The homework assignment (Library Dilemma #2)

Photo by loneblackrider on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In my last post, I posed an ethical scenario involving whether or not to waive library late fees. Sixteen people voted and here’s the breakdown:

Case 1, The Harry Potter fan: The vote was 10 to 6 in favor of letting the casual reader check out the last book in the Harry Potter series.

Case 2, The G.E.D. student: The vote was 13 to 3 in favor of letting an unemployed woman check out a G.E.D. study guide despite her library fines.

Case 3, The stranger: The vote was 11 to 4 in favor of letting a complete stranger check out a G.E.D. study guide, despite library fines.

Most of the comments in favor of waiving library fines argued that library fines are a disincentive to use the library, rather than their intended function as a disincentive to keep books beyond their due dates. Most of the arguments against waiving the fines pointed to the importance of personal responsibility on the parts of our patrons. In both cases, the fundamental issue seems to be the fairness, though interpreted quite differently. Those who wanted to waive fines tended to argue that fine policies in and of themselves are unfair to patrons. Those who did not want to waive the fines tended to argue that consistent application of library policy is necessary to make the policy fair. Finally, several comments pointed out that an ILS typically allows staff to override holds on accounts, so there may be other options.

I’m not surprised that most people would let the woman in Case 2 check out the GED study guide; I know I would. It seems to be a straightforward test of our commitment to improving  our community. However, I am rather surprised at the vote for Case 1. Waive or override fines because someone really wants to read a Harry Potter book? Really? Perhaps I didn’t make the scenario realistic enough. For those who would waive the fine for the Harry Potter fan, what would you do in the following case:

Case 4, Pumpkin Spice Latte: A woman comes to the circulation desk to check out Fifty Shades of Grey only to find that she must pay a $10 fine. She admits that she has the cash but she really wanted to buy a pumpkin spice latte after leaving the library. Would you override the hold on her account or waive the fine?

I’m not going to answer this one, because I’d like another shot at starting a new discussion. In the interests of getting a more even split, I’m going to propose another library dilemma, one that happens every Fall semester at our reference desk. Let me know what you think in the comments. (No Google Form this time; it didn’t work the way I had hoped.)

Photo by selva on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

A library service scenario: The music assignment

You work at the reference desk in an academic library. Every semester, Professor Jones assigns a devilishly tricky “library treasure hunt” to his music history students. The assignment consists of 50 music trivia questions and no guidance as to where to find the answers. Here’s an easy one: how many times did Kirsten Flagstad sing the role of Brünnhilde in the 1939-1940 season at the Metropolitan Opera? (Yes, that’s a real question on a real assignment.) After several semesters of the same assignment, the reference desk has put together a document with the answers to all 50 questions. How would you handle the following situations…

Case 1: The last-minute student

The day before the assignment is due, a frazzled student comes to the reference desk and asks for the answers to half of the trivia questions. Do you give her the answers? If so, why? If not, do you provide some other type of assistance?

Case 2: The very last minute student

Ten minutes before the assignment is due, a frazzled student comes to the reference desk and asks for the answers to all of the trivia questions. Do you give him the answers? If so, why? If not, do you provide some other type of assistance?

Case 3: The music history professor

Professor Smith is considering assigning a similar project for his music history students. He has an answer form with half of the answers filled in and he knows that he could probably find all of the answers on his own if he spent a few hours, but he asks you for half of the answers so he can save some time. Do you give him the answers? If so, why? If not, do you provide some other type of assistance?

 

What, exactly, are the ethical dilemmas here? Do all three patrons have the same information need? Does the amount of work each patron has already put in matter? Do the research abilities of the patrons matter? Would your answer change if you worked in a public library? Can you create another case that leads to additional ethical dilemmas? Feel free to comment below!

 

 

The late fines (Library Dilemma #1)

Photo by Stefan Baudy on Flickr, CC BY 2.0

You know my last blog post? The one about library ethics and service? Would you believe that it got me invited to speak at UIUC next week? Yeah, me neither, but I’m going anyway.

One thing I find especially interesting about this invitation is that, to date, I haven’t written very much about library ethics. This, despite the fact that I used to teach professional ethics, I took every ethics seminar available in grad school, and I even wrote my Master’s thesis in meta-ethics. What the heck! Why haven’t I blogged about library ethics?

Here’s the plan: rather than write long essays about ethical theories or issues, I’m going to start posting short ethical and practical dilemmas for you to discuss. No pipe-bombs and porn here; I intend to keep it to realistic problems that the average librarian might reasonably be expected to encounter. My intent is not to lecture about how we should or should not make ethical decisions, rather, I just want to discuss our moral intuitions as librarians and professionals. In technical terms, this is an exercise in descriptive rather than prescriptive ethics. If I can get a discussion going, I’ll post a follow-up next week as well as a new dilemma.

In what follows, I’m going to provide an actual library service scenario. This actually happened (more or less). First, I’ll provide some background information, though it’s up to you to determine what is relevant. After providing the scenario, I’ll give three variations. Add to the story if you’d like, change the scenario how you please, or make any adjustments that you feel are necessary; the scenario is a discussion prompt, not a story problem. Using either the comments or the embedded form  let me know what you would do in each case and whether there are any ethical or practical issues that are worth considering.

