Oct 21 - 27th

Re-Mix

I want to write about Lawrence Lessig's Ted Talks video about re-mix and "laws that choke creativity," for a couple reasons: first, because the I find the idea of re-mix to be a very powerful and creative way of spreading a message or of communicating a "response to something" that has not been fully explored. Secondly, because I am not a fan of copyright laws. I believe that there is a lot of potential for the idea of re-mix that is really only beginning to be explored and will continue to develop into something that will become more and more common and mainstream.  I also think that libraries may find use for this idea in children's programs that can involve creativity and literacy for both younger children and maybe young adults as well.

Before YouTube, there was (click link at your own risk, not always safe for work) Newgrounds. Newgrounds is a site primarily devoted to flash animations, many of them being created by amateur artists and many are parodies of existing cartoons, video game series, or pop-culture in general (featured at the time of writing this are at least three videos based on Pokemon, one on Zelda, and one on Monster Hunter).  The humor in the videos is often rather coarse and juvenile, and for a good reason, the audience of the website tends to be younger and the creators of the videos may be anyone, of any age.  The popularity that the site enjoys from its followers is primarily related to its videos that embrace the idea of re-mix, and this tends to be a younger crowd. Newgrounds can be seen as one of the early websites that really promoted re-mix, and allowed the idea to flourish into something far more diverse than only short Flash creations.

When I was in high school, I used to be a big fan of any video game that offered a level editor, and the more advanced and complicated the editor, then the happier I was with it.  At the time I was also really into anything involving computers, and a majority of my day at school was spent in programming classes.  When I would get home from school, I would immediately begin creating new maps for whatever game I happened to be playing at the time.  I believe that my first experience with creating new maps was with Heroes of Might and Magic, a turned based strategy game that offered a fairly rich map editor.  Gamers could use the editor to make maps unlike anything that came with the game; the maps could be large and complex enough to be their own games in-themselves with their own stories to play through.

Over the years I made maps for Quake, Unreal Tournament, Duke Nuke-em, and even an old DOS game called ZZT.  ZZT was particuralry interesting to me because of the ability to create scripts for every object in the game, allowing for virtually endless possibilities in the creation of new interactions with the "environment."  Of course, in this case it was a very old game that only involved ASCII characters that could be made to move around the screen.  But the lack of any real graphics in the game was hardly a turn-off for me, because what was captivating about the game was the creation of new content and the re-imagining of the game-concept through the creation of new maps and scripts.

Two very popular video games today that have taken the idea of user-generated content and embedded them into the very games themselves are Minecraft and Terraria. In these games, the player gets to create and destroy the world around her using different tools to destroy, and minerals to create.  The players in these games can create their own homes that can range from simple one-room structures, to elaborate castles, like this one:

Creation, and a sort of re-mix, are at the heart of many exciting trends in gaming as developers come to realize the importance of creativity in gaming.



This idea of re-mix is not restricted to only digital media or videos.  In a creative-writing class, our professor assigned a project based around an idea of "discovering" poetry.  The assignment itself was inspired by a book titled A Humument (you can see the project here, and click gallery), where an artist transformed an old book that he bought for a dime into something extraordinary.  Our assignment for the class was to go through some old books and to "re-mix" them, in a sense.  We had to create new poems discovered from the existing pages.  My art skills are have not really changed since the time that I was in preschool, but none-the-less, you can see my efforts at this blog.

This project turned out to be one of my favorite assignments from that class because of the way that it made me re-vision many of the old books sitting on any bookshelf that I came in contact with.  While sitting at the library, I would gaze at some of the dusty and out-dated science books, wondering what incredible poetry might be hidden inside their pages.  This makes me think that it could be a great project for youth programs in libraries, and it wouldn't even require the destruction of any books. In fact, it could also be used to teach kids to use standard media and art computer programs, and so serve as a tool for improving computer literacy as well as a creative arts and poetry project.  So long as the library has a scanner, kids would be able to scan pages from any of the old or new books on the shelves, preferably not already poetry books, but rather some genre not usually regarded as poetic, and then use any image-editing software to single out words and phrases in order to create new works.

