Lost In The Tubes

When I began my research into anonymity and privacy in Library 2.0 social networking efforts, I expected to find blogs and articles by the usual suspects: Michael’s Casey & Stephens, Jenny Levine, John Blyberg, etc.  But much of the information I’m finding doesn’t come from the world of library literature – it comes from the worlds of computer science & design and internet security.  This shouldn’t surprise me, as I’ve long held the belief that – given the issues we face in modern librarianship – librarians need to be much farther ranging in our search for guidance and answers to the pressing questions that we face.

Anonymity in social networking environments is addressed in two basic ways: its benefits and its dangers.  Many of the resources I’ve found that explore the benefits of anonymity focus on the role of social networking in the realm of primary education.  The paper, “Creating a Psychologically Safe Online Space for a Student-Generated Questions Learning Activity via Different Identity Revelation Modes,” shows how an anonymous question-and-answer environment can alleviate the embarrassment and stigma that so many students have towards asking questions in front of their peers.  In an anonymous online environment, students can ask questions of their teachers without the fear of appearing stupid.  This idea has obvious applications in libraries and how we offer information exchange services to our users.  The other benefit of anonymity in online social environments is the protection of user privacy – again, an issue central to the operations and values of libraries.

The dangers of anonymity are sometimes easy to overlook.  It’s not just the well-documented phenomena of enabling (and sometimes encouraging) trolling behavior, and predatory behavior online (the same anonymity that protects users from being identified by unauthorized parties also lets predators hide their identities from the people they’re stalking); there’s also a danger in that many social network users believe that anonymity provides more protection of their identity than is actually the case.  For example, in a report titled, “A Practical Attack to De-Anonymize Social Network Users”, the authors of the report show how “information about the group memberships of a user (i.e., the groups of a social network to which a user belongs) is often sufficient to uniquely identify this user, or, at least, to significantly reduce the set of possible candidates” using common techniques to steal web browser histories.  In other words – anonymity doesn’t mean your identity is safe.  This is a serious consideration for libraries as they implement social networking strategies for their employees and users.

I began my research with the resources listed on our Social Media Guidelines assignment, and I also plan on using some or all of the following articles:

Bisson, Casey. 2006. The future of privacy and libraries. MaisonBisson.com. http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11099/the-arrival-of-the-stupendous/ (accessed March 28, 2010).

Blyberg, John. 2005. ILS customer bill-of-rights. Blyberg.net. http://www.blyberg.net/2005/11/20/ils-customer-bill-of-rights/ (accessed March 28, 2010).

Buschman, John, Mark Rosenzweig and Kathleen de la Pena McCook. 2007. “On Anonymity in Libraryland Blogging.” Progressive Librarian 3-7. OmniFile Full Text Mega, WilsonWeb (accessed March 28, 2010).

Casey, Michael and Michael Stephens. 2008. The transparent library: Coping with anonymity. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6515878.html (accessed March 28, 2010).

Ibid. 2008. The transparent library: Six signposts on the way. Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6611609.html (accessed March 28, 2010).

Gritzalis, Stefanos. Enhancing web privacy and anonymity in the digital era. Information Management & Computer Security. 12, no. 3. 2004 : 255-288.

Grohol, Johm M. 2006. Anonymity and online community: Identity matters. A List Apart Magazine. No. 214 (April 4, 2006). http://www.alistapart.com/articles/identitymatters (accessed March 28, 2010).

Kosovsky, Bob. 2007. Anonymity for library staff?. Library 2.0. http://www.library20.org/forum/topics/515108:Topic:35567 (accessed March 28, 2010).

Levine, Jenny. 2005. The online library user manifesto. ALA TechSource. American Library Association. http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2005/11/the-online-library-user-manifesto.html (accessed March 28, 2010).

Litwin, Rory. 2006. The central problem of library 2.0: Privacy. Library juice. http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=68 (accessed March 28, 2010).

Narayanan, Arvind and Vitaly Shmatikov. 2009. De-anonymizing social networks. Austin, Texas: The Univeristy of Texas at Austin.

Perez, Sarah. 2008. The end of online anonymity. ReadWriteWeb. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_end_of_online_anonymity.php (accessed March 28, 2010).

Reeder, Franklin S. and Paul Alan Levy. 2005. “Protecting Anonymity on the Internet.” Newsletter  on Intellectual Freedom. 54, no. 5: 209, 257-64. OmniFile Full Text Mega, WilsonWeb (accessed March 28, 2010).

