Controversy of RA

In my last post, I talked about RA and mentioned discussing more the controversy in RA. But first, I want to briefly explore an idea that has percolated to the surface of my mind since yesterday.

RA (Reader's Advisory for those unfamiliar with the acronym) is a type of service that connects readers with books they would enjoy. Active RA (see my previous post) falls in with more general reference services and librarians use similar tactics in an RA interview as they would in other reference interviews. In addition, there are tools for RA--just as there are for other types of reference work--to assist librarians with connecting their patrons with another book (or DVD, magazine, etc.) that they will like. The idea of RA made me think of Ranganathan's 5 Laws (a very good discussion of them can be found here), and the second law in particular, "Every reader his or her book." During my class in which RA was the topic last week, I came to understand more about RA and the importance it plays in the service libraries provide to their patrons. However, this morning I realized that it is necessary to provide RA in the context of Ranganathan's second law. The second law justifies reference services in general and RA services in particular because it defines the purpose of connecting patrons to the items or information they desire. This is what a library does; how it happens may manifest differently in different libraries, but at the heart of every library's operation is the help library staff give patrons to find what they're looking for. General reference works to connect patrons with information or items they know they want. What is RA but helping patrons find a book they don't yet know they want? General reference and RA are two sides of the same coin (aka the second law).

Now so far, RA sounds like a pretty awesome and important service, right? So how can there be any controversy about helping people find a book? Well to start, not everyone--even within the profession--see RA as a necessary service to provide. Controversy can build when a few librarians are fighting to keep their RA resource subscriptions going at a time when libraries are having to slash budgets and work with less funding. A lot of librarians don't understand or are apprehensive about RA. Feelings can include "I don't read a lot of genre X, so how can I do RA?", "I don't like genre X, so how can I do RA?", "There's no real answer to RA questions, so how can I provide an accurate response?", or even "I don't know how to talk books" (Trott, p. 63). It's hard to get support for a service (even an important one) if the voices of dissension are loud.

In addition to controversy and conflict on the part of librarians, there is also controversy and conflict on the part of patrons and others outside the library. Why? Because of the types of materials patrons are looking for and are connected with. One of my classmates proposed a very thought-provoking hypothetical example. In it, a teenaged boy was looking for a hypothetical movie with lots of nudity and violence for a "guy's night." The library didn't have the exact item he wanted, so the librarian fielding the boy's question recommended another movie about a classic character in horror stories (Dracula) that was rated R for nudity and violence. This kind of situation of course would raise concerns with parents who would be worried about the fact that the librarian recommended an item with mature content to a teenager. However, our professional ethics dictate that we connect patrons with the materials (or types of materials) and information they want, as long as the materials or information can exist within current US law; if you want to see one of our most core tenets, check out the ALA Bill of Rights (particularly articles III and V). Also, as much as parents and guardians would like surrogate parents in librarians for their children, the responsibility of assuring children and teens don't borrow materials their parents would object to ultimately falls on the parents. Many libraries have policies that state they do not censor materials or refuse to check out items based on a patron's age. To see how this might look, here is the Access to Materials Policy of my local library:

"All staff members will respect every patron's right to choose his/her own library materials.

As part of the Reference interview, in recommending material to any patron, reference staff will consider the patron's reading capabilities, reading comprehension, and the specific question or interest at hand.

When material is not available at a branch library, reference staff will explain and encourage the use of Interlibrary Loan by both adults and children when it is appropriate.

It is not the responsibility of the circulation desk staff to question patrons about the materials being checked out of the library.

This policy applies to all formats of materials in the Library's collection and to patrons of all ages."

Before last week, I didn't realize how closely connected RA and larger issues like censorship and freedom to information are. I see RA in a much different light now. It is a vital service to patrons, but one that sees its fair share of objection from patrons and a lack of support from librarians. I feel like I have a better grasp of what it is and how it fits in both within a library and within our profession.

Trott, B. (2012). Reference, readers' advisory, and relevance. The Reference Librarian, 53(1), 60-66. doi: 10.1080/02763877.2011.596367

What Tangled Webs We Weave

I know that I'm not the only one who's been following Edwin Meller Press lately. I've seen reports and updates on its recent actions in the weekly ALA Direct email newsletters. For those of you who have not been following this series of events as closely, here's a bit of background (with lots of other articles included that you can follow up with and read for yourself).

It all started when a librarian, Dale Askey, criticized Edwin Meller Press for the quality of its publications on a blog post written in 2010. Now, for those of you not in the profession, it is considered part of a librarian's job to examine materials for a library collection and judge whether or not the item is suitable in both content and form. Poorly-bound books would likely be returned to the publisher that sent them because they would not be able to have a long shelf life, requiring the library to repurchase the title if it wanted to keep the title in the collection. Likewise, an item of poor scholarship quality may be returned or passed over because it would not as adequately discuss/explore a topic as other items addressing the same topic would; librarians would try to choose the titles of highest quality to ensure that library funds are spent smartly. And to get this information about items prior to making a purchase, librarians turn to reviews--which are written by publishers, book/item reviewers, and even other librarians. Libraries can't afford to waste money, so librarians will utilize many sources to help them make educated guesses about the value of an item for their collection. So back to Dale Askey. He was providing his own opinion about the materials from Edwin Meller on the blog; the post is no longer on the actual blog, but is available through web archiving (yay for web archiving!). And it seems that Edwin Meller took exception to his criticism. Initially two lawsuits were filed, one against Askey and one against Askey and McMaster University (where he works); since the lawsuits were originally filed, the one against both Askey and McMaster has been dropped, but the one against Askey alone still stands.