#lis60001

October 14 - 20

                In a poetry class that I took as an undergraduate at Slippery Rock University, a student named Abby wrote a very thought-provoking short poem about standing on the regal staircase outside of a Harvard library in the setting dusk.  In her poem, Abby extracted all of the implicit metadata that surrounded her as she stood on the ivory league campuses’ iconic building.  It filled the poem with an atmosphere of foreboding, unwelcoming, out-of-touch, and basically inaccessible to most of us.  The signs here were grey, dark, and made of stone. They were embedded in the staircase itself, in the Greek-style columns, and in the expansive Harvard skyline that seemed worlds apart from anywhere that she could locate herself.

                When people think about libraries today, I wonder how many people still have something like this Harvard vision in mind.  This is a vision where the library is something other, something a world apart, belonging to a wholly different class of people, and somewhere that the individual feels that there is nothing for her or him inside.  How many people’s visions of libraries involve technology, games, DVDs, music, social spaces, and an engaged and approachable professional staff?

                The image of a library as reflecting some Greek ideal of dusty-knowledge hidden away in ancient books might work for the members of the Harvard elite, but for everyone else this image is anything but inviting.  If libraries are to be a cornerstone of communities, with their doors wide open for all of its members, then the library’s metadata needs to communicate that message.  What is important in this idea is that there is no one image that a library should be molded to, but rather, when this happens it creates a negative stereotype of the library as either a solely academic, or even government controlled, institution that only allows membership to a select population.  In order to set itself free of these stereotypes, the image of the library is one that needs to be able to adapt to its community.

                The semester before taking that poetry class, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to San Francisco in order to tutor at an elementary school in a predominately Spanish speaking neighborhood.  What was striking about this elementary building was how welcoming it was to its students.  In order to achieve this, the school turned to local, amateur artists from its own neighborhood to make mural paintings on both the inside and outside walls.  The result was a tremendously beautifully and vibrantly colorful building that reflected the diversity in the community. This building was one that the community took part in shaping and defining.  The result was a place that welcomed all members of its community and one that students found identified with who they are and their needs without trying to reform them. It was somewhere that they belonged.

                If libraries are to be about their communities, then they could take a lesson from both Abby’s poem and the elementary school in a Spanish neighborhood in San Francisco.  We do not need to re-shape our communities.  If we try to do this, we will find that our communities will not want to support us, they will find us out-of-touch, and they will not want to use our services.  We will become some other that is stealing their tax dollars. 

Instead, advertising to our community that we want them as our patrons and that we do have services that reflect today’s needs means that our image needs to reflect this.  This does not have to be done by building a new building, as this may not always be feasible.  Instead, it can be done by community art projects, interior spaces that are comfortable and inviting, having media that is in-touch with what our patrons require us to have, and by engaging with our patrons.  Being a welcoming, community institution cannot just be left as implicit in existing as a library, but rather it needs to be made explicit the library’s image and attitude visible to the community.

#lis60001

October 7 – 13

“That withered paradigm”

                “There is something about the Web,” writes Peter Walsh (2003), “that makes the idea of the expert seem withered, even disreputable and laughable.”  Walsh’s article, appearing in the anthology of new media related essays entitled Democracy and New Media, calls into question the ‘expert paradigm’ and its relevancy on the Internet.  In the article, Walsh (2003) sets out to define the expert paradigm, identify a few key points of its origins (though not a complete history of the concept), and link its disruption with advances in communication technology starting from around the time of the printing press.

                According to Walsh (2003), the expert paradigm is one that requires a body of knowledge, and particularly an abstract knowledge that has some predictive aura surrounding it.  This sort of body of knowledge lends itself easily to religious knowledge, especially in the form of the Church in Western cultures. This sort of expert paradigm also has an “interior and exterior, an outer group of laypersons and an inner group of experts” (pp. 366). 

Maintaining this system requires the establishment of certain rules that restrict access to the group’s knowledge and regulate the amount of access that different levels of members have to that knowledge base.  But the part that I found most significant in Walsh’s (2003) defining points of the expert paradigm, was that Walsh identifies that the expert paradigm is “inherently unstable. [The expert paradigm] is constantly threatened by factions and turf battles from within and by skepticism or jealousy of its privileged status from without” (pp. 367).

The problem that the expert paradigm faces is that with the advancement and dissemination of communication technologies, those fault lines created by the competing factions from both inside and outside of the inner-circles are made all the more deeper and visible for everyone to see.  As Walsh (2003) notes, “important to the Reformation was the fact that Luther made use of a developing new technology and printed his views” (pp. 367).  The difference today, with the Internet, is that not only can everyone see these fault lines, but anyone can participate in their expansion.  The lines between expert and non-expert quickly become blurred as we lose focus of the author (if one can even be identified) and we cannot see their identifying insignia.

In Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger (2007) writes about the Great Wizard of Oz assuming a great and terrifying persona in order to capture enough pathos and ethos that his subjects are likely to equate his voice with absolute truth (pp. 140).  Weinberger (2007) is also writing about “truth and authority” and how the boundaries have shifted in the digital age.  In this case, the website Wikipedia is Weiberger’s (2007) golden example of a site that “gives up on being an Oz-like authority and helps us better decide what to believe” (pp. 141). 

The way in which Wikipedia disrobes itself of being the authoritative voice of truth, according to Weinberger (2007), is that Wikipedia is up front about its many possible weaknesses in a series of notices concerning the disputable accuracy of certain articles.  The result of the expert paradigm being so usurped is that, as Weinberger (2007) claims, “deciding what to believe is now our burden” (pp. 143).  The advancement of communication technologies has resulted in a time in which the information seeker herself can participate in the production of expert-like knowledge; a kind of authority that was once reserved only for the wealthy who could afford both the leisure time and publication expenses.

One problem that could arise from this transition is whether or not we now put too much stock into our own beliefs.  Are we only replacing the external Fountainhead with our own inner-truth based on our own limited experiences and observations?  While I do not completely argue against the value of lived-experiences as a resource for certain truths and values, it is also important that we do not lose focus on the value of the expert paradigm.  An expert, after all, is believed to be a person with a wide breadth of experience, knowledge, and understanding about a certain issue or topic—something that goes deeper than merely accumulating a list of facts about a topic.

Having ‘experts’ is important for keeping arguments in check and building the structure upon which a particular discourse rests.  We learn from experts, but not necessarily exactly whatever it is the expert is preaching, but rather, we learn more about our own views and arguments.  This only works, however, when we accept a certain amount of authority from those experts.  If we do not do this then we only reinforce the belief in our own views without having the ability to critically evaluate them and without having the benefit of an expert with a high degree of knowledge in a particular field to help us from falling into obvious errors in our own solipsism.

In the end of the “Withered paradigm” article, Walsh (2003) argues that the expert paradigm is in no threat of radically disappearing.  It is undergoing changes, as it has been for hundreds of years, but it will still remain.  I think that this is evident when one considers the goals of courses in information literacy on the Internet.  The idea of these courses is to learn how again to recognize authority, this time on the Internet.  In these courses, we re-learn how to look for authority in the form of professionalism, references, well articulated arguments, organization of the website, and both logical as well as grammatical clarity.  And, again, we learn to look for the author and to do research into the expertise of the author.

If a new Oz were to catch on to this trend in training in information literacy, such a great wizard would likely take on the form of some great socially constructed website.  A website that was easily available and seemingly ubiquitous. One in which seemed to be the suggested search result for just about every search engine query. It would be one so unassuming in appearance as to visibly deflect authority back onto its reader.

Walsh, P. (2003). That withered paradigm: The Web, the expert, and the information hegemony. In

Democracy and New Media. Henry Jenkins & David Thorburn (Eds.). Cambridge,

            Mass: MIT Press. pp. 343 – 364.

Weinberger, D. (2007). Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. New York,

NY: Henry Holt and company. pp. 129 – 147.

 #lis60001

Sept 30 - Oct 6

SOLE and Makerspaces

In February of 2013, Sugata Mitra delivered a powerful TED Talks presentation on the history and future of education.  Mitra (2013) explains how the foundation of our current education model was a perfect one for the British Empire to continue to reproduce effective teachers and managers of its own machinery, but today that machine is long over however we still continue to attempt to reproduce it via our outdated education model.

Mitra tells his own story about teaching children in some of the most impoverish and uneducated areas in India using what he referred to as a "computer in a hole" (2013).  Mitra would leave these incredibly simple machines in small and remote villages in India and simply vanish for a couple of months, then he would return and ask the children what they have been using the computer for and what they have learned from it.  The children would not only have to teach themselves how to operate a computer, but they would also have to teach themselves English in order to interact with the software. Mitra's incredible experiment shows that children left alone with little more than the possibility of discovery and a resource to facilitate that discovery can learn literacy skills, technical skills, and even scientific learning as advanced as DNA replication (2013).

