On Wednesday, October 19th at 6:30pm I attended a presentation and panel discussion about utilizing libraries to provide services for refugees and immigrants at the Goethe-Institut, a non-profit German cultural center, with its own small library, located on the outskirts of Union Square. Inka Jessen started off the event with a presentation about Syrian refugees and the services that are provided for them at the Stuttgart public library in Germany. Stuttgart is Germany’s third largest public library, currently housed in a brand new and quite gorgeous building that has 8 floors, with a huge center area carved out for the main library. Architecturally, the building is a giant cube, where all the windows are illuminated in blue at night. It is the most modern looking library I have ever seen. Jessen is in charge of all immigrant services at the library, a task that has become more important and more difficult with Germany’s open door policy towards Syrian refugees. She is also apart of the Goethe-Institut’s librarian in residence program, that has been running since 2008. Visiting and speaking with several New York City libraries and librarians she is conducting research and learning best practices to bring back to Stuttgart in order to make their refugee and immigrant services all the more better. She is incredibly grateful to be here in New York City, a city with a very rich immigrant history, as well as a bountiful history of immigrant library services and library partnerships with local community organizations.  Jessen details much of her experiences on the Goethe-Institut’s Librarian in Residence blog. However, it is written in German, so while it is very useful for her German colleagues and German-American partners, it has not been very useful for me. According to Jessen, Germany has recorded approximately 900,000 Syrian refugees that are now living among them, 8,500 of which are now living in Stuttgart. The refugees are living in small containers right outside of the library itself or in swiftly built long houses in other areas of town. Currently at Stuttgart, there are a variety of services available for refugees to utilize, aiding them with assimilation into German culture and working towards becoming productive citizens of Germany, at least until they have an opportunity to safely return home. Stuttgart offers internet access in 60 languages, with books and dvds in 26 languages, specifically including Arabic and Urdu language books and dictionaries they were able to obtain with some extra funding. They also provide easy access to German dictionaries, easy to read literature, virtual e-learning classes and on site adult German classes and mentor groups for learning the German language. Stuttgart has a reading aloud project for refugee children, where volunteers, many of them teachers or former teachers, read to Syrian children (many of which are parentless, living in groups) and play language based games to help them get a feel for the German language. Another program they have for teenagers is their Revolution Children project, where teens create and carry out theatrical performances in the library, helping to build community and educate others about the perils of current life in Syria. Volunteers also travel around Stuttgart, visiting the refugee housing areas to read to children and hand out bookpasses. Bookpasses are essentially library cards, in which the owner doesn’t have to have an address, making them a perfect way for refugees to access the library and all its resources.

I would like to part from the event for a moment to speak about several other information services that Germany is providing both Germans and Syrian refugees, as to paint a nice backdrop for the work Jessen is doing in Stuttgart. The German government, aid organizations and volunteers have created apps, websites and online resources to efficiently track and support refugees in their quest to navigate German bureaucracy, learn the German language, find both jobs and housing, and be granted asylum expeditiously. According to CNET reporters, Germany is utilizing technology better than any other country providing asylum for Syrians. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, otherwise known as BAMF, has created Germany’s first centralized database of refugees, migrants and asylum seekers. They have achieved this in 3 months, with 60 software developers working 18-20 hour days in order to pull this off. By leveraging the use of passport scanners, high resolution cameras and digital fingerprinting, which are all cross referenced in the database, they can register someone in 2-3 minutes, as opposed to days and they can approve or reject asylum for an individual in 48 hours, as opposed to 7-8 months. BAMF has also created the Ankommen (Arrival) app for those who have newly arrived, providing them with information about the complexities of the asylum process, the rights they have as refugees, the rights women have living in the western world, and basic German phrases. Bureaucrazy is another app that is on its way, yet still in the development process. It will help refugees navigate German bureaucracy and documentation, as well as provide a map of important places associated with these tasks. Babbel’s language learning app is another great resource for refugees. The monthly subscription for the app is $6.95, but Babbel has waived this fee for refugees, in order to help them learn German. There are also two websites that Syrian refugees have found helpful, Let’s Integrate, which helps foster the connection between locals and refugees by facilitating meetups, and HelpTo, where people can post items and services they are donating, as well as ask for help. It seems that Germany has done a masterful job utilizing technology, with the hopes of fostering integration. (https://www.cnet.com/news/germany-europe-refugee-crisis-technology-merkel/)