And so begins the back-and-forth between Edwin Meller and librarians. Currently, the publisher has stepped up its game and is suing another librarian. Rick Anderson is now the target of a second lawsuit because of his criticisms regarding Edwin Meller and the actions taken against Askey. Anderson's criticisms also took form in a blog; both posts regarding Edwin Meller have been archived (since they were taken down too) and can be seen here and here. The whole situation has gained a lot of attention in the profession and in higher education, and has spawned both petitions to tell Edwin Meller to lay off the lawsuits and a parody Twitter account. I know the saying goes that there is no such thing as bad press, but I can't imagine that Edwin Meller will be able to come out ahead in this.

Since I have no experience with this particular publisher, I have no way to personally attest to the accuracy of Dale Askey's claims. My reason for bringing up this series of events is to illustrate how easily something that we take for granted in a "free" country--being able to criticize a business, a person, a government--can be challenged. Think about all of the websites out there that are solely used to rate or review goods or services: Angie's List, Yelp, even sites that allow customer reviews like Amazon. If we are not allowed to be critical about a product or service, how are we going to be able to tell the wheat from the chaff? And let's be realistic: there is a lot of chaff out there. It's not really that big of a stretch to see that challenging the right of a librarian to criticize the quality of an item is challenging the right to criticize anything. At the core, it's an act of censorship.

I can't divine what Edwin Meller's true motives are and what they hope to gain from these lawsuits, but like some other bloggers I've read I think these lawsuits will cause more damage to the publisher than good.

CD and Censorship

As I progress through this latest of my classes, my program continues to be a source of new knowledge and enlightenment. The topic of collection management and development is almost overwhelming in its complexity, and there is so much exposure to things that I had never before considered--one of which is how collection development (CD) can consort with censorship, even unintentionally.

Time and time again, I see the same message filtered through my classes and class material: "Libraries should provide the information that its community desires. Librarians should not withhold material from anyone just because the information is controversial or otherwise seen as 'inappropriate.*' " This concept is so important, it makes up the first part of the Library Bill of Rights. That's why, when it comes to CD librarians need to be careful in their selections, both to make sure that the information needs of the community are being met and to ensure that their own biases are not affecting their decisions.

As a previous post alluded, CD is how a library creates its collection of resources. Decisions on what to get, how to get it, how much to pay for it, and even when or how to get rid of other items all falls under some part of CD. Librarians that make some or all of these decisions have a lot of power in that they directly affect what will reach the hands--and computers in the case of electronic resources--of the patrons served by the library. Can you see where I'm going with this? A librarian with a strong bias can be a dangerous thing when mixed with CD, and some self-reflection may be necessary to ensure that the librarian can remain neutral when it comes to deciding on items (physical and digital) to add to a library's collection. Otherwise this bias can act as a form of censorship. Choosing not to include a resource--if the reason is NOT related to the suitability of the item to the library's community--is an insidious form of censorship simply because the library patrons don't even know that it's happening. Their access is being restricted and they aren't even aware of the fact to advocate for themselves. So being self-aware, neutral, and keeping the library's community as the focus (not the item itself) is incredibly important for librarians.

There's a number of other topics that CD touches--including Open Access, digital ownership, and the Digital Divide (not just a buzzword, but a real problem in many urban areas). I hope to explore more of these topics further in future posts.

*Please note that there is a difference between "inappropriate" and "illegal."

Fight against censorship

I was going to post another recipe, but I think in honor of the effort to stop PIPA and SOPA from passing in Congress, I will post the link to Google's page allowing supporters of stopping the initiatives to sign the petition: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/. Please consider adding your name. These two initiatives seriously threaten Internet freedom and open access. While I don't know that they would be job-killers as many critics of PIPA and SOPA claim, I do think that they would open a dangerous door of censorship that would be hard to control, let alone close. The US Government would have the ability to block access to websites; I envision websites being blocked with vague explanations, or false or faulty reasoning (our government doesn't exactly have the best record for transparency). Many other countries worldwide block websites for one reason or another (France and Germany, I was amazed to find out, blocks websites with content related to Nazism and Holocaust denial).[1] China is an often-named example of serious censorship, but others include Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, and Syria (check the Enemies of the Internet list).

And I do agree with critics that say these bills will not help stop piracy. Those that illegally share or counterfeit media or other items will buy other domain names and continuously move their activity to other websites, which is no solution. The US government will be endlessly chasing after them. This is a poor attempt to create a stop gap measure. While Congress's intentions are good (stop piracy), the execution needs a lot more work, and much more consideration of the ensuing ramifications.

