Last week, I made my first proper visit ever to the main branch (any branch) of the New York Public Library. Given that I am already more than halfway through my first semester of library school, this milestone came shamefully late. It was an occasion for me to admit that I have admired the mission of public libraries only at a distance, and an opportunity to compare reality with theoretical ideals that I’ve spent the last couple of months cogitating. I was particularly curious about the mission of public accessibility and cultural representation, still feeling very much the outsider despite my academic immersion in the field. I came away with a mixture of positive and negative impressions, colored very much by my temperament, and usefully contrasted by my wife Ni’s more bold and outgoing relationship with the institution.

Our primary destination was the majestic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, with an eye to visiting the less glamorous Mid Manhattan Library after. The experience of ascending the steps to the Schwarzman Building ought to be familiar to anyone who has visited the similarly-styled Beaux-Arts environs of the Metropolitan Museum, and that similarity is borne out in the overall experience of exploring the building for the first time. Heavy tourist traffic flows in and out through designated in and out doors. A sleepy security guard gives the contents of your bag a cursory glance on a folding table, and elderly volunteers await your questions off to the side of the reverberating stone lobby. We received a straightforward instruction to go up to room 315 for library card registration.

That process was blessedly easy given that I had pre-registered with a little bit of personal information online. All it took was handing over my NYC ID card and allowing the employee at the card desk to designate that as my library card. Had I not registered in advance, a designated card-registration computer terminal stood at the ready nearby. This smooth experience was a marked contrast to a previous aborted attempt to get a card at the Jefferson Market branch in Greenwich Village. An impromptu visit to that elegant branch had ended in frustration with ambiguous instructions and an uncooperative computer. The Jefferson Market branch is an elegant one in an affluent, centrally-located neighborhood, and I am neither cognitively challenged nor unable to speak English. Therefore, despite the ease of my registration in Midtown, I can’t help but imagine that the process can be daunting under less ideal circumstances. Now in possession of a working NYPL card, I remained at a loss as to what to do with it.

The flow of traffic pulled Ni and me straight into the newly reopened Rose Main Reading Room. Tourists clustered near the entrance and circled the perimeter as if walking the aisles of a cathedral, while patrons sat with computers both public and private like supplicants in the nave. For me, that same grand cathedral sense of being on the outside of things pervaded. I was there as a spectator. However, the activities I saw taking place at the main tables were not esoteric, and resembled nothing so much as a Manhattan cafe with a lax policy toward laptop-squatters. I was heartened to see a postal worker comfortably streaming video on his phone. As a beautiful public space, this functions nicely. Reference volumes fill shelves along the walls, and I was surprised at the amount of material in languages other than English. My impression is that the librarians approached the population of this banner space with a progressive eye. The first shelves I perused contained mostly Latin American poetry. I stumbled upon some Telugu dictionaries, shelves full of overviews of social issues, and most impressively of all, an Ainu-English dictionary.

Across the hall, on the east side of the third floor, another reading room stood in stark contrast to the airy beauty and diverse representation of the Rose room, the windowless walls lined with portraits mostly of late 18th century American aristocrats. A feeling of being in a rich stranger’s house pervaded (like visiting the Fricke or Morgan Library), and persisted as I explored further, finding numerous locked doors labeled for specific use by researchers. One door, instead of an RFID-activated lock had a sign reading “Center for Scholars and Writers, please knock”, but my timidity outweighed my curiosity and sense of my own scholarly or writerly credentials. The barriers to entry were for the most part understandable and reasonable given the building’s status as a tourist destination, but I was disappointed to find the Dorot Jewish Division roped off with a sign cordoning the area off for researchers only. I wanted to poke around in search of information on the town in Belarus that my great grandfather came from, but this evidently would require more planning and knowledge of library procedures.

I couldn’t help but feel that our deepest browsing took place in the gift shop. Ni studied several posters at length and settled on a US map so she could get a better handle on the 50 states. Strangely, that which was for sale felt most permissible to touch. I can’t have been alone in this feeling, because the gift shop was more crowded than any other area we had visited. Clearly the Schwarzman Building’s functionality tended to two opposing extremes, those of public attraction and temple of deep research. The quotidian book-lending element of a public library was markedly absent or held at a procedural distance. Clearly I needed to complete the picture by visiting the Mid-Manhattan Library.

The atmosphere there differed vastly, as expected. A patina of (over)use lay over everything, from the worn wall-to-wall carpeting up to the Cold War-era foam ceiling tiles. The smell of bleach hung in the air from a bathroom being cleaned. Clearly nothing here would come to harm from my browsing. The fiction section was amply populated with colorful trade paperbacks from authors I’d never heard of, a welcome reminder that purely entertaining literature exists outside of the English major canon. This catalogue straightforwardly served a broad public that included me, too–I found myself a copy of Demons by Dostoevsky and got out. No fuss, no muss.

