Clueless faculty and uppity librarians
Tue 24 Nov 2009, 12:05 pm
Two recent articles in Inside Higher Ed have me feeling a little down about library/faculty relations in the American academy.
In A Win for the Stacks, we hear about how Syracuse University faculty are petitioning and protesting a plan for the library to move a portion of the collection 250 miles offsite, where they would be available for next-day delivery to faculty and students.
Then there is Reviving the Academic Library, an opinion piece by Johann Neem. Neem believes that “The library is a means to an end: enabling students and faculty to access archives.” And from his essay, it seems like he thinks that is the sum total of what a library should do. He blames “the emergence of the field of library sciences” (apparently a recent event in his mind) for librarians’ desire to convert libraries from archives into “vague learning environments which, when boiled down to their essence, are nothing more than computer labs with sofas and coffee.”
I’m not going to pick these articles apart. It has been done in the comments on Inside Higher Ed (an alternate title for this post is “Supercilious faculty and
defensive librarians”) and also in the FriendFeed threads where I first heard about the Syracuse situation and the Neem piece.
Instead, I’ll do something I usually try (and fail) not to do here, and that’s give advice. Not directly to the players in these articles, as I don’t really know the background for the Syracuse story or how Neem arrived at his conclusions. This will be more general advice. First for faculty, then for librarians.
Advice for faculty
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It’s fun to get riled up and self-righteous on behalf of the preservation of Western Civilization (believe me, I know all about rile and self-righteousness, and you can check the archives of this blog if you doubt me) but it’s more productive to get to know the librarians and make your case for what role you think the library should play before things blow up in public meetings.
I understand faculty and students who value browsing the library stacks (see my advice for librarians, below), but I think it’s time to recognize browsing the local stacks as a pleasurable, useful activity, rather than a core research strategy. Even if you are at an enormous, inclusive library like Harvard’s you are still missing a great deal that is electronic-only. And you should certainly re-think passing on that strategy to your students who are likely to end up at institutions where the library has far narrower collections, or where the library has already moved to a collection that is more online than printed.
Putting aside that libraries have long been more than an archive for books, if you wonder why the library is taking on amenities that you associate with a student center, I’d like you to do two things. First, talk to students about this. Talk to a lot of students, not just the ones who know what you think and will tell you what you want to hear. Find out how students want to do research and homework, and why they still choose the library over the student center (if, indeed, they do). Second, please visit your library after 10PM during a busy time of the term. Too many faculty never see the library when it is fully in use by the student body. Perhaps you will be surprised by the variety of activity going on in the library, and how students move from quiet solo study, to group study, to social conversations and back again.
Advice for librarians
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I have misgivings about the truism “the user is not broken,” but let’s think about that for a minute, since it’s a commonplace in library blogland. I think one of the most useful readings of that phrase is that when readers tell us something, we should assume that they are speaking in good faith and that they know what they want.
So when student and faculty readers tell us that they want books they can open and handle and that stacks that are browsable are one of our core services as far as they are concerned, shouldn’t we respect that? Yes, budget and space problems are causing friction at many libraries, but I think too many of us think that people don’t browse any more, and some users are telling us that we are wrong.
We keep telling students that we have a hybrid library of printed and online sources, and that they shouldn’t privilege the online sources just because they are easier to use. Shouldn’t we take our own advice there?
Lastly, I think we all (librarians and readers) need to re-think what browsing and serendipity mean now. I think librarians have not done a great job in helping people browse that hybrid library. It used to be we could go to the reference stacks, plant our feet and look around for well-known or likely sources. Now, a big chunk of our reference books come to us from online packages that are segregated by publisher and have no call numbers so we can’t easily browse them alongside the printed works in the catalog. I’d love to see an iTunes style interface for libraries that can flip back and forth between “cover flow” and text lists, and which incorporated links to online sources and catalog records for printed books.
- License:
- File under: Academe and Education, Librarians and the profession, Library
- Tags: browsing, inside higher ed, syracuse
- Comments? 9
“I have misgivings about the truism “the user is not broken,” but let’s think about that for a minute, since it’s a commonplace in library blogland. I think one of the most useful readings of that phrase is that when readers tell us something, we should assume that they are speaking in good faith and that they know what they want.”
That is, to date, the most useful reading I’ve seen of that particular commonplace. Congratulations.
Comment by walt crawford — November 24, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Great suggestions for faculty and staff. Rather than just talking to students to see how they work, I’d actually recommend faculty and library staff actually spend time observing how people use the library. If there’s one thing I’ve learned while doing user research is that people will lie. Oh, their intentions are good, but they lie and say what they think you want to hear, even when it doesn’t even remotely resemble how they actually use the product or service.
Stalk people in the stacks, on the couches, in the common rooms. Where it makes sense, approach them, introduce yourself, and say “I’m doing some research on how people use the library (or resource X). Would it be OK if I just sat here and watched you work for a little while, and occasionally asked you questions?”
The data you get from this kind of research will probably be richer and more useful than a gazillion surveys.
