I like Eric’s definition of a library, digital or otherwise:
Comments closedCollections without services are useless, and services without collections are empty. You can’t have one and not the other and call your thing a library. Librarians need to provide equal amounts of both in order to practice balanced librarianship, especially in a digital environment.
Recently (by which I mean the last year or so) people in my profession have been discussing a concept of libraries and librarianship. That’s a clunky sentence, but there’s a reason for that: I hesitate to call this concept “new,” which is a normal word to insert into a sentence such as that one. Another reason is that the name (or rather, nickname) of this concept is even more controversial than the concept itself, so I left that off too. So here’s the concept:
Does this sound revolutionary? I think not. I think this is what we’re doing and have been doing for, well, forever. So what’s the big deal? The big deal is that this concept is being spun as something new, and it’s being spun in a way that seems to be intended to be inflammatory. It’s meant to shake us out of our “we’ve always done it this way” funk, but in doing so it alienates two major groups of librarians: those who need the chance to understand the concept before accepting it, and those who have always been exploring the ever-changing topography of user needs.
To deal with the first group of alienated librarians first, I think that arguing that we need to get away from arguing about the name of a concept (as was stated, rather forcefully, at the Dead Tech session of CIL two weeks ago) in effect side-steps a major issue. If people are unable to discuss a concept because the name itself makes them mad, maybe the name is an issue. Librarians of all people should understand that exact words matter. We wouldn’t have so many acronyms if we didn’t believe in thoroughly explaining every service, group, and tool in its name (the Online Public Access Catalog comes immediately to mind…who thought up that little sobriquet?).
So, what’s in a name? The name that’s been pretty firmly attached to the concept at hand is “Library 2.0.” This name immediately does two things that I don’t think were intended by those who coined it: it implies that the skills, services, and holdings in libraries are obsolete, and it names libraries a “technology” fashioned by others and totally reactive rather than a living, vital group of people providing value-added services.
For the second group of alienated librarians, it implies that we haven’t been doing what we should be doing. Now, I’m not saying that the L2 concept actually is telling us to hurry up and do what we’re already doing, but simply by calling it the second iteration (and, by implication, the better iteration) of librarianship, it implies that we’re not doing something that we should be doing. And there’s nothing more annoying than being told to do what you’re already doing.
One final note, and then I’ll quit. I think that the pure volume of the discussions surrounding this concept is part of what makes some librarians uncomfortable. It feels like one more symptom of a disease that is ravishing the library profession. This disease is “Millennial Discomfort,” and it’s systemic in libraries. There’s such hysteria, such frantic runnings around in circles, and (let’s face it) such fear of this new generation and how “different” they are that the profession is on the verge of paralyzing itself. Somehow, we’ve lost sight of the fact the librarians get a whole degree in how to find out about stuff. So what’s so scary about finding out about new technologies, services, and information sources? It’s what we’re trained to do.
So let’s talk about the concept just as a part of librarianship and not as a part of any NEW librarianship. Let’s serve some users and do it well… just like we’ve been doing since librarianship was invented.
p.s. Some other people who are discussing this concept are Stephen Abram, Steven Cohen, Panlibus, and over a hundred thousand others.
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Clothing designs and cooking recipes can’t be copyrighted. They’re creative expressions (some more than others). They’re fixed in a tangible form. But there’s a 200-year-old rule that things that are “useful” can’t be regulated. At least, that’s what the New York Times says in their article “OK, Knockoffs, This is War,” which ran on March 30th. I haven’t found any original expression of this “legal principle” yet, but the NYT calls it “outdated in this era of sophisticated mass copying.” They go on to quote a lawyer:
”The whole underpinning of that 200-year-old law of functionality was to promote creativity and innovation,” said Alain Coblence, a lawyer hired by the Council of Fashion Designers and by fashion trade groups in Paris and Milan, which also promote the legislation. ”Yet the situation is exactly the reverse because designers now must ask what is the incentive to innovate if you know your creation is going to be stolen within days and your designs are going to be used before you have a chance to use them for yourself?”
Now, I’m by no means an expert on copyright law, or law of any kind, but I fail to see how this law is “outdated” just because it allows copying. After all, rich people will always buy designer originals rather than knockoffs, and regular people will never buy designer originals. I’m also having trouble imagining what we regular folks would be able to buy once all the clothing designs out there have been copyrighted with rights reserved for a “limited” time of only 120 years. (I’m using the current term length for unpublished works because I don’t know exactly how you would “publish” a dress or a coat.) How will this encourage innovation? I think it would innovate us right out of clothing!
There seem to be two main arguments for increased regulation: copying isn’t “fair,” and “people now have more disposable income” so they can afford the originals. The second reason needs no comment. The first sounds wonderful and all, except that my understanding of copyright law is that it has very little to do with fairness. Plagiarism isn’t “fair,” but unless it violates copyright law it isn’t actually illegal. And from my limited knowledge of fashion knockoffs, they get most of their fame from “citing” the original source. After all, those Oscar dress knockoffs wouldn’t sell very well if they weren’t copies of dresses worn at the Oscars.
Luckily, the NYT seems to be on my side. Author Eric Wilson ends with a quote from Gela Taylor, a designer at Juicy Couture talking about the proposed regulation.
”I don’t think anybody’s naive about this,” Ms. Taylor said. ”Fashion is a strange and ephemeral thing. But this proposal is for people who are not inspired by anything but looking for an easy way to make money.”
Now my question is, isn’t scholarship “useful”?
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