Presentations, part 2

I had no idea of the depth with which libraries can contribute to urban renewal and gentrification. The presentation provided the right mix of pictures and facts to effectively communicate their topic's nuances. I have two observations: They should have emphasized the beehive like atmosphere of the Salt Lake City Public Library and its subtle cues to that state's predominately Mormon population. They also should have engaged the controversy of gentrification a little more heartily; I have little compassion for homelessness but only slightly more for people who object that wealthier Americans are buying cheap properties, fixing them up, and enjoying a bohemian bourgeois lifestyle in an area formerly populated by working class whites before industries moved outward/southbound/overseas and colored folks moved in. Yes, property taxes are going up. If you own your home, sell it. If you rent, do you really care where you live anyway? Madison living space ordnance prevents the building of new homes and flats downtown and compels developers to buy out entire blocks to construct massive apartment buildings and create such population density that it gets even harder to find a place to sit down on the bus. I'm curious if the compassionate souls fighting gentrification would prefer urban/suburban sprawl instead?

I have no comments about the banned books presentation except that time shortage compelled me to skip my unwritten (but still scripted) portions pertaining to the role of librarians better arbiters of fact and truth than a partisan educational body and that no one knows how to pass books along to the rest of the class. I got to look at Heather Has Two Mommies but none of the others because they were immediately passed back or, in the case of And Tango Makes Three, read by a single person.

By the time the Big Box Store/Coffeeshop segment came I was too anxious about their time crunch to pay much attention. Rachel was too dismissive of Coffman, as evidenced by at least two members praising aspects of his essay, and was too flamboyant for the time allowed. Even with Sara pushing her along after her PowerPoint mishap she kept going, and going. I've told her that she is wayyy too in to being Jewish. Her pronunciation of "Coffman" as "Kauf-munn" and "tawlk" instead of "talk" are just two examples of needless flourish that helped put their group past time. Granted they had only 35 minutes to begin with but they still went 5 minutes over their allotted time. The third to last presenter, if you include Rachel's allegedly abbreviated conclusion, was painful to watch as he struggled to communicate his topic. I'm still not sure what it was, actually. Their last non-Rachel presenter, just like Karl in Banned Books, was gracious and quick without sounding dumb. Clearly he had more to say but couldn't in good conscience subject us to a longer class.

I was very frustrated for the entire class because I knew we would run long or have to shorten our presentations. Three peers took Alan's call for constructive criticism to the Nth degree and held up class for another 7 minutes after everyone else turned theirs in. My attempts to guilt them to finish, namely shouting for anyone who cared to hear "Don't think that because you already presented you can hold up the rest of us," seemed to stall them further. Based on conversations with my classmates, I'm confident the surveys have a lot in common and therefore extra effort on their part meaningless. A less wasteful way to survey would have been filling out the forms during an extended break of 15 or 20 minutes rather than the 15 minute survey time and the 10 minute break we ended up getting.

Presentations, part 1

I know several of the members on the One City One Book team and so criticism over content would be more difficult than criticism on form. I will focus on form.

The use of that program allowing them to move across the country gave their presentation an original flair and was definitely relevant to their geographical emphasis, but the limited point-by-point access necessitated that salmon colored handout. I would have preferred a PowerPoint like bullet system. The handout was nicely formatted but two whole sections were incorrectly/poorly labeled. At first glance it is bizarre to put PROS second  and CONS sixth as these are good introductions which can be elaborated upon later. The group's concept should have been acceptably explained through supplementary material--if a library school student didn't know about it already--and allow a modicum of detail before they got into the nittygritty. All of their cons in the CONS section, which was named "Issues" in presentation but not the handout, were already referenced. They were also in the wrong order in the handout.

Had they done PowerPoint and spoke out of order rather than printed a handout I'm sure these issues would seem much less important. Instead they made the extra effort without quite meeting it.

My ignorance of E-Readers, such as what the heck "e-ink" is, makes that presentation much more interesting and enlightening. Since I don't get into the politics of being a librarian and I see myself more as an archivist, I have a hard time caring about reading disabled people. If a person has difficulty reading words or holding a codex, I hardly see it as their right that publishers and developers must bow to their wide ranging disabilities. Having never known, at least to my knowledge, any dyslexics, and as someone who has recovered without medication from alleged brain chemistry problems, I am skeptical of invisible mental disorders and wonder why we're handicapping society and encouraging people who can't rub two sentences together to enroll in college and press for their rights to have their books read to them. Be like the deaf community, the first group of citizens to latch onto and rely upon two-way pagers, buy an iPad that let's you watch TV. Meanwhile you can overcome your mental handicap as you sling coffee or bar tend for the rest of your life.

