Dec 19, 2022Liked by HxL Substack, Bridget Wipf, Sarah Hartman-Caverly
This is succinct, well-documented and provocative. I just added a link to the first week of my Library History class for January. While we discuss these issues here and there--esp. as to library access--this is a kick starter.
Here is a new book I have added to the class:
Hanbury, Dallas. 2020. The Development of Southern Public Libraries and the African American Quest for Library Access 1898-1963. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Dec 19, 2022Liked by Bridget Wipf, HxL Substack, Sarah Hartman-Caverly
I am for keeping the DDS if only because it allows catalogers to move easily between libraries and because learning the system is one of the core educational tenets of our profession. I don't think it is that difficult for patrons in that even if they don't understand the system, the staff can direct them to the general shelves for a topic.
Dec 19, 2022·edited Dec 19, 2022Liked by HxL Substack, Bridget Wipf
The anal-retentive and nihilistic direction that critical librarianship has taken--"It isn't perfect so tear it ALL down!"--has steadily borne fruit in the profession. Fixing "problematic legacies" won't satisfy the ideologues and never has. Librarianship is being turned INTO something, a weapon in the arsenal of reframing truth. Since ChatGPT has come out, I'm beginning to see the potential damage Fanatics in our profession and in academia can really do. Academics, for all their flaws, are future-savvy. Since they know people will begin to increasingly use AI interfaces to answer their questions "authoritatively," naively expecting AI to tell them the truth, then the database of meaning and factuality is being front-loaded NOW with consciously politicized opinions and half-truths. Machines are being trained to answer questions the same way as the convinced would, but the answers will be lent the weight of cool computerized objectivity. So-called "radical academics" and "radical librarians" are doing this quite consciously. https://apoliticallibrarian.wordpress.com/2022/08/27/what-is-critical-librarianship-exactly/
"There is a rich body of literature on the role of library classification systems in NORMALZING unequal power relations, where certain subjects are normal and others are…well, the other. The distinguished Hope Olson comes to mind, as well as the work of legendary cataloger Sandy Berman, both of whom have devoted their careers to highlighting the ways in which classification systems SHAPE our society as much as reflect it." (My boldface.)
Is there actual empirical evidence for the causal claims made here? Or are these merely speculative assertions recruited for dramatic effect?
I think it is fair to say these are the claims made in the literature on this topic, no? I did not choose these words for dramatic effect (which sounds like a merely aesthetic choice) but to frame where critics are coming from.
Dec 19, 2022Liked by Sarah Hartman-Caverly, HxL Substack, Bridget Wipf
Excellent piece, Ms Nappo - thank you. I am planning on assigning this the next time I teach my required course in org of info/search.
I've been a professor in an information school going on 20 years and one relatively recent phenomenon is the student, or multiple students, who enter library school absolutely on fire about Dewey, and know firmly that they want to get rid of his classification, but don't have much of an idea about how classifications work or what they would replace him with. I've been teaching about Sanford Berman and Hope Olson for years and will continue to; one reason I do is to convey to the class that critiquing classification systems is far from a 21st-century activity and is in fact part of the process.
One educational (I hope) piece I assign is from the first "Revolting Librarians" which has a marvelous screed from an *early* Sanford Berman and makes my students' hair collectively stand on end if they aren't aware of how long critiques have been happening.
As merely a long time library patron I have been noticing in recent years that there seems to be a cost associated with library "wokeness", for lack of a better term. Our library sells off some of it's collection in a book sale every year to make room for new material. I believe part of the criterion used to choose these books maybe their lack of popularity. There are many older books, of course. But a truly surprising number of woke-themed titles are also included in the cut.
I agree that it is nice to just walk into a library and know where to look for your subject. I think my real problem with the Dewey Decimal System is every book is assigned just one number. A lot of books are about more than one thing, especially when they are written for adults. My vision for a library is that any one book has multiple correct places, in general, where it can hang out with books like it, but that does change, as the book gets re-shelved in its other appropriate location or locations at random. How do you find the book? When you look it up you upload its coordinates to a little widget which helps you locate the book's current location (or something like that). So, the spine of the book has multiple Dewey Decimal numbers representing its various categories.
This is a provocative proposal. On the other hand, no cataloging system presumes that the patron knows where in the physical collection to look for a book, as that's the purpose of a catalog. The "aboutness" of an item can be indicated by the assignment of multiple subject headings, which a catalog record can indicate.
I do take your point that if a patron is browsing without consulting the catalog, then his or her spontaneous discovery might be circumscribed by where in the library they are browsing. However, I think in order for libraries to function well, the physical locations with respect to their categories must be consistent.
My proposal is not currently practically workable. It could be in a future, though. And patrons will be able to find the book, because they know how the shelves in the library are laid out, with the DDNs in a prescribed order (the familiar or canonical one) AND they know what number their book has NOW. So, knowing that, they can go direct to the book. The widget tells you which of its many DDNs is the one that is being used to shelve the book right now. Currently impossible to do, I grant, but not theoretically impossible at all.