Timmer, John. 2010. Browser history hijack + social networks = lost anonymity. Ars Technica (February 24, 2010). http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2010/02/browser-history-hijack-social-networks-lost-anonymity.ars (accessed March 28, 2010).

Wondracek, Gilbert, Thorsten Holz, Engin Kirda, and Christopher Kruegel. 2010. A practical attack to de-anonymize social network users. iSecLab.

Yu, Fu-Yun and Yu-Hsin Liu. 2009. “Creating a psychologically safe online space for a student-generated questions learning activity via different identity revelation modes.” British Journal of Educational Technology 40, no. 6: 1109-23. OmniFile Full Text Mega, WilsonWeb (accessed March 28, 2010).

So I was sitting at Denny’s – the one on Harlem & Chicago Aves. – and I decided to check in on both Foursquare and Gowalla.  The location didn’t exist on either app, so I created it for both.  When I did this on Gowalla, it popped up a message telling me that to become the founder of this location, I needed to drop an item.  For those of you who don’t use Gowalla, it has items – random things you can pick up and drop at locations when you check in (another example of Gowalla “telling stories”).  For those of you that do use Gowalla:  There’s an electric guitar sitting at the Denny’s on Harlem & Chicago for anyone who wants it.  And that’s when it hit me – scavenger hunts!  Libraries can use Gowalla to stage community scavenger hunts, as a fun way to get people involved in the library and also to highlight the library’s connections to the community.  I don’t know if the GPS on smartphones is precise enough for a library to be able to use Gowalla to host a scavenger hunt within the confines of the library building itself (I don’t think you can have multiple locations within a single building) but Gowalla is also open-source, so maybe it could be adapted to the purpose.  And this is where QR codes would come in really handy!

Last Tuesday evening, my Advanced Archival Management class went to the Oak Park Public Library to tour their special collections.  Leaning against the wall in the secure room that houses the bulk of their Frank Lloyd Wright collection is a large aerial photograph of Oak Park, dated in the mid-1990s, and mounted to foam core.  There are a whole lot of colored pins stuck in it – it was a library promotion where patrons could stick a pin in the places where they live, work, play, etc.  It’s a visualization of the geography of the library patrons’ lives.  It occurs to me that this is what Foursquare and Gowalla are doing, globally and across all communities.  And libraries can use that.

One semester with Prof. Stephens, and I’m already seeing the world in a completely different way!

Random thought (speaking of QR codes…):  In my 701 class, in the Organization of Knowledge, and in my archives classes, we’ve spent a great deal of time debating the question, “What is a document?”  I think we’ve all read that one article by that one guy who thinks that a gazelle is a document; ridiculous, right?  But then I think, “What if you put a QR code on the gazelle, how would that affect its nature-as-document?”  :-/

Disclaimer:  The results of various searches and the statistics listed in this blog entry are accurate for the date March 21, 2010.

I began following the Kansas City Public Library (www.kclibrary.org) on Twitter and Facebook shortly after marrying my wife last summer.  She grew up in a suburb of KC and as a child, the Central Branch was her favorite library.  When I saw the iLibrarian blog entry on the Top Public Libraries on Twitter and noticed that Kansas City was ranked #4, I decided to use them for this monitoring assignment.

Facebook

The Kansas City Public Library can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kclibrary.    They have 1,315 fans.  They use their Facebook profile primarily to announce library events and highlight issues that affect the library and its community.  There isn’t much discussion happening on their Wall – there are no comments on their posts and the latest posting from a fan is dated Feb. 25, 2010.  However, despite the lack of commentary from the KC Public Library fans, what they do say seems fairly positive.  I also notice that there are no comments on any of the photos.

My favorite section of the Kansas City public Library Facebook profile is Boxes.  They have links to their main website for hours & locations, and various library resources.  They have an Ask a Librarian box with a link to live chat, to email, and a reference phone number.  Best of all – they have a WorldCat search box.

Under Info you can find links to the library’s website, and their Twitter and Flickr accounts.

