These days I can see information being divided into two main categories, free to access and restricted.
Restricted information can mean that it’s only available when purchased, but it’s a broader concept than this. The information could be restricted to members of a particular organization. The information could be held in an obscure book that’s only held in a small numbers of libraries. Although that libraries may be free to use, and although somebody may be able to borrow that book for free, I view that information as restricted because its access is limited to users of these libraries. If an outsider wants that information, it may not be available at all, or if it is, subject to interlibrary loan / document delivery charges and restrictions.
Until the internet, restricted information was the only form of information which we had. Librarians existed because they were the gatekeepers of this information.
Information that is free to access, is not completely free. It is usually subject to usage restrictions, whether through conventional intellectual property laws or creative commons.
The restricted does compete with the free, and vice versa. Restricted information needs a value add over what free information is offering. We see this happening in the legal information marketplace in Australia, where the three commercial publishers sometimes (especially amongst new graduates) have a hard time establishing a value proposition over Austlii and Court and Parliamentary websites.
As librarians, we need to engage and work with both sectors of information - only then can we truly be information professionals.
Right now, we need to avoid the extremes. A lot of librarians have a hierarchical view of information - that restricted information is always superior to free information. This is what leads to us being seen as arrogant, out of touch and not really needed in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, the librarian who only uses free information, and is not aware of what’s available in the world of restricted information, is not adding all much into the world either.
I often jump between the two worlds of information when doing research in my job. For example let’s say that I receive a request to do some industry research in an area I’m not familiar with. I might start in wikipedia, so I can get a basic understanding of key concepts and relevant keywords in the area. Then I’ll search in a restricted database. My database research may identify a key industry association, and so I’ll look that up on the free web. The free website may identify useful sources for further information, which I’ll follow up by looking in both free and restricted sources.
If librarians are seen to be tied to the world of restricted information, and if that information is slowly losing its preeminent position to free information, does that mean that librarians are doomed?
No, I think that the two worlds will coexist for a long time. For one thing, until all the information of the past and present is available online for free, there will always be a need for restricted information sources. We’re still a long way away from that - even now, books are still published in print only - and if they’re available as eBooks, they are locked down, so they are definitely restricted from my point of view. Actually I think that the popularity of the iPad and the Kindle is a reinvigoration of restricted information. With the iPad, there is an attempt to transform information which was once free to access (newspaper websites) into restricted information.
Restricted information versus information that is free to access has nothing to do with online versus print. When doing business research, I received requests for investment reports and industry reports which cost over $1,000 - and these are for reports which have never been published in print at all.
The high-end of the market of the market is not necessarily the best representative of the information market as a whole, but it’s not a zero sum game. The corpus of information that is free to access can be broadened, deepened and improved. At the same time, there will always be people (or institutions, such as large companies, law firms, universities etc) with the means and the desire to pay for something extra. Librarians need to help people with both sorts of information.
It’s been about twenty months since I lost my first iPhone. As I mentioned in my blog post about it, I didn’t have insurance, and I decided that I wouldn’t replace it immediately.
I deliberately distanced myself from the world of iPhones during this time. I didn't want to know about cool apps or interesting ways of using them, it was just too frustrating.
It’s been an interesting experience, to see what has changed during these twenty months. When I got my first iPhone, I was an early adopter in Australia - the iPhone had only been released for a couple of weeks here. Strangers would notice it and strike up conversations with me about it.
Now the iPhone is mainstream. There’s nothing special about having one - even some of my more technically challenged relatives have them. For a moment I considered one of the so called iPhone killers, the HTC Desire, which runs on a version of Google’s Android operating system. I had a look at a Desire in a shop - and although it seemed fine, it did not live up to its name and ultimately wasn't very compelling.
