To be honest, I was a subscriber of the "Reference is Dead" theory before I took the reference course this semester. Part of the reasons may be that I was not a person who would ask any question to any librarian in person in a library. Moreover, at least in China (and maybe partly in the US), the low usage of reference service in libraries is a fact.
It's very interesting that in last week's #libchat discussion on Twitter, a question "Is reference dead?" was raised up. I believe saying anything is dead is hard, because "being dead" has many possible meanings, which must be defined before it makes any sense. For example, when we say "print books are dead", do we mean printed books are obsolete (which is certain not the case), or will be totally obsolete, or will be largely obsolete, or all the print books are or will be somehow destroyed literally? (And in this case, neither of the possible explanations may not be accurate enough, which is another story though.) And in the "reference is dead" case, too, there may be different definitions of this expression, from no one is using reference, to reference is not longer sustainable for libraries, to reference is not relevant to the members, etc.
But what was really interesting about the #libchat discussion last week is that, it showed how different libraries are or could be in everything. The reference services can be either very popular (so popular that marketing is not even necessary at all), or seasonal, or totally obsolete and then was cancelled. The diversity between different kinds of libraries and individual libraries, which comes from the combination of the different ways the communities and the librarians perceive the libraries and services the libraries offer, is another difficulty for such statements about something being dead.
What makes thing even harder to be predicted is the larger landscape, which I dare not dig deeper in this post. But just like Keri said, "Ready reference is pretty much dead", certainly, because of Google and other social media platforms. However, after taking this course, I do realize that there are some values in the library reference service, regardless of the larger landscape and the future of library reference.
Maybe the biggest value of library reference work that I failed to realize is its representation of the human side of the library. Technology can be too cold and intimidating to library members. In order to be a community center, the human side of the library cannot be more emphasized. After all, not everyone is becoming a Cyborg.
Still another value that is represented in the library reference work is librarians' information expertise. We have the abilities to find, evaluate and use information effectively, we have the vision to use these abilities to help other people and improve the world in a proper way. That's why we are the supermen/superwomen in the information world. That's something we can and should be proud of ourselves. That is our identity no matter we are doing what work in what environment, library reference being alive or dead, libraries being alive or dead. That's why Dave Lankes said "An empty room with a librarian is a library."
I really love the final assignment of this course to do a pathfinder of the topic we are interested in. I kind of regret that I chose a topic that is too academic, "historical anthropology", because it seems that non-academic topic may be more helpful and relevant to the world. As a library student, this assignment reminds me that being a librarian means combining the information skills with the interests I have and share all these products to everyone. Pathfinder is one and only one of the means to do that. But that, being a librarian, is awesome!
Showing posts with label new librarianship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new librarianship. Show all posts
Sunday, December 9, 2012
How Libraries Respond to Hurricane #Sandy or the #Election: A List from #IST511
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:
Kudos to all the classmates in 511!
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
- For example, in Queens Public Library or Cape May County Library
- Offering storytime
- A really awesome example is from Queens Public Library
- Donating food
- Bookmobile
- An example comes from Brooklyn Public Library who offered bookmobiles to the affected area.
Election:
- Library card as voting ID
- For example, in Memphis, TN
- Having panels on voting issues
- An example is the Towson branch of the Baltimore County Public Library
- As a part of the "Searching for Democracy: A Public Conversation about the Constitution" Project in San Diego Public Library, local author Mark E. Smith talked about why we need to stop voting
- Pathfinder
- Political Cartoon
- Library of Congress' political cartoon exhibition
- Mock election
- One really serious example is the mock election conducted by The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Kudos to all the classmates in 511!
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Notes on LJ & SLJ 2012 Library Ebook Usage Reports
I am glad to read LJ & SLJ 2012 Library Ebook Usage Reports. I wrote down some facts that especially impressed me when I read the "Academic Library" and "Public Library" parts. (see below)
An impression I had about the general US library eBook market is that eBook is a much more urgent reality for public libraries than for academic libraries. I am really surprised to see the collection and circulation numbers in public libraries this year, which are increasing in a much faster speed than I expected. (Circulation number from 11,000 last year to 44,000 this year, WOW!) Another difference here is public awareness, low level of awareness is a bigger problem for academic libraries.
