You've seen it all

Earlier in the week Jacob Berg, friend of the Unified Library Scene, made a point about SciHub as a phenomenon.

Reminder that Sci Hub is popular and works because it was developed by an end-user, not for our cruddy workflows.

— Kakistocracy Man (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2017

I chewed on this idea for a couple of days and yesterday I had a tweet storm that I ended up deciding needed to be a blog post.

The thing that I kept turning over in my mind is that libraries implement a lot of solutions and workflows meant to help their users that were created without actual user input. And while I applaud the impulse that librarians have to implement systems, structures, and tools to help library users, I do think that excluding them from the design, development, and testing phases is a little short-sighted. Especially because our best intentions lead us to crate things that require that we create research guides and tutorials in order for them to be useful to our end users.

I feel like this impulse to exclude the user from the design, development, and testing phases of a library resource or service is a holdover from the time when librarians were both literal and figurative gatekeepers within the library. For many years, we've stood at reference desks and in classrooms as the sage on the stage, teaching people how to access the information that we have acquired and described. And while this was probably never a good idea, it definitely isn't how people interact with information anymore. Regardless of how you feel about the document, one of the things that ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education really crystallized for me is that information comes from many places at this point in time--not just the library--and an information literate person knows how to make the most of information in whatever place they find it.

So if being a useful library isn't about being a storehouse full of information kept safe by a gatekeeper, it seems like we should invite our library's users to become co-creators of the systems, structures, and tools meant for their benefit. To do that, though, we have to understand--really understand--what our users need and want. And in order to understand what our users need and want from us, we have to listen to them. And I don't just mean conducting an annual State of the Library survey. Yes, those surveys are good for getting a broad picture of what your user community things you're doing well or doing poorly. But you're wasting your time if you don't use that information as a jumping off point to gather additional, more targeted information.

I think you also have to engage your user communities in more direct ways. Host focus groups with your user communities. Show up at meetings in your community and get to know their actual concerns. Hire an anthropologist to teach you how to conduct effective observational studies to understand the habits of your user communities. And as you engage your user communities, listen more than you talk.

And, yes. When you listen to your user communities they're going to hurt your feelings by telling you about how your tools and processes are hard to use. They're going to tell you that you aren't relevant to their life and you don't meet their needs. You know what? Listen to that feedback and sit with your discomfort, but don't take it personally. Hear what people are telling you about what they actually want, what they actually need.

And yes. When you listen to your user communities, you're going to have the urge to tell teach them something that it would easier to use a particular service or tool. You're going to want to say, 'using [x] would be easier if you only knew [y].' I get it. You want to make things easier for them. But resist this urge, because your user communities aren't broken. What they're telling you is that if you have to tell them [y] in order to effectively use [x], then it isn't a good solution.

True engagement with user communities is hard. But creating structures, systems, and services intended for their use without their input is a waste of everyone's time and resources.

Stay positive,
Erin

There'd be no distance that could hold us back

I really appreciated this recent post for ACRLog by Michelle and Maura about vulnerability and leadership. This post felt especially resonant because I spent most of 2016 feeling like I was treading water in both my personal and professional lives.

First it was because I had over-committed myself at the end of 2015 and had things I needed to see through. Then it was because a really high stakes work project coincided with my studying for, and taking, the GRE. Then it was because on the day I took the GRE, I found out my mom has cancer.

The problem with feeling like you're treading water all the time is that you end up letting things you really care about slide because you don't have the emotional energy to do much more than the bare minimum. I basically didn't run at all in 2016. I didn't blog regularly. I gave up on reading anything other than what was assigned as part of the online book club I'm in. I had a hard time thinking about the strategic direction I wanted to take with the processes and people I manage because I was struggling to stay on top of the day-to-day things that needed to happen to keep things running.

I needed the time off that the Holiday Break provided. I needed to go away for a while and not think about anything other than the things right in front of me, and I needed to choose the ways in which I wanted 2017 to be different and the things that I wanted to spend my time and energy on in the coming year.

On New Year's Eve, a lot of my friends were sharing this tweet from John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats.

WHATEVER WENT DOWN IN YOUR LIFE THIS YEAR THAT YOU HATED, WATCH IT GO UP IN FLAMES IN YOUR MIND'S EYE

— The Mountain Goats (@mountain_goats) December 31, 2016

And that felt like a fitting way to let go of all of the ways in which 2016 left me feelings burned out. So on New Year's Eve, I paused and thanked 2016 for all of the things it had given me and all of the things it took from me. And then I started a Google Drive folder called "Get Your Shit Together 2k17."

