The Fedelers weren’t the only ones who didn’t have to pay attention to their library’s closing hours. Superintendent Patrick Thornberry and his family lived in the New York Society Library, a private Upper East Side library on 79th St. near Madison Avenue. While they weren’t directly attached to a park like the Fedelers, their apartment came with a penthouse-level garden and was only one block from Central Park. And if they saw something they liked while thumbing through an art book, they might be able to find it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also one block away. The Thornberrys must have thought they had a good deal and lived in the library for twenty-two years.^[2]

It goes without saying that, at both these libraries, the superintendents’ and their families had access to the stacks twenty-four hours a day, so finding a book wouldn’t have been a problem. But lest we fantasize too much about these unbelievable apartments and their unique amenities, let’s remember that there were downsides. If you’re in a garage band and really need the practice, this probably isn’t the ideal living environment. In fact, John Fedeler, Jr. explained in a New York Times article that “singing and stomping were strictly forbidden in his home until all library staff had gone home for the evening.”^[3] Getting shushed by a librarian in your own home would be just too much to bear!

Sadly, neither apartment currently has residents, not even via Airbnb. The New York Society Library’s apartment is used for closed stacks,^[4] while the Schwarzman’s apartment was divided up for many uses after it was no longer tenable. The kitchen became a mimeograph room, the switchboard moved into one of the bedrooms, and other rooms became bathrooms or smoking rooms.^[5]

Looking for your own library home?

Despite the current dearth of apartments hidden behind rare book rooms, if living in a library sounds like your dream come true (and assuming your band is on hiatus between tours), it needn’t be completely dashed. You could move into an apartment building built along with a library, like at the Delridge Branch of the Seattle Public Library. According to their website, “The new building was developed in partnership with the Delridge Neighborhoods Development Association. The branch anchors the first floor of a three-story building that includes 19 apartments on the top two floors.”^[6]

There’s a similar operation in San Francisco’s Glen Park Neighborhood, where the Glen Park Marketplace contains the Glen Park Branch of the San Francisco Public Library system, a grocery store, and fifteen residential condominiums in one building.^[7]

Library complexes are popping up all over. The University Dale Apartment complex in St. Paul, Minn., “consists of 92 apartment homes and six brown stone townhomes at the intersection of Dale Street and Aurora Avenue in St. Paul, above the Rondo Community Outreach Library.”^[8] No small library, Rondo has impressive community amenities like a homework center, electronic classrooms, and meeting rooms. It also houses two special collections, the Black Culture and History  and Immigrant and Refugee Battered Women’s Task Force collections. ^[9]

More than a place to live

If these complexes represent a growing trend, it’s not just that cities are trying new ways to mix space. These buildings tacitly operate as public/private partnerships and represent libraries’ continued importance. Libraries are first and foremost community services and must be in the communities they serve. A library couldn’t possibly get closer than by being physically attached to the housing of residents. These buildings, not just through their location but through their very architecture, say, “We are part of your community. You are part of us.” In an era when many library services have been transferred online, there may be no stronger statement a library can make.

As awesome as the Fedeler’s and Thronberry’s apartments were, they were still restricted to library superintendents and their families. In many ways those apartments were cut off from their community. Public apartments or condos built along with libraries have the opportunity to be more. So if living in a library suits you, know that you have options, and if there’s not a development like this in your area, hopefully the trend will continue.

References

[1] Cate Etherington, “Life Behind the Stacks: The Secret Apartments of New York Libraries,” 6SqFt, July 3, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Meyer Berger, “Engineer To Quit Old Library Home,” New York Times, June 20, 1949.

[4] Cate Etherington, “Life Behind the Stacks: The Secret Apartments of New York Libraries.”

[5] Meyer Berger, “Engineer To Quit Old Library Home.”

[6] “About the Delridge Branch,” Seattle Public Library, accessed July 29, 2016.

[7] “Glen Park Marketplace at 2815 Diamond Street,” San Francisco Modern Residential Real Estate, accessed July 29, 2016.

[8] “University Dale Apartments in St. Paul MN,” Real Estate Equities Living, July 29, 2016.

[9] “Rondo,” St. Paul Public Library, accessed July 29, 2016.

