The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
By James Gleick

Okay, I admit I’m already reading this one- and LOVING it.  Gleick (who also wrote a great biography of Richard Feynman), writes in a fascinating, engaging way about the history of information and of information technology.  This book wonderfully illuminates how we got where we are and provides hints at where we might be going.

I would like a stack of 20 copies, please, so I can give one to each of my favorite 20 technology-resistant librarians.

Check out these reviews.

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An Introduction to Research for Health Librarians
By Barbara Sen

This looks like one I’d love to read- and it is being released in May.

“This step-by-step guide provides encouragement, support, and direction for health librarians who may be new to research and evaluation or lacking in confidence or expertise. With a focus on practice-based research, evaluation, and small projects, it guides the reader through the research process, from starting to think about the research question, through to the completion of the research and dissemination of the results. It is designed to encourage quality research from library professionals and encourage them to add to the evidence base in this sector. This timely collection considers methods and approaches that are suitable in a health library context, making it a useful tool for health library professionals and students alike.”

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Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach it
By Sharon E. Straus MD, Paul Glasziou MRCGP FRACGP PhD, W. Scott Richardson MD, R. Brian Haynes MD

This one was released in December, but I haven’t gotten to it yet- and I’ve been instructed quite sternly to read everything Sharon Strauss writes.

“Evidence Based Medicine provides a clear explanation of the central questions: how to ask answerable clinical questions; how to translate them into effective searches for the best evidence; how to critically appraise that evidence for its validity and importance; and how to integrate it with patients’ values and preferences.”

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Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide
By Jessamyn C. West

Rachel Walden taught me what a “librarian crush” is, and I have had a librarian crush on Jessamyn since I saw these signs.

Teaching novice computer users, including seniors and individuals with disabilities such as low vision or motor skills, how to do what they want and need to do online is a formidable challenge for library staff. Part inspirational, part practical Without a/the Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide is a summary of techniques, approaches, and skills that will help librarians meet this challenge.

Jessamyn C. West’s experience as a librarian is deeply immersed in technology culture, yet living in rural America makes her uniquely qualified to write this book. Taking a big-picture approach to the subject, she demystifies and simplifies tech training for the busy librarian, providing an easy-to-use handbook full of techniques that can be used with all of a library’s many populations. As an added bonus, she also examines the players in the library technology arena to offer firsthand reports on what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next.

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The Atlas of New Librarianship

Libraries have existed for millennia, but today the library field is searching for solid footing in an increasingly fragmented (and increasingly digital) information environment. What is librarianship when it is unmoored from cataloging, books, buildings, and committees? In The Atlas of New Librarianship, R. David Lankes offers a guide to this new landscape for practitioners. He describes a new librarianship based not on books and artifacts but on knowledge and learning; and he suggests a new mission for librarians: to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities.

The vision for a new librarianship must go beyond finding library-related uses for information technology and the Internet; it must provide a durable foundation for the field. Lankes recasts librarianship and library practice using the fundamental concept that knowledge is created though conversation. New librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation; they seek to enrich, capture, store, and disseminate the conversations of their communities.

To help librarians navigate this new terrain, Lankes offers a map, a visual representation of the field that can guide explorations of it; more than 140 Agreements, statements about librarianship that range from relevant theories to examples of practice; and Threads, arrangements of Agreements to explain key ideas, covering such topics as conceptual foundations and skills and values. Agreement Supplements at the end of the book offer expanded discussions. Although it touches on theory as well as practice, the Atlas is meant to be a tool: textbook, conversation guide, platform for social networking, and call to action.

[More here]

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What new books are you reading or looking forward to?

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1. The world of information has always been in a constant state of flux. As technology continues to change the world of information, it is preferable for information professionals and the institutions they serve to adapt rather than perish.

This is not a new idea.

2. The most important qualities an information professional can posses are adaptability, resourcefulness, a habit of looking for better/easier/more efficient ways to do things, creativity, and a love for solving problems.

This is not a new idea.

3. Organizations providing information services should pay as close attention as possible to the needs of those whose information needs they serve. Where these needs can be measured, they should be measured. If you can find something that your library is regarding as more important than user needs, something is very wrong.

