Yikes!

Haul out your "The End is Near" sign. If Cushing Academy is anything to go by, it's a whole lot closer than I imagines.

The Boston Globe reported a couple days ago that the Boston-area independent school has turned its library into a media center--minus the books. Except for a few children's books and rare editions, they've given away everything and replaced it with a couple of large screens, laptop bars, 18 Kindles and a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

Never mind my English teacher/librarian reaction to doing away with a library full of books. One odd result of making the library switch is that I'm surprisingly less sentimental about books than I used to be, whatever Nicholson Baker says.

But this horrifies me for a number of other reasons.

1) 18 Kindles for the entire school? Reading is going to be down, that's for sure. And how will they ensure equitable access for all? Usage rights are so limited with digital information, I can't imagine how they're going to work this. Are students who can't access the libraries Kindles forced to buy assigned texts? Google books is great, but how many online books provide free full-text access? Not many.

Moreover, Kindles cost around $500 each; that doesn't seem very cost-effective. And what happens when the Kindle has a run-in with the output from that $12,000 cappuccino machine? Believe me, it will happen, and the results won't be pretty, as anyone who has spilled a drink on their keyboard knows.

2) I'm a tech-geek, so I don't dismiss online reading out of hand, as many do. I think it's another literacy we need to teach. However, there is no doubt that reading from a screen makes deep, sustained thought less likely, if not altogether impossible.

This seems like a bad idea on so many levels, almost all of the pointed out in the comments section, which is almost more interesting to read than the article. Take a look.

Library Camp of the West

Check out this free un-conference, discussing all things library.

Banned Blog Week?

A mini tempest over the blog caught me completely unawares last night. Someone had posted to LM-Net asking about ideas to read up on in preparing for a job interview as a high-school librarian. She received some excellent advice, including catching up on Web 2.0 , and I sent her the link to this blog as a good place to get some specifics on the different tools available.

Apparently, all she saw was the Iraqi death toll widget on the right there. She sent me an email that she also posted to the list-serv, saying I used the blog as a subterfuge for advancing my own political agenda, and that other unwary LM-Netters needed to be warned.

Now, it has all blown over; we've exchanged emails, taken the high road and agreed to let by-gones be by-gones. Ironically, as with all such contretemps, my blog hits increased, literally, 1,000 fold. According to my stats, I average around 30 hits per day (and most of those last less than 5 seconds!). Yesterday I had close to 700. Yeeha! Curiosity is a wonderful thing; some of those viewers may even become regular readers.

Anyone involved in such an issue, however, can't help pondering censorship, freedom of speech, and where we must stand as librarians. If my blog isn't necessarily political, this post definitely is.

According to the ALA Library Bill of Rights,

1. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.
2. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

As librarians we have a moral and civic obligation not only to guard against personal bias in our choice of materials, but also to actively protect diverse points of view and freedom of speech. As Supreme Court Justice Brandeis stated in his decision on Whitney vs. California, "It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."

This small spate with my blog is only a tempest in a teapot and is pretty much over. Yet it reflects a larger issue. When The Higher Power of Lucky won the Newbery last year, I laughed over the uproar caused by the anatomically correct word, "scrotum." There will always be those willing to be 'shocked! shocked!' at insults to their sensibilities.

I was less amused however, when I read in the NY Times that librarians--librarians!!--promised to ban the book from their libraries on the basis of a single word used appropriately and in context. No doubt some of these promises came from an unwillingness to face the inevitable parental challenges. While I don't believe we should buckle to the forces of intolerance, I at least understand the decision.

What I neither understand nor condone is the decision to completely ban the book from the library. Not keep it for more mature upper-elementary readers, but omit it from the collection altogether. To impose a personal set of values upon the reading materials of an entire student body. This goes against everything we, as librarians, not only should stand for, but MUST stand for.

If we allow the dictates of a vocal minority to threaten and bully others into adopting their limited agenda, we are all intellectually the poorer for it.

Hush!

That's the title of one of my favorite Buffy episodes, where a group of monsters called "The Gentlemen" steal the voices of Sunnydale's denizens. What does that have to do with libraries? Silence--or the lack thereof, has become an issue in my library.

In library school, we all held the vision of an active, vibrant center-of-learning, with students engaged in collaborative learning. We disdained the old-style librarians who insisted upon a sepulchral silence. During my practicum, I darned near gave myself an ulcer trying to determine the line where my co-operating librarian would insist upon greater quiet from the students, since it was often FAR sooner that I would have done. I vowed I would run a more student-friendly library.

Enter reality. My library has a "silent" side, for students who need the quiet, and a "collaborative" side, where, ostensibly, they may work quietly in groups. Two or three people working quietly is very different from 20 people working quietly, and I find myself not only waffling on where I think the line is, but going around "sshhshing" people far more frequently than I ever thought I would, and feeling at worst like the guy in the picture, or at best like the old-maid librarian stereotype of the movies.

Sometimes it really is too loud. Other times, students are working in what I think is a reasonable, albeit somewhat noisy, clamor, yet teachers or other students will complain about the volume. Of course, teachers can be even louder than the students!

So here's my question: how quiet is quiet? And how do you provide both a space to collaborate and the silence some students need? Is it really old-fashioned to insist on near-silence, in essence "stealing" student's voices? Or is there a genuine need for a place of quiet reflection and thought?

Or am I completely over-thinking this and, like most of life, the answer is somewhere in-between?