The end

Rubbish librarians is calling it a day. Goodbye.

I had that CILIP Chief Executive in the back of my cab

"So I jump into this taxi from Broadcasting House to the House of Commons and the taxidriver looks at me in his mirror. "I don't recognise you," he says," Which are you? Broadcaster or politician?" He's looking quite fierce. "Neither," I reply, "I'm a librarian." His face softens. "Ah, libraries," he says, "My daughter uses the library all the time. That's much better then being a broadcaster or a politician - I don't trust any of them." And there you have it - why libraries (and librarians) are at the heart of the debate about what sort of relationship we want between society and the State: because people care about their libraries."

This encounter sounds unlikely to us. But does it really demonstrate that libraries are "at the heart of the debate about what sort of relationship we want between society and the State"?

If, for example, the cabbie had gone on to say that his daughter also swam regularly, would that mean that swimming pools (and lifeguards) are at the heart of the debate too? And what if the driver had instead replied "My daughter has been invoiced for a book she's sure she returned, I hate librarians, get out of the cab!" ... what would that show?

Infowhelm world

We can't see this phrase catching on. Or "information obesity" for that matter.

The nauseating video is of the usual "gosh there's a lot of information out there" variety - you don't say!

Intute

Intute has always seemed to us to be the embodiment of the "mother knows best" tendency of information literacy and its demise can be seen as a demonstration of the futility of librarians trying to categorise the web on behalf of an uninterested public, quite happy to use search engines

You'd think its termination would bring some humility to those involved but not a bit of it. It was, apparently, "a hotbed of technical innovation" which explored "a staggering range of new technologies" and made "groundbreaking forays into virtual worlds"!

CILIP's "clear and compelling" messages (2)

Since they failed to get someone on Newsnight a few weeks ago, CILIP have become obsessed with the idea of "rapid response" in case of future media requests and building a more general campaign of advocacy in the face of likely cuts. However, they apparently believe that most librarians are incapabable of making a lucid case on their own and have therefore begun to produce a series of one-sheet lists of "compelling" arguments "to help CILIP members and library advocates".

The two lists produced so far take a bullet point approach to defending our profession and, sadly, are of the same standard as earlier CILIP documents we have highlighted.

We can't help thinking that merely parroting that "libraries change lives" will impress no-one, whilst claims that they "act as a cost-saver for society by combating ignorance, alienation, isolation, division and the lack of aspiration" or "stand for important values in our society including intellectual freedom, equality of opportunity, engaged citizenship, informed democracy, and a society in which people have the chance to achieve their potential" are both ludicrous and meaningless. Worse still is the assertion that we "enable learning and literacy from cradle to grave" - not least because it blithely appropriates a phrase associated so closely with the founding of the NHS. And surely it is dangerous to talk of "essential services" such as "author events and exhibitions" at a time when many truly essential services will be reduced.

All sectors will face cuts. These are big claims to make. How about some evidence?

Library 2.0 guru advocates skiving at work

Phil Bradley attacking an innocuous web page written by the Forum for Small Businesses offering advice on how to deal with employees who spend excessive time on Facebook at work. Reasonable reply from the Forum. Like a stroppy teenager, Phil rages "you don't understand"!

Tara Brabazon

Tara Brabazon achieved some notoriety a couple of years ago with The University of Google, a dreadful book which one of the RL team had the misfortune to read.

Flattered that a real academic appeared to be taking their views seriously, she found a ready audience amongst info-lit librarians and has spoken at conferences including LILAC. She, in turn, is probably grateful for the gigs - we can't imagine she gets many other offers.

She thinks librarians are important "because they punctuate the information landscape, controlling and managing enthusiasm and confusion." This shows her in terryfying action (note the ironic overhead projector).

Librarians in space

In what sense is this "library news"? Is the asteroid heading for the OU?

CILIP's "clear and compelling" one minute messages

Who writes this twee rubbish?

"They are not intimidating in the way other professionals can be. But just because they are unassuming, do not assume they are unimportant. It is the library staff who bring the library to life."

Annoyed Librarian

The RL team are going away for a few days. In our absence, we recommend the Annoyed Librarian who writes with great wit and insight about the US rubbish librarian scene.

Unfunny cartoon

This is from Cardiff University's Resource Bank of rubbish librarianship.

An addiction to web 2.0

An addict writes:

“You get up in the morning, that's one. Send another at the station. That's two. One before starting work, coffee break, couple at lunch and so on. You also think 'oh, difficult meeting with the boss, I'll want a tweet after that' and so on. So - far from a tweet being a tweet it becomes integral to the way you do things. Part of the panic of not having a tweet is the insane craving, but just as importantly, tweets help you get through things. Of course, you entirely ignore the fact that other people can have difficult meetings with the boss and not need to tweet. You also tend to hang around with people who tweet, and there's a concern that if you didn't tweet, you wouldn't see those people and would miss out on the gossip. Tweeters reinforce each other, and the habit that they both share.”

The Information Professional versus Google

CILIP’s website includes “Practical Guides” written by their Information and Advice Team which are considered of sufficient value to be password protected. One of them, The Information Professional versus Google, seems to be intended as a crib sheet for librarians to use when their role is being questioned. One would expect it to gather together and articulate the strongest arguments in favour of our profession. Unfortunately, it is a shocking example of bad writing, grammatical inconsistency, and the muddled thinking and poor reasoning that blight our discourse.

These are its main arguments:

• "A course at CILIP mentions that in 2007 Google only indexes 6% of the web."
• "Most material on the web is not vetted."
• "Information Professionals have a role in teaching information literacy; we are often in a good position to educate people about the web".
• Young people tend to skim read articles. Librarians are good at writing abstracts.
• "Information Professionals are often providing a service for the public good, not every one can afford to subscribe to the internet or afford books."
  