Now, back to the event. The second part of the event was a panel discussion with Inka Jessen, Fred Gitner, and Sonia Lin. Sonia Lin is the Policy Director of Immigrant Affairs at the Mayor’s Office. Her job is to support and institute policies and programs that will help aid the well being of the 3 million people who are foreign born in New York City. Fred Gitner is the Assistant Director of the New Americans Program and International Relations at the Queen’s Library. The Queen’s Library is not associated with the NYPL system, it is a non-for-profit corporation with over 65 libraries in its care, serving one of the most ethnically and culturally dense areas in the United States. Lin and Gitner represent two sides of the same coin, the partnership of libraries and local government to help immigrants become better American citizens, while still preserving their ancestral cultures and identities. From the library side of the coin, Gitner spoke of the various language programs geared toward those trying to learn English or for those interested in simply learning another language. One woman he spoke of told him that she wanted to “be part of the global community,” which is why she was thankful for their Korean and Urdu language classes. Some of the other programs they have available at the Queen’s Library include having a medical librarian available to help immigrants with health and health insurance related questions, attorney assistance for helping immigrants apply for citizenship, programs to obtain a high school diploma, and information sessions for people applying for the Diversity Visa green card lottery, done in partnership with the Mayor’s office. The list goes on and on. On the local government side of the coin, Lin was proudest of the IDNYC program. People can go to various libraries to apply for the card, which is accepted as a valid form of identification by the NYPD. They do not have to share their immigration status while applying for the card, can use it as a library card, and are provided with discounts to shows, gyms, prescription drugs, as well as free membership to certain museums and cultural institutions through the card. Benefits provided by this card are particularly important when you consider that of the 3 million immigrants in NYC, ½ million of them are undocumented. Jessen, on the other hand expressed great concern about the image problem libraries in Germany have had in the recent past. This is starting to change as German citizens witness how integral libraries have been with the assimilation of Syrian refugees, bringing renewed attention in the greatest of light. She expressed that she does not know of one library in Germany that provides the types of services that the NYPL, Queen’s Library and Brooklyn Public Library systems do for their populations, especially their immigrant populations. Jessen’s goal here is to absorb as much as she can, from people like Sonia Lin and Fred Gitner, during her librarian residency with the Goethe-Institut, and use that knowledge to transform refugee and immigrant library based services back in Stuttgart. I came to this event thinking that I was going to be schooled on the efficiencies and proficiencies of German libraries, I left a little prouder of the types of services libraries provide for their citizens in the city I call home.

William F. Birdsall, in his “A Political Economy of Librarianship,” laments the fact that libraries have not been an important part of the “emerging national and global information infrastructures.” (Birdsall, p.1) Instead, governments have largely looked toward private enterprise to generate the means by which citizens are provided access to the so-called information highway. While I certainly share his dismay that the public institution long charged with providing public access to information has coasted through the arrival of the information age, the remedy he proposes – to develop a political economy of librarianship — is strangely misguided.

Birdsall begins by describing the “ideology of Information Technology,” supposed to be at the root of the wrongheaded information public policy which is the target of his article. This ideology builds on the drive of politicians to deliver society from the industrial to the information age by creating a space for a deregulated market for information and information services in which firms compete in the realm of e-commerce and development of information technologies. Furthermore, individuals assume the role not of citizen but of consumer, fulfilling his duty to buy goods in the “internet mall.” Certainly, this cuts a librarian to the core. To a professional whose main charge is to provide access to informational material, it would seem that the new world brought about by the merger of computers and telecommunications should provide universal access to all kinds of digitized media, or possibly provide citizens with a more transparent and direct relationship to their government. It should be used for good, not commerce.

But this phantom IT ideology which exists only for Birdsall is reminiscent of a much better established ideology, that of Neoliberalism. The notion can be summed up in the following three axioms: cut government funding of public institutions and programs (austerity); limit government interference in the market (deregulation); and, whenever possible, consign the functions of the state to private enterprises. By viewing the problem through this broader lens, with the impact on comparable public institutions brought into view, the analysis can move beyond the politics of the library and seen instead as a more generalized flaw in the present attitude of government. If, as he says, “Libraries are marginalized as institutions serving the public,”(Birdsall, p.5) they are certainly not the only ones. What about Public Schools, the worst of which are being depopulated and overtaken by private charter schools? Or Public Universities, whose state funding has been reduced from the major portion of the budget to a pittance in recent years?

Birdsall proceeds from his diagnosis, always staying within the realm of the library, to call for the development of a political economy of librarianship. This is to be accomplished through the alliance of academics and practitioners who will unite to somehow spur a reinvestment in libraries and bring them to the forefront of the knowledge-based economy. Maybe I am overly skeptical, but I think a couple of freshly minted academic papers on the “Ideology of Information Technology” will not be enough to reverse the trend of the state limiting the role of public institutions and throwing the reins to private enterprise.

