Breaking Bad Librarians

A rambling post where I think I had a point about librarians taking ownership of their professionalism somewhere.


I've worked in libraries for 16 years. I've no clue about the first thing to being a drug dealer.

I mean, I guess the first thing would be to create a VistaPrint account and make business cards.

Beyond that, I feel my background in libraries is not something I am going to draw on. Or that's what I thought.

"information professionals are like drug dealers. We encourage info-addicts by being a source, and push our product to them"

Turns out, thanks to libraries, I have the skill base to be a drug dealer after all. I didn't get into libraries for a career progression to the drug scene, but here I am: pushing product to info-addicts.

Being a book cataloguer and classifier too, I'm at the processing end of things. My office with desktop PC, ruler and RDA ring binder is ostensibly a meth lab. I should really wear a dust mask or take off my trousers when cataloguing. [In the same vein of never drug dealing, I've never watched an episode of Breaking Bad]

But with all those do-gooders helping info-addicts into the 12-step plan and out of libraries, times are tough for us book pharmacists, man. I speak to other Skidaddys and Slim Shadys in the library business and traffic passing to get their OPAC hits is not exactly buzzin'. Some book fungus jugglers are thinking of diversifying and getting a piece of the Waterstones small arms-trade action.

I've probably taken that too far.

I am very grateful to @walkyouhome for commenting on how questionable this tweeted take on information professionalism is. If I saw it without comment, I admit I would have scrolled by another tired and desperate attempt at making librarianship appear hip. I would have seen the tweet as a church minister plugging in his brown electric guitar at the evening hymn singing group and moved on.

Yes, librarians talk of having "users" but Information Professionals are nothing like drug dealers. Further, the suggestion they are, even a little, has dubious connotations.

Drug dealers. Aside from the school playground edgy level comparison to place librarians as criminal chic, well, drug dealers are usually bad people.

And with info-addicts, it labels those who use the library as people information professionals believe have an illness.

As for product... what product? Access to information in itself is not a product. It is a service. And a vital one at that.

Not how an interlibrary loan operates

Ultimately, @brawbukes gave a great statement about the tweet: it is out of touch with the information sector and drug addiction alike and offensive to both.

OK. I'm perhaps not being fair. I realise the tweeter will say he feels he has made a throwaway, light remark. Something that he hoped would give a quick thrill with a buck of the library stereotypes.

"Hey! If you think about it, us librarians are the dangerous, other side of the tracks, smouldering bad-guys in black tees who can't be tamed."

I get it. Heck, I'm writing this blog and thinking I am so rock and roll under my hair curtains.

I'm listening to Ocean Colour Scene's 2nd album while writing this.

And with that we can dismiss the tweet entirely. Because drugs is the wrong criminal industry.

This should have been the tweet:

"Information professionals are like brothel madams and pimps. We offer material on loan for info-pervs and let them grubbily thumb through our wares. #ili2017" 

As for what information professionals in academia catering for bibliophiles and researchers are like? Best not go there, the mucky first edition fuckers.

A prostitution comparison is way more accurate than a drug scene one. So why not say that? Because it is unsavoury for a guy who, since he started the comparisons, looks like he is out of a seasonal film titled Santa Needs To Be A Taxman for Some Reason, to say. I don't think one simile is any more savoury or piece by piece ludicrous than the other comparison.

You see, @walkyouhome got me thinking. This is a microcosm shedding an important light on one of the issues I wrestle with about a failing the information profession has: apologising for being itself.

I'm not saying it's not good to have a bit fun about our varied roles. It can be empowering to think of yourself as a maverick or whatever when working away. It can get you through a tough day. But why do these analogies appear out of our professional conferences? Or tweeted apparently straight laced by us? I'm pretty sure this is not helpful to the perception of the profession. And lord knows non-librarians are quick enough to make terrible comparisons about libraries and librarians, without us helping them.

