For the observation post I decided to do something a bit different. I will be speaking of three libraries, all focused on art. I will not only speak of public libraries but also private (an internal library) focusing on the diversity of the employees and clients of customers. From here on, I will refer to myself as the author.

Gagosian Gallery (Private gallery)

The Gagosian Gallery has a growing private library – of approximately 3,000 books, not including the approx. 560 books in the private library of Larry Gagosian, the owner, and the approx. 1,000 auction houses catalogs, dating back to 1989 – for its employees, mainly in its 980 Madison and 555 West locations. Currently, the author is one of the two library interns that work under the supervising librarian. The Gagosian library services the professional staff of the company with art history, museum and private collection books for research for current and future – up to a year in the future – exhibitions and publications. Additionally, the interns can utilize the books in-house for university research or assignments given to them by the staff. In short, the Gagosian in general is not  a very diverse company. Since the staff – and interns – are 95% white and of money, the lack of diversity is very apparent. There are some people of color: the security staff is all black, two of the staff are Hispanic and the two library interns are of color – one black and the author, a Hispanic. There is no one of visible disability and few gay men, which seems to be a norm in the art world. The author spoke to some of the staff about the huge disparity in economic and race of the company and got answers like: “it’s always been this way” or “I never noticed, I don’t see color or care how many money people have.” One of the employees went as far to say, “it is better this way, there’s no reason to change if it works. I mean, if it’s not broken why fix it?” So this is what it is like to be ignorant to the lack of diversity in a workplace… Like Vinopal says, effectiveness of bias awareness interventions is the first step to developing insight into how implicit biases affect negative workplace behavior. But, if most think this way and no one is willing to do anything different, who is going to be the person doing the intervention? It can’t be an intern because they are there to “learn,” not give inputs about how things are run. This has got to be one of the most frustrating things in the business.

(This library was chosen because it is a place representative of the gallery world, a once attractive world to the author. This study was specifically about the Gagosian 980 Madison location)

Frick Art Reference Library (Public with membership)

The Frick Art Reference Library is a must for research in the art community of New York City; hence, the author felt she must speak of it. Let’s begin with the staff itself. The woman who does the check in of bags and coats was of color, not sure if black or hispanic. However, the rest of the staff appeared to be white. What was very noticeable was the age of the staff, many being young – at least front-of-the-house. The people who came to visit also seem to be young, and there specifically for research and not for pleasure. It appears that this library is mainly used by students and scholars since the author did not see that many older people come and go. Not much stood out and so there is not much to say.

Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public with membership)

The Thomas J. Watson Library is, as the Met itself, a prestigious institution with great research resources. The library services not only the public but the staff and volunteers of the museum. The Watson Library is a closed stack (non-browsing) and non-circulating collection devoted primarily to art history. Hence, the author had to request books in advance to be able to sit in and observe the staff and visitors. There is a different library on site, the Nolen Library, for researchers who would prefer to use a browsing collection – which the author found out about after the visit. However, the Watson has a collection used by other museums, galleries and school, which is why it was chosen. The day chosen for a visit seemed to be a particularly slow day, however, the staff seemed more diverse than the others visited. The library had  a staff full of different races, sex orientation and gender identity. It was pleasantly surprising. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, however, is a highly regarded institution that has been actively working to create and appeal to a diverse community so it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. It has an initiative that aims “to create ongoing relationships with the many diverse communities that make up New York, to diversify Museum visitorship and Membership, and to increase participation in Museum activities” – which truly shows even in the staff. Of course, it mainly employs people of the white race but it is definitely going in the right direction. This library, and institution, gave the author hope that change is happening – at least in larger institutions.

Vinopal in her article expresses, “we are starkly lacking in diversity based on race and ethnicity (we are overwhelmingly white), age (librarianship is an aging profession), disability, economic status, educational background, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other demographic and identity markers of difference.” And how right she is. Even though the author is a hispanic woman of color, she never really paid attention to the disparity of the art world, including libraries. Vinopal gives a few ideas for LEADERS to ponder over and create change in her article, but real change seems ions away. It is upsetting to notice that there isn’t a very diverse group of people working or visiting art libraries. We shouldn’t have to think of diverse groups by race, sexual orientation or disability, etc., but when most people you encounter are white, it is hard not to.

Vinopal. J. (2016). “The Quest for Diversity in Library Staffing: From Awareness to Action.” Lead Pipe. http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/quest-for-diversity/

The Metropolitan Museum’s Multicultural Audience Development Initiative:

http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/office-of-the-director/education-department/multicultural

On November 20 2016 I went to the New York Public Library and entered the Rose  Reading Room for the first time. It had been reopened for only a few weeks. After seeing the amount of hype and press surrounding the reopening alone I was pretty excited to see how the new retrieval system worked, how many people would be interacting with the new materials available again to the public, and who would use the other resources available within the room. I observed the room for three hours on Sunday and found that many people are not there for the books now available to the public, or to use the resources found within the library itself; but for the space to use their own devices to use New York Public Library’s wifi.

I stayed in the Rose Reading room on a Sunday afternoon for two reasons: that is when I assumed people that lived in the city had the most free time, and the materials found in the rose reading room are not able to physically leave the room. This restriction forces users to remain in the room for however long it takes them to digest the material. The hours I remained in the reading room were from two o’clock to five o’clock.

When I entered the room it was divided into two sections, I chose the South Hall because it allowed tours to enter and take pictures, then leave in order to truly get a sense of how much traffic the Reading Room was receiving. I also chose this side of the room, because there was only one scanner. If someone wanted access to the materials in the room, but could not dedicate the time to fully read it, the possibility to scan the work is of great interest. I assessed every half an hour how many people were currently within my half of the room taking pictures, how many people were sitting at the tables, using their own computers, as opposed to the computers in the room itself, had books, were on their mobile device, used the scanner or copy machine, and spoke to the librarians.

