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A Pietist vision for libraries and librarians?

Now that I’m officially graduated from GSLIS, I am ready to take up a new project to keep me thinking and developing as a professional. One topic that I’ve been interested in exploring is how Pietism relates to the practice of libraries and librarians.

  • What would it mean to call myself a “Pietist Librarian” in the same vein as others identify themselves as “Pietist Schoolman” (like Chris Gehrz).
  • Do libraries associated with Pietist universities have distinctive collections? Do they offer different services? Is their outlook and role on campus different that Evangelical schools?
  • How have libraries evolved/developed alongside the educational institutions associated with Spener and Francke? Borrowing categories from Gehrz, this could explore the intersection of Pietism and Libraries within the movement itself (as opposed to the ethos that, quite frankly, I’m more interested in!).
  • What lines can be traced within my own context – North Park University – between people like Nyvall, Olsson, Hawkinson, Anderson, Weborg, Clifton-Soderstrom? What (if anything!) does this have to do with libraries and library services?

Personal Motivation

Those are the broad questions that I’m grappling with and want to address somehow. When I think about starting this – I feel a strange mix of fear and pride. I think I am afraid because the topic seems looming and largely unexplored. But I also feel pride and excitement – perhaps for a number of different reasons. Doing some soul-searching, here are some reasons for excitement:

  • In the broader theological landscape, I think Pietism adds a unique and distinctive flavor that serves as a corrective or encouragement for Christianity in general. Therefore, it would not be surprising if a Pietism librarian could offer correction or encouragement within the realm of theological libraries.
  • If libraries have a role in forming “Whole and Holy Persons” (borrowing the subtitle of Chris Gehrz’s book) certainly that is my story. So I think any exploration of libraries and Pietism would be deeply personal and enriching.

Next Steps

I like to chart out next steps in public for accountability and transparency. Here’s my plan:

  • Continue reading the book “The Pietist Vision of Higher Education” and related podcast.
  • Read more about theological librarianship generally – especially the stuff produced by the ATLA.
  • Start thinking about a particular focus or perspective to motive and guide this work.
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Graduation and Commencement

After four semesters and countless hours of work, I’m slated to graduate from Library School this weekend. I’m actually not able to attend the graduating ceremony but I thought I would take some time to consider what this means for me on a personal level.

I recently toured a special exhibition in the Art Institute of Chicago that features Van Gogh’s bedroom paintings. It was a fabulous exhibition that provided a lot of information the paintings and the painter. But one line from the exhibit stands out to me as particularly relevant to this time of my life. A panel describing Van Gogh’s decision to become an artists borrows Van Gogh’s own language – through a letter to his brother Theo – which provided language for my current season.

In 1880 Van Gogh decided that art was his true calling. Describing his decision to his brother Theo, he used the language not of professional choice but of belonging: “I often feel homesick for the country of paintings.”

-page 17, Groom, Gloria Lynn, and Allison Perelman. Van Gogh’s Bedrooms. 2016.

Borrowing this language – without comparing myself to this master painter! -I want to explore libraries and librarianship not as a professional choice but as a sense of belonging. In focusing on this sense of belonging, I do not want to downplay the professionalism of librarians nor the important decisions that I’ve made that have brought me to this place. I feel strongly, however, that the appropriate way to understand these identifiers is from a place of “belonging”

This is plainly true in one sense of the word: I belong to group of professionals bound by professional practice and ethics. I belong to a group of co-workers here at North Park focused on student success. The Dean of GSLIS was also quick to point out that I belong to the group of GSLIS alumni – over 10,000 strong! – with the implication that I should also belong to the subset of alumni that support the school through financial gifts. I also belong to the American Library Association, and, recently, the Chicago Area Archivists association.

These ways of “belonging” are important but – as I hear in Van Gogh’s letter – I mean something a bit more direct. I belong to libraries.

I belong to the Grand Rapids Public Library – especially the West Leonard branch – where I remember visiting frequently growing up and revisiting over holiday breaks when I needed peace and quiet to study.

I belong to the libraries in my middle school and high school where I found marvelous books and a shelter from the storms of adolescence.