The contrast between these two manifestations of the NYPL suggests to me that there is work to be done in making higher-level library functions more intuitive and welcoming to the general public. Schwarzman’s rarified museum atmosphere belies the truth that its resources are for public consumption. I’m convinced that there’s untapped potential both in the library and the public itself, and that socially relevant research may take place at a greater scale outside of the academe if only some perceptual barriers were lifted.

On October 4th, I went to a panel discussion at the National Arts Club entitled “The Book as a Work of Art.” The panel was made up of four professionals: Kyle Triplett, who is the Rare Books Librarian at the New York Public Library; Peter Mendelsund, associate art editor at Alfred A. Knopf; Glenn Horowitz, a rare books dealer; and Benjamin Morse, co-founder and artistic director of the digital book company Orson & Co.

Unlike many of the panel discussions I’ve attended, in which a moderator asks specific questions for each person, or an overall question meant for everyone to answer in turn, this event was more like a series of presentations. The moderator was Karla Nielsen, who is the Curator of Literature at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. She started off by announcing to the audience that she and the panel had decided on the format of the discussion beforehand: each person had brought in an object that they would introduce to the audience, and then the four would give mini presentations on the theme (the book as a work of art).

Kyle Triplett went first, with a slide that contained a picture of an enlarged period from a book printed in 1665. He wanted the audience to realize that books have presence in a sculptural sense, and to lead them away from the idea that a period is simply a circle. Mr. Horowitz was next; he started by proclaiming that he approached books differently than the others on the panel, as his was from a financial point of view (the same could be said of both Mr. Morse and Mr. Mendelsund, but no matter). He had brought two volumes to show to the audience: William Faulkner’s first book, a copy of a collection of poetry, with an inscription to his father (which, according to Mr. Horowitz, was very rare – most of Faulkner’s inscribed books are made out to his mother), and One Hundred Years of Solitude, inscribed from Gabriel García Márquez to the son of the people to whom he dedicated the book. Mr. Morse displayed the cover of one of his ebook creations, and Mr. Mendelsund brought a “visual emblem” with which to represent his work: the copy of Joyce’s Ulysses that was published by Sylvia Beach. He said it inspired him when he was recently commissioned to create a new cover for the novel.

It was then time for the presentations by each panelist. Mr. Triplett introduced the audience to four different versions of Euclid’s Elements: from 1484, 1570, 1847, and 2014. He showed how the each subsequent copy had borrowed or imitated attributes from the ones that came before. Mr. Morse presented History of a Pleasure Seeker, an ebook with the specialized features unique to Orson and Co, including interlaid photographs of the places mentioned in the book and audio narration (represented by a gramophone). Mr. Morse and his partner have deemed their creations “elumes,” a name and style inspired by illuminated manuscripts. Mr. Horowitz, who was the only speaker that didn’t use the assistance of projected slides,held forth about his experience as a bookseller. Unfortunately, as Mr. Morse had just used the room’s audio to display his ebook, the speakers were projecting a clicking noise throughout Mr. Horowitz’s entire speech; this, combined with the lack of visuals, made it hard to follow what he was saying. This was a shame, because his experience as a bookseller in New York is a fascinating history. He started his business at age twenty-four, and has recently been in charge of selling Bob Dylan’s estate (it was jointly acquired by the University of Tulsa and another foundation in Oklahoma). He said the book that had meant the most to him was the copy of Virginia Woolf that he had found on a dusty back shelf in a bookstore in London; when he started flipping through it, he discovered, among other notes made by her, an inscription on the fourth page from Ms. Woolf to her sister. He bought it for five dollars. Mr. Mendelsund went last, with a powerpoint detailing the many book covers he has created; he believes that since books live with people on their shelves, it is important for the covers to communicate what the book is about.

Although the topic could have been really interesting, the event felt very disjointed. This, I felt, was mostly because of the lack of a moderator to ask questions and lead the discussion. Since the panelists were coming from such different backgrounds and work experiences, they needed a guiding force to achieve cohesion. The mini presentations were interesting, but the event would have been taken to a whole new level if there was more crossover: the bookseller would have answered questions from such a different perspective than the librarian, and the designer of ebooks might have felt similarly or vastly different from the designer of book covers.

In terms of design, I felt especially curious about Mr. Morse’s evident disdain for ordinary ebooks, and the decision to call his electronic books “elumes.” He credited his high regard for illustrated manuscripts as the reason for the name, but I’m not sure that the average person would make that connection. The amount of time his company spends perfecting the features of the books are obvious, and there are some characteristics that are highly appealing: in the example he gave, History of a Pleasure Seeker, the use of photographs from the time period in which the book is set is very compelling. The choice of using a gramophone icon that the reader can press to hear special audio features reminded me of the Ecological Approach outlined by Rogers (2004), in which designers create “interface objects so as to highlight the importance of making ‘what can be done to them’ obvious” (p. 100). Except, in this case, Orson & Co decided to stay in the old fashioned realm and have the image be a gramophone, rather than a speaker. Which is a bit like having a “save” button represented by a floppy disk; that is a carry over from when floppy disks were actually used, however, and this is clearly a design decision meant to be in keeping with the rest of the book’s theme.

