Towards the beginning of her piece “Feminine Theories of Technology,” Judy Wajcman argues that the culture and history of Western society dictates all technology is gendered male. Initially shocked, I thought it was too extreme until I realized how difficult it was to think of female technology. It’s almost impossible to think of things that aren’t socially gendered (traditionally domestic appliances like an iron or an electric mixer) unless you widen technology’s definition. Expanding it to mean ‘useful tool that helps fix a problem or aid in difficulty’ allows for much more leeway and thinking of women’s technologies becomes a little easier.

Even though Wajcman writes “identification between technology and manliness is not inherent in biological sex difference,” the only technologies I could think of that could absolutely be considered as female were tied to the specific things that make women physically different from men. Bras can be considered technology, and certainly menstrual products like tampons and pads. Birth control is another good example of a ‘female’ technology, especially with its contentious history of being moderated by men. Finally, I landed on the vibrator, which also has a colorful and perhaps controversial history.

In the 19th century, many women suffered from a particularly vague condition called hysteria whose varied symptoms amounted to a general irritability. Doctors would alleviate this condition by manually stimulating a woman’s genitalia until she reached ‘paroxysm,’ which was supposed to temporarily cure all hysterical symptoms. Of course paroxysm turned out to actually be orgasm, and women continually returned to their male doctors to get relief from their ‘condition’ of sexual frustration. Unfortunately doctors grew tired of manually stimulating women all day, so they elected to invent a device that would mechanically do it for them- the first vibrator. For a while these were legitimate medical devices, but as soon as the secret was out about women gaining pleasure from them they became an unmentionable subject. “Women’s power, women’s culture and women’s pleasure are regarded as having been systematically controlled and dominated by men, operating through patriarchal institutions like medicine,” Wajcman writes. The moment women claimed vibrators as useful devices for themselves, they were invalidated and became taboo.

Vibrators were not socially embraced again until the late 1990s, when a Sex and the City episode revolved around a particular toy called the Rabbit. If prim Charlotte York could use a vibrator, then what was to stop everyone else? Today vibrators are more common than ever, but still considered a risqué topic. Advancements in technology mean that today’s vibrators can be small, quiet, and discreet but still pack the punch buyers are looking for. I headed over to the Museum of Sex hoping there would be a good retrospective on the history of vibrators and to check out the selection in their gift shop. Sadly, the museum’s permanent collection is on rotation and I’d missed the exhibit on vibrators, but their Spotlight gallery did feature a small exhibit on sex machines.

The focal point of the room is the Fuck Bike, which is basically exactly what it sounds like – a bike with a bunch of parts cobbled together that make a dildo attachment piston back and forth when you pedal. Since the pedaling seat and the pistoning apparatus are positioned over four feet apart, this invention struck me as more voyeuristic than actually “for women,” so I figured I would focus on the accompanying photographs of other sex machines and their inventors. Very quickly I found out that all of the inventors were men, the photographer who interviewed them was a man, and the focus was on the ingenuity of all these creators that made such wonderful devices.

Only one woman, Jessy, was present in the collection – photographed sitting naked in front of one of the machines and credited as “machine user.” I thought this was really telling and disheartening, and a clear illustration of “the gendered nature of technical expertise.” Was there not one woman who had designed a machine for herself? Jessy was quoted saying she liked using the particular machine she was pictured with because she had “total control” and it was “all about [her],” although there’s still a performative residue left over as she talks about her experience that was made possible by a man who didn’t even have to touch her, and is enjoyed by many men free to ogle her and use her story for themselves. Even though the physical experience belongs to the machine user, I’d say home built sex machines are actually men’s devices and not women’s. How exactly is crouching in front of a 6-foot long bike in order to get an orgasm convenient for a woman?!

Annoyed, I went down to the museum’s gift shop to take a look at the toys they had for sale. The environment had a loud, fun kind of vibe, with blasting R&B club hits and relaxed, trendy looking employees that gave visitors knowing nods and looks. Out of the 5 or 6 staff members present in the tiny store space, there were only two female employees, one who was laughing and giggling loudly at seemingly everything her male co-worker said to her. It was like all the employees were very into the edginess of working at the Museum of Sex and not about actually educating anyone about its social implications or history.

Hyper aware of all the men in the store, I looked at all the pink and purple vibrators and compared them to the boxes of lubes, phallic sleeves, and condoms for sale. Some of the items, like handcuffs, were technically unisex but showed bound women on the packaging so I counted them towards men. Most of the men’s items were easily accessible, but the products for women required interaction – the vibrators were set up as display only, so in order to actually learn about a device you’d have to ask an (male) employee about it. After looking at the huge selection of lube for too long, I asked an employee whether the selection of items available were mostly for men or women. He misunderstood my question and proceeded to very concisely explain my own anatomy to me and how the selection of lubes would work with it. I corrected him, asking, “Do you think there are more products here in general to be used by men or to be used by women?”

“Oh, pff, women, definitely. All we have for men is this, this, and this,” he pointed to the rows of packaging in the store. “And the condoms. EVERYTHING else is for women.”

Needless to say, I left feeling even more annoyed. Hoping for a more positive experience, I headed to Babeland, a sex toy store catered to women. Though smaller than the museum store, the products here were better organized and it was a much more relaxed environment. There were two women working, and after about a minute one of them came over to me and asked in a relaxed but welcoming way if I needed any help. This was already eons better than the loud, flashy museum store with men hovering around waiting to ‘educate’ female shoppers. In addition to a wide selection of supportive pillows, strap-on harnesses, stand-to-pee devices, and vibrators, Babeland also had signage around their store promoting inclusion and safety when experimenting with sex. Best of all, there was even a vibrator called the Eva that proudly stated it was designed FOR women BY women; something I hadn’t been able to find all day! I admitted to one of the employees that I was there to write a paper and was happy to see something like it since everything I had seen earlier had a male bent to them. “You mean the packaging?” she asked. “Yeah, that’s a Thing. Let me know if you want to see any of our boxes!” Babeland wasn’t a utopia of products designed exclusively by women, but the fact that they even sold more than one item created by women seemed revolutionary. I left shortly after and was encouraged to return and take advantage of their student discount.