Photo by yuan2003 on Flickr, CC-BY-NC 2.0

A library service scenario: The library fines

Just before close on a Friday afternoon at your small, neighborhood branch of a large urban public library, a woman comes to the circulation desk to return six items that are each five days late. At $0.50 per day for each late item, her fine is $15. Combined with the $15 worth of fines already on her account, she is now on the hook for $30. Library software (the ILS) allows library staff to waive fines, but it will not allow patron check-outs if total fines exceed $20 due to library policy.  Given that library privileges are suspended once fines top $20, this woman will be unable to check out new items until she pays at least $10. The current head of the circulation department takes library policy very seriously, but she has already gone home for the day.

These are the material facts. How would you react given the following variations:

Case 1: Harry Potter The woman is a longtime library patron and you know that she has recently fallen in love with the Harry Potter series. The six late items are the first six books in the series. She assures you that the late books were an honest mistake. She really wants to finish the series over the weekend, she doesn’t have $10, there’s no time to get to an ATM before close, and just wants to check out the seventh and final Harry Potter book.

Case 2: The G.E.D. The woman is a longtime library patron and you know that she is currently unemployed due to downsizing at a local manufacturing plant. The items she turned in late are mostly study guides and other test preparation materials for the G.E.D., which she intends to take the following week. She assures you that the late books were an honest mistake. She has $10 in her purse, but she had hoped to use it to buy fuel for her car so she can get to the G.E.D. testing facility. The book she would like to check out is the final G.E.D. study guide she needs to finish her test preparation.

Case 3: The stranger You do not recognize this patron, this is only her third visit to the library in as many years and therefore you know nothing about her. She explains that she has fallen on some hard luck and she is currently unemployed due to downsizing at a local manufacturing plant. The items she turned in late are mostly study guides and other test preparation materials for the G.E.D., which she intends to take the following week. She assures you that the late books were an honest mistake. She has $10 in her purse, but she had hoped to use it to buy fuel for her car so she can get to the G.E.D. testing facility. The book she would like to check out is the final G.E.D. study guide she needs to finish her test preparation.

Using either the blog comments or the anonymous Google Form, feel free to discuss each case in the scenario. I’m really curious to see what you think and I hope I can get at least a small discussion going about ethical and practical dilemmas in librarianship.

By SomeDriftwood on Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

 

Thanks for commenting!

On ethical reference service (or, “Fishmongers? In my library?”)

Photo by dbnunley on FLickr. (CC BY-NC-SA )

There’s an old saying: give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach him how to fish and he’ll die from mercury poisoning because you can’t survive on nothing but fish. Or something like that. I never was any good at proverbs.

Anyway, the point is that is usually better to promote self-sufficiency than to merely provide handouts.* But, is this true at the reference desk? In last week’s AL Direct, I came across a post by Jessica Olin who recently asked this very question and I think she’s spot-on in identifying a common reference conundrum. As she frames it,

It’s rare that I just answer questions at the reference desk, especially when the asker is a student. Instead, I escort the student over to one of our public computers and walk them through the process of figuring it out for themselves. I make them work for it because I believe that working for it means they’ll eventually be able to answer questions for themselves. [...] But is this insistence good customer service? How would I react if my mechanic said some version of, “I know what’s causing that grinding noise when you turn left on hot days, but let’s see if you can figure it out for yourself”?

Put another way, is it morally permissible for a reference librarian to withhold information from a student in order to create a teachable moment? Like, “sure, I could just email you those APA citations, and I’d probably do it for your professor, but since you’re a student I’m going to force you to stand here for five minutes while I show you how to do it yourself.” I think Olin’s reference conundrum offers a nice opportunity to discuss something that librarianship is apparently lacking: an ethics of professional service.

A quick word about the official ethics of reference

“Now wait a minute,” you may be saying, “all we need to do is follow the ALA Code of Ethics.” Well, smarty-pants, I hate to break it to you, but official library codes of ethics are pretty much useless at the reference desk. Our professional codes help qualify our values as librarians, but they aren’t service-oriented for at least two reasons. First, statements like the ALA Code of Ethics, the just-released IFLA Code of Ethics, and the RUSA guidelines are prima facie, not absolute. That is, they are general guidelines not meant to negate any particular decisions at the point of service. Second, they tend to focus on ethics at the organizational level, not at the reference-desk level (e.g., RUSA’s statement on information services tells us that “the library should” do this and that, but it says nothing about what librarians should do). As Fallis (2007) has pointed out, the codes and principles supplied by our professional organizations leave us without much guidance as to “how library professionals should apply these principles to concrete cases” (p. 25). Our professional codes of ethics are a starting point, they do not provide a decision procedure for how to provide services.

“Now wait another minute,” you may be saying, because apparently you’re in the habit of talking to computers, “even if the official codes are too general for specific cases, we learned basic reference ethics in library school and we talk about issues every Thursday on Twitter!.” And that’s awesome. But, think back to what, exactly, you talked about in library school. The most recent edition of Bopp and Smith’s Reference and Information Services: An Introduction (i.e., the standard textbook since 2001) tells us that “ethical questions such as the provision of information that has the potential to harm society (e.g., how to build a bomb) are now concrete issues that reference librarians encounter in their daily lives” (p. 20, my emphasis). Other common reference dilemmas include whether or not to provide information about freebasing cocaine (p. 42) or whether to help troubled teens locate the how-to-commit-suicide manuals (p. 43). And sure enough, not a day goes by that I’m not dealing with coked-up emo kids looking for pipe-bomb recipes.

