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Category: Libraries and Librarians

The Problem of Literary Research

Published by Iris on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Two years into being a lit librarian (as well as 6 years of studying literature and writing literary criticism of various sorts and levels), I finally realized what makes literary research so hard. All these poor students are looking for research about their literary works, and they want examples of criticism that approach those works from particular theoretical frameworks. But the MLA International Bibliography and other databases for literary research don’t index by theoretical perspective. I can’t ask it for New Historicist readings of Daisy Miller, for example. And because of this I can’t easily figure out quite what New Historicism is, or who the key scholars were/are, or flesh out a “history of criticism on this piece” kind of literature review.

And I can understand why this is the case. I mean, can you imagine the overhead involved in making decisions about what theory/theories are represented in an article, applying this to a databases as massive as the MLA International Bibliography, or updating the constantly changing terminology associated with literary theory? And yet, this is one of the three primary query-types I’m asked to help with (the other two being “things interpreting this work” and “things characterizing this author.”)

It strikes me that this could be one of those perfect uses for social tagging in research databases. But until then, these poor students are in for a long and frustrating stint of following up on citations, using Web of Knowledge to develop a better feel for the network of scholars writing from a particular theoretical framework, and generally having to move beyond the now-normal task of picking articles with interesting titles from result lists.

In other words, I think that in many ways, the skills required for good literary research are still some of the least translatable into the electronic world. And these skills will probably continue to be much more based on building up vast internal schemata of authors and publishers then on boolean searching until a) databases add indexing about theoretical frameworks or b) MLA (and others) goes social and let us help them describe these works of criticism in ways that are useful to literary critics.

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The Week Before Classes

Published by Iris on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

Classes start next Monday, and man oh man am I in denial. Whew! I even have sessions to teach next week, and am only prepared enough to have them listed in my calendar. And here’s why (other than my general denial, of course): requests always come in just about the time I start getting swamped with pre-term-insanely-busy-ness. My calendar was three of the four work days this week with orientation sessions, planning sessions, and meetings. Also, all of the publicity projects I had going on were absolutely positively DUE today. The brochures I’ve been creating were to be handed out today, the poster needs to be hung, and I still need to send out that fall “I’m here, remember me” email to each faculty member in my departments. No idea when that’ll happen.

So basically I started the day in panic mode… and with an hour and a half of all-library meeting. I was not in the mood! Did they know we had things to do!!! Still, I survived, and even learned a few things.

Luckily, though, the new faculty orientation session went really well. I was pretty worried about it. I mean, four academic technologists and 6 librarians in a room trying to convey all the helpfulness in the world to 40 or so overwhelmed and exhausted new faculty members is a stretch under the best circumstances. On top of it all, I didn’t feel like we’d done enough to prepare the session. We had a very, very basic sketch of what we wanted to accomplish, but I prefer more than that when presenting with so many people. And yet, with all this going against us the new faculty members seemed to appreciate the session, and I had good conversations with a couple of people who will be entering my departments. (I’m a little bit petrified of some of their research areas… but I’ll figure something out. I mean, I kind of have to. It’s my job. And I know from prior experience that these challenges are the most rewarding…once they’re overcome.)

Anyway, this session somehow brought it all home to me that the term is really starting. There’s no turning back. But it did more than that. It reminded me that however much I dread the constant panic of the term, this really is what my job is all about, and I love it. That slightly queasy, there’s-no-way-on-EARTH-I’ll-be-able-to-answer-that, hot-and-cold feeling that washes over me as impossible questions float my way is not the point. The point isn’t even the “thrill of the hunt.” That hunt can be more frustrating than thrilling a lot of the time, let me tell you. The point is exactly what one new professor said today on her way out of the session: “I feel so … covered… like there’s this great safety net under me.” That’s the point.

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The Book-ish-ness of Books

Published by Iris on Thursday, August 16th, 2007

There’s been a really interesting and thought-provoking discussion going on lately about “2.0” topics, spectrums (or rather,” spectra”), print vs. electronic books, and the like. It all started with David Lee King’s Library 2.0 Spectrum, which got so many comments that he wrote a whole post about wanting feedback. Meanwhile Steve Lawson wrote a response (in addition to several comments on David’s posts), Uncontrolled Vocabulary took up the topic, and several other blogs began puzzling out what worked and what didn’t work about the L2 Spectrum.

Well, now the conversation has morphed. Over at See Also, Steve and Dave are hashing out whether a book is a book if it’s not printed on paper. I must say, I didn’t know what to think about that question. Deep down, I’ve always reserved a special place for printed and bound books that is completely separate from manuscripts and eBooks. In my head, these wonderful and time-honored creations have always been Books with a capital B. … And then there were these derivative things called eBooks — sort of like postcards of the Mona Lisa. You know exactly what they are, but you just have to make do with the presentation.