The event seemed to underscore, without meaning to, the commonly held belief of the sexiness of ebook and book cover design with the drab and dreary world of book collectors and librarians. It came to a head with Mr. Horowitz’s presentation, which was directly after the elume demonstration by Mr. Morse, and was plagued by technological difficulties (clicks of the microphone, lack of a visual presentation, etc.) Looking back, it makes me think of the Luddite rebellion example that was described in Sayers (2014), in which demonstrators broke wide-frame looms to try and stop the new technology from spreading. Not that Mr. Horowitz gave any indication of trying to halt the spread of ebooks, but the juxtaposition of the two professions (book dealer vs. ebook company owner), their ages (old vs. young), and the presentation styles (dry lecture vs. interactive electronic format) all seemed to emphasize the distance between their worlds.

Lastly: I keep harkening back to Mr. Morse, but his wish to make electronic books works of art, reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, again reminded me of Sayers: “In our so-called digital age, many people would assume that interventions in technological processes are accessible to more people than ever before” (p. 5). His company’s use of technology to create the most beautiful and high-brow form of ebooks possible makes me think that the type of audience he is envisioning are those who are privileged, sophisticated, and whose sensibilities are more refined than the “average” ebook user.

 

References:

Rogers, Y. (2004) “New theoretical approaches for human-computer interaction.” Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 38, 87–143.

Sayers, J. (2014). “Technology.” In B. Burgett & G. Hendler (Eds.), Keywords for American Cultural Studies, (2nd ed.). New York, NY: New York University Press. Retrieved from http://keywords.nyupress.org/american-cultural-studies/essay/technology/

When the value of a collection is undeniable, and we know it must be saved so that future generations may use and learn from it, the collection – ideally – becomes an archive. But how do we guarantee that the archive lasts?

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the lecture “What’s on the Back? Updating the Definition of Complete for Digitization Projects,” which was given by conservator Alex Bero and archivist Maggie Schreiner at New York University. Together with a second archivist, they are conserving, digitizing, and describing three collections of downstate New York history with funds from a three-year grant from the Gardiner Foundation. At this event, they focused on two collections with very different needs for both conservation and digitization: the Richard Maass Collection and the Sylvester Manor Collection.

The Maass Collection is a small (so-described by Bero and Schreiner), high-value collection of mostly manuscripts dating from the American Revolution. The collection was partially digitized in the early 2000s for an online exhibition; it seems that a lack of both time and funding ended the project. The goals of the current project include conserving those pieces in need of attention, digitizing the documents that were not included in the first round, capturing “what’s on the back” in the digitization process, organizing the records so that they clearly define what is in each folder, and attaching finding aids to each item. Because the images captured in the first part of the project were high-quality, some items did not need to be rescanned. However, Bero and Schreiner found that starting over on any incomplete folder was the most efficient way to approach the material this time around (rather than having the person doing the imaging pick through each folder to select the items to be scanned). They felt that this would both save time and eliminate risk of human error. After considerable conservation work (both original and corrective – Bero laments the use of archival tape!) and digitization, over 600 pieces will be added to the Maass digital archive.

The other project discussed is significantly larger, and because of that, will not be digitized en masse. The Sylvester Manor Collection comes from a family of original settlers of Shelter Island, who amassed a tremendous amount of paper and ephemera chronicling the founding and history of the town. Bero and Schreiner immediately knew they would not be digitizing everything, and started by eliminating printed material, the majority of which had already been digitized under other auspices. Bero then reviewed the remaining material, and determined that about 25-30% will require conservation work before being digitized. Because the collection came to NYU folded, wrinkled, bundled, and generally dirty, cleaning, flattening, and mending will be essential in order to get clear images of the material. This work will commence in earnest in Spring 2017.

The most interesting snippet of this lecture, for me, came during the question and answer period at the end. A question came from someone working on a digitization project herself, who asked how Bero and Schreiner thought the technology they were using would stand the test of time. Digitization of archives is, of course, a relatively new phenomenon, but even in its brief history, the techniques used have evolved significantly. How do we know that the ways in which we are “saving” things now will last into the future? We don’t. In our reading for the “Memory, Archives, and Cultural Preservation” class, Michele Valerie Cloonan confirmed that “…we must confront the fact that the experience of using digital documents will be different with each new generation of use.” [1] But, interestingly, Schreiner did not seem overly concerned with this issue. Perhaps because, as she told us, this project will become a part of NYU’s institutional repository, and NYU is committed to bringing the files stored there into the future in whatever ways necessary.

