SOCRATES: In the matter of just and unjust, fair and foul, good and evil, which are the subjects of our present consultation, ought we to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the opinion of the one man who has understanding, and whom we ought to fear and reverence more than all the rest of the world: and whom deserting we shall destroy and injure that principle in us which may be assumed to be improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice; is there not such a principle?

CRITO: Certainly, there is, Socrates.

      -Plato, Crito, 47c-d [trans. by Benjamin Jowett] [link]

It seems that Wikipedia is getting into trouble with the experts…again. As he explains in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education), Professor Timothy Messer-Kruse, an academic with years of experience researching the Haymarket Affair (i.e., an expert on the topic), ran into difficulty editing the Wikipedia article on the event because his suggested improvements constituted original research, contradicted the scholarly majority opinion, and lacked sufficient source attribution. Basically, Messer-Kruse attempted to correct commonly believed factual inaccuracies and was summarily shot-down.

Of course, the comments thread on the article exploded with academics crying foul against Wikipedia’s supposed disregard for truth and its supposed anti-intellectual populism. On the matter of truth, critics point to Wikipedia’s appeal to the “flash mob” of consensus instead of the authority of fact. On the matter of populism, scholars are peeved that Wikipedia gives non-experts the ability to rebuff experts. Messer-Kruse knows more about the Haymarket Affair than any of the editors on the Wikipedia page, so why should we give credence to their version of the facts over his? To the anti-Wikipedia crowd, this is yet more proof that Wikipedia is an inherently corrupt service. Then again, to other commentators, this is yet more proof that the expert is dead. The funny thing is, the ‘Haymarket Affair’ affair goes a long way in proving that both groups are wrong.

Consensus about the truth is not the same as truth by consensus

You see, Wikipedia does disregard truth. Wikipedia does give more weight to consensus. Wikipedia does allow non-experts to edit the experts. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. By its very design, Wikipedia has never been about adjudicating fact and fiction, or true from false. The epistemological project of Wikipedia is merely to report the facts and theories described by scholarly consensus, common knowledge, and reliable news sources. Put another way, Wikipedia is an exercise in descriptive epistemology (what people do believe); Wikipedia is not founded on normative epistemic principles (what people should believe). Actually, if anything, the whole farrago of criticism just goes to show that Wikipedia is surprisingly deferential to expertise, if not parasitic on it. The real problem is that many scholars are unable to accept this epistemological difference in the way Wikipedia works and they tend to treat it in inappropriate terms.

So, what are these descriptive epistemic norms? Wikipedia self-identifies three, the first of which is the core principle that “the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.” The intent of the verifiability criterion is to construct Wikipedia in such a way that (ideally) if Wikipedia is wrong about something, then that’s because the scholarly community is wrong about something (and not the other way around). In addition to the verifiability criterion, Wikipedia also includes two other core principles: ”neutral point of view (NPOV)” and “no original research (NOR)“, both of which are intended to minimize the impact of non-expertise. NPOV effectively prevents the scholarly consensus from being overshadowed by fringe theories and NOR ensures that Wikipedia editors are not placed in the position of peer-reviewers. Together, the core principles are an attempt to ensure that Wikipedia remains a place of descriptive, rather than normative, epistemology. Both the critics as well as certain naïve supporters fail to appreciate that the goal of Wikipedia is to provide a consensus about truth, not truth by consensus.

Sure, there are editors who don’t abide by the rules and there are many putative facts and theories that lack acceptably verifiable sources. There’s also the problem that novice researchers use Wikipedia uncritically and shallowly. But, it’s not like more traditional scholarship is safe as milk, as even a cursory glance at the recent state of scholarly communication will prove. Of course, all this gets lost in the proclamations that Wikipedia has fundamentally changed the nature of truth or, conversely, in the comments to Messer-Kruse’s article, as the anti-Wikipedians throw red herring after red herring but never land a substantive criticism (and there are plenty…but “it’s not peer-reviewed” is not one of them)

You start arguing that way, and the stink will never come off your hands.

What’s a non-expert to do?

So, Wikipedia is a descriptive project. But, where does that leave Messer-Kruse? Shouldn’t the Wikipedia article in question report his findings? Well, not necessarily, and I think this whole Messer-Kruse affair boils down to the more general problem of how non-experts are supposed to evaluate claims to expertise. This is a tricky problem: should novices accept expert testimony by fiat, or are there rational means for a non-expert to evaluate the experts? And it isn’t just tricky, it’s important; as Hume reminded us: “there is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men” (Enquiry, Book X, Part I). If not a majority, then at least a substantial portion of our claims to knowledge ultimately rest on the testimony of others (for example, I know that David Hume lived in Scotland purely based on the testimony of his biographers).

But, many times, when we seek truth we are met with false claims to expertise: quack doctors, mail-order doctorates, falsified research, and so on. So, how are laypersons to determine which experts are reporting the truth? This isn’t a new question either. As Plato discussed in Charmides (cf. 170a ff.), for a non-expert to adequately evaluate the claims of an expert, it would seem that the non-expert would have to know as much about the topic at hand as the expert…which would make the non-expert an expert. Awkward!

This is where Wikipedia’s descriptive epistemology comes into play. By merely reporting the findings of the scholarly community, Wikipedia editors can avoid the trap and push normative epistemic issues back to the scholarly community. For the Wikipedia editor, it is the job of the scholarly community to decide the facts; in most cases, the Wikipedia editor lacks sufficient expertise. So, when a scholar like Messer-Kruse goes to a layperson and presents findings that contradict scholarly consensus, the non-expert can either become an expert or defer to scholarly consensus.

Citation needed

Now, I’m not really that big of a fan of Wikipedia, if only because I hardly use it. I’m not usually after simple, descriptive facts like “X number of people died in the Haymarket Affair.” I’m generally after theory, which the looking-glass of Wikipedia has a more difficult time reflecting. It’s not that Wikipedia is wrong about theory, it’s just that it lacks the depth and breadth of coverage I want. But, that’s just because at a certain level scholarly consensus ends.

So, if you think Wikipedia is flawed because it won’t allow non-experts to defer to a single expert, then you don’t understand Wikipedia. If you think Wikipedia has meant the death of the expert or the end of truth, then you don’t understand Wikipedia. And, just in case you were wondering, I think the Haymarket Affair article has been edited to incorporate most of Messer-Kruse’s suggestions.^{[citation needed]}

If David Weinberger is to be believed, the Internet hasn’t just changed how we access information, it has altered the very meaning of ‘knowledge’. In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Weinberger claims that “for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument.” Supposedly, the networked, collaborative, and social nature of the Internet has changed our very understanding of knowledge to the point that knowledge is no longer tied to concepts of truth, objectivity, or certainty. Instead, as Weinberger argues in his recent book, Too Big to Know, “knowledge is a property of the network” (p. xiii). That is, the Internet has profoundly changed what it means to be a fact, to be true, or to be known. This book has been making the rounds among librarians, so I thought it might be a good idea to try to explain Weinberger’s argument and what librarians should–and should not–take away from it.