To add insult to injury, Birdsall, who seeks “a political economy of librarianship [that] could examine, for example, the validity of the premises of the ideology of information technology, how they have become incorporated into public policy, and whose ends are being met”(Ibid., p.7) gives the name praxis to the creation of the proposed theory. Praxis is typically understood be mean the realization or embodiment of a theory in a – typically political – act. Writing more papers does not qualify as taking action. And, to reiterate, it is a mistake to confine analysis of this problem to the particular institution of the library. If one seeking to take action can understand the similar effects of the neoliberal ideology on other public institutions, the possibility of a dialog across those institutions begins. Rather than “providing a common ground bringing practitioner and researcher together,”(Ibid., p.7) why not build alliances between librarians, professors, teachers, etc. to counter the marginalization of the institutions you hold so dear and the assault on public goods in general? That would, at least, merit the name praxis.

Robert Jensen brings up an interesting point in his article, “The Myth of the Neutral Professional” from 2004 when he states that an intellectual in any society is not neutral. Intellectual Professionals, such as librarians, serve a function; that function is to solidify the position of the elite. They do this by validating what they choose as important for the masses. Jensen talks about how librarians take on the agenda of the elite through things like acquisitions and programing, but something he does not acknowledge is the tagging system which also confirms the agenda of the elite. Librarians are the gatekeepers of information. Today, patrons have access to sources not kept by librarians for almost any information they like, however, the most valid source of intellectual information is still housed in some form of library. Libraries get their funding from somewhere, which makes them some form of extension of the elite as well. A library may house many voices, but a higher structure chooses those voices. Accessibility has changed how patrons interact with information. Librarians can use this to create a more open library system, and acknowledges its bias.
Intellectuals cannot ignore the interconnectedness of institutions in the United States. Institutional libraries do not stand alone in a web of power structures. A government unit of some kind does fund them. By extension, the rich and powerful elite, to some extent, control said government units. Libraries extend much farther than just career academics and intellectual professionals, especially academic libraries. Today the average millennial has to go to college to be financially secure; therefore the impact of an academic library reaches into more minds than ever before. The impact of so many people having their own perspectives in the social sciences could alter the future of how Americans think. The question is, with so many sources for information accessible, how will the average American react?
Just because there is an option for someone to verse themselves in new ideas, does not mean that, they will not simply narrow their field of view in order to focus on what matters to them. Whether to embrace knowing a little bit about everything, or accept that knowing everything about one thing is impossible seems to be the intellectual conundrum of the 21st century. I feel that in this paradox is where the excuse of neutrality is most dangerous. The idea of neutrality allows for those desiring to narrow their field of view to continue to do so without recognition of the bias they are gaining. By not advocating for new voices, libraries can enable this behavior, “[…] to take no explicit position by claiming to be neutral is also a political choice, particularly when one is given the resources that make it easy to evaluate the consequences of that distribution of power and potentially affect its distribution.” (Jensen, 2004) If you look at the structure of cataloging there is a particular field where this distribution of power is transparent: tagging. In the tags field, the goal is to describe a book in key words, findable to the patron. In a sense the librarian has freedom to tag something as whatever they like, but at the same time that person is limited to the acceptable “neutrality” where they must tag the item with accepted terms recognized by society as associated with the object. Using conventional tags for these materials is good for someone seeking out that information. But it limits the ability for someone to stumble upon this material, exposing them to something new or a new viewpoint on the subject matter. If it became the convention to tag things as related to a field that oppose it, or give a new view on it; less direct tagging, could be a solution to this small scale interest situation. The internalization of people is something that should be acknowledged by the intellectual professional, as well as their own biases. Another solution can be to add a new field to the tagging system recognizing the source’s lens before interacting with the source.
For example, if someone has limited themselves to knowing only about the issue of deforestation of the Amazon, they might limit their keyword search to “Deforestation” and “Amazon” which will educate them on that specific topic. The materials that person gains access to could include animals placed on extinction lists because of the deforestation, active parties causing the deforestation, and what governments might be doing to stop it. On WorldCat there is a field where that person can limit further by ‘Topic’. They can look at their subject of interest through a sociological lens, agricultural, anthropological, and many more. This field is the best solution one can find to the lack of neutrality in the library field. There are still limited available sources about the ‘medicine’ topic as a lens on the subject of the deforestation of the Amazon (one to be exact) but the patron can recognize a different lens on the same subject they have interest in.
The concept of neutrality in a library setting is an excuse for legitimacy at best. It needs to be clear to a patron that there are necessary biases involved when dealing with a body of information, whether that be in a physical library or when accessing an online catalog. As library professionals there are steps we can take to identify our catalog’s limits that will create transparency with patrons. Informing the public that they are exposing themselves to a limited collection of viewpoints at any given time could make that person more open to new voices. It may help that person realize that there will always be another way to view something, which is the true issue of the neutrality illusion; it creates an authority in something that can only honestly claim to be a small collection of intellectual thought.

