It’s Prof. Cooley, in the Art Library, with the Useless Box

Person: Heidi Cooley

My person is Heidi Cooley, author of Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era. I was at the 4th floor library at PMC looking at the new books display, and this book caught my attention. The title and the cover image conveyed the perfect combination of artsy, academic, and applying theory to practice. A brief skim of the chapters revealed that this book encapsulates perfectly the four degrees taught at the School of Information.

So what is Augusta? Scott Nixon, a traveling insurance agent from Augusta, Georgia, used a 16mm camera to document places in the U.S. called Augusta, filming from about 1930 to 1950. These are towns and streets and villages and storefronts and some other surprising Augustas. The result is an 18-minute movie, available on YouTube and archived, along with Nixon’s home movies, at the University of South Carolina (USC).

Cooley was a professor of technology and media arts at USC, and during a visit to the archive, the archivist showed her The Augustas and these 18 minutes triggered this book. The book is interesting, clever, and well written, but the main appeal to me is how Cooley extrapolated meanings and applications of information in ways that are both deep and broad and directly connect to our school. The Augustas relate to technology, mobility, mobile devices, bodies in motion, managing the movement of “stuff,” the application of surveillance, tracking, indexing information, metadata creation, digital and physical preservation, archiving, display, and the implication on governance.

Cooley’s departure point is the traveling salesman problem, which asks, “Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city and returns to the origin city?” It’s a question that is relevant to information storage, retrieval, design, display, usability, findability, and more. Books and articles that reflect the intellectual landscape in an interdisciplinary way are few and far between, and Cooley’s study is an “example of digital humanities scholarship and critical readings of the political stakes of new media technologies” (Archibald, 2016). It can provide new appreciation for a broad and deep understanding of information.

Place: Brooklyn Art Library – The Sketchbook Project

I’m not sure what possessed me to make my way across town on one of the coldest days of last winter to visit The Brooklyn Art Library. I must have read about it someplace, but I can’t recall where.

Nestled in some abandoned (or maybe it was the cold) side street in Williamsburg, the library is one large rectangular room lined with bookshelves, and on them are uniform sketchbooks. People buy a sketchbook from the library, then draw, paint, write, collage to their hearts’ delight, and bring or mail it back to the library. The library digitizes the books, adds metadata, and places them on the shelves where they are arranged chronologically. To look at a book, you register on your phone or using one of their iPads, and request up to three sketchbooks. You can search by artists, by title, by region, by topic, and more. You receive the book within a few minutes and as a special bonus receive the book immediately preceding the one you requested. This aspect of the arrangement particularly appealed to my knowledge organization sensibility. It somehow reminded my of Aby Warburg’s library in London and its cross-disciplinary references between adjacent sections.

The books themselves are, as one might expect, very wide ranging. Every imaginable kind and color of ink and pencil and paint and every style of drawing. There are journals and landscapes and manga and books in all languages and from many countries. Some are magnificent, some are puzzling, but the effect is quite strong, and even the duller ones are lifted up by being part of a beautiful and surprising collection.

Toward the back of the library there is a community-style conference table where visitors can look at the books. There were few people during my visit (temperatures were in their 20s, after all) but there were some, two adults and a child, some other adults of all ages. The people who work there are conversational without being pushy and will take their cues from the visitor.

The library embodies some of the ideas expressed in Finding Augusta, particularly those about arrangement of information as mobile objects; as Cooley notes, “mobility, its organization and potentiality, is the defining problem of this present” (Cooley, 2014). To that end, the Brooklyn Art Library provides its Bookmobile, which brings the collection to locations around the country in a mobile library.

Thing: The Useless Box

For my Thing, I chose a useless box. How do I know it’s a useless box? Well, it says so in bold black lettering on top of a flimsy looking plywood box: Useless Box.

Right under the lettering there is a slit in the cover, and below it, a simple mechanical switch. Push the switch and half cover lift open from the hinge to the center, only to immediately close again. Open close, open close—that’s all it does. Useless.

Measuring about six inches, I can hold it my hand, turn it around and examine it. Peeking inside I can see a small mechanical device operated by battery. Pushing the outside switch makes the top open and immediately close. The only use that comes to mind, or at least to my mind, it that this is some executive stress toy.