In a broader context, what Mitra has in mind for the future of education is the widespread adoption of Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLE).  The idea of the SOLE is to inspire the innate curiosity of children to learn, ask questions, and discover answers on their own.  Mitra has reminded the world that curiosity and discovery are universal and that any child can learn if given a little encouragement and the right resources.  Not only do they not need to be led down a uniform and highly-structured educational plan, but also, this old system might be more detrimental compared to systems based on learning through the child's wonder and imagination (2013).  SOLE environments encourage participation in groups and social problem solving to come to solutions for big problems as small communities of learners that grow at their own pace.


A similar method to self organized learning is being implemented in libraries across America.  The idea of "makerspaces" has been a topic in libraries recently, and is seen by some to be a way of connecting with the core value of public libraries: namely to facilitate lifelong-learning.  Makerspaces treat libraries as social platforms where, according to the editors at American Library Magazine, patrons have opportunities to "create, build, and craft" (nd).

The American Libraries Magazine's website features a whole section dedicated to this exciting trend in American libraries, "makerspaces." At http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/article/manufacturing-makerspaces you can explore some articles that describe the current uses, future plans, and even the surprisingly long history that makerspaces have in American libraries.  According to the magazine's website, the idea of makerspaces can date back into the late 19th century, when a library in New York began hosting sewing and knitting groups for women.

Today's makerspaces are often geared towards computer media creation, offering computer stations with media centered software kits for creating websites, animations, and 3D-modeling.  Some other tools that American Libraries Magazine suggests for creating interesting makerspaces are: 3D-printers, laser cutters, vinyl cutters, and various table-top tools for intricate wood working (Good & Doctorow, nd).  What these makerspaces remind us of is that learning is really lifelong and that these Self Organized Learning Environments can turn into powerful social learning hubs for children and adults.

These education models bridge not only age gaps, but also economic gaps between the haves and the have-nots.  A well-funded library can provide the discovery tools that enable a community to come together and create, express, and learn in ways that they may not have had the opportunity to have done otherwise.  These makerspaces encourage learning advanced, highly technical skills in small groups of learners in much the same way that Mitra shows is possible in his TED Talks presentation. These are spaces that are devoted to empowering the individual to be able to do and explore in a creative way in which is far more natural and beneficial than outdated models of highly prescriptive education.  With an idea of inclusion, openness, and encouragement, these makerspaces could have the potential of showing the world that a new direction in education is desperately needed, rather than continuously trying to patch the old model.



References

Good, T. & Doctorow, C. (nd). Manufacturing makerspaces. American Libraries Magazine. Retrieved
    October 4, 2013 from http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/article/manufacturing-makerspaces.

Mitra, S. (2013). Sugata Mitra: Building a school in the clouds [Video File]. Retrieved from
    http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html

September 23 - 29

For this week's blog post I thought that I would share some thoughts on perceptions and the commodification of 'information' in the digital age which come from an article that I have been reading.

Over the last couple of days I have been reading "What is Information? The flow of bits and the control of chaos" by David Sholle, which appears in an anthology of essays entitled Democracy and New Media.

In his article, Sholle gives a Marxist analysis and critique of just what it is that we talk about when we talk about "information" in the context of an "information society."  Sholle's article is driven by a set of implicit assumptions that the "information society" discourse is built upon, such as: an economic philosophy that posits information as the source of value in a global economy;" and "a business logic that focuses on the accumulation, production, and management of data;" as well as, "media claims that availability and access to information technologies represent an increase in choice and freedom" (pp. 343). Sholle's goal in the article is then to sort of deconstruct these assumptions and analyze the way in which information is being sold to us as something that is essential and has a real definite market value.

Sholle suggests that meaning of the word "information" (from the Latin informare, which means "to put into form"), has been entirely removed from the phrase information society (pp. 345).  So what is the new meaning for the word in this context? First, Scholle points out that to the average person, this information society is one where "the average citizen has access to knowledge, meaningful dialogue, and information essential to everyday decision making" (pp. 344).

Doing this requires advertising and propaganda tantamount to identifying information as having almost mystical properties to enhance our everyday lives, making things and people that are more intelligent, responsive, and fulfilling. A perfect example of such fetishistic fantasies is captured in the "Human Network" marketing campaign implemented by Cisco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwNMMiHVXg).  The ads focus around the incredible connectivity possibilities made possible at a global level by the spread of and accessibility to information and information technologies, and it is something so fundamentally basic that even a child can narrate the transformation. "Welcome to the human network," it is beautiful and it is bringing the world together. If you are not already on board with the program then you are falling behind, missing out not just on profits but on connections and cultural knowledge from around the globe.

