the hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder

Erin wrote a love letter to tattooed spunky hipster librarians, in response to some of the comments about whether librarianship is a dying profession in a recent Hiring Librarians post. In the next breath, the respondent goes on to state

We are all replaceable because we have no identity and once the ALA accepts the ridiculous Threshold Concepts- we won’t even be able to hold a conversation in academia without looking like the morons we allowed ourselves to become.

So in both the quote that Erin used about "tattooed spunky hipster librarians" and in this quote, there are ad hominem arguments being presented to support the claim that librarianship is a dying profession. I don't want to fall into a tu quoque by making additional ad hominem statements, indeed, the author of the Hiring Librarians post makes a number of very important points that merit discussion. I want to talk about why almost everyone I know reacted to the tone instead of the content.

The ad hominem arguments in this case serve three purposes, all of them dangerous.  A caveat to add that what I am discussing here is not only true of many folks who agree with the statement above, but many who disagree. As Nanci Griffith puts it, "I am guilty, I am war, I am the root of all evil." We all do it. We should all be watching ourselves if we care for what we do, who we serve, and the future (not of our profession, the future in general, of humanity).

First, these arguments derail conversations about important issues (for instance, about threshold concepts) by bringing moral character judgements into realms where they do not belong. Assessments of the character of others (or, here, ourselves as well?) beg answers from others because they threaten identity. Erin's post gets at how digs at identity weigh on us, make it difficult to engage in discussions, and gnaw at our self-worth. They do not offer grounds to continue discussion of the topic at hand. No arguments or premises offered. We should be talking about the merits of the proposition.

Second, ad hominems and other informal fallacies distract from the issues. Suddenly we find ourselves discussing the straw man of generational divide, not knowing how we got here. We end up treading and retreading discussions that were tired when they started. What do we look like, do people like us, why don't they care about us, all in circles and circles. Without substance because there are not grounds to continue discussion of the original topic. No arguments or premises offered. We should be talking about the merits of the proposition.

Third, ad hominems and other informal fallacies abdicate responsibility and blame. If we allow each other to engage in fallacious arguments, we let it all fall apart. It becomes acceptable to discuss tangential concerns as if they are primary. It becomes acceptable to overgeneralize our peers based on surface differences. It becomes acceptable to not offer grounds to continue discussion of the topic of concern. We need not offer arguments or premises. I start to wonder if we even care about the merits of the proposition. If we even care what we are doing at all.


There is significant damage from these arguments, but even more damage caused by the discussions that we're not having. It is essential that we address content in these discussions. Habits of rhetoric are the danger, but they are habits and we can all work on focusing on the issues. As a profession, we need to engage each other about what we are doing and why. We need to be disagreeing and challenging and working through issues and reaching a balance to move forward. Maybe we're scared and used to discussions moving in this same direction, and we let it slide. Maybe it is hard to be honest with ourselves and our colleagues about how we feel and what we think about some issues. I get it. I'm there.

Discussion that is real, honest, and deep is not easy, but it brings us forward. If we open ourselves, lay out arguments, share honest feelings and concerns, if we then listen, question, listen, disagree, listen, and hear, if we then find a path that works for us all, if we could do just that. We may not all be on board with every single move, but we will understand and know each other.  And we'll be moving.  Creating the future of librarianship, even.

Keep Rockin'
Rachel

I grew up in denial

The 2015 edition of the American Library Association's State of American Libraries document was released on Sunday and is worth your time if you're interested in learning about the issues facing academic, school, and public libraries.

I was struck by the infographic in the school libraries section entitled "The good, the bad, and the ugly." The two figures in the "ugly" section that gave me pause:

51% of college freshman have a hard time learning to navigate new tools and 43% have trouble making sense of information once sources are found. 

College freshman have the most difficulty conducting research:
coming up with keywords (75%)
sorting through irrelevant search results (57%)
identifying and selecting sources (51%)
integrating writing styles from different sources (43%)

Take these facts and juxtapose them with this information in the "Experiences with information literacy" section of the 2014 National Survey of Student Engagement entitled Bringing the Student into Focus.

...about nine in ten first-year students said their instructors discouraged plagiarism and stressed appropriately citing sources. Additionally, large majorities of first-year students reported that their instructors emphasized using peer-reviewed sources (81%) and questioning the quality of information sources (74%). Two out of three first-year students frequently received feedback from instructors on how to improve their use of information resources. 

It seems like both the students and the librarians who serve them at both the school library and academic library levels must be frustrated.

What students learn before the reach college with regards to information literacy seems largely dependent on the state of the school libraries that support them. Budgetary constraints mean that libraries close and positions are slashed. Every time that you think you have to do less with more, think about a school librarian. Currently friends of school libraries are lobby to get school library funding included in the Elementary and Secondary School Act, but it doesn't seem a sure thing.

On the other side of the equation, ACRL just released the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. This framework is anchored by six frames, or core concepts. These frames cover the entire process from information consumption to information creation.

