Education & Reading in America

In my last post, I vowed to do better at raising my awareness of how different the world can be for different people.

People like to think that they’re typical—we each like to believe that we’re the norm. I believe that much of the conflict that exists between social classes and political parties stems from our inability to see (or, more accurately, our inability to accept and truly understand) that the world for other people isn’t always the same as the world is for us.

I grew up in a family of well-educated, avid readers. Pretty much all of my friends are well-educated, avid readers, too. I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t read, or where all of my friends and family don’t read. Where the majority of people around me don’t have college degrees. I just can’t picture it.

Today, Stephen Abram posted some highlights from the Digest of Education Statistics, 2012:
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Copyright: Not an Authors' Rights System

The American Library Association tweeted this article today:

Copyright doesn’t make sense to everyone. Here’s why it should. by Carrie Russell (posted by District Dispatch on November 12, 2013)

It’s a good article. It’s important to acknowledge that, despite the challenges we currently face regarding copyright, our system in the United States is far less restrictive than authors’ rights systems in many other countries.

By the same token, though, this article highlights quite well the problems that I have with many of the changes made to U.S. copyright law over the past decades. Namely:

All the major evolutions of copyright law in this country over the past decades have been attempts by commercial interests to change it into a restrictive authors’ rights system.

If these changes continue, then copyright law won’t make sense anymore.

More Thoughts on Makerspaces in Libraries

Make It @ Your Library is an initiative of ILEAD USA, in collaboration with Instructables and the American Library Association.

Thinking more about makerspaces in libraries:

My caution about makerspaces is rooted in my sense that we’ve turned to them largely due to this ubiquitous fear that libraries will become irrelevant. The fear that if we don’t change, if we don’t innovate, if we don’t disrupt, then we’ll go the way of the dodo. We latch onto all sorts of ideas that promise to prove our continued relevancy and adaptability to people.

But this fear of irrelevancy is unfounded. For the past decade and more, pretty much every public library in the country has seen their usage rise. The data is clear – door counts, circs, and the use of library resources across the board are going up. More people use public library systems now than ever before.

Why are we so concerned about bending over backwards to prove that we’re relevant? It’s clear that we’re more relevant than we’ve ever been. The data is there for all to see.

Makerspaces serve useful purpose in our communities (absent more formal vocational training opportunities) and that’s great.

But I worry that we’re jumping on the makerspace bandwagon mostly because we’re depending on them to keep us relevant. And that’s the wrong reason.

Libraries change by their very nature. Culture and society evolve and the needs of our communities change. Makerspaces are an innovation that offer useful services to patrons and we should explore that.

But I worry that we’re turning to them—along with other innovations—because we’re in a panic. That’s not a solid foundation on which to build a successful service.

Library Makerspaces

Make It @ Your Library is an initiative of ILEAD USA, in collaboration with Instructables and the American Library Association.

I understand why makerspaces are all the rage in library-land lately. They present an opportunity to educate members of our community in a range of useful hands-on and productive skills.

So why am I wary of them?

Too often, I see library makerspaces that are really nothing more than glorified carpentry or mechanic shops.

Too often, I see patrons using 3D printers and other technology to make nothing more than trinkets and tchotchkes. I have to question the long-term value of this.

In all such cases, though, these makerspaces let the library teach useful skills to people. And that’s the point, isn’t it?

So what’s the problem?
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The End Of The Library?

I just read this post on TechCrunch:

The End Of The Library by MG Siegler (posted on October 13, 2013)

Obviously, this post is generating huge reactions among some librarians. There’s not a lot for me to add to the discussion on the future of libraries that I didn’t say in my post Another Librarian’s Response to “What’s a Library?” and in my response to Terry Deary when he suggested that libraries are no longer relevant.

In particular:

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.

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Internet Censorship: A Global Perspective

Given the blog I posted yesterday about CIPA, I think this is an important perspective to keep in mind:

A Map of the Countries That Censor the Internet by Casey Chan (posted by Gizmodo on August 13, 2013; found via Stephen’s Lighthouse)

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.

CIPA, Censorship & the EFF

For the past few days, this article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been making its way through the library sphere:

The Cost of Censorship in Libraries: 10 Years Under the Children’s Internet Protection Act by Rainey Reitman (posted on September 4, 2013)

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.

It is our job to provide access to information and to help people learn how to handle it in useful and healthy ways.
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Theatre, the Arts & Libraries: The Power of Storytelling

One of the things that strikes me most about working in a library is how much overlap there is between libraries and theatre.

In my MLIS program, there were several of us who came from a career in theatrical tech / stage management and were transitioning into librarianship. As I’ve noted before, theatrical technician-to-librarian is a fairly common path.

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.

The Truth About the Arts: Art is Activism by Lisa A. Kramer (posted on her blog on August 25, 2013)
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The Continued Value of Print

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:

The Biblioracle on Physical Books in an E-Book World by John Warner (posted by the Chicago Tribune on August 2, 2013)
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