Biblio Tech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google by John Palfrey

Libraries are often rated as a favorite government service, according to public opinions expressed to pollsters. When queried, people recall the pleasurable and benefit of visiting a library as a child and student. This nostalgia is nice to read but dangerous to rely on for future public support of libraries. According to Digital Public Library chairman John Palfrey, libraries need to stay vital and relevant by transitioning to a digital knowledge base. Why does it matter? The survival of our democracy is at stake.

The way for libraries will not be easy in a society that is increasing ruled by for-profit information services. Google, Amazon, and Apple are dictating how people obtain digital products. Adapting to their protocols and the copyright demands of publishers of digital books has made the library digital makeover difficult to negotiate. Librarians must network and unify to stand with the corporations and their seemingly unlimited reserves of funds and code writers.

Palfrey also calls for libraries to fund their own research and development and spend liberally in staff development. Without such an effort, libraries will be the powerless captive customer of corporate digital vendors. We already see the results of weakness in our schools where librarians and teachers are being fired to let private interests provide information and teaching systems. Democracy begins with good public schools with a tradition for teaching truth and problem solving. Community libraries and those of academia are also on the line.

We are not defeated yet. Palfrey offers a plan for libraries to transition to digital platforms while keeping printed books and public spaces for study and dialogue. I hope his book is widely read soon.

Palfrey, John. Biblio Tech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google. Basic Books, 2015. 280p. ISBN 9780465042999.

Miss Dorothy and Her Bookmobile and Reference Is Dead

Like many children, Dorothy had aspirations for her future. She would be a librarian with "a fine brick library" in the center of a town square, such as the one she frequented as a child in Massachusetts. She got the library degree and was ready for the work, but then she married and moved to the base of Mount Mitchell in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. There was no library and Dorothy was sad, but there were many people who wanted to read. You can read the rest of the true story in the children's book Miss Dorothy and Her Bookmobile by Gloria Houston and illustrated by Susan Condie Lamb.

While Houston's book is intended to teach children about perseverance and the privilege of reading books, it has another lesson that recent library school graduates and even old librarians should contemplate - things often turn out differently than we planned. What we imagined as youths may never come to pass. For example, I always thought that I would eventually work as a reference librarian in a major metropolitan library with a huge room dedicated just to the reference books. I assumed that our economy and society's demand for education and ready knowledge would always grow, and there would always be funds for large subject encyclopedias, huge atlases, and expensive scientific handbooks. With a large team of librarians, I would spend my days finding the answers to difficult questions, such as "What were the religious beliefs of the pharaohs of Egypt?" or "What is the most effective treatment for dengue fever?" I also thought I would have an hour for lunch, during which I would walk home, eat, read the newspaper, and nap for a few minutes. Life would be idyllic.

Needless to say, my life is much different. But it is great the way it turned out for me. I work in a suburban library with educated clients, and with a small but sharp team of librarians, I help people cope with contemporary problems, which may include finding answers to difficult questions about history and science. More often we help people identify toll-free numbers for consumer assistance, get instructions to fix appliances, print tax forms, and request books for the book clubs. We spend countless hours instructing young and old in the use of computers, the Internet, photocopiers, ebook readers, and other technology. Just last week, I had a senior who had been directed by her Internet provider's technical troubleshooter to take her laptop to the closest public library where there would be wireless service and a knowledgeable librarian to help him help her.

Which brings me to "Geeks Are the Future" with its statement "Reference is dead." In saying that reference librarians need to be fired to make room for IT professionals, Eli Neiburger seems to have fallen into the contemporary "either or" trap. Reference or IT? It seems unfortunate thinking to me, especially his feeling a need to attack a traditional library service, one that many of us believe gives added value to our collections of content. It also seems that his position is an "either or" choice of clients. Is he saying that we can only serve the technologically hip and forget the people who are not embracing the online world?

Of course, we need technologically savvy people to design websites and apps, but we still need reference librarians to help clients access the collections. My recent experiences from hiring librarians is there are many people with both sets of skills. They can tweak HTML code and find obscure facts about the Founding Fathers, troubleshoot PCs and find population statistics, explain the use of ereaders and recommend horror fiction to eager readers. These are talented, dedicated people. There is no "either or" choice to make. The key is to get energetic, well-rounded people to serve our libraries and their clients - modern Miss Dorothys with their dreams of being librarians.