For some items I check throughout the half hour, and others I checked stagnantly. In relation to the number of people that spoke to the librarian, and using the scanner and copy machine, I recorded throughout my time in the South Hall. For all other items I recorded every half hour, due to my inability to focus on them all at once and record my findings accurately.

During my first half an hour of observing, there were fifty-seven people seated in the room. There were ten people in the tourist area by the entrance taking pictures, and three people in total spoke to the librarian. There were only three people using the provided research computers, and two people used the copy machine. A total of five people had books on the tables in front of them. Thirty people of the fifty-seven had their own computers or laptops in front of them and nine were on their phones.

During my second half hour of observation there were sixty people seated, and eighteen in the tourist area. One person in total spoke to the librarian, three had books, and two were on the research computers. Independently, thirty two people were on their own computers, and nine were on their phones. One person in total used the copy machine.

From three pm to three-thirty sixty people remained seated, and thirty-six were standing in the tourist area. Thirty-four of them were using their own computers, three were using the research computers and ten people had books. Two people used the copy machine and nine were on their phones.

For the next half hour sixty people were seated and twenty five were in the tourist area. Fifty people were using their computers, and fifteen were on their phone. Seven people had books and two were on the research computers.

From four to four-thirty the number of seated people remained sixty, the tourists area had twenty-five people, fifty remained on their own computers, and fifteen on their phones. Seven had books and no one spoke to the librarian in an hour and a half.

For my last half hour of observing there were fifty people seated and twenty in the tourist area. No one spoke to the librarian or used the copy machine as in the previous half hour. Ten people were on their phones, two were on the research computers, and forty were on their own computers. Five people had books.

An important note on the low levels of usage for the scanner is that it does not do what most scanners are able. The scanner does not have the capacity to send scanned images to an e-mail address, they can only sent to USB. This is very limiting in that not everyone carries a USB drive with them, yet everyone has access to an email address. The copy machine costs ten cents a copy, this is the reason I assume there was so little use of these two resources.

I also attempted to take out books from the Rose Reading Room as a final test to see how well it performs as a lending library. I requested my books at two forty-five and the librarian dictated to me that the wait time would be forty-five minutes. In order to do so, I needed to have a library card, an address, a phone number, and an email address to fill out the form with the book information on it as well. I waited until the library closed at five o’clock that night and heard nothing about my book requests. I received an e-mail at ten o’clock that my books were then available and ready for pick up for the next five days. I never received my books nor did I have the time to return to the library and even look at them.

This kind of behavior from the largest public library in North American is unacceptable. The books I requested were not available to the public while the Reading Room was under renovation, and then the retrieval time for said books is much longer than the dictated amount. The amount of free time someone must have in order to interact with this system and be available to interact with the materials that the library houses is unrealistic for the average American living and working in New York City unless they have a certain amount of priviledge where they have hours of obligation-less time. For those well seasoned in how the New York Public Library functions, and is familiar with the long wait times, I do not see how this experience would be encouraging for a first time user’s repeat visit.

“If libraries were just for adults, we would have closed a long time ago.” – Jodi Shaw, Children’s Librarian

I visited my local library in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, at naptime. A pleasant time of day there, when the library is as one expects the library to be: quiet. In a few hours, this space would become an explosion of sound, with kids of all ages arriving to read, play, and discover.

The Carroll Gardens branch is under the umbrella of the Brooklyn Public Library, a network of 60 libraries serving over 2.5 million residents [1]. The branch is staffed by Ms. Shaw, three other full-time librarians, four clerks, a part-time librarian and a technical research specialist. It is one of eighteen “Carnegie” branches of BPL, known as such because they were built with funds from a 1901 gift from Andrew Carnegie (previously, the library had “…typically rented retail space to provide local service.”[2]) The Carnegie branches are beautiful, welcoming spaces – though not always organized ideally for a modern library. Stroller parking is an issue at the CG branch, and the bathrooms are not easily accessible via the elevator.

This particular location is also one of several where the children’s section is on the same floor as the main library, which makes for some challenges – generally, from 3 pm on, adults seeking peace and quiet must look elsewhere. But, as Ms. Shaw noted, the under-5 set is exactly with whom she is looking to engage.

Though adults certainly use the library – there were a number there during my observation, many on computers (watching TV! Using FaceBook!) and a few reading newspapers or browsing the stacks – it is children around whom the world of the library revolves. Programming is heavily weighted towards kids, with four weekly storytimes – often with kids and caregivers lining up around the block up to an hour in advance –  an ongoing arts & crafts program, monthly dance party, and frequent workshops like Lego challenges and Library Lab. There are also four computers dedicated just to kids, which offer educational games and programs like ABC Mouse.

Many of the children’s programs are generated by the Central Library for use by the various branches. While this seems like a practical way to organize a vast network, Ms. Shaw has reservations about this “top down” method. As she pointed out, the community served at the Carroll Gardens branch is very different than the community served at, say, the Brownsville branch. So shouldn’t the librarians at each branch have the opportunity to build programming that is most appropriate for their community?

Ms. Shaw did note that there are some ways in which she and the other librarians can get creative. First, any funds raised through events with their “Friends” group – a volunteer library advocacy group [3] – go directly to the branch. The Friends of the Carroll Gardens Library group is robust, and regularly holds book sales and bake sales – including a recent bake sale on Election Day (the library was a polling place) that raised almost $1,000. Second, Ms. Shaw and her colleagues have a fair amount of autonomy when it comes to spending these funds and developing new programming.

Ms. Shaw also recently worked with library manager John Leighton and the office of Congressman Brad Lander to submit a proposal for Lander’s participatory budgeting project, in which neighborhood residents have the opportunity to vote on how to spend their tax dollars.[4] Their proposal, for a dedicated teen space and an after-hours book drop, won $350,000. With these funds, they plan to improve the lighting, add outlets, and free up some open space where they can install comfortable furniture, all of which they hope will encourage teens to use the library as a safe place to hang out after school.