Jensen, R. (2004). The Myth of the Neutral Librarian. Progressive Librarian, 28-34.

I recently visited the Brooklyn Historical Society to conduct an interview with Brett Dion, whose official title is Oral History Project Archivist. Dion received his library science degree from Pratt, and began working at the New York Transit Museum during his final semester in school. He was there for seven years, at first in the archives and then as a registrar (which involved maintenance of the collection and loan paperwork). During his last couple of years at the Transit Museum, Dion began taking workshops at the New York Writers Coalition, and ended up volunteering with StoryCorps. As Dion describes, StoryCorps is a mutated version of oral history, because of the editing and streamlining process: often, when relating a story, people jump around and meander along in the telling. While from the oral history perspective, the narration should be left in its original state, StoryCorps condenses and edits to create a more straightforward version.

When Dion heard of an opening at the Brooklyn Historical Society in the oral history department last October, he jumped at the chance to interview. He wanted to expand his experience in collections, as he had never worked with audio recordings before. He was hired to stay on for two grant-financed projects; he is still working on the first, which must be 70% complete by this upcoming spring in order for the funding to continue. Much of the work done to preserve or archive collections at BHS is funded by grants, so much so that there is a staff member whose sole job is to apply for funds and write proposals. The project Dion is working on now is with legacy oral histories, which date back to 1973 and are stored on audio cassette. He is digitizing, doing conservation work for the tapes that are falling apart, and making the histories more available than they’ve ever been before. Using a system called the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), developed at the University of Kentucky libraries, Dion will put them online and make them accessible in a novel way: the audio will be synched with the transcripts. When uploading an MP3 and a file of the transcript, it is possible to lock them in place and match up the words that occur at every one-minute mark. This entails Dion (or one of his two interns) listening to each oral history within the system. At every fifty second mark, a bell goes off to tell the listener to pay attention; another bell goes off at sixty seconds, which is when Dion or the intern must highlight the word that is being spoken at that exact time. It then jumps to the next fifty second mark, and so on. Dion says that after an adjustment period, the process can go pretty quickly. Before matching up the audio, there must first be an evaluation of the transcripts themselves, which were created when the histories were recorded, back in the 1970s and 80s. Dion and his interns listen to each recording while carefully going over the accompanying transcript, to make sure that the initial transcription was accurate, and to correct any misspellings. Often the narrators of the histories will share their birthdate, but that information must be bleeped out, as a protection against identity theft. The Oral Historian at BHS, Zaheer Ali, wants the year to be left in, so that listeners can have context about what was happening in the world at the time, so only the day and month are removed (in both the transcripts and the audio).

The tapes are composed of sixty-seven interviews (starting in 1973) of Puerto Ricans, most of whom were born in the 1880s, and emigrated to Brooklyn in the 1920s and 30s. As a result, many were trying to get jobs just as the Great Depression was hitting; not only did they have this going against them, but they were very badly mistreated by other immigrants at the time. Dion says the tapes have survived remarkably well, but that as he is doing the transcription and audio work, he is often struck by the scripted quality of the interviews. He notes that it seems clear the interviewers have some purpose in mind, and are guiding the narrators to tell a specific story. This, of course, made me think of “The Ethics of Fieldwork,” by PERCS, and how one of their specifications is to not ask leading questions (p. 6). I was not able to hear the recordings Dion has been working on, but his description led me to believe that the interviewers at the time were not being as ethical as one may have hoped (of course, at that time, the ethics of fieldwork were much less defined than they are now). We can also only hope that the participants were not chosen to be interviewed because they were seen as “exemplified or erotic,” (p.8) and that it was simply because they were new residents of Brooklyn. Zaheer Ali’s philosophy is much more within the ethical framework PERCS lays out: he usually has a certain theme in mind, which dictates who he conducts the interviews with, but his strategy consists of letting those he speaks with tell him about their lives in whichever way they choose. One such theme revolves around the neighborhood of Crown Heights; in 1991, a riot broke out between the Hasidic Jews and African Americans who lived there. Fatalities occurred, followed by days of violence and unrest. BHS went to the area two years later, to find out how people were healing and recovering. As it is now the 25^th anniversary of those riots, BHS is collecting new oral histories, and making the 1993 recordings available to the public.

