New year, new post

My last postings began a new theme for this blog, focusing on libraries, especially public libraries, and the influence of neoliberalism. To define the latter, in my terms: the creeping influence of capitalism on every aspect of society, giving virtually anything the potential of becoming a commodity, including the library.

In the library world the influence of neoliberalism can be seen in various ways. A good example is the bookstore model, most famously considered by Steve Coffman in a 1997 issue of American Libraries ("What if you ran your library like a bookstore?") and developed further in Jeanette Woodward's Creating the Customer-Driven Library: Building on the Bookstore Model. Designing such a model involved significant changes in the traditional library, such as tailoring collection development toward very popular materials that are certain to check out a lot, thus driving higher circulation numbers. Circulation is a traditional signal of overall library usage, which helps earn potential higher tax levies from voters and respect from politicians who divvy up tax dollars. Another example of neoliberalism, more blatant, is the funding of library capital projects by corporations and their owners, creating such facilities as the Target computer lab or the Carl Pohlad performance hall. Add such support to the artificially created "success" of the bookstore model with its high circulation numbers, and neoliberalism would seem to be well on the way to taking over the library.

Of course, for most, rich folks and corporations giving dollars to libraries seems a no-brainer--every corporate dollar means less taxes paid by the average joe. And high library usage, of course, is a good thing--as long as one realizes there is more to a library than the number of books checked out. Consider a reference collection, for instance, with its maddening inability to generate statistics. But here's the rub: what if that reference collection begins to be underfunded because the library is buying material that adds only to its circulation luster, such as dvds and best-sellers?

One of the problems with this can be seen in my shop. I work in one of the last great urban public reference libraries. While we have plenty of computers for the public and dvds and best sellers and databases and programming, we also have an in-depth reference collection of monographs, continuations and serials. Right now this collection is at risk: Last year my taxbase-deprived city library system was merged into the larger, richer county entity, and some of the new people in positions of power now seem to wonder why my library has to be different from all the rest: why do we need all those dusty old books and serials at the downtown location? How come there's all those subscriptions for "obscure" trade journals? And why shouldn't my library be buying the same kind of books as all the other libraries in the system?

Reading this, one can see my library has a dual mission: to serve as a popular, browsing library and simultaneously as a facility for scholarly research. And with this duality, of course, comes tension. It's inherently difficult for both sides to receive equality. Especially during this time of economic downturn and malaise and reduced funding from the Feds and state, when every dollar must be spent wisely. And add to this the common belief that book are passe', because "everything can be found on the internet," and the reference collection is clearly in trouble.

So what's the solution? The discussion of that will start with my next post.

Still Researching

I promised I'd be posting more often, I know, but one gets BUSY. But I'm still on my agenda of letting people know, especially library folks, something about neoliberalism. I've just got to do more reading on the topic until I can justify an intelligent conversation. So, there's more to come--I just have to finish working through the books on that bib I posted a while ago.

More on Neoliberalism

For information on the topic, here's a brief, slightly annotated bibliography:

D'Angelo, Ed. Barbarians at the gates of the public library. Duluth: Library Juice Press. 2006
(Interesting, even philosophical discussion of the influence of modern capitalism on the public sphere and libraries.)

Giroux, Henry A. Terror of neoliberalism. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. 2004
(Good discussion of post-911 actions of Bush administration. Radical approach, with adulatory chapter on Edward Said.)

Harvey, David. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005

Kranich, Nancy C. Libraries & democracy : the cornerstones of liberty. Chicago : American Library Association. 2001
(In particular, see section on Civil librarianship, p-67+ (“Civic librarianship honors the historic mission of education for a democratic society.”)

Lee, Earl. Libraries in the age of mediocrity. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company. 1998.
(Not specifically about neoliberalism, but describes the effects of neoliberalism on libraries, e.g.: centralized collection development, user fees, replacing librarians with cheaper paraprofessionals.)

The library and "customers" (Part One)

In the past months, my library system has been merged into a larger entity. The move was inevitable: due to the recession/sub-prime crisis, the influence of a Republican governor in the pocket of the no-tax crowd and a not-so friendly Democratic mayor, my system had gone into life-support mode. Without the merger many libraries would have closed, with a lot of staff having to go bye-bye. So, we were sucked up by the big kids. And for the most part, that's ok.

But the new system is far more corporate than we're used to, with the library just a single entity in their big picture. And as a smaller fish having to learn to swim with the big one, an aspect of assimilating is figuring out the new library's culture.

In this case, the culture has a large customer-service base. In fact, the term "customer" is front and center, used in all discussions and communications. I have to admit this bothers me. I know the word is predominant in current library literature, spouted in LJ and blogs and library websites galore. But to me, customer implies a financial exchange between the library and the library user, a deal which goes way beyond the formerly accepted concept of a library patron merely paying taxes and getting various library services in return. Instead it smacks of the infamous public library-as-bookstore model, first presented years ago by Steve Coffman in American Libraries:

Coffman, Steve. "What If You Ran Your Library Like a Bookstore?" American Libraries (March 1998): 40-46.

