The latest Carnival of the Infosciences is up! Head on over to Inn0vate and check it out.
I’m now taking submissions for the next Carnival, which I’ll be hosting right here on March 5th. Enter your submissions through the wiki or send ‘em directly to me.
Q: Josh, why are you excited to start your new job?
A: Because, this is the kind of atmosphere I’ll be working in. How could I not be excited?
This has been preying on my mind for some weeks now, and I feel it’s finally time to get it off my chest: I hate the Dewey Decimal System.
Wait, let me be more precise. I think the Dewey Decimal System works just fine for cataloging materials in a library. From a librarian’s point of view, I have nothing against the Dewey Decimal System.
But a few weeks ago, I was staffing our reference desk when a patron came up and asked for books on a particular subject. She knew they were nonfiction, but she wasn’t sure where in our nonfiction section the books would be. I looked up the subject in our catalog, found some titles that might suit her, and led her back to nonfiction, telling her what Dewey number the books would be found under.
And I suddenly felt like a dick.
The patron wasn’t stupid by any stretch. But here we were, expecting her to learn our Very Clever Indeed system of cataloging materials, just so she could find the books she was looking for. Frankly, I think that makes us a bunch of dicks.
Libraries are not bookstores. In general, I’m not in favor of the bookstorization of libraries. But would it kill us to put books in sections that non-librarians understand, like “Travel” and “Science” and “Self Help”? Most public libraries I’ve been in (including MPOW) put the biographies and autobiographies in their own section (in alphabetical order of the subject, not in Dewey order). I haven’t seen a public library yet that didn’t put works of fiction in separate sections (in alphabetical order of the author, not in Dewey order). So why is the majority of our nonfiction set up in such a way as to push patrons to ask us for help in finding materials? How does having books in Dewey Decimal order help patrons find library materials all by themselves?
I don’t mind helping people find the materials they’re looking for. In fact, I rather enjoy it. But I’m tired of library users feeling like they have to ask me for help because they haven’t gotten their Dewey Decimal System decoder ring yet. I’m tired of having to instruct people in how to locate books in our small branch library, even if it makes me look like a Very Smart Person. I’m tired of feeling like a dick.
Ryan Deschamps’s very brainy “no-brainer” top-10 list of Library 2.0 applications should be required reading by…well, everyone in Libraryland. So, hop to it! And spread the word!
“If only every library had a John.” So said Sarah Houghton-Jan, talking about John Blyberg and the SOPAC features he designed for AADL. (Although it does sort of sound like she’s talking about something else, taken out of context. There are some days I wish my library had 4 or 5 johns. But no one consulted me when the building was being designed.)
Wouldn’t that be swell? I would love to have a John Blyberg at MPOW. But my library doesn’t have someone like him right now, and I don’t see us getting someone like that anytime soon. And what about those smaller libraries, with a staff of one? How are they supposed to get someone with John’s imagination and mad coding skillz?
John has made the source code for the SOPAC available, and I think this is really the most significant aspect of the AADL SOPAC. (Richard Wallis of Talis seems to agree.) Because not every library can have a John Blyberg, and every library shouldn’t have to hire a John Blyberg to get access to innovations like this. And we shouldn’t have to sit around and wait for ILS vendors to start releasing these kinds of innovations for free. Are we not librarians? Are we not all about the free flow of information? John giving out his source code for free shouldn’t be remarkable, because we librarians should be doing this all the time, as a matter of course. Isn’t sharing information and innovation the most cost-effective way of improving our systems and services? What do we have to lose?
To make a long, long rant much shorter, I’ll just say this: I think OPACs have a long way to go before they stop sucking. To be more precise, I think we need to throw out the whole concept of the “Online Public Access Catalog.” But that’s not going to happen today or tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll happily settle for OPACs that don’t suck so much. Casey Bisson’s WPopac is one such OPAC idea, and I’ve raved about it before.
John Blyberg has just announced another one: AADL’s “SOPAC.” Check this puppy out: users can rate, review, comment on and tag items. And John has released the source code, in case anyone else wants to do the same to their OPAC.
‘Scuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor.
I’m just all kinds of impressed. Ann Arbor’s SOPAC, like Casey’s WPopac, is seriously cool. These are major steps towards making the OPAC fun, and y’know, I’m all about the fun. Vive l’amusement!
Inspired by David Lee King’s series of posts on “Inviting Participation,” I wrote a post for MPOW’s public blog in which I raised issues about our library and libraries in general, openly inviting people to respond. Being the hotspur that I am, I went ahead and published the post…and then thought, “Maybe I should’n'a done that.” I went to my supervisor and asked her to read it and give me feedback. “So far,” she said, “the blog has only had posts about library news and programs. This is really going in a new direction.” Her advice was to pull the piece and run it by the library director for approval. I moved the post back into draft form, then decided to run it by the entire Web Committee (which includes our director).
This turned out to be a Very Good Thing. A vigorous discussion started through emails and ended with a spirited (but at all times polite and respectful) Web Committee meeting. Some of the committee members and I argued that the point of having a blog is to invite discussion and participation. One of my coworkers said, “Look at the discussion we’ve been having here today. We should be having these discussions with our customers.” It was a great discussion, and it ended with the decision that I rewrite the post somewhat (and everyone on the committee gave me good feedback), then submit it for final approval. It’s now up on our blog. It will be interesting to see if anyone submits a comment. Heck, I’ll be happy just to know that patrons are reading what I wrote.
Gee whiz, would I love to have a job as a Collaborative Publishing Librarian or Exploration & Training Librarian! Maybe someday…
(Coordinator of Patron Participation sounds really great, too.)
Jessica the Cool Librarian has started a new group blog to discuss library matters (and related topics) as a community. I’ve joined on as one of the moderators, and as a mod, I encourage anyone and everyone to sign up and start posting and commenting. Behold, Library Talk!
My jaw is on the floor. I missed this point, so I’m very thankful that Jessamyn West has pointed out one incredibly great thing about Casey Bisson’s WPopac.
Catalog records distributed freely under a CC or GNU license? Jumpin’ Jupiter! That’s monumental! That’s heroic! That’s…about damn time!