The Carroll Gardens Branch is a special place, and Jodi Shaw is a huge part of that. She is an engaged, excited librarian, committed to her constituents in a way that seems rare. She is an active member of the American Library Association and regularly attends their conferences (BPL pays her way at one conference each year); she hopes to take on a leadership position there soon. She has written several articles for Public Libraries Online [5], exploring topics from collections digitization to figuring out how to manage crowds at storytime. And she is working hard to engage with the Central Library to ensure that her branch is meeting or exceeding its community’s needs.

Any visitor to this branch will note that it is a community hub, where people of all ages come to work, play, and engage with their neighbors. But it is especially friendly to its littlest patrons.

[1] http://www.bklynlibrary.org/locations

[2] http://www.bklynlibrary.org/about/carnegie

[3] http://www.bklynlibrary.org/support/friends-groups

[4] http://bradlander.nyc/PB

[5] http://publiclibrariesonline.org/author/jodishaw/

“Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art.”[1] Similarly, we can say the same about scholarly publications in the digital age. The Webinar event, “Technology and Publishing: The Work of Scholarship in the Age of its Digital Reproducibility,” presented by Dr. Martin Paul Eve and hosted by the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) discussed the ways in which the digital age and the unlimited reproducibly of scholarship has changed the expectations of researchers toward scholarly communication. Our digital technology promises the notion of access to infinite resources. But as Eve identified, our social and economic processes do not compliment this idea of abundance. This lecture therefore considers a variety of challenges with open access as a way in which to identify solutions to this disconnect between infinite reproducibility and scholarly publications.

 

The lecture began by considering why academics publish as a way to refocus the objectives of scholarly communications systems. According to Eve, academics publish their research for two key reasons, dissemination and assessment. Scholars disseminate their work as a way to communicate their results to their academic communities as well as to put their ideas “on the record”. Publishing also ensures that their records will be preserved by institutions, colleagues and within the footnotes of future scholarship. Additionally, scholars publish their work so they can be assessed. Assessment allows for recognition and promotion. By having research published, especially by a renowned publishing house in the field, the work is recognized as a critical contribution to scholarship and results in salary promotion within Universities. While publishers will pay scholars a small salary of patronage, which enables academics to produce work that will contribute to their field, the majority of their salary depends on Universities, as their contract requires and incentivizes publishing research. Scholars are not dependent or affected by the royalties from the sale of their publications. Therefore, publishers can make a profit, often substantial, from the sale of these publications to library institutions. A major problem within libraries is that they have insufficient funding to provide academics and students sufficient access to these publications year after year. Moreover, since libraries purchase the publications rather than researchers, researchers are not cost sensitive to the publication ecosystem. This entire system results in researchers driven to produce ever more work, hyper-inflationary price increases, libraries unable to afford to purchase publications, and the micro-monopolies of scholarship.[2] However, as Eve argued, these issues also existed in the pre-digital age, beginning at the age of mechanical reproducibility. And, digital technology might help us with these conflicts.

 

Referencing Walter Benjamin’s, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Eve asserts that the digital age and digital reproduction and dissemination, similar to the technical reproduction era of photography and film in the early 20^th century, has caused a profound change in its effect upon the public.[3] But as discussed in class, the digital (computer) revolution, has affected a much larger and wider scale of people than that of the industrial/ print revolution. Similarly, as Moor theorized, “as computers permeate more and more of our society, I think we will see more and more of the transforming effect of computers on our basic institutions and practices.”[4] We have consequently seen this effect as our traditional work has transformed into instructing a computer to do a job.[5] Therefore, the job in which we now assign to a computer to complete has become an invisible operation.[6] And this notion of the invisibility factor in the computer revolution is directly applicable to Eve’s conceptions of the effects of digital scholarly publishing.

 

In the digital age, we don’t need multiple print copies. We can reproduce, disseminate, read and access information digitally. Moreover, we can have interactive scholarly communication. As the Internet is a system that provides us with information freely, it has become expected that free access be given to articles on the Internet. As a result, when a user is asked to pay for an article, it is believed that the fee is for the shareholder’s return and going towards the author and/or publisher. However, the fee for access to the article is actually for the invisible labor of the producing the article. As Eve clearly articulates, digital reproduction hides labor functions seen within the print age and the costs of labor have changed between print and digital. While labor functions, such as type setting, proofreading, editing, preservation, marketing, legal budgets, etc., are still included in digital labor costs of production, the cost of dissemination is lower in the digital age. This is why digital reproduction has invisible labor in comparison to print reproduction. These issues of labor invisibility within digital reproduction of scholarly communication are also reminiscent of our class discussion on computer invisibility. Computer invisibility of software and systems inhibit the public from evaluating where the information is coming from as well as prevents technology literacy. Digital labor invisibility and computer invisibility therefore, similarly impact and change the public’s perception of information provided and consumed through digital technology. Thus, systems such as open access and open software/free software are seen by many as a solution to several of the concerns of invisibility within digital technologies.

 

Open access systems provide free access to read and to refuse scholarly communications by enforcing a processing charge on library institutions. However, as Eve asserts, the current open access system is not economically sound. It costs more for institutions to pay the article processing charges for open access than it did for them to just subscribe to publications individually. Since our current scholarly publishing system enables publishers to have control over an authors work, they also determine how the work will be accessed within open access systems. As Eve points out, it makes no sense for scholars to produce their research to then hand it over to publishers for almost no cost, as it is then sold back to the university libraries for a high price. To combat digital publishing’s economic and labor systems within open access systems, Eve proposes that many small to moderate sized libraries should pay a small sum to companies like the one he helped found, Library Partner Subsidy (LPS), as LPS will conduct the labor of publishing so that the scholarly works can be available to everyone. By having many institutions participate in this system, they will be able to provide fully free access to their users to a wide range of publications for a fraction of the cost. While Eve’s analysis and solution lead us to support his own initiatives, his ideas are interesting to consider. By having a middle-man institution working with providing libraries with open access by removing the labor costs placed on the shoulders of publishing firms, institutions and their users can gain more access to information for less of cost.

