Image from Yuba College on Flickr

It can be difficult to drop things that we’re doing or get rid of things we’ve had for a while. Just watch the show Hoarders. We become attached to our possessions and ways of doing things. It is necessary though. We can’t do everything, collect everything, and be all things to all people. If we try, we will either become bloated or stretch ourselves too thin. We have to know our communities and tailor our services to their specific needs.

Gretchen Rubin, the author of the Happiness Project wrote a great blog post over at Zen Habits about identifying and getting rid of clutter. Much of what is in this post is relevant to libraries and the way they collect resources, implement technology, and provide services.  Here are a few of Rubin’s questions seen through the lens of libraries:

• Would I replace it if it were broken or lost? If we’re not replacing specific library books when they get lost, did we really need them in the first place?
• Does it seem potentially useful—but never actually gets used? A book or database or technology may have seemed like a really great idea and perfect for your community, but it isn’t getting used. Sometimes this has to do with marketing. Sometimes it was simply a bad decision. Don’t retain a resource or maintain a service because it seemed like a good idea at one point. Retain the ones that are valuable and used by your community.
• Does it serve its purpose well? Is the collection you purchased doing what you thought it would? Is the new service you’re providing doing what you wanted? If it’s not actually doing what you intended you may need to reevaluate it.
• Has it been replaced by a better model? Has a newer edition of a book come out? Does a technology you have been using have a new competitor that might be cheaper or  work better than what you’re currently using? If so, maybe it’s time to upgrade. Conversely, don’t get something simply because it is the newest and shiniest. Evaluate if you need it or if your version of it still fills your need.
• Is it nicely put away in an out-of-the-way place? Perhaps you’re considering offsite storage or compact shelving for books. This could be an option for some institutions, but maybe you just have too much stuff. Could you just get rid of some of it?
• Does this memento actually prompt any memories? Sometimes we develop emotional attachments to things. “We need to keep this specific collection because we’d feel bad if we got rid of it. Libraries are supposed to have this reference set!” If your patrons don’t use things, there is no need to keep them around.
• Have I ever used this thing? Look at your reference statistics. When was the last time that book circulated? Never?! In seven years?! Hmmm, it might be a good candidate for Better World Books. The same thing goes for electronic resources. We have the ability to look at usage. Tie your decisions to your patrons usage. They vote with their clicks and their checkouts.

I’d bet you could start getting rid of things today, reducing clutter, and begin freeing your funds, space, and time for much more valuable ventures. What clutter do you have at your library?

But on closer inspection, that wasn’t the whole story. There was a Twilight book or two in the vicinity, but the books they were hocking were a bit older. In fact, they were classics. Playing on the black and red cover styles of the Twilight books, they had Wuthering Heights with the tagline “Love Never Dies,” and a sticker that lets you know it’s “Bella & Edwards favorite book.” They had Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the tagline, “The Original Forbidden Love…”

They were attempting to fleece young people into reading classic literature. Kind of a good idea. There’s that hackneyed adage about not judging a book by it’s cover, but that’s exactly what everyone does. People who enjoy Twilight have probably read all the books by now, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to read. Repackaging classics into thicker volumes with larger print and a flashy cover just might get young people to read these fine works of art. Most of the time it’s all about appearances.

How can libraries steal this idea? How can we change the appearance of something to make it more appealing or relevant to users. An example might be your library’s website. There’s good content and useful tools on there, but maybe the way they’re displayed isn’t exciting or makes users turn to something easier.

Perhaps by reformatting the website content, making it prettier and more interactive, users might be more inclined to navigate to your website and stick around for a while.

Are there other ways we can change the appearance of something, either physically or online, to increase usage?

Click here to watch the video on YouTube

Also, my friend Becky from library school at UW-Madison told me about a community reception her library runs that highlights faculty scholarship and creativity. So you’d be able to learn more about the accomplishments and wider lives of community members in that way. I just think stuff like this is so cool and think that we should be doing more of it.

Is anyone else hosting events like this?

I just wanted to share this awesome dinosaur display I put up. You can view all the pictures on our library’s Flickr page. Don’t forget to share what you’re passionate about…even if it’s dinos.

TC & Me

The author T.C. Boyle was on campus this week, and I was able to meet him. He stopped by the library to view cover art that students had created for his novel The Tortilla Curtain. Some of the art was pretty amazing and very creative. I know we are told to never judge a book by its cover, but everyone does it anyway.

He also spoke Tuesday evening, which I live-twittered. There was something that he said that really resonated with me. He said something to the effect that he doesn’t know what he thinks until he writes about it. In describing his writing process for The Tortilla Curtain he said that around the time he was writing the book (as always) there was a big debate about immigration with people staunchly on one side or the other. It sounded like Boyle wanted to learn more about how he felt about the controversy, so he wrote a story about it.

His way of writing seems pretty amazing. He simply goes through and writes slowly and thoughtfully without really changing things after he decides on them. He never plans out endings. He lets the story go where it takes him.

This hit home with me because I think I am the same way. I often am not sure what I think about things. Writing things down, and blogging makes my thoughts more concrete. I may not always agree with myself later, but I can see my own thinking process and even have a discussion with myself later. That is one of the great beauties of writing: it is a way of freezing time, taking a picture not of physical things but of thoughts and feelings.