“Also, can I borrow your phone? My mom needs to know where to pick me up.”

Except, that never actually happens. Yes, there’s certainly a great deal of pedagogical value in submitting our ethical intuitions to extreme cases, but the vast majority of ethical decisions are not about bombs, porn, and suicide. Neither are they always about banned books, open access, ebooks, or other hot moral issues in the blogging world. Yes, these are important things to discuss, but they are issues of advocacy more than they are issues of practical service. Practically speaking, most of our ethical decisions are mundane: whether to waive a fine, whether to give out the guest username and password, whether to ask a patron to lower their speaking voice, who should get the free books at the conference, or, in Olin’s case, whether to give a student the answers to her homework assignment.

Between professional codes that are too broad for specific use and thought experiments that are too narrow for realistic service models, where are we to look for an ethics of practical reference service?

The fiduciary relationship

Surprisingly, there isn’t a lot in the current professional literature. I did a quick search for “reference AND ethics” in LISA, LISTA, and Library Literature and Information Science Full-Text. Once the book reviews are filtered out, there are fewer than 100 articles published on reference ethics since 2002. Most of these are either irrelevant or they only cover the sexy issues likes bombs and porn. There are a few good articles that touch on reference service, including Bivens-Tatum (2007), Lenker (2008), and Ulvik & Salvesen (2007), but it’s pretty slim pickings. So, for my money, the best extant discussion of an ethics of reference service can be found in John Bunge’s article, “Ethics and the Reference Librarian” (1999), wherein Bunge makes two important observations. First, librarians are professionals and with that status comes certain fiduciary obligations to patrons. The librarian/patron relationship is a fiduciary relationship in which the patron is willingly placing his or her trust in the specialized knowledge and skills of the librarian. At all times, the autonomy, competence, and responsibilities of the patron are key moral concerns, and yet the patron has willingly ceded some autonomy to the librarian. According to Bunge, the upshot is that the fiduciary model “accommodates [all patron skill levels], allowing the client as much authority and responsibility as is warranted by his or her ability to make decisions” (p. 47). Bunge’s second observation is that professional relationships are never exclusive to the professional and the client: there are always third-party stakeholders to whom we have moral obligations (p. 55). Academic librarians work for universities, students study with teachers, and so on. We should always keep in mind our obligations to third-parties…as well as our patrons’ obligations to third parties, and this is where I part with Bunge.

You see, Bunge argues that the only things relevant to the reference transaction are those things directly relevant to the expertise that initiated the fiduciary relationship. Bunge writes,

“However, the librarian does not have expertise in the inquirer’s values, in how the information should be used, or in the inquirer’s goals in life. These are areas in which the client should be allowed the fullest possible freedom to make judgments and decisions” (p. 55).

The problem here is that when we are asked to both (1) show respect for our patrons’ autonomy and (2) consider third-party stakeholders, then we must also show respect for the other fiduciary relationships into which our patrons have entered. That includes the teacher/student relationship. In the case of the student asking for the answers to the homework assignment, even though Bunge argues that the way a patron uses information is irrelevant, I argue that we are obligated to respect the teacher/student fiduciary relationship that initiated the homework in the first place…especially when we, as academic librarians, have our own fiduciary relationships with the teaching faculty.** Lest we forget, by initiating the professional encounter, our students are ceding some autonomy and decision-making to the reference librarian and, specifically, they are often ceding decision-making that impacts their external teacher/student relationship. If we really want to respect our students’ autonomous natures, we have to respect their obligations to others.

by beITRON on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND)

I could go on and on about professional/client relationships, but I’ll just give you the quick and dirty version of the decision procedure we get out of the fiduciary model. When we run into ethical conundrums on the desk we should keep the following in mind:

1. The reference transaction is a professional relationship and the services that a reference librarian provides should be coherent with the the values of librarianship, the librarian’s expertise, external fiduciary responsibilities, and respect for the patron’s own autonomy (which includes the patron’s competence and external responsibilities).
2. Understand your expertise: If a patron makes a request that goes beyond the librarian’s skills or expertise, the librarian should not attempt to fulfill that request (get help instead!).
3. Consider the stakeholders: If a patron makes a request that undermines the librarian’s fiduciary obligation to a third party, the librarian should honor that request only to the extent that it does not violate the broader external obligations that establish the librarian’s third-party obligations in the first place.  (My general rule is that it’s acceptable to bend a policy if doing so is consistent with the general educational mission of the library and university.)
4. Respect the patron’s autonomy: At all times, the librarian should respect the autonomy of the patron and avoid undermining a patron’s own fiduciary relationships, provided those relationships are known to the librarian, are uncoerced, and are just. (Your students have willingly entered into professional relationships with their professors; don’t undermine that relationship unless it’s coercive or unjust.)

And that’s it. Four parts. Maybe there’s another one or two I’m not thinking of at the moment, and there are probably a few additional clarifications to be made, but it’s a hell of a lot simpler than the painfully specific mess that RUSA provides. Run Olin’s conundrum through the process and we see that it’s perfectly fine to withhold certain information from certain students. Providing homework answers undermines both student and librarian obligations to teaching faculty, so we shouldn’t do it. Instead, we should do our best to set the student on the right track. Basically, we teach at the reference desk because we have a librarian’s commitment to provide access to information conflicting with a professional commitment to honor our student’s external relationships. Teaching a student to look-up an article is, quite simply, just our way of circumscribing what we can’t do. Consider that conundrum SOLVED!