• "Information Professionals are developing IT skills to encourage users to library websites." (Is this wise?)
  
• "Information professionals save time. Frank Ryan says the three things he has learnt are that time has a value, the internet is not free (it still takes staff time to find free material) and pay-as-you-go pricing does not work for users." (Who is Frank Ryan?)
• "With the growth of web 2.0 and social media the role of information professional has changed, our role can often now be of "moderator" – providing quality control rather than being susceptible to popular low-quality information." (Eh?)
• "Search engines are constantly being updated to improve the service; this can result in them going offline, addresses changing or "broken links". Information professionals are able to update and index their own collections in a consistent manner." (What does this mean?)
• "Archives of things such as news items often go offline after a while. Libraries often have access to buy in online or physical collections." (“Things such as news items”!)
• "The cost of digitising a library is approximately $10 a book so physical libraries are likely to exist for some time. It has taken Google book search 3 years to digitize a million books, so it is likely to take 200 years to index all the books." (Assuming, that is, there are no further advances in scanning technology in the next 200 years)

Maybe CILIP should consider "vetting" its own material on the web?

Mediocre 2.0

While we will highlight particularly moronic academic library blogs, even the more sensible ones can seem less than essential. It’s certainly hard to imagine any scholars actually reading them.

A common approach is to list websites that might help research: for example, this one, and this. Clearly librarians should be experts when it comes to identifying useful sources of online information but we wonder whether randomly listing them on an unstructured, non-searchable blog is of much use to anyone. Better, surely, to draw on this knowledge when dealing with specific enquiries?

We can’t help thinking the motivation for such blogs is less to inform academics (who, presumably, are perfectly capable of finding the information they need) and more to show that librarians are hip to web 2.0.

The danger is that they give the impression that librarians have nothing better to do than idly surf the web for vaguely interesting websites. Writing about the recent KPMG report, Update editor Elspeth Hymans states: "We all need to think lean, and think how what we do adds value. Not 'Do I do what I do well?', but 'Does what I do need to be done at all'?" Quite.

Save your library: open up a Twitter feed

There's an interesting debate going on regarding a report which, in passing, suggests that public libraries might be staffed by volunteers.

One thing it shows is the limitations of Twitter as a forum for debating complex issues. The Twitter comments are either moronic (e.g. "This is scary #libraries keep being mentioned as being choppable today") or, more usefully, refer people to blog posts. The CILIP forum includes a couple of robust and persuasive comments from actual volunteers, and this is very good too

Library 2.0 guru Phil Bradley doesn't see it like that. This is his solution:

"Take a video camera, video it all, put it on YouTube, open up a Twitter feed, stream questions from the rest of us in order to give us better insight. Then go out onto the streets and ask people what they think?"

Pitiful video

Do other professions do this sort of thing?

Even more pointless

Link

Most pointless library blog entry of the week

Sorry, but does this kind of thing really amount to a "paradigm shift"?

Defining our professional future

On the subject of CILIP, it's depressing to see that this lucid, thoughtful contribution to their Conversation has produced no response and yet there has been much chatter about the "ethics" of tweeting at conferences ...

Update blog

What's going on over at CILIP's Update?

The magazine (and its somewhat pointless blog) appears to have become a outlet for Matthew Mezey's interest in weird American management gurus.

Rubbish video

This is a video made at an Australian university which has caused great excitement in the rubbish librarian community.

It's a nice example of how woolly our profession can be when we try to envisage the future: a mishmash of technophilia, utopianism, dubious business theory and wishful thinking.

Key points include:

• The "old ways" are bad, whatever they are.
• The future library will not have a "hierarchy" or "bosses". This will be achieved by using Twitter, somehow.
• Future librarians will cycle to work, however far they live from their workplace. This will have a "ripple" effect, encouraging library users to cycle to work too, thus saving the world from global warming.

Open letter to the Prime Minister

This is a letter written by some librarians to the Prime Minister. It was sent in February and is regarding school libraries.

It is a typical information literacy text. It’s badly written, lacks self-awareness and makes ludicrous claims for the profession. The timing is also strange: hadn't they seen the opinion polls?

Take this extract: leaving aside the offensive nature of the metaphor, can tidal waves "gradually but inexorably" drown people? And will the 21st century really be "symbolized", not by climate change or the rise of China, but by distance education?


Link

World Cup rubbish

Link

Making money from rubbish librarians

Twitter for librarians, CILIP Training course, 27 July 2010. Course leader: Phil Bradley.

Under "Who should attend?":

"Any library/information professional who needs to keep up to date with new resources ... No technical understanding or ability is required or expected."

!!

Cost = £305-£430 + VAT.

From Phil's post "CILIP in 2020": "I want CILIP to continue to run courses ..."

Rubbish 2.0

From Matthew Mezey's report on the Online Information 2009 event in Library & Information Update, January-February 2010, p22.

Handbook for Information Literacy Teaching

"The cover illustration and its insert companion were inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film
2001: A Space Odyssey.The moment when prehistoric man discovered the use of simple
tools was a milestone in the history of civilisation.The ability to use information as a survival
tool has had an equally profound impact.The pairing of these images conveys a sense of the
evolution and progress of the human race, from a manual to an intellectual dexterity; they
emphasise the liberating effects of information on the human spirit.We believe that these
images encapsulate many of the principles of information literacy described in this
Handbook; they motivate, inspire and demand attention.We hope that you agree."

Link