It’s almost impossible to write about sex toys without acknowledging the obvious gendering of the toys and how they are used, but the disparity between male and female technologies is put into stark relief in this field. The fact that products made for women have actually been designed by men seems even more insidious than usual. Anything relating to a woman’s sexuality (or inherently female anatomy) is considered gauche unless a man moderates it, and the first step to rectifying this is dropping the 19th century taboos in order to fully adopt Wajcman’s feminist perspective on technology. We’re slowly getting there, with the “feminine media” of the internet giving many women access to liberating technologies that change how they view their bodies. Online sales are still frustrating because of their discretion, but hopefully rises in this ‘secret’ arena of demand will encourage more of a movement into the public.

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/07/how-the-vibrator-caused-buzz

http://wiki.medialab-prado.es/images/4/4b/Wajcman_Feminist_theories_of_technology.pdf

 

 

For the past 3 years, I have worked on several digitization projects in two special collections libraries. The two libraries take vastly different approaches to book digitization especially; these differences reflect of course large differences in their projects’ funding, and differences in workplace cultures, but I also believe that they express a difference in the philosophy and purpose of digitization. Beginning with these examples, I’d like to explore them more deeply and apply to them the framework laid out in “W(h)ither Preservation,” an essay by Michele Cloonan.

The first library I worked for wanted books scanned as whole objects–scans were of spreads of pages, blank pages were included, spines were scanned, images were cropped to show a sizable margin around the edge of the book pages. I remember being trained on the book scanner, and my manager expressing her desire for future people who had never seen a book before to be able to understand what they were like from these scans.

The library where I work now scans books with the philosophy of many other libraries, a style best known on Google Books: left and right pages are separated into separate images, spines and blank pages are not scanned, and the scans are cropped close to the text on the page, without showing the edge of the book or much of the page’s margins.

“When is the object part of the information?” asked Michele Cloonan in her essay, “W(h)ither Preservation?” invoking the assumed divide between books content, and the books form. These two libraries different approaches reflect different answers to this question. Neither library displayed digital images with high enough quality for a viewer to deduce the type of paper used, or binding stitch of the book; both also depicted books as flat surfaces (not employing 3D scanning, obviously). What is information to the first library–the structure, wholeness, and look of a book–was not necessarily important enough information to be digitized for the second library.

Still, the choices made by most library staff in book scanning enable books to become text-searchable by Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which reads the printed text on a scanned book and transforms it into searchable text into the copy. OCR cannot currently process handwritten text, nor can it really distinguish between erroneous marks and what is supposed to be text; edges of books, stitching, and other high contrast areas can confuse it, and thus they’re best cropped out when OCR is employed.

At the end of the day, in the case of most digital libraries scanning books, one ends up with an a nice, neat, OCR’d PDF that bears little resemblance to the book that has been scanned, but looks tidy and readable (on the high-quality monitor used for image editing). Information in this case means simply text, textual content, and illustrations. There are almost an infinite number of ways that a PDF is not like a book, and cannot reproduce all of the information a book holds.

Walter Benjamin explores the way that photography and film can “put the copy of the original in situations which would be out of reach for the original itself,” in his essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. This is the intrinsic idea of book digitization, of course. Creating text-searchable documents out of standard books that can be sent and shared in the blink of an eye are features that are totally beyond the capabilities of physical books, and that speed and search power is now  the standard by which information is shared.

“By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder and listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis in the renewal of mankind.” Benjamin’s observations on the analog photography of artworks is just as relevant to the digital photography of books: scanned books no longer look or act like unique physical books. They can be text searchable, and can potentially exist everywhere at once, but contain little reference to their former form (bound paper).

“Digital documents force us to preserve them on their own terms,” writes Cloonan, and we can perhaps begin to see digital preservation as something other than the sequestering of digital files for an imagined future where the original physical books don’t exist. I wonder then if we can begin to think of scanned books in a digital library as a kind of hybrid information form, transforming the content of analog books into a powerfully sharable and searchable digital form. It is perhaps wisest to operate under the assumption that digital files are just as perishable as physical books, if not more, as Cloonan and others point out. It’s too much to assume that these digital files will continue be usable and accessible by the time most books have perished, and be used as the only source of their implicit and explicit information, as my first manager imagined.

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Cloonan, M. V. (2001). “W(h)ither preservation?” The Library Quarterly 71(2): 231–242.

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.

The library landscape changes in accordance with the community it serves—more prosperous communities can afford nicer facilities, while those with less funding might house out-of-date technologies, a smaller staff, and surroundings that aren’t quite as kempt. The latter are characteristics of the types of environments fostering biases in the titular “Street Level Bureaucrats” outlined in Michael Lipsky’s 1969 study for the Institute on Poverty Research. Though the study was conducted over forty years ago, it is applicable in todays’ public libraries, where librarians are comparable to the Street Level Bureaucrats outline within the study. In fact, I would argue that the comparison is spot-on:

1. He is called upon to interact constantly with citizens in the regular course of his job.

2. Although he works within a bureaucratie structure, his independenee on the job is fairly extensive.One component of this independenee is discretion in making decisions; but independence in job performance is not Iimited to discretion. The attitude and general approach of a Street-Ievel Bureaucrat toward his client may affect his client significantly. These considerations are broader than the term discretion suggests. 