I see oral histories as giving voice to those who are not always heard, and undermining what Kincheloe and McLaren describe as discursive practices, which they write are “defined as a set of tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said; who can speak with the blessings of authority and who must listen; and whose social constructions are valid and whose are erroneous and unimportant” (2002, p. 94). This might be a romanticized view, as the decision of who to interview and why is up to the organization collecting the oral histories; as a result, one person (or, more likely, a committee) is deciding who is worth interviewing. This means that many groups who may greatly benefit from being heard may never get that chance.

References:

Elon University. Program for Ethnographic Research & Community Studies. The ethics of fieldwork module. Retrieved from http://www.elon.edu/docs/e-web/org/ percs/EthicsModuleforWeb.pdf

Kincheloe, J. L. & McLaren, P. (2002). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In Y. Zou & E. T. Trueba (Eds.), Ethnography and schools: Qualitative approaches to the study of education (87-127). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Ever since their onset as a public institution, libraries have been political in nature. After the death of Alexander the Great and the subsequent break up of Macedonia in the Hellenistic age, there was a boom in the creation of libraries as institutions of the state, where previous collections of merit were kept privately by the elite. Kings recognized the value information had in a world that was continuously vying for power and control. In many instances they would go to great lengths to obtain scrolls and works of prominent thinkers, which in turn would draw scholars and the elite to their libraries, only furthering their prestige and power. Most notable of these first state-funded libraries was the Library of Alexandria, which became a “comprehensive repository of Greek writings as well as a tool for research” under the Ptolemaic dynasty (http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-fierce-forgotten-library-wars-of-the-ancient-world). Threatened by the new and growing status of the Library of Pergamum the Ptolemaic kings adopted strategies of war to ensure that the Library of Alexandria would remain at the top of the pedestal, by cutting off trade of papyrus and imprisoning scholars wishing to trade sides. While by no means as violent or even overt in its undertaking, I would argue that libraries and fields of librarianship remain arenas of political advocation today, whether used as such or not. What is born political, remains political. As Birdsall puts it, modern “libraries are the creation and instrument of public policy derived from political processes” (Birdsall, 2). And it would be more advantageous to embrace this sentiment than attempt a detached stance of neutrality or impartiality.

In the vein of the political, libraries have long been heralded as institutions embodying democratic values. Ideals of intellectual freedom, free and open access, literacy, and inclusion have been championed by public figures like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and even Keith Richards, with the library specifically in mind (Bushman, 3-4). Many of these ideals are ones that this country claims to be governmentally founded on, but have not been fully realized or enacted until quite recently. In keeping with this tradition and continuing to break with the structure of white, male, elitist hegemony, librarians are in a position to enact change in a professional and academic setting. Whether it is advocating for more politically correct classification and subject headings through the Library of Congress or using displays in local libraries to address social and cultural issues in their specific community, librarians have a great opportunity to channel democratic values, expand perspective, and seek social justice in seemingly small but penetrating ways. There are many in this field who wish to remain apolitical and would like to keep politics out of libraries altogether. This can be exemplified in a fairly recent comment by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. Representative of Florida’s 23rd congressional district and member of the Democratic party. In respect to the discussion of the Library of Congress updating the subject heading of ‘illegal alien’ to ‘noncitizen’ or ‘unauthorized immigration,’ she is quoted as saying that the Library of Congress should choose “subject headings without political influence” (http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/07/15/the-surprising-political-power-of-libraries/). I, however, would argue that it is impossible to create an appropriate subject heading for people who wish to be and are not yet citizens of this country without any allusion to politics, just as I would argue that removing politics from the library altogether is impossible. In shadowing both Desmond Tutu and Robert Jensen, the application of neutrality in any professional environment simply does not exist. There will always be a distribution of power and to “either overtly endorse or reject that distribution is, of course, a political choice” (Jensen, 3).  Furthermore, to remain detached from the issue by claiming neutrality is essentially the same as agreeing with the powers that be or the current state of affairs, a specific stance and also a political undertaking. Instead of tiptoeing around this issue or keeping the political nature of ourselves dormant, I propose we embrace it as a catalyst and a much more constructive and productive way to bring about change.