As we've been merged for eight months now, and I've heard the term coming out of my colleagues' mouths on an ever-increasing basis, I've been doing some thinking. Why does this use of the word customer in a library context nag at me so much? Why can't I just join the crowd and parrot the word in meetings like everybody else? Of course, being a librarian, once I putting my brain to work on something, I needed to find out more. So I starting investigating the bookstore model more deeply: in articles in library literature, books, online. And I discovered an interesting thread popping up in some of the more-radical lit. A thread that reveals the whole basis of the bookstore model, and one that got me to the root of why I dislike the library-as-bookstore model--a concept known as neoliberalism.

More soon.





I

Finally, a new post

Well, it's been a while since the last post. A busy spring and summer is a good excuse--here in Minnesota you need to cram an entire year's worth of outdoor life into 3 months. Fun stuff: my bro's getting hitched, going to the Kingfield neighborbood farmer's market; National Night Out, attending my very first St. Paul Saints game, concerts, outdoor wine bars, walks by the lake, bike rides. You gotta do it, 'cause the middle of August means time's a-wastin' here in the Great White North.

Another reason for not posting is my search for content, after finishing up 'Stick. There's so many blogs in the world, and most of them are self indulgent or have uninteresting subjects or are just plain boring. So I thought: why post if I'm going to just be one of the crowd?

But then, after a while, I thought some more...I've got interests that I'd enjoy blogging about--and I know quite a bit about 'em. And somebody might actually get something out of what I have to say, or I might pick up something from someone else.

So, I've decided Chilly's going to focus on 3 main areas: libraries and librarians ('cause that what I do professionally), guitars ('cause that's what I like to do on my time off) and politics ('cause at heart I'm a West-Wing watching, Obama-supporting political wonk).

Those will be the new themes. I may stray off them from time to time, but bear with me: when and if that happens, I'll try to keep away from talking about me, myself and I and, most of all, I'll try to keep it interesting.

Thing 22. What Did I Learn...And Keeping Up

Time to be wrapping it up for the "Thing on a Stick" part of Chilly, and moving into a proper blog, full of info about what's on my mind, what's going on with the family, what's happening with the world, or just the library world or...oh, hell. I don't know. Apparently 1 out of 7 internet users are blogging now, and if I'm going to be one of the better of the horde, I'd best come up with a subject. Write about what you know was the mantra of my creative writing program, and it's a good and proper one, but I'll have to do some thinking on that before coming back to Chilly.

How to keep up with 2.0?--that is the question. And it's a toughie. Because there's so much out there now. The more you seek, the more you find and then more and more and more. Like right now I've got 55 feeds in my Bloglines account (about 45 of 'em usually active), more than 300 links to my Del.icio.us page, about 20 items sitting in Google Docs, tons of connections via LinkedIn, yada yada. So the trick is to winnow out the chaff. It's rather like having a pile of library books on the bedside table, all good and all due on the same date. A pleasurable cause for stress, but Argh!

But one shouldn't stress from pleasure and usefulness, and that's what 2.0 is for me. So some tactics are needed: It's probably a good idea to go through and weed items once in a while, whether they be feeds, or Del.icio.us links or MySpace friends (now that sounds nasty). And to consider carefully what I add, no matter what the application. And finally, if I start stressing from essentially having too much info, I just have to remember--I'm in control, not the information. Nothing bad will happen if I don't read my Bloglines feeds for the day. Or a week. Or even a month. Life goes on. And so do I.

Thing 21. Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

I really like Ning and kind of enjoy Web Junction. The former is great, I've found, for discovering folks with similar interests. Like I'm really into guitar playing and blues music, and guess what: there's lots of groups in Ning that reflect those interests. Within these groups there's forums on all kinds of related topics, sound files, videos (including lessons)--pretty cool. And particularly so is the Ning page for old-fart rockers like me: Loud Old Guys--check it out!

Web Junction is different, but cool on its own. Not so much fun, but educational in a career-enhancing way. You can learn new stuff or brush up on skills in all kinds of areas. From my standpoint, what's especially useful are the resources on patron services and technology, with the classes either on vid. or self-paced. A few of 'em are free, but a lot are pretty inexpensive and would seem to be a great way to start learning about Cold Fusion or Dreamweaver or to hone one's business skills. On the other hand, though, there are a few that cost TOO MUCH: it seems wrong to charge 150 smackeroos to learn how to use Google a little better at the ref. desk, for instance. If I want to learn that any better, I can find it on the internet. By Googling.