I belong to the D’Angelo Law Library at the University of Chicago where I found I could flourish in libraries.

I belong to the Chicago Public library where I found practical resources – a quiet place to study and apply for jobs – and deeper joy and inspiration.

But mostly, I belong to my beloved Brandel Library at North Park University. Perhaps more than any other place in my life, this place testifies to my personal and professional transformations. I dare not try to offer a complete chronicle; only to say that these transformations have been profound. The library has been been, at times, a neutral place that has been witness to these developments and, at other times, a charged catalyst that has fostered and created this sense of belonging.

Belonging and Membership

In thinking about this post and reflecting on graduating using Van Gogh’s words, I’ve started thinking a lot about the term “membership” and thinking about whether “belonging” or “membership” is a more appropriate framing device for these graduating and commencement reflections.

When I think about the term “membership, my definition draws heavily from St. Paul and Wendell Berry. St. Paul writes:

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:12

And Wendell Berry, drawing on language from St. Paul, writes about the fictional community of Port Williams:

The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.

That Distant Land, 356

Even though I like the direct, emotive language of belonging, I think that membership language reflects the reciprocal relationships that are created through belonging – relationships between person and place and relationships between individuals – and the mutual obligations that we are called to respect.

I have a tendency to keep things like this in draft forever – so I’m going to publish this post with the understanding that these ideas are still in flux and that I’m likely to revisit this post in the future.

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Working on my thesis…again

I’m working on updating and uploading my thesis to an new, online home. I’m particularly interested in the metadata and how moving from analog to digital offers new opportunities and challenges. I’ve been working on this project for a while now and think it’s time to get somewhat more serious about it. Sometimes my idealist and dreams get in the way of actual, productive work so I wanted to address them both head on here and now.

Ideals

Ideally, I’d like to use my thesis as the basis of an exploration in linked data and the semantic web. My grandest visions involve creating a “Wikipedia of Covenant history” that allows raw data (names, dates, etc.) to be incorporated into meaningful narratives as well as stand alone as definitive data sets. The narratives I have in mind would be analogous to the text of my thesis – interpreting the bare facts of the history – and the data sets would be somewhat analogous to the bibliography.

The data sources I have in mind are ambitious; they include:

  • Books. Given my interest, this should be obvious. But I’d also love to include other information resources: tracts, pamphlets, videos, and blog posts. Perhaps even tweets and news stories.
  • People. Obviously all authors and editors but also all ordained Covenant clergy, including basic biographical information. Former Covenant archivist Timothy Johnson compiled a wonderful resource that I’ve used many times – I’d love to transition that data online and mix it with other datasets
  • Churches. A list of all Covenant churches of all time. Ideally, this would include information such as location, date of founding, etc.
  • Dates. This is pretty easy – link all of these events to a standard calendar.
  • Events. Catalog covenant events like CHIC, Midwinter, the Annual Meetings, etc.

These would be the different data sets – at least the ones I’m currently imagining – and they would be linked by different connections. I’ve done a little dreaming and research about different taxonomies and schemas but am having a hard time (1) determining what schema/structure makes the most sense and (2) what the technical challenges would be in implementing such a thing.

Additionally, there is the question about how I would generate and manage these different datasets. I have a relatively complete lists of books…but in that process I realized how incomplete that list was and how arbitrary certain distinctions seemed in practice. For example, certain articles in The Covenant Quarterly were much more influential to Covenant life than certain books. Yet cataloging all the periodical – Covenant Quarterly, Covenant Companion, weekly newspapers! – seems like an overwhelming and daunting task but ultimately one that would be very beneficial.

I’m going to spend sometime in the next few days exploring other examples of linked data set so that I get a better sense of how these things can related, what relationships already exist, and what tweaks I would need to make locally.

I’m imagining both a site where these different entities are linked to each other (much like my current sites in Omeka) but also where the user could browse and filter so as to ask relatively complex questions and get back hard data in response. For example, a list of pastors that served at a given church, list of churches started in a certain decade, books written by North Park grads, etc. I think this falls squarely in the “digital humanities” ball park and I’m excited to continue thinking about it.