Rethinking knowledge…

Weinberger begins by challenging our assumptions about what it means to be a ‘fact’. For centuries, facts were “relatively sparse, painstakingly discovered, and used to prove theories” (p. 38). This “Age of Classic Facts” has been torn asunder by the Internet age, insofar as the vast network we’ve created allows us to quickly and easily find disagreement about truth. As Weinberger explains, “push on a fact hard enough, and you’ll find someone contradicting it. Try to use facts to ground an argument, and you’ll find links to those who disagree with you all the way down to the ground” (p. 41). Sure, there’s always been disagreement about what is and is not true, but the vast size and networked nature of the Internet magnifies contradictions and dissent to the extent that mutually incompatible “facts” can exist simultaneously, equally, and democratically.

All this, because the hyperlinked and social environment of the Internet has supplanted the historic dominance of paper as our means for recording information. As Weinberger repeatedly insists, paper is a medium beset with limitations: books are limited in size, limited in distribution, and relatively expensive to make. Thus, he argues, traditional knowledge is a product of physical limitations–an “accident of paper”–and

if your medium doesn’t easily allow you to correct mistakes, knowledge will tend to be carefully vetted. If it’s expensive to publish, then you create mechanisms that winnow out contenders. If you’re publishing on paper, you will create centralized locations where you amass books. The property of knowledge as a body of vetted works comes directly from the properties of paper. (p. 45)

Given that “facts” are the putative foundations for knowledge, when that nature of facts change, the nature of knowledge must change as well. We have developed a tendency to reduce the number of things we’re willing to count as “facts” only because we have been historically conditioned to think in terms of the limitations imposed by paper. Yet,

because the Internet shows us how much there is to know and how deeply we disagree about everything, our old strategy of knowing by reducing what there is to be known–knowledge that is shaped like the data-information-knowledge-wisdom pyramid–is badly adapted to the new ecology” (p. 81).

The bulk of Weinberger’s book pursues this line of thought. He touches on the epistemic benefits of collaboration (Chapter 4), that the Internet allows greater voice to a diversity of opinions (Chapter 5), how hyperlinking has changed the (previously linear) way we think (Chapter 6), how science is flourishing in the Internet age (Chapter 7), how the Internet has affected decision-making (Chapter 8), and best practices for encouraging the growth of the Internet in light of how knowledge has been changed (Chapter 9). It’s an ambitious project, and Weinberger has certainly opened the floor for a compelling dialogue. (And I do hope I’ve presented his argument fairly.)

…now that the facts aren’t the facts…

I think part of the reason librarians have gravitated towards this book is that we realize that the library is in a state of flux. The rise of the Internet has complicated how we seek information, how we communicate information, and how we preserve information. It’s only natural during a sea change to shake the foundations a little bit. And, given that the historical foundations of librarianship are rooted in the collection of recorded knowledge in the form of print books, Weinberger’s ideas must seem enticing, to say the least. However, we owe  it to ourselves as information and knowledge professionals to take a philosophically coherent approach towards the objects of our trade; and on this count, Weinberger’s book falls flat.

Evgeny Morozov has already pointed out that Too Big to Know is ultimately a “shallow” and “incurious” project. Indeed, Weinberger’s handling of epistemology is about as philosophically sloppy as you can get; he comes across as deeply confused about the difference between  (1) justified, true belief and (2) what is believed to be true and/or justified. The former is what philosophers generally mean by “knowledge” (Gettier cases aside). The latter is more properly the domain of the social sciences. It’s “what do we know” versus “what do we think we know” and it’s a distinction that philosophers have long appreciated…and sophists have long abused. When you factor in the numerous straw-man arguments against classical views of knowledge, truth, objectivity, and information, the book is clearly bad philosophy.

Then again, Weinberger is coming at philosophy from a postmodernist standpoint (his dissertation was on Heidegger), so some of his more egregious fallacies can be explained away as mere rhetorical devices. What’s more salient here is his avowed debt to postmodernism. Supposedly, the Internet has proved the truth of the familiar postmodern tropes that “all knowledge and experience is an interpretation”, that “interpretations are social”, and that “there is no privileged position” (p. 89 ff). I’m not going to rehash the many, many, many, many problems of postmodernism, though I would like to add that if Weinberger were correct, and ”the Internet showed us that the postmodernists were right” (p. 90), then we’re not really left with any reason to agree with his arguments in the first place. After all, Weinberger is only offering one interpretation among many and there is no disinterested position from which we can evaluate competing interpretations, no “experts” or objective description of the world in which to appeal. So, if Weinberger’s right, then I’m correct in asserting that he’s wrong. As Steven Poole wryly observed, the argument of Too Big to Know only proves that a “flashmob of Wikipedia editors [would] probably have done better in a few weeks.”

…experts are everywhere…

Yet, despite the philosophical incoherence of Weinberger’s discussion of the new world of knowledge, there’s still something valuable for librarians: namely, the questions that the book raises. Postmodern critiques have always been powerful and adept at exposing problems in our worldview. That their proposed analysis of those problems is usually inconsistent and incoherent shouldn’t detract from the importance of the problems raised. At the very least, Weinberger’s book does point to some interesting issues in which librarians are very well versed. Actually, if anything, the value of Too Big to Know is best found in the way it draws attention to issues that bring librarians to the forefront.

For example, Weinberger is concerned about knowledge creation in a networked and social world and his proposal is that we abandon (or at least heavily modify) things like fact, truth, reason, and objectivity. However, what he fails to realize is that we already have an entire field of study devoted to knowledge in a social world; it’s called social epistemology and it was first introduced by none other than Jesse Shera…a librarian. Not only is social epistemology a core part of library science, it also avoids the postmodern fallacies by properly focusing on the impact of social networks on justification, rather than focusing on truth as Weinberger does. For librarians, who are already heavily invested in social epistemology, most of Weinberger’s observations are already objects of study, even as his analysis falls short.

In a similar vein, Weinberger tackles the sheer magnitude of information accessible via the Internet. He would have us redefine ‘fact’ from the sparse, hard-won facts of the past, into “networked facts” relying on “Linked Data” (p. 39). Of course, wrestling with massive quantities of data is also par for the course in library science. We’ve always wrestled with massive quantities of information: linked data, metadata, classification, you name it. Librarians, better than anybody, understand that the problem isn’t that there are more facts (the number of facts is and has always been not just infinite but uncountable) or that facts are now more accessible. Most facts are mundane and uninteresting: my name is Lane, the Earth is bigger than a marble, 47 is greater than 46, 48 is greater than 47, and so on. No, the problem is not that facts have somehow changed. The problem is that most of them aren’t interesting. Sorting the interesting and pragmatically useful facts from the fluff is a chore that requires more than mere networking, it requires understanding of the kind practiced by librarians.

