Frank Turner- “Libraries have changed more in the last 15 years than they have in the last five centuries.”

Libraries as "glorified study halls"?

Steward of the Once and Future Book
November/December 2010
by Bruce Fellman

How does it feel to become University Librarian at Yale when all around you are predicting the end of the book as we know it? Intellectual historian Frank M. Turner '71PhD, who became interim University Librarian in January, has now formally assumed the leadership of Yale's vast library system—just as the apocalypse of the printed book is being discussed by his counterparts around the country. There are dark suggestions in journals and at conferences, he says, that "in less than 25 years, libraries will be glorified study halls," each with "one vast computer furnishing electronic materials."

But he's not worried: "The book won't disappear, and, in fact, our circulation remains high." Turner—the John Hay Whitney Professor of History, a former Yale provost, and since 2003 the head of the Beinecke (a post he'll keep until his replacement is hired)—readily acknowledges the reach of the digital revolution. "Libraries have changed more in the last 15 years than they have in the last five centuries," he says. Yale's library system "contains exemplars of everything: from the Beinecke, with its enormous breadth and depth of traditional print materials, to the medical library, which, except for its historical component, is virtually all electronic."

The rise of such virtual collections, along with digital devices and high-speed wireless Internet access, is changing a fundamental aspect of the library. "We've always thought of the library as the heart of the university, as a distinct place," Turner says. But librarians need a new perspective on the Sterling system. By enabling researchers to invent their own fresh ways of using the collections, "the library of the future will have to go into the heart of the user."

Nature study talking about the use of digitized books to uncover language clues

Cultural goldmine lurks in digitized books

'Culturomics' uncovers fame, fortune and censorship from more than a century of words.

Philip Ball

Analysing decades of books can reveal important cultural trends.FRANCK CAMHI / Alamy

The digitization of books by Google Books has sparked controversy over issues of copyright and book sales, but for linguists and cultural historians this vast project could offer an unprecedented treasure trove. In a paper published today in Science¹, researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Google Books team in Mountain View, California, herald a new discipline called culturomics, which sifts through this literary bounty for insights into trends in what cultures can and will talk about through the written word.

Among the findings described by the collaboration, led by Jean-Baptiste Michel, a Harvard biologist, are the size of the English language (around a million words in 2000), the typical 'fame trajectories' of well-known people, and the literary signatures of censorship such as that imposed by Germany's Nazi government.
"The possibilities with such a new database, and the ability to analyse it in real time, are really exciting," says linguist Sheila Embleton of York University in Toronto, Canada.
"Quantitative analysis of this kind can reveal patterns of language usage and of the salience of a subject matter to a degree that would be impossible by other means," agrees historian Patricia Hudson of Cardiff University, UK.
"The really great aspect of all this is using huge databases, but they will have to be used in careful ways, especially considering alternative explanations and teasing out the differences in alternatives from the database," adds Royal Skousen, a linguist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "I do not like the term 'culturomics'," he adds. "It smacks too much of 'freakonomics', and both terms smack of amateur sociology."

Half a trillion words

Using statistical and computational techniques to analyse vast quantities of data in historical and linguistic research is nothing new — the fields known as quantitative history and quantitative linguistics already do this. But it is the sheer volume of the database created by Google Books that sets the new work apart.

So far, Google has digitized more than 15 million books, representing about 12% of all those ever published in all languages. Michel and his colleagues performed their analyses on just a third of this sample, selected for the good quality of the optical character recognition in the digitization and the reliability of information about a book's provenance, such as the date and place of publication.

The resulting data set contained over 500 billion words. This is far more than any single person could read: a fast reader would, without breaks for food and sleep, need 80 years to finish the books for the year 2000 alone.
Not all isolated strings of characters in texts are real words. Some are numbers, abbreviations or typos. In fact, 51% of the character strings in 1900, and 31% in 2000, were 'non-words'. "I really have trouble believing that," admits Embleton. "If it's true, it would really shake some of my foundational thoughts about English."
According to this account, the English language has grown by more than 70% during the past 50 years, and around 8,500 new words are being added each year. Moreover, only about half of the words currently in use are apparently documented in standard dictionaries. "That high amount of lexical 'dark matter' is also very hard to believe, and would also shake some foundations," says Embleton. "I'd love to see the data."