This is ethics.
(by Steve Rhodes on Flickr, CC BY-ND)

Finding a balance

I don’t think this idea is particularly revolutionary but I should point out that Bunge’s treatment of the reference interview as a fiduciary relationship has received scant attention in the library literature. I think it’s a good model that can bring our ethics of librarianship more in line with other professions that have far more robust ethics of service (e.g., medicine and law). Granted, there’s a lot more to say on the issue; at the very least, several terms need to be fleshed out (autonomy, obligation, etc.). And I should address soft paternalism (see Chapter 5 of Mill’s On Liberty).  But, the general thrust of my argument is that while librarianship is filled with professional value statements and case studies of specific incidents, what we need is a simple, general statement of the relevant principles required to make ethical decisions at the point of service. Since we’re professionals and patrons willingly sacrifice some autonomy when they ask for our assistance, it makes sense to ground our service ethics in the professional/client relationship. So, let’s let the ALA Code of Ethics guide the services we provide, and the fiduciary model guide how we provide those services.

The moral of my story? Sometimes we need to hand out fish, sometimes we need to hand out rods, but we should always hand out something because that’s what we’re here for.

by kasperbs on Flickr (CC BY)

Stuff I cited or thought about

Bivens-Tatum, Wayne. “The Virtue of Reference.” Library Philosophy and Practice. (January 2007). Online.

Bopp, Richard E., & Linda C. Smith. Reference and Information Services: An Introduction. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited.

Bunge, Charles A. “Ethics and the Reference Librarian.” The Reference Librarian 31, no. 66 (1999): 25-43.

Fallis, Don. “Information Ethics for 21st Century Library Professionals.” Library Hi Tech, 25, no. 1 (2007): 23-36.

Hauptman, Robert. Ethics and Librarianship. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2002.

Lenker, Mark. “Dangerous Questions at the Reference Desk: A Virtue Ethics Approach.” Journal of Information Ethics, 17, no. 1 (2008): 43-60.

Mill, J.S., On Liberty. London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1869. Online. (See Chapter Five)

Ulvik, Synnove and Gunhild Salvesen. “Ethical Reference Practice.” New Library World, 108, no. 7/8 (2007): 342-353.

_____

* However, this does not hold true in cases of institutionalized inequality. For my purposes, I just want to talk about academic libraries as educational settings.

** Of course, if the teacher/student fiduciary relationship is broken due to coercion, discrimination, incompetency, unfair assignments or other issues, then our obligations to uphold that third-party relationship end. Or, more precisely, we push the relationship to its nearest proxy. In the case of a bad teacher or assignment, we consider obligations to the university, to society, to the world, etc..

Libraries and the Enlightenment (Essential Readings in the Philosophy of LIS)

The Enlightenment Room, British Museum (By Flickr user mendhak CC BY-SA)

About a month ago, I read an interesting post by Andy Woodworth wherein he argued that even though we have an obligation to provide access to the “junk food literature” our patrons demand, ”that doesn’t mean that librarians can’t work to make a difference in educating their patrons about sources, in pointing them to better authors and materials, and cultivating better information consumption practices.” As you can imagine, more orthodox librarians in the comments jumped all over the suggestion, calling it elitist, snobbish, and condescending. After all, they argued, tastes are subjective, so all books are equally valuable, and it’s elitist and authoritarian to suggest otherwise…librarians should always remain passive, neutral providers. This line of thinking is as stupid as it is cynical, but it’s emblematic of the tension in librarianship between  those who view libraries as passive information and entertainment sources and those who want libraries to take on more responsibility for educating their communities. I mention this debate because I think it provides a helpful framework for understanding the value of Wayne Bivens-Tatum’s new book Libraries and The Enlightenment (Library Juice Press, 2012) which makes the case that, far from being neutral providers of information, libraries are “agencies of education and enlightenment” (p. 133) that embody the best of Enlightenment-era ideals.

Sapere Aude!

At its heart, this book is an intellectual history of the modern library. Bivens-Tatum begins with a brief survey (and adequate defense) of the Enlightenment era (Chapter 1) which he characterizes as being distinguished by “the emergence of a coherent set of values centering on human reason and freedom” (p. xi). The former of these values form the philosophical side of Enlightenment, characterized by the free use of reason and scientific inquiry in pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The latter value forms the political side of Enlightenment and is the wellspring of democratic principles such as “individual liberty, equal rights, religious toleration, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to education and political participation” (p. 23). Subsequent chapters trace the influence of the philosophical Enlightenment on the rise of the academic library Enlightenment (Chapter 2) and the influence of the political Enlightenment on the public library (Chapter 3).

In discussing the rise of the academic library, Bivens-Tatum presents a well-researched historical overview that traces the concept of intellectual freedom from Kant’s 1798 Conflict of the Faculties, through the German Idealists (Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher), and into Wilhelm von Humboldt’s sweeping education reforms, which form the basis of the modern research university. Academic libraries,  being “dependent on their parent institutions for their form and motivation” (p. 83), followed suit as necessary adjuncts. Public libraries, on the other hand, are presented in light of the political values of Enlightenment (i.e., equality, education, and other democratic ideals) to the extent that “the belief in the ability of individuals to improve themselves through self-education persists through the history of public libraries” (p. 99). Democracy requires an educated and informed citizenry, so libraries were built to educate and inform.