So what makes The Useless Box a worthy choice for my information-Thing? Well, it’s the legacy of the Useless Box that ties in to our information universe. Developed in the 1950s in Bell Labs, it is the brainchild of Claude Shannon, a pioneering information theorist:

“The first working model was constructed by his mentor, Claude Shannon, who later became known as the father of information theory. This context, the fact that the creators of this aggressively pointless gadget are emblematic figures in the ascendancy of machines over our contemporary world, lends a frisson of historical oddity to what is essentially an executive toy.”
(O’Connell, 2016)

Contemplating the box as an expression of meaning is an act of mediation that can take you in many directions, from the meaning of labor and mechanical objects to questioning usefulness itself. And finally I admit, one appealing thing about this Thing is that is reminds me of Thing. Picking up on some lines of thought from Cooley, this can take us to the latest in creating life out of dead brain tissue to Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” in which a woman learns how to see the future:

“From the beginning I knew my destination, and I chose my route accordingly. But am I working toward an extreme of joy, or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum, or a maximum?”
(Chiang, 2002)

In other words, even when everything is known (like a device that you know will close itself immediately after you open it), isn’t it still possible for wonder to exist?

by Debbie Rabina, Ph.D.

References

Archibald, R. (2016). Review of Cooley, Heidi Rae, Finding Augusta: Habits of mobility and governance in the digital era. H-War, H-Net Reviews. Retrieved from http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=43095

Chiang, T. (2002). Stories of your life and others. New York: Vintage.

Cooley, H. R. (2014). Finding Augusta: Habits of mobility and governance in the digital era. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press.

O’Connell, M. (2016) Letter of recommendation: The useless machine. The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-useless-machine.html

Shaer, M. (2019). Scientists are giving dead brains new life. What could go wrong? The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/magazine/dead-pig-brains-reanimation.htm

Posted on July 19, 2019July 22, 2019 by Mary Bakija 0

After School At The Cortelyou Library

The first thing you see when you enter the Cortelyou Library is the information desk. A librarian sits there, and if you make eye contact, she’ll smile and say hello. Many of those who entered on the day I was there, both children and adults, knew her. “I passed!” reported one teen, and the librarian gave the thumbs-up sign, while telling another, “I haven’t seen you in a while!” Other patrons either passed the desk quietly, or stopped with specific questions. It was a cool fall day, around the time the elementary school next door and the middle school down the street had ended classes for the day, and the librarian was constantly fielding questions.

“How does she get a library card?” one guardian asked, nudging the girl at her side, before accepting a form to fill out.

“When is storytime?” another guardian asked, in a thick Russian accent. The bilingual storytime wasn’t for a little while, so the family of five headed out, saying they’d return.

“Where’s the bathroom?” asked another guardian, shepherding her child in the direction the librarian pointed.

Where To Checkout?

Directly to the left upon entering is another highly used area: the self-checkout machines. People who came in knowing which book they wanted walked right up to one to use it to search. Others checked out after browsing a bit, or after picking up their book from the holds shelf nearby. Some popped in, renewed, popped out. A class of about a dozen pre-K aged children stood in line to check out books with their teacher at one of the self-checkout kiosks. The teacher had a bag full of the kids’ library cards and helped each child check out one or two picture books, which went fairly smoothly. (Putting coats back on didn’t go quite as well. The “flipping method” requires some finesse and experience, it seems. And then Max forgot his hat.) The teacher reminded the kids: “Keep the paper slip with the book, because that tells you when you have to bring it back.”

It’s interesting to see the information desk and the self-checkout stations so close to each other. It’s common to every branch of the Brooklyn Public Library that I’ve visited, and I have seen how useful it can be. During this observation, the librarian at the info desk spent several minutes recommending a book comparable to Nathan Hale’s series to a mother and her son, at which point a few people wanted to check out books. Rather than wait, they saw the self-checkout kiosks were available, and they used those. However, people also used them when no patrons were at the info desk. It was a little sad to see people actively avoiding that human interaction; the alternative view, of course, is that they might find self checkout to be more efficient, faster, or even a more private way to access information.

Where To Sit?

