He doesn’t see our research resources, our literacy initiatives, our job search assistance, our government documents collections, or our social services. He doesn’t see our partnerships with local school systems and cultural institutions. He doesn’t see community use spaces and safe places to for people to hang out. He doesn’t see a champion of informed democracy and self-improvement. He doesn’t see librarians as curators of information, experts to guide people through society’s myriad information resources.
This is not in any way to mitigate the irreducible importance of the freedom of information in our democracy. But the larger reality is that we’re far better off on this front than many other people in throughout the world. If anything—this makes upholding our own freedom all the more important, as an example of the benefit to society that it engenders.
There’s much excellent material to go over in this piece. I have many reactions to it. The first and most important being this:
It’s not a library’s job to police people.
It’s not actually our job to act in loco parentis. This is one of the big differences between public libraries and public schools, and it’s something that many library patrons misunderstand. It’s not a library’s job to judge any patron’s information needs—it’s not even any of our business why they need it.
The professor who taught my Intro to Library Science class (the ever-delightful Dr. Janice Del Negro) once commented that “librarians tend be a little bit off of center”. Theatre people tend to be a lot off of center, so we feel right at home in libraries.
Theatre is about telling stories—librarianship, at heart, is about sharing stories. Both passions are founded on a love of storytelling, a recognition of the irreducible importance of storytelling in society. Even history, science, math… All forms of human communication and the sharing of knowledge are forms of storytelling.
So when I read this article about the nature of arts and theatre, I couldn’t help but think of how it applies libraries, too.
With the inexorable rise of ebooks, there have been a lot of people expounding the continuing benefits of print books. Most of them tend to cite similar things:
The physical heft of print books.
The smell of print books.
The permanence of print.
The retention of knowledge when reading print books.
Etc.
People also approach the issue from the perspective of the benefits of ebooks.
We’ve all read these blog posts and articles, we know how they go. These are all legitimate and important considerations.
Here’s an article, though, that mentions a couple benefits of print that I’ve not seen cited before—and I think these reasons are some of the best for continuing to allow print books to play an important role in all our lives:
I was a voracious reader on my own but I hated reading for school. It was never any fun when it was for school. I understand that reading is essential for childhood learning in almost every respect—but this is not the way to encourage kids to want to read.
Ironically, I never read any of the assigned books for my classes in junior & high school—but I’ve read every one of those books on my own just for fun (and because I think it’s important to be well read) since then. The mere act of assigning the book automatically made me not want to read it.
Over the years, I’ve spoken about this phenomenon with many people—friends, coworkers, classmates—and I’ve been struck by how many people had the exact same experience in school. Moreover—it tends to be the most well-read and best educated people who felt this most acutely.
When the people who love reading the most hate reading for school… that should tell us something.
I think everyone who has any role in the design of user interaction environments, no matter how peripheral or glancing (and yes – book displays and public service desks count!) should read this article.
His critiques are spot-on and his conclusion is important. Such considerations may seem overwrought in the context of public service desk or book display design, but the ethical responsibility to help is appropriate for all—and especially for libraries.
Microinteractions: Designing with Details by Dan Saffer, published by O’Reilly Media, 2013.I’ve been hearing about microinteraction design rather a lot in the last couple of weeks. This morning, a coworker sent me a link to an article on Fast Company about Dan Saffer’s book, Microinteractions: Designing with Details.
(It’s worth reading not just for the article but for the comments, as well – they’re pretty amusing!)
I really like the philosophy of microinteraction design. It appeals to what I understand about neurology – that we’re evolved to be paleolithic hunter-gatherers and our brains are wired to take in all the little details of our surroundings (animal sign for food and danger, edible plant sign, water sign, weather sign). Our fundamental functioning of mind is based on being hyperaware of the details around us, the visceral input that informs all of our interactions with the world. It’s the details that wake up our full attention and spur our brains to engage at their fullest capacity. It’s the details that make things really real for us. Microinteractions fulfill a similar role in a digital environment as visceral input in the analog world.
In particular, I like microinteraction design as an alternative to skeuomorphism – which does have legitimate uses (particularly for people who aren’t entirely comfortable in digital environments) but tends to be inelegant, clunky, and overly relied upon as a crutch for bad designers.
As my coworker summed up microinteraction design:
Indeed, details are everything – people pay attention to their comprehensive experiences, whether it’s IRL on online. Sites that are enjoyable to navigate/explore are products of thoughtful planning and design; since users have become much more discerning about site structure/features, more sophisticated (but not overly complicated) design approaches are needed.
I love this design philosophy and I’m eager to see what we can do with microinteractions.
As a professional librarian, I’m obsessed with the phenomenon of serendipitous discovery. Some of the most rewarding learning experiences of my life came to me by chance; I discovered some of my favorite books and authors simply by browsing the shelves at the library and allowing interesting things to catch my eye. I’m more grateful for these unlooked-for experiences than I can say.
John the Librarian 