In order to truly and fully express how this can be accomplished, I would like to showcase Jenna Freedman, a blue haired reference librarian at Barnard college, and the work she has done to actively bolster politics in the field of librarianship through her creation of a feminist zine collection at Barnard in 2003. Zines are themselves an anomaly, in that they are an untraditional medium for cataloging in libraries. They are do-it-yourself magazines that run the gamut from handwritten and stapled to professionally printed, serving as a unique form of personal expression on an array of topics and can be considered primary source material about contemporary popular culture. As a self-proclaimed anarchist and punk, it is Freedman’s nature to “critique privileges and challenge social hierarchies,” (Eichhorn, 126) “in favor of egalitarianism and environmentalism and against sexism, racism, and corporate hierarchies” (Eichhorn,126). It is through this lens that she has founded the feminist zine collection at Barnard, which currently consists of more than 1,500 zines in their open stacks collection and over 4,000 zines in their adjoining archive. All of the zines in their open stacks collection are duplicated in their archive for preservation and cataloged in Worldcat, so they are visible to not just Barnard, but the library community at large and available through interlibrary loans (Eichhorn, 128-29). The political and activist nature of this collection is two-fold, encompassing the “actual space of the library and the more conceptual space of the library catalog” (Eichhorn, 129). The fact that Freedman herself is not just a reference librarian, but crosses over the boundaries of special collections librarian, archivist, cataloger, and scholar makes her a defier of professional library tradition within the space of the library. Her decision to catalog the zines was a “way to change the status of the zines,” (Eichhorn, 129) giving them validation and making them as important as any other published material. Additionally, by adding the zines to Worldcat she has given researchers greater access to contemporary feminist material, a “discourse on feminism that, at least until the late 1990’s, was still primarily accessible in private collections” (Eichhorn, 130). There are only a few other collections of zines of this nature, including the Riot Grrrl collection at the New York University and the collection at the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University. As if this wasn’t enough, Freedman keeps an open dialogue with the producers of the zines in her collection due to the highly personal content in the zines, in the case that they want their name removed or in the case that a female to male transgendered zinester no longer wants their work apart of a feminist collection (Eichhorn 130-31).

In an age where we have just appointed Carla Hayden, a woman and an African-American, as the first person in 214 years to hold the post of Librarian of Congress other than a Caucasian man, it is high time we went the way of Freedman. Her willingness to cross boundaries of librarianship and assert her tenacious beliefs in order to provide greater access to knowledge are most definitely political, as well as something to be admired.

On the 10^th floor of Elmer Holmes Bobst Library lies a well-kept secret: the NYU University Archives. With only two full time staff, four part-time graduate assistants, and one part-time undergraduate student, the department is incredibly lean. This small staff supports roughly 800 unique patrons per year, with 55% of patrons affiliated with NYU, and 45% coming from outside the University. Though only formally created in the late 1970s, the department has been collecting materials since the University’s founding in 1831. The Archive is home to a range of collections, including items such as architectural renderings, administrative records, realia, busts, posters, audiovisual materials, mascots, and more. The Archive houses their collections onsite at Bobst and in a storage facility at Cooper Square, with 40% of the collection stored offsite in a warehouse upstate. Unlike a rare book and special collection reading room, the University Archives have a fairly flexible admission policy. Their reading room is open Monday through Friday, 9:30am to 5:00pm, by appointment only. However, this collection is not restricted to patrons with specific credentials (ie. academics), but instead is open to anyone with an interest in the Archive’s holdings.

Visiting NYU’s University Archives definitely brought up issues of access. The archives are open five days a week during normal business hours. A visit to the collection for anyone with a 9-5 weekday job would be impossible. Janet Bunde, the interim University Archivist at NYU, explained that the Archive hopes to extend their hours in order to better accommodate patrons who are only available on weekends. Digitization, of course, serves as a successful remedy to the challenges of physical access. However, a crucial issue facing many university archives and special collections, including the NYU University Archives, is the lack of funding available for digitization of records. NYU has only digitized an extremely small portion of their university archives, including 1,400 photographs, a small number of 35mm films, and a few documents. The collections that NYU has digitized have been made easily accessible through their digital finding aids, and are clearly organized and presented.

I applaud Bunde and her staff for their hard work to make their archives accessible to all, and it seems that they are making great progress toward opening the collection to an even broader audience. There are still, however, major issues across institutions as to priorities of funding. Where staff constraints affect such issues of access as reading room hours, digitization serves as the antidote. There is a one-time labor commitment of digitizing and uploading materials to a server, which results in inestimable hours of use by patrons. This includes, of course, the labor of website and database maintenance, but one could argue that this time is still minimal compared to the perpetual staff needs of operating a reading room, retrieving physical materials for patrons, and providing face-to-face reference support (which of course has it’s positives, as compared to digital reference support).

Another challenge that Bunde discussed was determining which materials are necessary to preserve. In a university as large as NYU, there is a significant amount of material that must be sorted through and culled on an annual basis. As the university is able to bolster its digitization efforts, issues of quantity will become even more pressing. As Roy Rosenzweig states, “the simultaneous fragility and promiscuity of digital data requires yet more rethinking –about whether we should be trying to save everything, who is ‘responsible’ for preserving the past, and how we find and define historical evidence” (Rosenzweig, 2003). This will become a challenge that Bunde and her staff will have to grapple with as they are able to increase their digitization efforts.

