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Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 20
In all the talk about the civic potential for digital information and local libraries, and there is much good and solid talk, the underlying economics of our institutions is often not on the agenda. With the economic crisis slowly spreading is pall over the nation, one has to wonder what the immediate future holds for any of our proposals for a more permanent and public system of access to government information. Just here in Illinois, which is looking at a possible nine billion and the University of Illinois must consider its own financial future challenges. One is more than sure these economic choices are being made in thousands of libraries around the country. So let me add another topic to discuss with our community -- the economics of libraries and their worth to the people they serve. Here is one insightful article about the range of funding mechanisms used throughout Illinois. See you on Day 21 Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 19
Now that the Senate is close to a vote on the stimulus bill -- and we all know what a slugfest the conference committee is going to be as the two Congressional chambers work through their differences -- I think this could be another one of those "teaching moments" for our communities, let of course by government information librarians. Blogs are good, guides are good; but how about if a collection of public libraries and academic libraries banded together to put on a one or two hour program the describes the various intricacies of the legislation and how folks can get the information from the web. This can be done, considering how much energy we put into explaining tax forms and how to find ancestors. See you Day 20. Continue reading
Won’t Get Fooled Again: Day 18
It is just possible that the community organizing traditions shared by many public and academic libraries will find resonance with the Obama administration. Both draw on a culture of commitment and service to specific communities. In the case of Obama, a clear promise to "change" how things are done in Washington (not unlike the promises made by every president elected since the 1950's.) In return, Obama promises to speak directly to and for those individuals who voted for him. There is much talk about the grassroots organizing potential of Obama's millions of emails that give him a direct way to reach out to local and state-wide constituents. An electoral right and power often associated with the Congress rather than the president. Indeed, it is exactly this kind of direct outreach that Obama's administration is counting on to push Congress into acceptance of the massive economic stimulus package. However, to judge by the track record of the federal depository library system, most librarians share a far different relationship with their communities. We tend to think of them less as individuals who "get us into office." There is only a very shallow tradition of working closely with the congressional districts of House members or Senators to coordinate the collection and service of federal documents. In most cases, academic and public libraries identify their immediate communities as the student and faculty of their respective institutions, or the set of voters that approve their budgets (usually a local government or public body.) Where am I going with this? The suggestion, which I will develop more fully in subsequent blog entries, that libraries that share a clear mission to include government information service to their communities are going to have to redefine the who, what and why of that service. Further, this service will need to expand beyond the passive collection of "public documents" and add value in such a way that mirrors what many other community organizations are doing with either public programs and/or information. For example, suppose state and national library associations came up with a coordinated program that highlights the the recommendations of the Government Accountability Office's "13 Urgent Issues" to be considered by the new administration and congress. Indeed, FGI has laid the foundation for this kind of national service over the last couple of months by pulling together the basic bones of bibliographic guides. However, there is still too little effort to push this kind of community information organizing to the necessary level where a library's community might come to expect this kind of information service as a matter of course. Community organizing never rests. See you on Day 19. Continue reading
Won’t get Fooled Again: Day 17
If we are to think in terms of sustainability when in comes to government information, especially in the context of our library organizations, then some attention will need to be paid to two critical areas -- how government information services are organized in libraries and how we teach future librarians to deal with government information. Both these points will be examined more carefully in subsequent posts. See you on Day 18 Continue reading
Won’t get Fooled Again: Day 16
I think the Obama honeymoon is over. The withdrawl of nominees due to failure to pay taxes, sharp rebukes from House and Senate republicans over the economic stimulus package, That is not say his influence as a change agent is curtailed. You don't live and survive brutal Chicago politics for very long if you fall to the ground in a faint after your opponents deliver a quick partisan jab to the ribs (or even more painfully, sometimes by your supporters.) It would be a mistake to assume any sense of goodwill and comity will overwhelm the toxic partisanship that has flooded our political swamplands over so many decades. It is going to take a few more hits, losses, and diversions to reverse such a trend. In this way, supporters of free and open government information ought to take the long view and realize that it will take at least eight more years to undo the damage done by the Bush administrations to the nation's robust exchange of public and civic information. As I said in an earlier blog post, if Obama is still President for those two terms, we at least have an executive officer who shares our rhetoric of democratic access to government information. Whether he will be able to hold fast against the entrenched institutional interests that resist this kind of free flow of information (too expensive, to hard, too threatening, too much a security risk) remains to be seen. To this end, any of the near future plans from our various professional association discussions and study efforts must rise above the politcal tides that flow through the civic structures every two and four years. Just as there is a concepts of a "deep environment" argues for a perspective and planning structure that anticipates long term effects and relationships, so too there could be a concept of "deep civic information" that transcends the political life cycles of our national and state elections. This lesson was brought home again here in Illinois when our barely week old new Governor, and the newly elected leadership of the General Assembly, woke up to realize that they must now deal with a 9 billion dollar budget shortfall, state institutions that are either broken, obscure, or corrupted by indifference or political influence. If librarians are going to salvage anything from this political train wreck, it will be a way to connect the governors and those they serve with those flows of public information that matter more than the politics. See you on Day 17. Continue reading
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