Houston, Gloria. Miss Dorothy and Her Bookmobile. 2011. ISBN 9780060291556

Tough Times: Thoughts on the Library Job Market from a Department Head Who Just Hired a Reference Librarian

Library funding news has been bleak for the last couple of years. Municipal budgets are flat or declining, and loss of funding from state governments is hitting all types of libraries particularly hard. Not many full time library positions are being offered on the job lines. Knowing all of this, I was still surprised by the huge response to the posting of a full time reference librarian's position at my library. In the past, we had never gotten more than about forty applicants for a job that we posted, and even then a third of the job seekers were people from other fields thinking that they could bypass the requirements for library training and experience. After I posted our position in April, I received seventy-eight applications with resumes from fully qualified librarians or library students close to qualifying.

Reading through over seventy letters (a few foolish applicants failed to send cover letters), I got a look into the very deep pool of library talent that is currently available for hire. Many qualified, experienced, and creative librarians are currently either unemployed or under-employed. From my reading of the letters and resumes, I sense that under-employed is the new norm for young librarians. Quite a few have been working in part time library positions for several years, perhaps supplementing that employment with work at restaurants, discount stores, and such. Many have been volunteering at libraries or social services agencies that they feel translate into relevant experience. A fortunate few are making ends meet with two part time library jobs. Many get glowing references from employers who wish they could give them full time hours. New graduates from library school have these now experienced librarians competing for the same few jobs.

While I did not sense despair from the letters, there seemed to be a heightened urgency to get a library job that actually paid a living wage. The applicants are ready to work. Several expressed that the open position was just what they had been seeking – a position that sparked their imagination. They were sure that they were perfect for the job. I am sure that many of them would have done well. My first call folder was rather thick.

It always stings not to get a job for which you are qualified and enamored. Nothing I can write here can lessen that sting for the many hopeful applicants that did not even get an interview. At this point all the applicants know the outcome, for I did contact them to announce the position was filled.

A second round of surprises came after my carefully worded closing letters. Around a dozen applicants thanked me for letting them know that the job was filled. While the news was not good for them, it was an acknowledgment of their offering themselves to my library and ended any doubt that they had as to their status in the process. Another handful of applicants asked me through email or even by phone call what they had lacked to be considered. Here I answered carefully, saying what I had sought (a reiteration of the job announcement) instead of dissecting what the candidates lacked. They could then make their own analysis. By doing this, a potentially awkward question (which I would not deny them) became a more positive conversation.

I have spent weeks thinking about the experience and have a few observations for people applying for jobs.

1. Send a well-written cover letter of no more than three paragraphs that covers about three quarters of a page. Address how you meet the job criteria. Don't stray into your irrelevant (to the job) interests and activities. Be positive without boasting.

2. If you are sending cover letters and resumes by email (which most people do), be very careful to send the right ones specific to the job for which you are applying. Sending letters addressed to other parties does not engender any confidence in your ability to do good work. If you are applying to a public library, do not state on your resume that your objective is to work in a government archive. This seems pretty obvious, but I saw six or seven cases of incompatible objectives.

3. For the benefit of the prospective employer, who might be collecting Word documents or PDFs in a folder, put your name in the document name. It saves the employer from having to rename dozens of documents named "resume."

4. If sending paper letter and resume, be sure to include your email address so the prospective employer can quickly verify that it was received. Not including an email makes you seem out of touch.

5. PDFs often look better when opened by the prospective employer, whose Microsoft Word might have different margins than the applicant's Microsoft Word.

6. Have patience. Looking through applications and setting up interviews takes time. Calling or emailing the prospective employer to ask when your interview will be the moment the application period ends will not portray you as the calm and confident candidate that the employer seeks.

Here are a few thoughts for the profession as a whole.

1. This is not the time to push prospective librarians to attend library school. Only those people who know the current conditions and who either have a job already lined up or are willing to risk spending a few years under-employed should start working for a degree.

2. Library schools need to scale back to survive. If too many degrees are issued causing an overabundance of librarians, the news will eventually reach prospective future students and registrations will fall.

3. Finding satisfying non-traditional jobs for current and future library students is also needed.

Thousands of librarians are meeting at the annual conference of the American Library Association this week in Washington, D.C. I suspect there will be many there seeking jobs. I hope to read how well they did finding them and how the issue of jobs for librarians is address at the conference.

Reflections of a Reference Librarian by Susan J. Beck

In her final column for Reference & User Services Quarterly, Susan J. Beck, outgoing president of the Reference and User Services Association, does more than reflect on the year and say thanks. She has used the column to present a sort of "This I Believe" statement about her commitment as a librarian. Being a contemporary, entering the field just a year and a half before Beck, I read "Reflections of a Reference Librarian" (Summer 2010, Volume 49, Number 4, pp. 305-9) with interest, nodding my head throughout.