[1] Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”(2005 [1936]).

[2] According to Eve, Micro-monopolies in this context refers to the concept that each scholarly published work is individual and cannot be supplemented by another scholar’s or publication’s work.

[3] Eve references Walter Benjamin’s theory of mechanical reproduction

[4] Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” Pg 5.

[5] Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” Pg 5.

[6] Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” Pg 6.

 

Technology and Publishing: The Work of Scholarship in the Age of its Digital Reproducibility

Benjamin, W. (2005 [1936]). “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” trans. Andy Blunden. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Moore: “What is Computer Ethics,” https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623278/mod_resource/content/1/moor-what%20is%20computer%20ethics.pdf

 

The article by danah boyd and Kate Crawford, “Critical questions for Big Data: Provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon,” discusses the shortcomings of Big Data, specifically in correlation with social media. One of the arguments they put forth in their paper is the way in which data from Twitter is not what it appears to be. Since posts are public by default on Twitter, the “data” from the site is often analyzed or used in research, but those publishing their findings don’t always make it clear that Twitter posts aren’t necessarily representative of what they claim to be. As boyd and Crawford point out, “Twitter does not represent ‘all people’, and it is an error to assume ‘people’ and ‘Twitter users’ are synonymous: they are a very particular sub-set…Nor can we assume that accounts and users are equivalent” (2012, p. 669). As they go on to explain, some users have several accounts, or many people use the same account, or tweets on an account are generated by a bot. There are also those who use Twitter in a passive sense: rather than participate, they simply look at what others are saying. These varying types of users are indicative of the fact that Twitter cannot be relied upon as a representative sample of the population. Unfortunately, however, although some researchers do point out the inherent flaws of using data from Twitter, many news sources do not. Thus, many people don’t question the analysis of what users are expressing on Twitter, or statements relating to statistics of what is happening on the site.

It is this lack of questioning, and lack of awareness, that is worrisome. Big Data is everywhere we turn, yet many people don’t stop to think about the ways in which it is all around us. When the iPhone came out with the touchpad home button, many people didn’t think twice about turning over their thumbprint to their phones (and, as an extension, the company that makes them). Payton and Claypoole write in their book, Privacy in the Age of Big Data, “As business and government collects and benefits from all of this data, capturing data becomes an end in itself. We must have more and more data to feed the insatiable appetite for more. And yet, we are not having a serious public discussion about what information is collected about each of us and how it is being used” (2014, p. vii). This is most likely because the average person does not stop to think how creepy many of these tracking systems are; they either don’t care or don’t realize it’s happening. To return to iPhones as an example: several updates ago, location tags suddenly appeared on photos. As I am very paranoid about any possible intrusions into my private information, I immediately went to my settings and turned off location services for every single app except for Google Maps (and even then, the location is activated only while I am using the app). However, when I brought the issue up to friends, no one else seemed to care that their phones were essentially tracking them.

And yet, the joke is on me. Because GPS is not the only form of tracking on phones. Pinging between cell towers can also help determine location (the first season of “Serial” should have taught me that). It can also be tracked via WiFi, if the phone is continually searching for different networks (another default setting, although that function can of course be turned off – and it most certainly is on my phone). Not only does tracking happen through these types of relatively subtle ways, but it can also happen in the form of a game. As laid out in “Terms of Service,” the graphic novella by Keller and Neufeld, participating in social media can be highly compelling, even if it means giving away a plethora of information about yourself (apparently checking in on Foursquare enough times to become “mayor” of a space is enough to overcome any feelings of hesitation). For those who don’t participate in the technology at all, it can feel isolating: “Once enough people reveal their information, then NOT revealing your information becomes a stigma” (2015, p. 12). There is also a form of pressure that can happen when a person doesn’t have social media accounts: people may think or act like that person is weird for choosing to abstain.

Many of the services that are touted as time-saving and efficient, such as Amazon Go, are actually tracking insane amounts of data on each user. Of course, it’s clear that Amazon is on a mission to take over the world (and no one seems to be upset about it), but people should at least be on the alert about a service that is keeping tabs on users in multiple ways. Using Amazon Go would mean providing the company with data on your physical location, your buying and eating habits, and your credit card information. The convenience of it all (not having to stand in line to check out, not having to interact with another human being), as well as the novelty, is what consumers will focus on, but what if Amazon’s databases are broken into and suddenly a hacker knows everything about you? Not worth the convenience after all.

There are also, of course, the new types of technology that have recently begun to invade homes: Google Home, Amazon Echo, ivee, etc. Here are some very worrying default settings for the Echo (and the other devices work similarly): past recordings are kept to improve answers the for future questions; location services are activated, the better to suggest nearby stores and restaurants; and the microphone is ALWAYS ON (Studio One Networks, 2016). These settings can all be changed, but will the average consumer know/care to do that?

In this day and age, everyone needs to be aware of, and protective of, their privacy. It is all too easy for both corporations and the government to keep track of and use data that is collected on the average citizen. Knowing the ease with which your movements, preferences, beliefs, habits and more can be recorded and tracked, it is the responsibility of every person to, at the very least, be aware of the accessibility of their individual data. People can decide for themselves how much or how little to reveal through their use of products and websites, but it is important for everyone to question the necessity of the data they are putting out into the world. Knowledge of this, as in most cases, is power.