The post Living in the Library first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Lighthouse keepers and their families often lived in extreme isolation in highly unpastoral areas like rocky outcroppings or barren islands. They didn’t have many options in terms of leisure, and they certainly couldn’t pop into to a local bookstore. Access to entertainment was further hampered because lighthouse keepers usually weren’t paid handsomely for their labors. Because of their lack of access to entertainment and, well, anything else, lighthouse keepers as a group could greatly benefit from a circulating library collection. The only problem was that they were geographically excluded from access to local libraries. However, lighthouse keepers did important work. The least the librarians and library groups of the era could do was provide them with some entertaining books.

As Zarrelli explains, “Portable lighthouse libraries, distributed across the United States in the 19th century, were a common but important part of life for families living under the constant work and near-isolation of the lighthouse watch.”^[1] These collections were packed inside portable, sturdy boxes, and the contents were zealously guarded by the librarians. I dare say more books have gone missing from my libraries than from a lighthouse box, and I’m pretty sure lighthouse keepers couldn’t dodge their fines by donating a can of soup. After a box made its way around one area of lighthouses, it would be switched with a box from a different area. Eventually, the boxes would rotate around the country’s coast lines.

During my tenure as an MLIS student, I studied a few mobile libraries that surpass the traditional Book Mobiles. Biblioburro, a traveling library run by the very dedicated Luis Soriano that’s packed and transported on the back of his two Colombian donkeys, was all the rage on discussion boards then, and I hope it still is. A more recent example would be Raul Lemesoff’s Weapons of Mass Instruction, a Ford Falcon modified into a library and tank that carries about nine hundred books through the streets of Buenos Aires. Though its collection is limited, it makes up for it with what I believe can only legally be described as “sheer awesomeness.”

These traveling librarians are making good on both patrons’ needs and the meta-library mission. If the second Law of Library Science is “every reader to their book,” these small libraries are certainly working to fill a need that the largest and most impressive central libraries in the world can’t. There are readers in distant and hard to get to places that don’t have access to a library, interlibrary loan system, or even a strong Internet signal and the technology to download e-books. If these patrons are to have books then those books have to be taken to them, and why shouldn’t we, like the lighthouse librarians of yore, figure out a way to do that? I’m sure we’re capable, and I’m sure the patrons are waiting.

Reference

[1] Natalie Zarrelli, “The Most Precious Cargo for Lighthouses Across America was a Traveling Library,” Atlas Obscura, February 8, 2016.

The post The Tiniest Libraries for the Most Remote Patrons first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Yes, these titles have always been in play, but what they signify has changed. The above library specialist, for example, once implied doing specialized work but now typically signifies a librarian I position made “special” because it doesn’t confer hours, benefits, or job security. A quick look through the LinkedIn pages of your part-time coworkers will make the context for all this clear and tell you the truth of their lives: They have these titles at more than one location or work for more than one branch, and they aren’t part-time because they want to be.

Libraries as an Industry

Aleksandra Sagen’s article “Librarians fight precarious work’s creep into white collar jobs” discusses what is, to many, the biggest issue facing new librarians: They’re simply not likely to get full-time jobs. From Sagen’s article:

“They’re basically trapped in entry-level jobs,” said Maureen O’Reilly, a librarian and president of the Toronto Public Library Workers Union. “They’re still waiting many, many, many, many, many years to get a full-time job.” The average wait time for someone to be hired as a full-time librarian with the Toronto Public Library is a decade — and that’s for applicants who already have a foot in the door working other jobs at the library.[1]

Full-Time Jobs Have Been Outsourced to Part-Time Employees

Sagen connects the employment problem in libraries to its corollary in the private sector, and she’s right to, since both issues boil down to the sobering fact that it’s cheaper to periodically hire and replace a phalanx of part-time employees than to hire one or two full-time ones. Dan Lyons discusses this same issue in his New York Times article, “Congratulations! You’ve been fired.” He describes how his fellow employees in the tech company HubSpot were called “rock stars” and told they “were changing the world” but were disposable. Their firings were called “graduations.” Lyons talks about how cruel it is to fire people with no warning and little explanation, all the while talking about how great they are. He also talks about how normal it started to seem to employees.[2]

Lyons goes on to describe how, fun language and false compliments aside, this “‘new’ way of working was actually the oldest game in the world: the exploitation of labor by capital.”*[3] Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO at HubSpot, has responded to the book with his own article.[4]

My library, although next door to several tech companies, is worlds apart in terms of culture and environment, but Lyons’s words struck a chord. They matched the theme in Sagen’s article, and a theme running through the lives of many of my contemporaries. Supervisors will increase the responsibility of qualified part-time librarians, talk about the amazing jobs they’re doing, and tell them how great it is to have them around, but hiring them full-time won’t be an option. Like Lyons’s tech contemporaries, library staff and culture are becoming so inured to this that it seems normal.