Institutional repositories are “digital collections of the outputs created within a university or research institution.” [2] As Clifford Lynch notes in his article “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age,” IRs came about in the early 2000s – around the same time as the original Maass project – in response to a need for access to and preservation of scholarly materials [3]. As he states:

“an institutional repository is a recognition that the intellectual life and scholarship of our universities will increasingly be represented, documented, and shared in digital form, and that a primary responsibility of our universities is to exercise stewardship over these riches: both to make them available and to preserve them.” [4]

Lynch hits on a key point here – not just that we are moving towards an age of digital preservation, but that the onus is on universities to lead the charge in collecting and preserving academic materials digitally. He further notes that “…a key part of the services that compromise an institutional repository is the management of technological changes, and the migration of digital content from one set of technologies to the next …” [5] As Maggie Schreiner pointed out, knowing that NYU is committed to bringing her work into the future as technologies change means that this is a burden she and her colleagues do not have to bear. Unfortunately, not every university is able to make this commitment; an institutional repository is an expense to develop and maintain. And while there are a number of Open Access repositories that are not affiliated with a particular institution, it seems that they tend to focus more on access than preservation. Perhaps there is a way, going forward, to work towards some kind of national repository, which could commit to both access and preservation in a widespread way.

“What’s on the Back?” was enlightening to me on many levels, and gave me an opportunity to think about what we save, the way we save it, who is responsible for saving it, and what that will mean for future generations.

[1] Cloonan, Michele Valerie. “W(H)ITHER Preservation?” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. Vol. 71, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 231-242

[2] http://www.openscholarship.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2009-09/open_access_institutional_repositories.pdf

[3] http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/publications/arl-br-226.pdf

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

In her article “W(H)ITHER Preservation?,” Michele Valerie Cloonan states that “several major libraries have recently dismantled their preservation programs and replaced them with digital initiative departments.”[1] She characterizes this as “shortsighted, narrow-minded, and, ultimately, counterproductive.”[2] While the Conservation Lab at the New York Public Library might not be as large or well-funded as it once was, as a member of the Prints & Photographs departments, I can attest to the crucial role they play. We work in close collaboration with their staff, particularly the specialized conservators for both prints and photographs, preparing for both in-house and external loan exhibitions, undertaking conservation as needed, and preserving our collections as a whole.

That said, while the library hasn’t dismantled its preservation program, the digital initiatives Cloonan mentions are among the areas of the library that have seen the most growth in my almost seven years at the library. Some of the most visible initiatives are products of the interdisciplinary NYPL Labs. Map Warper and Surveyor allow the public to align historical maps (Map Warper) and photographs (Surveyor) to the digital maps of today.[3] Emigrant City, Building Inspector, and What’s on the Menu?, allow the public to aid the library in transcribing 19th and 20th-century bank records, New York City insurance atlases, and restaurant menus, respectively.[4] Other notable initiatives include the NYPL Digital Collections, a database of objects digitized from the library’s collections, and individual department catalogs, including Manuscripts & Archives and Prints & Photographs. However, no matter what initiative it’s used for, whether it’s a periodical, book, manuscript, map, piece of ephemera, print, or photograph, if an object from the library’s collection is photographed and digitized, it’s done by the Digital Imaging Unit (DIU). As such, the DIU is the sine qua non of all digital initiatives at the NYPL.

To see exactly how the physical is converted to the digital and how the library’s digital initiatives are being realized, I took a 15-minute subway ride from the main Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (SASB) at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street to the Library Services Center (LSC) in Long Island City, Queens. The DIU was formerly located on the ground floor of SASB and still maintains a single camera set-up there to digitize objects that are often too fragile or valuable to make the trip to Queens. However, in 2010 the DIU, along with Conservation, Special Formats Processing, Exhibitions, and several other departments relocated to a former warehouse building in Long Island City, extensively renovated into a state-of-the-art library preservation and distribution facility.[5]

From the outside, the three-story LSC maintains its appearance as a nondescript, former warehouse. However, immediately upon entering, it’s readily apparent how much time, effort, and money was put into making it the most advanced facility possible. It was there I met with Peter Riesett, Head Photographer at the DIU. We proceeded to the second floor of the building where the DIU is located. Upon entering the studio, one first sees a large, light gray room with expansive staging tables along the right side of the room, staff offices along the left, and a currently unused book copy stand in the back. It was in this room I met several of the ten people who staff the DIU, eight of whom are photographers.

In an adjacent dark gray space are six digital capture stations. Each station is partitioned by walls on the left and right with a sliding black curtain in the back. Four of the six set-ups have a copy stand with a 30 x 40-inch table and a motorized column holding a medium format camera with a digital back overhead. There is also a similar set-up with a much larger table to allow for the photography of oversized objects. The last set-up features a book scanner system with a book cradle and two cameras mounted opposite each other at an angle. All of the digital capture stations have strobe lighting mounted on stands with soft boxes to diffuse them, as well as standing desks with Mac Pro tower computers to process the images captured. While the equipment seems brand-new, Riesett informs me that they recently received approval of a city capital planning allocation to upgrade all of the cameras to 100-megapixel digital backs and the computers to the latest Mac Pro model.