The information profession is one of a very few professional sectors that seem to cackle and cling onto reinventions (or worse, brandings) of what they do as something else. We aren't librarians - we are Knowledge Wizards. We aren't librarians - we are Information Superheroes. We are Answer Sleuths. I mean, these are all more positive descriptions than information drug dealers, but still.

Are we so lacking in confidence as a professionalism that we glamorise our work to such a stretch that we are happy comparing ourselves to things nothing like librarianship?

It's not as if other professional sectors feel the need to do it.

Fair enough. There was that one time a corporate lawyer told people he did "murders and executions" instead of mergers and acquisitions. But he was American and a psycho. Although his VistaPrint game was strong.

However, generally, I don't see accountants try to sex up their jobs as, I don't know - Somali pirates.

Is it because of the librarian stereotype? I know we all are keen to rid ourselves of that. And we are quite right to challenge it when it plays falsely. I believe something is not a stereotype if it is true. The truth doesn't need to be bucked or glamorised.

Information professionals tend to be introverted. They tend to avoid conflict and seek conciliation. They tend to want to help others. They tend to be imaginative. They tend to worry about copyright infringement. None of this is a bad thing.

More importantly...

Information professionals facilitate access to information. Information professionals do this in service led industries. They do this to benefit users, clients and, yes, customers in all sorts of interesting sectors that change lives: improve lives. They do this under pressures of budgets, being told their skills are out of date and threat of losing their employment to volunteers and junior office administration staff.

One of the reasons for this is the lack of understanding about the value of what an information professional does.

Crucially, information professionals tend to work under non-information professional management structures and provide an information service to non-information professionals. So we need to be clear about what we do and why we are key to the service.

If someone asks me to talk about what I do I'm not going with:
"I'm like Thesesus slaying the minotaur and mapping the goddamn labyrinth for you info-virgins"

I'm going to say:
"I'm inputting consistent fields of information to identify an item searchable and findable on the catalogue - it is a pivotal role which enables the library service to function for those who need it."

That's because actually I'm very happy providing accurate and consistent authorised access points and a logical system to find library books and online databases. This is what I do. I work hard at it. Study it. I'm good at it. And I'll hope it reflects how professional my sector is.

Getting to brass tacks, what I'm trying to say in all this is:

I've no idea how to go about starting up as a drug dealer.
I do know what it takes to be an excellent information professional.
I wouldn't know the street value of mary jane.
I do know how to provide an enquirer with the answer they will most value.

It would be quite nice to think us librarians can proudly tell people actually what we do without suggesting we belong where the other grass is greener.

I really hope we see the end of analogies suggesting librarianship is important and cool for reasons nothing to do with the work of librarians. But something tells me we will continue to find them floating to the top of the loch after the profession has not weighted the bodies down with enough stones. Because librarians are not like hitmen for info-hirers.



If you didn't like this blog, you might like these other blogs I've written about libraries instead:

• One where I talk about Google not being a replacement for a librarian
• One where I talk about libraries not being phone boxes
• One where I talk about library closures (Nick Poole endorsed) 

Librarian III: the one with the scary robot computer

Here is another of my ill-informed hot takes on Library news.





I don't get it.
Why would anyone support public library closures?

"Without the library, you have no civilisation" (Ray Bradbury). I truly believe that.

Surely, if public libraries had never been invented 2300 years ago as a good thing, then in 2016 we would be looking to create them as a good thing?

A public library service is a place for a community to get authoritative information, entertainment and other communication resources. It does this without judgment, without prejudice and without bias.

A public library service is the place to help with reading and information gathering skills, to expand intellectual horizons, to support hobbies, to facilitate research in everything from job interviews to caring for herbaceous plants, for local news and history, for government information, EU laws. It gives use of the internet, to fax machines, photocopiers and other service equipment.

A public library service, crucially, has professionally trained staff in information and library management to enhance the resources, research skillset and education potential of any public library user. They improve the access to answers without agenda or commission.

A public library service does all this in a period of time where there is more information and platforms to find it than at any other point on this planet.

And public libraries exist under absolute equality for anyone for free at point of enquiry.