Used under CC license - https://flic.kr/p/8agsb6
Used under CC license – https://flic.kr/p/8agsb6

Practical

I’m going to start building an omeka site that will import the Zotero for my thesis and create items for each book. This will also allow me to generate: a small set of names to begin thinking about people and some items to plot on a timeline (to see what features are available there). I think it will also be nice to get the data into a “better” format –  i.e. a format where a limited amount of metadata is structured in such a way that it can move moved to a different system.

At this point, I’m thinking of these datasets much like tables in a database but I think there are alternatives (XML, JSON, etc.) that are worth exploring and a sample set of this size – and a project with no real consequences! – is a perfect test run.

I also think practically about how I will generate the datasets that I need to complete this project. That is a bit daunting but the raw data is available in the Covenant Yearbooks. Ideally, I’d build on existing works but that’s a start.

Omeka Plugins:

  • Bulk Metadata Editor
  • COINS
  • CSS Editor
  • Dublin Core Extended
  • Exhibit Builder
  • Facet by Metadata
  • Item Order
  • Item Relations
  • Record Relations
  • Search by Metadata
  • Simple Pages
  • Simple Vocab
  • Zotero Import

Okay. I think that is everything. More later on!

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Review – Publisher of the Community: We’re All Doomed

I just watched R. David Lankes’s recent keynote and wanted to post a short review of the material he covered.

Information

“Publisher of the Community: We’re All Doomed” Closing keynote for the NISO Workshop on “Using the Web as an E-Content Distribution Platform: Challenges and Opportunities.” http://quartz.syr.edu/blog/?p=6265

Abstract: We need to build platforms for scholarship and knowledge development, not information and content delivery. These platforms are not about APIs and eContent, but about people and content. We need to strive not for discovery, but epiphanies.

[vimeo id=”109836897″]

Reflection/Response

I really enjoyed this presentation and will take a few new ideas from it. Beyond new ideas, it was refreshing and inspiring and perhaps a bit challenging to hear his thoughts about collections and technology.

Lankes began by talking about the “death of documents” in that the definitions of documents are changing in rapid and new ways. Digital stuff is different at a fundamental level and the editorial process is radically different because digital information resources are living, changing things. There is continuity in this change but, overall, the change has been a massive paradigm shift. The words “ebooks” and “ejournals” are really just metaphors – we are trying to fit new information into old information formats.

This section flooded my mind with thoughts.

  • In my work moving the Covenant Quarterly online, how can I respect both the “old format” while embracing the new opportunities of a digital environment?
  • I asked a very similar question about my work with the Northfield Historical society – how do I work with that community and not just their collection? Great questions that are constantly reframing my approach.

Lankes also argues for a “sea change” in the history of library and library services – we need to stop thinking about content. There have been massive shifts in the last 40 years:

  • Collection focus. Our primary role was collecting and preserving documents. This worked…but only worked with a functional infrastructure of knowledge producers (academics and publishers) and libraries. Technical revolutions changed that – things like cheap paper and ink – and libraries had to change and evolve. The modern conception of a “book palace” – a building full of books – is a product of this period of time. This model is breaking – and totally broken by the digital revolution and the internet. Creating MARC records for webpages is crazy.
  • Service focus. Cataloging is a service – that has both internal and external audiences. Question – are we really applying our services to the external audience? From library orientation to information literacy – that’s a sign of the shift from collections to service focused libraries. This is a big change…but it’s not enough. It’s still operating in the “consumption” model of information. This model creates an artificial line between the knowledge consumption process and the knowledge creation process.
  • Conversation focus. It’s not about putting content online – it’s about making libraries as centers for conversations as mediators and participants. Conversations create revolutions. Move beyond collecting and organizing metadata toward capturing scholarship itself.

A Netflix for education doesn’t work because education isn’t based on consumption – it’s based on learning and learning is based on conversation and participation.