 

References:

Boyd, D. & Crawford, K. (2012). “Critical questions for big data: provocations for a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon.” Information, Communication & Society 15(5): 662–679. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/ 10.1080/1369118X.2012.678878

Keller, M. & Neufeld, J. (2015). “Terms of service: understanding our role in the world of big data.” Al Jazeera America. http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/terms-of-service/#1

Payton, T. & Claypoole T. (2014). Privacy in the age of big data: Recognizing threats, defending your rights, and protecting your family. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Studio One Networks. 2016. Expert Q & A: How private is the new Amazon Echo? Retrieved from http://www.yoursecurityresource.com/expertqa/how-private-is-new-amazon-echo/

I live in a small town in Connecticut where the library is commonplace where everyone is equal providing a sanctuary from bad weather and a space for learning. Since I was a young child using the space I had seen technology creeping into the Library by educating children through film and books on CD’s. That was the extent of the technology I remember using in the library. Today it is very different, as I observed my local library the way the public use the space has changed through empowerment programs for children, adults and seniors alike, through Makerspace.

After being away for a couple years I found myself drawn to the library again. As my needs for the library have changed the library has changed drastically as to what it has to offer to the public. The differences from town to town reflect the use of each library and accessibility provided. Each town has a different need and ability to provide information access to the public.

The Westport public library has embarked on bringing technology to the forefront of the library by providing a Makerspace. Starting only three years ago, in 2014, Makerspace came to Westport through a grant provided by the Institute on Museum and Library Services (IMLS).[1] What this provides is a clear link to the next generation and the future of information repositories. The Westport library Makerspace has tools for all types of creations. Each Makerspace around the country has different kinds of tools, but here are some of the general ones; public access to 3D systems, SketchUp software, robotics, code academy, Ponoko, laser cutters, and updated computers for use within the institution.[2] Many workshops and classes that are provided by Westport’s Makerspace have an age limit, typically no one under the age of 8. This allows for users to be of a wide range of ages, just like the library space, Makerspace is open for anyone who wants to learn something new in a new way. In the most recent Annual Report by the Westport Library 2014-2015, there have been 11,304 people who have used Makerspace through workshops and 1,500 programs. Between the years 2014 -2015 1,200 people attended robot coding training and about 3,000 people attended the Makerfaire, which is recognized nationally by institutions using Makerspace.[3] Creating a safe creative space within a information center, Makerspace, fosters new ideas for the future.

The untapped potential for the technology used in Makerspace can be found in our local communities, just out of reach. Using high-grade technology may deter people who think professionals should be using the technology, maybe that professional will be you someday. The correct use of technology, whether that is a power tool or the use of the web, safety of the user is at the forefront of the Maker Movement. In looking towards the future we need to think about how to teach the next generation to use technology appropriately. When thinking about the potential of Makerspace it reminded me of the Larry Diamond’s article “Liberation Technology.” While Diamond is discussing the extremes of technology being liberated within China and other dictatorships around the world, we can relate the definition to the possibilities of Makerspace. “Liberation technology is any form of information and communication technology (ICT) that can expand political, social, and economic freedom.”[4] What is being made in Makerspace’s around the country may be the answer to the next big question that we have yet to ask.

How can Maker Movement tools be seen as liberation technology here in the United States? Makerspace allows for entrepreneurs to explore capabilities of a product or company they have created. By providing the free access to technological tools in the modern world of entrepreneurship, we will see a big positive impact on the economy. A “shift from primarily centralized [manufacturing] to include distributed small-scale manufacturing and assembly – great access to technology-aided and industrial-grade tools – allow makers to experiment with new materials, structures and products.”[5] Although the companies may be small and seen as not capable of working with larger companies, any opportunity to get a head start on knowledge and skills needed to survive in the economy is an opportunity to take with Makerspace. Socially, Makerspace has a huge influence on education of all ages K-12 and through higher education programs. The Maker Impact Summit report from 2013 lays out the key elements of Makerspace that effect, in a positive way, the education system. The maker movement “encourages learning dispositions…. Emphasizes the value of hands-on experience … [and] transforms consumers into creators.”[6] The only way that this can occur within the education system is if there are advocates for this type of change, which is a drastic shift to the long-standing structure of a ““push-and-drill model, in which learners merely interact with decontextualized content.”[7] Where as the Maker Movement is a ““why-and-how” model, in which learners probe, question and create.”[8] The unmatched potential for a change in the education system in America to occur, we can see where possibilities for Makerspace in politics could be vital. Starting from the smaller governments, locally “the maker movement has the potential to revitalize communities and change the way citizens engage with their civic institutions. Achieving broad benefits [of Makerspace] will require some changes in government policy at local, state and Federal levels.”[9] If our communities cannot connect within themselves then how are individuals or these communities supposed to connect nation wide. This is how Makerspace can represent a liberation technology. By reconnecting communities across the nation through the collaboration of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), our nation may be able to return to its glory days, because right now we are stepping back and not moving forward.

Resources:

http://time.com/104210/maker-faire-maker-movement/

https://youtu.be/7wHorfRvvcE

http://www.ala.org/transforminglibraries/future/trends/makers

 

[1] “Maker space.” Westport Library. Accessed on December 9, 2016. http://westportlibrary.org/services/maker-space

[2] Dougherty, Dale et al. Impact of the Maker Movement, Maker Impact Summit December 2013, Westlake, Texas. MakerMedia and Deloitte University Press, 2014. 7.

[3] Board of Trustees. Westport Public Library 2014-2015 Annual Report. November 2014. 22-23. http://westportlibrary.org/1440

[4] Diamond, Larry. “Liberation Technology.” Journal of Democracy 21 (2010). 69-83; 70.

[5] Dougherty. Impact of the Maker Movement. 16.

[6] Dougherty. Impact of the Maker Movement. 19.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid

[9] Dougherty. Impact of the Maker Movement. 22.

On October 21, I went to a workshop at the Frick Library called “Save Your Scholarship: Web Archiving and Tools for Preserving Research Resources”’ The audience was composed of art historians, artists and librarians. The presenters were both archivists. Their lecture was presented by the Digital Art History Lab, which is part of the Frick Art Reference Library. The Digital Art History Lab, created in 2014 has a mission to “provide researchers with the digital tools and data necessary to explore new methodologies.” And to promote the conservation of things digital. www.nyarc.org/content.digital-art-history-comes-frick. The Frick Museum is also in a consortium with the Brooklyn Museum Library, and the MOMA Library: the NYARC. This has a complimentary mission to “facilitate collaboration that results in enhanced resources to research communities.” www.nyarc.org/content/about.