Adding Up Underemployment

Sagen and Lyons’s articles present a story close to my own heart—and, to be honest, close to my own bank account. When I graduated with my MLIS, I had a teaching credential, experience teaching both ESL and Special Education, and I had finished two really good library internships. It never occurred to me that the best job I’d get would be working as an aide, shelving and running paging lists for barely above minimum wage. Kids in high school worked in this position alongside people who’d had the MLIS degree for years. The supervisors at the top of the food chain were thrilled to have librarians doing their shelving because, why wouldn’t they be? Those books were never shelved so well. Even better, we were hungry to go above and beyond our job description—to do librarian level work for library aide wages.

It took six months to get a librarian position in a city over (as a library specialist, which was technically a librarian I position but paid less and had no benefits). I was hired to work on-call but immediately asked to work a regular position every other Saturday. As I got to know my coworkers, I learned that this was a thing our library system did, and that my Saturday position was something of a revolving door. No one wants to work one day every two weeks with no chance of moving up or getting more hours.

It took another eight months to get a librarian I per diem position (this one genuinely is on-call) steady enough that I could give up the “aide” title from the first county. My replacement was, of course, a recently graduated MLIS student. When I landed a job as an adjunct faculty librarian at a local college I was able to give up the specialist job. Still, I was (and am) working an average of two jobs at a time at three locations, and I’m still not getting forty hours a week.

The bigger problem is that part-time jobs, even jobs at libraries with good reputations and traditionally strong unions, don’t accrue much in the way of retirement or sick leave. They often don’t have other benefits, like vacation days or healthcare, at all. Library unions, it seems, only really benefit full-time staff.

Wait! There’s more!

In library school, I was really excited go to ALA conventions. Public libraries, I quickly learned, don’t pay for part-timers to go to those. To be fair, they have offered to pay for my registration; however, with limited hours and paying for my own medical benefits, I can’t afford lodging, food, and transportation, and I certainly can’t afford to take the day off work. Besides, my library will generally expect me to fill in for full-time staff who are attending. This is only one example of my catch-22: because I’m not a full-time employee, I don’t have access to things that would make me a stronger candidate in order to become a full-time employee.

Things Are Rough All Over, but It Doesn’t Have to be This Way

Originally, I thought this was a San Francisco Bay Area problem. With the library and information program at SJSU producing two to three hundred graduates a semester (though not all living in the area), I assumed there were just too many of us vying for a finite number of jobs in this region. But I’ve learned that it’s like this all over. New York City has the same story, as does Colorado, and, according to Sagen, so does Toronto.[5]

The pattern new librarians face has become both obvious and significant, and while a lucky few have landed full-time positions, many more have become disheartened with the industry and quit. Meanwhile, part-time librarians, whatever their title, bounce between branches and systems hoping to one day become full-time. As Sagen points out, that can take “many, many, many, many, many years.”

Like Lyon’s HubSpot friends, these newer librarians are told they’re doing great and that they’re assets. As much as that’s probably true, it’s also true that they’re disposable assets, and that libraries—like Walmart, McDonald’s, or any other business—have learned that it’s cheaper to hire ten desperate part-time employees than two full-time ones who would cover the same hours. One simple solution to all this is to drastically shrink library program admittance. Another is to present MLIS programs more as “information science” programs, which is a growing, if controversial, trend.

If libraries don’t want to be viewed as big businesses by their librarians, they need to treat them like valued staff instead of part-time wage earners. That means hiring more full-time positions instead of lots of part-time ones and insuring that staff have enough benefits to make them want to stay put. It also means paying to send part-time employees to conferences (it should be easy with their flexible schedules!) and allowing them access to the same training as other staff so they can stay on the cutting edge of technology and keep up with new materials. These opportunities are all impossible for someone who’s juggling two or three jobs. True, none of this will do a thing for many of the newest library school graduates, but in the long term, neither does yoking them to inconsistent and unstable work forever.

