A Wandering Eyre reports from inside ALA’s Library 2.0 “camp” :
“ALA wants to make spaghetti. It is cheap, easy, and can feed a crowd, but they do not take the time to look around and realize that anyone can make spaghetti. ALA thinks that all good things come from companies and big dysfunctional organizations, so they contract a company to create a recipe for spaghetti. ALA does not understand that it could have relied on its two chefs, Jenny and Michael, to make spaghetti on their own and thus pay an outrageous sum of money for a recipe for spaghetti which should have been, essentially, free.”
I won’t flog this issue to death, but these observations are uncannily close to my experiences within ALA. “Jane’s” conclusions could apply to many ALA projects, from the gigundo web site redesign fiasco that four years later we’re still paying for, to the monstrously unusable conference event planner, and on to American Library’s selection of that hideous “ebrary” software (sorry, AL).
ALA has two trainers who know what they’re doing; add a small contract for the content services–the blog, a wiki, etc.–and they’d be done. The trainers know what’s most likely to be used in libraries, and they know what they like to work and teach with. That’s part of their expertise as teachers. But–to continue the cooking metaphor–ALA can’t just make tiramisu: they have to make tiramisu and then ruin it by slathering on a thick layer of Betty Crocker chocolate frosting, because how can tiramisu be any good considering it only has ten simple ingredients, none of which are corporate brands?
This issue intrigues me (and trust me–the off-blog discussions are quite frisky) me not only because it is classic ALA dysfunctionalism, but because more broadly it’s endemic to our profession. Take “virtual reference.” I think the primary appeal of VR software to most librarians is that it’s expensive, cumbersome, and peculiar enough to dignify what should be the very simple task of answering questions over the Web. Start talking about seats and stats and scheduling and all the functionality “needed” to do VR: if librarians were inventing reference from the ground up today, it would take another twenty years, untold meetings, and vast outlays of library funding before anyone sat at a desk and allowed a user to approach with a question–and half the time the user would crash to the floor before she got an answer.
Heck, for a very reasonable fee, I would have consulted with Jenny and Michael and then provided a “technology package” for ALA that would have made everyone happy (at least as happy as groups ever are). A web hosting account, a registered domain, a group blog with everyone pre-registered, several other blog installations where the trainers could compare and contrast blogging software, a wiki or three, a Flickr Pro account, a YouTube account, and a suite of software such as Audacity, SecureFTP… most of it free, some of it open source (which isn’t “free,” it simply incurs its costs in different ways–but that’s another discussion), all of it easy.
Anyway, good on Jenny and Michael to teach, no matter how challenging the environment. Good on the biblioblogosphere to give us a place to share and discuss. Maybe next time we’ll let spaghetti be spaghetti, and refrain from frosting the tiramisu.
Posted on this day, other years:
- Christopher Beha, The Whole Five Feet: I Loved Every Inch of It - 2009
- Getting a (goals-based) life - 2008
- Karen's Cheese Straws - 2005
- Gmail Account - 2004
- Seattle Public Library: I Feel Pretty - 2004
- Patriot Act Pictures Solicited - 2004
- Cat in the Act - 2004
Oh, man. You brought up my VERY FAVORITE example in librarianship, Virtual Reference. I could go on for hours about that one.
I think we need to have a special drinking time at ALA set aside for Five Minutes Hate, just for VR software!
Hey, if patrons want us to answer their questions via the Internets, they can (a) buy a computer that works with our software, (b) use the only browser that works with our software, (c) take a very short tutorial on how to ask a question, (d) download and install a very small application, (e) restart their browser, and (f) wait patiently while we try to get the co-browsing to work again.
I mean, come on. People need to make sacrifices from time to time, don’t they?
Don’t forget, they should also have to come to the library to register, and bring three recent bills, their birth certificate, a passport, and a sworn affidavit.
Don’t forget having to forgo real content in order to pay for the commercial service out of the limited budget!
a dna sample might be in order too!
luckily MPOW skipped the whole commercial VR fiasco and went straight to IM. but i’m always down for conference drinking time!
David, that’s an example of one of the more enduring principles of technology implementations: the second mouse gets the cheese!
As someone who does at least 12-15 hours of VR weekly, both at MPOW and as a freelancer from home, I could certainly use a drink and a good grip session on VR software and all of its issues. Let me know where to meet 😉
Virtual reference? What do you mean? You mean you want us to answer questions from people in real time, over the internet? We can’t do that! We can’t think that quickly! Now if the patron would just come into the library and talk to us at the desk, that would be a different matter. . . .
I have never had a POW that did VR or IM (though I’m working on the latter), but I, too, will happily lift a glass or two for the cause.
Maybe what we need to do is prepare to caucus at Leslie Burger’s party at ALA for an 11 p.m. seance where we can exorcise VR!
I don’t understand where this is all coming from but I would like to explain what our role is in the ALA program.