Twitter

The Kansas City Public Library can be found on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KCPubLibrary.  Their Twitter presence is much more interactive than Facebook.  They have 3,029 followers and they tweet once or twice a day to announce library events – weekly reading groups, artistic and literary events, and links to resources on their website – as well as job openings.  In the last three weeks, the two biggest subjects were the grand reopening of their renovated Bluford Branch and their posting of three job openings (including two web development positions).  One thing I noticed immediately when I first began following KC Public Library on Twitter is that they thank everyone who retweets them.  I think this is a very effective and wonderful way of letting their followers know that they’re paying attention to what people are saying about them, and that they want their Twitter presence to be communal and interactive.

To see what people were saying about the Kansas City Public Library on Twitter, I searched “Kansas City Public Library,” “KC Public Library,” “Kansas City Library,” “KC Library,” and their proper tag – “KCPubLibrary”.  The vast majority of tweets being posted about the library are people retweeting the job openings and event announcements.  There was one tweet in particular that caught my attention, though:

And yes, KCPubLibrary thanked them for their comment.

Flickr

The Kansas City Public Library can be found on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/kclibrary.  They have 94 total pages of images, dating back to 2003.  The images are organized into Library Events (by year), Special Collections, Library Locations, Exhibits, Library Projects, and Rental Spaces.  Within each of these collections are several sets, each set with no more than a dozen or so images.  I think having a photo collection specifically dedicated to their rental spaces is an exceptionally good idea.

In all of their collections, I was able to find only one image that has a comment on it – and that comment is an invitation for KC Public Library to connect with another Missouri library on Flickr.  Much like Facebook, they’ve set up their Flickr account very well – but very few of their users are interacting with them through this venue.  They only have 20 contacts listed on their profile, and all of them are other libraries and cultural organizations in Kansas City and Missouri.

Social Ratings

I searched Yelp!, Yahoo! Local, and Foursquare to see if I could find a more active online conversation about Kansas City Public Library.

Yelp! turned up half a dozen reviews for all search term variations (the same variations I used on Twitter), some of which were for individual branch locations.  The reviews are all very positive, with average user ratings of 4.5 stars (the lowest rating was three stars for the Waldo Branch, but the poster made a point of mentioning how this branch had been able to find a book for her that none of the other system branches could).

Yahoo! Local listed one review (four stars) and Foursquare only lists 55 checkins from 16 unique visitors, and only two comments.

Conclusion

In all, the Kansas City Public Library has made good effort to get themselves into the social networking world.  They use Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr to publicize the many goings-on at their various locations, and highlight local history and cultural resources.  Maybe it’s the constituency of their user-base, or maybe they use these platforms to make announcements more than to open discussions, but the communication is fairly one-way, with little commentary or feedback from the people following them online.  What their followers do have to say is very positive – they’re just not saying it very much.

We spend a lot of time in the world of Web 2.0 talking about anonymity and privacy.  It seems that most people take it as a given in this new world that these things are good and necessary.  To some extent, they are – especially in libraries, where users expect to have their personal information kept confidential.  As libraries venture out into the world of social networking, we need to keep this in mind if we want our users to feel comfortable participating in library services in a socially networked environment.  Some people won’t want to give their names or share personal information with other library users who participate in an online system.  On the other hand, as Jaron Lanier argues very persuasively in his book, You Are Not A Gadget, online anonymity can be a bad thing.  It enables and encourages trolling, and it promotes a certain shallowness in the exchange of ideas.  If you don’t have to put your name next to something, then you don’t have to stick around to answer any questions or face any counter-arguments – and you can be as mean as you want to be without having to face the consequences.  Mr. Lanier refers to this as “drive-by anonymity” and there’s a long history of it bringing out the worst in people.

I believe that finding a balance in realm of online anonymity is essential to the successful implementation of Library 2.0 services.  I need to know more about how libraries deal with issues of anonymity – and privacy – and what the current trends are in the emerging world of Library 2.0.

As I reflect on my experiences with online social networking, I realize that I’ve been participating in some form of it since college – even high school, if you count the online community-based games I blogged about previously. While not all of the online communities I’ve belonged to meet the strict definition of social networking sites as described in the readings and resources for this week, some of them have been:

• Usenet groups
• Email listservs
• Community blogs

Basically, all the methods people used to create online communities before the advent of social networking sites.