Perhaps I shouldn't write these when I'm already angry?

You Can't Spell "Reaction" Without "React"

I'm glad that Robbins touched on the difficulties of contemporaneous empathy when it comes to the Cold War and anticommunism. Having been born in 1985, my real-world exposure to the Red Menace was limited to the gradual phasing out of school maps that still included the USSR. Our early education on the American Revolution referred correctly to our independence from "England", rather than the "United Kingdom" as it was called some time later, and adults often used them interchangeably into the present. The Russian SSR was the key member of the USSR and followed a similar pattern which continued to beguile us. Perhaps that contributed to my eventual sub-specialization in Russian studies which, together with my relative youth, allows me to see Russian communism more objectively. As an American patriot I believe our system is superior given its adaptability rooted in pragmatism rather than idealism, as a student of history I can see how the Soviet system was doomed for internal and external reasons, but I have great difficulty putting myself in the shoes of people who feared communists were under their beds or hiding in their closet.

The USSR were technically allies, perhaps better to say respectfully neutral and assuming the worst was to come, and Russian forces bore the brunt of wartime casualties in a bloody struggle which killed tens of millions while the other allies bided their time to invade North Africa, Italy, and finally France. Those members of the American Legion faced a smaller and weaker German army precisely because the USSR threw their lives into the conflict.

This anticommunism extends into the institutionalized racism of the US during this time. It's always disappointing that white settlers, introduced to punish the treacherous Indians, adopted and maintained a similar racism practiced by the slave holding Indians who were removed from their native lands so whites could grow tobacco, cotton, rice, and indigo. Society and individual behaviors feed off each other to create irrational manifestations of our hopes and fears but for the life of me I can't understand how people can justify certain actions. I cannot recall who uttered this in Dismissal... but one of the charges against Ruth Brown was that her media exposure threatened the progress of local Negros: I've heard this same claim made in my studies of civil rights in the 1960s.

Phrases like that should be dubbed "2/3s phrases." One-third of the population will hear it and know it's an out and out lie but say it to deflect criticism, another third will identify it as a compromise that will quell agitation and restore peace, and another third will realize its absurdity but be overwhelmed by the other two-thirds. A similar claim can be made about gay marriage. There will always be a segment which feels homosexuality has no Godly right to exist who will be allies with morally conservative people who don't want gay people to further dilute the permanence of unions.

Particular to Ruth Brown, the logic of the conservative -villers aggravated me to no end. Particularly on page 73 when, after saying she did not consider herself having committed great harm, was asked the loaded question "Miss Brown, if you remain here as a librarian would you agree to do nothing more that would harm Bartlesville?" This is what happens when ad hoc citizens committees which have little to no expertise mandate policies under the guise of public accountability. They were little more than a professional lynch mob by committee with the intention to subvert the autonomy of a public institution with an avowed professional commitment to grant access to more information rather than less and facilitate thoughtful questions. I'm not the type of LIS student who got into the school with a political ax to grind--I just really want to be an archivist--but this sort of behavior stems from public hysteria and irrationality. This shit continues to the present and usually the actions of conservatives who fear loss rather than liberals who dream what could be improved. Lefties possess some crazy and irrational ideas as well--but they are usually unrealized aspirations watered down by conservative circumstances rather than the established norm struggling for survival.

Reaction is rarely celebrated in history texts because it is often based on intolerance, prejudice, and comparatively has a clear and present enemy rather than a sympathetic victim so often the subject of social history. Just look at our fiction--even the 1950s era Captain America Commie Basher was rendered an imposter by the Marvel retcon because we like our creative works to, in some ways, reflect our ideals. Real-life bigotry at a substantial enough level conveyed to the reader beyond mere standard practice makes an unsympathetic character indeed. I'm glad Cap got frozen and stands up for America once again.

Litigiousness

In our politically charged environment when anyone who opposes a popular or, depending on your ideology, the morally correct opinion, it is pleasant to be occasionally reminded that law and governance, however impersonal, are still objective arenas of discourse. It's true that we're overly litigious, however. Briefly: A man sentenced to 10 years for DWI and vehicular manslaughter was sued by the victim's family. Not satisfied with a sentence that probably wouldn't go lower than five years with good behavior, they wanted damages. He counter-sued and claimed their teenage son's disobedience of bicycle helmet laws contributed to his death and his own jail sentence. Some in the media portrayed his suit as morbid but I believed it illustrated the neutered way in which society takes the little things that make up life and puts them under a magnifying glass whenever we get our panties in a bunch. The civil suit against OJ was bad enough but he was a free man and still had plenty of money--this guy wasn't going to be earning much money in prison. His suit put the absurdity of the lawsuit into the open and transformed the public's perception of grieving parents seeking justice to vengeful parents seeking a paycheck.