But on the other hand, it's interesting to see that eBooks represent a higher percentage of acquisition budgets in academic libraries than public libraries. I am not sure how much of the difference can be explained by the limited budgets of public libraries. But clearly, budget is a huge issue in a broader term.
For library eBooks, I cannot agree more with a comment by Professor Dave Lankes, that publishers will not sell eBooks to us just because we complain. We should actually do something more constructive.
Like my previous post mentioned, OA is definitely something all libraries must participate in unity as soon as possible. Some libraries are adopting the eBook model developed by Douglas County Public Library, but more libraries should join, because it ensures that libraries own the eBooks rather than just subscribing them. Moreover, libraries should participate the campaigns on Unglue.It to unglue eBooks to public domain. It doesn't take each participants a lot of money; but if more people/libraries can join, we will definitely have more free resources in the future.
My note:
Academic Library:
Public Library:
An impression I had about the general US library eBook market is that eBook is a much more urgent reality for public libraries than for academic libraries. I am really surprised to see the collection and circulation numbers in public libraries this year, which are increasing in a much faster speed than I expected. (Circulation number from 11,000 last year to 44,000 this year, WOW!) Another difference here is public awareness, low level of awareness is a bigger problem for academic libraries.
But on the other hand, it's interesting to see that eBooks represent a higher percentage of acquisition budgets in academic libraries than public libraries. I am not sure how much of the difference can be explained by the limited budgets of public libraries. But clearly, budget is a huge issue in a broader term.
For library eBooks, I cannot agree more with a comment by Professor Dave Lankes, that publishers will not sell eBooks to us just because we complain. We should actually do something more constructive.
Like my previous post mentioned, OA is definitely something all libraries must participate in unity as soon as possible. Some libraries are adopting the eBook model developed by Douglas County Public Library, but more libraries should join, because it ensures that libraries own the eBooks rather than just subscribing them. Moreover, libraries should participate the campaigns on Unglue.It to unglue eBooks to public domain. It doesn't take each participants a lot of money; but if more people/libraries can join, we will definitely have more free resources in the future.
My note:
Academic Library:
- There are no dramatic changes in this field after 2010. And the relationship between vendors and libraries are not more contentious.
- EBooks represent 9.6% of academic libraries acquisition budgets; and participants predict that the number will increase to 19.5% by 2017.
- 83% of the institutions say they purchase eBooks of "perpetual access" (which may or may not mean that the library own the eBook); 71% choose "subscription".
- The percentage of institutions which are using PDA increase from 16% two years ago to 31% in this survey.
- 52% of the participants identify low perception as the barrier to user eBook access, which has been lower since 2010. But 50% of the participants say that users prefer print, which has been increasing after 2010.
Public Library:
- The mean number of eBooks offered by libraries increase from 4,350 last year to 10,000 this year, while circulation increase from 11,000 last year to 44,000 this year.
- EBook reader (90%) is the dominating device used by library members to read eBooks borrowed from public libraries; tablet (66%) is the second most used device. 24% of the public libraries lend eBook reader for home use.
- Physical barriers are the most important barriers to eBook access, like the long time to wait and limited number of eBooks available.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
"What if they don't care about the library?"
"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.
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.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Some ramdom thoughts after this week's #ist616 class
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.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Book-more libraries and book-less libraries #ist511
First of all, I am a big supporter of all the bookless libraries (one reason is that, I think different forms of libraries can help us better realize the nature of LIBRARY). There has been a number of examples and a lot of articles to talk about them in the last decade. In short, this movement (if you like) can be traced back to Fiedler Engineering Library in Kansas State University which was opened in 2000 (which is hard to believe, 2000?!). In 2010, this movement became famous because Stanford University's Frederick Emmons Terman Engineering Library got rid of most of its physical resources. After that, Applied Engineering and Technology Library in UTSA adopted this bookless model in a more radical way, which was called "the first completely bookless library on a university or college campus" (source: Library Journal). Another really famous example outside traditional settings is Khan Academy.