A nice piece of design in this branch is that there are two separate areas with computers: one for adults, and one for children in the children’s area. Several kids coming in after school raced to the computers, working together on projects and playing games. Adults were also busy at their computers — the entire time I was at the library, every computer in the adult section was occupied, and patrons were often waiting their turn for a computer to become available. Because both computer sections are surrounded by bookshelves, as patrons young and old waited for a chance to use a computer, they also interacted with the physical collection, browsing titles and picking up books.

The most apparent constraint of this branch is its small size. Though this was a peak time for the branch, it’s representative of the weekday after-school crowd. According to the library system’s BrooklynStat service, in fiscal year 2018, the branch recorded 198,901 visits, making it the fifth most popular branch in the system. Taking into account Sundays and holidays, the library was open about 300 days during the year, so that’s an average of about 663 people that visited this branch each day. And, at least in its busy times, you can really feel that. It’s bustling and vibrant, warm and welcoming, convivial and social, and incredibly kid-friendly. By 3:30pm the day I visited, every chair was occupied, and additional children dashed around tables or sat on the floor. The noise had increased — in addition to the general chatter and energy of the crowd, three infants wailed unconsolably for 20 minutes straight — and the space was more comparable to a school cafeteria than to what most people imagine a library to be.

How To Improve

The wide, single-story building was built in 1983. The library doesn’t have stats available online that date back to that time, but we can see some change in the neighborhood by looking at census data. According to the Department of City Planning, the population of Community District 14, where the Cortleyou Library is located, was 143,859 in 1980. By 2010, the population had grown by nearly 17,000 people. The library may have filled the neighborhood needs effectively in the ’80s, but the neighborhood has grown, and perhaps it’s time for the library to grow, as well.

If I were to improve the library in just one way, to accommodate the demand and the various users, I think separate, walled sections would be helpful. During my observation, several adults entered the library, looked around for a seat, observed the hectic atmosphere, and then turned around and left, perhaps to sit in one of the several coffeeshops on Cortelyou Road instead. If the spaces for children and for adults were separated, it would impact the energy and sociability of the library — I for one wouldn’t have made a new kindergartener friend, who shared facts from the non-fiction book she’d just read about glass. But it would be nice to have a dedicated, quieter space, where adults (and children) could enjoy a bit of peace. I’d add a few comfortable chairs in there, too, as all those currently in the library are firm plastic seats at tables.

Public Service

Though not exactly the “street-level bureaucrats” described by Michael Lipsky in his paper Toward a Theory of Street-Level Bureaucracy (because the Brooklyn Public Library is not run by the government, but is a nonprofit organization that receives funds from a number of sources, which does include local, state, and federal governments), Lipsky’s descriptions felt like they’d come alive here in some ways. Librarians represent a larger organization, and certainly some people who don’t know exactly where the library’s funding comes from may not distinguish the library from a government agency. And as shown above, librarians interact with citizens extensively.

“The potential impact on citizens with whom [a street-level bureaucrat] deals is fairly extensive,” Lipsky wrote. At the library, that couldn’t be more true. I saw it in action, quite positively, throughout the afternoon, as librarians and support staff assisted patrons with all sorts of requests, tirelessly fielding repeated, similar questions without irritation.

The physical and psychological threats Lipsky outlines are also a possibility at the library. There is certainly a psychic toll on everyone working, from the librarian who was trying to settle down a man who was yelling, to the security guard who reminded a girl about some of the responsibilities she has for her younger brother, to the volunteer who shelved books near the hysterical infants. And every single one of them worked with patience. It’s exhausting to be “on” like that all the time. But for the right person, like the librarian I saw at work that day, and with the right training and support, it might be easier to see it not as exhausting, but rather as rewarding.

Posted on November 29, 2018November 29, 2018 by Mary Bakija 0

Archivists Need To Be Political In The Propaganda Machine

Anthony Clark describes presidential libraries a “fake history sites” and “propaganda machines.” (Hard to argue after visiting some.)

Archivists Round Table Symposium #archives pic.twitter.com/pJXCVBCG0K

— Geof Huth (@geofhuth) October 19, 2018

Would Donald Trump be president if presidential libraries were more honest about the political histories they represent? That was one of the thorny questions raised by Anthony Clark during his keynote address at the annual New York Archives Week Symposium presented by the Archivists Round Table. The theme of the day was “The Uncomfortable Archive,” and Clark, author of The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity & Enshrine Their Legacies, had a lot to say about the things that make him uncomfortable with the current state of presidential libraries and museums.