The panel on the use of the Kindle was more genial but reminded me of this case nonetheless. The first presenter walked the audience into their mind-set that the device was simply being tested, rather than mandated, and having no blind students, they could not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. Quite intentionally the coming lawsuit seemed asinine. Another example of overly litigious citizens using the state to lower standards to the commonest denominators to disadvantage the majority of Americans who have fully functioning eyes. But after another speaker described "print disabled" persons and attempts to ensure that these persons are not left out of the discussions which develop these paperless technologies and mandate accessibility, the frivolous lawsuit took on important symbolic meanings intended to increase awareness. Perhaps I run the risk of seeming prejudiced when I say that people with untreatable mental disorders that keep them from learning effectively without outside assistance should probably not go to college in the first place. People who are deaf or blind or have reduced use of their limbs can and should be reasonably accommodated--but only if their disabilities demonstratively limit their talent. Stephen Hawking stands out as an extreme example: A Brilliant mind trapped inside a nearly lifeless shell. Many persons suffering from retardation are given High School diplomas as more of a gesture but potential employers realize this. High School is no longer a "Secondary School" that only the most well off Americans completed but rather an assumed minimum educational qualification and it doesn't behoove America well to turn college into the new gold standard. This is not Harrison Bergeron.

The second video, save for discussions of the ways libraries can be more attractive to students with a coffeeshop like atmosphere, was much less stimulating. The southern woman's accent was one of the strongest I've heard from an obviously intelligent person. My experience has been that the strongest accents have the worst grammar and thus perpetuate the image of the ignorant southerner. This sort of spoils things for proud southerners who freely use "y'all", and English would benefit from a second-person plural, but refrain from double-negatives. Her frequent interruptions of other speakers irked me but she usually contributed to thoughtful discussion so she came out ahead--as far as I'm concerned.

It is a cliche but still no less true that libraries must re-invent themselves as their users change. I recall an anecdote of a campus which mandated laptops and, because the library did nothing to provide services and instruction to fit this new paradigm, eventually dissolved the library. While I prefer an actual coffee-house to a hybrid library, many of my peers don't and I recognize this must be exploited. This will become especially important as generations of children are given handmedown PCs and laptops and lose the physicality which gave birth to the terms "file" or "cut and paste."

The audience input was also quite fascinating. Not being a tech person I failed to understand, at least at first, why Google wouldn't want metadata for more complete and accurate searching. From my understanding of the subsequent discussion, the fault with Google's search mechanisms which allows Google Bombing would be exacerbated if they accepted metadata.

After these videos, however, I kind of want a Kindle for PDFs. Unlike most of my peers I don't print them but I don't like to carry my laptop everywhere. It's a heavy mofo and has destroyed two of the three zipper compartments in my expensive leather messenger bag. I still have no idea how much repairs might be... perhaps I should sue?

Conceptual Issues in Government Publications and the Coming Apocolypse

Perhaps because Nancy Mulhern, someone I've known for several years now, is leading the government publications discussion, the readings were a little heavy on conceptual matters. This heavy conceptual basis is the same for most of our class's readings but then again I'd've hardly appreciated an explanation of SUDOC classification and "Digital Democracy" covered the pragmatic side pretty well.

The CWD article approached information from an apparently unique perspective but, looking at them both, someone should consider the consequences of diminished government print documentation and the various information/citizen types many people willfully avoid or do not have reliable infrastructure for the computer and Internet access. My girlfriend's father lives in a cabin that's better than some proper homes I've visited but is completely off the grid. Until this year he didn't have running water and he relies on solar power to charge car batteries used for his radio, portable DVD player, and occasional amp. He'd need utilities hooked up in order to support a power sucking computer with a slow connection in order to view documents but he has no desire to do this. My suspicion that many of the types of citizens who believe the state is exaggerating the danger of CWD would object if a previously held privilege were lost. Surely they can use the computer at their local library but what if their budget is so low there's only one and its primarily for the catalog? Or, what if there's a half-hour limit and the citizens wants to write the treatise on some obscure act or law?