I find it ironic, therefore, that I was fairly late coming to the social networking party. I was the last of my social circle to get on Friendster and MySpace (both accounts have since been deleted by me for lack of use) and I had to be dragged kicking and screaming to Facebook by my roommate at the time. Now, I’m very active on Facebook (I check my account about once every hour) and I have accounts on Twitter, Flikr (which I never use as I don’t even own a digital camera – except my cell phone and I don’t ever use the camera feature), and I still belong to a handful of community resource-sharing websites.

I have mixed feelings about social networking. I love Facebook – despite their insistence on constantly changing it for absolutely no good reason anyone can discern – but I tend to stay away from Twitter (except for this class). There are two basic reasons why I don’t like Twitter: 1) It updates so quickly when you follow more than a dozen or so members that I feel overwhelmed by it; 2) you’ve probably noticed that I’m an individual who tends to be rather prolix in my communication – the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter sits unnaturally with me. Besides, I have all the same friends on Twitter that I have on Facebook, and their updates tend to be the same on both, so I don’t need to go to both places to know what’s going on with them. Facebook, on the other hand, allows for a much greater variety of interaction – groups, pages, fans, applications, links, photo-sharing, IM, etc. The regional and school networks, especially, have put me back in touch with friends from my childhood that I haven’t spoken with since we all left for college. I’m so happy to have their presence back in my life and to be a part of theirs again!

From the perspective of an avid Facebook user, I’m most fascinated by the idea of reputation in Gene Smith’s Social Software Building Blocks. He defines reputation as “a way of knowing the status of other people in the system (Who’s a good citizen? Who can be trusted?)” (Smith, 2007) Facebook has specific elements to convey all the other building blocks Mr. Smith mentions, but there’s no dedicated way for Facebook users to establish and communicate reputation. In some ways, the reputation you have on Facebook depends on how well you fulfill all the other building blocks: How many friends do you have? Do you belong to the same groups as me? Are we fans of the same things? How many comments do your posts generate? How many people “Like” your status updates? How many links do you post? How many photos? All of these are elements that influence the way that other users perceive you. In light of the conversation we had with Jenny Levine in class yesterday (2/27) re: the way that her online persona was used against her, I’ve become convinced that reputation is the most important building block of social networking sites! To tie into my context book, You Are Not A Gadget, even if you want your online presence to be anonymous, you need to put time and effort into developing and maintaining it, to create a reliable reputation. As librarians venturing into the social networking world, we can’t just consign Lib. 2.0 projects to side-ventures with only one or two employees tasked to worry about it. These efforts need to be multilateral and a priority for all library employees.

Sources Cited

Smith, Gene. 2007. Social software building blocks. nForm. http://nform.ca/publications/social-software-building-block [accessed February 28, 2010]

(Citations courtesy of Michael Stephens at http://lis768.tametheweb.com/modules/social-networking/)

For my context book, I chose You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier.  Mr. Lanier is renowned within the digital world; he was one of a handful of people in the 1980s that created the internet and the modern digital world.  In particular, he’s credited as one of the inventors of virtual reality technology.  So I was fascinated to learn that he’s also one of the most outspoken critics of Web 2.0.

This book is proving difficult to write about.  It’s one of the most idea-dense texts I’ve read in years.  Literally each paragraph has a new idea, a pithy quote, or something worth digging into!  The only way to really explain what this book is about – and do it justice – is to have you read it.

Much of his criticism of the modern web stems from a phenomenon he calls “lock in” – design choices made in the early stages of development that become the basis of so many other inter-related pieces of software that the original design choice becomes impossible to change.  At this point, other design options that may have existed once cease to be available to us.  The original design choices are locked in and they dictate how everything else needs to be designed and built henceforth.  One of the problems he sees with the web as it exists is that many of these locked in design elements are completely arbitrary.  Designers make choices based on what’s easiest, based on what they want, or they create something to fulfill a specific role but then their design gets used in areas of the web where it was never intended to function.  He points out that at the beginning of each stage of web development there are always several different designs that are created, with wide variation in quality, adaptability, etc.  What he sees in the current development of Web 2.0 are some of the worst designs taking hold.