So, where did all of this information talk come from?  "Knowledge" and "understanding" used to be the zenith of  the human intellect, why the shift to "information?" Sholle suggests that the use of "information" emerged in the mid-twentieth century "as industrial capitalism grapple[d] with the incorporation of intelligence into its machine tools" (pp. 346).  Information, in this sense, is the way in which knowledge is seen broken down into bits in the digital age and incorporated into the machines.  What we have now is a "flow of information" that has been digitized and so can take on any form, almost independent of its content. Information is a measurable and containable pulse that is transmitted across networks. The actual "information" itself isn't nearly as important as its capacity to be a commodity.

So what is information as commodity?  Sholle states that "in an information society, the dominant conceptualization is one where information work and information products have replaced the industrial form. . . . [I]t is the vast array of information commodities produced within the information economy that is the key selling point of this digital age" (pp. 356).  Further, an information economy depends upon the ability of information to "float free of any specific medium and thus become transferable into as many context as possible (pp. 357).  And so, in an information society we come to expect pure versatility out of our information. It must be able to take on the form of print, audio, video, and graphic representation fluidly and effortlessly.

Sholle goes on to lay out some of what he finds to be the "strategies to control the exchange of information," which include (pp. 358):

• Standardizing the various products. For instance, cell phones / smart phones or e-readers and tablets. By creating different standards and tiers for these products, consumers can have some projected value of what these technologies cost.
• Sell the information flow, not the specific content.  Sholle sites the World Wide Web as a prime example of this--or Internet access in general can also fit the shoe. You pay for the service and experience of using it, though nothing specific.  
• Redistribute the information as many times as possible.
• Produce ephemeral information that must be consumed over and over.
• Process the consumer's behavior.

One could argue that there is nothing on Sholle's list that is new, or even unique to marketing information.

Sholle concludes that "ultimately, the complex processes and problems of the information economy are clouded in a veil of fetishism" (pp. 359). A fetishism that heavily involves marketing information as an unstoppable force, and one that gives us unique insights into the reality out there at a global perspective and at the speed of now.

By labeling our culture and time as an "information society" we are led into the belief of the inevitability and naturalization of such technologies and ideologies.  We are led to believe that this information has at all times been embedded in all of the normal items of everyday life and only await some technology company's benevolent decision to unlock these hidden potentials.  Everything that falls outside of this web is boring, outdated, and unintelligent--out of step with the times.



Sholle, D. (2003). What is information? The flow of bits and the control of chaos. In H. Jenkins & D. Thorburn (Eds.), Democracy and New Media (pp. 343 - 364). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

#LIS60001

Theater as Information

An article that I have been studying has discussed research in information behavior (or information practice) and its role in studying Shakespeare for researchers, actors, directors, and anyone else who professionally studies the Bard.  Not only has this gotten me on board, but has also got be thinking about plays in general, as it relates to information in a very contextualized and cultural way. The whole production is really just a vehicle -- a container and its contents, the passions of the particular actors, director vision, set pathos.  But its contents are also of a fluid variety. They are not the same for everyone who 'receives' the performance.  Each of the audience members has their own horizon -- they are each 'experts of their own worlds' which the performance is an outsider. It is a rather complex and social process of Socratic midwifery between work (artist vision), script, director, production, set, theatre, actor, audience -- and it can continue long after the performance is over in dialogue about the performance.

Sept 16 - 22

All this week I have been absolutely fascinated with Dervin's Sense Making Methodology chart.  For starters, I did not know it was possible to create a post-modern / existential graph before, but alas here one is! Secondly, the graph is filled with wonderful ideas and each one says considerately more than what is actually depicted on the graph itself. Whereas most chart are in the business of portraying 'objective' data so that everyone can benefit from them just by a careful analysis of the trends that they project; this chart has a certain esoteric value to it that results in a greater appreciation the longer a time spent studying it.

The graph itself portrays a cartoonish scene of an purposefully ill-defined squiggly-man approaching a bridge in order to cross the gap from uncertainty (ignorance) where he currently stands, to some unforeseeable conclusion on the other side.  Unlike some other charts in information behavior, Dervin's is not overly optimistic about the outcome of the information seeking process.  Her chart clearly illustrates (and labels) the possibility of failure, hindrances, and other possible consequences that could be the end result of an information seeking event.