There are a number of things to be noted:
Second, even as a radicalist in this term, I can think of how much objection the libraries will face then they make such a decision (I heard a lot of stories about all the objections Bird Library was suffered from when it decided to move away some of its physical resources -- BTW, when I first visited Bird Library this summer, my first impression was, why there were so many books!).
Library members love books. Again, in OCLC's "Library Perception 2010" report, after the economic failure, more American people connect public libraries with books. But on the other hand, people also love spaces. Prioritizing strategies in the local context are so important here. But all these things remind me of the tension between "meeting users' needs" and "creating new needs". As shown by iPhone and many other examples, users' needs are created. In most of the cases, users don't know what they need (they just know what they are using and how they like it, based on Atlas). So listening to the users is a dilemma. How do we take what we hear from the library members?
Let's put this topic in the back burner first. Talking about the public perceptions of libraries, in China, libraries are even more strongly tied with books. Maybe it's because "图书馆" (the Chinese word of "library") has "图书" ("book" in Chinese) in it. The connection of libraries and books in the language is so straightforward makes it extremely hard to change public's opinions about what a library is.
Well, the previous statement may not be totally true. First, maybe Chinese librarians have not worked hard to change public's perceptions. A lot of librarians themselves believe that librarians are ONLY about books. Second, sometimes, Chinese people don't know what a library is; many of they cannot even distinguish between a bookstore and a library. In short, they don't give libraries a shit. Third, acquiring how many books each year is still one of the most important factor to assess a library and library director in China (yes, we have a national library assessment system).
In a word, most of the Chinese libraries are still going toward "book-more".
There was a very interesting news several years ago that, in order to have more spaces in the library, Cornell University Library decided to get rid of some repetitive collections, so they sold these books to Tsinghua University Library in Beijing (which is one of the best academic library in China). In the library I used to work, what we can hear every year is that, we spend how much money to buy how many books this year, how many percent more than last year.
To some extent, it's understandable that collection is still the number one issue in most of the Chinese libraries. First of all, as mentioned above, it's still the mindset of the public and some of the librarians and library directors that libraries are only about books. Second, at least in public libraries, people are still complaining there are not enough books to borrow. There are still strong needs for books In China; even in the biggest cities like Beijing, the lack of a functioning community library system makes a few central library working really hard but still cannot meet the most citizen's reading needs. There is hardly a robust eBook ecosystem in China, so relying on physical books is the reasonable choice. The widely adoption of book ATM machines in some major Chinese cities is one of the results of this environment.
But there is also another side of the story. Like what was mentioned in the last post, there is a strong need in the public for library spaces rather than just resources and services, especially in academic libraries. So it's hard for me to understand why Tsinghua University decided to buy all these books from Cornell. Even on the general level, more and more academic and even public libraries find it hard to have enough space to restore all the physical resources in recent years, like what has been happening in the US. Some libraries (like Peking University Library and many others) already have their off-campus repository facilities.
The situations on the eBooks market are becoming better, with some big online retailers and social media platforms devoting themselves to digital publishing and a number of public libraries joining this wave. Moreover, more and more libraries, public and academic, are using tablets and eBook readers as facilitator to learning, with pre-loaded digital resources offered by some content vendors.
With all these developments going on, it's expected that the "library-book" mindset among librarians will change in the future. However, more efforts should be put to change public's opinion about libraries. Librarians cannot wait for the public opinion to change; they should do something to make it change. The easiest answer here is to prepare for enough alternatives to physical books, and communicate our values to the public. It's not a short and easy process. Conversation is always endless.
There are a number of things to be noted:
- Most of the bookless libraries are college libraries.
- Most of the bookless libraries are natural science or applied science libraries.
- Only a few of these examples are truly libraries with no physical resources at all; most of them just remove most of the physical resources.
Second, even as a radicalist in this term, I can think of how much objection the libraries will face then they make such a decision (I heard a lot of stories about all the objections Bird Library was suffered from when it decided to move away some of its physical resources -- BTW, when I first visited Bird Library this summer, my first impression was, why there were so many books!).