However, I do take issue with some of these claims. First, this presentation created vocational confusion. Lankes argues – persuasively, I might add – that libraries must move beyond a focus on collections to a focus on service and even beyond that to community conversations. However, my library and my position in the library are organized around the first two areas – collections and services – and my job is focused squarely on maintaining access to our collections and a few of our services. So while I’m inspired by the claims that we need to focus beyond those things I wondered what those new services and platforms for community conversations could actually look like and – as importantly – how do we move in that direction without the required skills? Lankes said that “People create restrictions that technology has removed” but that gives me pause for several reasons. First – the technical challenges to what Lankes proposed are not trivial. The technical infrastructure takes time and energy and expertise that many libraries and community groups simply lack. Second, how do we manage this change?

These – of course – are criticisms as much as they are struggling to think through the ramifications of his argument in my local context and in the context of my future.

CC image from Flickr - https://flic.kr/p/hKQMcN
CC image from Flickr – https://flic.kr/p/hKQMcN

Looking forward, I’d like to think more about the following things and perhaps explore them in library school:

  • The history of the book and the history of libraries. It seems like many librarians take this background and context for granted but I think it deserves intentional study.
  • Focus on building conversations. I think this means a focus on reference and instruction but – beyond that – how can I work with the communities I’m a member of?
  • How can I embody that belief – that the real goal of learning isn’t the consumption of knowledge or the production of knowledge but mediating and participating in that conversation? I try and do that here on my blog – but my attempts have been mixed. I will renew that effort!

Okay. I think that’s enough in the way of reflections. That’s plenty to think about and plenty to wrestle with for now.

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“The library is like…” Exploring metaphors and the language of libraries

I’ve been thinking a bit about language recently and the role language has in shaping our perceptions of reality. In summary, I’d like to catalog and analysis some frequently used metaphors and images for libraries, unpacking them to see what they mean and – ultimately – to make recommendations about what language is most appropriate or beneficial. Some quick notes with my own questions and ideas:

What are libraries like? What should they be like?

  • Cathedrals/Sanctuaries
  • Starbucks
  • Home
  • Portals
  • Purchase agents for communities
  • Warehouses
  • Google
  • Netflix
  • Amazon
  • Wikipedia
  • Community centers
  • Publishers

Who are the people that use libraries?

  • Users
  • Patrons
  • Community
  • Customers
  • “future generations”

What are librarians?

  • Tour guides
  • Instructors
  • Organizers
  • “better googlers”
  • Metadata experts
  • Community leaders
  • Creators

A few notes after making this list. First, some of the language isn’t exactly metaphoric, per se, but I’m still somewhat interested in how differences in language impact perceptions or library collections and services. Second, I’m also perfectly aware that there isn’t one “best” answer or word for these questions. For example, librarians sometimes acts as an instructor and other times act as a metadata expert for an institution. So my question is not to settle the debate by saying “libraries should be instructors and not googlers” but merely explore what difference the linguistic framing makes.

For example, popular culture often juxtaposes libraries and Google. The nature of this justaposition changes based on the context – are these competing forces? complimentary? has one superceded the other? – but that is the language of the conversation. Students want a “google like experience” – but what does that mean? Librarians want their collections to be searchable by google…but some are reluctant to embrace and endorse google as a good searching tool.

Additional Thoughts/Questions

Is there a relationship between the language people use to describe libraries (cathedral, starbucks, etc.) be related to library architecture and design? Those two examples seem clearly connected – but I’d like to explore that relationship in more detail. Or perhaps someone has already.

It seems like other fields have done similar research. A few come to mind immediately but my frame of reference is currently the church and the way language is used in that context. Is it a “congregation” or an “audience” – does it matter? What is a pastor: a leader? A shepard? A servant? Again – my contest is limited but I would imagine that other fields have studied how language shifts with role and culture.

Would there be cultural/national differences in the framing metaphors people use? Thinking just about the English language – what is the cultural element to this and how does it impact people’s thoughts or feelings?

How could I begin to answer/address the question? Through a literature review? Interviews? Testing? Seems almost like an ethnographic research project.

So that’s a sketch of a research project I’d like to tackle some day. At core, I think it would be an exploration of what libraries are on a very basic and philosophical level and that it would be impossible for me to “catalog” the metaphors and languages while remaining neutral.