So it's 2017 and that work project is looming less largely over all of us, but we still have a lot of loose ends to tie up. And I still have some commitments, but I've mostly let go of the voluntary commitments that I don't feel totally invested in. I'm still waiting to find out if I got accepted to the PhD program I applied to, and probably will be until sometime in the spring. And my mom still has cancer, but she's got really great doctors who are working very hard to provide her with the best care.

And I decided that in 2017, I want to spend more time thinking about process--the how and the why of a project or task instead of just the results. And as I try to focus on staying grounded and present, I find myself saying "be where you are right now."

I guess this is as much a State of the Blog address as anything else. Or maybe a State of the Blogger address? Anyway, I really appreciate those of you who hung around the Unified Library Scene in 2016 because you found something of value here--an idea or a story that resonated with you and who you are or want to become. I hope that you continue to find something of value here again this year.

We couldn't have even done this if it wasn't for you.

Stay positive,
Erin

Friday jams (12/16/2016)

Let's be real here. For a variety of reasons, this year has been a real mess for nearly everyone I know. Over here at Unified Library Scene headquarters, we've been holding it together the best way we know how. And in some ways, it feels like we're all just throwing ourselves toward the end zone, hoping that the ball crosses the pylon as we face plant into the astroturf.

Anyway, I hope that you have the opportunity to end the year with the opportunity to rest and reflect in whatever way seems most helpful and restorative to you.

Please enjoy this jam that comes from the newly release A Tribe Called Quest album as the last Friday Jam of 2016.

Stay positive,
Erin

ps--When I mentioned Friday Jams yesterday on Twitter, Rachel posted this. So let's all take a moment to allow Luscious Jackson to fill us with holiday cheer.

You're all alone and so peaceful

So, I want to talk about our tendency as librarians to over-market our services as a substitute for listening to what our users really need from us.

An opinion piece on Forbes' site discusses the how a combination of Big Data and information literacy can create a more informed citizenry--one that can identify fake news when it sees it. It's not an objectively terrible take on the idea of fake news and what can be done about it. There is a part that gave me pause, though. The author begins the closing paragraph of his article by stating "...we see that fake news exists because as a society we have failed to teach our citizens data and information literacy."

I feel like Michael Bluth speaks for all of us here...

via GIPHY

Okay, but also yes.

I should start by saying that I believe that librarians have thought a lot about what it takes to create information literate people. I should also say that I believe that those among us who have taken on reference and instruction roles go about the business of creating information literate people in really thoughtful ways. If you want a thoughtful take on information literacy in an age where people believe that truth is relative, I highly recommend that you take a look at what Kevin Seeber has to say about how creating information literate people is more complicated than just teaching people that this source is good and that one is bad. I think that Kevin makes a well-reasoned, thoughtful argument. You should read it.

As a metadata creator, I spend relatively little time thinking about information literacy and about creating information literate people. But I do spend a lot of time thinking about whether (and how) our collections and services resonate with our user communities. I feel like one of the things that librarians do when confronted with a message like the one in the Forbes article I linked to is freak out and double down on their outreach and marketing efforts. If people can't see how hard we're working on [insert a topic here], that's a failure on our part to market our services well. We must not be doing a great job of making people aware of our tools and services, librarians think. so we need to work harder to connect with people. But sometimes the answer isn't another research guide or more table tents. Sometimes people don't notice the work being done by librarians on [insert a topic here] because we believe we know better than our users what they need to be successful.

Librarians talk a lot about The Future of Libraries: how can we invent our collections, services, and tools to maintain our relevance? I would argue that the best way for us to meet the future is to stop acting like gatekeepers of information in both a literal and figurative sense and to start spending more tine in conversation with our user communities learning more about their needs and thinking critically about how we can meet them. Having those conversations means having conversations with the people who are your most regular customers and those that you feel most comfortable around. But having those conversations also means talking to people who never set foot in your doors and those who make you feel the most uncomfortable. And most importantly, listening to your user communities likely means that the decisions you make will go against what you believe as a self-appointed gatekeeper.

I get why it's easier to choose yelling louder and louder over listening. It's easier and more comfortable and it allows us to remain comfortably in this notion that librarians know best. But the louder we yell, the more we become background noise. So let's stop yelling and start listening.

Stay positive,
Erin

It's gonna have to get a little bit heavy

I didn't submit this anonymous tweet to the LIS Grievances bot, but I could have.

Our obsession with linked open data, despite the fact that we've been outsourcing our cataloguing for years and now have garbage metadata.

— LIS Grievances (@lis_grievances) November 2, 2016

There is an oft-quoted aphorism about metadata: Metadata is a love note to the future. It's a great idea, right, that the metadata you create will help future generations access information? But I think that we do ourselves a great disservice when we don't acknowledge that well-formed metadata is really the best kind of love note to the future.

