The Chicago Underground Library is a project that aims to create an archive of self- and small press-published works in Chicago. Through a searchable on-line archive and eventually a physical space, it will open new opportunities for research, inspiration, and collaboration among those in and outside of the publishing community. By putting fiction, critical journals, zines, poetry, comics, political pamphlets, and art books side by side, CUL hopes to bridge the gaps resultant from stratification along the lines of content, production value, and commercial viability.

The CUL hopes to be bipedal, walking on both a digital collection (Web accessible) and eventually a public space.

This is essentially a grassroots and cooperative operation, and neither of the founders are librarians by degree. And the regionalism strikes me as very appropriate, a great collection focus. The potential for an organization like this is intriguing in its product and in its politics – I’d be glad to hear anyone else’s thoughts.

The economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter had a name for this principle of capitalism: creative destruction. Perhaps nowhere does it play out more dramatically — and more rapidly — than in Silicon Valley, where innovation unleashes a force that creates and destroys, over and over.

Technology companies are susceptible to creatively destructive forces when they try to expand too far beyond their original mission. Technologies like computer programming can only be successful if they break problems into smaller pieces that individually solve only a single component of the larger goal. At the time of writing, a computer programming function is defined by the masses (Wikipedia) as “a portion of code within a larger program, which performs a specific task and can be relatively independent of the remaining code” (my emphasis). This principle of modularization at the most basic level of contemporary information technology is important to a technology organization’s business model.

Microsoft and Yahoo both fail so horribly at the world of search and Internet advertising because those problem domains lie at the heart of neither companies’ core service: the operating system/desktop platform and the Internet portal. The reason Google so thoroughly dominates the world of search and Internet advertising is because that is its only core. Everything it does revolves around this core service and all of its activities support this model. The moral of the story is that you must choose your core, your identity and your raison d’être and you must choose it wisely because trying to be all things to all people is a futile exercise.

What does this mean for libraries? In the techie realm of libraries, an institution needs to determine what its core mission is and decide how it will define itself in a world of creative destruction. It will need to be able to clearly and succinctly articulate what those goals are to its affiliate institutions: universities or local governments. The library must not try to do everything; as the current computing paradigm of APIs and web services demonstrates, technology works when it is implemented singularly and exceptionally, but in a manner that is open and unafraid of sharing its data and services.

And finally, the modern library must not be afraid to get in the game and take a turn at trying to creatively destroy the old guard, lest it fall prey to the fate of the Yahoos of the world.

Somehow, it all sounded familiar: the fretting, the fear that the greater public does not understand the added value that a group of professionals brings to the information environment, the bated enthusiasm that one has for a new medium which has massive amounts of potential but which also severely disrupts all that you hold dear.

Journalists, welcome to the 21st century. As your gentle 5 minute ambassador from LibraryLand, I would like to assure you that things will work out. See these promising numbers from a forward thinking (and public!) institution, they are proof that relevance is, well, relevant to the effort a profession makes:

Last year we announced that items circulated during the 2003-04 year passed the 2 million mark. This year, we circulated just over 3 million items. This new circulation record represents a 33% increase and the highest annual percentage of increase in the Library’s history.

We are also experiencing growth in other key areas. Our buildings were visited 1.3 million times, an 8% increase. Attendance at programs increased 14%, over 51,000, and more individuals used library computers than ever before…223,000 logins represent a 37% increase over last year.

The need to expand our space and adapt to the needs and interests of the community is clear. Let us know what you need from the Library.

My eye was instantly drawn to the “Advocacy” section of the report. Although there are both a legislative advocacy component as well as a “grassroots” advocacy component (that is, “To provide training for academic librarians in influencing, persuasion, and advocacy”) – there is no component for advocacy to the public.

While I realize that academic libraries don’t necessarily have an agenda to bring the general public into an awareness of their successes, trials, and difficulties, it leads me to wonder about the success library organizations have had in getting their issues to the general public.

In my mind, legislative advocacy has to be undergirded by an awareness in our polity about the issues that concern libraries. The voting public needs to know. So don’t we need “public advocacy”?

Each month American Libraries has a section on banned books and the battles they raise. I wonder how much of this gets attention in local and national media – any ideas?

Are our organizations (ALA, ARL, etc.) doing enough of this kind of outreach to a wider audience?

The printed version of the New York Times had a front page story on Web 3.0, a.k.a., the Sematic Web, a.k.a., the World Wide Database, this past Sunday. First of all, the trend of versioning the Web needs to stop. It is silly and non-sensical.