The chart itself names a number of possible causes for such failures, and these possibilities arise right from the beginning of the process. Firstly, the squiggly-man himself carries with him a large umbrella, labeled Context.  This umbrella that the squiggly-man is constantly holding with him at every stage of the information seeking event consists of things such as power dynamics, cultures, and ideologies that will shape and manipulate the information that the seeker comes into contact with and processes.

The point at which the information seeker sets out can be a problem in itself. This point is named by Dervin as the Situation, a name that reminds the reader of Sartre's influential work, Being and Nothingness.  As such, a Situation resonates with ideas about subjectivity and a "resisting world," but also a heavy resistance to the fixity of truth.  Indeed, the Situation is characterized by Dervin as consisting of experience, history, barriers, horizons (recalling Heidegger), and constraints.  It is no easy process of merely knowing the topic you need information on and receiving that information in some instantaneously enlightening experience.  There are entire worlds to be considered.

Sense-making and un-making is what facilitates crossing the gap. According to Dervin's chart, sense-making is made possible through an active process of "verbings", procedures, and strategies.  This makes the information seeker something like an experimenter, trying different active methods in order to discover and process information.  The bridge itself is made up of different sources (media, institutions, people) that might produce or solicit the information, as well as "relevances" which indicate the ways in which we evaluate the usefulness or trustworthiness of a source.  The gap itself consists of our own questions, confusions, riddles, and angst, or the ultimate impossibility of grounding any of our sources on an external truth.

Finally, on the other side there is the outcome, and as already mentioned above, these outcomes are not always positive.  Perhaps the seeker was helped or perhaps she or he was made more confused or left with more questions.  Perhaps the information received was more negative than positive.  Whatever the case may be, the squiggly-man has made it to the other side and must now deal with whatever consequence or impacts arise from the change.

From the stand-point strictly of a librarian working with individuals to assist them in finding appropriate information sources, I think that the most important thing to gain from Dervin's idea is the uniqueness of every situation and the opportunity that each different situation presents.  The squiggly-man on Dervin's chart is made up of a flexible squiggly line for a reason.  That reason is to present the idea that she or he is not some rigid, already predetermined and predefined person.  We should attempt as much as possible to let go of our presuppositions and actually listen carefully to the needs of each patron.   The more we know about the individual and her or his needs, the better equipped we are to find the appropriate resources for them. 

#LIS60001

Sept 9 - 15

Scanning in the Library

Although on an average day of working at the library I am faced with at least a couple of questions about operating the scanner, that is not the kind of scanning that I want to get into right now.  The kind of scanning I have in mind for now is information scanning and how people ordinarily go about research.

When I started at the Kent University Fashion Library, I had no idea what a fashion library was.  In fact, getting the student position at the fashion library here at Kent was the first exposure I had to a library this specialized and specific.  Also, I really have no history with fashion. I do not speak the lingo or know the trends; I do not know the brand names or the top designers; I do not frequently shop or even browse online for clothes.  All in all, my exposure was low and my knowledge was far lower.

Now, I really cannot say that I have become an expert in fashion in three weeks, and I must admit that I have been devoting most of my energy toward learning the library processes more than the fashion industry, but still I feel that our class lecture on information scanning resonated on this topic.

As discussed in class, Francis J. Aguilar’s environmental and information scanning consists of the following linear stages:

·         Undirected Viewing

·         Conditional Viewing

·         Informal Viewing

·         Formal Search

On my first day of starting at the Fashion Library, I was strongly involved in stage one: undirected viewing.  In this stage, characterized by a “general exposure to information,” I found myself walking through the stacks scanning the titles of books and trying to get a general land layout of the rows and the subjects they contained.  Through this general exposure I began to see that the stacks were divided into sections by topics including retail management, history of costumes, designers, colors theories, apparel and jewelry, ethnic fashion, ecology in the fashion industry, and some works on philosophic ruminations.  

Not all of these divisions always seemed perfect to me, as books on some topics seemed be spread out in multiple spots, like books on color could be in fabrics, or patterns, or ethnic, or with other books on color. Further, there was a section for reference, a display section for newer books, the general stacks, large items, and magazines.  For some reason, there are some magazines and periodicals on the main stacks.