I was more of a fan boy of Apple two years ago than I am now. These days I still prefer to use Apple in my home computing and generally wish it well, but there’s an ambivalence growing in me about the company. I’m starting to wonder if Steve Jobs is such a benevolent dictator. Three things have happened this year which have made me uneasy about Apple:
How Apple attempted to ban Mark Fiore’s iPhone app. This has now been rectified and later described as a mistake, but I wonder what they considered to be their mistake? What is attempting to stifle satire about politicians and the political process, or was it that they banned the wrong person - a Pulitzer prize winner with a profile high enough to cause embarrassment to Apple?
Apple’s hostility to Flash. Apple says it’s just about the technology, but the effect of its poor relationship with Adobe is having a wider impact.
The allegation that Apple has discouraged music labels from making special promotions with one of its competitors, Amazon’s online music store.
My circumstances have changed too. Two years ago, I had a lengthy train commute from the Blue Mountains into Sydney. The iPhone was a godsend during this commute. Now I don’t have such a train commute, and so I won’t be using the iPhone in that way. But I’ll still find use for it, particularly at work and out and about in Canberra. The IT environment where I work is extremely locked down, so I’m looking forward to having the iPhone as one area where reasonable personal use and preferences are still possible.
I’m finding that many Apps are better developed and more useful than they were in 2008. It's nice to be able to copy & paste text.
In hindsight, I wish I had been able to have my iPhone replaced shortly after I lost it twenty months ago. But I didn’t. My new iPhone is a better model than the one which I lost. So why doesn't it seem as good?
I had a little epiphany last week when writing up a post for Libraries Interact about day 9 of the 30 posts in 30 days event. The result is that I’ve decided to set myself a modified challenge that’s more realistic for me. Starting today, 15 comments (and 5 posts) in 15 days.
Anyone else is more than welcome to try this, but for me, it’s just a personal goal. The posts, which will average at about one every three days (a massive increase for me, considering my recent activity), will probably be here, but they could possibly be in the exploded library bunker or Libraries Interact or LiveJournal or Vox or that which must not be named.
But the main part of the challenge is the commenting. Although one comment a day is not at all onerous, it will make me focus on reading other blogs more actively than I have been in the recent past. This can only be a good thing. I still feel as if I am settling into my new life in Canberra, and I hope that this goal will instill good habits to improve my blogging and involvement in the blogging community.
The numbers of comments and posts and days are just minimums.
Bradburn v. North Central Regional Library District case [right now there is a problem with the Court's website, I'll supply links to the opinions when I can be certain that they'll work] has been decided by the Washington Supreme Court. On the one hand, it’s a credit to the US legal system that these cases are heard and issues surrounding freedom of speech are examined as if it’s an important legal concept - in contrast to Australia, where there’s no constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech. On the other hand, I am disappointed with the majority’s opinion and line of reasoning. I hope there will be a different result when the case returns to the Federal Court system.
The majority of the Washington Supreme Court applied the decision in United States v. American Library Association 539 U.S. 194 (2003). But as the dissenting opinion pointed out, one key fact was very different in Bradburn v. NCRL:
I respectfully disagree with the majority that United States v. American
Library Ass'n, 539 U.S. 194, 123 S. Ct. 2297, 156 L. Ed. 2d 221 (2003), supports
upholding the policy's constitutionality under either the federal or state constitution.
Even accepting for the moment that these libraries are not a limited public forum,
eight justices found the ability of a patron to disable the filter constitutionally
critical. Writing for a four justice plurality upholding CIPA, Justice Rehnquist noted
constitutional concerns about the software blocking "are dispelled by the ease with
which patrons may have the filtering software disabled. When a patron encounters a
blocked site, he need only ask a librarian to unblock it or (at least in the case of
adults) disable the filter." Id. at 209. Justice Kennedy was even more pointed,
beginning his concurrence by saying, "If, on the request of an adult user, a librarian
will unblock filtered material or disable the Internet software filter without
significant delay, there is little to this case." Id. at 214 (Kennedy, J., concurring).
But the NCRL’s practice, as presented in the arguments and the opinions, does not include unblocking material “without significant delay”.