(Right?) For the sake of this post let’s agree that there are at least a few—if not an overwhelming number of—similarities between the Street-Level Bureaucrat and the public librarian (specifically). Lipsky studies a few of the problems facing SLB’s, namely those “that arise from lack of organizational and personal resources, physical and psychological threat, and conflicting and ambiguous role expectations,”(MANGUEL web) succinctly identifying what happen to be some of the most pertinent causes of identity crisis in contemporary public librarianship.

Why does one become a public librarian? A common response is that it’s incidental to a love of reading, or an inspirational hometown librarian. But what does a librarian end up being— a mother figure? A social worker? A jaded burnout? As the role of librarian grows and changes, how can they adapt to serve a changing patronage that increasingly includes, for example, the homeless population, bringing a whole new set of responsibilities to the position? And how do we prep librarians for these new responsibilities?

 

As Alberto Manguel recently wrote in the New York Times, “libraries have become largely social centers. Most libraries today are used less to borrow books than to seek protection from harsh weather and to find jobs online”(MANGUEL web). Many of these are homeless patrons utilizing resources unavailable outside of a library. This fact necessitates a response from the library community. The American Library Association has a growing list of homeless-oriented library programs implemented across the country. The scope ranges wildly in what these programs offer; the Baltimore County Public Library’s  “Street Card” program, is listed— essentially just a card with information pertaining to available assistance with employment, food, emergencies, health, legal issues, and shelter, among other things (ALA web). This seems a small, painless implementation, but with greater implications— these cards are a response to the daily experience of the librarian, which involves interaction with a population that has not been adequately served by the right institutions (homeless shelters, etc.) and are now seeking to use the library in a different manner than most librarians would, I’m sure, ideally imagine.

The programs get more involved throughout the list: public librarians in Denver actually lead off-site visits to shelters for homeless and low-income women to give lessons on interviewing techniques, technology skills, and provide free bus tokens and library cards. Even more radically, San Francisco Public Library formed a homeless and poverty outreach with the city’s Department of Public Health and hired the nation’s first full-time, in-house social worker. The library recruits formerly homeless patrons to assist with the outreach program, and the program is lead by a psychiatrist!

In light of this, is it enough to equip public librarians with research skills? Should Social work be a part of the education of the public librarian? Perhaps. As the role of librarian and that of social worker are becoming increasingly inextricable in certain library environments, the only course of action can be to prepare these currently ill-equipped Street-Level Bureaucrats by teaching them the skills required to navigate their workspace.

Manguel has different beliefs, saying “a library is not a homeless shelter (at the St. Agnes library in New York, I witnessed a librarian explaining to a customer why she could not sleep on the floor), a nursery or a fun fair (the Seneca East Public Library in Attica, Ohio, offers pajama parties), or a prime provider of social support and medical care (which American librarians today nonetheless routinely give)” (MANGUEL web). He has a point, but why deny the fact that libraries no longer serve simply as havens for books and research? Why not equip librarians with more specific social-work skills that, coupled with their librarian skills, can help them to truly impact and better the communities that they serve?

 

Sources Cited

Lipsky, Michael. “Toward A Theory of Street-Level Bureaucrats.” Institute for Research on Poverty. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1969.

Manguel, Alberto. “Reinventing the Library.” New York Times 23 Oct 2015. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/24/opinion/reinventing-the-library.html?_r=0>

“Extending Our Reach: Reducing Homelessness Through Library Engagement.” American Library Association. Web. Accessed 27 Oct 2015. <http://www.ala.org/offices/extending-our-reach-reducing-homelessness-through-library-engagement-6> 

Located between Mount Sinai Hospital and the Museum Mile, New York Academy of Medicine is home to over half a million volumes, including a comprehensive collection of rare books and artifacts. I met with Arlene, the Reference Librarian of Historical Collections, in the gilded marble lobby of the Academy, where she brought me up to the Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room.

Although it was originally intended only for the use of the Academy’s Fellows, the Library opened its doors to the public in 1878–about thirty years after its inception. The library grew rapidly throughout the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, expanding its collection mainly through personal and institutional donations from the Medical Journal Association, the Society of the New York Hospital, and the medical books of the New York Public Library. The Rare Book Room houses thousands of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and artifacts relating the history not only to the history of medicine, but also natural history, philosophy, and the history of print.

Arlene was excited to show me some of the collection’s highlights, including a hand-painted first edition of Conrad Gessner’s Historiae animalium, pictured below. Gessner’s book–one of the most carefully-colored copies I’ve ever seen–speaks to a key concern of rare books libraries: that is, a preoccupation with the singular object. When every object is unique, “form and substance are indistinguishable.” (Cloonan, 236). The Library holds multiple copies of Gessner’s volume, each unique in coloration, providence, and form.

These differences are carefully accounted for in the card catalogue, but what is particularly interesting is the fact that the majority of these details have been lost in the catalogue’s migration to the digital realm. Arlene explained how the temporary staff who created the metadata were not so careful in their work; not everything was catalogued or catalogued in sufficient detail. In effect, the particularities of the books as objects has been lost for users trying to access them online. As a center for this history of print, the Academy Library takes such considerations seriously.

For example,  I was shown a copy of a seventeenth-century natural history textbook in which its eighteenth-century owner added a watercolor observation of a beached whale. Arlene explained how, although the whale drawing is accounted for in the card catalogue, she wasn’t aware of it until a patron found it while doing research.

Another example is an anatomy textbook with fore-edge paintings of William Harvey, John Hunter, and Edward Jenner. Although the book plate within describes the paintings, no where are they noted on the digital catalogue. The problems this raises in terms of accessibility of information are central to the concerns Arlene discussed with me.

