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.

Thing 20. Social Networking.

I have accounts for MySpace and Facebook. I got 'em both so I could see how each works and compare. Now, I admit I don't do a lot with either. I've set up minimal profiles but haven't created cool pages or anything. Heck, I don't even have any sound files to automatically deafen you when opening my MySpace page. I guess this is 'cause I'm of the age group that's reticent about letting the whole wide world know too much about me. Unlike modern kids who seem to revel in the thought. Also, I know few folks to network with (how sad, but we're all the same age kinda), don't have the urge to share stuff like songs with anybody and find trad. email perfectly fine for electronic communication. There--spoken like a truly old fart.

But it's a good thing libraries have established a presence in Facebook and MySpace. Every kid on the planet has an account in one, the other or both. (A speaker at a conference I attended said he asked the students in the classes he taught how many had pages and EVERYONE of 500 did.) And if this many kids are using an app., it's important that libraries be there. I've seen a lot of what many institutions are offering: communication options, catalog search boxes, links to groups, book talks, yadda, yadda. And it's great--the more kids see this stuff and use it, the better for libraries.