Comment by Cecily — November 24, 2009 @ 12:28 pm
The Rochester study did that, Cecily – using an ethnographic approach. We’re going to try something like that on a smaller scale in the spring, looking at both our physical library and our website using student researchers. I’m excited about it.
The kerfuffle over the rudeness of making too many assumptions (on both sides) has been interesting but also quite startling in terms of seeing such a lot of buried hostility surfacing. And how.
Comment by Barbara Fister — November 24, 2009 @ 1:57 pm
err…. coulda given you a link to that study, I suppose.
Comment by Barbara Fister — November 24, 2009 @ 1:59 pm
“I think it’s time to recognize browsing the local stacks as a pleasurable, useful activity, rather than a core research strategy.”
I think it entirely depends on the library and its users. Maybe browsing isn’t a core research strategy at general undergraduate libraries, but it certainly is at art schools and arts libraries (often ignored or glossed over in library-land since they are a small minority). There are different kinds of users and one answer is never going to fit all.
That said, I love your idea about interface design that toggles back and forth been visual-based browsing and text. Those are exactly the kinds of flexible tools that could be put to use across many different libraries for many different patrons.
Comment by Ivy — November 24, 2009 @ 4:41 pm
I found good wisdom in your advice for both faculty and students, especially the suggestion that faculty should make an effort to visit the library and as part of that process – get to know their subject specialist. It’s never been more important to pay attention to the users and their expectations – which have and are changing rapidly – but we can’t forget about those whose needs might not change very much. So for us it’s very much a balancing act. Yet while it’s important to pay attention to what the users want, we should try to innovate by thinking about those things the users might find helpful but which they would never think to ask us for. That’s where observing their work-practice behaviors can be enlightening.
Comment by stevenb — November 25, 2009 @ 10:21 am
Good post. We talked about the Syracuse protest on the most recent episode of the Digital Campus podcast (digitalcampus.tv, episode 48, if you’re interested). Mills Kelly made the important point that most libraries in Europe have closed stacks, and yet somehow research occurs there. The sentence “it’s time to recognize browsing the local stacks as a pleasurable, useful activity, rather than a core research strategy” seems therefore right on target.
That said, I take the point about listening to the users. And so did Syracuse: they’ve “tabled” their plan to move those books offsite: http://library.syr.edu/blog/news/archives/001644.php
Comment by Amanda French — November 30, 2009 @ 4:22 pm
As a student at Syracuse, I would contest the characterization of the response against the outsourcing of library materials at SU as the “self-righteous” indignation of clueless, Luddite faculty. The response against SU’s surprise announcement of its library ‘master plan’ has been not only strong but also rational and measured. This response has been from faculty, yes, but in greater numbers from undergraduates, graduate students, alumni, community members and more than a few librarians.
As for preparing students for libraries with fewer holdings–well, that’d be difficult among ARL libraries, as SU ranks near the bottom in nearly every category (volumes held, budget, acquisitions, and–after significant layoffs last year–trained librarians on staff). These facts have been apparent for years, and are now coupled with diminishing space and resources dedicated to arts/humanities collections (down 73%) and increasing designated lounge and cafe space (up 350%, according to the published ‘master plan’). This situation is not something that can only be opposed by those that do not understand the value of online archives or new media technology. Far from it.
Members of the SU community are of course concerned with the ability to browse (and outre though that might seem there are far too many advantages to that to dismiss it so cavalierly), but we’re also interested in community investment, resource allocation, labor issues, and the long-term function of the university to the students, faculty, and the city of Syracuse. It is one of the ironies of this situation that skeptics of SU’s library plans are criticized for not acknowledging the future, when it was a lack of long-term planning and investment on the part of the administration that got the university into this position in the first place.
I understand your post above is more directed to the general state of libraries, and it’s done with tongue in cheek at times. In that regard it is admirable and well done. But as far as the SU situation goes, it misses the mark in many ways. The situation is ‘tabled’ but the master plan, as of today, remains unchanged.
Comment by Michael Dwyer — November 30, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
Thank you all for the thoughtful comments. I can’t respond to everything in detail, but I feel like I should reply to Michael.
First, thank you very much for the background, Michael. I really didn’t know any more about the Syracuse situation than I read in Inside Higher Ed., so this was enlightening.
I hope that you are in the minority in reading this as a screed against clueless, Luddite faculty, or a vote against browsing and stacks. The “clueless” in the title (along with the “uppity”) is supposed to be a parody of how each side sees the other. My overall idea is that we need less of this extremism. As for “self-righteous indignation,” I was thinking mostly of some of the comments on Inside Higher Ed. Here’s a great one: “This current trend by librarians to destroy real education is appalling and must be resisted at all costs.”
I don’t dismiss browsing cavalierly. It’s quite possible that if I were at Syracuse and knew all the facts, I’d be on the side of the students who oppose the changes. But I do think that browsing the stacks increasingly misses larger and larger amounts of valuable material that either the library isn’t buying or simply doesn’t exist in paper at all.
Comment by Steve Lawson — November 30, 2009 @ 10:24 pm