I agree with Beck on many counts. Understanding cataloging seems essential to reference work. Fewer people are sharpening pencils. Library students shouldn't hesitate to ask reference librarians for help. Reference librarians are still needed in the digital information age.

On the third page of her piece, Beck issues a challenge "I actually read library literature - do you?" She suspects that many librarians do not, a suspicion I share. I think that many can still do their jobs adequately without constant study, for they have inborn qualities that make them good service providers, and as reference librarians, they can look up what they do not know. And I admit that I read selectively, choosing what interests me and sometime ignoring more management oriented articles from which I might benefit. But "good enough" and "adequate" are not really good enough for our survival. No matter how long we have been around the profession, reading the literature for new ideas and inspiration is essential.

I read her thoughts about volunteering on professional committees with a little regret. I feel I have never done quite enough of this myself. There is a balance that needs to be maintained, keeping the reference desk staffed and also getting away to advance the profession. In the past, librarians in small libraries sometimes could not get away enough to really be committee people. Time, distance, and expenses were at issue. With new ways of meeting via the Internet, more people can be involved. Let's hope librarians avail themselves of the opportunities and not later regret their reluctance.

Beck hints about retirement - "declining years of my career." From what she says, I doubt she is declining as she still seems to aspire to learn and improve. I hope her article inspires old and young librarians to keep up with her.

The column does not appear to be online as I write. Watch for it on the RUSQ website.

ALA Elections and This I Believe

As I prepare to vote for officers and council members of the American Library Association, I dread the process. Many of the candidates' statements of concern are so repetitive and dry. As I read through them, I often resort to looking for key words and phrases, such "intellectual freedom" and "public service." I rarely feel that I get a real sense of the person writing. If I do, however, that librarian often get a vote for good writing. I reason that if the candidate writes well, she or he probably communicates well and may make a good representative.

I wish all of the ALA candidates would be required to read or listen to This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. This I Believe was a short daily radio program began in the early 1950s by a group of broadcasters associated with Edward R. Murrow. Prominent citizens told listeners in about four minutes what shaped their personal beliefs and how they applied their philosophies to their lives. Helen Keller, Martha Graham, Leonard Bernstein, Carl Sandberg, and Wallace Stegner were among the early guests on the program. The program was phenomenally successful but criticized for having only the thoughts of social elites. Murrow and his friends then opened the program to people from all walks of life. It lost its sponsorship in the mid-1950s and was mostly forgotten until Jay Allison revived it for National Public Radio in 2005.

I listened to This I Believe on five compact discs, including statements from both the original and revived series. I enjoyed how most of the essays started with a clear statement of belief and then told how the person came to believe. Many of the guests told personal stories of hardships overcome, events witnessed, and lessons learned. Some were humorous. Series guidelines insist that speakers tell what they believe, not what they don't believe, keeping the statements positive and constructive. I do not agree with the philosophies of all the speakers, including William F. Buckley, Jr. and Newt Gingrich, but I think I may better understand why they believe as they do. I most enjoyed many of the statements from everyday people. After a week of listening, I felt inspired and armed with a few good ideas.

This I Believe has its own website with thousands of statements. Most importantly for ALA candidates, there are guidelines about how to write a statement. Wouldn't it be grand to have interesting, informative ALA candidate statements recorded well in advance and available online? We could listen to the voices of the people who want to serve us. Make them podcasts and we could listen on out iPods. Maybe librarians would take more time to vote.

This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women. Audio Renaissance, 2006. 5 compact discs. ISBN 1593979789

Off Your Seat and on Your Feet: Continued Conversation

Jodi Lee and Christopher Korenowsky of the Columbus Metropolitan Library have quite bravely asked me for my thoughts about their PLA presentation. Before sending them my thoughts, I looked at their online handouts, which are really quite nice. The handouts do not tell you everything you want to know, but they do start the conversation about proactive reference with very relevant points. What I think is really good is the way that they incorporate staff testimonials into the attractive documents. Take a look at Telling Our Story and Off Your Seat and On Your Feet! The think about your reference service area.

Andrew Keen: Provocateur and Nothing More: A LibrarianInBlack Report

The LibrarianInBlack attended a symposium at the University of California-Berkeley called "Is the Web a Threat to Our Culture?" The two speakers were Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur, and Paul Duguid, an adjunct professor at the UCB School of Information. Sarah quickly produced a lengthy and thought-provoking account of the evening, including questions from the audience and her own thoughts. Librarians interested in the impact of technology on their work will find the account helpful. I recommend her report.