Library members love books. Again, in OCLC's "Library Perception 2010" report, after the economic failure, more American people connect public libraries with books. But on the other hand, people also love spaces. Prioritizing strategies in the local context are so important here. But all these things remind me of the tension between "meeting users' needs" and "creating new needs". As shown by iPhone and many other examples, users' needs are created. In most of the cases, users don't know what they need (they just know what they are using and how they like it, based on Atlas). So listening to the users is a dilemma. How do we take what we hear from the library members?
Let's put this topic in the back burner first. Talking about the public perceptions of libraries, in China, libraries are even more strongly tied with books. Maybe it's because "图书馆" (the Chinese word of "library") has "图书" ("book" in Chinese) in it. The connection of libraries and books in the language is so straightforward makes it extremely hard to change public's opinions about what a library is.
Well, the previous statement may not be totally true. First, maybe Chinese librarians have not worked hard to change public's perceptions. A lot of librarians themselves believe that librarians are ONLY about books. Second, sometimes, Chinese people don't know what a library is; many of they cannot even distinguish between a bookstore and a library. In short, they don't give libraries a shit. Third, acquiring how many books each year is still one of the most important factor to assess a library and library director in China (yes, we have a national library assessment system).
In a word, most of the Chinese libraries are still going toward "book-more".
There was a very interesting news several years ago that, in order to have more spaces in the library, Cornell University Library decided to get rid of some repetitive collections, so they sold these books to Tsinghua University Library in Beijing (which is one of the best academic library in China). In the library I used to work, what we can hear every year is that, we spend how much money to buy how many books this year, how many percent more than last year.
To some extent, it's understandable that collection is still the number one issue in most of the Chinese libraries. First of all, as mentioned above, it's still the mindset of the public and some of the librarians and library directors that libraries are only about books. Second, at least in public libraries, people are still complaining there are not enough books to borrow. There are still strong needs for books In China; even in the biggest cities like Beijing, the lack of a functioning community library system makes a few central library working really hard but still cannot meet the most citizen's reading needs. There is hardly a robust eBook ecosystem in China, so relying on physical books is the reasonable choice. The widely adoption of book ATM machines in some major Chinese cities is one of the results of this environment.
But there is also another side of the story. Like what was mentioned in the last post, there is a strong need in the public for library spaces rather than just resources and services, especially in academic libraries. So it's hard for me to understand why Tsinghua University decided to buy all these books from Cornell. Even on the general level, more and more academic and even public libraries find it hard to have enough space to restore all the physical resources in recent years, like what has been happening in the US. Some libraries (like Peking University Library and many others) already have their off-campus repository facilities.
The situations on the eBooks market are becoming better, with some big online retailers and social media platforms devoting themselves to digital publishing and a number of public libraries joining this wave. Moreover, more and more libraries, public and academic, are using tablets and eBook readers as facilitator to learning, with pre-loaded digital resources offered by some content vendors.
With all these developments going on, it's expected that the "library-book" mindset among librarians will change in the future. However, more efforts should be put to change public's opinion about libraries. Librarians cannot wait for the public opinion to change; they should do something to make it change. The easiest answer here is to prepare for enough alternatives to physical books, and communicate our values to the public. It's not a short and easy process. Conversation is always endless.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Occupying Seats in Chinese Libraries #ist511
One topic one can read frequently in the professional literature as well as the news reports about Chinese libraries is the "occupying seats" issue. It happens mainly in college libraries: too many students need to use academic libraries as a space for learning compared with the libraries' capacities. In public libraries too, especially in the vacations, you can see so many students waiting for entering a seat in the library's learning space. I cannot say that the large number of population is the only reason here, but obviously, it is one of the issues that makes Chinese librarianship unique. (So I am kind of curious about how libraries in India are dealing with these issues, if there is any.)