As far as the story is concerned, this says it all:

…the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”

The thing about Holy Grails is that they tend to be the stuff of legend. A computer that could perform such a task is only going to be found in the legends about the future: science fiction literature. I am not quite sure why people think that a computer could do a better job than a person at being a travel agent. Perhaps too many people have been ripped off by the human versions and have some strange faith that a computer would dutifully book their dream vacation. I suspect the same people trust electronic voting machines, too.

I think the author of the piece would have done well to look at the seminal refutation to the notion of such a smart and well designed Internet: Metacrap, by Cory Doctorow. Here is the side of the story that was missing:

If everyone would subscribe to such a system and create good metadata for the purposes of describing their goods, services and information, it would be a trivial matter to search the Internet for highly qualified, context-sensitive results: a fan could find all the downloadable music in a given genre, a manufacturer could efficiently discover suppliers, travelers could easily choose a hotel room for an upcoming trip.

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It’s also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities.

Human knowledge can be described by machines but you ultimately need to look at what that description boils down to: a string of 1’s and 0’s. It is only after you assemble the binary patterns into the complex patterns that through a series of transformations designed and developed by people that you end up with a form of information that truly answers the question you are looking to answer, is this a good place to vacation with a kid? Human knowledge is entangled with the experiences that a machine will never be able to emulate. I am afraid that until a computer knows what it is like to have a child and sip a pina colada (but not too much pina colada, because you have a child after all…) it will always make a terrible travel agent.

Kate Dean, the executive director of the United States Internet Service Provider Association, a trade group, said: “When they said they were talking about child pornography, we spent a lot of time developing proposals for what could be done. Now they are talking about a whole different ball of wax.”

Also interesting is mention of another topic we debated, Wikipedia. The article cites a grass roots effort by grad students to put good information into the open encyclopedia.

Higher education is fighting back. Librarians are teaching “information literacy” and establishing alternative Web indexes. Graduate students, in the front lines as teaching assistants, are starting to discuss joining Wikipedia rather than fighting it, as many instructors still, quixotically, do.

Also, did you know that the 2005 International Edublog Awards have a category for Best Library/Librarian Blogs? I think you may recognize one of the winners from our beloved alma mater. One of the other honorees is a system colleague of mine, twice removed.

Here’s goal number two:

Goal Statement: Through its leadership, ALA ensures the highest quality graduate and continuing education opportunities for librarians and library staff.

Strategic Objectives:

1. Ensure that accreditation standards reflect the needs and core values of the profession.
2. Increase availability of and access to continuing education and continuous learning opportunities for librarians and library staff.
3. Make ALA continuing education programs and publications affordable and accessible in a wide variety of media and formats.
4. Establish standards for educational programs for library support staff.

I wonder if we all believe that we’re getting the amount of continuing education that we need to stay competent in our jobs. Since we all come from such different angles, I wonder if everyone could chime in about their educational opportunities (or lack there of), and how they measure up to ALA’s goal.

“Radical Militant Librarian – Defending Access, Defending Privacy, Defending Freedom.”

The buttons will cost $2.00, unless bought in bulk (at which time the cost goes down). What a radical bargain! And in the colors of France!

ALA claims that the slogan on the button is a response to FBI complaints about politically “radical, militant librarians” who raised their voices over the PATRIOT Act.

My anticipation is that many of our least radical, and certainly least militant librarians will happily, jauntily purchase a button and sport it at work the following week. The kitsch value of this button is irresistible (”Must… buy… buttoon… must… have one for my blazer.”) I also anticipate that many of our most militant library spokespeople will not be wearing this button at ALA this summer.

From the OED:

Militant: 3. a. Combative; aggressively persistent; strongly espousing a cause; entrenched, adamant.

Radical: 3. e. Characterized by independence of, or departure from, what is usual or traditional; progressive, unorthodox, or revolutionary (in outlook, conception, design, etc.).

That this button is a fundraiser is a granted point. But the slogan strikes me as blind, purchasable flagwaving that can (and will) be worn by librarians who will hardly deserve the label. “Revolutionary”? “Aggressively persistent”? How many of us can claim such a thing? The trumpet is hardly loud enough to be heard over the wall, much less bring it down.

Maybe this button should be given by ALA to the deserving few.

My own button would realistically read: “Clean, Showered Librarian: Defending Thai Food, Defending Lost, Defending Wisconsin Cheese.”