As a final example, Weinberger makes a big deal of the changing importance of expertise–how the democratic Web seemingly gives everyone equal voice and therefore equal value. He writes, the Internet’s “massiveness alone gives rise to new possibilities for expertise–that is, for groups of unrelated people to collectively figure something out, or to be a knowledge resource about a topic far too big for any individual expert” (p. 52). And, you know, crowdsourcing of the kind practiced by projects like Galaxy Zoo or Wikipedia really is a wonderful thing. Distributing research across thousands (or even millions) of individuals is one of the greatest achievements of the Internet. Of course, if you know anything about the Oxford English Dictionary or the Longitudinal Prize, it’s certainly not a new idea; the Internet just sped things up, it didn’t change the meaning of knowledge or expertise. By analogy, we wouldn’t say that parallel processing changed the nature of computer processors, it just allowed a new technique with new advantages. Librarians get this. In social epistemology, we study the role of expertise in knowledge creation. In reference and instruction, we teach strategies for identifying expertise. We have a robust and coherent account of how we should and should not evaluate information, whether it is from one or one million sources. It’s the information that matters, not necessarily who provided it or how many people were involved in speeding up the discovery process.

…and the smartest person in the room is the room.

So, by all means read Too Big to Know; it raises important questions that need to be discussed in the Internet Age. Just don’t put much stock in Weinberger’s analysis; it’s inconsistent, incoherent, and purely rhetorical. Instead, read the book as a librarian. As librarians, we’ve been discussing these issues for centuries and we have robust and pragmatically useful means for answering them. Remember, we’re not about “books”, we never have been: we’re about information. Maybe Too Big to Know is a good reminder of that. If the Internet has changed anything, it has changed the scope of our mission and the importance of our craft. And both for the better.

EDIT: For a more philosophically robust and coherent take on knowledge creation in the Internet Age, take a look at Michael Nielsen’s Reinventing Discovery (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2012). 

On Sunday, I had an interesting exchange on Twitter with none other than Duke professor and HASTAC founder Cathy Davidson. At issue was the tone of her recent blog post, “How Digital Humanists Can Lead Us to National Digital Literacy.” I wasn’t going to write anything about it, but you know, it’s been bugging me a little bit. Allow me to quote her introduction to the post…

“Here’s the entrance exam question for 21st century literacy:

QUESTION: If SOPA/PIPA had been passed into U.S. law in 2002, would Wikipedia exist today? If either law had passed in 2012, would Wikipedia exist in 2022? Why or why not? Discuss.

If you cannot answer that question, you are not literate nor are you in control of your life—even if you think you are.” [my emphasis]

Now, I don’t know about you, but when a leading scholar (the leading scholar?) in the digital humanities argues that a nuanced understanding of SOPA and PIPA are necessary conditions for both literacy and personal autonomy, it strikes me as hyperbolic at best, and elitist and condescending at worst. I, for one, have no idea what Wikipedia would be like in 2022 if SOPA had passed. Apparently, I’m an illiterate slave to the system. Surely, Davidson doesn’t really think that personal autonomy is a function of how Web-savvy we are. Well, I posed the question and she responded: ”If we live our lives on the Web and don’t understand its positives AND negatives, we do not control our lives. All of us.” This is equivalent to saying that if we do control our lives, then either we don’t live on the Web or we do understand the positives and negatives of the Web…or both (which is weird).

Logic aside, I have trouble getting behind the belief that the personal autonomy (i.e., the ability to make informed, rational decisions free from coercion) of Web users is predicated on their ability to understand specific, Internet-related legislation. Now, maybe I could see it if Chris Dodd succeeded in becoming a Sith Lord and really could control our minds, but that seems unlikely. Tying autonomy to specific domain knowledge is just patently absurd. Can you imagine someone arguing that if you vote and you don’t understand Citizens United, or if you’re gay and don’t understand the implications of the Defense of Marriage Act, then you’re illiterate and have no control over your life? It’s not just absurd; it’s bordering on offensive.

"Can someone please tell me what this fortune cookie says?"

Hyperbole aside, Davidson goes on to explain that most of us can’t answer the question posed, because most of us are “inheritors and perpetrators” of an educational system rooted in misguided Industrial Age theories about labor, consumption, and social progress (here’s Ken Robinson on the issue). As it turns out, if you’re an educator, you are actively participating in an antiquated educational system that favors the elite and is designed solely to prepare the rest of us for the workforce. Oh yeah, and don’t forget, you have no control over your life…that is, “unless you happen to be a Digital Humanist” [original emphasis]. That’s right. According to Davidson, you are “inheritors and perpetrators” of a corrupt system “unless you happen to be a Digital Humanist.” Suck it, physicists, philosophers, engineers, art historians, and the rest of you: your only option is to join the Digital Humanities.

Now, I’ve got no problem with the Digital Humanities. As defined by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, ‘Digital Humanities’ refers to:

“a nexus of fields within which scholars use computing technologies to investigate the kinds of questions that are traditional to the humanities, or…ask traditional kinds of humanities-oriented questions about computing technologies.”

This is a great  field of study. An important field of study. In fact, I admit that a lot of my work falls under this definition. Sure, I’m baffled by the silliness of some of the Postmodernism 2.0 stuff like “Critical Code Studies”, “The Ethno-Hermeneutics of jQuery” or “Postcolonial Client-Server Architecture”. But, that’s just me objecting to a certain methodology, not to the importance of studying the digital as a part of the humanities. Like I said, I’ve got no problem with the Digital Humanities.

However, when a leading scholar like Davidson makes patronizing and divisive comments to the effect that if you don’t get SOPA, then you “do not control your life”, and that you’re perpetrating a broken system “unless you are a Digital Humanist”, well, something is amiss. Yes, as Web users, we should learn more about SOPA and its effects. Yes, as educators, we should think carefully about educational reform for the 21st Century. But one thing we should not do is hold SOPA and education reform up as litmus tests for literacy, autonomy, and effectiveness as teachers.

So, what do you think? Should familiarity with SOPA be used to measure literacy and autonomy? Are educators outside of the digital humanities perpetrators of a corrupted system? Am I just being overly sensitive?

Back in October, the geeks were crapping their collective shorts in anger at some ill-advised changes coming out of Mountain View. If you’ll recall, Google tweaked Reader and rolled out some crappy apps in what was called the week Google messed up. “We’re leaving Google!” the geeks proclaimed. This sort of “you changed your service, so I’m going elsewhere” bloviating is rather common with social media, so I decided to call the bluff: is it really possible to quit Google? Well, for the past 84 days I’ve been Google-free as part of my Life after Google experiment. That’s twelve weeks without using Google search or any other Google products. I am (almost) completely Google free*…and what an 84 days it’s been.