As digital preservation and initiatives are relatively new to libraries, often resulting in regularly changing criteria and policies of which objects from the library’s collection should be selected for digitization and why, Riesett points to three relatively consistent circumstances in which objects are digitized at the DIU. The first is grant funded projects. Second are objects and collections from the library’s various departments, selected by department curators in collaboration with the Digital Oversight Committee. Last is the digitization of objects to be displayed in exhibitions at the research libraries. Although each of these situations is unique, they all tend to share the initial requirements of funding, complete object metadata, and consideration of copyright issues.

Riesett mentions two current projects as examples of grant funded projects at the library, the first circumstance in which objects are digitized at the DIU. “Mapping the Nation, 1565-1899” is a project of the Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, they will catalog, conserve, and digitize roughly 4,000 maps from the 16th to the 19th century documenting the United States from the national level all the way down to counties, towns, and localities.[6] The Manuscripts & Archives Division received a grant from the Polonsky Foundation to digitize and make accessible 50,000 pages documenting life in the early United States, including papers from many of the Founding Fathers.[7] Riesett mentions that the grant from the Polonsky Foundation was sizeable enough to allow them to hire a photographer dedicated to working on just the one project.

In the second circumstance in which objects are digitized, library departments and curators are asked to come up with groups of objects for digitization in collaboration with the Digital Oversight Committee. Again, this is primarily done to provide the public access to objects and collections from the library. However, the departments themselves often see this as an opportunity to digitally preserve objects in their collections, for which there wouldn’t otherwise be funding. In the Prints Department, we recently used just such an opportunity to begin digitizing our collections of 15th and 16th century German and Italian old master prints. In the Photography Department, we recently digitized a collection of nearly 9,300 negatives by the photographer Morris Huberland.

It’s a situation similar to what occurred at the Library of Congress during the National Digital Library Initiative of the late 90s as described by Dalbello in her article “Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage.” The Manuscripts Division was one of three departments upon which the project primarily drew. Knowing their collection was heavily used by researchers, the curators “wanted to preserve it for the future.”[8] As digitized items would be served before any original objects, the project provided researchers with access to the collection, while allowing curators to minimize further risk to the collection.[9]

The last circumstance Riesett describes in which objects are regularly digitized at the DIU is in preparation for in-house exhibitions. These exhibitions take place at the research libraries of the NYPL, including SASB, the Library for Performing Arts, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Although primarily done for the purpose of access, curators and librarians also see this as another way to digitally preserve objects in their collections. In the Prints Department, the digitization of objects bound for exhibition has allowed us to preserve and provide access to a significant portion of prints by Henri Guerard, J.M.W. Turner, and Mary Cassatt from the Samuel Putnam Avery Collection. In the Photography Department, the exhibition Public Eye: 175 Years of Sharing Photography allowed us to preserve and provide access to over 150 photographs from 1849 to the present day.

On the subway ride back from the DIU, I had a chance to reflect on the question of preservation vs. access at the NYPL. While it must be acknowledged that digital initiatives currently receive more resources and enthusiasm than preservation at the NYPL, fortunately, the library hasn’t abandoned preservation, either. The situation instead seems closer to Paul Conway’s proposed “bridge” between traditional and digital preservation, as described by Cloonan. Conway lists three “distinct but not mutually exclusive applications of digital technology: protect originals, represent originals, and transcend originals.”[10] Rather than a decision of one or the other, Conway’s “bridge” appealingly takes into consideration both the requirements of preservationists and “the purposes that digital technologies may serve for end users.”[11]

 

[1] Michèle Valerie Cloonan. “W(H)ITHER Preservation?” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 71, no. 2 (2001): 231-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4309507.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “NYPL Labs.” The New York Public Library. Accessed October 11, 2016. https://www.nypl.org/collections/labs.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “New York Public Library’s New Library Services Center Features World’s Largest Automated Sorter of Library Materials.” The New York Public Library. April 22, 2010. Accessed October 11, 2016. https://www.nypl.org/press/press-release/2010/04/22/new-york-public-librarys-new-library-services-center-features-worlds-.

[6] NEH Grant Details: Mapping the Nation, 1565-1899. Accessed October 11, 2016. https://securegrants.neh.gov/PublicQuery/main.aspx?f=1&gn=PW-228237-15.

[7] “The New York Public Library Receives Grant To Digitize 50,000 Pages of Historic Early American Manuscript Material For Public Use.” January 21, 2015. Accessed October 11, 2016. https://www.nypl.org/press/press-release/new-york-public-library-receives-grant-digitize-50000-pages-historic-early.

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

[9] Ibid.

[10] Michèle Valerie Cloonan. “W(H)ITHER Preservation?” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 71, no. 2 (2001): 231-42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4309507.