The panel was composed of Steve Benen a political pundit blogger from the Washington Monthly, Cathy Resmer online editor of Seven Days Newspaper, and Ann DeMarle, head of the Emergent Media Center at Champlain College.  It was moderated by Jeff Rutenbeck Dean for the Division of Communication and Creative Media at Champlain College.

One thing that got people going in the audience was when Jeff said that books were an inefficient means of communication. Publishing online is much quicker and people can interact and have a conversation with the information, whereas books take years to publish and you cannot interact with a book.  The audience got defensive and sentimental about books, expressing that they did not want them to go away.  Someone actually stated how books were one of the most perfectly evolved forms of media.  Jeff also passed around a Kindle for people to gawk at.  The guy next to me was ogling it for about five minutes.

Photo by davidking

What was especially interesting was the discussion that ensued after Jeff brought up the idea that textbooks are “so superficial.”  He said that for his classes, “you could get 90 percent of the information in the textbooks from Wikipedia.”  At this a student commented that he did not go to textbooks first.  He went to Google or YouTube or blogs or other online sources.  Barbara Shatara, a librarian at the Fletcher Free Library asked him the same question I was thinking: how do you evaluate this information for credibility?  His answer was that he evaluated by cross referencing.  If he found info on one blog he would look and see if it was confirmed in other places.  If there were more people agreeing with something than disagreeing then he would believe it.

This gives a good insight into how information is being evaluated in this era.  Instead of looking for some authority people look to the masses.  “Do a lot of people believe this?  Ok, good then I will too.”  A lot of people believe that evolution is a falsehood and that global warming is a fabrication.   A great danger with this is when looking to corroborate or disprove a piece of information on the web, it very much depends on how you are searching.  If you search with keywords only  related to creationism, or find a creationist website and start following their links, the information your find is going to be colored in a very specific way.  With a mindset such as this, the tyranny of the majority can then determine what is true and not true, and that is very dangerous.

There were a number of debates back and forth and everyone really got into the session.  I was surprised at how many people were engaged and actually caring about these issues.  I guess information literacy is a real issue that people outside of libraries or academia care about.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the effects of the interweb on reading.  Nicholas Carr and his fascinating article, “Is Google Making us Stoopid?,” brought up the idea that Google and the nature of the internet in general is making it more and more difficult to thoughtfully read books and longer texts.  The typical internet experience is made up of little kernels of information plucked from different locations, allowing you to create your own whole.  This is in opposition to the previous model where an expert writes his own coherent view of a certain topic and you get one view in its entirety.  These are two very different ways of thinking, as well as two very different ways of reading.

Another article, “Literacy Debate – Online, R U Really Reading?” by Mokoto Rich asks us if this new type of internet reading is an enemy of traditional reading or if it too should be respected as another type of literacy.  It is fascinating to hear how one of the children in the article, Nadia, does read, but instead of books it is fan fiction. These are stories produced by regular people who can have the story go whatever direction they want.  Nadia even writes her own story about a person who dies and is reincarnated as a half cat half human.  It is instances like this in which the internet really amazes me.

I am of the opinion that this sort of literacy is equally as valid as traditional book literacy.  In Nadia’s case, she is reading other people’s work, engaging with the material, and inspired to create her own.  This is literacy at its finest.  But what I have come to realize is there are all different sorts of literacy.  There is the basic literacy level where you gain knowledge of reading, grammar, spelling and can understand sentences.  But from there there are countless types of specialized literacies.  Being able to read a legal brief, a medical chart, or a philosophical tome aren’t things that many of us have to do unless we work in one of those professions, but they still all constitute different modes of literacy.  My point is that you can be literate in only the things that are necessary for you, your career and your interests.

I would argue, though, that in order to be a well rounded individual in this day and age one needs to have in some measure the two diametrically opposed types of literacy: web reading and book reading.  The web is so ubiquitous that there is no escaping it.  Even print newspapers refer you to their online content.  This is not anything groundbreaking but, the internet is shaping our culture, and if people want to be a part of that culture they need to know how to get information from the web and understand it.  A person is not engaged in society if they shun the web.

On the other hand, those who spend all their time on the internet reading blogs and social networking are missing out on a big part of humanity as well.  No matter how many wikipedia articles, blog posts, or sparknotes, you read about The Odyssey you will still never capture the same feeling as actually reading it.  You will not be able to understand Odysseus’ unbounded joy when he again sees his beloved Ithaca.  So much of our culture and knowledge is contained in books.  You can get much of this knowledge from the web, but it will be very superficial.  You will not have the same depth of understanding you would get from reading a book.  Thus, being able to sit down, concentrate, and read in depth books will continue to be a desirable skill.

Therefore, some degree of literacy is necessary to succeed in life, such as the ability to read and write.  It is not necessary though to be able to sort through web pages (John McCain has his wife do it).  It also isn’t necessary to read books or even long articles.  Even though neither of these things is necessary, I believe that they are still both essential to live a full and flourishing human life.

The teacher Connie has been teaching for 27 years and 149 out of the 150 students she was teaching got permission from their parents to read the book.  This is a clear case of censorship and narrow-mindedness on the part of the school board.  Is anyone one else aggravated by this?