This is not a new idea.

4. Whenever possible, obstacles between users and the information they seek should be removed.  Among these obstacles are academic jargon and expecting users to care about cataloging minutia (it is minutia to them, get over it).  Information professionals should be champions of clarity and concision who find accessible ways to describe complex topics.

This is not a new idea.

Much of the above comes from conversations with really smart and insightful people like Amy Buckland, Kathryn Greenhill, Jenica Rogers, and Maurice Coleman.

Any good stuff above should be credited to them. Any stupid stuff should be blamed on me.

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“You will live on gin and Valium…and when you run out of them, you will survive on spite.”

This one cracked my wife up: So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities
(Liz has a PhD in Art History)

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Skip up to about 0:29 for Haley’s line about the public library: “I thought that was a bathroom for homeless people.”

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Ten Reasons Why ‘Professional Librarian’ is an Oxymoron

Deschamps’ 10 Reasons are:
1. Librarians Have No Monopoly on the Activities They Claim
2. There are No Consequences For Failing to Adhere to Ethical Practices
3. Librarianship is Too Generalized to Claim Any Expertise
4. ’Librarian’ Assumes a Place of Work, Rather than the Work Itself
5. Peer Review in Librarianship Does Not Work Because There is No Competitive Process to Go With It
6. Values Are Not Enough
7. The Primary Motivation for Professionalization is the Monopoly of Labor
8. Accredited Library Schools Do Not Adequately Prepare Students for Library Work
9. Competing Professions Are Offering Different Paradigms to Achieve the Same Goals
10. Nobody Can Name a ‘Great’ Librarian

Go read the whole thing. Even if you don’t agree with him, you’re still likely to find it meaty food for thought.

I strongly suspect Deschamps’ post is in response to this piece by Rory Litwin:

The Library Paraprofessional Movement and the Deprofessionalization of Librarianship

It will probably come as no surprise that I don’t care for Litwin’s piece.

A little fisking follows to supplement the things I like about Deschamps’ post.

Litwin writes:

Most librarians support the requirement of the master’s degree for professional‐level work, but many find the issue difficult to discuss when it is restated in terms of fairness toward working-class library workers, who are pursuing their rights.

Seeing “working-class library workers” literally made me snort aloud. Class has no meaningful or useful place in a discussion about where we are and where we need to go, especially when many degreed librarians make far less than many “working-class” people in many lines of work. I dearly wish that I could say my libraryfolk friends with multiple masters degrees and years of experience had as much income as my plumber, but they don’t. I also distrust anyone (and I mean *anyone*) who uses the term “working class.”

While it is difficult to say exactly what will be required of students who go through this certification program, one can assume that the academic standards of graduate education will not apply…

When the standards are as hugely varying as they are in library schools, they aren’t really “standards” at all. Like most, I know some paraprofessionals with greater knowledge and skills than some degreed librarians. Let’s stop pretending that the degree necessarily says something about the skills and knowledge of the person holding it…because it doesn’t. (See Deschamps’ #8.)

Litwin pretty much admits this:

There can be no denying that many paraprofessionals are more talented, more experienced, and even better educated than many MLS‐holding librarians. There are also libraries that fill their professional positions with non‐MLS holding librarians who, after years of working closely with their communities, can serve as positive examples for the profession in many respects. This is all true.

If you put aside Litwin’s condescending tone ([sarcasm]“I CAN, Rory?! In MANY respects?! Wow, thanks!”[/sarcasm]), we seem to agree.

The problem with framing the question in these terms, however, is that it overlooks the value of the professional status of librarians itself, both for the institutions in which they work and for the world of libraries as a whole.

Think about this for a minute: Litwin is comparing “library professionals” with “library paraprofessionals” but DOESN’T think that comparing skill-sets or experience isn’t a good way to frame the comparison. I call shenannigans¹.

After telling us that we’re overlooking “the value of the professional status,” Litwin gives several paragraphs on sociological theory and completely fails to support his assertion.

A profession that is dedicated to sharing knowledge is unlikely to create effective barriers to its knowledge base, a factor undercutting the profession’s defense of its degree of autonomy.