[11] Ibid.

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.

Larchmont Public Library

 

The Larchmont Public Library (LPL) has recently finished a major renovation. This has involved $1 million and nine months of construction. The renovations are a response to changing needs and uses of library patrons as well as addressing some structural flow problems. The library reopened for use on September 16, 2016.

I have used this library for about 15 years and am very conscious of the before and after. My observation takes into account my awareness of LPL’s past, the changes it has made, and what those changes suggest about who the target user is.

The old LPL was two buildings put together. The main building was two floors with a basement. The main entry opened into a large room with two wings. Each wing had periodical shelves along the walls, sofas and soft chairs. There was one catalogue computer terminal in one of the wings on a pedestal table. A narrow hall which housed the circulation desk, led to a large back room with the reference desk, and long tables with straight chairs and about 10 computer terminals. On the second and basement floors were the main collection of books, and one or two small rooms for tutoring.  The attached building (the children’s collection) was two floors, and could be entered only through a staircase or elevator in the basement of the main building or through an outside door in the back of the attached building. The walls of the hall from the outside door into the children’s room were used for changing art shows of local artists.

The LPL did not invite in a consultant to do a needs assessment (based on conversation with Mark Hagarty, LPL Webmaster and cataloguer). They were pretty clear on what they wanted to change but they did consult with several architects and structural engineers to discuss what was physically possible and practical. I would note that the knowledge of the library staff for what were their users’ needs and the transformation of that vision into changes in the library environment, are a very clear example of the analog usefulness of people in this process. The changes made did not come from an algorithm, but from human interaction. They were a human evaluation of among other things, use of technology. I am reminded of Downey’s article that stresses the almost always necessary, though sometimes hidden input of human work, in navigating technology changes or uses.

Today the LPL is very different. When you walk in the front door, you still have a reading area to the left and right. The one to the left has soft chairs and small tables, all of which have outlets for laptops. The whole building has wifi. The room to the right is now a closed quiet room, with glass walls into the main lobby. It also has small tables with outlets. The circulation desk is still in the middle, but now includes the reference staff. The area behind the circulation desk, which used to be reference is a reading room with long tables, multiple computers, multiple outlets around the room and two glass walled room where groups can study together.

You can now get to the children’s room from the main lobby. Bathrooms were put in on the first floor.

On the second floor, more rooms with glass walls have been built for groups to meet for academic or social reasons. All of the “study” rooms have tables with chairs. On the surfaces of the tables are outlets for laptops.

LPL has a Face book page, a twitter feed and a website. It has programs for all ages all the time. Various events repeat i.e. there is a mahjong group that meets every Thurs at 11. There is an SAT prep group that meets on Thurs at 5. There is a children’s story hour every Tues at 9. There is a Sat afternoon movie, and a Sun afternoon “meet the author”. There are also monthly events on any and every topic; money management, parenting for special needs children, learning how to play bridge, and on and on.

The LPL seems to be doing a rather good job at being what Lewis calls a “third place” or “third space”, that is a place that is not home or work. Lewis writes about academic libraries, but there are parallels with this community library. The library “wants to provide a variety of spaces that match the variety of ways” community members” do their work- quietly and privately, in groups, with their own technology, and with technology supplied by the library.” ( Lewis, p.93) The LPL is doing this. The technology access is there, and the various spaces to study with others, or study or read by yourself  But a third space is more than just rooms and access to technology. Lewis draws on the works of Oldenburg to elaborate. The third place is the place that is not home or work, where you feel comfortable, an “informal public space”. It is a “neutral place”, where you” can freely come and go”, you can go there and” find acquaintances”, you can become a “regular”, it’s a place that isn’t fancy but comfortable. The third place roots “people in a space where they can feel belonging, ease and warmth” (Oldenburg, p. 26)

And yet, how welcoming is this “third space”. If you do not live in the Larchmont zip code, how welcome are you? You might have a library cards from another Westchester town, but not a LPL card and so you will not be able to use the internet (use is linked to library card number). Larchmont has no low income or medium income housing (and has been sued by the state for this). This is a library for its community and it excludes others. This is seen in many ways. LPL expects its users to come in with laptops or be computer facile and does not have resources if patrons are not (it expects “information literacy” and laptop ownership). Notice the reference desk, which used to help with computer searches, has now gotten much smaller. This plays into the dynamic that Pawley notices “policies to promote “literacy” have systematically worked to render some groups of people-indeed the majority-less capable of active information use and knowledge construction than an educated elite”(Pawley, p.425) This library seems to be upholding the isolation of the educated elite (which is its community). The person who uses this library is supposed to be tech knowledgeable, is expected to be interested in programs on “money management”, and is expected to appreciate  the “Staff monthly book picks”. The library in this instance is reinforcing the elite power dynamic, which is its community, to keep out those who are not of this community. There will be no “information diffusion” there is not even an attempt at this, by the elite, downward to “everyone else” (Pawley, p.434). The knowledge stays inside the library, which stays inside the community, and the other is not welcome.