                The workshop I attended was part of outreach efforts by both the DAHL and the NYARC. The initial message presented, was that today we are in a time of crisis, not unlike the climate crisis (their metaphor). How to store and retrieve born-digital materials? The presenters talked about why it was important to save born-digital materials and talked about how link rot and content shift can undermine scholarship and how quickly links disappear. After having been told how little was actually being archived, we were shown pie charts of which organizations were archiving. Universities and colleges were doing the most, at 52%, archives handle another 15%, state government 13%, the federal government a mere and scary 5%. Museums handle 1%. We then were given information about what NYARC is archiving. All three museums are archiving their own collections, their websites, and related websites. They move outside their walls to archive the websites of auction houses, catalogues raissonnes, artists’ websites, NYC gallery websites, restitution scholarship and art resources.

                Because so little is being archived, the HAHL and NYAARC are providing  many trainings and resources to organizations and individuals to promote archiving at all levels. The presenters did this by giving us a set of links to websites for online archives. We discussed the Internet Archive, the International Internet Preservation Consortium.  We then had a series of exercises: looking up URLs to see if they still existed, and then archived some links.  We were also shown how to cite links that had been found in web archives. The presenters encouraged the audience to reach out to DAHL or NYARC if , in the future they have difficulties archiving their websites.

                Some thoughts about this workshop. The overarching feel at the workshop was one of anxiety, so much to preserve, so few resources, and we are in crisis. That anxiety is certainly mirrored in Cloonan’s article “W(h)ither Away”. “ The responsibility for the preservation of cultural heritage is more complex and pressing today than at any other time in history”. And repeated in Rosenzweig’s article “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in the Digital Era” where he notes “even traditional historians should worry about what the digital era might mean for the historical record. US government records for example are being lost on a daily basis” Therefore great anxiety, hence NYARC and DAHL reaching out to the community and individuals to encourage everyone to preserve. At the end of the day, however the bulk of archiving and preserving will be done by institutions, as has always been done in the past.

                So we are anxious about the pressing need to preserve, which will mostly be done on an institutional level and or a commercial level (the Internet Archive has a commercial aspect) and at the same time there is a growing consciousness of how biased or non neutral these institutions are in their practices of preserving “ Archives, ever since the mnemons of ancient Greece, have been about power, about maintaining power, about the power of the present to control what is, and will be known about the past, about the power of remembering over forgetting.”

Bias is unavoidable, and not surprisingly in this “crisis” time institutions are focusing first on preserving what they value. Each institution making up NYARC starts by preserving its own materials. This is not to be faulted, but just noted. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that whoever is doing the archiving is self-conscious “objectivity” has been increasingly understood in terms of “situated knowledge” or “partial perspective” (Cook) In our rush to preserve at least we can hope the preservers know they are biased.

https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623264/mod_resource/content/1/Cloonan%20-%20W%28h%29ither%20Preservation.pdf

https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623263/mod_resource/content/1/rosenzweig-Scarcity%20or%20Abundance-preserving%20the%20past%20in%20the%20digital%20era.pdf

https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623262/mod_resource/content/1/schwartz%2C%20cook-archives%2C%20records%2C%20power.pdf

For my observation I went to the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they have been since 1992. The archive itself is a product of the Women’s movement, the sexual revolution and the Gay Liberation movement of the 1960’s and 70’s. A group of women, including Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel, unhappy with sexism in the Gay Academic Union (GAU), branched out, forming a separate women’s consciousness-raising group, which became the basis of the LHA. For the first 15 years Nestle and Edel ran the archive out of Nestle’s apartment on 92nd st, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. They relied on volunteers and women of like mind to help organize, catalog and educate people in the community. Their goal was, and still is, to “turn shame into a sense of cherished history, to change the meaning of history to include every woman who had the courage to touch another woman, whether for a night or a lifetime.” Their statement of purpose goes on to say that the archive “exists to gather and preserve records of Lesbian lives and activities so that future generations will have ready access to materials relevant to their lives,” which was and is important because these histories or stories had previously been denied “by patriarchal historians in the interests of the culture which they serve.” Originally they achieved community outreach through the creation of a newsletter and a slide show in the late 1970’s, today they achieve this through readings, workshops and women’s study classes that are free and open to the whole community. The principles the LHA are founded on are fundamentally different than more traditional archives, something that was made very apparent to me upon my visit. Principles like vowing to teach archival skills generationally to members of the lesbian community, making sure the archive is involved in the political struggle of being a lesbian, and ensuring that the archive itself resides physically in the community, as opposed to an academic setting.

(http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/history.html)