What person in their right mind would look at a library service and go "Nope, not on my watch!"

Increasingly libraries and librarians are being replaced by something else. Something less. School librarians are under threat from boards who see it as an administrative role, law libraries are being broken up for more office space, and even more "volunteer" public libraries are being spoken of as replacements for the public libraries in the future. If that future was set in a Midsommers Murder episode involving a church congregation.

The BBC came late to the Wake with their report of 1/4 English library losses last week. Scotland seems rather more robust in maintaining a public library service, given they are less impacted with UK government budgets set, but they are not immune and have faced cuts and closures also and threats of more to come.

And this is what this blog post will focus on: public libraries.

I mean, I can understand if a politician makes the argument that, in a time of budgetary crisis... hard choices... regrettable forced hand... this is something I will disagree with, but will understand to debate against.

But to be actively against libraries? What sort of odd-ball argument is that?

When people protest against this removal of the library service to replace it with a private gym, in what Twilight Zone are we trapped that a local councillor condemns the protestors for being too privileged?

What weirdo does that?

Bet he's proud of that political scoring against the...
oh wait *he's* the councillor happy to turn a public library into a private gym?

How someone put in trust of public services can actively take the side of the private gym over people wanting to save the library service seems perverse to me.

And so it goes on: Jane Edbrooke talking on the same protest reached a strange low by arguing a link between wanting to have a library service at the expense of domestic abuse centres.

When Nick Pool of CILIP says in defence of libraries:

"[A library] doesn’t just mean a room with books. It means getting people the information they need, when they need it. Information to help them build a business, find things to read, do their homework, access healthcare information or participate in their community."

But politician, Jane Edbrooke says in defence of libraries:

“For me [a library's] whether there are people there who welcome you to a building, answer your queries and that there’s a well stocked book service."

We clearly have a problem.

A problem like it's something out of, I don't know, fucking... The Bladerunner. Who are the real information professionals who know what a library is? We need a test to find out.

"How do you feel seeing a turtle on it's back in the midday sun?"
"Do you think the internet contains less information when the internet is inside a library?"

Not even joking:

Credit: Ian Clark

Actually, Jane and Matthew Bennett will be delighted at the recent news people are welcoming users to a library building. Specifically, bouncers. Edinburgh Central Library is employing bouncers to help with security to deal with the library being used by people who are mainly on the fortified wine rather than the merlots of those pesky protestors.

When a councillor says of reappointing a library to become a private gym:

"The building will re-open to the public, for longer hours, in early 2017 and will have a neighbourhood library service, health and fitness facilities and space for community groups to use... Lambeth council has worked incredibly hard to minimise the impact of the cuts on Lambeth libraries"

It is beyond me to think it possible to argue that library is improved when the professional staff are removed, the resources reduced and the main thing in the library is a private gym. To have libraries placed in the Leisure budget for councils.

For some reason completely incomprehensible to me, the people who are closing public libraries try to justify it:

• The internet has provided access to information to everyone.
• Books are more available.
• Only 1 in 5 have borrowed a library book in the past year.
• Volunteers are just as good as professional librarians.
• Some volunteer libraries are successful.

For information professionals these arguments are as sensible as:

• The internet is everywhere and some of it even goes in our mouths when we sleep.
• Kindles grow on trees
• Only 1 in 3 die from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
• An MSc in Information Studies is months and months of learning the alphabet really well
• The amateur football down the park sometimes has terrible refereeing

The truth is:

• The internet is not a panacea where everyone has access or has the training to use it safely
• Books are luxuries.
• Library usage is very subjective. Borrowing does not equal usage. Membership does not equal impact. And 1 in 5 of the population, is a rather large number.
• Information Professionals are expert in efficient information provision, management, negotiation and a plethora of skills combined within a network of other information professionals
• Volunteer libraries are not ever a success story. They indicate failures. Volunteers don't want to be running a library. They are doing it because they see themselves as a last solution to a need for the service which the powers at be are choosing to let slide. And the volunteer libraries are not as good as professionally staffed libraries.