Ultimately, I was very impressed with the NYU University Archives’ commitment to open access for all. Bunde and her staff created a welcoming environment for researchers who may not be regular patrons of university special collections. As Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook state, “archives –as records –wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory, and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies” (Schwartz & Cook, 2002). I believe that NYU has worked to create an archive that is inclusive of the many dialogues of NYU and the surrounding community, both historically and in current day. I was impressed with their commitment to functioning as an archive for the community, and I look forward to seeing what types of materials their future digitization projects bring to light.

References

Schwartz, Joan, and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2.1-19 (2002): 2-13. Print.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era”. The American Historical Review 108.3 (2003): 739. Print.

In 1996, in an attic in San Francisco, Brewster Kahle started the Internet Archive, an organization whose mission is, quite literally, to archive the Internet. Kahle often likens the goal of IA to that of the Library of Alexandria, to provide “universal access to all knowledge” (Internet Archive, 2015). The traditional role of the archive in preserving cultural heritage and aiding in (or dictating) the construction of identity and social memory is well documented. However, I believe that twenty-first century technologies have not only changed conceptions of archives and access, but will also completely transform the process of meaning-making as it relates to understandings of the self. I believe systems like the Internet Archive will play a significant role in this change, allowing users to challenge historical understandings of power dynamics, hegemonic narratives, and accessibility through unrestricted access to enormous quantities of archived information.

“Archives — as records— wield power over the shape and direction of historical scholarship, collective memory, and national identity, over how we know ourselves as individuals, groups, and societies”, state Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook, from their 2002 article Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory. As Schwartz and Cook argue, the powerful typically control the hegemonic historical narrative that is constructed through archives by dictating what is preserved and what is sacrificed. The histories of select socioeconomically and culturally favored groups are retained, while the stories of marginalized groups are dismissed. It is important to note, I think, that “marginalized” does not necessarily mean statistically insignificant, merely socially and economically disadvantaged due to complex socio-historical factors. The ways in which these marginalized groups are able to engage with archives, as well as the ways that a lack of representation effects identity construction for these underrepresented groups, are extremely complicated. Questions of selection, retention, organization, and access quickly come to the forefront when considering archives. As Schwartz and Cook assert, “Records are also about power. They are about imposing control and order on transactions, events, people, and societies through the legal, symbolic, structural, and operational power of recorded communication” (Schwartz & Cook, 2002). I believe that digital technology has played a large role in alleviating issues of access, though I argue that issues of power dynamics, hegemonic representation, and material organization are still as prevalent as they were in the pre-digital era. This is especially true when considering monolithic cultural and educational institutions that have merely digitized their existing collections, effectively providing wider access to the same socio-historically problematic materials and presentation. I do, however, believe that the Internet Archive represents an exciting new realm of archiving, one that aspires to adhere to tenets of egalitarianism, non-discrimination, and universal access.

One of the most powerful aspects of digital archives is the ability of users to engage with material on a much deeper level than traditional archives allowed, often providing space for expansive reinterpretations of community and of self. In Marija Dalbello’s paper on digital cultural heritage, she includes a quote from Springer et al., who raise an important point when they ask “Does releasing public content with no known restrictions create a sense of democratic access or increase the sense of public ownership and shared stewardship for public cultural heritage resources” (Springer et al., 2008, 15). I argue that this is in fact the case. A sense of ownership in relation to cultural heritage enables users to see themselves and their communities as being present in the complex historical narratives that are told by archives. I believe that the Internet Archive provides space for people to participate in these kinds of reinterpretations of culture (and, by extension, identity construction) through open access to an exhaustive, and largely uncensored, quantity of material.

I think the potential for underrepresented (or entirely disregarded) groups, as well as individuals, to radically transform their processes of identity formation is present with an “unregulated “ (or at the very least lightly curated) archival system like the Internet Archive. Whether or not this will prove true remains to be seen. Identity formation and understandings of the self are complicated and greatly nuanced, and, since the advent of recorded history, have been deeply impacted by the hegemonic narratives of official archives. I believe the Internet Archive will serve as a sort of case study for the future of information retention, presentation, and access and the way that marginalized groups engage with these materials. I personally am incredibly excited at the prospect of a future of archival systems that seek to represent all, rather than the narrative of the privileged few.

References

Dalbello, Marija. “Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage.” Proceedings of the Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) conference, 25-30 May, 2009.

Internet Archive. https://archive.org. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

Lepore, Jill. “The Cobweb: Can the Internet be Archived?” The New Yorker. Condé Nast, 26 Jan. 2015. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

Schwartz, Joan, and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2.1-19 (2002): 2-13. Print.