In terms of the digital preservation, the library has not begun a comprehensive digitization project, but instead digitizes material for online exhibits. While the Library has hired freelance digitizers from time-to-time, the volume of work they can get done is often limited. The main problem seems to be lack of adequate funding for long-term digitization projects beyond money from federal grants. Moreover, further problems arise with conservation when rare material is handled for digitization–a threat that is perhaps not worth it for the librarians at NYAM in the long run. Archivists and librarians are well aware of scholars’ “failure to understand the pressures that make it impossible to save everything.” (Rosenzweig, 760). At the NYAM LIbrary, thousands of volumes of journals and theses had to be given away because of lack of space. This idea perhaps extends to the pressure to digitize rare material, which is not always technically or fiscally viable.

The main concerns of the collection’s librarians, therefore, revolve around conservation and access. The Library opened its Conservation Lab in 1982 with the aim to preserve its collection for future generations. Focusing on item-level treatment and storage considerations, the Lab is largely funded by grants and donations. Larger conservation projects, focusing on specific themes or bodies of work, therefore only occur once or twice a year. Facing a lack of funding, NYAM’s rare book librarians have been focusing more on smaller projects of careful storage, bounding up delicate books within acid-free supports and shrink wrap.

In this case, the digital collection is therefore more about access and the production of a coherent heritage. Arranged in online exhibitions, the Library’s digital collection speaks to the project of arranging historical material into a consistent narrative. The collection and preservation of heritage by institutions creates a “social memory by which popular significance becomes based on memory stores and historical materials. Therefore, ‘significance’ is consensual, but also hegemonic because it is shaped by practices and meta-cultures that characterize their transmission” (Dalbello, 1). As an adjunct of the New York Academy of Medicine, the library’s heritage, like many rare book collections, is primarily based in hegemonic culture. While the digital exhibits and cultural programming provided by NYAM showcase facets of their incredible collection, such a limited view and incomplete catalogue stifles access and intellectual comprehension.

 

References

Cloonan, M.V. (2001). “W(h)ither preservation?” The Library Quarterly 71(2): 231-42.

Dalbello, M. (2009). “Digital culture heritage: concepts, projects, and emerging constructions of heritage.” Proceedings of the Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) Conference. 25-30 May, 2009.

The New York Academy of Medicine — Library. Retrieved from http://www.nyam.org/library/.

Rosenzweig, R. (2003). “Scarcity or abundance? Preserving the past in a digital era.” The American Historical Review 108(3): 735-763.

Over the summer, the media was abuzz with developments involving Hart Island. Located north of Manhattan in the East River, Hart Island functions as New York City’s potter’s field and the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. The island is operated by the Department of Corrections, which employs prison labor to maintain its many mass grave sites. Among the one million New Yorkers buried, are indigent persons, prisoners, stillborn children, those whose families cannot afford private funerals and, more generally, anyone who is not claimed or identified within a two-week period after death.

As of July 2015, visitors would be permitted entry to grave sites once per month, a vast improvement that resulted from years of struggle between advocacy groups and city agencies (Kilgannon). Formerly, the cemetery was a point of contention due to the inaccessibility of both its grave sites and burial records. Those who sought information about burials encountered a bureaucratic labyrinth involving weeks of being bounced between personnel at the Department of Corrections. Hart Island visitors were subject to even more imposing barriers: the island was only reachable by a ferry which ran infrequently, and visitors were to undergo the same DOC processes used to grant visitors access to NYC’s prisons. Furthermore, those who jumped through these hoops and made it to Hart Island were physically barred from entry to actual grave sites, forced to gaze upon the mass graves from a small gazebo located near the ferry dock.

Hart Island’s inaccessibility not only restricted burial grounds, but also obscured a repository of information, including records and identities that contribute to social memory. Cox and Day consider cemeteries archives wherein components include artifacts, records and grave sites, and they describe these archives as a “rich source of historical information” (Cox 1). What happens, then, when that archive is neither accessible nor properly managed? In the case of Hart Island, social histories were rendered invisible due to poor record keeping and access protocol. The public potter’s field is chilling representation of the power bureaucratic structures wield over the voices and histories of citizens, socially-excluded groups in particular.

In “Archives, Records and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Schwartz and Cook expand on the importance of archival studies, saying, “…it is essential to reconsider the relationships between archives and the societies that create and use them. At the heart of that relationship is power” (Schwartz 5). They go on to explain the ways in which the archivist’s power manifests:

“…power to make records of certain event and ideas and not of others, power to name, label, and order records to meet business, government, or personal needs, power to preserve the record, power to mediate the record, power over access, power over individual rights and freedoms, over collective memory and national identity – is a concept largely absent from the traditional archival perspective” (Schwartz 5).

By considering the relationship between Hart Island’s archive and the society that created it, one may be able to deduce why the archive was approached with such carelessness. After all, the majority of those buried on Hart Island are indigent peoples who were likely neglected by the system during the course of their lives. I believe that the information missing from Hart Islands archive speaks volumes. Lack of physical and informational access, uninformative burial records, and shoddy management of Hart Island’s archive can be interpreted as a reflection lacking resources, and in turn, limited concern for Hart Island’s interred.

According to Schwartz and Cook, “Power over the documentary record, and by extension over the collective memory of marginalized members of society…” resides in “…the ways in which institutional resources are allotted for procurement and processing of collections, and the priority given to their diffusion…” (Schwartz 17). If it is an act of power to choose which information is entered into or omitted from the archive, then Hart Island’s anemic record keeping is a sad testament to city government’s desire and resources devoted to preserving social memory of socially excluded peoples. Hart Island is far from the only space where hegemony and colonialism result in erasure of certain voices from the archive.