Since I started this experiment, Google has (arguably) violated anti-trust statutes with a social overhaul of the Google search algorithm, and, just this week, Google announced sweeping changes to privacy across the gamut of Google products and services. And I’m talking about some serious changes to privacy. Like, highway rest area level privacy concerns (See Fig. 1) . Google has effectively rewritten their privacy policies with the succinct, yet catchy, “LOL privacy WUT?!” As an official Google mouthpiece explains it, “our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services.” This isn’t a little thing. Did you watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On on YouTube? Now you’ve got Kraft Shells & Cheese ads in your search results. Did your creepy uncle email you more Obama birth certificate crap? Great! Now you’ve got Google+ suggesting Michelle Bachmann as a friend. Did you search for Intelligent Design websites while researching scientific literacy? Congrats! I hope you like those bat-shit crazy Kirk Cameron videos that YouTube will keep suggesting. By their own admission, Google wants to “treat you as a single user across all our products.” It’s been pointed out that this really isn’t much different from what companies like Facebook and Yahoo already do. The problem is that that’s not how we want to use Google.

Fig. 1: Google and you.

You see, Google wants to take the social media thunder from Facebook but Google forgets that we didn’t start using Google because we wanted to be social; we started Googling because we wanted the best search results. Facebook has always been about integrated services: we knew that the videos we watched, posts we wrote, and games we played were being tracked to enhance the immersive experience (or at least we should have known). Facebook’s “privacy” agreement has always had scare quotes. But, Google has grown by accretion, slowly purchasing wildly disparate services (like YouTube and Picnik) and developing one-off  enhancements in the now defunct Google Labs. We’ve been accustomed to using these services as distinct–almost siloed–entities united by a common Google username and password. But, now, in pursuit of likes, pokes, and +1s, Google has abruptly changed focus. Services are being killed off, interfaces are being redesigned, search results are being impacted, privacy agreements are being rewritten, and the passive voice is being abused in this sentence. At one point in time, search engines like Yahoo, Altavista, and (later) Google were our alternative to walled gardens like AOL and (later) Facebook. Not anymore. As was recently argued on Lifehacker, Google is Facebook is AOL: Google is heading straight towards a walled garden. Next thing you know, Google will be buying out CD manufacturing plants.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with yet another post analyzing Google’s many problems. (At least not today…I’ve got a draft post that pits David Weinberger and Evgeny Morozov against each other in an epic battle of Google-related derp.) Instead, I want to tell you that you can actually survive fairly well without Google. If you’ll indulge me, here is a quick rundown of what I feel are outstanding alternatives to popular Google products. First, the list:

Desktop Web Browsing: Maxthon or Iron

If you’re like me, you fell in love with Google Chrome and never looked back. Fast, stable, and secure, Chrome set the bar for browsers and recently surpassed Firefox in market share. Of course, there’s also the pesky little issue of Chrome tracking your online behavior by default. If you really want to stick with Chrome, at least do yourself a favor and download the Keep My Opt-Outs extension. If you want something that looks like Chrome, but isn’t, I recommend downloading SRWare’s Iron browser, which is simply a version of Chromium without any of the privacy-related problems. Another option is the Maxthon browser: the best browser you’ve never heard of. Not only does Maxthon run the Webkit engine (like Chrome and Safari), but it also runs a Trident engine like Internet Explorer. What does that mean? Well, for starters, you get the same speed and stability of Chrome, but when you run into one of those irritating sites that only works in Internet Explorer, Maxthon can handle it. This is big. How many of you keep an Internet Explorer icon on your desktop just to access your library’s Sharepoint or Exchange servers? To boot, Maxthon offers a built in RSS reader, customizable skins, and tons of interesting tweaks. Actually, the only downside to Maxthon is that it may offer too much customization.

Mobile Web Browsing: Maxthon or Opera

The fact that the mobile browser on Android phones tracks my location is creepy as hell. So, I recommend downloading either Opera Mini or the Maxthon mobile browser. Both offer more options than Google’s browser, both are significantly faster than the native browser, and both sync with their desktop counterparts.

Web-based RSS Feed Reader: Netvibes

I’ve covered Netvibes before, so I won’t spend much time, but it’s a really cool alternative to Reader. You can use it in the exact same way if you’d like, but the personalization options are where it shines. For example, I’ve got my webcomics feeds set to display in a mosaic/thumbnail view. Awesome.

Search: DuckDuckGo, Wolfram Alpha, and Yahoo/Bing

If you stop and think about how you really use search engines, I bet you’re like me: you don’t use the basic Google web search for research. Instead, 90% of your Googling is for something you already know. Here’s an example: A few weeks ago, Khristy and I were cycling through the new releases on OnDemand and trying to figure out what to watch. When we came to a movie we thought might be interesting, I quickly Googled DuckDuckGo‘ed it and I knew what I wanted: the page on Rotten Tomatoes, the IMDb page, and maybe the Wikipedia article on the movie. In short, I was using the search engine as a federated search across websites I would otherwise have in my bookmarks folder. I wasn’t researching the films. I was searching for links to websites I already knew about and, as I found out a year ago, pretty much all of the major search engines will give you the exact same results for 90% of your searching, albeit in a slightly different order. Google has no monopoly on using search engines as shortcuts. (Incidentally, we wound up watching Water for Elephants, a surprisingly good period drama with excellent camerawork by Rodrigo Prieto and a surprisingly unsparkly Robert Pattinson.)

What Google does have a monopoly on is tracking your search behavior. So, go with a safe alternative like DuckDuckGo that doesn’t filter your results based on some sketchy advertising profile and doesn’t track you around. Try it out for a week or two and you might be surprised at the quality of results. Even better, if you’ve switched to Maxthon, you can manage, search, and compare multiple search engines simultaneously with the browser’s multisearch feature. (It’s really cool. Truest me.)

Image Search: Yahoo Images

I covered this before, too, but Google’s image search is god awful. Really. What’s worse, they’ve removed the ability to filter by license, so if you’re looking for Creative Commons works, you’re out of luck. However, Yahoo! Image Search more than makes up for Google’s failures. Not only is there a prominent way to filter by license, but Yahoo! owns Flickr and it’s six billion photographs.

Office Suite: Office Web Apps

This one is tricky. Google Docs is great, and I’ll probably go back if only because everyone at work uses Google Docs. But, Microsoft’s Office Web Apps is pretty amazing (and both Maxthon and Opera will get you around any Internet Explorer requirements). Basically, Web Apps a suite of browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that seamlessly integrate with your desktop versions. And you get 25 gigabytes of free cloud storage. There is a bit of a learning curve, but, then again, there was with Google Docs, too.