 

 

• Downey, G. J. (2014). “Making media work: time, space, identity, and labor in the analysis of information and communication infrastructures” in Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, eds. T. Gillespie, P. Boczkowski, and K. Foot. Cambridge: MIT Press, 141–165. https://gdowney.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/downey-g-2014-in-gillespie-t-et-al-eds-2014-making-media-work.pdf.

• Lewis, David. Reimagining the Academic Library. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016
• Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars,  Hangouts and How They Get You Through The Day. New York: Paragon House, 1989
• https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/623239/mod_resource/content/1/pawley-information%20literacy.pdf

 

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.

Cultural Anthropology in the United States has been plagued by ethical dilemmas from the country’s infancy. From creating ethically questionable projects such as Project Camelot and Project Cambridge – where American scholars were, under the name of anthropology, acting as spies for the US government – to displaying the rituals of other cultures in museums and special collections in libraries – remember that providing a sufficient cultural context in a museum cabinet is difficult, if not impossible. The PERC (Program for Ethnographic Research & Community Studies) article got me thinking about ethics and how they are applied in museums and special collections in libraries regarding cultural anthropology. Here I want to talk about the ethical fine line that is often crossed by museums and what some of them are doing to fix it. There is no doubt that there have been, and will continue to be, huge benefits in having certain artifacts and human remains available to study. Research using museum and library collections have been able to advance knowledge of the development of humans and the society, the history disease and religion, etc. “Display of human remains, both physically within museum galleries and online, is an important part of sharing this information to the widest possible audience. This not only spreads knowledge but may also help to generate enthusiasm for learning about our past; hopefully for the benefit of future generations. Of course, display should be done with careful thought. There is no justification for the voyeuristic display of human remains simply as objects of morbid curiosity.” This, of course, also applies to artifacts of civilizations that still exists, i.e. Native American artifacts.

The benefits of research however, must be set against the feelings of communities with strong connections to some of the artifacts and remains within museum and library collections. In recent decades there has been a growing concern in addressing ethical issues in museums and libraries as its workers have developed a cultural sensitivity and a social responsiveness to a degree unseen before. Most codes of ethics urge museums and libraries to give appropriate consideration to represented groups or beliefs. We need to know, understand and recognize the differences in cultures and seek consultation with others when caring for culturally sensitive material. Something that may seem appropriate to a “non-tribal” institution – such as a public Library – to make available to the public, may not be the case. Decisions about what to exhibit in the museum or library or what to publicize in digital collections, and the means of presentation, space, language, and so on, are critical considering it will influence the public’s perception in many ways. As curators, archivists or special collections librarians, our main responsibility, in my humble opinion, is to the culture you are presenting to the public as it may be an incorrect one – or even a disrespectful one.

One of the cases I read in conjunction to this article was a very simple one that ended with no complications – and as we know, it doesn’t always end this way. The case involves what  the best practices for culturally sensitive material held by a non-tribal institution may be in a specific situation. The Head of Special Collections and Archives of the Eli M. Oboler Library (part of Idaho State University) worked with one of its interns to identify culturally sensitive images. Once found, they felt it was necessary and proper to remove the funerary and ritualistic images of the Fort Hall Tribal – Native Americans of the area – from the digital collection until members of the aforementioned tribe were consulted. These images were taken in the late 1920s and clearly showed the sacred ceremony of the Sun Dance, a ceremony that we know is private, and a funeral of a person dressed in full regalia, thought to be a Chief. These images were retained and published prior to the arrival of the current Head of Special Collections and were paid no mind until this project in 2013. The consultation with the appropriate members of Fort Hall ended in a mutually beneficial agreement: the images in question are to be restricted to the public. The Fort Hall Tribe would also be provided with a digital copy of the other images pertaining to the tribe and, in return, the Fort Hall Tribal Archivist and the Ancestral Researcher agreed to identify the photographs and provide the information to the Head of Special Collections at ISU. Both parties were still working on this particular collection last year, but by the Head of Special Collections reaching out to the tribe, the institution has opened the door for potential future collaboration.

All collections come with some level of responsibility, and, when working with objects and human remains, cultural sensitivity should be one of the most important things we are aware of. The effects of collecting on indigenous people can be devastating to its religion, its  spirituality, and its culture. The removal of sacred pieces, for example, belittles indigenous religion. The museum or library who holds a culturally sensitive collection must make sure it is not culturally inaccurate and religiously offensive. If the institution is currently holding a questionable object, it must work to resolve the issue it may arise, as it is our responsibility.

 

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

Fletcher, Alexandra. “In Respect of the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum.” The British Museum. N.p., 12 June 2014. Web. 26 Sept. 2016.

Ryan, Ellen M. “Identifying Culturally Sensitive American Indian Material in a Non-tribal Institution.” Case Studies in Archival Ethics (2014): n. pag. Print.

