But I have to say, the party rocks! Below is a list of all the panels I attended during the conference:
I know I missed so many interesting panels this year. But since I will attend ALA Annual 2013. So hope I can have a better experience in Chicago next year.