In principle she already can, because the researchers have made their database public at http://www.culturomics.org/. This will allow others to explore the huge number of potential questions it suggests, not just about word use but about cultural history. Michel and colleagues offer two such examples, concerned with fame and censorship.

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They say that actors reach their peak of fame, as recorded in references to names, around the age of 30, while writers take a decade longer but achieve a higher peak. "Science is a poor route to fame," they add. Physicists and biologists who achieve fame do so only late in life, and "even at their peak, mathematicians tend not to be appreciated by the public".

Big Brother's fingerprints

Nation-specific subsets of the data can show how references to ideas, events or people can drop out of sight because of state suppression. For example, the Jewish artist Marc Chagall virtually disappears from German writings in 1936-1944 (while remaining prominent in English-language books), and 'Trotsky' and 'Tiananmen Square' similarly vanish at certain sensitive points in time from Russian and Chinese works respectively. The authors also look at trends in references to feminism, God, diet and evolution.
"The ability, via modern technology, to look at just so much at once really opens horizons," says Embleton. However, Hudson cautions that making effective use of such a resource will require skill and judgement, not just number-crunching.
"How this quantitative evidence is generated and how it is interpreted are the most important factors in forming conclusions," she says. "Quantitative evidence of this kind must always address suitably framed general questions, and employed alongside qualitative evidence and reasoning, or it will not be worth a great deal." 

• References

  1. Michel, J.-B. et al. Science advance online publication. doi:10.1126/science.1199644 (2010).

Okay, since class is now officially over, our Professor has requested a final blog ruminating about the semester.

This semester, I was strangely pleased to note how collaborative the efforts are here within the School of Information Science.  I have been used to vehemently defending a point and being graded on my position and the articulation of its defense.  Not here.  More to follow.

The use of free-text vs controlled vocabularies in searching.

Landscape Analysis:

In what is described as a period from the mid-sixties until the mid-seventies, “the findings of various experiments in the testing and evaluating of indexing languages … have demonstrated again and again the strength of the natural language, with minimal or no control, as optimally the best indexing language” (Dubois,  63).   However, as these studies were examined more closely,  it was determined that they were done on special collections and thus could not be applied to large data sets.  In the 1980’s, it was determined that the “ideal search capacity should always be both free text and controlled vocabulary” (Dubois, 64).  

However, as data and the subsequent databases which housed them grew larger, the process of retrieving information of valuable became more difficult.   One issue is that over time, language changes, specifically within scientific areas.  The need to formalize a set of controlled vocabularies to assist in the search became increasingly apparent.  Through many different studies of databases within different areas of research, tests were done to try and solve the issue of controlled vocabularies vs. free text.  These studies employed a variety of methods to search these databases for specific information.  

Definitions:

The purpose of a controlled vocabulary is  “[t]o ensure as far as possible the consistent representation of the subject matter of documents both in input to and output from the system and [t]o facilitate the conduct of searches in the system especially by bringing together in some way the terms that are most closely related semantically” (Dubois, 64).   The purpose of a free-text vocabulary is to allow the user to determine which subjects and terms she would like to search for within the database.  The user has control of the search by creating the terminology used within the search.  However, the traditional library techniques used for searching within digital databases have been stretched by the sheer size of the data.  This is why information science is investigating the utility of ontologies in the drive to design better searching capabilities. “Ontology is a complex multi-disciplinary field that draws upon the knowledge of information organization, natural language processing, information extraction, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation and acquisition” (Ding and Foo, 123).