 

In the 18^th volume of Progressive Librarian, William F Birdsall calls for “A Political Economy of Librarianship”, and, by extension, of information. He lays out an incredibly concise and apparently prescient critique of the ideology that governs information commerce. Fifteen years on, I’d like to use this reflective piece to take stock of the info tech economy, the problems that have developed since Birdsall’s writing, and the work that remains to be done.

Birdsall’s appraisal of the “ideology of information technology” consists of seven bullet points that in essence describe a free-market capitalist system in which information is the main form of capital, and laborers and consumers adapt to play their part within the system of information capital. In summation, he writes “the ideology of information technology promotes a fatalism that encourages political passivity by claiming that our fates are determined by inevitable technological change, the ‘natural’ laws of the free market, and the uncontrollable gale forces of global creative destruction.”

This fatalism has become all the more apparent as its fomenters and practitioners have blossomed into a recognizable social class, the “knowledge worker who is prepared to go anywhere in the world to sell her or his skills” and “is expected to have no loyalties to the local community and its public institutions.” In 2001, these information capitalists would have largely resembled the audience in the famous Steve Ballmer “developers” chant video, essentially a room full of brainy dweebs associated mainly with producing software for office workers. In the late 90s/early 00s infosphere, these guys existed across an unbridgeable divide in the popular imagination from the ‘cool’ computer geek––think of the computer hacker “Invisigoth” from The X-Files, the cast of The Matrix, developers of violent FPS games like Half-Life and Deus Ex, et cetera. In the intervening decade and a half, however, the sweaty billionaire and grimy hacker poles of information professionalism have converged, arriving at a consumerist, bourgeois, and superficially cosmopolitan middle ground. What happened?

I suspect that the information technology industry circa 2000, though lucrative, was still small enough to be populated with, if I may be glib, ‘true geeks’—people interested in computing for computing’s sake. Since then, the growth of the information job market outpaced the ability of the education system to fill demand for skilled labor, and the user-centered turn in the industry’s direction (embodied particularly in social networking and the parasite economy of on-demand service apps) has changed both the aesthetics and the soft skill set of the profession. With aestheticization have come a shared “clean” design language and a valorization of “innovators” like the deified Steve Jobs, his Olympian ancestor Nikola Tesla, and his earthly successor Elon Musk. Rank and file employees, for their part, are fed through purely vocational for-profit “boot camp” programs like General Assembly, with no objective besides securing a comfortable middle class career.

The “knowledge worker” that Birdsall posits serves to produce and control the distribution of the knowledge capital that is the lifeblood of this new economy. Birdsall’s second bullet point in the ideology of information technology states, “in the knowledge-based economy, only the marketplace should determine how information, its primary raw material, is generated, priced, and distributed.” Media piracy temporarily ruptured the boundaries of this strict, mercantil-ish system, but the old order has to some degree reasserted itself through the sanctification of streaming, subscription-based models. The piracy issue highlighted the important distinction that information, unlike bullion, is infinitely reproducible and distributable. While net neutrality stands, the channels for free information remain blessedly open. Libraries in this political economy ought naturally to serve as hubs for free information (duh), but suffer from the content-mill stranglehold of tech giants and media verticals on production and the mere visibility and convenience of commercial competitors in the information market.

On the content-production front, I’d like to point to the vaunted Library of Congress project to archive every tweet ever. This is a small but important step toward (being glib again) the socialization of social media. LOC recognizes the cultural relevance of platforms like Twitter, and Twitter stands to gain a sheen of legitimacy and prestige. On this front and that of boosting libraries’ visibility and usability, however, there remain labor issues to be tackled. The former involves wresting the rights to content by freelance writers or creators from media properties that exist outside the library-compatible worlds of traditional newspapers, magazines, and journals. The latter requires sweeping change to the education and training of information laborers.

The aforementioned crass social class of knowledge workers exists and continues to grow because the free market has been quicker to adapt to employers’ and technology’s demands for skilled work than the conventional education system. Legions of developers enter the market possessing and desiring nothing more than the mechanistic skillset to perform their role and the ability to adapt to incremental changes in the technologies they use. Without merely becoming more training camps for this class of laborer, the education system must step in and give ideological structure to this economy. Critical thinking and a small measure of altruism are needed, lest the all of the most skilled laborers continue to be drawn to corporate salaries over public sector work. I see a small seed of hope for this in the interdisciplinary framework of Critical Information Studies proposed by Siva Vaidhyanathan, with some challenge presented by the task of bringing it from the postgraduate level down to the more economically useful grounding of secondary or even primary education. As generations of young people grow up with ever increasing levels of immersion in information technology, it will not do to delay in teaching some critical thinking about just where all that information comes from, and what will become of it down the road. Librarianship will not replace knowledge professions from within the corporate sphere, but it has a lot of growing to do before it earns its rightful place in restoring values to the information economy.