The remainder of the book focuses on the concept of the Universal Library as a larger, unrealized Enlightenment goal that is still with us today. The idea is of a library “for everyone in the world to be able to find and access every human document or form of information ever created from any place” (p. 141) and Bivens-Tatum traces this pursuit from Alexandria through Naudé , Diderot, and Bush, and on to Google and Wikipedia. Bivens-Tatum ends with an exhortation to librarians to look back at the philosophical foundations of the modern library and embrace the educational mission of libraries.

By Flickr user amodiovalerioverde

Why Enlightenment matters

I introduced this review with the issue of whether librarians should act as neutral information providers or as active educators and I think Bivens-Tatum’s book presents a compelling argument for the latter. As he explains (quite eloquently):

“It should be clear from the brief history presented here that public libraries began as instruments of enlightenment, hoping to spread knowledge and culture broadly to the people…[but] the course of the twentieth century proved that no matter how high the purpose or grand the rhetoric of the public library movement, people just did not use public libraries en masse, and those that did use public libraries were primarily interested in entertainment. As a result, public libraries shifted from instruments of enlightenment to information and entertainment centers, and librarians shifted from purveyors of education to neutral providers of that information and entertainment. Instead of enlightenment and education, the goal eventually became to get as many people using libraries as possible, regardless of whether that use had anything to do with the traditional purposes of the public library.” (p. 133

If libraries are to survive the 21st century, we have to decide what role we play in our communities. Are we going to be providers or educators? Providers focus on satisfying patron demands; educators focus on satisfying patron needs. Providers measure gate-counts; educators measure community impact. Providers want patrons to read; educators want them to read well. What Bivens-Tatum offers is a reminder that libraries aren’t just there to satisfy their communities…they are there to improve them, to educate them, to enlighten them.

By Flickr user andyi

Summing up

Overall, this is a wonderful survey of the intellectual history of the modern library with very little to criticize. I could nitpick Bivens-Tatum’s interpretation of Kant, but it wouldn’t change the general thrust of his argument. Likewise I could point out the glaring omission of Hume, Reid, Hutcheson, and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, which was a movement equally as influential on university reform as German Idealism, yet more truly a part of the Enlightenment. But, this isn’t a commonplace book, so Bivens-Tatum isn’t obligated to cover every 18th century philosopher. In fact, the only substantive criticism I’ll offer is that the book isn’t really about libraries and the Enlightenment, per se. Rather, it’s about the 19th century interpretation of Enlightenment values during the Romantic era (in the case of academic libraries) and again during the second Industrial Revolution and into the Progressive era (in the case of public libraries). Basically, Bivens-Tatum hasn’t shown the influence of the Enlightenment itself on libraries as much as he’s shown the influence of certain post-Enlightenment movements. Yes, the Enlightenment influenced the modern library, but only by way of other philosophical and political movements, and it would have been nice to see the relationships made clearer. But, these are minor concerns that aren’t meant to detract from the value of Libraries and the Enlightenment. There are several recent books out there urging libraries to transform, and many include the call to educate or improve our communities. What Bivens-Tatum has provided is the context by which we can understand what it means fora library to educate in the first place.

Bivens-Tatum, Wayne. Libraries and the Enlightenment. Los Angeles: Library Juice Press. 2012. ISBN: 978-1-936117-42-0

$25.00 through Library Juice Press

Librarians, Expertise, and the Social Transcript

In my last post I wrote that librarians are experts on the causal chain of testimonial knowledge. Of course, that’s rather technical language, so I’ve been looking for a friendlier way to explain how and why librarians are experts. We’re the people who act as guides to the network of knowledge claims and cultural expressions that make up our cultural record (or at least that portion of it that fits within our financial and moral constraints), so how can we fit that into 140 characters, so to speak. Then it hit me: the social transcript! I explained Charles Osburn’s social transcript theory in a previous post, but the quick take is that ‘social transcript’ refers to the “oral and written communications that are passed on to subsequent generations as knowledge of many kinds, and therefore to be critiqued, accepted, rejected, or even ignored” (Osburn, 134). It’s not just information. It’s not just recorded knowledge. The social transcript is the record of intellectual and aesthetic works that we choose to represent our beliefs, knowledge, values, and culture. As librarians, our role is to act as stewards and guides to that social transcript. Maintaining the social transcript is tantamount to preserving the causal chain of testimony so that we can situate our beliefs appropriately and come to new knowledge and new aesthetic experiences. In the elevator-friendly sense,  are experts on the social transcript. But, so what?

I’d like to use this post to say something about the potential upshots to thinking of librarians as experts on the social transcript (i.e., the causal chain of testimony). So, here goes it…

On the value of being a librarian…any type of librarian.

“Balkan topography” on Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA)

One of the things that bugs me most about librarianship is the endless fragmentation and cordoning-off of various librarian ‘types’. Are you in reference? Instruction? Access services? Cataloging? IT? Archives? Are you a public librarian? Academic librarian? Medical librarian? School librarian? I could list off the various combinations all damned day but, if you’re reading this, you’re probably a librarian and you probably already know that the profession suffers from some pretty severe Balkanization. To a certain extent, that’s to be expected, given the relevant differences between various functions in the library, various types of libraries, and various communities encountered. To make the library run, we need to play different roles.