Life after Google

So, there you have it. There are viable alternatives to Google. Now, we can nitpick just how good these alternatives really are and, truthfully, Google’s services really are pretty spectacular. If anything, what this experiment shows is that we should think twice about using Google by default. Think about it, from search to video to email to photos and beyond, most people instinctively go the Google route. If anything, Google is like the Wal-Mart of the Internet. Great prices, great selection, great locations. Yeah, they’ve got their problems, but they’re just so danged convenient. And just as Wal-Mart has defined the shopping experience to the exclusion of local and independent retailers, so to does Google define the Web experience to the exclusion of nifty alternatives. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Honestly, going forward, I’ll be using Google again…and frequently I might add. But, it won’t be by default. Remember, the Internet is a big place: you have options.

(* There are some Google services for which I simply couldn’t find a comparable alternative. YouTube is a good example. Likewise, Google Books is an excellent research tool. I’ve also kept my GMail account active, though it’s only used for setting up and managing accounts on other services…I’ve got Exchange at work and friends/family just use Facebook and Twitter.)

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while: since I quit using Google, I’ve spent most of my time in the fetal position under my desk. I’ll post an update on Google really soon, I promise, but in the meantime…

Hoo-boy! Have I got a job for you! You may remember that the library at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga recently hired two new librarian positions. Well, we’re at it again, and this time we’re looking for a Web Design & Instruction Librarian. You can read through the ad yourself (here’s the detailed description), but it goes something like this. We’re looking for a forward-thinking librarian to help redesign and then manage our website and content management systems, as well as play an active role in our award-winning instruction program (multiple PRIMO databases and last year’s ACRL President’s Program Innovation Award, if you must ask). Web-development + library instruction = this job.*

The job ad explains what you’d be doing, but I’d also like to point out that you’d be joining a kick-ass team of librarians. Our librarians are well-established presences at national and international conferences; ALA, ACRL, Internet Librarian, LOEX, CIL, Brick and Click, you name it and we’re presenting. We’re also at the forefront of some pretty cool new initiatives. Library Boing Boing? That’s our guy. OCLC’s Web-Scale Management Services? That’s us, too. Trust me, if you want to get creative or pursue novel initiatives, this is the place to be.

What’s that? You’re worried that a gun rack won’t fit in your Prius and you don’t know how to make moonshine? Well, don’t worry, Chattanooga is actually a remarkably progressive city. Did you know that the New York Times recently placed Chattanooga in it’s top 45 travel destinations in the world? (Granted, we kind of have an in) Chattanooga is also routinely ranked as one of the most livable cities in the U.S., due in no small part to a great housing market, a nationally respected art scene, a killer restaurant scene (weighted towards locavorism), the nation’s fastest Internet speeds, internationally renowned outdoor activities, and environmentalism in your face (from the solar farm at the airport to the electric-car recharging stations to more LEED buildings than you can shake a sustainably harvested stick at). What’s not to love? We’re like a smaller version of Portland…with fewer hipsters and more fried chicken.

"I use eleven herbs and spices...you've probably never heard of them."

So…ummm…yeah. Come work at UTC. Who knows, in a few months you could have the office right next to mine!

*And, on a personal note, I want to give a big shout-out to the person you’d be following: Caitlin Shanley, who recently left us for a sweet job at Penn. If you apply for this job and are even half as awesome as Caitlin, I know you’ll be hired. (And, Shanley, if you’re reading this, I tried to send you a care package of your favorite things, but my barbecue pit died out before I could catch a squirrel. Sorry.)

Image by korephotos on Flickr

Recently, David Lankes has argued that

librarians must be political. That is they must be aware of politics, aid their members in political pursuits, and actively participate in the political process.

With the recent media attention given to the various Occupy Movement libraries, Lankes’s sentiment seems to fit in with the current  library zeitgeist. Reading is empowerment! Knowledge is power! Libraries are the arsenal of democracy! (That last one may be a mixed metaphor.) And, you know, there’s something to be said for approaching librarianship as a political activity. It’s compelling to think of libraries as change-agents and of librarians as some sort of 21st Century salonnières fomenting revolution in the streets. An informed public is necessary in a flourishing, progressive republic and, as a nexus for information, libraries serve a vital political role. But, it’s one thing for libraries to serve a valuable socio-politcal function (which they certainly do), and quite another thing to treat librarianship as inherently political.

It should be noted that Lankes is advocating a political, not partisan, librarianship, and he is careful to distinguish the two. Political librarianship is most certainly not about picking teams. Instead, it is about playing an active role in the political process as advocates for informed and open political participation. Or, at least, that’s part of it. Lankes gives three criteria for political librarianship: the political librarian “must be aware of politics, aid their members in political pursuits, and actively participate in the political process.” These three criteria are intended to be guided by the principles of fairness, neutrality, and intellectual honesty. It certainly sounds compelling, so, what’s the problem? Well, we can look at two overarching issues, one descriptive and one normative. First, it isn’t clear that librarians are inherently political already and, second, it isn’t clear that they should be political, either.

Is librarianship political?

Two things are offered in proof of the political nature of librarianship: that “libraries are enmeshed into the larger concept of democracy” and that librarians empower their community members as informed political participants. As to the former, it’s true that libraries play in enormously influential and important role in society as places where any and all citizens are free to access trustworthy information. I’m not even going to waste your time proving it because, really, the sociopolitical value of the library is self-evident.  The problem is that what is true of the library is not necessarily true of the librarian, and vice-versa. Lankes argues that “libraries are political entities, and librarians are political creatures.” But, this common type of reasoning is also known as a fallacy of division, and though some librarians may, in fact, be political creatures, that’s not because libraries are political institutions. Put another way, the fact that libraries are political by nature does not by itself entail that librarians are political by nature. Libraries are made of brick and mortar, but that doesn’t mean librarians are. Your library has a $5 million budget, but that doesn’t mean that you do. Libraries have a role in the political process, but that doesn’t prove that librarians do.

Moreover, the mere fact that librarians (sometimes) empower political participation is insufficient evidence that we are already political activists. The problem here is that the vast majority of what we do has nothing to do with political empowerment. From helping a student find sources for a paper on King Lear, to helping a patron cite a source in APA, to locating the Chilton Guide for an ’84 Dodge Aries, the majority of our work is apolitical. Children’s libraries have nothing to do with politics, nor should they, ElmoPAC be damned. Readers’ advisory can’t always end with Das Kapital.  And even though the Hewlett-Packard lobbyists are a powerful force, clearing another damned printer jam is not a political statement.

"Load Tray 3...For Great Justice!"

