I Am Appalled.

As a scholar, a former attorney, and of course, a Badger, I find the GOP's abusive FOIA request for Professor Cronin's emails completely inappropriate. So do some other folks. And I'm posting this here because it's something that should concern anyone who will one day work in the public sector; that includes a lot of us in 643.

Week 10 Reading and Class Reflection

Last week’s class

I think the one-shot workshop was a good warm-up for the webinars, since it really drove home some of the issues faced by both the presenters and the audience. As a presenter, I felt a little frustrated to have such a big topic and so little time, and was glad that we put together handouts for our audience, since those made me feel like the things that we didn’t get to discuss would be available to them if they wanted to learn more. In the scope of our workshop, the quizzes that we opened with weren’t very useful by themselves, but they would have been fantastic if we actually were going to do a series of workshops. For example, a lot of people thought that ideas were protected by copyright, and the implications of that alone would make a great workshop.

As an audience member, my favorite workshops were those that taught something. Having a specific, manageable lesson made a workshop feel more relevant and more streamlined than having a vaguer goal of raising awareness or discussing an issue without trying to resolve anything. Our own workshop fell more on the “raising awareness” side, which I feel bad about considering that I preferred more educational workshops as a participant. I think having a nice balance of prepared presentation and group discussion was a positive as well. And a final observation: as much as I love cupcakes, they are a terrible idea for a situation like this. They’re messy and take more concentration to eat than cookies do, and dealing with the wrappers and napkins distracted the audience a little. Next time, they get nothing but a Werthers.

AALL Webinar

This was one of the few AALL webinars available to members for free, and it purported to explain the resources available with an AALL membership, which I thought might be useful since I’ve only been a member since October, and I’m sure there is information on the website that I haven’t explored yet. Unfortunately, most of what I learned from the webinar was what NOT to do in our upcoming webinars. For example, the screen consisted entirely of slides throughout most of the presentation; although the presenters referred to handouts that pre-registered participants received, there was no way to access those if you viewed the webinar from the archive, as I did. There were two brief polls during the webinar, one asking how long the participants had been AALL members and one asking which social networking tools were used by participants. The last 4 minutes or so consisted of a Q and A session, but the questions asked weren’t visible to participants; only the presenters could see them, and they repeated them back. Basically, the webinar consisted of presenters reciting a script over a series of Powerpoint slides. Aside from those few minutes of questions and the polls, there was no interactivity; if I had set aside time to attend this when it was scheduled, I would have been pretty upset, since the lack of interactivity meant that it wouldn’t have been any more helpful live than it was archived. I think interactivity really is key in producing an engaging webinar, and I hope to include live chat that is open to everyone in the webinar that we produce. I think the most irritating thing about the AALL webinar, though, was that it didn’t teach me anything new; all of the information that they presented is easily available on the website, so there was no educational value for me. So besides interactivity, I think the most important ingredient in a successful webinar is a definable take-away for the participants; people are likely to enjoy this kind of experience more when they can walk away from it feeling better-informed than they were when they logged on.

This Week’s Readings

Speaking of things that didn’t teach me much of anything, the Montgomery article would probably have felt a lot more revelatory back in January, before I spent several months immersed in technology applications for librarianship. Even then, the tone would have seemed a little out of date; I’m surprised that this was published in 2010, since most of the technology described has been around for years. The painstakingly thorough explanation of Facebook and sentences like, “If you want to connect with a college student today, go online,” would have made this feel outdated several years ago. I guess the references to Twitter were more contemporary, but even that has been around for a while now. I appreciate the intentions behind the piece, and that it tried to explain the relevance of embedded librarianship, but I think that the intended audience for this is a different kind of librarian than the kind SI produces: someone much less comfortable with social networking and emerging technology than are my peers and I.

How People Learn Chapter 7 raised some great points about the importance of knowing your subject matter when you teach. I imagine that the public library people won’t have found much value in this (or did you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!) but I thought it highlighted an issue I’ve been thinking about lately: how can an academic librarian effectively teach students how to research a discipline in which the librarian hasn’t been thoroughly trained? I’m getting a lot out of SI, but there’s absolutely no way I’d be prepared to teach law students if I hadn’t gone through law school myself. Worse yet, if I were going to become a law librarian without going to law school, I doubt if I’d have any idea how much knowledge I didn’t have. You’d have to learn on the job, which would make you basically useless for the first year or two. Why on earth does anyone hire a law librarian without a JD? In a law firm, librarians hardly ever have JDs; even in academic law libraries, they’re helpful but not always required. How can those librarians initially provide great service without knowing not only research methods but also the structure of the law itself? And yet, somehow that system must be working. Law firms are all about the bottom line, so it stands to reason that they hire librarians from whom they can get the best research at the most reasonable cost. What am I missing here?

And I know it probably sounds like I’m patting myself on the back an awful lot, but it’s actually more like breathing a sigh of relief that I’m not grossly under-qualified for the career I’ve chosen. By the time I graduate from SI, I’ll have almost ten years of post-secondary education under my belt. It feels good to know that most of that time and money wasn’t wasted, and that it will make me a better librarian.