Two case studies: PsycINFO and genomic information retrieval:

In the case of  PsycINFO, an analysis of a database where records were processed more than once.  An analysis of the findings included a range of variables at fault.  The conclusion was that the methodology of using a controlled vocabulary improved the consistency of the research enormously:  uncontrolled vocabulary 27.05% vs controlled vocabulary 44.32% (Leininger, 4). 

In the case of  the genomic retrieval study, the strategy of “query expansion” was deployed.  This strategy of “[q]uery expansion is commonly used to assist consumers in health information seeking by addressing the issue of vocabulary mismatch between lay persons and professionals” (Mu and Lu, 205).   In short, a query system was utilized and the researchers concluded, “[t]he results indicate that string index expansion techniques result in better performance than work index expansion techniques and the difference is statistically significant” (Mu and Lu, 205).

Solution:

We should use co-word analysis to increase useful information retrieval and partially nullify the time (as in differences between decades) issue.  “However, gaining access to such information is often difficult, as a result of inconsistency involved in the processing of information and the way in which queries are expressed by searchers”  (Ding, Chowdhury, and Foo, 429).

In Ding, Chowdhury, and Foo (429),  they point to research that indicates that users like to choose a wide variety of terms in the works  and that these terms are used infrequently.  This leads them to the conclusion that “[i]f inappropriate, incorrect or an an insufficient variety of words are used to form the queries or index the records in the system, the users may not be able to find the objects they desire” (Ding, Chowdhury, and Foo, 430).  . Therefore, in using co-word analyses, we need to define and number the terms utilized so that we crate sufficiently usable outputs.     

In another  study,  an ontology was developed using algorithms and statistics.  The major drawback of this approach was that only taxonomic relations were learned.  “Detecting the non-taxonomic conceptual relationships, for example, the ‘has Part’ relations between concepts, is becoming critical for building good-quality ontologies” (Ding and Foo, 128).  Therefore, if we want robust ontologies, we will need to monitor the inputs to adequately perform the relational querying. 

Finally, we need to employ string index expansion techniques.  It has been shown in the referenced study that they work better and the outcomes are statistically significant.

Conclusion:

“Co-word analysis can play an important role in assisting Traditional Thesauri to provide more search varieties to the end users.  However, it is acknowledged that co-word analysis cannot supply semantic relations between words”  (Ding, Chowdhury, and Foo, 433).  “Ontology promotes standardization and reusability of information representation through identifying common and shared knowledge.  Ontology adds value to traditional thesauri through deeper semantics in digital objects, conceptually,  relationally, and through machine understandability” (Ding and Foo, 132). 

Additionally, ontologies are being touted as a way to utilize an emergent technology to solve the problems inherent in information management.  In particular, ontologies are an integral part to the formation of the semantic web.  What is the semantic web?  “The term ‘Semantic Web’ was coined … to describe [a] vision of the next generation web that provides services that are much more automated based on machine-processable semantics of data and heuristics” (Ding and Foo, 124).  Many studies were carried out in the development of an ontology.  One main drawback was that “[t]he automatically constructed ontology can be too prolific and deficient at the same time” (Ding and Foo, 127).  Therefore, the human component to the development of these ontologies was found to be necessary to either broaden or reign in the scope. 

It seems that the utilization of these three tactics, string index expansion, ontologies and co-word analyses combined with an overall strategy of utilizing controlled vocabularies will be the most effective methodology of dealing with the avalanche of data that is being collected today.  If the querying systems continue to be refined and overseen by human participants, they ontologies can continue to grow more robust making the semantic web more valuable to researchers.

On a final note, I am concerned about the emergence of artificial intelligence that will dictate the searchable terminology to the humans.  I am also very concerned about the inherent compression of the English language that is an inevitable outcome of creating metadata “standardization” of terminology that can be searched.  In fairness, technology should be able to help with the aid of human cognition, not the other way around.  I also do realize that in order to find the data we are looking for, we must creating a standard to search with.  However, when this is applied to research, only a few will determine what “catchwords” will be acceptable.  This is truly frightening.