So there I found myself on November 17th, walking up the steps of a very unassuming brownstone on the outskirts of Prospect Park, with only a small gay flag in the window, not really sure what to expect upon entering. I was greeted by a woman named Red, an English and Women’s Studies teacher at Hunter College, and a member of the LHA. Straight away I was given a very warm welcome and a tour. The archive encompasses both floors of the brownstone, intermingling areas of living with areas of books, files and organization. Most documents, journals, and records are kept on the 2nd floor, along with their t-shirt collection, button collection, audio tapes and other miscellaneous memorabilia. Downstairs there is a library of sorts, with lesbian pulp fiction, a wonderful collection of literature written by women, reference materials, and even a small children’s book collection. After the tour I was basically left to my own devices, told I could go through and look at whatever I wanted, and to come ask for assistance if I needed it. I have to admit, this was a little overwhelming at first. A feeling akin to being a kid in a candy store, frozen with anticipation, and thoughts of where to begin. So I headed upstairs and started with their Special Collections area. This area was organized by topic, and each topic was kept in a small filing box on a standing bookshelf and on shelves built into a walk-in closet. There were categories like “Dinah Shore and the History of Women’s Golf,” “Lilith Fair,” “Coming Out Stories,” “Places to Love,” “Gay and Lesbian Association of Students (GLASS),” and of course, one of the founder, Joan Nestle. In this same area were cabinet files, broken down into Biographical Files, Geographic Files, Conference Files and Unpublished Files. There were bins of documents, news clippings and ephemera to still be filed, simply resting on top of the cabinet files. The arrangement of everything felt very organic and grassroots. With living lesbians and histories coexisting with those of the past in a figurative sense, but also physically, given that people who run the archive actually live in the same residence. It lends a specific type of energy to the space. On our tour, Red pointed out that the archives had unpublished papers by Gertrude Stein, Alice Walker and Adrienne Rich, an area she frequently accessed for her own research. This area peaked my interest as well and the next thing I know I am sitting on the ground reading an unpublished lecture that Adrienne Rich, a favorite poet of mine, wrote and gave in 1983 at Scripps College in Claremont, California. After, I moved on to look at their small exhibition area, with a small exhibit of clothing and one of pins. Red had said that a lot of people come to look at these exhibits. The clothing exhibit contained a military jacket, some t-shirts and a famous black slip that belonged to Joan Nestle. The pin collection was set up over an area that was once a sink, with lots of pins spread out for viewing, while others were contained in receptacles with small drawers. The pins were a lovely visual timeline of lesbian and female struggle, with sayings such as, “Women Make Policy, Not Coffee,” “We Won’t Go Back. Keep Abortion Legal, April 5, 1995, rally in Washington, D.C.” and “The New Right Preaches The Old Wrongs.” The t-shirt collection was also in this area, although not really on view. It is archived in long garment boxes on the floor and in sliding closet areas built into the wall. After looking at the exhibits, I made my way over to another section of the upstairs that contained the archives of the archives (very meta), boxes of audio tapes containing oral histories (which they have labeled, “love tapes”) and an area of mostly cataloged magazines and scholarly journals. After perusing, I made my way back downstairs, where Red and I listened to 2 oral histories on audio tape, while simultaneously looking at photographs that Morgan Greenwald had taken of Sagaris. Sagaris was a Vermont based, collectively run, feminist institution created in 1975. The goal was to have a place of feminist education, without hierarchy, patriarchy, and a strict structure, where the foremost feminist thinkers could gather, to communicate with and teach other women. Some of the original members and faces found in Greenwald’s photographs include, Rita Mae Brown, Charlotte Bunch, Mary Daly, Dorothy Allison and Susan Sherman. However, listening to the oral histories was the real prize for me. The history we listened to first belonged to Mabel Hampton, one of the original organizers of LHA. Hampton was an African-American woman living on 131st st. in Harlem at the time and she spoke of her coming out story. As she tells it, she walked into a sandwich shop in Jersey City, was so fascinated by a woman that she went home with her and didn’t leave for 40 years. She lived and had a relationship with this woman from 1932 until 1978, when she died. As she saw it, she was “already half in the light, may as well step all the way in,” a lighthearted but courageous move at the time. The second oral history we listened to belonged to a woman named Gerry, who spoke of being born for the first time, at age 39, in a sleazy, secret gay bar in Greenwich Village called The Els Bar, sometime in the late 1940’s. This woman was a real firecracker, she described herself as always being gay, but was “just too stupid to know it.” Until, that is, a woman bought her a beer, kissed her on the palm and told her to come back soon. And even though she lived in Woodstock, she went back the very next night and was never the same. She described bars like The Els Bar and the Pony Stable as being the only places where gay people could mingle socially. The bar was kept in complete darkness, except for a single light on the area where the bartender made drinks and received money. And the dance floor was so small, it was the “size of a postage stamp.” Stories like this deserve to be preserved and shared. They have the power to enlighten and to comfort. It is stories and histories such as these that led me towards the field of library science. My experience that day at the Lesbian Herstory Archives was both priceless and an affirmation of my chosen path.

“The archivist, even more than the historian and the political scientist, tends to be scrupulous about his neutrality, and to see his job as a technical job, free from the nasty world of political interest: a job of collecting, sorting, preserving, making available, the records of the society. But I will stick by what I have said about other scholars, and argue that the archivist, in subtle ways, tends to perpetuate the political and economic status quo simply by going about his ordinary business. His supposed neutrality is, in other words, a fake.”^[1]

It was with this quote from historian Howard Zinn that Anne Garner, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Library at the New York Academy of Medicine began the recent panel discussion there entitled “Archives, Advocacy and Change: Tales from Four New York City Collections.”

The discussion featured four panelists: Jenna Freedman, founder, curator, and cataloger of the Barnard Zine Library; Steven Fullwood, founder of the “In the Life Archive,” an initiative to collect, preserve, catalog, and make available materials produced by and about LGBTQ people of African descent at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; Timothy Johnson, director of New York University’s Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, as well as co-director of Tamiment’s Center for the United States and the Cold War; and Rich Wandel, Center Archivist and Historian at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center National History Archive.

While the first three panelists provided brief presentations on the histories of their collections, the materials they contain, and their individual collection practices, surprisingly, it wasn’t until the final panelist, Rich Wandel, that someone spoke directly to Zinn’s criticism of archivists. And Wandel wasted no time, starting off by declaring that “the archival profession is inherently an activist profession.” It was only after this declaration that the discussion of the archives as a location for advocacy and change (reflected in the title of the program and presumably the reason for Garner’s provocative quotation of Zinn) began in earnest.

However, Zinn’s characterization of the supposed neutrality of archivists as “fake” was in no way a dismissal of the archivist. Rather it was an attempt to convince the archivist of their power, a power Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook describe in their article “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory” as the power “to shape our notions of history, identity, and memory.”^[2] Indeed, Zinn went on to urge archivists to use that power “to compile a whole new world of documentary material, about the lives, desires, needs, of ordinary people.” Doing so would ensure “that the condition, the grievances, the will of the underclasses become a force in the nation.”^[3] It is therefore in the material they choose to collect, highlight, and disseminate that these four panelists exert their power as archivists.