Yes, sometimes we help patrons find information about how to write a grant for government funding, write a petition to city council, or understand a current policy debate (to name just a few things I’ve done in the past month). But, this no more makes me inherently political than today’s research consultation with a chemistry student makes me inherently a chemist. Librarians are not defined by the nature of the questions they are asked. In fact, even if…hold up…what’s that tapping? Are you furiously typing an objection? Are you about to argue that “EVERYTHING is political!” Are you going to tell me that every little thing we do to improve the library or to help educate our students is a means of empowering them as more knowledgeable political actors, hence a political activity? Sorry, dude or dudette, it’s just not true. If we take the “everything is political” angle, we only cheapen the meaning of the word “political” to the point where it becomes a useless, watered-down abstraction. Not everything is political. Claiming that everything from early childhood literacy programming to e-book lending is “political” doesn’t add anything to the conversation. Besides, I have good evidence that everything is philosophy instead. (For an excellent rebuttal of the “everything is political” line of thinking in academia, check out this article by Stanley Fish.)

So, librarianship is not inherently a political profession. Sure, there are politically active librarians, and that’s a good thing. But, there are also bridge-playing librarians, and we can’t say that librarianship is inherently about playing bridge. Of course, if librarianship is not already political, perhaps it should be…

Image by kimsworldofart on Flickr

Should librarianship be political?

I think the real question is whether librarians should be political, if we aren’t already. Should we ”be aware of politics, aid [our] members in political pursuits, and actively participate in the political process”? Well, the first is incontestable. Librarians should be aware of a lot of things, from politics to business to culture to technology and more. But, what about the other two? I think the answer is a lot less clear.

For all of the accolades poured upon the People’s Library at Occupy Wall Street (and rightly so, I might add), one thing is certain: they didn’t have official library sponsorship. You see, there’s this little thing called the Hatch Act that places limits on the political activities of federal employees. Most states have drafted similar restrictions and you can read a nice little rundown of librarians and political speech in this handy article from the ALA. Apparently, there are limits to using taxpayer-funded resources for political activities. Shocking, right?! I mean, who knew!? Who would have ever guessed that you probably can’t use public resources to “actively participate in the political process”? Sure, you absolutely can (and should) be politically active as a citizen. We just can’t do it in an official capacity unless the nature of the political activity falls under one of the narrowly circumscribed, acceptable venues for libraries (i.e., library advocacy, though Lankes explicitly argues that he is talking about more than “politics related directly to the library”). Put another way, we absolutely should be advocates for nuanced and informed political expression, but the duty to take an active role in the political process arises because we are citizens, not because we are librarians. Every citizen has the same duty to abide by intellectual honesty and fairness, librarian or not.

Well, if being politically aware is a gimme, and our duty to participate in politics isn’t really a duty of librarianship, then what about the idea of aiding patrons in political pursuits? I guess it depends on how much we aid our patrons. In one sense, aiding patrons in political pursuits entails that we provide multiple points of view on controversial subjects, we adhere to principles of intellectual honesty, and we serve all patrons who need help, without judgment. Basically, it’s about being advocates for intellectual freedom. The thing is, we’re supposed to be advocates for intellectual honesty regardless of how political we are. We’re supposed to help patrons fairly and honestly no matter what their needs are. It’s even written in the danged Library Bill of Rights: “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.” But if, on the other hand, aiding patrons in political pursuits entails going above and beyond how we help with other information needs, then it’s unclear (1) how we’re supposed to justify giving more attention to political needs than to other patron needs and (2) how we’re supposed to do that in light of the restrictions on campaigning, protesting, circulating petitions, and other political activities.

At this point I can’t see any reason to embrace a political librarianship. Either ‘political’ is interpreted to mean “fair, honest, offering multiple viewpoints, etc.”, in which case that’s no different from what we’ve always been obligated to do. Or, ‘political’ is interpreted in a stronger sense, meaning “a duty to actively engage in political activities” in which case we’ll need to make a librarian exception to the various laws following the Hatch Act, and we’ll need to explain how that duty is peculiar to librarianship and not founded in the more properly basic citizenship. Or, we could go with door number three…

ZONKED!

Apolitical librarianship

I’m just going to throw this out there: rather than being political, the values inherent in librarianship are apolitical. The library qua institution has political power precisely because it is apolitical, it “rises above the fray”, so to speak. I think Andromeda Yelton hit the nail on the head when she recently wrote that the power of libraries is in their role as “safe spaces” for questioning political authority and testing new ideas. And the librarians working in those safe spaces are already prohibited (both morally and legally) from political involvement. As Wayne Bivens-Tatum explains in a great post on the subject of politicized reference questions, “librar­i­ans aren’t supposed to take sides in a debate when help­ing read­ers find infor­ma­tion, or refuse to help find infor­ma­tion on top­ics they disagree with.” And that includes taking the patron’s or reader’s side.  Actually, now that I think about, that just sounds like the fairness and intellectual honesty that supposedly makes librarians necessary in politics. Hmmm…librarianship is political because it’s apolitical? Sounds like a walking contradiction to me (cue the Green Day).

So, “political librarianship” is either inconsistent, incoherent, redundant, or self-contradictory. We can’t be political librarians, but we can politically active citizens who are also librarians. Sorry it took 1700 words to say it; I tend to ramble sometimes. Anyway, I’d love to hear what you think. Is there a way to be a political librarian in the strong sense? Should we show preference to political needs over other information needs? Is librarianship fundamentally about speaking truth to power? Go ahead and cast your ballot. (Just don’t do it from the reference desk.)

By Todd Huffman on Flickr

The blog has been quiet for a few weeks, but don’t think I’ve forgotten about my little Life after Google project. It’s now been exactly one month without Google and the nausea and vomiting have mostly subsided, though I still wake up in a cold-sweat at times.

If you’ll recall, the parameters of the experiment require that I avoid Google and Google-related products to the best of my ability, with exceptions for (1) minimal use of GMail, (2) using Google to illustrate a point, and (3) when it would interfere with my abilities as a reference librarian. So far, I’m pleased to say that I have barely entered the world of Google at all. Here are three permanent changes I’ve made; three alternatives to Google that I’ll be sticking with.

Getting rid of Chrome

I thought that not using Chrome would be the most difficult thing. I mean, it’s such a fast browser. Hell, it just overtook Firefox in worldwide usage. Thankfully, there are a lot of good alternatives out there. I’ve been having a lot of fun with Opera, it is incredibly fast, though it is incredibly resource-intensive, so I can only really use it on my work computer. At home, with only 2Gb of RAM it can start to crawl. I’ve always kept Firefox on standby, but even it can feel a bit bloated at times.

Anyway, I love the Google Chrome browsing experience so much that I decided to see what other Webkit-based browsers are out there. Thankfully, there are a ton. Comodo Dragon looks almost exactly like Chrome, though with better security and no Google tracking. Maxthon is incredibly popular in Asia and it offers the added bonuses of customizable skins, a built-in feed-reader, built-in notepad, mouse gestures, and more. It even runs a Trident engine in the background for when you run into those old Microsoft web-pages that only work in Internet Explorer. Finally, I just downloaded SRWare Iron, another Chrome lookalike that gets rid of all that pesky tracking. I figure I’ll go back and forth between Comodo Dragon, Maxthon, and Opera before settling on one. Chrome has officially been uninstalled from my computer.