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Review/Notes – “Behind the Point-and-Click Discovery Tool: Integrating Critical Thinking in Finding Resources”

Rob Hallis presenting on Behind the Point-and-Click Discovery Tool: Integrating Critical Thinking in Finding Resources

History of discovery: silos of databases to federated searching to “pushed suggestions”. Pulled data = what you “pull” from a system; Pushed data = what a system (like Amazon) “pushes” at you. Is critical thinking an “autonomous activity?” I don’t think so! Move from a bibliographic paradigm to a constructive process where there is uncertainty and confusion. He is using “Seeking Meaning: A process approach to Library and Information Science” by Kuhthau. (http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/all/vf-npu/Record/2557683).

Questions/Thoughts unrelated to the main presentation:

  • Do we really know enough about how students think/learn through online searching in any form (OPAC, database, discovery)?
  • He uses this metaphor for searching for information resources: online shopping. You know what you want and where to look – but you don’t click the first thing. You shop around. Is this a good metaphor? What’s a better metaphor/image to use?
  • These presentations are really demonstrating the huge range of what falls under library “instruction” – from simple multiple choice tutorials to walking through a very complicated search processes. I wonder if that’s even a meaningful term at some point. How involved in the thesis creation process are libraries/librarians? It seems like this presenter portrays libraries as very active in the thesis/research process from the very beginning…but is that the case at our institutions? That seems like the role of the classroom professor.
  • Many presenters use the passive voice or at least speak passively when talking about Discovery Services. For example, “the resources that the discovery services provide” instead of “discovery services provide resources.” I wonder what this reflects – a mistrust of discovery? A lack of understanding of what discovery layers do or how they actually work? Or is this verbiage trying to focus on the actions of the user over the actions of the discovery service?
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Review: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr

I was reminded of an this article I’ve been meaning to read for a long time and finally took the time to read. Here is the title and information in wonderful, library-approved style:

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic, August 2008. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/306868/.

google-appI wanted to read this article and then offer a series of reflections – both on the substance of Carr’s writing and from my own personal experience – that would respond to the questions he raises.

The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone, and our radio and TV.

Carr wrote this in 2008 – I think it is safe to conclude that the rate at which the internet has subsumed other intellectual technologies has only increased since then. This seems plainly true – technology in general and the internet in particular have replaced old forms of intellectual technologies. However, the conclusions that Carr draws from this fact deserve some scrutiny.

When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new e-mail message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration.

I’ve added emphasis to point out what I see as a troubled conclusion. It is troubled in a number of ways. First, in his hypothetical example, a new e-mail message may announce its arrival in that way; in my use of technology that is a preference that the user has sole control over – it is up to the user to make that decision themselves. Second, what is the logical relation between this pop-up message and the users’s attention and concentration? Carr writes merely “the result is” which seems noticeably weak given his tone elsewhere. I would argue that these two flaws – viewing the use of technology as inevitable and not as a set of user choices and the muddled relationship between technological change and user response – are the flaws to his argument.

Two critiques of my own critiques. First, I’m not saying that Carr is wrong is in his assertions regarding technology and the human mind. I’m merely saying I’m not convinced. Second,

This puts me in an uneasy place. Though I at least partially reject Carr’s premise, I find myself agreeing with many of his conclusions. For example,

In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.

I can agree with this wholeheartedly. My response, however, is different. Rather than see this loss of “quiet space” as an inevitable consequence of the technological age, I see it as a consequence of remarkably poor user behavior. The task in the digital area is to understand the far reaching of effects of technology (which I believe represent a fundamental paradigm shift in libraries and the broader world) and then to adopt behavioral patterns to those norms.

This post has taken a very abstract approach to this question – but the whole time I was thinking of the smartphone I now carry with me everywhere I go. In Carr’s words, it has very much become my “map and clock, printing press and typewriter, calculator and telephone, and radio and TV” and, to be honest, I couldn’t be happier with that. However, there are many times when I simply turn off my phone, leave messages unchecked, and enter the “quiet spaces” Carr mentions later. At least in my mind, my smartphone use does not destroy the “quiet spaces” of life and both offer essential and exciting parts of the human experience in the 21st century.