But this undirected viewing went beyond only getting a feel for the way the library was divided and subdivided.  I was also exposed to the patrons, and by observing them I slowly learned who they were, what they used the library for, and what I would need to know in order to help them.

Conditional viewing, or a more “directed exposure” probably began over the next couple of days at the library.  I began to understand a little bit more about the function of the fashion library after more exposure to the patrons and attempting to answer their questions concerning the library resources.  From becoming more familiar with the frequent questions I started to get a better idea of what I needed to know more about in order to be more useful.  The number one thing that I needed to start becoming more comfortable with was answering questions related to technology: how to print, how to load a flashcard, how to install a VPN, and related questions.

From here, I believe I entered stage three, the “informal search.” This stage was defined in class as a “limited and unstructured effort to obtain specific information or information for a specific purpose.” My purpose here was to better learn the technology aspects of the fashion library so that I could better serve the patrons.  My methodology was trial and error.  Rather than finding web resources or documentation on the devices, I spent some time playing around on the computers and seeing what worked and what did not.

Finally, after I felt as comfortable as I could feel by learning through that method, I entered the last stage, the “formal search”.  Also, I believe that I am still in this final stage.  Now, I refer to web pages for answers, if I have time, or I ask a supervisor.  As well, my attempt to map out the layout of the library has gotten more formal as time has gone on. I have gotten a better idea of common class topics after attempting to help multiple students with their research needs.  I have tried to remember these common areas of research and to track down their positions in the stacks so that I can more quickly show students to the location that they can begin browsing.

#lis60001

September 2 - 8

1. "Inherent in all things to be learned we should be able to find inherent connections." 
     -Mortimer Adler

• What happens when the "natural joints" are questioned or discarded all together?

 The quote by Mortimer is revealing as to his philosophical principles, specifically his allegiance to Aristotelian principles and ideals.  According to a certain school of thought, human beings are very capable of knowing about "objects" in a disinterested manner. This way of objectively knowing an object should be sufficient to give the Knower some privileged access to the nature of the object, and to place that object in some taxonomy according to its relationship with other objects of knowledge. 

This view is highly flattering of the human senses, in particular those basic five senses identified by Aristotle, as well as lending un-do credit to human rationality.  There are, however, many pitfalls to this standpoint, the sum of which make this sort of idealism feel highly outdated and imaginative.

• According to this viewpoint, there is a 1:1 ratio between human representations of the world and the world outside of us. 
• Humans are capable of knowing the world and the objects as they are.
• This way of thinking pretends that communication is such that one person is actually capable of representing their knowledge in some form to another human being; one who is then capable of consuming that communication in an identical manner. In other words, it overlooks basic problems with communication.
• It ignores biases and prejudices that exist in the creation of human knowledge.
• Generally commits the hubris of believing that humans are capable of knowing the order of the universe as was intended by God.
• Under this view we might think that knowledge is not something created by humans, but rather, that knowledge is something "out there" waiting to be observed and labeled. 

Around 1640, the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy. In this work, Descartes questions the biases of knowledge that he found had clouded philosophy for centuries in the European education system.  In this early break from Aristotle, Descartes posits his new methodology for truth exists in his own cogitos (his thinking stuff). A later Dutch philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard took Descartes ideas much further.

Kierkegaard wrote on subjectivity and negative communication, as well as heavy criticism of the Christianity being practiced in his time, and is now identified as a founder of existentialism. Existentialism inspired French philosophers and thinkers such as Sartre and his major work Being and Nothingness, as well as theorists like Derrida, and Foucault, and so post-modernism took off.

The point of this very brief (and highly selective) progression is to show how far we have come from accepting outdated notions of things having a natural order that is accessible to the knowledge man. Today, we tend to see views such as those held on to by Adler's as being highly Euro-centric, Christian, narratives of how man was able to rationally categorize all of the world's knowledge--as originally intended by the All Mighty.

Instead, the "natural joints" of the world are recognized as being convenient means of humans to communicate their own knowledge, as gained from a certain perspective, analyzed in a certain way, and thought about through a certain perspective. Humans create the categories and humans decide what goes in them. It is up to humans to debate over the subtleties of these systems we invent by our all too human means.

So, in the words of Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, we are far more likely to accept the notion that "my judgment is my own and you are not entitled to it."  Truth and knowledge is created in my own world and makes the most sense there.  It is in the communication of those truths is where problems tend to arise.