But, then, why are we all called ‘librarians’? You wouldn’t say that everyone who works at Apple is a software engineer. Or that everyone at Disney World is an “Imagineer”. True, there are organizations like schools, where most members are called ‘teachers’. But, that makes sense because teachers play the same general role, just in different domains. Librarians, on the other hand, play very different roles within their organizations…but all in the same domain.

If we do like many librarians, and go the route of defining ourselves in terms of information particulars (e.g., information literacy, organization of information, access to information, etc.) then we run the real risk of marginalizing our coworkers. Librarians are experts in organizing information? Good for the catalogers, bad for the instructors. Experts in information literacy? Good for the instructors, bad for the catalogers. Experts on literacy? Great for the school librarians, not so much for the medical librarians. Hopefully, you get the drift. In contrast, I think that by defining librarians as experts on the social transcript, we can create a more inclusive environment. Whether cataloging, reference, or archives, we all are playing different roles directed at the same domain of expertise: the social transcript. Likewise, whether school, public, special, or academic, we all have different communities of practice  but we all operate within the same social transcript. Whether you’re an academic reference librarian, a public cataloging librarian, or an early childhood literacy school librarian, we’re all applying our expertise within the social transcript and we all deserve the title ‘librarian’.

On the value of fiction

By Flickr user Metadata Deluxe (CC BY 2.0)

Many librarians want to define librarianship directly in terms of knowledge or information. But, as I’ve asked previously, if libraries are fundamentally places for acquiring knowledge or accessing information, what does that entail for works of fiction? Sure, you could argue that the reason we read The Brothers Karamazov is for insight and knowledge about the human condition, but that’s a rather cynical view of literature and it ignores the emotive and aesthetic value great literature can have. And, of course, the view completely falls apart with popular books like Twilight or the Harry Potter series. Do we read Harry Potter to gain knowledge about child wizardry? Twilight to gain insight into the experiences of teen werewolves?  Of course not. We read these books because they entertain us. We read these books because they are part of the cultural landscape. In other words, they are sewn into the fabric of the social transcript. This is why 50 Shades of Grey makes headlines, and far more sexually explicit books in the same library don’t: 50 Shades of Grey is part of our social transcript (Working Stiff…not so much).

On the value of bad information

By Flickr user Mr. Reivaj (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Of course, our commitment to knowledge and information is a still a pretty big deal. So, it seems odd that we routinely collect, organize, and make accessible bad information. We say we are committed to information literacy or that we are committed to knowledge creation. And yet we keep on buying books on homeopathy. On astrology. On bullshit medical advice that is killing children. Libraries are full of  misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies. And even with less controversial topics, libraries stock their shelves with books that directly contradict each other. Why?

Part of the reason for this is because, as experts on the social transcript, we understand the difference between primary information and secondary information. By ‘primary information’ I mean the actual claims made by an information source. By ‘secondary information’ I mean the information we can derive about an information source. For example, a physics textbook contains primary information insofar as it reports certain facts about the world. It contains secondary information insofar as that collection of facts, formulae, and theories says something about the social transcript (i.e., secondary information about what we take to be ‘physics’). Likewise, though a book on homeopathy contains a great deal of false information at the primary level, it offers a great deal of valuable secondary information about the social transcript: it tells us what some people think is true. As stewards of the social transcript, we need to provide both what is true as well as what is believed to be true.

Of course, this isn’t to say that any information, misinformation, or disinformation is part of our domain, or that we have to treat misinformation and disinformation equitably. Patrons generally seek knowledge, not deception. So, we generally provide factual information, not fringe theories: I don’t give physics majors articles on astrology or medical students books on homeopathy. Unless they ask for them. Furthermore, scientific and cultural theories are constantly being adjusted. The medical theories of Galen won’t get you through medical school and Newton’s aether theory won’t get you through physics, but at a secondary level of information about information, it’s vital that libraries collect even these discredited theories as a means of enhancing the social transcript and preserving all of the links in the chain of knowledge.

On the value of librarians in a changing world

I’ll add one more upshot: defending the contemporary value of librarians. If we, as a profession, are going to justify our continued existence into the 21st Century, we need to make a strong case. One of the more popular tactics is to reposition librarianship as a social science, which directs our professional focus at information users rather than information itself.  I’d be an idiot to suggest that we shouldn’t pay close attention to the information needs of our communities. But, should that be the core of librarianship? When we go before the city council, the school board, or the budget committee, do we want to justify our value by saying, “well, we’re the people who study how communities use information”? Of course not. Research into the sociology of information use may be what we do, but it isn’t what defines us.

So, why not explain that librarians are experts on the social transcript? We’re the ones that make sure that the chain of knowledge is intact, reliable, and accessible. We ensure that our communities have access to the domain of knowledge and culture in a way that makes sense. That last bit is important. Yes, the amount of information available online is staggering. With an Internet connection, the average person has access to quantities of information that are orders of magnitude greater than even that contained in the Library of Congress. But, which information matters? This is where librarians come in: we make that flood of information manageable.