References

[1] Aleksandra Sagen, “Librarians Fight Precarious Work’s Creep into White Collar Jobs,” Canadian Press, March 27, 2016.

[2] Dan Lyons, “Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired,” New York Times, April 9, 2016.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Dharmesh Shah, “Undisrupted: HubSpot’s Reflections on “Disrupted,” LinkedIn, April 12, 2016.

[5] Aleksandra Sagen, “Librarians Fight Precarious Work’s Creep into White Collar Jobs,” Canadian Press, March 27, 2016.

The post Remember When This Was Full-Time? Your Newest Coworkers Don’t. first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

It’s no secret to librarians that many patrons come to the library for more than our collections. Most people can find books and DVDs online. They can use our research databases without getting out of bed. For reference questions they can call, email, text, or instant message. We have reference resources that don’t circulate, and anyone who’s worked in a children’s room knows that parents don’t want to buy the thirty-five books their child wants that day, so coming to the library can be a life (and pocketbook) saver. Still, many patrons who come in the door don’t, strictly speaking, need our services. Many come for another free service we provide, albeit indirectly: human contact.

Human Contact

This topic was discussed in the anonymous Guardian article, “For Many Library Visitors, I’m the Only Person they’ve Talked to All Day.”[1] The content of this article doesn’t surprise library staff, since so many of our patrons come in to have someone to talk to, or even just to be around people.

These patrons can be divided into two types. The first is a library regular who comes here to use the computers, maybe watch a DVD, or just sit and read, but they’re here several days a week. Some people hang out at their local coffee shop, others at their local bar—and for many, it’s their local library.

The second type is a talker. A patron might ask for help finding a book and then try spending the next half hour telling you why they want that book. Usually I’m more than happy to go along with this as far as is practical. Part of our job is customer service, so being pleasant and conversational is the deal. Of course, sometimes the conversation goes on too long, becomes overtly political or personal, or otherwise crosses a line, but until it does I tend to humor it.

These patrons come from all over. Sometimes it’s a patron experiencing homelessness, or an elderly patron who’s outlived their loved ones, or a latchkey kid whose house is too quiet. Some people are just shy, but they know that librarians tend to be approachable. After all, we’re polite, usually appear relaxed, and we’re not selling anything.

Libraries vs. Bookstores vs. Amazon

The fact that we’re not selling anything really is crucial here. At the turn of the century, when there were so many claims that big box book and music stores would close (they mostly did) and that libraries would collapse (they mostly didn’t), human interaction was a big part of what was left out of the calculations. Barnes & Noble and Borders had employees every bit as nice as librarians, but their job, even if it was 100 percent customer service-orientated, was to sell things. The cafés with comfy chairs were staffed by pleasant people who had nothing to do with selling books, but you were still supposed to buy a latte or a brownie, and you knew it.

The job of bookstore employees was to be friendly, but the job of the place, its sin qua non, was to sell you things. A librarian’s sin qua non is to help people find things, and we think of that as including more than just books. “Things,” in this sense, can be CDs or DVDs, free Internet, information, or even just a dry place when it’s raining. If a bookstore’s purpose was to get you to buy something before you left, our purpose is to get you to come in at all. It’s a completely different attitude, and, because of it, our pleasantness comes with a lot less pressure. For lonely people, that unconditional friendliness is extremely valuable.

Viewed through this lens, Amazon isn’t a competitor. The few times I’ve used their customer service it went far better than expected. The people on the other end of the phone and email were polite and helped me with everything I needed. But their disembodied voices and typed script were that of professionals doing a job, and they’re only available after a transaction goes wrong. While Amazon is much better than libraries at helping you find even the rarest of books or music, its algorithms can’t fill the need for an interpersonal connection. Library staff can. It’s not the only reason that libraries thrive, but it is, perhaps, a big part of our success in the face of Amazon.