This is really just an effort to say that the relationship between objects ("the inherent connections," as Adler put it) only actually exist when we agree upon them. As long as we agree upon terms and divisions, this system works fine, but we should not mistake ideas and representations with the real thing.

2. The joints as I see them.

“I believe I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I try to be a good man, you see yourself” (Kundun, 2007).

The above quote is from the character of the Dalai Lama from the 2007 Martin Scorsese film, Kundun.

The joints of nature are more like mirrors that reveal the connections (the "nature") of our inner-worlds.  When we find one of these joints for ourselves, our response should not be to be filled with a sense of enlightenment towards the world, but rather bewilderment at ourselves.  When another reveals one of these joints to us then we may begin investigating the differences of our two worlds.

These joints are areas of power and struggle, both internally and externally, and an examined life should never be too comfortable with where these joints are located or what it is they are reflecting.  The mistakes of settling for a finished product of knowledge is the focus of Kierkegaard’s vehemence towards Hegel and much of Christianity. Truth is a becoming and these joints are full of uncertainty.  It is an uncertainty that keeps us striving toward more truth, a greater understanding, a finer granularity of knowledge.  I think a scientific age could come to appreciate this take on the joints of nature every bit as much a spiritual one.

These joints are revealing of political affinities, psychological fitness, and spiritual make-up.  They are abstractions of things that we allow to represent the whole structure of our horizons. They are imbued with cultural ideologies, zeitgeist, and personal convictions.  They are our habits of thought and associations that provide an order and functionality to things.  They make it possible for a Master Signifier to exist at all.  But they are more like scotch tape than like duct tape--not only are they frail and lose their adhesiveness over time, but they can also be transparent to others.

#lis60001

August 26 - September 1

1. Finding and Discovery

The difference between finding what you want and discovering what you want is often a matter of knowing exactly what you want before entering the store or not knowing what it is you are after. As Weinerberger points out, a store does a good job of promoting those unexpected items that a customer did not know they wanted before entering the store.  In a retail setting, sometimes this is done through staff picks, clearance racks, impulse items, or suggestive sales at check-out.   When you accidently stumble upon that item that you just have to have, then you have discovered what you needed at that point as opposed to going into the store for a toothbrush, grabbing the toothbrush, paying, and leaving.

In the Fashion, Design, and Marketing library here at Kent State, I think that the staff does a tremendous job of creating the opportunity for discovery for its patrons.  The main way this is done is through display shelves at the entrance of the library.  The display shelves are used to promote new books that are typically large and visually-attractive so that they can grab the attention of a passer-by.  In addition to this, a few books are selected for display right at the check-out counter. These books are mostly colorful introductions to fashion and design and are appropriate items to have available to anyone interested in beginning their studies in fashion. Finally, the magazines are shelved faced-out so that the patrons can see the covers for a greater chance of either seeing a new magazine that they did not know about before, or even noticing the newest issue of a magazine that they might have some interest in already.

Of course, even the shelving of materials in the main stacks promotes discovery. Even if a student knows that they need to write a research paper on Chanel (for example), through browsing the section they might find more contextual information about designers who may have been influenced by Chanel, or information on the French fashion culture in the early 1900s.  This kind of discovery is invaluable to research because at the time of setting out on a research project we are never really sure the total extent of what we are researching.

 

2.  Access points

Creating more access points to information is crucial for the survival and relevance of libraries in today’s digital age.  I think that the basic aspects of doing this are already being met by a large amount of libraries today, and that is by having electronic access to information resources.  Today, having licenses with large research databases is essential for any academic library, as well as having remote access to the library’s catalog through a VPN.

The digital age primarily means that information is more versatile than ever. Information can be stored, transferred, copied, and accessed faster and in more ways than ever before.  I think that libraries have already been embracing this change but need to continue to do so in order to meet the demands of their community and in order to broaden their reach.  Today, even the collections of a small rural library have a chance to be accessed by anyone anywhere, if that library has the means to digitize at least some of its collections.

Searching the catalog itself can be made easier and more efficient through the use of metadata.  Appropriate and creative uses of metadata can be used to ensure that patrons are getting the relevant information that serves their needs, and as a method of discovery for the patron to find additional information resources that she or he might not have known about before.  The ability for patrons to suggest, review, tag, or create lists to share with other patrons could go a long way in promoting the use of library resources to a larger public.