References

Dextre Clarke, S. G. (2008). The last 50 years of knowledge organization: A journey through my personal archives Journal of Information Science, 34(4), 427 <last_page> 437.

Ding, Y., Chowdhury, G. G., & Foo, S. (2000). Incorporating the results of co-word analyses to increase search variety for information retrieval Journal of Information Science, 26(6), 429 <last_page> 451.

Ding, Y., & Foo, S. (2002). Ontology research and development. part 1 - a review of ontology generation Journal of Information Science, 28(2), 123 <last_page> 136.

Dubois, C. P. R. (1984). The use of thesauri in online retrieval Journal of Information Science, 8(2), 63 <last_page> 66.

Leininger, K. (2000). Interindexer consistency in PsycINFO Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 32(1), 4 <last_page> 8.

Mu, X., & Lu, K. (2010). Towards effective genomic information retrieval: The impact of query complexity and expansion strategies Journal of Information Science, 36(2), 194-208. doi:10.1177/0165551509357856

Rowley, J. (1994). The controlled versus natural indexing languages debate revisited: A perspective on information retrieval practice and research Journal of Information Science, 20(2), 108 <last_page> 118.

Library funding increasingly going to online database subscriptions.

We have spent many hours listening to various librarians (public, school, college and university) talk about an increasing amount of the yearly budget going to pay for online database subcriptions to journals.  One new study by Scientific American has shown that requiring a subscription to a journal does NOT increase article citation.  That was a shocker and here is the study. 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=open-and-shut-case-do-open-access

The relevant bit of the study is here:  "Nor is Davis convinced that OA benefits are as significant as some of the recent research has claimed. Davis headed two previous studies, the most recent of which was a randomized control trial for OA research. In 11 different physiology journals Davis's group randomly allocated research articles to be published OA or not, and tracked their usage and citations. The results, published in 2008 in the British Medical Journal, found that although OA articles were downloaded more frequently they were not cited significantly more than non-OA articles."

In Memoriam: Frank Turner

In Memoriam: Frank Turner

I did wonder why Mr. Turner would not accept my request for an interview. This is truly shocking.

Librarian Frank Turner dies suddenly

Posted by Mark Alden Branch '86 on November 11, 2010, 3:12 pm

Frank Turner ’71PhD. ©Julie Brown

Frank M. Turner ’71PhD, a long-serving Yale professor and administrator who just two months ago was appointed University Librarian, died suddenly this morning, according to an e-mail from President Richard Levin ’74PhD. He was 66.
Turner was the John Hay Whitney Professor of History and an esteemed scholar of European intellectual history. He was provost of the university from 1988 to 1992, and he had been director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library since 2003. He is survived by his wife, the Reverend Ellen Louise Tillotson.

Extrinsic v. Intrinsic Value

Our 511 class had a really heated discussion over the instrinsic value of a book, which then moved into the realm of GOLD.  What I realized within the discussion is that commodities (like gold) do have an intrinsic value that can be estimated by looking at both tangible and intangible factors (see definition below).  I am, however, not sure about the intrinsic value of a book.   Prof. Lankes was adamant that the book ONLY had value that we attributed to it, there was no intrinsic value whatsoever.   Does anyone have any thoughts about this?


What Does Intrinsic Value Mean?The actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value.  Value investors use a variety of analytical techniques in order to estimate the intrinsic value of securities in hopes of finding investments where the true value of the investment exceeds its current market value.

What Does Extrinsic Value Mean?
The difference between an option's price and the intrinsic value.

Investopedia explains Extrinsic ValueFor example, an option that has a premium price of $10 and an intrinsic value of $5 would have an extrinsic value of $5. Denoting the amount by which the option's price is greater than the intrinsic value, the extrinsic value of the option declines as its expiration date draws closer.

References

Extrinsic value definition Retrieved 11/5/2010, 2010, from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/extrinsicvalue.asp

Intrinsic value definition Retrieved 11/5/2010, 2010, from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp

Library tours

So, last week we went on an 'in-depth' tour of the Bird library.  I was quite interested in knowing more about the man the library was named after, Ernest Bird, but frankly could not find out much about him except that he graduated from Syracuse in 1916.  I did find out that this library has 2.3M volumes, not too shabby compared to my 3,000.