Awareness

When you work behind a counter, it’s easy to see people as a transaction, to move them along because you know there’s another patron waiting. Whether we’re the only person a patron talks to all day, or all week, isn’t really the point. Libraries, like any customer service environment, need to consider that our patrons have different needs. Some are here to pick something up or print something, and even if they approach us for help they don’t want to chat. Others are here precisely to chat and might pick something up or use the Internet while they’re here. Though librarians are generally cognizant of the attitudes and needs of our patrons, we should keep in mind that for many of them, the need isn’t the book we’re handing them, it’s the conversation we’re having with them while we do it.

References:

[1] “For Many Library Visitors, I’m the Only Person they’ve Talked to All Day,” Guardian (Manchester), February 6, 2016.

The post We Are Here, and We Are Generally Pleasant first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Librarians are very fond of pointing out that we are not our stereotypes. We’re not all shrill older ladies in horn rimmed glasses with a wicked “Shhh!” We’re not all meek or mild-mannered men in V-neck sweaters.  We like relaxed dress codes, and we’re very comfortable with tattoos and bright blue hair. When we’re not getting people books, we’re putting on pub trivia nights or showing off 3D printers. These are not our stereotypes.

Another thing about us is that we’re far more snarky than most people realize. Truth is, a sense of humor is a prerequisite. Like so many other service jobs, sometimes we need sarcasm to relieve tension and get through the day. I suspect we’ve always been this way. But while librarians in Alexandria were presumably just as snarky as we are, the modern world has given us a new place to express it: Twitter.

Librarians on Twitter

This is the focus Roz Warren’s Huffington Post article, “Librarians! Here’s a Little Snark to Brighten Your Day,” which focuses on the anonymous tweets of @LousyLibrarian. Here are two examples:

“Can you help me find the self-help books?” “I kind of feel like I shouldn’t.”

Storytime is every Monday and Wednesday at headache-thirty.

I myself have spent some time at work doing…um…research into sarcastic librarian Twitter feeds. Turns out, there are a lot of them. My personal favorite is @RantyLibrarian. Two examples:

Yes, we have books on Paleo. And yes, also Cross-Fit. And alcoholism, for me, because of patrons like you. #StopReading

Sure we carry #AynRand. She’s in the “You Should Make Better Life Decisions” section. #TerribleDecisions #StopReading

For a few more funny library themed Twitter accounts, see the bottom of this post.

We don’t all do this…but most of us do this

Many of these feeds are anonymous, of course. But I’ve never worked for a library where a certain amount of behind-the-scenes sarcasm wasn’t the norm. That we make jokes about library-life should surprise no one. Servers and bartenders do, too, and our jobs are similar in many ways— highly specialized, existing in every town and city, operating at every level of the economic spectrum, and most critically, finding out what you want and bringing it to you. But let’s not read too much into the service industry comparison. I’m quite sure every industry has a discrepancy between how its professionals act in front of customers and how they act with each other.

Hey, people are stressed. Humor helps.

Because the librarian stereotype varies between calmness and austerity, it doesn’t reflect the very real fact that librarian work can be stressful. Many of our patrons are stressed. A person who hasn’t used a computer in fifteen years but has to pay bills online, a homeless patron who needs medical services, a high schooler prepping for an AP exam, a person with severe mental disorders, or even just a well-meaning patron who’s obviously on a lot of speed—these people are stressed, and often create stressful situations for everyone around them. Sometimes our patrons are difficult to be help, or even be near. Sometimes they mistreat each other or us.

If we take part of our break to giggle at Twitter feeds that express what we’re feeling or provides some catharsis, that’s a lot better than sassing patrons at the reference desk.

Twitter feeds and hash tags (a small representative sample)

@RantyLibrarian

@BelleLibrary

@LousyLibrarian

@FakeLibStats

#libraryproblems

#librarianproblems

Also: #BookFace.

Resources:

American Library Association. “Programs for Millennials and more.” July 15, 2015.

Scott, Clare. “American Library Association Continues to Stress the Importance of Public Access to 3D Printing.” 3dprint.com, December 10, 2015.

Warren, Roz. “Librarians! Here’s a Little Snark to Brighten Your Day.” Huffpost Books, January 5, 2016.

The post Snark, Sarcasm, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Librarians first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Times They Are (Still) a-Changing’

Libraries of previous eras all had their dilemmas when it came to collection building. Comic books, music and movies, and potentially dangerous books have all been controversies de jour for your local library. More recently, whether or not to provide Internet access was an issue, and we still struggle with the best ways to carry e-books.