A Reference Librarian Hero

“I expedite the use of the library,” Mr. Smith said over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel, explaining just what it is he does. “I’ve been called a connector. I’m in a position to save people time. I know where to find things.” (NYT, 12/31/07)

These are wonderful words from David Smith, a reference librarian about whom the New York Times has written. They say just what we should strive to do at the reference desk. We do it every day, so it seems a bit strange to think of it as a remarkable mission, but it surprises people to find someone so helpful.

Placed where he is in the New York Public Library, Mr. Smith assists many famous writers. The article includes their praises of the librarian. Roy Blount, Jr. was shocked when Smith offered his help. Why are people so scared of librarian?

Read and be inspired.

Roberts, Sam. "The Library's Helpful Sage of the Stacks." New York Times. December 31, 2007. Page E1.

In Hiring, Is Your Library the New York Yankees or the Minnesota Twins?

My way of thinking about hiring reference librarians has been challenged. I had not even realized that I had an assumption about practices regarding large and small libraries and the individuals that they add to their teams. Now I see there is another viewpoint, which has some merit. Of course, reality falls between the philosophies.

It has been said that to understand America, you must understand baseball. I think baseball modeling can apply to libraries, too. So, I ask this question:

Is your library the New York Yankees or the Minnesota Twins?

I have always thought that smaller public libraries take a more Minnesota Twins approach to hiring librarians. Not able to offer the highest salaries, smaller libraries tend to choose recent library school graduates (fresh from their farm teams) and put them in the lineup. They then field questions at the reference desk and go to bat for the libraries to order books, plan events, and design websites. These rookies bring a lot of excitement into the smaller libraries and develop a strong fan following.

After a few years, these librarians elect to become free agents and hire themselves to new teams at higher salaries. Larger libraries, like the New York Yankees, are always looking for veteran players who excel in the game. These institutions accumulate the stars, the heavy hitters, the gold glove librarians who will make few errors.

It was suggested to me recently that this thinking is all wrong and that new librarians should start with the big libraries and that the smaller libraries need the veterans. New librarians need the mentors and the greater resources available in the big libraries. In small libraries, where a librarian may often be alone without another professional on deck, a veteran will know what to do in difficult situations and need few reference tools because she will know how to get the answers from what she has on hand.

This challenge has made me look around, and I see that both philosophies are in practice. Recent graduates go to both small and large libraries. They learn a lot when they are the only players on the field, or they benefit from being with vets in a full lineup. Veteran librarians are sometimes moving to smaller libraries where they may be more comfortable than in large organizations. Sadly, no one is throwing money around like the Yankees.

Ironically, when I think about my career, I realize that I actually started at a fairly large library and then moved to a small library. Subsequently I worked for a big organization and then a small one again. I will take my bat and glove wherever I am needed.

Few of us are like Craig Biggio, Kirby Puckett, or Robin Yount, staying with one team. Most of us aspire to be Don Baylor or Nolan Ryan, starring for several libraries.

Put me in coach! Let's play two!

Time Odyssey: Visions of Reference and User Services

Everything that reference librarians do may change in the next ten years, but they will still be needed. This was the consensus from four panelists at the RUSA President's Program Time Odyssey: Visions of Reference and User Services, one of the final presentations at the American Library Association conference in Washington, D.C.

The future is not magical, according to Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist from Intel. There are always unforeseen consequences of technological change. Libraries will survive, she said, as people want the library as a place and books are stubborn, persistent artifacts. Libraries are "centers of gravity" - important to society for the tradition they foster, for the distribution of knowledge, and for the stamp of legitimacy they give to the materials they collect.

Bell said that libraries have always been high tech. In the 19th century they broke ground in the use of indexes and filing systems that would be the backbone of business and government. In today's world there is a crisis in the disorganization of digital information. Society need libraries to make sense of the information explosion.

She went on to say that libraries are needed to preserve civilization. They have done it before, especially when Islamic libraries preserved classical Greek and Roman literature.

Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project said that there is a new twist on Andy Warhol's statement about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes. In the Internet age, everyone is famous to fifteen people.

Rainie said we have several questions ahead of us. First is "What kind of Internet do we have?" There are more kinds of information and more methods of dissemination than ever before. Soon there will be smart doorknobs that know when the owner will come home because of Internet transmitted information. Is this good?

We have questions about our national information policy. Are we going to let rural areas and the poor be left out? Are we going to allow corporation to buy higher speeds than anyone else? Who owns information?