Reforms to DOC procedures surrounding Hart Island did not happen on their own. After visiting Hart Island on a photography assignment, artist and activist Melinda Hunt took interest in the island, founding The Hart Island Project with the mission to connect loved ones with memories of friends and relatives buried on the island. Citing concerns about lack of access to information, she helped the NYCLU file a lawsuit against the city in the effort to make burial records publicly available (Surico). Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Department of Corrections was obliged to make this information accessible, and in addition, provide more resources for family members and guests to visit grave sites (Velsey).

Melinda Hunt’s Hart Island Project moved along a bit more quickly that the city’s lethargic bureaucracy: in 2008 soon after FOIA required the DOC to hand over burial information, Hunt had already pooled her resources to digitize the records and create an online collection called the Traveling Cloud Museum (Walshe). According to the official website’s description, the Traveling Cloud Museum “…offers an innovative method for preserving the histories of people whose identities are erased by a system of burials dating back to the American Civil War” (“The Hart Island Project”). Beyond simply providing burial information, the Traveling Cloud Museum functions as a citizen’s archive that crowdsources submissions of individual stories, images, and media about those buried on Hart Island (“The Hart Island Project”).

The breadth of burial information available on the Traveling Cloud Museum far surpasses the city’s database, which only contains fields for name, age, date of death, place of death, plot number and medical examiner. For example, Hunt recognized that a plot number would do no good in assisting visitors find their loved ones, so the Traveling Cloud Museum used Google Earth to map the exact location where each plot is located (“The Hart Island Project”).

Removed from the inertia of bureaucracy, the online collection created ‘space’ for narratives, voices and information often excluded from the archive. By digitizing records and crowdsourcing stories, the Traveling Cloud Museum’s online collection essentially became a citizen’s archive, circumventing bureaucratic structures that imposed restrictions on information access. The online archive is just one example of how digitization can facilitate access by overcoming barriers that prevent the public from interacting with certain information. While Rosenweig would argue that proper “preservation of the past is, in the end, often a matter of allocating adequate resources,” I believe the digital space allows for more public participation in archiving efforts – participation that has the potential to decolonize the archive (Rosenweig 762). In the case of Hart Island, digitization prevailed in disseminating information that bureaucratic structures had otherwise rendered invisible.

Sources Cited

Cox, Richard J. (2011) Stories of a Pleasant Green Space: Cemetery Records and Archives. Archival Issues, 33 (2). pp. 88-99. (In Press)

“The Hart Island Project.” HartIslandProject. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2015. <https://www.hartisland.net/>.

Kilgannon, Corey. “New York City to Allow Relatives to Visit Grave Sites at Potter’s Field.” The New York Times 9 July 2015: A22. The New York Times. 8 July 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” The American Historical Review 108.3 (2003): 745-762. JSTOR [JSTOR]. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.

Schwartz, Joan M., and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory.” Archival Science 2 (2002): 1-20. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.

Surico, John. “The Journey from Death to Hart Island.” Urban Omnibus. N.p., 14 Oct. 2015. Web. 26 Oct. 2015. <http://urbanomnibus.net/2015/10/the-journey-from-death-to-hart-island/>.

Velsey, Kim. “An Open Hart Island: Off the Coast of the Bronx Lie 850,000 Lost Souls—the City Council Hopes to Pay Its Respects.” Observer. N.p., 28 Sept. 2012. Web. <http://observer.com/2012/09/hart-island/>.

Walshe, Sadhbh. “‘Like a Prison for the Dead’: Welcome to Hart Island, Home to New York City’s Pauper Graves.” The Guardian. N.p., 3 June 2015. Web. <http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/03/hart-island-new-york-city-mass-burial-graves>.

 

The New York Public Library’s palatial main branch is famed for its lionized gates to knowledge, and thousands of known and unknown scholars, artists, and autodidacts have used this space throughout its 100+ year history. The library functions not only as a research facility (where a full liberal arts education is available for free), but also as a fine art museum with galleries, murals, statues, architecture, and a tree lined portico. This is the ultimate library. It broadens the spectrum of what a library can be while maintaining what a library has always been.

There are a variety of divisions within the library based on their subject (i.e. Periodicals, Prints & Photography, Rare Books & Manuscripts, Jewish Studies etc.); given the brevity of this article I will be observing only one: the Map Division, located on the northeast corner of the first floor. Their holdings include more than 433,000 sheet maps, over 20,000 books and atlases, all ranging from the 15^th to 21^st centuries. They have six computer workstations that allow access to Google Earth, Digital Sanborn Maps:1867-1970, Oasis NYC: community maps of New York City, and, as always, the NYPL classic catalog. Their reading room has twenty-eight chairs that surround three oak tables that are original furniture from the building’s inception (1911). In the reading room there are approximately 1900 open stack books for self referencing (using Library of Congress classification), twelve antiquarian maps along the walls, three sizable globes on stands, one gargantuan 45lbs. atlas of earth, and an enclosed map exhibit. Wi-Fi is provided and personal laptops are welcomed.

My observation is based on five visits, each an hour long, with casual interactions among the staff. The reading room is quiet and has a studious aura; the age range is diverse; within those seated most are using electronics, some are reading with laptops, and a few are reading & writing without gadgetry. Seating can be scarce as the famous Rose main reading room is closed, therefore, a whole table is designated for those referencing the map collection, for many of the maps are large and the atlases hefty. Tourist trickle through the room regularly, basking in the Beux Arts decor, taking photos, looking at globes, occasionally flipping through the open stacks, but the gargantuan atlas receives regular attention. However, there is a zoological feel to the tourist amusing themselves while patrons study; I overheard someone ask the reference desk why there were so many people here, presumably they could do all this work from home, the librarian obliquely responded: “they have their reasons.”