Clark has ample first-hand experience with these federally maintained institutions, which, though spurred into action by Franklin D. Roosevelt, weren’t formally established until the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955. Clark worked in the U.S. House of Representatives on a House Oversight Committee that investigated the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and in 2003 began research on his book. After visiting the few presidential libraries that exist (13 as of today, with Barack Obama’s currently in controversial planning stages), he said he encountered a lot of things that made him uncomfortable. Noting that the presidential libraries account for a quarter of the federal archives budget while only holding five percent of its records, he expressed additional concern over the outside funding they receive. By ingratiating themselves to private funders, he said presidential libraries are doing “wholesale damage” to the country, serving as “propaganda machines” that raise money for those private organizations while acting as “fake history sites” that obscure or erase the truth. This is what made Clark wonder whether our country’s current administration might have been different if those charged with administering the records had played a more reliable role in presenting presidential history.

He outlined the problem of personnel who would bow to the interests of private organizations that provide funding to these libraries, which he suggested might prioritize an exhibit that shows a president in a good light over fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests, for instance. For someone in that position, it’s understandable they might worry — don’t do what the funders want, and maybe lose the funding, and the job — but Clark reminded the room that it’s more than a top-down change that’s required. Yes, he said, there should be someone who is “independently leading an independent agency.” But if the leader isn’t leading, then, he said, “they don’t deserve your industry,” and you should find a place that “respects and deserves” you, and become the kind of leader that others respect and deserve.

Clark’s passion for the topic was evident. It’s clear that his many years spent considering this so deeply have had an impact, and it seems he is understandably upset that he’s one of the few people who’ve done anything about his findings. Though I haven’t read his book yet, I can imagine that frustration comes through as clearly in his writing as in his speech. It’s a difficult position to be in. Here’s someone who spent more than a decade seeing issues first-hand and documenting a lot of problems in a system, but perhaps feels like he’s attempting to take down a goliath singlehandedly. As Sara A. Polak wrote in a review of his book in The Public Historian, “The exasperation here is problematic because it creates the sense that Clark is a strong proponent of one side in a quarrel, rather than a historian trying to provide a dispassionate perspective on a struggle between complex interests and important ideological choices.”

But maybe this is an important time to be passionate, and maybe Clark is in a unique position to do so. Or maybe, as he implied in his address, all of us as information professionals share that role, and it is more important than ever to be impassioned.

As Robert Jensen outlined in The Myth of the Neutral Professional, a reading for one of our recent classes, those who are in a position to control access to information are unable to be neutral. Whether it’s deciding which books to acquire for a library collection, or what programming is created, or what details are shared or not shared in an exhibit, political choices are part of an information professional’s job. For those working in presidential libraries and museums, allowing misleading or incorrect information to be presented to the public is a political choice. It might seem like a tricky position to be in, but it’s one that ethical guidelines remind us to be cognizant of. For instance, the Society of American Archivists’ Code of Ethics states: “Archivists should demonstrate professional integrity and avoid potential conflicts of interest. They strive to balance the sometimes-competing interests of all stakeholders.” In his address, Clark noted that the stakeholders of the presidential library system might appear to include the foundations that provide funding or even the former presidents themselves; however, he reminded us that the true stakeholders are the American people.

It’s a strong ethical question for anyone working in any information profession: Who is it that you truly serve, and are you doing all that you can to serve them? Or, as Jensen stated: “The appropriate question isn’t ‘Are you political?’ but instead should be ‘Can you defend the conclusions you reach?'” In the end, neutrality may not be possible, and for Clark, we may all be better off because of that.

Thankfully, forums such as this one exist to help information professionals consider the implications of political actions in the workplace. The Archivists Round Table is an excellent resource for bringing this community together to discuss complicated topics like this that are relevant to the profession, and they hold events throughout the year, which I look forward to attending more of.

Posted on November 11, 2018 by Mary Bakija 0

Foundations of Information

Pratt School of Information