I got a LOT out of the American University article about embedded librarians, though, mostly because it challenged my perception of what an embedded librarian would be. I guess one of the nice things about law librarianship is that law libraries are almost always either within or right next to the law schools that they serve; as an academic law librarian, I’ll probably be lucky enough to be physically present with the students and faculty. The online component is less well-established, though; I think most academic law libraries now provide reference via chat, usually on Meebo, but the business librarian in this article seems to have struck a great balance, complementing his physical interactions with the business school with his virtual ones. This article actually gave me kind of a genius idea, maybe, but I’m not going to write about it because I don’t want to jinx it. If it pans out, though, I will let you know. J Anyway, this was definitely my favorite of the readings. The nice thing about getting near the end of the semester is that all the disparate practical skills and pieces of information we’ve been accumulating for the past several months are starting to come together to form a coherent picture; this article really made that clear to me.

Week 9 Class Reflection

No reading this week, right? I'm pretty sure that's what the syllabus said, but it seems like such a lucky break that I keep thinking I must have read it wrong. Not that I don't usually enjoy our readings-- I do!-- but we have a paper due for 500 on the 27th, and having a chance to get a head start on it this weekend is awesome.

Anyway, without readings to think about, I've got last week's book club, last week's class, and the preparation for the one-shot workshop to cover here.

Book Club

There were a lot of good things about the book club: everyone chose readings that were interesting, and all of those short fiction pieces were a nice change from the usual things that we read and discuss in SI. There were cookies, which is always a win. And we had some pretty active dialogues about some of the stories. I don't think most of us had much success pretending to be high school or junior high students, but we tried. Overall, it was a good exercise, and I had a fun time with it; I don't really think I learned anything that I'll apply to my future employment, but not everything has to be totally on-point to be worthwhile.

Class

I really enjoyed hearing Bobbi Newman speak. I noticed that some people seemed to think that her refusal to become vehement about either side of the debate was somehow dishonest or fence-sitting, but I appreciated it. I like that she gave us an honest view of the HCOD situation without letting emotional appeals cloud the issue. Also, I appreciated getting new information regarding some publishers' refusing to sell or lease e-books to libraries at all. I really hadn't known that was going on, and it definitely makes the HarperCollins vs. libraries face-off even less black and white than it originally seemed. I think that a well-reasoned response to the situation requires an acknowledgment of the merits of arguments on both sides, and I also think that such an approach is the first step toward a satisfactory resolution.

I've been doing a lot of research on negotiation strategies lately for a project, and two major things from that research came to mind here. First, studies show that in negotiation, the initial "anchor" that is set will have an effect on the outcome, even if one doesn't intend for that to happen. HarperCollins set the anchor at 26 loans, so prior to this, in order for libraries to feel like they'd "won," they would have to negotiate for more than 26 loans out of a single e-book. Thinking about other publishers who won't allow e-book lending at all, however, forces a reevaluation of the anchor-- the number 26 is no longer the biggest problem, and HarperCollins might not even be the real enemy.

The other negotiation-oriented issue that I was thinking about is that parties with a strong attachment to one side of an issue can be irrational and stubborn, and often believe that their position has greater merit than it actually has. Research shows, however, that if those people are forced to actively consider the opposing view, e.g., write a essay arguing for that view as strongly as possible and supporting the argument with evidence, their own positions become less polarized. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes allows you to compromise more effectively, which improves outcomes for everyone involved.

Basically, what I'm saying is that this HCOD issue is one that gets people pretty fired up, obviously, and it would be easy for the opposing sides to get so emotionally attached to their individual positions that they couldn't effectively negotiate a positive outcome. Bobbi's balanced perspective seemed to me like one that can help prevent that from happening.

Prep for this week's One-Shot Workshop

FUN. We're talking about copyright versus ethics, and putting together the information for the workshop has got me nerding out a little. I'm excited for the presentations, and to see what other groups have come up with. And I don't want to ruin the surprise, but I think there's a solid chance that there will be baked goods involved, so if you're in our group, save some room!

I Wholeheartedly Endorse This Plan.

Exam time just got awesome at Yale Law.

Week 8 Reading Reflection

I had actually never read the ALA’s code of ethics until today; strange, right? I think it’s one of those things that just slipped through the cracks. Honestly, I was a little arrogant when I approached it, thinking that there really couldn’t be much there. I think that’s grounded in my experience as an attorney; before you’re admitted to the bar, you have to pass an exam on professional responsibility, and you can take a full semester course in law school to prepare if you want to. I didn’t, but I did study for quite a while before taking the MPRE. So next to that, the ALA’s code of ethics actually is kind of lightweight, in terms of how much information there is to deal with. But even though it’s brief, I could see how there actually could be some significant ethical quandaries in librarianship.

For example, I remember the outcry when the Library of Congress blocked Wikileaks, and as I was reading I thought, “They must have updated this to make a point about the situation.” But then I saw the date, and realized that it had been this way when the Wikileaks incident occurred. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to balance your clearly-stated ethical principles as a librarian with your obligations as a government employee; I’m glad I’m not the one who had to make that judgment call. I think the code does a good job of addressing potential problems in general enough terms to make the principles broadly applicable. I also think the position on intellectual property is a little bit of a cop-out, since 17 words are hardly sufficient to give librarians a real idea how to deal with potential copyright issues, but that’s just my hang-up.