The reference desk is stationed by one librarian at a time, with new shifts beginning every two hours, and their demeanor exudes patience along with a nuanced knowledge of the collection. The librarians have seven avenues of patron relations: email, telephone, written, reference, consultation, direction, and instruction. The first three are usually a sort reference work, but sometimes an appointment is made for consultation, which can be an in-depth assistance and advising on research, or arranging a class visit with instructors and deciding on content. On one occasion I saw a class of 15 undergraduates led to the back with a stack of maps awaiting them. I also noticed in a historical atlas of New York acknowledgments given to the map division for its cartographic consultation. Direction is on the opposite side of the spectrum and far more common, as it directs people to the restrooms, power outlets, computer labs, or a specific location in Midtown. Instruction can consists of catalog usage, workstation navigation, or simply applying for a library card. These seven avenues are the librarians realm of service, all of which is done with the utmost patience and professionalism.

The variety of readers and their purpose is broad: students working on a project, geologist, real estate developers, insurance companies, lawyers, construction companies, map enthusiasts, fiction authors, scholars, and grandparents showing grandchildren their old neighborhood.

The table reserved for patrons reading from the collection is left empty when not in use. Prior to the internet, the map division would average 30 readers daily, but now it has dropped to an average 10, and it lowers slightly during the summer and winter months. The variety of readers and their purpose is broad: students working on a project, geologist, real estate developers, insurance companies, lawyers, construction companies, map enthusiasts, fiction authors, scholars, and grandparents showing grandchildren their old neighborhood. Occasionally, a gracious reader will leave a copy of their published work, but sometimes they speak in detail about their research and it’s always fascinating. This reserved table is one of three, and yet its significance is notable; an aura emanates from it, or perhaps it is simply in better condition.

Some of the older maps show methods of preservation, such as being enclosed in clear plastic (mylar), or backed my canvass (muslin), but sometimes they use facsimiles instead of the original because of its fragile state. The NYPL does have a conservation department, but some paper is acidic and beyond repair; digitization is the another method to for long-term use. Although, in one instance a researcher insisted on the original and was accommodated.

There are two catalogs that are used in tandem: one is a physical nine volume book call GK Hall, which is essentially the original card catalog that dates back to the Astor/Lenox libraries (now known as the Public Theatre & Fricke Museum) and catalogs up to 1978; after 1978 the catalog is online, but here’s the rub: only some of GK Hall material is online, so both catalogs are needed to reference the entire collection. The best of both worlds.

CONCLUSION: the librarians are patient, helpful, and consistent. The space is studious despite the flow of tourism, random a-socialism, and other spontaneous events. The collection is exhaustive and fully available to the public. Truly a gem of New York City.

 

NYPL Map Division site

 

 

 

Perhaps not entirely obvious, yet still no where near a controversial statement, librarians devote themselves to attention. The library is replete with it. Since childhood, its stacks imbued us with a sense of hushed tones and solemn contemplation, bodies hunched, minds deep in congress with personal gods. But the reality behind this impression runs as deep as the foundation. Without attention, no library would exist further than a massive hulk of unordered books in some forgotten cellar (if that, as even this compilation requires some attention).

Essentially, we, as librarians, deal in attention: by the attention we provide in the formation of collections, for the attention of the members and visitors who hope to connect to the information they require. Classification, organization, and preservation enable minds to access otherwise esoteric, dispersed information, and thus we provide a service, attending to collections so others may more freely attend to the content of their interest.

Libraries establish the source of societies extended attention span, and attention founds all human experience. To this latter effect, the psychologist William James remarks:

Only those items which I notice shape my mind – without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos. Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground – intelligible perspective, in a word. […] but without it the consciousness […] would be a gray chaotic indiscriminateness, impossible for us even to conceive (James).

Vanguards against the buzzing manifold, we channel the ever deepening ocean of information through artifacts of our epistemology, generalities and contexts, so that others should keep themselves afloat in the process of their own inquiry. Digital technology allows librarians the ability to disperse their attention to many more millions of items, but with this advanced reach comes many issues. Some problems involve digital archives, preservation, memory, and power. I, however, wish to deal with toll this new technological information age takes on our own attention spans and, by extension, our well-being.

First, consider Marcia J. Nauratil’s engaging The Alienated Librarian, an exposition of burnout in the library as the “proletarization of professional labor.” To explain, she focuses on the emergence of bureaucracy as an ultimate power source over librarian autonomy:

Bureaucratic discouragement of professionalism, with its components of suppressed autonomy, role strains, and proletarianization, is a potent inducer of work alienation. The bureaucratic structure of libraries has also fos­tered and enhanced the alienating effects of all the other developmental factors considered thus far (Nauratil 55).

Hierarchical, bureaucratic oversight from library, university, or government administration stymies regular employees’ self-determination. This structuralized oppression likens librarians to Charlie Chaplin’s character in Modern Times:

Similar to the methods used to enact authority as seen in this clip, authoritarian measures legitimize bureaucracy in libraries. Some of these, as Nauratil lists, are deskilling; role strain, overload, and ambiguity; and intensification of the labor process (23-25).

But these factors of control form behind closed doors, occur perhaps unintentionally, and certainly hide under the guise of budget constraints and austerity measures. My questions: where do librarians feel depersonalization most immediately? What do we hear and do in place of the mechanical repetition in the world presented by Modern Times?

William James expounds on a familiar effect:

[…]the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction […] We all know this latter state, even in its extreme degree. Most people probably fall several times a day into a fit of something like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time (James).

Here, James distinguishes distraction as the opposite of attention, an effect of contemporary life that we find intimately familiar.