Isabel Rechberg and Jawad Syed’s paper “Ethical issues in knowledge management: conflict of knowledge ownership” highlights some important issues surrounding knowledge production and management within the corporate sphere. However, I wish they had expanded upon this topic further by asking what larger issues arise when we treat knowledge as a commodity? What are the potentials for violence in this system? Finally, I ask how approaching this issue from a library and information studies perspective can help to reframe the concepts of knowledge production, management, and consumption.

Rechberg and Syed’s paper emphasizes “the need for a moral contract of KM between organizations and individuals that is built on the ethical constructs of trust, fairness and justice, so that individuals are acknowledged as legitimate and foremost owners of knowledge, and are willing to participate in KM and enhance its effectiveness” (Rechberg and Syed, 2013). While I agree that it is important to protect the intellectual property of employees, I believe that the protection of the individual is paramount, and should not merely be a stepping-stone to a more streamlined knowledge production team for the company. It seems for Rechberg and Syed, the end goal is to provide a ‘safe space’ for knowledge production within the capitalist system in order to encourage “individuals to willingly participate in knowledge processes” (Rechberg and Syed, 2013). I would have loved to see Rechberg and Syed take their arguments one step further and discuss the ways that treating knowledge as a commodity alienates both producers and consumers, and is inherently detrimental to the knowledge production process. As the knowledge economy becomes further entrenched in the realm of Web-based production, the potential for exploitation is magnified. I look to Mechanical Turk as a prime example of this phenomenon.

Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing marketplace, was established in 2005 with the goal of matching companies with individuals who bid on jobs that can only be completed by humans. Moshe Marvit’s article in The Nation, “How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine”, cites tasks such as detecting biases in an article, recognizing irony, and reading text out of photographs (Marvit, 2014). While on the surface this digital marketplace seemed like a perfect platform for matching companies with willing employees, it has actually become something of an Internet sweatshop, creating an unregulated labor market that is novel even within Western capitalist history. As Marx states:

            Even if the system of working remains the same, the simultaneous employment of a large number of labourers brings about a total change in the material conditions of the labour process. Buildings in which many are at work…which serve, simultaneously or otherwise, the purpose of many labourers, are now consumed in common. (Marx, 1867).

The Internet as a whole, and Mechanical Turk specifically, is the 21^st century version of the “buildings in which many are at work” that Marx speaks of, and a “total change in the material conditions of the labour process” has been the result. Given the fact that Mechanical Turk is centered on people performing tasks that computers cannot, I argue that this labor market is not just exploiting the labor of employees, but also their knowledge, both tacit and explicit. Mechanical Turk gives us a glimpse of a digital work environment centered on non-negotiable contracts, fierce competition, and free from minimum wage regulation, where individuals’ labor and knowledge are both exploited to frightening degrees. The question, then, is where do librarians fit into this violent new labor market? Is it possible to return a degree of agency to the knowledge production/consumption process?

Library and information professionals such as Christine Pawley have grappled with the complex relationship between production and consumption and have, in my opinion, crafted some solutions that are applicable to the Web-based knowledge market. Pawley’s “Information Literacy: A Contradictory Coupling” raises some important points regarding issues with the concept of information literacy as a whole, while also touching on the need to reframe the concepts of information production and consumption. Pawley discusses the need to develop “information literacy practices that situate all information users—not just scholars—at the center of processes of information production and recontextualization, thus hybridizing the identity of consumer-as-producer and producer-as-consumer” (Pawley, 2003). Pawley points to the need to reframe knowledge and information production/consumption not as dichotomous, but as one single, inextricably linked process. When we begin to recognize, as Pawley discusses, the idea of information as a process, not merely an item to be created by some and consumed by others, we can move information out of the realm of commodity. By participating in the both the information production and consumption processes, individuals are no longer subjected to the alienating effects of knowledge as commodity. As information and library professionals help to reframe this understanding of knowledge as an active process, individuals will be presented with the opportunity to escape the production/consumption dichotomy and the associated commodification of the “product”. It is in this way that I believe library and information studies can help to combat the negative aspects of knowledge production, management, and consumption in the corporate environment, and reintroduce a sense of agency to the process.

References

Marvit, Moshe. “How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine.” The Nation. The Nation Mag., 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Sept. 2015.

Marx, Karl. “Capital: An Analysis of Capitalist Production.” Ed. Julian Borchardt. Capital. Ed. Max Eastman. New York: Random House, 1959. 64-65. Print.

Pawley, Christine. “Information Literacy: A Contradictory Coupling.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 73.4 (2003): 422-448. Digital.

Rechberg, Isabel, and Jawad Syed. “Ethical issues in knowledge management: conflict of knowledge ownership.” Journal of Knowledge Management 17.6 (2013): 828-840. Digital.