The other thing that troubles me about these cases is the argument that internet filtering is a collection development decision. The argument follows that just as a library has the right to develop and maintain a collection development policy that does not include pornography, then it is exactly the same thing for a library to implement a filter to exclude pornography from its library. I don’t think that web filtering is another aspect of collection development. As the minority opinion explains:
But censoring material on the Internet is not the same thing as declining to purchase a particular book. It is more like refusing to circulate a book that is in the collection based on its content.
The collection development analogy breaks down when its leads to active exclusion via web filtering. It’s been interesting to see parallels between the apologists for both the NCRL’s policy and mandatory web filtering in Australia: they both say, “this is not a free speech issue”, and use something else to justify the curtailment of free speech. But now I’m digressing onto the subject of my next post.
It's been over 6 months since I last blogged here. It wasn't an intentional break, time just got away from me, plus lots of different changes.
Tonight I've written 6 posts in one night. Some may not appear to be consistent with others, such as post 2 and post 4, but it could be that post 4 is a more specific example of radical and uncomfortable change.
I am an information omnivore, I will use information whether it comes from print or online sources. Being an information omnivore makes me have a hard time with two different sorts of people. Most of the time it’s been the people who think that information from online sources is inherently of a poor quality, unstable, unreliable and generally worthless. But increasingly I have to deal with the other extreme, the people who think that information from print sources is always out of date, and is too expensive or inconvenient to deal with. I am definitely not a bibliophile, but there is no way that you can try to keep on top of a specialized field and ignore books and other print only sources.
Repeat after me: Right now, it is not all available online for free. And if information created from the past is needed, it will never be all available online for free. I wish it were, but it isn't.
As I write this I have no internet connection at home. Of course, I use the internet all day at work, but would never contemplate working on this blog there. Anyway, I’m writing all of this offline, with the intention of uploading it when I’ve got my home connection sorted out.
We take things for granted, and I wonder if this situation of not being able to blog has made me want to blog again. That, and the fact that my daily commute is way shorter than it was than when I lived in Sydney. My guess is that it’s been halved and then halved again.
I used to have sanguine views about the relationship between librarianship and Knowledge Management. I haven’t had any formal education in KM, but I attended an early conference on the subject - the one which the Special Libraries Association organized in St. Louis in 2000. I used to think that librarianship and KM would co-exist and even support each other - until I worked at a law firm with a strong KM department. In fact the library is a part of KM and its rebranded name reflects this. My experience there has made me reevaluate my opinion about the ideal relationship between the library and KM.
My advice to a librarian interested in applying for a job at a large law firm is to find the answers to the following questions (please note, I’m not suggesting to ask all of these questions in a job interview context):
Is there a National Library Manager who is a librarian?
Are library staff allowed to develop the research sections of the intranet, or is that reserved for specialist KM staff?
Are library staff allowed to work on new technology projects, or is that reserved for specialist KM staff?
Are librarians, or people aren’t lawyers, allowed to work as Knowledge Managers?
I’m not writing to criticize KM per se, but to express concern at what happens when KM is left in charge of the library - at least from my own experience. I've seen that in this situation, KM ends up cannibalizing the library, creating a two tiered system in which the library is definitely subordinate. The library remains responsible for reference, document delivery and training; time intensive activities which KM doesn’t want to be burdened with. Cataloging remains with the library by default, but it is not appreciated or understood by the KM masters and is marginalized.
KM takes on several higher status activities which the librarians used to be responsible for: liaising and outreach with the users in the practice groups, developing the research section of the intranet, working on new ICT projects and managing the library staff. Because KM is taking on additional work, it needs more people. The trouble is that KM professionals are lawyers and are not cheap. To balance the books, the library is shrunk.
I’m worried that the library could be shrunk to the point where it could be drowned in a bath tub or outsourced without a peep because it has been under-staffed and under-resourced for too long. I’m also concerned that in this KM dominated system, librarians have been deskilled - going from being professionals with opportunities for advancement into occupiers of a dead end job.
This negative experience doesn’t mean that I think that there is no scope for effective and meaningful partnerships and collaboration between KM and the library in law firms. I have just observed that putting KM in charge of the library is not a good idea.