Some of the elements of the modern web that he dislikes are:

• The people who are creating the web value information in-and-of-itself. Mr. Lanier points out that information only has value through experience. (p. 28)
• He feels that the modern web is flattened and homogenous compared to the original iteration of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. He talks about this frequently throughout the book; personal web pages in the ‘90s were unique, colorful, and full of individual character. No two web pages were the same. Now, with social networking sites like Facebook, everyone has to force their online presence into the same preset boxes. The character of the web is gone and he feels that we reduce ourselves when we fit into standardized formats. We traded the ability to be unique in order to increase the ability of websites like Facebook and Google to search, categorize, and use us as marketing tools. This trade-off was a bad one, in his opinion. It makes information easier to collate but it reduces the value of human individuality. (p. 68)
• Web 2.0 values collective behavior and intelligence more than the intelligence and unpredictable behaviors of the individual. He points out, though, that in every case cited to establish the value of collective intelligence, each one had an individual guiding the collective. There’s no evidence that collective intelligence works on its own. (p. 56) Furthermore, collectivity enables and promotes pack dynamics (p. 64)
• He feels that anonymity is actually a bad thing.  As an example, he spends a fair amount of time analyzing the phenomenon of online trolling. He points out that even in the academic Usenets of the 1980s, scholars and university faculty were meaner online than they would ever be in the real world. The transient anonymity of the digital realm makes it easy to be mean. (p. 69)

The list goes on and he circles back to all these points throughout.  There are two examples in particular that I think apply the world of Library 2.0.  The first is his critique of quantity over quality:

A fashionable idea in technical circles is that quantity not only turns into quality at some extreme of scale, but also does so according to principles we already understand. Some of my colleagues think a million, or perhaps a billion, fragmentary insults will eventually yield wisdom that surpasses that of any well-thought-out essay, so long as sophisticated secret statistical algorithms recombine the fragments. I disagree. A trope from the early days of computer science comes to mind: garbage in, garbage out. (p. 49)

While I feel that Mr. Lanier over-emphasizes the trolling aspects of the modern web by assuming most web content consists of people throwing insults at each other – and vastly underestimates the amount of truly intelligent, high quality content people are still creating – this critique is correct in its essence.  Library practice has always emphasized the quality of information over its quantity.  This is the great value and strength of libraries over any other information storage and retrieval system.  As libraries venture farther into the preset, homogenized, and quantitative world of social networking and Web 2.0, we must resist the pressures that modern technology exerts on us to lose track of the quality of the information we offer, and value its quantity instead.  We can help to resist and counteract this trend in Web 2.0.

The second example that really struck me is one he brings up very early on, on page 7 in fact: the development of MIDI software for digital music.  While MIDI is now the foundation of all digital musical formats, and any musician who wants to participate in the digital musical world has no choice but to use it, this software was never intended by its creator to fill such a broad role.  MIDI was created by a keyboardist as a way to work with ‘80s-era synthesizers in digital formats.  These keyboards didn’t have dynamically sensitive keys, so notes were only either key-up or key-down, and that’s how MIDI was built to handle notes – “key-up” or “key-down”.  This definition of musical notes can’t “describe the curvy, transient expressions” (p. 7) of other musical instruments, and subsequent attempts to make MIDI more dynamically variable are fundamentally hampered by this initial design.  Because of  the universal adoption of MIDI (adopted more for convenience and not because it’s the best design), musicians who want to work with the notes and sounds of dynamic instruments digitally have to force them into the structure of MIDI – and digital music has become less dynamic because of it.  Mr. Lanier points out, “ Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition…  It was a mental tool distinguishable from the music itself…  After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure you couldn’t avoid.” (p. 9)  In Mr. Lanier’s estimation, Web 2.0 is doing to human interactions what MIDI did to music.  As librarians who will help to create Library 2.0, we need to continually emphasize the human nature of our work – its messy, interesting, and transient nature – and always recognize that social networking technology is just a tool that can’t be allowed to overwhelm the individuality of each one of our users.

Mr. Lanier ends the book on an optimistic note.  He recognizes the tremendous benefit that the Web can be to mankind, and he believes in the great potential of digital technology.  It’s just the current design trends that he doesn’t like.  The good thing is that most of the designs of Web 2.0 haven’t been locked in yet.  We can still change it for the better – for the more human and individual – and there have already been popular movements in that direction.

I believe this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to venture into the world of Web 2.0.  As I’ve stated in previous blog posts – I feel it’s absolutely essential in any discussion to have someone playing the role of Devil’s Advocate.  In discussions of Web 2.0 and the digital world, Mr. Lanier plays that role better than anyone else I know.