I'd feel better if those making the decisions didn't try and justify it and said:
"It's for money, basically. The decision is already made to reduce it's size, staffing and budget. And then with less library users and staff to protest, it will be easier to have it completely gone by 2019, saving us more money. If we can replace it with something we can actually charge people for, so much the better. "

But that's only because I am coming to terms with having no councillor saying:
"Me approving the cutting out of library services is awful - horrendous - it will be a scar on our cultural landscape as we enter a future without free, objective and protected information provision for all. A future where we rely on businesses to hand feed us their services until they decide to remove them or change them or refuse them or simply stop caring about them because they have enough information about us in return or we are not paying enough, and so commit us into a dark age where only the monarchy and monks can control information dissemination. Unless you like Fifty Shades a lot, then you'll be A-OK."

But even the economic argument is wrong. The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland has published an excellent summary Manifesto for Libraries showing money to libraries is an investment: £1 = £8 of national benefits.

In previous posts I've given my opinion on why Google isn't good enough to replace a librarian, and why a reconstituted telephone box of books isn't good enough to call a library.

But the situation is caused by exactly this thinking.

And still it comes back to books. People argue that you can get a book on Amazon Kindle for 1p. It won't be probably anywhere near being a good book - barely readable - and a book for a Kindle requires a Kindle and rolling service provider, and electricity: but 1p.

If 1p going to Amazon to tax orbit it away and store your reading habits into its algorithm isn't your bag, why not go to a charity shop, some argue. Books are still cheap and you are helping a charity. Which is great if you want to enter a pick an mix of BDSM fiction and 5 year old Guinness Book of Records annuals.

What if you don't want a second (shudder) hand copy of Fifty Shades of Grey from Oxfam?

What if you want a book that you don't need to access via a screen and search?

What if you want the book you want, for free?

The fact is, why it comes back to books is because public libraries are seen by councillors as a place for the very old, the very young and the very unemployed. Which is no bad thing, but libraries should be about so much more than leisure, shelter and a time for rhyme-time time.

And that's where they are going wrong with their thinking. Public libraries are there for everyone. The question is: why is the perception that they are not?

How have public libraries (and libraries in general) become thought of obsolete to all but the few when information is now more volatile than ever before?




A common accusation is that the internet has killed the librarian. Whereas librarians and libraries are better equipped to use tools of the digital than most private and government offices. But how to convince people that there is almost nothing else libraries can do to be more cutting edge? I'm at a loss.

We need to sea-change the belief that librarians are dusty, timid, fussy book shelvers which the stereotype suggests they are. They do not shush people under stares through spectacles at the end of noses.

Perhaps there is a need to tweak the message of Librarianship and the valued significance of public libraries to tell people how relevant librarians still are.

Might I suggest a new origins story (they are so hot right now) and a reimagining of an old, darker, professional name:

Queue heavy rain, it is night in the city and a black cat scowls before diving for cover under a great granite pillar of the Public Library:

It began when librarians embraced CD-ROMs as the future of libraries in 1994 as a way of countering those who claimed librarians were old fashioned and uncool. In a merciless attempt at providing well catalogued, authoritative and ethically delivered electronic information to everyone, it was only a matter of time before they used top cybernetics to install 33.6k modems in themselves.

That time was 2008.

Physically linking into the internet, they realised that if they were to maintain logical and consistent access points and search terms then they must remove the one variable in preventing this: Non-library trained mankind hell-bent on using Google on the Simple Search screen.

They became: Cybrarians.

At first, Cybrarians were crude and easily spotted. Because they were basically wooden index card cabinets on coasters, with a couple of pincers on the end. Quickly they adapted and evolved to look more and more human. Only their strange penchants for tweed-wear and spectacle safety chains on their Ray-Bans give them away in this dystopian 2016 future we now live in.