As a gay man in New York City involved in the gay rights movement since the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March in June 1970, Wandel said it’s often easy to take for granted and forget just how far the LGBTQ movement has come. At the same time, he said it’s also easy to forget how there are still many places in America where LGBTQ youth are repeatedly told by their communities and even their families that they’re different, that there’s something wrong or even immoral about them. The archives are important to the entire LGBTQ community, but they are especially important to these LGBTQ youth. It lets them know they’re not alone, not the only ones who feel as they do, and most importantly, it “lets them know they’re worth something.”

Just as Emily Drabinski stressed the importance of librarians being “ethically and politically engaged on behalf of marginal knowledge formations and identities who quite reasonably expect to be able to locate themselves in the library”^[4] with regard to classification and cataloging, Wandel stressed the importance of the archives as a way for people, especially LGBTQ people, to “find themselves in history.” In this case, it’s not only important that the material is archived for history, but that it’s made available to the LGBTQ community and the public.

Through the lens of Wandel’s passionate advocacy of the archivist as an activist, it was possible to go back to the presentations of the first three panelists and see where that activism was present, even if it wasn’t at first readily apparent. Steven Fullwood grew up in Toledo, Ohio as one of those LGBTQ youth Wandel described; being told that he was different (as both gay and black), that there was something wrong with him, and feeling he was the only one who felt as he did. He eventually made his way to New York and a job at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in 1998. Having noticed a lack of materials being collected about black gays and lesbians, Fullwood founded the “In the Life Archive” in 1999 at Schomburg. It was the first archive of its kind and later expanded to include materials by and about all LGBTQ people of African descent. As it stands, it is the largest black LGBTQ archive at a public institution.

While Schwartz and Cook mention the “variety of subaltern groups desiring to construct a viable, authentic, and cohesive identity,” Fullwood spoke about his initial difficulties in convincing people to donate their materials to the “In the Life Archive.”^[5] He said he was often met with surprise (“Why would you even want that?”) as people didn’t realize that what they had was both important and historic. However, as Fullwood became increasingly active and well known within the black LGBTQ community in Harlem, he was able to develop personal relationships with individuals and groups, eventually serving as a kind of “conduit” for the community into the archives. Those who were initially surprised or even suspicious have now seen their identity “confirmed and justified as historical documents validate with all their authority as ‘evidence’ the identity stories so built.”^[6]

Jenna Freedman also spoke to involving the community in developing the archives but from a slightly different perspective than that of Steven Fullwood. Although Freedman was a zinester (a person who creates zines, or self-published works of appropriated texts and images reproduced by photocopier and originating in the do-it-yourself ethos of the punk rock subculture) before arriving at the Barnard College Library, she “surveyed” the Barnard community in an attempt to discover what they felt they needed in order to “serve the community.” The result of this survey was the creation of a library focused on zines produced by cis- and transgender women (Barnard admitted transgender women for the first time in 2015), with an emphasis on those created by women of color.

However, Friedman quickly found herself running afoul of what Schwartz and Cook describe as one of the sources of “power over the documentary record, and by extension over the collective memory of marginalized members of society.” That is the institution and by extension “the ways in which institutional resources are allotted.”^[7] As zines often contain explicit or sexual material, Freedman often found her Zine Library questioned or even threatened by the administration of the college. However, she emphasized that it was essential for her to privilege the subject and not what was considered acceptable, either socially or to the institution. Fortunately, despite some early conflicts, Freedman and the Zine Library have not only survived but grown into a collection of over 7,000 zines.

At first, Timothy Johnson seemed a bit of an outlier in this particular panel discussion as the Tamiment Library doesn’t have any obvious connections to groups marginalized based on sexual orientation. However, the Tamiment and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives give voice to those marginalized due to their involvement in radical politics, labor movements, civil rights, and civil liberties.

It was in talking about the Tamiment’s collection of materials related to the Occupy Wall Street movement that Johnson provided a candid example of the power of the archivist. The Tamiment currently houses the largest collection of such material in the world; over 80 linear feet worth. It is a result of a serendipitous situation in which two library science students working at the Tamiment and involved in the protests realized the opportunity as well as the need to collect and preserve as much material as possible. When Anne Garner asked Johnson whether the Tamiment had also collected material from Chase Bank to present the opposing view to the Occupy movement, Johnson responded that the Tamiment’s mission is to give ay voice to the oppressed, not the ones doing the oppressing. With his brief rejoinder, Johnson reminded the audience of the archives origin as being “established by the powerful to protect or enhance their position in society” and that the goal of the activist archivist goal is to subvert that power.^[8]

While Schwartz and Cook echo Howard Zinn’s criticism of archivists in citing the “professional myth of impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity,” they also echo Zinn’s challenge in stating that “the point is for archivists to (re)search thoroughly for the missing voices…so that archives can acquire and reflect multiple voices, and not, by default, only the voices of the powerful.”^[9] If Zinn, Schwartz, and Cook were present at the recent panel discussion at the New York Academy of Medicine, I think they would find that both their criticisms of and challenges to archivists continue to be taken seriously.

 

^[1] Zinn, Howard. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest.” The Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 2 (1977): 14-26. Accessed November 3, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41101382.

^[2] Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2, no. 1 (March 2002): 1-19.

^[3] Zinn, Howard. “Secrecy, Archives, and the Public Interest.” The Midwestern Archivist 2, no. 2 (1977): 14-26. Accessed November 3, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41101382.

^[4] Drabinski, Emily. “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 83, no. 2 (April 2013): 94-111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669547.

^[5] Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2, no. 1 (March 2002): 1-19.

^[6] Ibid.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Ibid.