We saw many of the services that are performed from book preservation to book wrapping (to care for older books).  The most fascinating aspect of the tour was seeing some of the old collections.  A book which came from Queen Elizabeth's private library, early stone tablets (no, not the original Ten Commandments), and a very unique diary with notes from the holocaust. 

The tour was very interesting, especially seeing how much work goes in to preserving the collection.  It made me think about digital libraries and how the future of the printed book is coming to an end. [sigh].

Question of the week: What sorts of classes do you take to become a librarian? (with thanks to Dan)

Here at Syracuse, we take core classes and electives in the MSLIS program (Master of Science, Library and Information Studies).  The core fall classes are Intro. to the Library and Information Profession, Information and Information Environments, Information Resources:Users and Services, Information Resources:Organization and Access.  Additionally, Management Principles for Information Professionals is required but offered both terms (I am taking this in the fall term).  I am also part of the Black and Latino Leadership program, this is an uncredited elective class.

In the spring, I will take 2 classes dealing with Telecommunications and Information Policy and Information Resources: Acquisitions.  My two electives will be,  Creating.Managing.Preserving Digital Assets, Database Administration Concepts and Database Management. 

We also have electives which up to 6 credits can be taken in any School at Syracuse. I have chosen to transfer my 6 credits from the MBA progran ( Strategic Management and Managerial Economics).

My final 5 credits will be an internship (hopefully back at Yale) and a 2 credit independent study.

All of these classes have been discussed with my advisor, Prof Lankes, who also happens to be the Director of the Libary and Information Studies Program.

So, I have been getting a lot of questions about the mission here at the iSchool.  One buzzword that is heard consistently in many of my interactions is innovation.  I would have to say that Dave Lankes (our instructor who wanted us to create this blog) is an innovator.  He spent the first four classes in full deconstruction mode, but then he continued the educational process by beginning to construct what a vision of a librarian might be. 

In our latest class, he brought in a guest speaker, Joseph Janes, from the iSchool at the University of Washington.  UW is a main competitor for students studying Information Science so I thought the discussion would be thought provoking.  It was.  We heard a lot about "play" in the discussion which immediately brought me back to Derrida's notion of "jouissance".  Ideas should be played with, tossed around and used to stimulate discusssion.  This is at the very heart of innovation.  Then Prof. Janes told the class that he and Lankes had been separated at birth!  That explained a lot as to why they were saying very similar things.  Then we find out that they both graduated from Syracuse.  Even better, because now I am sure that Syracuse University is the right place to be.  It is truly an innovation hub.

One final note, as Camus said in The Fall, "We are all in the soup together"

Question of the week: tell me, why are librarians so technologically oriented these days? what do blogs have to do with that? why do you need to build websites? I have so many questions...

At the Syracuse iSchool (School of Information Studies), there are three majors: library and information science, information management and telecommunications and network management. Librarians are concerned with the access, retrieval and storage of information. So I am taking classes in digital libraries, database management, open access systems, etc so that I can understand the architecture that we all use. The notion of a librarian standing behind a desk checking out books for you is kind of an idealized notion that really does not correspond to a modern librarian's job.

Interview with Mr. Kendall Crilly: Associate University Librarian, Program Development and Research, Yale University.

This was a 35 minute interview; I have edited portions for clarity.

What led you to pursue a profession in an academic library and how did you enter the Yale University library system?

 Well, as an undergraduate, I never used the library system.  In 1985, when I started a Master’s degree in the Yale School of Music, I worked on a project inventorying 150 musical scores.  That summer I continued working in the Sterling Library on a project inventorying the old card catalogues.  In the spring of 1986, I was taking a class with Harold Samuel called, “Research in Additions” taught at the School of Music.  This professor was exciting, leading me to rethink my future career as an organist.  So, I took a year off from my studies and worked in the Sterling Library, mostly in clerical functions.  I began a MS.LIS. Degree at Southern Connecticut State University, taking courses at night.  In 1988, I began working full-time in the Sterling Library at the Circulations Desk.