Cybrarians can't be bargained with. Cybrarians don’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. Cybraians will never have their hair bun out of place. And Cybrarians absolutely will not stop, ever… in delivering digital literacy. Yep, they are the most uncool, coolest robots in the Galaxy.
~~~~

Or maybe not. Sure, CILIP and other interested groups in the sector had become complacent (and there is another blog to be wrote around that) until recently as to the value and worth of the profession, preferring to accept rather than own their lot in life, but still...

Maybe we need to reframe the problem to one of asking why anyone would want to support library closures and remove professional library services? What makes someone take a stance to mock and troll information professionals fighting for the services to be the best they can be. Ask them to admit to themselves what it is they are supporting in their place. Get an answer to the question:

How on earth did it come to you falling out of love with Librarians?

The medicine cabinet theory

This is an accompanying post to an earlier blog post of mine: "Google is not your friend"

Here is a question:

Do you call a cupboard with painkillers and antihistamines in it:
A) A medicine cabinet
B) A hospital

If you answered A, then you shouldn't call a red telephone box reconstituted to hold books a library.



http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/428572/What-a-novel-idea-villagers-transform-redundant-phone-box-into-a-LIBRARY

It isn't a library. It is a telephone box with books in it, though.

A room with books on shelves in a house isn't a library. It is a room with books in it, though.

A library space used for a coffee shop isn't a library. It is a place to get a cup of coffee, though.

A library, at it's most basic, is an intellectually curated collection of authored materials. It has expertise to guide to what's in the collection. It finds things which are not in the collection. It is beyond loaning books. It is about good information and broadening horizons at all stages of life without prejudice. A library is an organic communication system.

All libraries are important. So why would I disparage this apparently good willed concept so utterly?

Book exchanges in otherwise unused rural village telephone boxes is actually a good idea. Why not? And libraries are big on loaning free books and information. But, these boxes are not ever libraries.

Thinking red telephone boxes are libraries is a short leap to thinking tables of books set up once a week in a community hall is a library. It is a small step from putting non-expert volunteers into managing a building designed to be a library and thinking it is a library.

Library and information professionals know this and are quick to point it out. Some non-library and non-information professionals, however, take surprising umbrage to this. They swear they see only a difference in scope between an information professional led service as a library and 170 books packed into a leaking, red painted iron container for one.

The problem is a few non-library and information professionals have hijacked the word "library" and use it, unwittingly diluting the library profession's position and the potential of libraries.

I don't really blame them. This is because non-library information professionals no longer know what a library is. They don't know what a library is for. They don't use libraries properly and then, whenever they see free-to-borrow books on a shelf, they see a library. They are not idiots, they are simply mistaken.

Yes, they see a medical cabinet and think it is a hospital. They see a strange bloke in a car pulling up in the dead of night alongside offering a lift for a "favour" as basically a licenced taxi.

The truth is, librarians are on their side. Librarians want better libraries, they want to help non-librarians have libraries they will love to use. Librarians should be praised rather than receiving laughably chastising comments from non-librarians accusing librarians of not knowing what a library is, or for being accused of being petty whenever pointing out when the word "library" is misused. Librarians are the good guys in this!

Librarians are the only ones standing between a space to provide information provision and standing in a telephone box without a telephone.

By the way, if you answered B, then I look forward to you trying to walk your dining table on a leash because it has 4 legs like a dog has 4 legs.

Google is not your friend

"Google is your friend"

I was loitering in the pub we call Twitter near closing time when I overheard the phrase. "Google is your friend". It was said as part of a Twitter conversation about the merit of information professionals in research.

"Google is your friend" "Information Professionals are obsolete"

The only proper response to this is: "F*ck off ya fud". [Ironically, best don't google search 'fud']

The reason this is the only response it deserves is because there is nothing else to say. Anyone who says "Google is your friend" loses this and any future argument about information management and research at that point. Anyone who says it is archaic, primordial, pond scum. Gloop. They no longer matter. They are anti-matter, vacuous. Nothing.