As long as libraries have the space and funding, they tend to include whatever this year’s controversial material is. Many are making that choice with self-published books. Though there are several practical issues such as funding (discussed recently by Public Library Online’s own Troy Lambert), this article is concerned with inclusion criteria for those libraries that choose to bring self-published materials into their space.

Writing Strong Policy

Including self-published works comes with many decisions, such as whether to include printed books, e-books, or both. The library will have to maintain a stringent inclusion policy that fits into their larger policies for selection of new material. This will make it easier to defend against people who say self-published books don’t belong, and also help deter authors of self-published materials the library doesn’t want.

Recognition of the Material

One easy way to add credibility to self-published books is to only accept those that are already recognized; for example, accepting e-books that are part of a publisher or e-book platform. If a patron can get the item on their Kindle, the library has less reason to say “no.” Contrariwise, if the library has an arrangement set up so that all books they adopt into their collection will also become available on an e-reading platform, it raises the stakes on inclusion decisions, forcing the library to be pickier.

Other criteria for determining the legitimacy of a self-published book can be even more simple. Is the author prominent in the local community? How many other books have they published? Is there a built-in readership for this book? These factors can all play into the selection process.

Vetting the Quality

A library may need to take extra steps to assess the quality of self-published books. Often genre books, such as romances or mysteries, are included solely on the basis of publisher recommendation or author. Without these pre-arranged tools, libraries may need to create a formal submission and acceptance policy that goes above and beyond their normal criteria, as well as task an employee or committee with making recommendations.

Is There a Reason We Shouldn’t Have Them?

Self-publishing has become a big industry. Certainly, it’s a way to provide a community access to the works of local authors, but there’s also a growing list of self-published authors who have attained success and popularity. Let’s not forget that Fifty Shades of Grey was originally self-published, and though it has had its own controversies in libraries, the vast majority of public libraries carry it and it circulates extremely well. Whether or not libraries choose to have a wide selection of self-published material and how far they wish to take their collections (consider Taken by the T-Rex and the other very NSFW Christie Sims writings , which have attained enough popularity to be available through BarnesAndNoble.com, be reviewed on Goodreads and are technically in the same genre as Fifty Shades) is something each library system will have to answer for itself. Soon, the question may not be whether your library should carry self-published material, but simply if, like Fifty Shades of Grey, it has the shelf space and can order them from Baker & Taylor.

If the goal of a library is to provide people access to information and books, and if self-published books fits all the criteria for inclusion, then the library should strongly consider carrying them. However, as much as we should have open policies relating to the items we accept, we also must be willing to do the work of curating our self-published collections. Space is limited, and every book we put on a shelf is a choice we’re making about how to use the space we have. If self-published books are coming to our libraries (and, really, why not?) we should be careful and considered in the way we choose them.

Sources:

Lambert, Troy. “Building a Bypass: Libraries, Amazon, and Indie Authors.” Public Libraries Online. December 08, 2015. Web. Accessed January 07, 2015.

Landgraf, Greg. “Solving the Self-Published Puzzle” American Libraries. October 30, 2015. Web. Accessed January 07, 2015.

Schwartz, Meredith. “Florida County Pulls Fifty Shades of Grey From Shelves.” May 11, 2012.,Web. Accessed January 07, 2015

The post Policies for Library Inclusion of Self-Published Works first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Official Use
Every librarian, researcher or graduate student knows the dual truisms of Wikipedia:

1) Wikipedia can’t be trusted.

2) We all trust Wikipedia anyway.

This doublethink is something we’ve managed, for the most part, to work around. For example, many use Wikipedia for personal questions but trust EBSCOhost for official reference work, or use Wikipedia for reference questions but only if the patron can’t see the screen. Whatever justification we’re using is an acknowledgment that we use Wikipedia at least much of the time.

Justifiable Use
Though officially I stress caution, I maintain Wikipedia is a fine resource. Whether using it for something that really matters (like a school essay) or just killing time reading about ramen, a reader should be careful.

The student essay example is the easiest to describe. Students are getting information from Wikipedia. If they’re looking up info for their 1984 essay, it doesn’t matter that they’ve been told Wikipedia is doubleplusungood, they’re using it anyway. They can’t be talked out of using it. But they can be taught to use it effectively.