Lanier, Jaron. 2010. You are not a gadget: a manifesto. Alfred A. Knopf. New York

Liz’s blog post, “The Future of Our Intelligence”, got me thinking very deeply about the question of Web 2.0 and its effect on our thinking.  Let me begin with a disclaimer: I’ve chosen You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier as my context book for this class and it’s possible that it’s having too much of an influence on my thinking right now.

There’s a fundamental fallacy in the statement, “By 2020, people’s use of the internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information, they become smarter and make better choices.”  (http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Future-of-the-Internet-IV/Part-1Google.aspx?r=1)  The fallacy is this – informed decisions are not the same as intelligent decisions.  Yes, intelligent decisions by their nature must be informed, but just because we have information it doesn’t automatically follow that we know how to use it well, or how to think about it critically.  One of the biggest problems I have with the internet as it’s coming to be is its insistence that information is the ultimate good in-and-of-itself.  So many of the people who designed and built the internet hold up information as the terminal object of design and use.

It’s not.

This may be sacrilege coming from a librarian, but information has no intrinsic value at all.  Its only value lies in how we use it.  Information is not an end, it’s a tool – and like all tools, it’s only as good as our ability to use it.  Any good engineer will tell you: You can’t design a functional system if you’re only designing it for the sake of itself.  Such a level of systemic solipsism is anathema to good design.  You can’t design a good hammer if you’re not constantly considering the needs of driving a nail, or knocking down a wall.  A hammer has no value in your hand if you’re not going to use it.  Systems must be designed for their intended use.  Our ability to store and retrieve information is essential to our ultimate ability to use it, but storage and retrieval isn’t the point of an information system.  The point of an information system is to use the information.  The problem with the modern internet is that too many of its systems are designed to maximize information storage and retrieval, but they’re not designed to maximize our ability to use information once we’ve retrieved it.  This is a crucial distinction and too many people in the Web 2.0 world fail to make it!

This leads me to another fundamental question – The job of library systems is to store as much information as possible, as is relevant to its user-base, and to maximize the ability of its users to retrieve that information.  But is it the responsibility of libraries to maximize their users’ ability to use the information they retrieve from us?  I think the answer is both yes and no.  Yes, in that we need to consider the possible uses of information in order to design the best storage and retrieval systems.  No, in that libraries can’t be expected to function as schools.  Despite the fact that all libraries have an educational component to their mission, we can’t be expected to teach our users how to think.  That’s the job of educational systems.  All we can do is provide our users with information in such as way to enable them to use it as best they can.

But we shouldn’t ever make the mistake of equating information with intelligence.  We cannot fall into the trap of viewing information storage and retrieval as a worthwhile endeavor in-and-of-itself.  We must always seek to maximize the use of information after it has been retrieved.

I want to start by stating as clearly as possible how much I love the ideas presented in The Cluetrain Manifesto.  Reconceptualizing business as a series of human conversations, as a place for employees to find creative and situationally effective ways to assist customers, as a panacea to the Kafka-esque idea of business as an impersonal and imposing façade that’s prevailed for the last several decades, is wonderful and exciting!  I feel that libraries have been ahead of this curve for at least my entire life.  The reference interview, for example, as the basis for information exchange between librarian and user has always recognized the fundamental need for personal conversations that are unique to each user.  I find the following lines from Chapter 5 of The Cluetrain Manifesto especially appropriate to the mission of libraries: “Increasingly, a useful expert is not someone with (containing) all the answers but someone who knows where to find answers. The new experts have value not by centralizing information and control but by being great ‘pointers’ to other people and to useful, current information.” (Levine et al. 2001)  Libraries and librarians have always derived their authority through their ability to direct information seekers to the most authoritative information.  This ties into the idea of hyperlocality and libraries.  Not only are libraries already links to information, but as a part of a local community they’re in a unique position to fill a role as a link to local information, of unique benefit to the community to which they belong.  This also ties into my continuing belief that a community must take ownership of its library.  The Library Journal article, “Hyperlocal Libraries”, is now a foundational text for my professional career.  I think the ideas it contains are essential!