Moreover, defending librarianship in terms of the domain of knowledge or the social transcript gives us a firm foundation for the relevance of librarians in conversations regarding scholarly communication, open access, copyright, and similar important issues. Rather than describe our value with gate counts and grade point averages, we can point to our unique expertise in dealing with the transmission of knowledge across and through barriers. Not only do we curate information to help our patrons discover what matters, we play an active role in shaping the networks that convey that information.

Conclusion: it’s not about information

I guess what I’m trying to say is that information and knowledge are not the bedrock of a philosophy of librarianship. Yes, information and knowledge are integral to a properly functioning library, but they aren’t the things that distinguish us as librarians: we’re neither information scientists nor epistemologists. Instead, we’re experts on the transmission of information and knowledge through testimony. We understand the networks that preserve and deliver knowledge, if not the knowledge itself. Thinking of librarianship in terms of testimony solves some thorny philosophical issues, but if philosophical issues aren’t relevant to you, then just take the aggregate of all the various chains of knowledge and expression available to us. That’s the social transcript. And that’s where librarians live.

 

Librarians are experts on testimony

Photo by pkingDesign on Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In my last post, I briefly discussed the meaning of the word ‘expert’, ending with a question: “Are librarians experts and, if so, experts on what?” I’m actually working on a paper at this very moment on the issue, but I thought the blog might be a good place to knock around some ideas. So, in this post I want to take a look at how academic librarians understand their own expertise and offer a brief account of how and why academic librarians can accurately be called experts.

Problem

First, I want to start with a problem. An old problem, actually, that goes all the way back to one of Plato’s earliest dialogues, the Charmides. In the passage that follows, Socrates and his interlocutor Critias are attempting to determine how an average person can tell a legitimate doctor from a quack…

Socrates: Then he who conducts his inquiry aright will consider the doctor, as a medical man, in connection with cases of health and disease.

Critias: So it seems.

S: And will inquire whether, in what is said or done in such cases, his words are truly spoken, and his acts rightly done?

C: He must.

S: Well now, could anyone follow up either of these points without the medical art?

C:No, indeed.

S: Nobody at all, it would seem, but a doctor; and so not the temperate man either: for he would have to be a doctor, in addition to his temperance.

[Charmides, 171b-c., trans. W. Lamb]

Call this the Paradox of Expertise: how can a non-expert evaluate the claims made by an expert? If we just blindly accept what an expert says, then we’re gullible. But, it would seem that the only way we can correctly evaluate the claims made by putative experts…is to become experts ourselves. But, then, we wouldn’t need to consult the experts in the first place, now would we?

As librarians, this is especially problematic because we are tasked with managing massive quantities of information, most of which we know little to nothing about. Though we may actually be subject-specialists in one or two disciplines, most librarians are charged with providing assistance across all disciplines. For example, I recently provided some research assistance for a graduate thesis in computational enjuneering ingenearing engeniering…I can’t even spell it I’m so not an expert. How can an idiot like me help a student research a complicated topic without knowing at least as much about that topic as the student asking for help?

What’s more, our patrons don’t seek out misinformation or disinformation; they don’t want to be deceived. No, our patrons seek information “in order to bring about good epistemic outcomes. That is, they want to acquire knowledge, true beliefs, justified beliefs, understanding, etc.” (Fallis, 2006). They come to the library for knowledge…so how can non-subject-specialist librarians facilitate their search? If I’m not an expert on quantum mechanics, how can I help generate new knowledge about quantum mechanics? Put another way, how are students justified in accepting the information the librarian provides?

Well, there are two main approaches to getting around the Paradox of Expertise: criticize the very idea of expertise and show that it is inapplicable or try to figure out some area of expertise that can get librarians through Plato’s trap. First, the negative, or “critical”, approach…

What are ‘experts’ anyway?

by Flickr user Chris Pirillo (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

If you read TheAtlantic.com regularly, then you may have seen a recent article entitled “Wikipedia and the Shifting Definition of ‘Expert‘” by resident Wikipedia-booster Rebecca J. Rosen. According to Rosen, even though Wikipedia is deferential to expertise, changes are afoot:

a new study from researchers at Stanford University and Yahoo Research points to a complementary phenomenon: The definition of what makes someone an expert is changing…Expertise, to these researchers, isn’t who a writer is but what a writer knows, as measured by what they read online.

Actually, what she links to is a summary of a poster presentation from the 2012 World Wide Web conference in Lyon. The poster, entitled “A Data-Driven Sketch of Wikipedia Editors“, presents the findings of an as yet unpublished study by a couple of computer scientists from Yahoo! Research and a doctoral student from Stanford. The longer paper, entitled “Smart but Fun: A Data-Driven Portrait of Wikipedia Editors,” is still under review so I won’t pull any juicy citations from it, but it’s worth a read anyway. But, basically, the researchers pulled data from the Yahoo! Toolbar and compared the search behavior of Wikipedia editors to that of other Web users. They found that Wikipedia users tend to be “more sophisticated than usual Web users” and “deeply immersed in pop culture.” No big surprise. (Except for the “more sophisticated” bit. I don’t know any tech-savvy people who would willingly install the Yahoo! Toolbar.) Anyway, Rosen zeroes in on the researchers claim that “[i]ntuitively, someone is an expert in a topic if their interest is significantly above average.” She adds that “it’s a new and radically distilled understanding of expertise: An expert is someone who knows something.” All this supposedly lends credence to Maria Bustillos’s infamous claim that Wikipedia has meant “the death of the expert.” Or, at the very least, it’s signaled a new sense of expertise that is gradually usurping traditional notions of credibility.