Third, we have personal identity questions and security problems to solve. The Internet was built by trusting people who expected good behavior. Some users have abused this trust, so the Internet needs to be redesigned.

Allen Renear of the University of Illinois told a long joke about a girl approaching the reference desk ten years from now. The point was that scholarly publishing, especially for scientific and technical knowledge, will no longer be reliant on expensive periodicals.

The most interesting statistic he mentioned is that scholars are reading many more articles now than ten years ago but in the same length of time. So reading is not as deep. In ten years it is thought that scholars will be reading only little bits of articles as needed.

Wendy Schultz of Infinite Futures said that there will still be reference desks in 2017. She said librarians are in a great position to thrive, as they will be needed more than ever. She urged librarians to plot out alternative futures as to be able to adapt to the actual outcomes as they develop.

American Libraries, February 2007: Are You Reading?

Based on circumstantial evidence, I do not think many people are bothering to read monthly issues of American Libraries. They are probably unaware of the redesign of the journal and its focus of looking back and forward in 2007, its 100th anniversary year. It is unfortunate that the articles are not fulltext at American Libraries Online. Is the fear that no one will bother joining ALA if the articles are free on the web? I do not think so. Most librarians join ALA because they are committed to the profession, not because they really want the journal. Is the fear that nonlibrarians will read the articles? I hope not. Putting the articles on the web would give them the exposure they deserve. The authors who wrote the articles and columns deserve a broader platform.

Because I can not link to the articles, I will link to the February table of contents and tell you what articles impressed me in the new issue.

"Race and Place: A Personal Account of Unequal Access" by Tracie D. Hall on pages 30-33 is definitely the most important item in the issue. The library service we all expect is still not universally available, as Hall makes very clear.

Meredith Farkas tells about the efforts of the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to train its staff in "A Roadmap to Learning 2.0" on page 26. Few libraries have the resources and talent of PLCMC, but they steal a few ideas from their blueprint for learning.

"Spectrum Turns 10: ALA's Diversity Recruitment Program Marks Its First Decade" by Amy Stone on pages 42-43 is an alert to how much more needs to be done in the area of diversity recruitment.

I was asked the other day why libraries would be interested in Second Life, the virtual world on the web. The answer is that youth are interested. See "Who's on Second? Do You Know Where Your Avatar Is?" by Jennifer Burek Pierce on page 46.

Mary Ellen Quinn tells about the new The Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland in "Librarian's Library" on page 48. It will take real commitment to read, as it is three volumes and over two thousand pages. It does sound interesting. Can someone write the concise edition?

Bill Ott devotes his "Rousing Reads" on page 51 to one author, Lee Child.

Will Manley reports on the 1907 ALA Annual Conference in Ashville, North Carolina on page 64. No, he was not there! He read through the July 1907 issue of Bulletin of the American Library Association. He says that we would recognize most of the content, issues, and attitudes. Only the ideas about service for youth have changed radically.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could link to these articles so you could read them right now? The folks at RUSQ have caught on. Seek out the February issue of American Libraries. There should be one around your library.

Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure & Choices for Libraries

Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information started the second full day of Internet Librarian with his keynote address Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure & Choices for Libraries. Anyone who has heard Lynch before knows that he mixes philosophy, science, and future studies into his presentations, bringing in many concepts unfamiliar to most of humanity, and he can at times be hard to follow. Perhaps I have heard him at enough conferences. I think I understood him this year.

Teaching, learning, and scholarship are rapidly changing, according to Lynch. The explosive increase and retention of digital documents alters the missions of scientists, scholars, and librarians. So much scientific data is available that scientists no longer have to do actual experiments or field work; many people are needed to mine and analyze the data coming from the big projects, such as the Hubbell telescope. Biographers studying important individuals can no longer read all their subjects' published or archived writings and communications, as digital capturing has caught much too much. Academic libraries can no longer afford to comprehensively collect research literature.

Lynch calls on libraries to help manage the data. There will have to be more collaboration and agreeing by academic libraries to specialize and then share their collections more readily with other institutions. They will have to get beyond just having published materials. Researchers who are not part of large, richly funded projects are the people who most need library help with managing and storing their data.

Lynch spoke at length about the predicted growth of the field of data science, which he says is ill-defined and unplanned. Who will be training these new scientists? Where will they work? He foresees that they will be decentralized, spread to academic departments, funding agencies, and small research institutions.

Lynch ended by pointing out how democratization of data has led to the amateurization of research. Non-funded individuals are doing great thinking. How can their work be synthesized. The future is full of opportunities.