This phenomenon, by the way, is one of the best counterarguments against "Chinese people don't use libraries". They do! They have a need for libraries, though they may not need as much of some services and resources offered by the libraries and expected by the librarians. There seems to be a strong need for library space in such cases. (On the other hand, unfortunately, the focuses of most of the Chinese libraries, public or academic, are still resources or even physical books. I will talk about this issue in the next post.)
On the other hand, a lot of students who get a seat in the library just don't study there immediately. They try to use some ways to take this seat and come back later. This behavior makes the whole situation worse.
You can see a lot of these amusing pictures online:
There are a number of solutions to this problem, one of which is that, some academic libraries in China locks all the learning spaces, and they sell the seats to the students! This policy, as simple as it is, was severely criticized by some Chinese librarians.
Recently, Beijing Normal University Library (I got my undergraduate degree there) had a new policy (in Chinese) that, during certain hours in a day, everyone who wants to get a seat in the library must register in a machine in advance. If they leave the library, they need to log-off in the machine too. And if one is found to break the rule for three times, he/she will be deprived of the right to get a seat in the library for 30 days.
It doesn't sound like a very humanized policy because of the punishment part. However, I don't think this policy is totally unacceptable. It's interesting to know that some other libraries around the world are using this device too (like this Korean library). What makes me feel better about this policy is that, several days ago, the library tweeted a message in Weibo (again, Chinese version of Twitter) that public opinions about this seat management system are welcome.
Besides good management, at least in some cases, the problem in the library is only a part of the bigger issue on the campus. For example, in some universities, all the classrooms are forbidden to be used for anything other than classes. In such cases, it's inevitable that the library is overly crowded. The point is that, rather than just taking care of themselves, libraries under such a condition should try to do something to fix the bigger problem too (as early as possible).
So again, libraries should have conversations with all the stakeholders in this case. They should talk with universities to open all the available learning spaces on the campus. They should also talk with the students about the management measures and maybe about how they can find a space to learn more easily. For public libraries, one of the solutions is to establish a community library system, which also involves conversation, though a much more complex one.
Chinese librarianship is different with US librarianship on many big and subtle aspects. (for example, it may be hard to image the lack of space issue in the US libraries) However, even so, some basic principles, like conversation, can be applicable in China to at least ease the problem.
This phenomenon, by the way, is one of the best counterarguments against "Chinese people don't use libraries". They do! They have a need for libraries, though they may not need as much of some services and resources offered by the libraries and expected by the librarians. There seems to be a strong need for library space in such cases. (On the other hand, unfortunately, the focuses of most of the Chinese libraries, public or academic, are still resources or even physical books. I will talk about this issue in the next post.)
On the other hand, a lot of students who get a seat in the library just don't study there immediately. They try to use some ways to take this seat and come back later. This behavior makes the whole situation worse.
You can see a lot of these amusing pictures online:
(One student used her coat to occupy the seat. Photo from: http://www.guokr.com/post/82085/)
(This time, it's a toy bear.)
(The queue of students waiting for entering the library very early in the morning, which is so not uncommon in China. Photo from: http://www.hinews.cn/news/system/2012/09/03/014900309.shtml)
Recently, Beijing Normal University Library (I got my undergraduate degree there) had a new policy (in Chinese) that, during certain hours in a day, everyone who wants to get a seat in the library must register in a machine in advance. If they leave the library, they need to log-off in the machine too. And if one is found to break the rule for three times, he/she will be deprived of the right to get a seat in the library for 30 days.
It doesn't sound like a very humanized policy because of the punishment part. However, I don't think this policy is totally unacceptable. It's interesting to know that some other libraries around the world are using this device too (like this Korean library). What makes me feel better about this policy is that, several days ago, the library tweeted a message in Weibo (again, Chinese version of Twitter) that public opinions about this seat management system are welcome.
Besides good management, at least in some cases, the problem in the library is only a part of the bigger issue on the campus. For example, in some universities, all the classrooms are forbidden to be used for anything other than classes. In such cases, it's inevitable that the library is overly crowded. The point is that, rather than just taking care of themselves, libraries under such a condition should try to do something to fix the bigger problem too (as early as possible).