I think the problem with not being able to see the future is that it can lead us to make choices that make sense in the moment. It's easy to say that the feelings that catalogers have about poorly-formed metadata spring from a misguided place filled with artisanally created catalog records. It's easy to say that catalogers are perfectionists who have trouble accepting "good enough" records that get the job of discovery done. It's easy to say that the catalog is a place where we can cut corners because the catalog has less to do with the library user's experience than, say, the physical space. But saying all of those things can be problematic in the long run.

When decide that metadata creation isn't a task worth doing well, we're not writing a love note to the future. We're writing it a passive-aggressive note.

When we place value on quantity over quality or bottom-line over long term investment, we're making it more difficult for those future generations to access information in our libraries.  When we accept poorly-formed metadata into our systems, we are creating a future where people we will likely never meet will have to remediate our metadata in order to make it usable. We are suggesting that it's fine to kick the can down the road, as the saying goes, to let someone else deal with it rather than taking the time to do things right the first time.

I should be clear about one thing. Vendors aren't inherently the villains in this story. Sometimes because of lack of staffing or money or expertise, a library has to outsource some of its cataloging to someone else. And whether we like to acknowledge it or not, those records we download from our bibliographic utility of choice are technically from a vendor. So whether you're downloading records from a bibliographic utility, sending pockets of your collection to be cataloged, or receiving MARC record with your newly purchased material, the fact that you're getting your metadata from a vendor isn't the problem. The problem comes when the records we receive have poorly-formed metadata and we either don't remediate it or don't demand that vendors create metadata that is up to our standards.

So it's time to acknowledge that simply creating metadata to describe a resource alone isn't a love note to the future. If we truly want to write a love note to the future, we should decide in the present that well-formed metadata is something to which we're willing to dedicate sufficient staff and financial resources.

Stay positive,
Erin

The personal is political is personal

I'm currently reading a book by Frances E. Kendall called Understanding white privilege: creating pathways to authentic relationships across race. In the chapter titled "Understanding white privilege," Kendall tells an anecdote about something that happened in conjunction with one of the diversity-related training sessions she facilitated. During a break on the second day of the workshop, a white woman and a Latina from the class ended up at the same store. The white woman watched how the Latina was treated by the sales clerk from which she was trying to make a purchase--being asked for additional identification when she presented her credit card, being told that the security guard would want to see her receipt when she left--and contrasted that with her own experience. The white woman came back to the training session and told Kendall that she wouldn't have believed how her Latina colleague was treated if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. Kendall writes:

even though Debbie had been listening to employees of color talk about their painful experiences for a day and a half, she had essentially chosen not to believe what they said; she had continued to say that she thought the different experiences were individual, not race based. She used her own privilege of expecting to be educated about race by the people who were most affected--those of color--and then chose not to believe them (61).

I read this passage right around the time that people were starting to express their outrage over the press releases that ALA sent out regarding its desire to work with the newly elected administration and which highlighted a trio of initiatives that it felt aligned with the newly elected administration's stated goals for its administration. People have addressed this situation in smarter, and more nuanced ways that I have. If you're interested in reading other people's points of view, I would suggest checking out #notmyALA on Twitter. A lot of opinions and posts are aggregated there.

There is a piece of this conversation that relates to the passage from Kendall's book that I want to highlight. In its most recent communication on this issue, the ALA President stated "the ALA executive board will discuss these issues and our processes and will use your comments to help guide us in our discussion and planning as we work to earn back the trust of our members and prepare for the work ahead during this new administration."

So, let's talk about trust.

ALA has identified diversity as one of its key action areas, charging a task force and then a subsequent implementation working group with considering how equity, diversity and inclusion could be built both within ALA and in wider library community. You can read the task force's final report here. By charging people at the Association-level to do the work  of identifying and proposing ways to further DEI-related initiatives, the Association has both implicitly and explicitly asked the margainalized people throughout ALA what can be done to make ALA a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive place. The Association has asked people to entrust us with their stories and told people that it is part of our value system that we will hold those stories and respond in an appropriate way. And then we have chosen not to believe them when they tell us that they are afraid that they will be the targets of state-sponsored violence.

In the same week, ALA's President released a statement affirming ALA's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and two statements affirming ALA's commitment to working with the incoming administration. And, yes, one of those statements was taken down and an apology issued. But one can see how people within the Association's membership would be outraged that such an affirmation was issued in the first place. ALA asked people what they needed to trust the Association as a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization and then didn't listen to them as they expressed their loudest fears and their deepest concerns.

In the days following the election, Hugh Acheson posted to Instagram a letter he sent to the staff at each of the restaurants he owns. In the letter he writes "The customer is always right, until they are wrong. And when they are wrong with epithets or cruelty they will be asked to leave. This is not me giving you an aggressive power to wield, but rather making sure you understand the ethos I have in protecting what I believe in, and what I do not have the patience for."

