58 Days to Government Information Liberation
All right, I am willing to take an initial stab at trying to imagine the possible relationships between library services and those demanded by egovernment services. Is there a natural evolution of common purpose or intent? And I think Daniel's concern about liability is a fair point, and I do believe that any sustainable blending of egovernment and government librarianship is going to have to deal with the basic question: once we supply the internet connections, the computer equipment, and the technology, what do we bring into the relationship? I keep coming back to the wealth of ideas generated by Marshall McLuhan's research and insight -- as with this particular observation from a 1960 letter: "In an electronic age, all that properly moves is information. The massive overlay of antecedent and existent technology takes on a peculiar characters of simultaneity in the electronic age. All technologies become simultaneous, and the new problem becomes of relevance in stress and selection, rather than commitment to any one." In the context of government information, this might mean that the library role in the vast spectrum of e-government services is to "stress and select" options for people among the wide array of possible information choices and service possibilities. But this is a role that benefits very little from our long-standing library relationship with the textual literacy of a culture. Users will need to be "talked and walked" through the choices in a very deliberative way by a service provider. This kind of activity would share a common deliberative guidance we might find in our readers advisory services -- but little else. See you on Day 57. Continue reading
59 Days to Government Information Liberation
Ok, now that the issue of possession is in its proper perspective, I agree with Daniel -- its time to put the larger picture together. As I see it, the framework for the "next century project" -- a form of government information librarianship (and librarianship in general) that exists regardless of the format or technologies -- can be built from these planks: 1. Recognize the importance of librarians and their institutions in the sustainability of a dynamic civic culture. 2. Seek to establish the most effective techniques individual bibliographic institutions can contribute to a national system of government information access, preservation and organization. 3. Create standards/protocols to inform best practices on how to integrate the impact of e-government services into our institutions. 4. Develop a model graduate curriculum/studies to prepare the next generation of government information librarians. 5. Build effective rhetoric of advocacy for open, free and permanent access to government information that binds the shared interests of our various professional associations. This shared rhetoric should come from consensus and not assent. 7. Deliver various programs of public education and outreach about government information policy structure that takes into account the cyclical nature of partisan election, but is not dependent on it. 8. Fashion new models of management and public service for government information resources in our institutions. That should be enough to keep us busy for the next 59 days. See you on Day 58 Continue reading
60 Days to Goverrnment Information Liberation
Thanks Jim and Daniel for your willingness to tear away at our longest standing point of contention -- the future need of possession to define what we do as librarians, especially government information librarians. This thoughtful and flexible intellectual exchange continues to be a booster shot of optimism that librarians will still ground their arguments not only in the rhetoric of advocacy, but also from serious intellectual foundations that frame our daily practice. This is why I enjoy the Thomas Mann articles so much.... And, no, I do not think we will convince one another to switch sides. But that is not necessarily the point. Think of it this way -- it takes at least two notes (or tones) to make accessible music. I would like to think our two points of frame a greater spectrum of possibilities for our profession. When I speak of a duality in formats, I do not see it as a zero sum proposition -- rather I see a series of librarian centric choices being made based on what librarians see as the principal purpose of their institutions. Which -- may or may not -- be the same as their community of users or other groups with different goals and interests n the same problems. The best book I read on this was written by Patrick Williams -- The American Public Library and the Problem of Purpose. 1988, New York: Greenwood Press. The world wide web -- even with all its flexibility and fragility -- enables to us to explore a new kind of government information librarianship, but not at the cost of more traditional forms. Possession remains a critical component in this, but is no longer a social good that is dominated the dominion of libraries. Yes the governments are taking back their possession of information sources through the digital media and e government services. And yes, under the Gutenberg traditions and technologies, this physical possession was more distributed among the social and economic classes because of the physical characteristics of the paper and print book. But you can also see this kind of distributed shared possession showing up in the digital world -- for instance -- with many other web sites capturing the lost or deleted pages of change.gov. What rankles us as government information librarians is that we perceive this act of preservation to be better done through rational and centralized functions of our governments. It is a public good that deserves a proactive public preservation. And it rankles us so much that for the past hundred years we have recreated thousands of smaller and localized variations of what we think the government should be doing. I have no problem with this argument, and will remain as vocal and full-throated in my rhetoric as anyone in the defense of libraries and their righteous place as critical institutions in our democracy and civic culture. What I do argue for us to seriously consider as our next century project, however, is a form of government information librarianship (and librarianship in general) that exists regardless of the format or technologies. My favorite question I love to pose for my library graduate students runs something like this -- Can doctor still be a doctor without a hospital? They usually answer -- of course. Can you be a lawyer with out a courthouse? Again -- affirmative. Now the money shot -- Can you be a librarian without a library? Dead silence. What I am trying to do here is tease out for them the critical intellectual and fundamental things we do in that wonderfully complex exchange of knowledge among individuals and their institutions of government. Possession of material might have once been central to that purpose. And in the case of some of our institutions (even depository libraries) that command and control might still be in play. But I also strongly suspect that much more intellectual effort and research will be needed in order to build a community of theory and practice that imagines a world where this idea of possession is much less exclusive or destiny for any one institution. Now we are getting somewhere… See you on Day 59 Continue reading