What are your core responsibilities and how many support staff report to you?

I have direct line reports of 8, with a total of 69 staff.  The lines which report directly to me are 1) Access Services, 2) Document Delivery with is an inter-Ivy League direct borrowing program, 3) Half of the technology unit, 4) Director of Research Education, 5) Usability and Assessment, 6) Historical Sound Archives, 7) Oral History of American Music, and 8) Broader circulation and access for other libraries, such as Bass Library (undergraduate library).

Here is the University Library Org Chart:

www.library.yale.edu/lhr/aboutus/orgchart1.doc

President Levin stated "When we did our first-phase renovations of the Payne Whitney Gym and Sterling Library more than a decade ago, it was very important to me [laughs] that the budget for the library be just a little more than the budget for the gym! And today, the library budget remains more than double that of the athletics department." (Lassila, K. D. (2010).  q&a: rick levin. Yale Alumni Magazine 74(1),  29.).  How do President's Levin's recent comments support the strategic goal of Yale's libraries?

President Levin’s statement confirms that our Libraries are held in high esteem.  Our University Librarian, Frank Turner, defines our mission as to be “the #1 service institution to support the teaching and research mission of Yale University”.  This places the Library in an enviable position.  A breakdown of the library budget shows 47% comes directly from the University, 45% comes from endowments and historical funding, the remainder, 8% comes from grants and contracts.

What are some of the challenges you face at the Sterling Library?

The Sterling Library is a Gothic structure, built in 1931.  Our biggest challenge is to get the students back into the library.  We have remodeled the main reading room, moved out all of the card catalogues and opened up some really beautiful spaces within the alcoves and reading rooms in the library.  We have fashioned a committee to re-purpose the space so that it will be found attractive to our students.

What do you think is the future of digital libraries?

All of our libraries have electronic databases.  We are in the process of digitizing the works housed in the Beinecke Library, which houses our rare collections.  We have a committee working on integrating the libraries into the broader community.  I’ll give you an example.  If was teaching a course on 17^th Century Western music and I wanted a real cool audio-visual presentation, I could go to the Beinecke, take some images of old sheet music, then I could go to the Music Library and get some images of old instruments, and then go to the Sterling databases to find collections of different texts used. However, as you know, the campus is so spread out that this would discourage most Professors from engaging in this exhausting activity.  So, we are working on integrating our collections to be accessible from disparate locations within the University Library System. 

When assessing candidates to join the library system, what skills, capabilities and core competencies do you look for in an individual?

This is a question that if you asked five of our librarians, you would get six different answers (laughs).  For me, I look for someone with an MLS degree, understands the technology and would preferably have a second advanced degree.  This person must possess excellent interpersonal communication skills, have upside potential, is intellectually curious, is passionate about a subject and has managerial ambition.  For a level 3, 4 or 5 librarian, I would need to see managerial experience and excellent writing skills.

Other than having the second largest academic collection of volumes (~12.5M), what do you like most about being a Yale University librarian?

This is easy, my colleagues.  When I started in the library, my colleagues were helpful.  When I would call them for help, they would say, “I haven’t met you yet, but how can I help you?”  This atmosphere is pervasive throughout our library system.  If I may add, I love the buildings, the rarity of the collections (sometimes Beinecke houses the only copy of a particular book in existence!), but the colleagues are what I like the most.

After reflecting upon my experience with Mr. Crilly, I saw three opportunities in the interview, one of them being the problem with "re-purposing" the space in the Gothic cathedral and the second being the "interoperability" issue with the digital libraries. The third opportunity, I left out of the transcript because I hope to use it as a carrot for getting an internship. 

The ship has left it's moorings...

