Tag: critical thought

Another Librarian’s Response to "What’s a Library?"

I love Rita Meade’s (@ScrewyDecimal) reaction piece to Michael Rosenblum’s op-ed “What’s a Library?” that was posted by the Huffington Post on May 8, 2013.

A Librarian’s Response to “What’s a Library?” (posted on Book Riot on May 13, 2013)

[With apologies for plagiarizing her title.]

Let’s be kind – let’s give Mr. Rosenblum the benefit of the doubt and assume he was honestly trying to critique the current state of libraries in some kind of difficult to discern attempt to help.

He still failed.
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Interesting Article: The Reading Brain in the Digital Age

The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens by Ferris Jabr (posted by Scientific American on April 11, 2013)

When I was in grad school, I had an idea to conduct research into the neurological underpinnings of reading on paper vs. computer screens vs. ebooks. While my vision for the project was beyond the scope of what I could accomplish in the program and thus never got started, I’ve continued to be obsessed with this facet of our modern technology. I’ve written about it on this blog before. I continue to follow research being done on the subject.

This article from Scientific American sums up well what we currently know about how our brains process written language through different presentation media. It appears that I’m correct in my belief that these acts of reading are qualitatively different as far as our brains are concerned.

As librarians, we need to account for these differences in our resources – especially when it comes to education and literacy initiatives.

Library Website Design, Part III: Give Them Paths to Follow, Not Points to Click

When it comes to making sure that all of our services are available on our library’s website, the best strategy is to make access intuitive and obvious.

The mistake that’s all too easy to make (and all too frequently made) is to assume that this means putting points of access right there on the home page.

At certain point, though, this requires either:

  • Putting so many points of access on the home page that everything gets lost in the chaos and the site loses any sense of focus at all; or,
  • Prioritizing certain services over others and keeping many points of access off the home page – which triggers our fear that we might fail to address every conceivable patron need in an obvious way, and unintentionally defines unwanted implications regarding the perceived relative value of these services.

To reiterate what PC Sweeney said: “Too many choices creates confusion.”
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Library Website Design, Part II: The Tyranny of Choice, and an Ode to the Reference Interview

Consider the way that many library websites handle online database collections: we list every database we have and let the patron find the one they need. We offer alphabetical listings of our databases, we have categorized lists… we offer multiple points of access to try and provide any given patron an option that might fit how they want to interact with the site.

But there’s a fundamental flaw in this use-case:

It puts the burden of identifying and locating appropriate resources on the patron. The general category and topics lists help somewhat – but the patron still needs to decide which category they need to drill through, and then they need to assess each database offered in that category to determine which might best serve their purpose.
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Library Website Design, Part I: The Trader Joe’s Principle

Prefab
Prefab from Influx (image used with permission)
Designing a library website is challenging. Most commercial websites – e-commerce sites, for example, or promotional sites for businesses – have clear purposes and limited use-cases.

Libraries, by contrast, offer a staggering array of services to a wide variety of users.

How do you design for that? How do you focus your layout and navigation without sacrificing the visibility of all your myriad resources and services? How do you promote certain services without ostracizing patrons who are seeking services that aren’t being promoted?
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Thoughts on the True Nature of Ebooks

Stuart Kelly at The Guardian has an interesting take on the potential new reality of ebooks:

Why ebooks are a different genre from print (posted March 26, 2013)

I’ve long been advocating for the multimedia potential of ebooks but I hadn’t really thought about the data-gathering and non-private nature of the medium before.

On a deeper level, I’d like to see more longitudinal studies done on information comprehension and retention when reading ebooks, as well as direct neurological mapping of ebook reading vs. print. I’m curious to know how our pre- and sub-conscious minds deal with the physical differences in the delivery mechanisms.
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Library Services – or, What Makes A Library Valuable?

An Attempt to Bring Together a Variety of Recent Issues

I know the hoopla about Terry Deary is old news already, but I keep thinking about it, circling back around to it.

Despite my powerful and vociferous reaction to his statements about the value of public libraries, there’s something about this situation that still isn’t resolved in my mind. And I think I know what it is.

Terry Deary is absolutely, 100% wrong about the “concept behind libraries”. Which begs an essential question:

How did a well-educated, literate man come to view public libraries so wrongly in the first place?
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The Virtues of Anthropomorphization

Chimpanzee from Disneynature
Chimpanzee from Disneynature

Recently, I was perusing Cracked, just randomly clicking through the linked articles at the bottom of the page, wasting time as is my wont, and I came across this:

5 Mind-Blowing Ways Animals Display Human Emotions

This reminded me of a movie review that one of my coworkers wrote last year for the Disneynature documentary Chimpanzee.

Both of these articles illustrate a near-universal attitude toward the subject of animal and human behavior and emotions: Namely, the assumption that human and animal behaviors are essentially different.

Both of these articles make me want to ask:

Just where do you think human behavior and emotions come from?
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Public Libraries Matter: And We’re Already Trying to Do More

Last week, David Vinjamuri posted Part II of his two-part series on public libraries. I had some serious criticisms of Part I, so I’m happy to see that he goes some way to redeeming himself this time around.

Why Public Libraries Matter: And How They Can Do More by David Vinjamuri

His essay hits several nails squarely on the head, most especially his vision of libraries as community spaces and central forces in the ecosystem of reading. And he’s correct that libraries must establish larger cooperative communities between disparate systems.

This is not to say, though, that he gets everything right in Part II.
Continue reading “Public Libraries Matter: And We’re Already Trying to Do More” →