[1] Wikipedia. (2012, January 16). Internet censorship. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

Wikileaks and me

I know that many people have weighed in on Wikileaks's release of classified US government documents. My purpose in bringing it up and adding my voice to the chorus is not to chastize them, although I have very mixed feelings about their decision to post the cables as expressed in one of my posts on my class's discussion board:

"I don't know what the answer is in regards to information relating to national security. On one side is this feeling I have that the citizens of a country have the right to know what their government is doing, so [government] transparency--something that has been promised in the past but never truly attained--would be necessary for this to happen. Yet, I can understand why such information should be kept from the public eye--leaks can happen like the one Wikileaks was just involved in, and information that's dangerous for other ("enemy") countries to know could be released that harms us in the end."

So on the topic of the ethics of the leak, I'm still on the fence. I honestly don't know whether it's right or wrong. Maybe it'll depend on how many lives are negatively effected by this (and I mean ordinary citizens, not political leaders).

My real concern lies with the fact that the Library of Congress has decided to block all access to Wikileaks from all of their computers, public and staff computers alike. The Library of Congress issued a statement, which is also posted on their own blog as to why they did this. In their statement, they say that as federal agency they are "obligated to protect classified information." This would make sense if the whole world also didn't have access to these cables. However, I fail to see the logic behind this reason for blocking documents posted on a website that is publically accessible from 1) public libraries, 2) public wireless access points, and 3) home computers (I would also bet the leaks can be uploaded on mobile devices too). I hate to tell the US government, but the documents are no longer classified if everyone can access them and read them. They get credit for trying to prevent people from reading them, including addressing federal government workers[1] (and even students looking to get future jobs in the federal government are being told to question the wisdom in looking at the documents[2]); but they won't be able to put "the genie back in the bottle"[3], a term the Progressive Librarians Guild uses in their statement admonishing the LoC for its move to block Wikileaks.

On a related matter, the Library of Congress also houses the Congressional Research Service. For those who don't know what the CRS is, it is a group of researchers in the LoC that provides reports  that are "high-level professional analysis"[4] on various topics to the Congressional committees (more information about the CRS if you're interested can be found on their website here). Because the CRS does all of its research out of the Library of Congress, it too cannot view the cables and, according to this article, will be unable to refer directly to any of the cables; they would have to rely on secondary sources, like newspapers that have cited the leaked documents. Finding the secondary sources to cite may prove difficult, especially after an article I read this morning that discusses the list of secret locations that was released early this week. The article states, "the Associated Press has decided against publishing their names because of the sensitive nature of the information."[5] Well, that's very considerate of the Associated Press, but unfortunately the information is still out there. If Congress requires a report on these topics--for example, in order to determine legislature for future protection of sensitive digital US documents--the CRS would not be able to use anything from the leaked cables themselves. I would bet my year's salary that every country the US has its eye on has these documents and is going over them very carefully, including the location list. So these countries can look through that information all it wants, but the CRS can't? How does this make sense?

I remember seeing a couple of articles saying that LoC claimed they were told to block the site. Unfortunately, I can't find which articles mentioned that (I've read of lot of literature on this topic over the last week), so I can't state whether or not I actually saw those articles or even if the LoC did in fact make those claims. I can say, according to a number of articles including this one on Library Journal, that a memo from the White House's Office of Management and Budget did go out directing federal workers that classified information cannot be accessed on non-classified systems. (The original memo can be found on the TPM Muckraker website.) However, at no point was any office, department, or agency told to block the website. So why did the LoC do it?

That is the million-dollar question. Why did the LoC do it? While they may be the federal archives, they are still a library and should follow those tenets that libraries hold so dear, including advocating against censorship. If our national library (which the LoC really is) will not stand up against censorship, then why do the rest of the nation's public libraries fight so darn hard against it? I feel very saddened by the LoC's choice to take the initiative to censor Wikileaks, first because the block wasn't being required of them and second because libraries are supposed to fight censorship, not promote it.

The staff of the LoC are being very quiet about all this, but I wonder what they would say? Do they agree with the move? Do they feel conflicted about it? Sadly, they are probably being directed to say nothing about it, regardless of what they hear. I would like to know their opinion and perspective on this situation; it may help me to understand why a library, an institution that historically has stood for open access and freedom of information, would choose to close its doors the way the LoC did.

For the record, to date I have not looked at the leaked documents.

[1] Lipton, E. (2010, December 4). Don’t Look, Don’t Read: Government Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html
[2] Grinberg, E. (2010, December 8). Will reading WikiLeaks cost students jobs with the federal government? CNN.com. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-08/justice/wikileaks.students_1_wikileaks-security-clearance-students?_s=PM:CRIME
[3] Progressive Librarians Guild. (2010, December 4). On Wikileaks and the Library of Congress: A Statement by the Progressive Librarians Guild. Retrieved from http://libr.org/plg/lcwikileaks.php
[4] Aftergood, S. (2010, December 6). Blocking Access to Wikileaks May Harm CRS, Analysts Say. Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/12/crs_block.html
[5] List reveals secret locations. (2010, December 6). Retrieved from http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_16794319?IADID=Search-www.contracostatimes.com-www.contracostatimes.com&nclick_check=1