Then David comes along and questions this assumption. He feels that books are books, no matter the format. And that seems like a very reasonable conclusion. You can digitize everything but the paper (and the smell), so what’s the problem? I’d hate to get caught in the trap of putting printed books on a pedestal just because I like the way they feel. And there’s nothing worse than finding yourself falling into the trap of “because that’s the way they’ve always been.” In fact, I’m not sure that I haven’t fallen into that trap, even now.

But something in the comments to Steve’s post struck a chord and I felt compelled to add my own comment to the string, even though I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to say. Steve had made the point that calling the paper and binding of a book a “container” might be too simplifying. He said:

I think my problem with the word “container” is similar to Dorothea’s problem with the word “just” in the post I linked to above. It makes it all sound very simple, very easy, when it isn’t. I can pour my ginger ale from an aluminum can container into a glass tumbler container, and it is still ginger ale. “Pour” Tristram Shandy from a paper book container to a Google scan container, and you no longer have Shandy, you have something else. (cite)

Then, as I typed, I puzzled out what I was thinking. I’m still not sure I’m “right”… but here’s what I wrote (edited only slightly to compensate for sloppy writing):

I think you’re right that the point is that it’s not simple. The point is not so much the words in a row. The point is not so much the placement of pictures, type face, or white space (which is also important). The point is that “containers” are not entirely benign. If they were entirely benign, people wouldn’t pour ginger ale from the can to the glass. There’s something about a glass that’s more comfortable to drink from. The edge feels different on the lips, the spray tickles your nose… the experience isn’t the same. And yet, the ginger ale is still ginger ale.

Ok, so the container matters in this case, but doesn’t change the substance. But what about the case of a Van Gogh painting? Seeing digital reproductions of his work is nothing like seeing the real thing. The colors aren’t as vibrant. The textures of the brushwork are simply shadows rather than spaces. In this case, the “container” changes the work absolutely and fundamentally.

So does the “container” change the substance of a book in the same way that it changes a painting? I’d say, “It depends.”

Ludlum might be a “book” no matter it’s container. Shandy, maybe, not so much. Complex texts are not generally read in as linear fashion as they are written. The words march forward, the same as ever, but my eyes jump back to the top of the facing page, the previous paragraph, the next sentence, almost without breaking the flow of my reading. Complex texts require this type of reading-while-reading as you make sense of them.

Some day, technology might be able to simulate the act of putting a finger on a page in order to mark a point you’re trying to interpret by reading forward. Some day eBook readers might allow the kind of non-linear reading that’s necessary for sense-making. And some day there might be a fully automatic process by which complex texts, these books that have never been anything but Books, can be converted to digital formats. Just like some day we may have digitally reproduced paintings where the experience of the painting isn’t fundamentally changed. (cite)

[Updated to add: I’ve been thinking more about things that get translated into different formats. Things like music, for instance. Music is one thing that’s drastically different live vs. recorded, and yet that’s entirely accepted and doesn’t phase anyone. So now my question is this: are books more like music or more like paintings? My gut reaction is still that they’re more like paintings because they’re not a linear experience, while music is always listened to in a metaphorically linear way.]

[Updated again to point to Mark’s excellent comment on Steve’s post. This reminder helps me a lot! Thanks Mark.]

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Online Research Guides

Published by Iris on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

As part of my liaison duties, I create and maintain the “subject” and “course” research guides designed for the departments I serve. Subject research guides are meant to give students a grasp of the resources available that most researchers in a given major or concentration will probably need at some point in their research. Course research guides are designed for specific courses that I’m supporting each term.

And really, the course research guides are pretty simple to come up with. They usually either replace or complement any handouts that are appropriate for a class, and they’re almost always tied to a specific assignment or set of assignments, so I generally have a fairly good idea of what those students will need.

Subject research guides are another matter entirely. I have no idea what I’m doing, really. Do I gather things by resource type (e.g. “Finding books,” “Finding articles,” “Useful web sites,” etc.), or do I gather things by topic? (Here’s an example of a page that’s organized by resource-type, and here’s one that’s organized by topic.) Either way, they’re long lists of stuff, and not very interesting, but with our current tools I’m tied to a heavily text-based, straight HTML page.

When you think about it, the idea of breaking things up by resource type vs. topic really comes down to your choice of audience. Am I creating these primarily for inexperienced researchers who need help getting started? If so, topical organization seems to make sense. It pulls together fewer things and makes it so students don’t have to jump around to see if other resource-types will be useful to their topics. But if I’m primarily making these things for more intermediate-level researchers who already know that all they want is the MLA International Bibliography, for example, a page full of topics (where the MLA-IB could appear in any one of the topics, or all of them) would probably drive them batty! If I were using these pages, I’d want to click “articles” and see a short list of the databases and indexes that are relevant to an area of study.

So who is my audience? I don’t really know. But I’ve finally realized that answering this question could make the creation of these subject pages so much easier.

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