I find that more important than the articles is Wikipedia’s reference section. The articles can only be judged on whether or not they’re written authoritatively, and if the reader is new to the topic it’s difficult to tell. I often tell students who are lost to start on Wikipedia, but instead of stopping there to pick through the reference section. Those references are more often than not from legitimate sources, and at least sources that (unlike Wikipedia) can be fairly judged for their reliability. More important, there are often a lot of them. For example: the Wikipedia page for ramen has twenty-five references. The novel 1984 has seventy-eight. Then there’s the “See also,” “further reading,” and “External links” sections. With all this in one place, Wikipedia is a great jumping off location for a deeper or broader search on a topic. Even if the article has mistakes, it’s still useful.

Wikipedia: Doubleplusgood
Even though most users rely on Wikipedia with virtually no oversight, it certainly isn’t flawless. It’s sometimes outright wrong, and sometimes weirdly useless (the article on the Potato Doughnuts explains, “Much like flour doughnuts, potato doughnuts are often accompanied with coffee.” Really, doughnuts with coffee? You don’t say, Wikipedia!). But all failures and jests aside, there’s a reason Wikipedia has been around for an internet eternity of fifteen years, and a reason English Wikipedia reached its five millionth page. Wikipedia has proven, mostly, to be reliable.

Ten years ago librarians, researchers, and academics spent a lot of time questioning the merits of Wikipedia as a resource. To do that in 2015 misses the point. Like it or not, Wikipedia is a resource. A high school student right now doesn’t remember a time when Wikipedia wasn’t one of their primary sources of information.  And with five million articles in English alone, few topics are so esoteric that they don’t have a page (to drive the point home: “Esoteric” has a Wikipedia page with 129 references). Those who haven’t accepted Wikipedia may cling to their solid points, but they might as well get on board. And using Wikipedia as a source for references is a good middle ground.

Links:

English Wikipedia surpasses five million articles

1984

Ramen

Potato Doughnut

Add Pic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_logo#/media/File:Paul_Stansifer_at_the_Wikimedia_Foundation_in_front_of_the_Wikipedia_Puzzle_Globe_Logo.jpg

The post (Still) Justifying Wikipedia first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Futures of Libraries 11.0 and Nina Simon
The Futures of Libraries 11.0 conference happened at San Francisco Public Library’s Main branch on September 29th. Keynote Speaker Nina Simon asked some very relevant questions based on her experience with experimental community engagement in the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.  Perhaps her most provocative point was made when she posed a question related to community interaction, asking, “How do you build a radically collaborative institution?”

Our Knowledge/Their Awareness
Many libraries are expanding services and trying to create more active community spaces. However, getting patrons and stakeholders to understand how our changes better serve them can be an uphill battle. Fundamentally, this is an issue in communication. The question libraries need to ask when considering new programing is: how do we get our communities and stakeholders to not only understand this is happening, but also to be active participants?

Programming Versus Collaboration
Libraries aren’t always successful at promoting awareness, let alone encouraging community members to collaborate with us. Putting up flyers and sending out emails (our two most typical modes of communicating new goings-on) are often insufficient. Relying on word of mouth, Twitter, or Facebook is great, but these are hardly  consistent systems, and let’s be honest: are any of our Facebook posts going viral? Simon discussed the way building larger programs isn’t just about expanding them (turning one staff member with fifteen patrons into two staff members with thirty patrons) but converting programming into platforms we can provide to large numbers of people. This got me thinking about the difference between those two ideas. Libraries are comfortable providing programs and inviting people to consume them. But programming is, by its nature, a little stiff. It’s . . . well . . . programmed. Platforms are meant to be more involved; they’re meant for use and interaction rather than consumption. Maybe if we try thinking about collaborating with patrons instead of providing them with programing we will be able to reach more of our communities. Maybe the way to increase the reach of our programs is to stop thinking only about programming.

Making It Work
Creating awareness isn’t the same as encouraging collaboration, and, as Simon pointed out at Futures, collaboration is important for expansion. Building platforms for collaboration is one way we can invite new community members inside and interact with communities in a new way. That’s something libraries should be trying to do.

LINKS:

Futures of Libraries 11.0

Santa Cruz Museum of Art and & History

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