And now comes the part in this essay where I feel compelled to play Devil’s Advocate.  Normally, playing a more critical role in the discussion is something I greatly enjoy – and something that I believe is absolutely necessary for any discussion to generate greatest possible benefit – but this time I don’t want to do it.  Like I said, I love the ideas presented in The Cluetrain Manifesto… but I can’t ignore the fact that some of the authors’ assumptions are wrong – especially some of their assumptions about what customers want.  For example, the authors state that it is a “well-known phenomenon in customer support: people would rather find the answers themselves on your Web site than have the answers delivered to them by picking up the phone.” (Levine et al. 2001)  My experience teaches me that the exact opposite is true.  Perhaps, coming from a tech industry background, the authors dealt with a very different sort of customer than I’ve dealt with in my professional career.  I’ve worked various positions in various companies in various industries, and I’ve handled customer service in every one of my positions.  In all cases, my customers far preferred to pick up the phone or send an email than search for the answers themselves.  For some people, self-reliance isn’t empowering – for many, it’s just a burden.  Perhaps I’m being too cynical, but in my experience most people don’t want to have to figure things out for themselves, they want someone to tell them what to do.  In my current job, we just created a Web-based FAQ and video tutorial library to answer all of the most common customer service inquiries I receive.  These resources provide the exact same answers that I give our customers when they contact me directly.  We created these Web-based resources to improve service to our customers… and no one is using them.  Click counts to these pages are very low and the number of direct inquiries I’m receiving through phone and email is as high as it’s ever been.  The feedback we’re getting regarding the FAQ and video tutorials is that it’s impersonal and people feel we’re trying to avoid having to deal with them directly.  Our customers DO NOT want to be self-reliant, they want to be led to the answers.  I truly believe that Cluetrain is wrong about this.

The Cluetrain Manifesto also ignores some essential aspects of old-fashioned corporate hierarchies.  While their criticisms of these systems are absolutely correct, they fail to mention that there are benefits to setting up a company along more structured lines.  First, organizational hierarchies don’t just codify the lines of power, they also clarify the lines of communication within a company.  As someone who works at the bottom of the structure, I find it extremely frustrating when I don’t know who I’m supposed to be listening to.  I have half a dozen people dropping projects onto my desk and I don’t know which are supposed to take priority because there’s no clear structure to tell me whom I’m supposed to answer to.  Prioritizing all these projects is a huge responsibility and there could be serious consequences if I do it wrong.  Frankly, I don’t get paid enough to take that on, but without a structure I have no clear path and so I have to risk consequences that are far beyond my pay grade.  Second, having clear and well-established delineations of responsibility isn’t a bad thing – especially when employees are being pressured to take on more than is commensurate with their salaries.  Finally, it isn’t just “[p]ower [that] flows from the top” (Levine et al. 2001) – something far more unpleasant and vulgar also flows downhill, and the best word to describe it rhymes with “sit”.  In a structured organization, there are only a few well-defined paths that it can take to dump onto the heads of the people at the bottom.  Which means that in a structured hierarchy, those at the bottom know where to dodge, and they know what they can’t avoid.  In an unstructured organization, it comes from everywhere and people can’t protect themselves.  A hierarchy can be a huge benefit to those at the bottom, even as it oppresses them.

Sources Referenced:

Levine, Rick, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger. 1999, 2001. The cluetrain manifesto: the end of business as usual. Basic Books. http://www.cluetrain.com/book/hyperorg.html [accessed February 21, 2010]

Lyons, Charles. 2009. Hyperlocal Libraries. Library journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6668445.html [accessed February 21, 2010]

(Citations courtesy of Michael Stephens at http://lis768.tametheweb.com/modules/the-l2-library/)

Another thought re: “The See-Through CEO” – Issues of confidentiality are at the forefront of library policy.  Our users want us to keep certain records confidential (e.g. – sharing circulation statistics with the FBI).  And obviously there are certain laws that require organizations to keep some things private.  I also think the example of Apple and the iPod is a good one – sometimes closed doors have a place.  And so I have to disagree with the statement, “You can’t go halfway naked. It’s all or nothing.” (Thompson, 2007)  I think you can keep some things closed to the public and still be transparent – as long as you’re open about the fact that you’re keeping some things closed.  Be upfront with your users, tell them that there are certain things you can’t share with them, and tell them why.  Transparency builds trust – and if they trust you, then most people are probably going to go along with you on this as long as you’re not hiding it from them, especially in libraries where users expect us to respect the confidentiality of information.  Or maybe I’m being naïve.  I agree that “[i]t’s not secrets that are dying…but lies.” (Thompson, 2007)  We can keep some things to ourselves, we just can’t lie about it to our users.