So again, libraries should have conversations with all the stakeholders in this case. They should talk with universities to open all the available learning spaces on the campus. They should also talk with the students about the management measures and maybe about how they can find a space to learn more easily. For public libraries, one of the solutions is to establish a community library system, which also involves conversation, though a much more complex one.
Chinese librarianship is different with US librarianship on many big and subtle aspects. (for example, it may be hard to image the lack of space issue in the US libraries) However, even so, some basic principles, like conversation, can be applicable in China to at least ease the problem.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Censorship and Chinese libraries
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
On Oakland's people's library
I may have read this piece of news earlier this week, but when I read about the story that the people's library in Oakland was shut down by the police yesterday, I was both excited by the efforts of the volunteers who established the library and was kind of sad about the result.
According to the news, some activists in Oakland took over the building of an abandoned library in the morning of this Monday, which was one of the Carnegie's donations originally established in 1918 and has been closed since 1970s until this Monday.
After occupying the library, the volunteers coming from everywhere filled the library with donated books and erected banners to make it working again. But that's not all. They tried to get the community to engage! According to one of the occupiers' narration:
As I mentioned earlier, I have been reading Professor Lankes' Atlas of New Librarian recently. This event made me excited not only because it is a perfect example of how libraries can help to improve the society in a broader sense, but also because it illustrates what librarians are.
Definitely, librarians are not only those people who work in a library. On the one hand, if one is working in a library in a "wrong" manner, I don't think he is qualified to be a librarian (I am certainly not unbiased toward this issue). On the other hand, as Professor Lankes puts, people with an MLIS degree, no matter where he/she works, he/she can still do the job like a librarian. But here, this story may extend Professor Lankes' statement further. Because there is little information about these activists' professional backgrounds, it's safe to assume that little of them have a MLIS degree. So we can say, even if you do not work in a library nor have an MLIS degree, you can still be a librarian by doing things like this, to sharing information to promote knowledge creation in your community.
Sadly, according to the news, this library was closed by the police last night. But on the other hand, even this library being open for less than a week, we can still expect the little changes it posed to the local community and the society as a whole will turn out to be something great. Just like we can see the influences of Occupy Wall Street Library in this library by its name "people's library", we can expect this library inspire other people to make our society better in the future.
For more information, you can follow Twitter hashtag: #peopleslibrary
According to the news, some activists in Oakland took over the building of an abandoned library in the morning of this Monday, which was one of the Carnegie's donations originally established in 1918 and has been closed since 1970s until this Monday.
After occupying the library, the volunteers coming from everywhere filled the library with donated books and erected banners to make it working again. But that's not all. They tried to get the community to engage! According to one of the occupiers' narration:
the organizers also put out a press release, went door-knocking in the neighborhood to inform and invite the community, and built a gardening program that invited youth to come and develop the blighted space.And they even planned to host a poetry reading program according to the news! In short, they did it, and they did it like awesome librarians.
As I mentioned earlier, I have been reading Professor Lankes' Atlas of New Librarian recently. This event made me excited not only because it is a perfect example of how libraries can help to improve the society in a broader sense, but also because it illustrates what librarians are.
Definitely, librarians are not only those people who work in a library. On the one hand, if one is working in a library in a "wrong" manner, I don't think he is qualified to be a librarian (I am certainly not unbiased toward this issue). On the other hand, as Professor Lankes puts, people with an MLIS degree, no matter where he/she works, he/she can still do the job like a librarian. But here, this story may extend Professor Lankes' statement further. Because there is little information about these activists' professional backgrounds, it's safe to assume that little of them have a MLIS degree. So we can say, even if you do not work in a library nor have an MLIS degree, you can still be a librarian by doing things like this, to sharing information to promote knowledge creation in your community.
Sadly, according to the news, this library was closed by the police last night. But on the other hand, even this library being open for less than a week, we can still expect the little changes it posed to the local community and the society as a whole will turn out to be something great. Just like we can see the influences of Occupy Wall Street Library in this library by its name "people's library", we can expect this library inspire other people to make our society better in the future.
For more information, you can follow Twitter hashtag: #peopleslibrary
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