In our latest class, Prof. Lankes left the realm of deconstruction and allowed this mangled piece of library science to begin it's maiden voyage into the ports of actual librarianships.  He brought in two librarians working in the public school system who shared their experiences with the class:  Sue, a Syracuse alumnus and Buffy, a recognized pioneer in the Georgia school system.   The overwhelming theme of both presentations was 'collaborative environments'.  

Being so far removed from these educational environments, I was surprised to see just how advanced the library has become.  I have attached Buffy's blog link so that folks can get a flavour of the potential each librarian possesses!

http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/feed/

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Blogger Buzz: Blogger integrates with Amazon Associates

Librarians as Problem Solvers

Public libraries were founded to support the information needs of the community, they are funded by tax money and owned by the public.  Lankes focused on the role of the library in an expanded definition, librarians as probem solvers.  That is, if there was an ecological disaster, librarians could be part of the 'first responder team'.  This makes perfect sense. 

In arguably the greatest Science Fiction trilogy of all time, Issac Asimov's Foundation, the story starts with a prediction that the Galactic Empire would come to an end.  To prevent the destruction of the human race, an Encyclopedia is created to capture the knoweldge needed to re-create the Empire.  In a very similar fashion, librarians capture and catalogue existing knowledge that could be used in addressing potential human disasters, including the possible extinction of human knowledge.

Enter Ed Nanno, first year LIS student: The first question I was asked while using one of the iSchool's computer labs was, "Why would anyone want to be a librarian?".  I thought that this was an odd question considering the amount of time I had spent discussing this new career path with family, friends, and confidants.  So I retorted, "why wouldn't someone choose this as a career?" The answer came back as, "it's so boring, just you and all those books!"  So, this made me think about what was in fact, attractive, about being a librarian. 

Going back through my past education, I choose philosophy as my undergraduate major.  I believe that this was due to my "love of wisdom" (the meaning of the Greek words 'philos' and 'sophia').  As I continued to mull over the reasons, I decided that I needed to admit that I was a bibliophile as well as a lover of architecture.  The combination of all those books housed in such beautiful buildings was appealing to me both professionally and aesthetically.  This seemed to assuage my feelings of anxiety regarding my newly chosen profession.

Enter Dave Lankes, destroyer of worlds (actually of worldviews, but I rather like the Oppenheimer connection):  The first impression is of a man wearing jeans and crocs, cracking jokes.  As his lecture ensued, we gathered that he would break all "standardized" conventions regarding teaching, lecturing and directing (being the Director of the program, that is).   As he engaged the lecture hall, he jokes, used props (a left behind hair extension), and remembered specifics about the students in the room.  Then he lowered the boom.  In a discussion about the cultural differences in the philosophy of the library, he recounted a visit to Italy for the opening of a library.  Libraries in Italy are built as monuments of culture whereas in the United States, they are buildings which provide open access to professionals. 

So, I must say that I love this class.  It is helping the librarians of the future to focus, not on the next iteration of  the 'private language' MARCS system (classification system within libraries which is not compatible with other programming languages), but rather within their roles of shaping and creating the future that we are obligated to build.

Lankes not being Habermas

Lankes being Kuhn

So, we have all been asked to post some thougts about our first class. I must say that I was impressed that the first slide mentioned Thomas Kuhn. My pulse quickened, the signal distorted and I knew immediately that this was going to be a transformative class. Kuhn, being the author of "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", was interested in how scientific knowledge progressed. He created a model called "paradigm shifts" which describes how science comes to accept new theories.

I realized that this course was going to be a new direction within our epistemological frameworks. Not only was Prof. Lankes interested in advancing the study of library science, but he was advocating a whole new hermeneutical turn for the semantic structures we had grown accustomed to hearing about regarding librarianship.

Blog Title

So... this being the first post on the blog, any die-hard RUSH fan out there knows that I have nicked a line from the song  Grand Designs to be the title.  In fact, I am going to my 21st RUSH concert tonight, the second time I have seen them in Syracuse.  The first time was back in high school and it was also my first RUSH show.