The experts aren’t dead

If you’ve bothered to click on the links, you’ll see pretty quickly that Rosen’s article is ill-informed and that she probably hasn’t read the very study she cites. Likewise, you’ll see that the authors of the study have a weak grasp of what it means to be intuitive. “Intuitively, someone is an expert in a topic if their interest is significantly above average”? In what world is that intuitive? Apparently a world where correlation implies causation, I guess. A world where compulsive gamblers are experts on game theory, teenage boys are experts on the female reproductive system, and toddlers are experts on differential geometry. I think we all can agree that merely showing a great deal of interest in a subject does not make you an expert on said subject.

"Mama! Dada! Positive Gaussian curvature!"

I think there are more plausible and certainly more well-thought-out definitions of what an expert really is. In his widely anthologized article “Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?”, Alvin Goldman proposes the following definition of what it means to be an expert:

 [W]e can say that an expert (in the strong sense) in domain D is someone who possesses an extensive fund of knowledge (true belief ) and a set of skills or methods for apt and successful deployment of this knowledge to new questions in the domain. Anyone purporting to be a (cognitive) expert in a given domain will claim to have such a fund and set of methods, and will claim to have true answers to the question(s) under dispute because he has applied his fund and his methods to the question(s). (p. 92)

So, you can be an expert so long as you satisfy two properties: you’ve got to know a lot about something and you have to be able to apply that knowledge to new situations. For example, a particle physicist is not an expert on subatomic particles merely because she knows a lot about them. She also has to be able to make predictions, solve problems, and be able to adapt to new discoveries. That is, the expert is the one who can reliably solve problems in particle physics. In contrast, the Wikipedia editors on the particle physics page are not experts because they are interested in the page. Neither are they experts if they’re read a lot and have a lot of domain knowledge. They’re only experts on particle physics if they can successfully apply their knowledge in new and challenging situations. Basically, if a given Wikipedia editor is capable of searching for the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider, I’d say she is probably an expert on particle physics.

And, if you think about it, this comports well with our standard distinction between expert and amateur. An amateur is very interested in a subject and knows a lot about it. An expert knows a lot about it and can put that knowledge to use as a tool for discovering new questions and finding new answers. This, of course, is not to say that amateurs can’t discover anything new–they certainly can and do all the time. But, experts do it consistently and reliably.

But, are we paying attention to the experts?

Here’s the thing: geeky postmodernists love Wikipedia because, to them, Wikipedia represents a destabilizing force. The success of the world’s largest encyclopedia has supposedly meant the end of the old, post-Enlightenment hegemony of ‘expertise’, ‘truth’, and ‘objectivity’. Now, we live in a world where the expert is dead, where individual genius and creativity are symptoms of “Romantic snobbery“, and where quaint notions of ‘fact’ are officially deceased. But, of course, this is all just so much sophism and intellectual mysticism. Truth, fact, objectivity, and expertise are safe, secure, and just as they have always been. In fact, as I argued a few weeks ago, Wikipedia is actually surprisingly deferential to traditional, scholarly expertise; Wikipedia is founded on a deep respect for authoritative knowledge. So, contra the postmodern geeks, the experts aren’t dead…we’re just not paying attention to them.

And it’s true! We are willfully ignoring expertise. Homeopathy is a billion dollar industry. Horoscopes appear in every “news”paper. People think gays and lesbians shouldn’t adopt, that Obama is a secret Muslim, that there’s no agreement on climate change, that intelligent design is legitimate science, and that vaccines cause autism, just to name a few pants-crappingly stupid beliefs that people would stop believing if they just listened to the damn experts. Actually, that last one about vaccines is a good example of just how dangerous it is to ignore genuine expertise. For a great overview of why and how non-experts should defer to experts, take a look at Stephen John’s “Expert Testimony and Epistemological Free-Riding: The MMR Controversy” in the July 2011 Philosophical Quarterly (you may be able to find a free copy if you poke around a little).

by Flickr user chrisheuer (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Are librarians experts?

Basically, an expert is someone with the requisite skills and knowledge to discover and answer new questions in a given domain. It’s not just about what we know, it’s about whether and how we can use what we know. As a librarian, this brings up an interesting couple of questions: are librarians experts and, if so, what is our area of expertise? Postmodern librarians like LeMoine (2012), Martin (2009), Stover (2004), argue that librarians are non-experts. Realists like Pressley and Gilbertson (2011), O’Kelly and Lyon (2011), and Crosby (2001) argue that librarians are experts on information and information seeking. There’s actually no consensus about whether librarians are experts or “generalists.” And though I do think that librarians are experts, I’m not so sure that calling us experts on “information” is accurate.

In my next post, I want to tackle the question of whether and, if so, how librarians are experts. It’s an especially interesting problem given that we reference librarians routinely assist patrons in researching subjects about which we know very little…so how and why are patrons justified in trusting our help? And in case you think this is just idle, armchair philosophy, remember that there is an active movement afoot to replace academic librarians (generalists) with subject-specialist post-docs (experts).  Figuring out whether librarians are experts is a crucial step in explaining our worth. And rather than claim that the definition of ‘expert’ has been radically altered, or that the expert is dead, or that expertise doesn’t matter, I’d like to argue that it most certainly does and now more so than ever.