The Ugly Side of Librarianship: Segregation in Library Services from 1900-1950
by Klaus Musmann

 I find it incredible that only 6 African-Americans became librarians in the first 25 years of the 20th century.  Libraries have welcomed African-American librarians for less than a century, and even then not in large numbers.  How diverse is the library profession now?  This calls to mind how in my district, the superintendent has made it one of her goals to bring more educators of color into our classrooms, stating that students of color in the schools have requested that more teachers "look like them".  I would assume that just as seeing teachers of color makes students of color more comfortable and welcomed, the same might hold true for libraries.  The diversity of the employees should match the demographic of their patrons.   Are there still roadblocks--instances of institutionalized racism--that are holding African-Americans and other people of color from entering the library profession?  Or have we made progress?  The country has clearly come a long way in the past 150 years from a time when African-Americans were prohibited from owning books.  However, I would guess that based on the demographic of my class and of the libraries I frequent, we still have work to do to make librarianship open to all.

After reading the article and thinking about librarianship this week, some questions that arose are these: if I am to provide library services and materials to all without judgment or bias, "tak[ing] the people with their prejudices" (81), how then am I to work for social justice?  Should I not hope to eradicate prejudices?  It seems that at least public librarians, unlike teachers, cannot (and perhaps should not?) do much to shape the opinions of those they serve.  Where does a school librarian fit on this spectrum?

illustration from Wave by Suzy Lee

photo from weheartbooks.com

Libraries: Digital, electronic, and hybrid 
by D.D. Rusch-Feja

My initial sense when reading this article was that it lacked a human element.  However, as I continued I tried to take the perspective that the complex systems outlined are the basis for user-friendly virtual libraries.  That said, I did appreciate the concept of the "life cycle" of digital libraries: "'from information creation, access and use, to archiving and presentation'".  I know that all libraries go through such a cycle, but digital librarians face unique challenges as they attempt to keep pace with the internet, an issue that Johnson also raised when she wrote of attempting to save rapidly changing and disappearing web content.  I had a momentary mental image of a tsunami-sized wall of information about to crash over librarians armed with buckets, trying to scoop up the information and whisk it away into relevant and usable organizational format.  That involves discernment of quality and worth, an act that seems subjective and sticky, as in Johnson's discussion of the papers of Joe Hamburger.  I have more to learn about archiving and how it relates to library collection management.

Traces: Document, record, archive, archives
by Sue McKemmish

I liked way that "Traces" placed archiving within a more human context.  When archivers are described as keepers of stories it gives their work a mystical bend--not that archiving involves anything resembling magic, but it demonstrates archiving's a purpose on a grander scale. 

I had never before thought of archiving in the broadest sense, as preservation of anything--the environment, architecture, and so forth.  The chapter also stretched my understanding of what can actually be archived.  I had always thought of archiving as keeping intentionally-created items such as books or websites, and not so much preserving the "traces" of events, like photographs, recordings, and news reports.  "Traces" also impressed on me the great responsibility placed on archivists since there must be a very deliberate hand in selecting (or discarding) records which in turn shapes the "social and organizational structures of remembering and forgetting" (17).  The way in which information is selected, classified, and organized sends a specific message that could be used for good or ill.  This conjures images of history being rewritten in 1984, but in the case of archiving the facts do not need rewriting, only careful retention and deletion, classification and labeling. 

 Libraries
by Christine Pawley

It is incredible to me how relatively quickly libraries have evolved from simple collections to multimedia hybrids.  Librarians' list of tasks have also grown.  Every day I see my school's media specialist taking on technology tasks that fall to no one else.  In the public schools, I have observed the tug-of-war between buying physical materials versus digital services.  In many cases, as I'm sure is the case in libraries as well, we'd like to have the best of both worlds. 

Information Science
by Tefko Saracevic

It makes sense that information science is interdisciplinary because of the interdisciplinary nature of libraries themselves.  It is interesting to see how information science correlates to information literacy, the topic of my other course this semester.  I think information literacy is what a person has when they have mastered the basics of information science.  Also, both information literacy and science deal with computer literacy and science, but are do not solely involve technology.  The article added to my understanding of information and how to qualify it--the value of information is based on the difference the information makes in one's decision-making process.  Information, like information science and literacy, are broad and abstract terms, but perhaps rightly so, since the work of librarians and the tasks of libraries are ever-changing.  The aspects of information literacy that interest me are practical applications in social and educational settings, which is not surprising as I'm on my way to school librarianship.

 photo from weblo.com

This Book is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
by Marilyn Johnson 

We all know reading is sexy, right?  That librarians are sexy seems to be the point as Johnson enthusiastically promotes the librarians of Library 2.0.  She appears to idolize the youthful, tattooed, blogging librarians--or is she trying overcompensate for the prevailing stereotype of the shushing, white-bun-topped librarian?  She spends a great deal of time covering Second-Life librarians who work exclusively in the digital realm.  Then, Johnson's presentation of the ostensibly woeful case of the NYPL is an unexpected turn.  While she previously lauded change and progress, suddenly in the tenth chapter she digs in her heels against the integration of a circulating library in the research library.  Not surprisingly, the hip, young, blogging librarian types at NYPL are also the librarians who support the circulating library and the values I think the library stands for: research and education, yes, but also accessibility and community.

As someone who uses iTunes and an iPod but also tends a growing record and cassette tape collection, I can understand the conflict between digitalization versus preservation.  My lifestyle relies heavily upon digital technology, and yet I do not believe anything can replace the look, feel, weight, and smell of the physical book or vinyl--as media as well as art piece.  I do think that the two can coexist peacefully.  For example, when Johnson hastily attempts to reconcile the traditional role of the library with the new demands of library patrons, she seems to be talking about something like the "hybrid libraries" aptly summarized in the Rusch-Feja article.  I like the idea of the library providing one simple search process that might take the user to either digital or physical artifacts.

This Book is Overdue had me wondering--who are the heroes?  Is Johnson urging us to admire the hip, blogging, progressives of Library 2.0 or the old school traditionalists still holding down the fort?  Both.  I think her intention is to show that librarians of any stripe are indispensable gatekeepers to knowledge and the skills to find information themselves.  Since this is a book written for general audiences, the question remains whether the book is an effective argument for our case. 

On a more personal note, I find it interesting that Johnson is so tickled when she encounters librarians with a sardonic, sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor.  My plastic-framed glasses and blog may place me among her stereotyped "hip librarians", but I tend to be quite genuine and gullible and often fail at using sarcasm.  She comments on the obvious: that any profession will contain a smattering of most personality types.  I would guess that a reader not familiar with librarianship would develop a broader mental picture of what librarians can be, but Johnson's oscillation between high-tech libraries and traditional ones, with little attempt to synthesize the two, might be confusing.