InfoMatters

For reasons I cannot easily explain, I found myself browsing the archive of poll results on Library Journal’s site this week. I also found myself fighting the irritating pop-up ads for AARP which cover the data and cannot be easily dismissed but that’s another matter. If there is a more negative set of responses out there on the future of libraries, I’ve not had the misfortune to find it. These polls are weekly snapshots of readers’ responses to rather pointed questions (and one might argue that the very framing of the questions reveals their bias but a that’s also another matter). Try these results:

The Future is bleak:
93% believe the next 10 years look less promising than before for the profession of librarian.
70% believe their libraries’ commitment to intellectual freedom is diminishing even when 81% believe the need for public libraries to protect intellectual freedom is increasing.
55% believe more fee-based services are in their future, 44% believe the library’s place in the market is eroding.

Who’s to blame? Round up the usual suspects:

Prime suspects: the LIS educators! 93% think that LIS schools are focusing on the wrong things (I won’t rest until we get that up to 100%

But it’s not just LIS schools’ fault, it’s those incompetent administrators and and stuffy old boards:

86% believe the staff are more concerned with the future than the administration
87% believe the library trustees fail to raise the visibility of the library in the community, and have no political clout, even as 71.4% of respondents believe their library board is becoming older and more political! 57% feel there is no common understanding between staff and boards on the library’s direction anyhow.

But wait, what about the public? Surely they still love and respect us?
Yes, it’s just turning the love into dollars that is a problem. 57% believe voter support for libraries is increasing even if 48% feel public support for libraries is eroding. I suppose the public is not always the same as the voters, must be all those super delegates that love libraries.

Could it be that libraries are not addressing community problems? 77% believe this is a real problem. No wonder since 40% think the library does not even understand the community agenda, despite those old politicos on the boards.

Fear not though, 52% believe their library does measure its impact on the community. What exactly is being measured or learned from this is hard to guess if one doesn’t understand the community’s agenda but hey, impact is impact right?

Will it change? Libraries are failing to groom new leaders according to 65% of respondents and the majority feel there are not enough staff recognition award programs (see a trend here?) but there is a bright spot: 65% report that their libraries are beginning to promote extroverts! Since extroverts supposedly suffer less depression than introverts, this sounds like a winning strategy — give the person who came up with this idea an award!

Of course, none of the survey items ask if these respondents are the cause or the recipients of the problem, but what do you expect when those terrible LIS programs never taught anyone about good survey design. Pass the happy juice.

NPR carried another segment this morning about the oath required of faculty in the Cal State system. They covered it earlier in the month so that story seems to have some legs. Most telling, Wendy Gonaver spoke up immediately when she did not feel comfortable with the oath. Compare this to certain political hacks who seem to swallow their objections until they get whiff of a book deal. Most frightening — can you really believe in this day and age a faculty member will be removed from a classroom by police for failing to take a loyalty oath? Where’s the AAUP on all this? Where’s the AAUP at all?

I am sitting in Austin TX listening to a web feed of a BBC show talking to people in London about a football match in Moscow that we in the US just watched on ESPN. As background, the mighty Red Devils of Manchester United won the European Champions League tonight in penalty shoot-out. That was the result I wanted (though I hate penalties as a basis for separating teams at the end of a game, nay a season). It’s somewhat unnerving to listen to a radio interviewer in London telling the audience she has to move from where she is due to drunk thugs claiming to be Chelsea supporters who are threatening anyone nearby who is not wearing blue. Hooligans aside, it’s a global village, and the wonders of uniting us in real time across the planet to share the moment is something a middle-aged radio fan such as myself loves to experience, words are sometimes more vivid than images. The phone-in to London is coming in from all over Britain and from Moscow, with emails from around the world, uniting a worldwide audience of football fans. Community is connection.

The process has been slow but e-book numbers show continued healthy growth according to the latest publishing data. Against a backdrop of typical 2.5% annual growth in book sales over the last decade (more than $25 billion of revenue in 2007 according to AAP), the e-book proportion is miniscule (less than $100 million) but growing much faster. This January alone, e-book sales showed record numbers again suggesting a further spurt in 2008 is likely. It’s not easy to get accurate data on these issues but the International Digital Publishing Forum provides wholesale estimates and intriguing data nuggets: did you realize Japanese readers were buying over 300% more books to read on their phones than the previous year or that sales for e-books doubled in Korea in 2007? And you can’t just dismiss this by saying that selling 3 books instead of 1 is a 300% growth — the $ amounts for Korea alone top $140m. Not sure how much of this is due to nifty new readers or the increasing pressure to condense your entire life into your cell phone but all these data provide an interesting counterpoint to the negative assessments of people’s reading habits. I don’t dispute the NEA (well, perhaps a little) but my view is that we are all spending more time reading now than ever before, if by reading you include more than curling up with a book.

I can hardly bear to write that Roy Mersky, perhaps the best known legal librarian in the country, is at this moment close to the end of his life. Roy, the Tarlton Law Librarian here at UT has been an incredible force in the education and career advancement of many influential legal scholars and a staunch supporter of our school’s development over the last five years. Roy, the Law West of Townes Hall, was a pioneer in the area of legal information access, a human rights activist, a bon-vivant, a storyteller, an outspoken critic of mediocrity, a demanding leader but a passionate defender of his staff and just about the best fun at a party you could ever hope to meet. There are hundreds of stories one could tell of his sharp wit (and sharper tongue) but I will never forget his telling me that if we wanted to create a leading national program in legal information, all we had to do was start one! To help me do this, he invited to UT dozens of the leading law librarians and legal informatics researchers (at their own expense) for a workshop where they provided me with input, curricular ideas and advice. That everyone he asked responded positively to his invitation spoke volumes of the man’s impact on others’ lives. I have no direct way of communicating to Roy, in his final hours tonight, the sadness felt by many at our school but Roy Mersky was cut from very special cloth and we’ll not see the likes of him again. Farewell Roy, and thank you — what a life!

The quote above is from an interesting story in the LA Times of a potential faculty member for Cal State who was fired for not signing a loyalty oath initially developed to weed out commies from the university system in those enlightened 1950s. Before making your own mind up, here’s the text:

From the California Constitution:

“I, ______, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”

The faculty member wanted to add an addendum to the effect that as a Quaker, she was a pacifist, and the interpretation of defending needed clarification. Unlike some other universities in CA, employees are not given this option. Wendy Gonaver, the faculty member concerned, was due to teach a course on protecting the constitution ( you could not make this stuff up, right?)

The reader reaction is quite intense on the paper’s site, but I just can’t quite figure out how the Al Qaeda member gets through, unless one assumes such a person would not care. Indeed, the most telling line in the report is a quote from Gonaver that the only people that fail to get hired as a result of this oath are those who ‘take it seriously’.