Two things here: The first is that Litwin is saying the failure of librarians to create effective barriers to knowledge is a bad thing. The second is that I reject his assertion that there is a significant difference in the level of autononomy of an employee in a library depending on whether he/she is classified as a professional or a paraprofessional (or, as Litwin writes elsewhere in his piece, salaried or paid an hourly wage). In my experience, the autonomy of an individual employee is largely based on the management philosophies of those they report to and the credibility the employee has earned. Perhaps this is different in academic libraries.

A librarian in technical services, according to Gillham, is a manager, meaning that the department is left without an autonomous professional presence and the attributes that accompany it (code of professional ethics, graduate‐level education, intrinsic reward of service, etc.).

So…now it seems that one cannot ascribe to a code of ethics or experience intrisic reward of service without an MLIS? I’m calling shenannigans again.

Litwin’s article isn’t *all* bad. If you remove the unsupported (or just poorly-supported) assertions about libraries, it is an interesting review of sociological literature on “deprofessionalism.” *With* the library stuff, it is pseudointellectual gobbledygook that provides no useful insight or guidance. (See Deschamps’ reason #5.)

By contrast, Deschamps’ piece is clear, succinct, and lays out the reality of our circumstances in a way that cuts through all the shennanigans.

Since I’m giving Litwin such a hard time, though, I’ll try to find some nits to pick about Deschamps’ post.

[Insert 30 minute pause here]

Deschamps’ #5 is “Peer Review in Librarianship Does Not Work Because There is No Competitive Process to Go With It”

I disagree that so much of library literature is mediocre because of the collaborative habits of libraryfolk. Rather, I think it is largely because of Reason #8, “Accredited Library Schools Do Not Adequately Prepare Students for Library Work.” The degree is frequently not academically demanding, so it doesn’t produce a lot of academics.

Deschamps’ phrasing of his Reason #7 (”The Primary Motivation for Professionalization is the Monopoly of Labor”) could, I think, be improved. I might rephrase it:

“The Primary Motivation for the Whining about ‘Deprofessionalization’ is the Fear of Losing Work or Having Needlessly Invested a lot of Effort, Time, Money, and Psychic Energy becoming a ‘Professional’ Librarian.”

But these are nitpicks.

Thoughts?

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You can download the mp3 or listen in the embedded player below:

Sarah and Kendra have a site here: http://libpunk.info/

Here’s the Podcast feed.

Want to join in? Do!

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A similarly interesting discussion of this post is taking place on FriendFeed.

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Links mentioned in the embedded video above:
http://davidrothman.net/category/library-20/
http://www.libraryman.com/blog/essays-on-101/

[Edit]

Excellent response from Sarah Glassmeyer (video embedded below):

[/Edit]

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Melissa Rethlefsen:
Melissa is a co-author, a mentor who is always ready to help, and a wonderful, treasured friend. I can think of no medical library geek who would be more appropriate to receive recognition for her awesomeness.

Rachel Walden:
Rachel has been blogging longer, better, and more consistently than I have. Her blog is not only wonderfully informative and frequently entertaining- it also makes medical librarians look soooooooo good. Rachel was absurdly nice to me when I started blogging and has remained someone I frequently turn to for advice, both professional and personal. I join Library Journal in noting Rachel’s butt-kickery.

I was shocked to discover that Dorothea Salo hadn’t been recognized previously. What do I enjoy more than a smart, articulate, argumentative person? One who disagrees with me. I can’t claim to know her well, but I’ve had fun getting to chat a little with Dorothea on Friendfeed and I’ve always been impressed by those of her writings I am able to properly understand. Read her blog if you haven’t yet.

I’ve only gotten to know Jenica P. Rogers-Urbanek a bit in the last year or so, but quickly came to respect her knowledge, intelligence, kindness, and wit.

Dave Pattern is one of those guys who is perpetually playing with new, interesting, and useful geekery. We should just be grateful he uses his talents for good and information services. If his powers were put to evil applications, we’d all have reason to fear.

I was also pleased to see smart folks like Michael Porter, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Lauren Pressley, Jason Griffey and Karen Coombs. I know none of them well but have admired their work when I’ve encountered it.

Congratulations to these and others recognized this year!

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See also: Academic Librarian PSA and Harper Library PSA

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