“Heck, for a very reasonable fee, I would have consulted with Jenny and Michael and then provided a “technology package†for ALA that would have made everyone happy (at least as happy as groups ever are). A web hosting account, a registered domain, a group blog with everyone pre-registered, several other blog installations where the trainers could compare and contrast blogging software, a wiki or three, a Flickr Pro account, a YouTube account, and a suite of software such as Audacity, SecureFTP… most of it free, some of it open source (which isn’t “free,†it simply incurs its costs in different ways—but that’s another discussion), all of it easy.â€
The technology part is easy. People may not like all of our choices but they were made for very specific reasons: Blogware because we can create customized blog types and very quickly set them up; iTunes because we have a back end hosting system with Audioblog that is simple and works, because the interface is ubiquitious and free and because we believe that using iTunes opens up the biggest possible exposure to the ideas presented here, and BlogBridge because it is the only reader I know of that handles dynamic reading lists. We set ourselves up to support these three technologies FOR THE BOOT CAMP. No one is being asked to commit to anything beyond this pilot and when you all have to make choices about scaling, you can go through the excercise of looking at the various trade-offs, which we have carefully done in evaluating our choices. You cannot economically support everything and even free open source options often have greater costs associated with installation and support than proprietary ones. And we are simply passing through the hosting costs for these technologies for the program which come to less than $250 (including hosting of the podcasts, blogs, and the group chat system campfire. There is no profit built into these costs for the Otter Group.
The hard part of this program (and where the value lies) is in the process. It is in getting people to re-think how they do things and to use their “immersion†in the new tools (imperfect as they may be) to help them figure out how to work differently. This is where we see our value—in structuring the process, managing it, and leading people through it. Based on what I am seeing in the project drafts, at the process level, things are going very well. In the end, the measureable value here will lie in what comes out of the projects and what kinds of new models—conceptual, technological, cultural, and process—that people take away from this program. That is not trivial and that is what we are doing here.
We have designed and built this process and used it with other groups to foster innovation. We work in partnership with content experts like Jenny and Michael which is the role they play.
The larger lesson here is that if you think you can just throw together a few pieces of technology and get things to work differently you are deluding yourselves. It takes hard work to make the process and cultural changes that are at the heart of library 2.0.
“The larger lesson here is that if you think you can just throw together a few pieces of technology and get things to work differently you are deluding yourselves. It takes hard work to make the process and cultural changes that are at the heart of library 2.0.”
Call me a geezer, but all this recalls “3 Ts and an A,” from my early military training: Time, Training, Tools, and Attitude. People need the time to learn, such as a boot camp offers. They need training, and how lucky they are to have Jenny and Michael. They need to have the right attitude, and to be exposed to the right attitudes. I am guessing this is a selective group that arrived with the right motivations. But the third “T” is important, as well.
When I was a jet engine mechanic, at the beginning and end of every day I had to count my tools. This was to prevent foreign object damage to airplanes, but it also was a way I reacquainted myself with the tools that were so essential to meeting the mission.
Every tool had a reason for being there; every tool was right for the job–and I watched mechanics win awards for improving old tools or inventing new ones. These were also the tools I was taught to use, in training school, so that when I went into the field, and used my tools every day, and counted them up, I knew what they were, how to use them, and why they applied to my work. Learning those tools didn’t make me a good mechanic per se, but it was an important underpinning to my education.
I have had jobs directly or indirectly related to library technology for fifteen years, and a first career with related issues behind that one, and of course I know I can’t “throw together a few pieces of technology and expect things to work differently.”
But as an educator and manager–and a former mechanic–I also know that selecting the tools used for instruction is important. I’m not going to repeat my specific concerns about the software choices made for this program–except to note that you raise an issue about open source software I already addressed, so that was a bit of a red herring.
So when you say “the technology part is easy,” I have to disagree. The tools selected make a vast difference for the pedagogical experience. That’s not easy at all. It wasn’t easy in 1993, when I was teaching telnet and gopher and email, and it’s not easy in 2006, when in any given classroom setting, one library may have a system so closed that linking to a hosted blog is its only practical option, while another library may have an in-system programmer yearning to write a RSS 2.0 feed from scratch. In instruction related to new technologies, using the tools that are industry standards gives students a running start, so that when they are back in their libraries brimming with great ideas they have some practical ideas to start with.
If you don’t have the right tools, the mission becomes much harder. In LibraryLand, that is where we fall down all too often: we either underspend or overspend, or we fetishize the tools, or we dismiss their importance, or we cling to old tools, or fear new tools. This is symptomatic of a larger problem: we’re often wonderful on “process” and theory and mission statements, and we’re just great at meetings and strategic planning. It’s getting to launch we have trouble with.
I am confident Jenny and Michael are doing a terrific job, and the students will leave this Boot Camp better for the experience. But the observations made about Boot Camp are worth noting, not just about Boot Camp or ALA, but profession-wide.
What I don’t understand is why you don’t just write off the blog commentary and call it a day. In a 2.0 world, the kibitzing never stops, and the work we do can be talked to death, sometimes fairly and sometimes not. But if you’ve got to vent, please do it here–and not with your students and certainly not over the phone. Kapeesh?
(which isn’t “free,” it simply incurs its costs in different ways–but that’s another discussion)
This is a discussion I’d love to see, especially within the ALA. I geet the feeling people who don’t work with FOSS systems much are making decisions based on what they learn from vendors.
Where are the geeks in all of this? The people who run the backend stuff seem to be absent from what I’ve seen.
ALA Library 2.0 – My Perspective
All of the discussions about ALA Library 2.0 and its implementation are great (Library 2.0, Open Stacks, …
Blake, I work with open source software. Some of it is worth it and some of it is not. None of it is “free.” Everything has a price.