Category: Uncategorized

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I was delighted to find the following email in my inbox the other day. From ALA’s president Barbara Stripling:

ALA is saddened by recent news that the government has obtained vast amounts of personal information and electronic communications of millions of innocent people. The extent of the personal information received by the government is very troubling. Those of you who have been long-time members of ALA know that we have always argued that provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act encroach on the privacy expectations of library users. Worse, the surveillance law erodes our basic First Amendment rights, all while undermining the very fabric of our democracy […]

We need to restore the balance between individual rights and terrorism prevention, and libraries are one of the few trusted American institutions that can lead true public engagement on our nation’s surveillance laws and procedures. Libraries have the tools, resources and leaders that can teach Americans about their First Amendment privacy rights and help our communities discuss ways to improve the balance between First Amendment rights and government surveillance activities. And patrons are ready to learn about their privacy rights from their libraries.

How academic libraries can join the fight for privacy has been buzzing around my head of late. Thankfully, Stripling’s email also links to some helpful resources: the Choose Privacy Week website and a Moderator’s Guide [pdf]. I haven’t given this enough thought to craft a decent post, but three things immediately come to mind as actions academic librarians can take (in addition to hosting discussion forums):

1) Prominently display a link to your library’s privacy statement and data retention policies on the homepage. Wait, you don’t have one? Well, now is a better time than any to get started!

2) Know your university’s policies on user data and find out what third parties (esp. email platform providers) have access to it.

3) Start talking to electronic resources vendors about how they use your patrons’ data. What do they collect? What is their retention policy? What other third-parties have access to that data?

I don’t imagine I’ll have many discussions at the reference desk about protecting user privacy and data, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight for it. More thoughts on this later. Happy Friday!

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But then students are our target audience:

“The vast majority of academics who responded – around 90% – saw the main role of the university library as a purchaser of content. While 45% described themselves as very dependent on their library for their work, only 2% of academics start their research with a visit to the library building.”

Source: Academics will need both the physical and virtual library for years to come

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Anthony Molaro, Associate Dean of Library and Instructional Services at Prairie State College, wrote a provocative post today entitled “What Librarians Lack: The Importance of the Entrepreneurial Spirit.” I would not go so far as to say all librarians/libraries lack entrepreneurial spirit (NC State, Virginia Tech, Harvard, Virginia, and Champlain College immediately come to mind as libraries making significant strides in library services and technology and I’m sure there are others), but I would agree that tectonic shifts rarely happen in academic libraries. When was the last time we created a shift so profound that the academy shuddered and the profession balked at the mere thought?

We don’t lack for innovators. As Molaro notes:

No society is devoid of entrepreneurs, ubiquitous protests of “we have lost our entrepreneurial spirit” notwithstanding. They may be under the radar, languishing in non-entrepreneurial positions, or channeling their entrepreneurial spirit in non-productive ways, but they are present. Find and enlist them. Support and mentor them. Galvanize the entrepreneurship resources and stakeholders to support them as well. Use your positions of power to help them find new customers, investors, advisors, and business partners.

I’m ready to do something radical. I’m ready to try something scary. Let’s build something from the ground up and terraform the library landscape.

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Writer-scholar-teacher-librarian extraordinaire Barbara Fister gave the keynote presentation at this year’s LOEX conference in Nashville, TN. I encourage you to read the full text of her presentation, which she described in the following abstract:

Developing both the skills and the disposition to engage in inquiry is a ubiquitous if ill- defined goal of higher education. Libraries are a space, physical and social, where students practice a number of inquiry skills they can use after graduation to make a living – and, more importantly, to make a difference. But it’s hard to take the long view. Students are focused on completing assignments as efficiently as possible. Faculty want to cover content. Administrators want strong retention and completion rates. Who has time to think about what comes next? The information universe that librarians invite students to use is so complex that learning just enough to complete academic tasks saturates our instructional efforts, distracting us from a fundamental question: what experiences do we provide that support long-lasting and meaningful learning? How will what students learn in our libraries today help them make meaning in the information universe of the future?

In her presentation, Fister asks us to critically and honestly examine what libraries are for, what universities are for, and what knowledge is for, both within the context of higher education but also with an eye toward creating lifelong learners. She then offers six ”outlandish claims” about first-year instruction to help us answer these questions:

  1. Research papers should not be part of the first-year experience.
  2. We should stop teaching students how to find sources.
  3. Very rarely are citations needed.
  4. We should stop policing plagiarism.
  5. We should stop implying that “scholarly” means “good.”
  6. Librarians should spend as much time working with faculty as with students.

As you wrap up your work week and move into the weekend, I hope you’ll think about these claims. I know I will!

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Over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe, Kim Leeder discusses the rhetorical value of the term “traditional library.” She closes with the following observation:

If we define [the traditional library] rhetorically as an institution focused on physical spaces and materials, then there remains no question: the traditional library is dead. That doesn’t mean libraries as an institution are dead, nor does it mean that the physical library as a component of some larger organization is dead. The traditional library has been replaced with an expanded vision of itself, one that encompasses traditional values and features but extends outward to include the vastness of free and licensed digital resources as well as spaces and services that are entirely people-focused. The contemporary library, in contrast to the traditional library, resides online, teaches, reaches out and asserts its value across its community. [emphasis added]

In this way, every academic library exists on a spectrum between traditional, book-/space-centered work and contemporary, instruction-/service-centered work. In my opinion, a moderately successful library will be one that is keenly aware of its place on the spectrum and is able to articulate its value as such, but the highest success (at least in today’s information-rich, digitally connected landscape) will be reserved for those who can strategically align themselves closer to the contemporary side of the spectrum through teaching and outreach.