I was struck by how closely these two situations sat in the State of American Libraries document, but how far apart they seem in real life. It is important for college students to be good consumers (and creators) of information, and the Framework seems to give them the tools to do that. But when I look at what the Framework expects information literate people to be able to do, I end up back at the figures about how college freshpeople have a hard time conducting research. And I wonder how we, as academic librarians, can expect college students to become information literate if they come to college without the skills to participate in the larger conversation because of the preparation they received before coming to college.

I don't know the answer to how you take college students who (at least according to ALA's figures) are ill prepared to be good consumers and producers of information and turn them into information literate people. But I think the first step is to acknowledge that strong school library programs create a good foundation for information literacy. And that cutting those programs puts college students in a compromised position when it comes to being college students navigating the world of finding, identifying, selecting, and obtaining information. Which, by the way, are the FRBR user tasks.

Look, I get that shaping students into information literate people while in college is a process that happens both inside the library and inside the classroom. And that information literate students aren't created in a day, or a semester, or even in four years. And I get that you have to have the Framework because it gives you signposts for where you are in the journey.

But I can't help but feel like, from my perspective anyway, these two worlds exist independent of one another. And I also can't help but feel that maybe they shouldn't.

I will admit to feeling ill-prepared to write about this topic, since I'm not in a public services position. I teach a few one-shot classes every semester, but that's the extent of my interaction with information literacy and with students. But I feel like it's important for me to think about (and talk about) this issue. I feel like thoughtful engagement with the ACRL Framework will make me better able to support my public services colleagues in shaping college students into information literate people. Admittedly, there are nuances in this argument that I'm certain I'm not aware of. So I'm sure I got it wrong. And if I got it wrong, tell me in the comments!

Stay positive,
Erin

Problems on the Path to Promotion

I have a few related thoughts to what Erin talked about yesterday, and I'm just going to throw them out there without data or citations.

When I got my very first job as a librarian at a small liberal arts college, one of the orientation steps was sitting down with the provost. He was a very smart guy. He sat me down, asked me how everything was going, and then said, "you need to think about whether you want to go into administration." It wasn't a reflection on my vast potential, but a reaction to the climate of higher education.

In higher ed, we have a weird kind of career ladder which makes sense when you go assistant professor, tenure, associate professor, full professor.  All of those are the same kind of job. But somewhere in there is dean. It's not a promotion from associate or full professor. A dean is a completely different job. One that we need people who are good at and want to do.

The same is true in libraries. Especially true for the kind of "traditional" library jobs like reference and cataloging. Dean or Director is a fully separate job than that. One that there is no clear path toward.

The dynamics of a professional class with a bimodal age distribution (many boomers, many young folks) is that the jobs aren't where the applicants are. They are in middle and upper management. What my provost was trying to tell me when I was a tiny baby librarian is that, decide now if leadership is for you because things will happen fast.

If we need quality people in leadership roles, we need to ask all new librarians the question that I was asked. The answer may be "no," that's okay, but when the answer is "yes," we need to work with that so that we can create the kind of leaders that we need. Great leaders are going to rise quickly from the ranks of new librarians who have an aptitude and a desire to lead.

However, there are some inherit tensions in this situation. The first is that leaders (or even just managers) are going to be "promoted" into those wholly different positions past the folks who said "no" to administration. Just because you don't want a job doesn't mean you're not going to resent the person that got it for any number of reasons. We need to work on that individually and collectively. Perhaps the "do you want to administrate" question was only asked tacitly, and creating an environment where it is an honest discussion would help.


Additionally, in many institutions, there is not much room for advancement and most of the staff stay in their positions or desire to remain in the same institution.  In these situations, developing leaders can often mean investing in staff only to see them leave your institution for opportunities with greater responsibility and long term advancement. The worst form of this is seeing someone with a great potential and (perhaps unconsciously) hamstringing their development so that they will stay at their current position. No. We need to understand that our field will benefit from the best leaders in the positions best suited for them, and we should help our colleagues in their professional development because it is the right thing to do by them as professionals and for our profession. As managers, you need to be flexible and advocate for what they need for advancement.

I think if we confront those two tensions, if we help each other think about leadership and our own professional goals, we can make libraries way more awesome for everyone who already works here and everyone trying to get a job in a library. What do you think?

Keep Rockin',

Rachel

Lazy and Dangerous

At the time, it really annoyed me how persnickety Professor J. Pablo Silva was about having clear antecedents. There was to be no "this" or "that" or "it" in your paper. As a reader, the text should be clear as to what it is referring. As a writer, you need to know what you're actually talking about. Clear referents make for a clearer argument. Now, more than ten years out of college, "you have to say what you're talking about" is one of the things I am happiest that I had driven into the depths of my psyche. You can't just talk about stuff. You have to be clear.

It's human nature to want to classify things together and establish some shorthands, but there is a danger implicit in simplifying our world. Some twitter conversations from last week come to mind.