Quite aside the statement predisposes that Google is somehow the friend to those without access to the hardware to use it, the literacy to use it, the technological infrastructure to use it - it shows a lack of understanding of improving information provision and why it is important in society. Google in this statement shows a limited ambition. Google is good enough for the dross masses. It is the statement of the false bourgeois built on hollow straws.

Google is a commercial company and can and do change their motivations and mission statement based on capital theory, not for the good of information access. Google has abandoned it's primary operation to archive and protect the World's printed analogue and born-digital history. It is now about the money-making, patent-pending future.

The Google Books project has lost impetus and is out of funding and favour: Self-driving future cars are in.

"Google is your friend" "Google is your friend" "Let them eat cake"

The thing is, Google is your friend. Google is able to talk to you about pretty much anything you want. Sure some of what it talks about isn't always accurate, it hasn't always read up on a topic, sometimes it forgets things and sometimes it tells you just what you want to hear, but it is easy to talk to. You can have better relationships with other "friends" who can offer better advice, but Google keeps tagging along and wittering on over them. Google is your annoying old school friend who you worked with a couple of times on a class project. It's Google who turns up later to your office nights out and is reduced to telling old, hoary jokes for attention when the conversation goes over their head.

You could be introduced to other "friends" with good, respected specialised jobs - who are encouraged to be professional, continue in their development and take care of their health. Your friend Google is too ripped of its titties on sweet candy and sugar cane to care much about being professional. Professionalism is for squares - you see any squares in the word 'Google'? Google doesn't care, it's so pumped full of algorithms in its veins it has no idea what it is saying to you, just whatever comes to mind first, but it doesn't matter because Google is still talking to you, still your friend, right, buddy, right?

"Google is your friend" "Google is your embarrassing friend"

Let's drop this silly analogy for now. Let's have a practical example.

"Google is your friend"

You've been accused of a heinous crime. You're going to court. You know you're innocent but the details are complex. If you are found guilty it is career ruining at best, family disownment and a shiv in the eye down at the prison yard at worse.

Your lawyer comes in and says: "OK, I've sat with the ipad this morning on Google. I've found a few things which seem legit. Well, one of the things was, like, the 6th hit on page 1 - so that has to be hopeful, right? This one guy has a blog - I'm calling him as an expert witness. He is really opinionated on a lot of stuff, some of which involves your situation, kind of. It shouldn't be too hard to track him down because IJUDGETHEJUDGES is a fairly rare name, I reckon. I would have done more but I clicked on Google Images by mistake and then spent a fair bit of time searching for lawyer cartoons. I will charge you time for that, unfortunately."

OR, would you prefer if your lawyer comes in and says: "Good afternoon. I've been working on your case. The firm's professional information team has collated a dossier of supportive Good Law: authoritative case reports and the concerned legislation status at the time of your alleged crime. While they were doing this for me, I used my time to read through your details and start on how I'm going to develop your defence."

"Google is your friend" "Information Professionals are your best friends"

The world of information is expanding in preposterous directions and over mind bending mediums. Information Professionals should be in more demand than ever. There is sound reasoning for it. Information access and literacy is going to be ever more key in research and learning. If Google is the highest form of resource we can aim for, we are in trouble.

Information professionals are not against Google. Google is not a friend to an Information Professional. To them it is a tool. It has some advantages and some disadvantages. It doesn't search the Deep Web, but lets you track down a lot of populist facing materials which want to be freely found. It also has some fairly advanced tricks hidden away to help search it the most effectively, of which will be mainly unknown to the non-information professional.

An information professional will tell you Google is the last port in a research storm. You start with the information query and in a structured interview with the researcher, hone it to the most precise it can be. The information professional will help with interrogating the most suited resource, online or offline, to find the most authoritative information. They do this objectively. They do it without any sense of trying to promote one answer over another because they've not been paid to do that. They give the answer in the most useful format. The information professional also has the advantage of being in the best place to ask other information professionals and combine their skills for your benefit.

Information professionals enjoy giving good information, using trusted resources with efficiency and the occasional smile.

Google might be your friend, but with Information Professionals you are amongst friends.

Oh! Someone has just tweeted we don't need libraries because now there are Kindles.... Grrrrrrr!