So long Reader

I had come to rely on Reader as my de facto homepage; probably 75% of my time online was spent in Reader. Thankfully, Netvibes offers a great alternative. And it really is great. Netvibes works almost exactly the same as Reader, right down to the same keyboard shortcuts (I need my J and K keys to work). What’s more, Netvibes offers a fairly substantial array of viewing options, including a mosaic view, a widget view, and more, customizable to the folder level. Right now I’ve got my news-oriented folders set to a standard Reader-style view, and my photography and art folders set to a mosaic view…very nice. Of course, there are a few downsides. It’s a bit slower than Reader, both in terms of time to load the page and time between refreshing feeds. This isn’t a problem on a laptop or desktop, but the mobile version takes forever to load. Hopefully they’ll work on that.

Finding Photos

I was invited to speak in New York this past weekend, and I was sure that it would be a pain finding good backgrounds for my slides without the help of Google Images . But, surprise, surprise, Google Image Search is worse than useless compared to Yahoo’s Image search, and for one simple reason: Flickr. Yahoo owns Flickr and image searches tend to come out of Flickr first and foremost. What’s more, you can filter by license and search solely Creative Commons works. Google used to allow that, but not any more (as far as I can tell). Basically, Yahoo Image Search is the best way to search Flickr, and whether I’m designing slides for a presentation, digital displays for the library, or other marketing “stuff”, Flickr is the place to go.

The rest

As to the rest, there are some hits and misses. It’s hard not using Google Maps and I admit that I used Maps on my phone once or twice. There are a few lingering committee projects I have going in Google Docs. As photos go, I may go back to Picasa, because the Windows media gallery is simply awful. There are other hangups, to be sure, and I’ll blog about them later, if I make it another month.

by mikeandanna on Flickr

If you’ve taught any library instruction sessions over the past few years, you’ve probably had that helpful student who points out that “Google has everything!” I had That Guy this past Friday and he wouldn’t back down: library instruction is unnecessary because he can get everything he needs using Google and Google Scholar. “I don’t really need to use the library ’cause it’s all in Google anyway,” he said. Maybe you’ve had the same student in a recent class? Maybe you’ve had a faculty member or administrative-type express the same sentiment? Maybe you’ve given in to your anger and lashed out in a cardigan-bedecked fury, leaving behind a room of broken bodies covered in cat dander? Maybe not, but whatever the case, it sure is annoying, isn’t it?

So, how do we counter the popular belief that everything is in Google? Sure, we can talk about credibility, about the cost of subscriptions, about search engine optimization, about the difference between the Surface Web and the Deep Web…I’m sure you have approximately ninety bajillion responses to the Bill Mahers of the world. But you know what sticks? Numbers. If you really want to drive the point home that Google is only a moderately helpful research tool, why not quickly show your students that, far from being “everything”, a Google search returns fewer articles than a fairly standard library database? It goes like this…

When Friday’s student insisted that Google has “everything”, I decided to call him on his bluff. I looked him straight in the eye and coolly said, “Boy, I’m ’bout *this close* to smacking the taste out your mouth.” And, out loud, I said, “Want to put that to a test? What’s your topic?” “Alcoholism,” he replied. Now, this was the part of class before we talk about narrowing topics, so I indulged him in his overly broad topic. I pointed down the middle of the room and asked everyone on the left side of the room to go to Google and look up “alcoholism”. The students on the right were to go to the rather ordinary Academic OneFile database and do the same, limiting just to full-text articles. Here’s a screen capture from Google:

A regular Google search for the term "alcoholism"

Notice, there are supposedly 5.07 million articles available. Wow. What does Academic OneFile have in full-text?

Academic OneFile keyword, full-text search for "alcoholism"

Academic OneFile has  5,272 academic journal articles, 3,531 magazine articles, 11,875 news articles, and 669 other sources at 8:13 p.m. on November 7, 2011. That’s a rather paltry grand total of just over 21,000 full-text articles. Crap. The Google kids are right: Google has everything! Needless to say, the students on the left felt vindicated…until I asked them to scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the next page of results. And then the next page. And the next page. On the smartboards in the front of the room I advanced through Google’s results ten at a time until we all got to this:

Page 87 of Google search for "alcoholism" at 8:16p.m., 11/07/11

868 web pages. That’s it. Adding the omitted results brings it to an even 1,000. Now, about that 5.07 million? Maybe Google can reduce their figure by, oh, I don’t know, about 99.9998%. Google may index more than five million websites related to alcoholism, but the search results are capped.

It’s as simple as that. If your students argue that Google has everything, show them that a basic library database offers 20 times as many articles in full-text. Even a Subject Search for ‘Alcoholism’ yields more than 13,000 articles. Heck, the narrow subject of ‘Alcoholism, Genetic Aspects’ has almost 657 articles, compared to Google’s 703 articles for ‘Alcoholism and Genetics’. I’m telling you, letting the students see these numbers for themselves can quickly sway them back towards the library. Add in the cherry that they won’t have to worry about whether the library source is acceptable as one of their minimum of 15 sources, and you’ve got a compelling argument that will sway even the most die-hard Google fan.

That is, of course, assuming the Google fan is relatively inexperienced in academic research. With an experienced understanding of how to manipulate Google results, you can get some amazing things. Try playing A Google A Day if you don’t believe me. An experienced researcher knows how to tweak filters, pick the right keywords, and get freaky with the Boolean operators. The trick I’m suggesting isn’t for them; they already know that Google has a lot, but it doesn’t have everything. The trick I’m suggesting is for the novice researcher. It’s for library instruction classes, not one-on-ones with faculty and graduate students. It’s for students with broad, Freshman-level topics. It’s just a rhetorical trick designed to call into question the commonly held belief that you can find more in Google than in the library. And, as a rhetorical device, it introduces valuable questions. Why does Google cap their results? How useful is it to have millions of results? How does Google decide which 1,000 results to display? Sure, Google may have 50 billion pages indexed, and you may find websites on just about everything, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to show that, from a practical standpoint, the library has more.

by lugfpj on Flickr

Remember when Google was just a search engine? Yeah, me neither. With the way Google has infiltrated every nook and cranny of our digital lives, it’s almost hard to imagine life before Google. For the past two years, I’ve used Google services like Search, Reader, Blogger, Alerts, News, and Buzz as my means of professional communication. I use Chrome on my PC and Android on my phone. I’ve used Picasa to manage photos, YouTube for entertainment, and Earth to explore. And I’m not even going to start with Maps, Calendar, Notebook, Scholar, Images…you get the idea. And now, I’m supposed to join Google+, the future of social media. A seamless integration and consolidation of existing Google services into a harmonious user-experience that addresses the beauty and richness of sharing in–

Damn it. No. Just no. I’m not having this social media crap. Google, you’ve reached your breaking point. And I don’t know if you’re being diabolical, or just capricious, but it’s not cool to haphazardly screw around with your most popular services just because you really, really, really want me to start circling my +1 in your hangout. Besides sounding pervy, that’s just not the way to customer loyalty.  Your fans are roundly criticizing you and calling this the week you messed up. And though the grumblings about Google haven’t reached angry Apple fan-boy levels of derp yet, I’m sure that in the near future we’ll hear people loudly proclaiming that they’re “done with Google” (probably the same people who “moved to Canada” after the last election, if you catch my drift).