As attention brokerage firms, libraries situate their workers right at the heart of the technological data swarm. One paper asks: “how is it possible to be a knowledgeable librarian in the twenty-first century? […] When constantly overwhelmed with information and distraction by its overabundance, it is difficult to focus or even know where to start (Dewan 101).” The burden of excellence in reference librarianship is at extreme odds with the very nature of the field in its current state. So, when we acknowledge that “people depend on librarians to navigate information that simply overwhelms them,” — which requires librarians to “subscribe to email alerts, listservs, RSS feeds […] in an effort to keep pace with today’s ever increasing body of knowledge(100),” — the childhood intuition of the quiet reverence of the library belies a furious deluge behind the reference desk.

To cope, librarians tend to multitask, sequentially drawn to and from sources, which splinters attention and stresses the addled mind (Levitin; Dewen 107). Librarians habitualize this constant repositioning of interest, and develop an attention deficit trait, ADT (108). The pathology of our “age of distraction:”

It is brought on by the demands on our time and attention that have exploded over the past two decades. As our minds fill with noise—feckless synaptic events signifying nothing—the brain gradually loses its capacity to attend fully and thoroughly to anything (Hallowell).

Attention, the process that underpins our connection with the world, “[…] the very root of judgement, character, and will (James),” and the principle of a librarian’s craft, erodes in the cacophonous polyphony of “You Got Mail.” If anything removes us from our “species-being,” look no further than how many tabs you have opened in your browser.

However harsh I sound; I am no luddite. Technology has extended our attention out to the furthest galaxies and the smallest quantum; it gives the world stage to whom would otherwise tremble in silence. The internet has crumbled physical boundaries and allowed perspectives to promulgate. Ultimately, meaning can proliferate beyond all prior bounds. But this does not discount the deliriant effect on us, and knowledge laborers in specific.

Written in 1989, Nauratil’s book predates the expansion of the internet, with broadband service, smartphone devices, and wifi. Nevertheless, under these considerations, we can see that the advanced access to information disperses attention — the “opium of the masses.” Nauratil’s remedies for alienation and burnout require our recognition of bureaucratic authority, to take action against the power that would separate us further from our work. Yet, if librarians are kept busy, stressed, and disorientated, the reality of our alienation internalizes; we view ourselves as the problem, not the structural imbalances from which these issues spawn. Our attitude becomes, “I barely know what is right in the world, when everything seems to go in its own direction, and its own set of considerations. How can know what happens in administration? I am too tired to even look.”

Attention is our direction in the world, that is, to the world. When we focus, with a clear and unburdened mind, we should see the reality of the situation, if only through our own perspective. When our mind fails to acknowledge the world, as it is, then we should attend to others in more apt vantage points. Thus our own interest can expand intersubjectively. Technology and the internet enables effect, but also disables it. Knowing this dual nature is crucial.

 

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Works Cited

Dewan, Pauline. “Can I Have Your Attention? Implications of the Research on Distractions and Multitasking for Reference Librarians.” The Reference Librarian 55, no. 2 (2014): 95-117.

Hallowell, Edward. “Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Review, 01 Jan. 2005. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

James, William. “Classics in the History of Psychology.” James (1890) Chapter 11. Ed. Christopher D. Green. York University, Toronto, Ontario, Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

Levitin, Daniel. “Daniel Levitin: “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in an Age of Information Overload”” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Oct. 2014. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

Nauratil, Marcia J. The Alienated Librarian (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989)

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Confucius

I used to believe in the quote above until I graduated from college and struggled to find a job in my field of study. I had it all planned out in my head as follows: graduate from college, obtain a job in my chosen field, start saving for continued studies and enjoy my job, because I’m going to be doing what I loved. What an oversight this was in my journey. Firstly, I spent quite a lot of money to obtain certification to teach in New York City. Then I sent out lots of resumes and attended several interviews for teaching positions, only to hear the same phrase over and over again, “you need experience.” I was so disappointed and discouraged that I started applying elsewhere. Eventually, I was able to secure a teaching job and even though my ego was so deflated, I anticipated a great turn of events from this opportunity. I embraced this job, worked long hours, wrote lesson plans excellently, and organized occasional field trips for my classes because I believed that teaching should not be unilateral. I loved my job and seeing the children learn encouraged me to work even harder and longer hours. Unfortunately my dedication went unnoticed and I began to feel unappreciated. My paycheck remained the same for months with no consideration for increase. I felt extremely stressed from the increasing class sessions. Indeed, my new beginning ended faster than I envisioned for after a few years I decided to quit teaching because of burnout feelings. At this point, I reflected on the following:

“My life is bitter as wormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I’m a poor, miserable, forlorn drudge…. What’s the use of trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying to be anything? What’s the use of living? I wish I was dead!”

(Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

 

Nauratil (2001) gives several definitions of burnout as seen by psychiatrists and researchers in “The Alienated Librarian” but the one that resonates with me the most states that “ other researchers focus on burnout as a process rather than an end state, viewing it as ‘a progressive loss of idealism, energy and purpose experienced by people in the helping professions as a result of their conditions of work” (p. 2). Thus, reading this definition really gave me a clearer picture of my burnout feelings. I realized that I had my own ideas about being a teacher and when I was given the opportunity to teach my enthusiasm and energy was driven by my purpose to impart knowledge and educate young minds. I soon lost my passion and desire to teach, all because of the horrible conditions of my work environment. I had chosen a job that I loved and enjoyed working diligently every day, sometimes without lunch breaks. Yet, I was never recognized nor given any recognition for my efforts inside and outside of the classroom. This undisputable treatment made me feel resentful with a dwindling passion for teaching. Feelings of being overwhelmed and confused resulted in my frequent experiences of headaches, colds and chronic fatigue. Many individuals in the work force can share these same experiences, but not many persons can identify or recognize “burnout.” I had no idea of what I was experiencing at that time, for it was only after I left teaching that I learned of the “burnout phenomenon”.