As for the reading on creating a library assignment workshop for university faculty, I don’t really have much to say. I loved that it was included here, and I definitely recognized some of my experiences as an undergrad and as a grad student among the descriptions of assignment types. I can see this being really useful when I start working as a librarian, and I’ve filed it away for then.

Since I’m one of the people who couldn’t make it to class last week, I obviously don’t have any thoughts on the book clubs so far. But I’ve gone over our readings for Monday’s book club, and I’m struck by how different the stories are; I’m looking forward to hearing what my classmates have to say about them.

HCOD

Oh boy.

So, I had already read quite a bit about this issue, but it had all been commentary and calls for boycotts. This time around, I read the official statements from HarperCollins and OverDrive, as well as discussions by a few blog authors on both sides of the issue. And… this is kind of a mess.

First of all, I think that people should probably stop invoking the First Sale Doctrine. It doesn’t work here; HarperCollins has been very careful to make it clear that e-books are licensed, not sold, which takes them out of the realm of the First Sale Doctrine. One of the reasons the FSD came into being was that a physical work is hard to track after its initial sale, so just as a matter of practical policy, it doesn’t make sense to let a copyright holder try to control a work after it’s purchased. But a license is another beast altogether; you can call this morally unjustifiable, but you simply cannot call it illegal.

Having said that, do I think that this stinks? Yes. I do, and not even for the sake of the library or libraries with which I’ll someday be affiliated; as Jason Griffey pointed out, the impact of this on academic libraries is likely to be negligible. But it will be rough for public libraries, and some of the possible repercussions and/or “solutions” (I’m looking at you, Martin Taylor) are unacceptable. Not to mention that posting this information on a site called “Library Love Fest” is so ridiculously ironic that it blows my mind.

So the only remaining question is, what do I think should happen here? Well, here comes capitalism to the rescue: voting with your wallet is a solid way to fight back. It might even do some good; at the very least, HarperCollins might bend a little as a way to pour oil on the choppy waters of public opinion. Putting the squeeze on public libraries is like kicking a puppy because it bit you with its tiny little puppy teeth; even if you think you’re in the right, no one else is going to agree with you. Unless they hate puppies.

Boycott aside, I think that to resolve this to everyone’s satisfaction, we really are going to have to stop treating e-books like traditional books. I know that some librarians argue that the unpredictable nature of the licensing will make it impossible to budget, and that’s a fair point. Eventually, I think this situation will go the way of so many research databases currently used in academic libraries—subscription services. Instead of licensing a single title and lending it 26 times before re-purchasing, I think that libraries will purchase a general license annually, covering a set number of “loans” of any of the books in the catalog. Maybe publishers will create different tiers within that catalog, adjusting price structure based on the contents of each tier. This would allow libraries to create a predictable annual budget while still letting publishers and authors profit from their work; authors’ profits could be determined in a manner similar to that used by the RIAA in their licensing.

This idea probably has lots of flaws; if it were perfect, someone in the industry would presumably have suggested it already. Or maybe it's been suggested lots of times, and I just haven't read enough to know it. HarperCollins definitely didn’t make the brightest move in the world here, and I don’t think the precise boundaries of their current position will stick. But as multiple bloggers noted, we can’t treat e-books like their paper brethren. The new medium demands a new approach to lending, and I hope one can be developed without too much ideological bloodshed.

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See, I promised last week that I’d make up for the short and crabby blog entry with a long one this week; I think it’s fair to say that I delivered (if anyone is even still reading at this point.)

Week 7 Reading and Class Reflection

This is definitely going to be my shortest blog post of the semester, because I don't really have anything to say right now. I'm in the group that's doing the 3/14 presentations, and I'd like to have those readings fresh in my mind for next week, so I'll be reading them next weekend. Could I read them now to blog about them, and then again next week to prepare for the discussion? Probably. But that doesn't seem very efficient, considering that I sometimes struggle to make it through the week's reading ONE time, never mind twice. So... I hope this doesn't sound lazy, but since my spring "break" consisted of approximately 40 hours of law library duties in D.C., punctuated by sleepless nights set to a soundtrack of world's most incompetent street musician trying to play the Sesame Street theme song on his saxophone, I'm just not in a place right now where I have time or energy to spare. That being said, even if spring break wasn't really restful or rejuvenating, it was an amazing learning experience, and I'm really glad I went. I'm just not going back to school with a whole new lease on life or anything.

And speaking of learning experiences, I also don't have anything to say about the one from last week's class, because there was so much unplowed snow that I couldn't get out of my driveway. You've got to love Michigan winters. D.C. absolutely had that going for it-- I got to wear flip flops! Outside!

So, I apologize if you were looking for some carefully considered ruminations on the book club readings or the guest speaker from last week; I promise a blog entry chock-full of reading reflections next week (although, again, none on this week's class since I won't be there tomorrow due to other academic obligations.)