The Nerves of Government chapter was an interesting libertarian examination of government and communications and perhaps a uniquely American outlook. In the United States we're ambivalent to the dangers of powerful government: Democrats would prefer a government that assists political, social, and economic equality in the face of change and Republicans favor actions which spur development and growth but may leave some people out of it. We're not used to thinking about the government as a free speech agent because the first amendment is our guarantor and our history still convinces us that our government in small. We've never had, for example, pirate radio competing with the monopolistic paternalism of the BBC. Our version of this conflict is Clinton signing a law deregulating the commercial radio industry which allowed Clear Channel Communications to buy out practically any station it wanted.

Our government is actually quite large but it's federated so most of the control is local or state level but there's always a trace of "What if--" in the American psyche which usually leads to these types of discussions. What if the feds use the commerce clause to exercise total control? What if they control the means of communication? What if the Canadians invade? What if the Ruskies finally go through with it? We'd better stock up on every type of gun the liberal American weapons laws allow, and some they don't, build a bunker and stock it with dehydrated food. Down there, the Internet will just be a pleasant memory of naked women and eBay.

Any digital democracy model must find a place for Americans like my girlfriend's father and the conspiracy theorists or else they may start another Whiskey Rebellion.

As the World Turns

I suspect this week's readings are right up Alan's alley but, with the exception of a few portions in each article, they were predominately at the cross-roads of law and economics--two subjects I don't care to study. The soap-opera like conditions in Telling Tales Out of School were a useful wrapper in the discussion of ownership in corporatist universities but at times reminded me of Henrietta Lacks, Revisited.

While I knew something about the ways in which copyright law has evolved over the centuries, the long quote in Intellectual Property and the Liberal State reminded me how irrational it sounds to justify a decision, any decision really, by claiming it will undermine a whole host of related activities. That an author loses all control of their work as it is disseminated was covered in a previous reading, which one I am unsure, but that only considered the intellectual component. Perhaps the Labor Theory that incorporated millers and printers into a book was relevant in a time when books were still something of an art form in an age of poor literacy relatively poor rates of reproducibility. As more people have the intelligence and leisure to read books and printing is less arduous the financial incentive increases with this new capacity. It seems....

I also enjoyed the nuances of the Cultures and Copyrights article which elaborated on the creolization of copyright law in Australia. The author claimed that sacredness was being injected into copyright law but I feel the case was reasonably made by Intell Prop in Lib State when it argued that the romantic idea of authorship, mainly inspiration and originality by using community resources like language, culture, etc, injected sacredness into copyright law quite some time ago.

Revising Copyright Law for the Information Age made an interesting and admittedly flawed argument in favor of vernacular laws based on common sense in an age of wide dissemination. Too often our societies can't deal with problems of such a scale because any sweeping action would instigate large and powerful groups and change our very conception of, in this case, copyright law. In politics these are called "Third Rail" issues. President Bush knew Social Security had problems and proposed a privatization scheme which may have alleviated the coming crisis but is instead a signature domestic failure for a president who will probably be remembered for foreign policy. Health care is a similar third rail. By the author of Revising Copyright Law looking at the problem and proposing solutions, he's assisting the necessary dialogue as the controlling means of information are lost or disseminated. I doubt much has or will come of it, however. Greed and shortsightedness are fairly common attributes of agents whose primary concern is profit.

Negro Views

Deborah Brandt is right that we take literacy for granted but until this book I simply hadn't considered the innate differences between learning to write and learning to read. It wasn't until my early adulthood that I realized exactly how a person could read a foreign language without speaking it and it naturally follows that a person could learn to read without being able to write effectively. I found the chapter "The Sacred and the Profane" illuminating in the small-p politics of conflict surrounding them.

But indicative of my internal issues with race, "The Power of It" profoundly annoyed me with its emphasis on civil rights and church. Brandt was documenting people as she saw them, so she can't be faulted for working with what she found, but it's annoying that the black image hasn't gone past this yet. The reminders of injustice and exclusion of the not-so-old South always make my blood boil but the non-believer in me abhors the extensive use of the Bible as a reading primer and dominance of the church in black life. Were I a former slave, or the son of slaves, who took the time to consider which religion to choose, I hope I would refuse the one of my masters and tormentors. Use of artifacts, like that three year old who loved a particular pen, were touching anecdotes but nearly the entire chapter had racism and slavery looming in the corner. I enjoy feeling angry but only about certain things which are arguable.