61 Days to Government Information Liberation
Just got finish reading an article from the upcoming Sunday edition of the New York Times -- "If You Liked This, Sure to Love That" which talks about the public contest Netflix is running to improve the accuracy of the search engines that recommend movies to their users. Here is a section from the story that describes the problem and the prize -- "THE “NAPOLEON DYNAMITE” problem is driving Len Bertoni crazy. Bertoni is a 51-year-old “semiretired” computer scientist who lives an hour outside Pittsburgh. In the spring of 2007, his sister-in-law e-mailed him an intriguing bit of news: Netflix, the Web-based DVD-rental company, was holding a contest to try to improve Cinematch, its “recommendation engine.” The prize: $1 million. Cinematch is the bit of software embedded in the Netflix Web site that analyzes each customer’s movie-viewing habits and recommends other movies that the customer might enjoy. (Did you like the legal thriller “The Firm”? Well, maybe you’d like “Michael Clayton.” Or perhaps “A Few Good Men.”) The Netflix Prize goes to anyone who can make Cinematch’s predictions 10 percent more accurate." Deeper in the story is this tidbit -- "IT USED TO BE THAT if you wanted to buy a book, rent a movie or shop for some music, you had to rely on flesh-and-blood judgment — yours, or that of someone you trusted. You’d go to your local store and look for new stuff, or you might just wander the aisles in what librarians call a stack search, to see if anything jumped out at you. You might check out newspaper reviews or consult your friends; if you were lucky, your local video store employed one of those young cinéastes who could size you up in a glance and suggest something suitable." And then this -- "Cinematch has, in fact, become a video-store roboclerk: its suggestions now drive a surprising 60 percent of Netflix’s rentals. It also often steers a customer’s attention away from big-grossing hits toward smaller, independent movies. Traditional video stores depend on hits; just-out-of-the-theaters blockbusters account for 80 percent of what they rent. At Netflix, by contrast, 70 percent of what it sends out is from the backlist — older movies or small, independent ones. A good recommendation system, in other words, does not merely help people find new stuff. As Netflix has discovered, it also spurs them to consume more stuff." The implications for government information library service seem, to me, profound. Automated trust? Where could we go with this when it comes to that sense of trust the informs the best part of librarianship and the community of users that rely on our institutions. I know some libraries are using aspects of this kind of recommendation automation ... but I love the notion of using the social software tools in such a way to help people find more stuff they might in which they might be interested. I know there is a huge gap between selecting movies and TV shows based on likes and dislikes and what we do as government information librarians when we explain large or small complex policy/legal connections. But just as Jim points out about the inherent necessity of collaboration embedded in librarian practice and theory (and we will continue to agree to disagree about the centrality of possession in that mix) -- I can only dream of an government information search algorithm that picks and chooses its way among the complex of relationships embedded in government information. If you like this regulation on natural gas, then you might want to consider this one. I know this happens at a very "structural" level in the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations that link the regulations through citations and their foundational public laws. And I know that, in a very real sense, subject headings and other authority records do this at a kind 19th century linear approach. But it seems to me that I spend most of my flesh and blood library time explaining these connections to our users rather than seeing any evidence that they grasp these library connections intuitively. How can we make our library intuition more transparent? In some ways we are flesh and blood alogrithims -- which gets to another part of the story that delights me, when the contest participants sharpen their mathematical tools -- "As the teams have grown better at predicting human preferences, the more incomprehensible their computer programs have become, even to their creators. Each team has lined up a gantlet of scores of algorithms, each one analyzing a slightly different correlation between movies and users. The upshot is that while the teams are producing ever-more-accurate recommendations, they cannot precisely explain how they’re doing this. Chris Volinsky admits that his team’s program has become a black box, its internal logic unknowable." Which has always been the challenge of teaching student librarians about the art of reference work -- there is this black box quality to how we know what we know and where to search for relevant information. See you on Day 60. Continue reading
62 Days to Government Information Liberation
I am at another slog point in the conversation. I am thinking about a couple of things -- the future of education and government information librarians; and what aspects of government information access should transcend all levels of government. To the first, I am pondering one of the first blogs I posted back in January here. 10 months later I think my mind has shifted on a few points -- particularly when it comes to the issue of formats. Jim's responses to my earlier 75 day posts have got me reconsidering my positions. It is somewhat amazing that we started this conversation three and half years ago with dueling articles in the Journal of Academic Librarianship about the future of the federal depository library system.... Which brings me to my second musing -- the future of government information service in libraries -- especially as framed by century long traditions of formal depository libraries. Here, I think the creation and distribution mechanisms recast the traditional library approaches radically. I think we should be working towards some kind of overarching standards, protocols, expectations for all library-based government information services -- regardless of which level of government it comes from, or in seeming contradiction to my statement above, format. In other words,the pressures of e-government services delivered in library settings set new expectations for our users and how we are trained as professionals. It is a shift from a world of government information organized by static bibliographic standards to one driven by a dynamic information liquidity/exchange where users' particular needs combine with available government information resources/services to create a continuum of knowledge possibilities. To be continued... See you on Day 61 Continue reading
Latest Comments