I understand that ALA has a dual responsibility to serve both libraries and the people who staff them. To that end, I believe that our goal in libraries should be to serve the communities in which we find ourselves, even when their beliefs don't align with ours. Libraries should be places that foster conversation and an exchange of ideas, but I believe that in libraries, as in Acheson's restaurants, there is a point past which the patron isn't always right--especially when a member of our user community is wrong with cruelty.

So how does the Association go about the work of rebuilding trust?

First, I think it is incumbent upon Association-level leadership to restore the relationship between the Association and its members by centering the voices and taking seriously the concerns the people among its membership who will be most vulnerable in the coming years.

Second, I think it is incumbent upon the membership to make even more space for people who are traditionally underrepresented in librarianship to take on leadership roles. The includes not only providing increased support for programs like the Spectrum Scholarship Program but also the development of a pipeline for leadership both at the Division-level and Association-level.

Finally, I think it is incumbent upon both Association-level leadership and Association membership to ensure the safety of our most vulnerable members through both our words and our actions.

I'm sure that the path toward a restored relationship between the Association and its membership will not be without bumps and will probably look different than what I've suggested here. But I do hope that it happens. And I'll continue to attend ALA Council meetings and ALA Midwinter and ALA Annual in the hopes of seeing signs of the Association working toward that restoration.

Stay positive,
Erin

Mountains grow from just one stone

One of the things that I talk about over and over (and over and over) again on the blog is the idea of imagining what it would be like to center the lived experiences of our user communities when it comes to creating metadata to describe our collections. I was thrilled when a friend, Anna-Sophia, sent me a link to the transcript for a 2015 talk by Sara Wachter-Boettcher called "Everybody hurts: content for kindness."

The talk centers around this idea:

And what I've come to is there's an opportunity that we have to make every decision an act of kindness. Make sure everything we write, everything that we build, come from a place of kindness at its core.

Wachter-Boettcher goes on to talk about how this mission of centering kindness can be lived in when it comes to better understanding both the needs and the triggers of our user communities. While the audience of this talk wasn't those engaged in the work of libraries or librarianship, I can get behind this premise for librarianship in general and metadata creation more specifically. I spend a lot of time wondering how metadata creation would be different if those of us who create metadata saw it as not just an act of service, but also as an act of care for the user communities that we serve and support. And then I wonder why we don't.

I was struck by something that Wachter-Boettcher referenced early in her talk. She made mention of an address given by Paul Ford, in which he states:

If we are going to ask people in the form of our products, in the form of the things we make, to spend their heartbeats--if we are going to ask them to spend their heartbeats on us, on our ideas, how can we be sure, far more sure than we are now, that they spend those heartbeats wisely?

And I think that this quote is at the center of why we don't always see metadata creation as an act of care, and why we should.

I worry that we take for granted that users will spend their  heartbeats using the collections and services that we offer. I especially worry about this in academic libraries where students and faculty require access to scholarly resources in order to conduct research and create scholarly works. As this applies specifically to metadata creation, I worry that we take for granted that user communities will have to use the library catalog in order to access our collections. As many people wiser than I have pointed out to me when I try to reckon with this mindset, it's a direct holdover from the time when our collections were kept in closed stacks and library workers were the gatekeepers to these collections. It's also a significant conflation of the catalog as both the content and the carrier--a thing that I do all the time and which my wise friend, Kyle, regularly holds me accountable for.

So what would it look like for those of us who create metadata to describe collections to choose to put kindness at the center of our work? First and foremost, I think that we should stop taking our user communities for granted and create software systems and rules for description and encoding that respect the lived experiences of our users. While I don't agree with the idea that people in Technical Services are change averse, I do think our public services colleagues have been quicker to see the ways in which the needs of our user communities are changing and then responding. Second, I think it means evaluating our local policies for metadata creation and remediation and amending them in ways that have the biggest impact on our user communities.

I don't think that evaluating our metadata reuse policies means we have to stop reusing metadata. For some materials, records don't need a significant amount of customization. And for smaller libraries, metadata reuse is the only way that their cataloging operations stay afloat. But I do think it's worth considering which types of material and which subjects are important enough to your users to provide the extra care of customization. Especially if the library for which you are describing collections has made diversity, equity, and inclusion a priority.

I think that many people who create metadata would tell you that the work they do is a public services. I think what is important for us to be explicit about is that we have the choice to treat our work as an act of care for the user communities we serve. I think it's time for us to think more about what it would mean for metadata creators if we thought about making sure that our user communities were using our heartbeats wisely when they accessed the metadata we create.

Stay positive,
Erin