This is succinct, well-documented and provocative. I just added a link to the first week of my Library History class for January. While we discuss these issues here and there--esp. as to library access--this is a kick starter.
Here is a new book I have added to the class:
Hanbury, Dallas. 2020. The Development of Southern Public Libraries and the African American Quest for Library Access 1898-1963. Lanham: Lexington Books.
I am for keeping the DDS if only because it allows catalogers to move easily between libraries and because learning the system is one of the core educational tenets of our profession. I don't think it is that difficult for patrons in that even if they don't understand the system, the staff can direct them to the general shelves for a topic.
The anal-retentive and nihilistic direction that critical librarianship has taken--"It isn't perfect so tear it ALL down!"--has steadily borne fruit in the profession. Fixing "problematic legacies" won't satisfy the ideologues and never has. Librarianship is being turned INTO something, a weapon in the arsenal of reframing truth. Since ChatGPT has come out, I'm beginning to see the potential damage Fanatics in our profession and in academia can really do. Academics, for all their flaws, are future-savvy. Since they know people will begin to increasingly use AI interfaces to answer their questions "authoritatively," naively expecting AI to tell them the truth, then the database of meaning and factuality is being front-loaded NOW with consciously politicized opinions and half-truths. Machines are being trained to answer questions the same way as the convinced would, but the answers will be lent the weight of cool computerized objectivity. So-called "radical academics" and "radical librarians" are doing this quite consciously. https://apoliticallibrarian.wordpress.com/2022/08/27/what-is-critical-librarianship-exactly/
https://medium.com/datascience-semantics3/thoughts-on-the-gigo-principle-in-machine-learning-4fbd3af43dc4
"There is a rich body of literature on the role of library classification systems in NORMALZING unequal power relations, where certain subjects are normal and others are…well, the other. The distinguished Hope Olson comes to mind, as well as the work of legendary cataloger Sandy Berman, both of whom have devoted their careers to highlighting the ways in which classification systems SHAPE our society as much as reflect it." (My boldface.)
Is there actual empirical evidence for the causal claims made here? Or are these merely speculative assertions recruited for dramatic effect?
I think it is fair to say these are the claims made in the literature on this topic, no? I did not choose these words for dramatic effect (which sounds like a merely aesthetic choice) but to frame where critics are coming from.
Excellent piece, Ms Nappo - thank you. I am planning on assigning this the next time I teach my required course in org of info/search.
I've been a professor in an information school going on 20 years and one relatively recent phenomenon is the student, or multiple students, who enter library school absolutely on fire about Dewey, and know firmly that they want to get rid of his classification, but don't have much of an idea about how classifications work or what they would replace him with. I've been teaching about Sanford Berman and Hope Olson for years and will continue to; one reason I do is to convey to the class that critiquing classification systems is far from a 21st-century activity and is in fact part of the process.
One educational (I hope) piece I assign is from the first "Revolting Librarians" which has a marvelous screed from an *early* Sanford Berman and makes my students' hair collectively stand on end if they aren't aware of how long critiques have been happening.
As merely a long time library patron I have been noticing in recent years that there seems to be a cost associated with library "wokeness", for lack of a better term. Our library sells off some of it's collection in a book sale every year to make room for new material. I believe part of the criterion used to choose these books maybe their lack of popularity. There are many older books, of course. But a truly surprising number of woke-themed titles are also included in the cut.
Saw this recent article about cataloguing so am sharing here for those who want to see some more discussions on this topic: https://news.fairforall.org/p/all-is-not-quiet-in-the-library-catalogs?r=1mq6c5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I agree that it is nice to just walk into a library and know where to look for your subject. I think my real problem with the Dewey Decimal System is every book is assigned just one number. A lot of books are about more than one thing, especially when they are written for adults. My vision for a library is that any one book has multiple correct places, in general, where it can hang out with books like it, but that does change, as the book gets re-shelved in its other appropriate location or locations at random. How do you find the book? When you look it up you upload its coordinates to a little widget which helps you locate the book's current location (or something like that). So, the spine of the book has multiple Dewey Decimal numbers representing its various categories.
This is a provocative proposal. On the other hand, no cataloging system presumes that the patron knows where in the physical collection to look for a book, as that's the purpose of a catalog. The "aboutness" of an item can be indicated by the assignment of multiple subject headings, which a catalog record can indicate.
I do take your point that if a patron is browsing without consulting the catalog, then his or her spontaneous discovery might be circumscribed by where in the library they are browsing. However, I think in order for libraries to function well, the physical locations with respect to their categories must be consistent.
My proposal is not currently practically workable. It could be in a future, though. And patrons will be able to find the book, because they know how the shelves in the library are laid out, with the DDNs in a prescribed order (the familiar or canonical one) AND they know what number their book has NOW. So, knowing that, they can go direct to the book. The widget tells you which of its many DDNs is the one that is being used to shelve the book right now. Currently impossible to do, I grant, but not theoretically impossible at all.