Given how weird Google has been lately, I’ve decided to embark upon an experimental journey. Sure, Google does things that irritate us. Sure, Google doesn’t understand privacy. But, can we really live without Google? I don’t know, but I’m going to try. Over the next few months I’m going to intentionally divest myself from as many Google products and services as possible. My overarching question is this: can a moderately tech-savvy reference librarian manage to survive the Internet without the help of Google? Here’s the plan…

The Plan

I intend to play around with alternatives to each and every Google service that I currently use, both professionally and personally (with two exceptions that I’ll explain later). This means a different search engine, browser, RSS reader, blog, image host, office suite…you name it. If Google makes it, I won’t use it for three months. But, I have to make two exceptions. First, GMail. I use GMail to sign-up for, and receive notifications from, other services. But, still, given that my GMail address is on emergency contact forms and user accounts, I can’t get rid of it too easily (though I’m working on it). Second, I can’t just stop using my Android phone. But, I’ve stopped syncing to my Google account, I don’t really download apps, I use the Opera mini browser instead of the Google option, and I’ve turned off Google’s location services. It’s the best I can do. As to the rest…

Like I said, I’m moderately tech-savvy. I don’t do coding or server stuff, but I know my way around a computer and I know enough not to fall for the old “build a GUI interface in Visual Basic” trick. I’m comfortable using most social media sites, and I encourage their use, though I tend not to share very much. I guess you could say that on the Librarian Internet Technology Skills Scale, where 1 is Michael Gorman and 10 is my awesome coworker Jason Griffey, I’m around a solid 7. (See Figure 1)*

Fig. 1. The Gorman-Griffey Continuum of Librarian Internet Skills (GGCLIS)

So, though there may be awesome server-side solutions to abandoning Google, I won’t go that route. Instead, I’ll look for ready-to-use, freely available alternatives to as many Google products as I can think of. Here’s a preliminary list:

I’ll be logging out of all of my Google accounts, uninstalling Google Chrome, Picasa, and Desktop, removing bookmarks to Google websites, and I’ll try my best to avoid using any Google product. For three months. However, I will use Google in the following situations: (1) to illustrate a point or compare Google with a competing service, (2) if I need it to help a patron, or (3) if after a good faith effort I simply can’t find a reasonable alternative.

Now, I’m not saying it will be easy. I doubt that Google can be completely eliminated. But, I have a feeling that I’ll survive. I also don’t want anyone to get the impression that I’m anti-Google. I love Google. Google is wonderful. This is just an experiment, not a statement. I’ll be sure to post updates along the way. Hopefully, by February 2012, I’ll have a new perspective on life after Google.

Oh yeah, and welcome to the new blog.

*For the record, Gorman is one of my favorite librarians and he probably isn’t really a Sith Lord.

The matter of the fact is that text is not dead (“Text” is a part of the world of visual communication) and if we intend to be taken seriously as sites of production then it behooves us to keep the lines to the past open for those in the future.

And he’s absolutely right. There is no prima facie reason to abandon a technology simply because something new and different has come along. Sure, it sometimes goes that way: we replaced the typewriter with the computer in less than two decades. Then again, for all the gee-whiz technology we’re buying, I’ve got five bucks that says you’ve got a pen or pencil within your reach.

That’s vintage Canadian money. I’m all about the Lauriers, baby.

Where am I going with this?

There’s an unfortunate tendency in some library circles to view new technologies or new theories as the one and only future of librarianship. It’s said that ebooks will replace print books, smartphones will replace desktops, the cloud will replace local storage, and so on. And that’s just the tech side of things. Library practice sees the same push towards replacement. Patron driven acquisitions will replace collection development. Transliteracy will replace information literacy. Knowledge construction will replace knowledge collection. Tagging will replace classification systems. You get the idea. And, you know, some of that may in fact happen. But, a lot of it won’t. Just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s worth keeping around. New Coke was grody to the max. The New Age movement is patent nonsense. New Jack Swing? Color Me Sadd.

Wow. That’s just one “Ooh, baby, ooh” from the worst pun ever. Sorry. by stgermh on Flickr

My point is just that some of our current practices are in need of replacement, but others will outlive each and every one of us. Sure, saying that text is dead is just hyperbolic rhetoric, not meant to be taken seriously. But, the threat of thinking in terms of obsolescence is very real. For all we know, ebooks may go the way of the microfiche; for all we know, social tagging may go the way of the card catalog. Maybe so, maybe not. But we should at least avoid the rhetoric; we shouldn’t turn our backs on the past because something better might come along.

Don’t get me wrong. The pitfalls of techno-theoretical boosterism don’t entail that we shouldn’t be advocates for new technologies and theories. If we don’t actively pursue, explore, and recommend new technology or new theory, we won’t be going anywhere as a profession. We need to embrace new technologies and see how far we can push them, even if they do turn out to be worthless in the long run. The important thing is that we don’t pretend that existing technologies no longer matter when something new comes along. We shouldn’t think in terms of replacement, we should think in terms of addition or enhancement. That is, we shouldn’t look at our print books begrudgingly because we think they’ll soon be replaced. We shouldn’t resent what we have because we want what’s yet to come.

If ebooks replace print books, so be it, but we shouldn’t give print books the cold shoulder just because Kindles just got cheaper. And we shouldn’t throw around hyperbolic “X is dead” statements until X is truly long gone. Spending time on future technology and trends is absolutely vital to our profession. But so is spending time on past technologies and trends, and we need to remember that the utility of the technologies and theories of the present can only be determined in relation to the past. I’m not saying we need to start teaching all about microfilm in library instruction or that the scriptorium is integral to the modern library. What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that advancement necessarily means replacement. As Joe says: ”it behooves us to keep the lines to the past open for those in the future.” Again, we shouldn’t resent what we’ve got because something better might come along. Let text and print die a natural death, don’t let them die from neglect.

Yes, I know that these books weren’t replaced by ebooks. They were replaced by nothing at all. by shanegorski no Flickr