My recent reading of Graham Greene’s 1961 novel, titled “A Burnt-out Case” describes the main character Querry who quits his job and withdraws into the African jungle because of his being psychologically and spiritually disillusioned. First of all this novel shows just how long burnout has been an issue in society; and secondly it gives the reader an insight into one of the many reasons why many professionals choose to use fear so as to “cope” with burnout. However, it is this fear of circumstances like poverty that keeps many professionals in their vocations. Also, the fear of failure that makes them continue to work harder; fear of loss that makes them accept emotional pressures and end up with depression. This statement expresses a very familiar feeling that is experienced and uttered by many professionals in society today, Graham Greene points out that“ A vocation is an act of love: it is not a professional career. When desire is dead one cannot continue to make love. I’ve come to the end of desire and the end of a vocation” (p. 57).

Many professionals complain daily about their jobs ranging from compulsion to prove oneself, to depersonalization, and to withdrawal. Librarians, teachers, customer service representatives, social workers, counselors, psychiatrists and many other human services professionals tend to become tired of their “calling” or urge to follow a specific career and eventually end their careers even though work and survival are interrelated. It is known that one needs to work in order to survive, sustain and grow, while making a meaningful contribution to society. However, it can also be said that when this codependence breaks down, individuals tend to compensate by accepting their situations in order to remain employable. At the same time it is motivation that keeps them focussed on achieving their goals. Findings of the Society for Human Resource Management show that they believe employers are able to get the best possible talent if they follow what motivates employees. They state that being able to use personal skills was ranked highly in what creates job satisfaction. Therefore, employers should make this a priority so that their employees are able to use their skills and abilities to the fullest. (2009 “Employee Job Satisfaction”). This will give the employees the opportunity to feel that they are valued, as well as being used to their fullest potential and will motivate them to do their best since they are working in their professional area.

 

 

“2009 Employee Job Satisfaction: Understanding the Factors That Make Work Gratifying.” Society for Human Resource Management (2009): 6-17. Web. 14 Feb. 2012.

 

Greene, G. (1961), A Burnt-out Case, Penguin Group, New York.

 

Maslach, C., Schauteil, W.B & Leiter, M.P. (2001), Job Burnout, Annual Review Psychology pp. 52. 397-422.

 

Nauratil, M. J. (1989), The Alienated Librarian, Greenwood Press Inc. New York.

 

 

Blog Article #2

In our class discussions, I often wonder about the under-represented groups of people who are not able to access the technologies on which we focus.  This could be because of physical restraints, mental restraints (not having the knowledge or skills necessary to access information), geographical restraints (not living near a library or having access to internet at home), or a variety of other hindrances that I sometimes feel are swept aside in order to narrow the discussion into a workable framework.   For the sake of narrowing it down and to talk about a group with which I have personal experience working with, I’m going to try to focus on those with special needs, that is, those with developmental disabilities and physical impairments.

In class we have looked heavily at the user experience within the library system.  While we have touched on those lesser represented in the studies and research we’ve looked at, I would like to flip the lens and see how little those studies would apply to those with special needs.  I was reminded of Wilson’s article “Human Information Behavior” and wondered how well his definitions would apply to certain minorities.  Wilson defines information seeking behavior as the “purposive seeking for information as a consequence of a need to satisfy some goal. In the course of seeking, the individual may interact with manual information systems (such as a newspaper or a library), or with computer-based systems (such as the World Wide Web).”  I like this definition when I apply it to myself.  However, I have huge issues with this definition when I try to apply it to individuals with whom I have worked with developmental disabilities.  One is a young woman who is my age and would be a fully functional individual had she not been, at four years old, plagued with a sickness that resulted in the non-verbal, non-ambulatory life she now lives.

Even though this young woman is unable to speak or get around on her own, she is still able to make herself known and heard.  She is able to communicate her wants and needs to those she works with.  Now, according to Wilson’s definition, she would only portray information seeking behavior if she were to actively seek that information and interact with information systems.  So say she wanted to have the opportunity to listen to a book on tape.  She wouldn’t be able to go to the computer room and look up the books on tape available at her local library.  She wouldn’t be able to drive to that library and ask questions of the librarian.  She wouldn’t be able to check the item out on her own, nor would she be able to return it on her own.  So what are her options according to Wilson to demonstrate information seeking behavior?  As far as I can tell, she has none.

Would it be beneficial to alter Wilson’s definition of information seeking behavior in order to make it more widely applicable?  Should there be a completely separate definition based on various groups of people?  I would argue that there should be a broader definition to determine intent of the user as opposed to simply actions of the user in order to include those that may not be able to act on their intent.  I’m concerned that if there is a separate definition created for those groups of people that are already marginalized, it will further the perception of their being placed on the outskirts of the community.  Although this doesn’t happen in all cases, and in many cases there are communities within communities made up of these particular underrepresented groups which make a lot of headway in making sure there is equality across the board.  I am speaking of general societal perception and stereotypes that go along with these groups.  I have found that there is a distinct discomfort in talking about such things in the company of those who have not have personal experience working with people with developmental disabilities.  I think an open dialogue is a necessity for considering the creation of new, broader, more-inclusive terms of the “user” and “behavior.”

The assumed notion of health, accessibility, and skill is what bothers me primarily when I am looking at research and studies about user friendliness and something as narrowing as “experience.”  It trims the fat and focuses on the meaty majority that has the resources and skills available to them.  I am not saying that there are not resources available for people with special needs, I am simply arguing that there is not much, if any, recognition of this group in studies or research.  I feel that this pushes us to look further into underrepresented or misrepresented groups like prisons, halfway houses, psychiatric hospitals, the VA, rural schools, immigrant populations, visually and auditory impaired persons, this list could go on forever.  In a world that is increasingly focused on the individual can’t afford not to include such groups of people when looking at the future of information and librarianship.