Sources Cited

Thompson, Clive. 2007. The see-through CEO. Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html [accessed February 14, 2010]

(Citations courtesy of Michael Stephens at http://lis768.tametheweb.com/modules/transparency/)

When talking about transparency, there are two different aspects that need to be addressed – external and internal.  External transparency involves opening up the internal workings of an organization for scrutiny by the outside world; internal transparency means opening up the inner-workings of an organization to its own employees.  I believe both are necessary for the continued success of any business in the modern world, including libraries.

Internal transparency is beneficial even in the old Business & Library 1.0 model.  It gives each employee a voice in the operations and output of the organization.  By investing themselves this way, each employee takes ownership of the end-product and has a personal stake in making it the best they possibly can.  It improves morale and loyalty, and makes the company more secure.  In my experience, the biggest obstacle to internal transparency is ego.  I think Michaels Casey & Stephens are spot on in their article, “The Transparent Library: Check Your Ego at the Door.”  Organization leaders need to “keep an eye toward the whole and the benefits found there” (Casey & Stephens, 2008) but it never ceases to amaze me how many leaders fail to do this.  For example, I worked for a company that made a hugely bad decision that substantially reduced fundraising (I signed a confidentiality agreement so I can’t say which company or what this bad decision was – ironic in a post on transparency, no?) but rather than find ways to fix the mistake, the CEO was so terrified of being fired by the Board that she spent all her time and effort refusing to admit that a mistake was made in the first place, and trying to cover it up.  This only made things worse.  If she had only admitted the mistake, openly and honestly, we-the-employees could have fixed it and she could have shown the Board how well she reacts to crises and finds solutions.  Her ego doomed the company.  Another challenge to internal transparency lies in the way that many organizations handle performance evaluation, promotion, reward, and discipline.  The Michaels encourage us to “[r]ecognize and appreciate talent” (Casey & Stephens, 2008) but in the predominant climate of performance metrics, where promotions and layoffs are tied directly to the number of successful projects an employee has to their name, individuals have a powerful incentive to take personal credit for everything they can and pass blame for their own failures.  Management is in an especially good position to abuse this system for personal benefit.  Too often, #7 on the Michaels’ roadmap to transparency (“Get all departments, all divisions, to plan their projects as a group so everyone knows (and can prepare for) what’s on the upcoming calendar and so everyone can offer input and suggestion”) (Casey & Stephens, 2007) is never allowed to happen in an organization because management is too eager to keep the credit for themselves, and too scared of the consequences if their names are associated with an idea that fails.  Too often, being a team player means losing out on personal rewards.  For internal transparency to work, organization leaders must brainstorm more and different ways to handle performance evaluation, recognition, and discipline so employees at all levels feel comfortable and encouraged to be creative in doing their jobs.

In the new world of Library 2.0, external transparency is possibly the most important element in the equation.  Libraries need to find ways to be essential parts of their users’ community.  When information seekers can pick and choose the information sources they want to integrate into their world, the library needs to be something they want to claim as their own.  The community of users needs to feel a sense of ownership in the library; it’s not enough to be a library that the community uses, we have to become the Community’s Library.  As long as the internal workings of a library are kept closed from its users, there will be an intrinsic and powerful separation between them.  Bringing users into those workings, not only letting them hear the discussions but giving them an active voice in the decision-making process, encourages users to make the library their own, to take responsibility for it. As stated in “The See-Through CEO” – “once people are interested in you, they’re interested in helping you out” (Thompson, 2007) which can only benefit us and strengthen our users’ sense of responsibility and ownership.  Finally, to repeat a point from Katy’s blog (entry posted February 12, 2010): transparency fosters trust and humanizes the library.  By humanizing the library, it makes it easier for our users to be open with us so we can see what they really need and want, and do our jobs better for them.

Sources Cited

Casey, Michael & Michael Stephens. 2007. The transparent library: a road map to transparency. Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6510682.html [accessed February 14, 2010]

Ibid. 2008. The transparent library: check your ego at the door. Library Journal. http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6573364.html [accessed February 14, 2010]

Thompson, Clive. 2007. The see-through CEO. Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html [accessed February 14, 2010]

The webrarian of bohemia. http://community.tametheweb.com/bohemianwebrarian/ [accessed February 14, 2010]

(Citations courtesy of Michael Stephens at http://lis768.tametheweb.com/modules/transparency/)