“But if we don’t
assert the importance of that role, of the centrality of selecting,
acquiring, retaining, preserving and building means of access to
collections, we will inevitably fade away.”
-- Michael A. Keller, Victoria A. Reich and Andrew C. Herkovic, from
What is a library anymore, anyway?
“Sixty-five million years ago the Age of Reptiles came to a
cataclysmic extinction known as The Great Dying. There is still
controversy over what happened, but all theories agree that the
dinosaurs died out because the environment changed and they couldn’t
adapt. Librarians are well positioned to thrive. But the future is not
what it used to be. Our expertise is no longer an extension of the past.
Looking into the future is like looking into a kaleidoscope: everything
is constantly changing, quickly. We have evolved many times over the
history of Libraryland. We can do it again.”
-- Stephen Abram, The Google Opportunity
Introduction
Libraries and
librarianship faced a great change from 1886 to 1919 when Andrew
Carnegie donated $56 million to construct libraries in both Canada and
the United States of America. According to Richard E. Rubin in
Foundations of Library and Information Science, Carnegie’s funds were
directed specifically toward the library buildings, not the collections
housed in them, leaving the local librarians to stock the shelves with
materials of local interest. This had such an impact that “the
specifically local character of today’s public library collections and
services may be a direct result of the special conditions and
restrictions that Carnegie required of every donation” (Rubin, 2004, p.
290). Currently, libraries and librarianship are facing a new change:
digitization. With the creation of the Internet, libraries and
librarians have been forced to come to terms with a shift from local
collection development, as set forth with the help of Andrew Carnegie,
to online resources being available to anyone, anytime. Nothing has
brought this dichotomy into the light like the search engine Google.
This paper will look at the debate surrounding Google in library science
literature, as characterized by the two quotations above. Librarians are
“taking sides” in this debate. One side is demanding that librarians
“submit” to the searching capabilities of Google (the Googleizers) while
the other side is demanding that librarians “resist” the siren song of
Google and return to librarianship’s traditional role of information
gatekeepers (Resistors). However, what is missing from this debate is a
strong voice calling for a revolutionary change in the profession, for a
true re-examination of core values, not just a renewing of values. This
paper will look at a possible third way for modern librarianship:
librarians as activists for the right to communicate.
Librarians and Google
The debate over Google in the library community started to heat up last
December when Google announced that it was planning to digitally scan
books from five major libraries, allowing Google users to search them
online. According to Google:
“The Library Project’s aim is simple: make it easier for people to find
relevant books – specifically books they wouldn’t find any other way
such as those that are out of print – while carefully respecting
authors’ and publishers’ copyrights. Our ultimate goal is to work with
publishers and libraries to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual
card catalog of all books in all languages that helps users discover new
books and publishers discover new readers.” (Google Book Search, 2005)
Google has made searching Google Book Search (as it is now known) as
simple as searching its main search engine, Google.com. The user
performs a simple keyword search and Google returns the content that
best matches the query. Unlike a library, Google offers its users the
opportunity to buy the selected book as well as find it in a local
library. Although, the commercial nature of the project is concerning to
most librarians, the substance of the debate is focused on the keyword
search capabilities of Google itself.
Google relies on software called PageRank to determine the position of a
search result. As Google explains it:
“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using
its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value.
In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by
page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of
votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts
the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more
heavily and help to make other pages “important”.” (Google Technology,
2005)
This, combined with keyword searching, which Google claims is content
sensitive (Google Technology, 2005), allows Google to find thousands,
and sometimes millions, of sites for each individual search. The
relative ease of searching Google has encouraged many library users to
bypass the reference desk and head straight to Google whenever they have
an information query. However, many librarians are wary of Google’s
keyword searching capabilities. In a recent American Libraries article,
Thomas Mann gave a scathing critique of Google’s keyword searches. He
claims that PageRank cannot sort the “wheat” from the “chaff” because
relevant information might not be the most “popular” information. If
information is obscure, then Google’s PageRank software ends up hiding
it. In addition, he claims that Google can only manipulate results
within a keyword search, and is unable to “build bridges among multiple
sets using different words for the same idea, or covering different
aspects of the same subject” (Mann, 2005, p. 46). He further claims that
Google is in fact incapable of context sensitivity, making Google’s
keyword searching the destroyer of systematic subject searching in
research collections (Mann, 2005).
Not all librarians have such negative feeling towards Google. Some see
Google as an opportunity to adapt the profession. Stephen Abram, in “The
Google Opportunity” suggests ten things that a library can do to adapt
to a “Google world” (Abram, 2005). He believes that “Google has staked
out an extremely strong position in the mind of the information seeker,”
and therefore, librarians must adapt and respond if they “value their
communities” (Abram, 2005, p. 35). His suggestions range from improving
users’ information literacy, to rethinking the library as a repository
for texts by getting involved with Internet archives, to pushing new
content onto users so that they can become aware of it. He places a lot
of emphasis on ensuring that libraries remain in the community by moving
traditional library services, like collection development, into an
online environment.
Resist or submit? Googleizers vs. Resistors
The debate between the Googleizers and the Resistors (as they have
called themselves) is characterized by its “either/or” dichotomy. Two
examples of this debate are found in Library Journal, where a transcript
of a live debate was placed, and American Libraries, where a transcript
of an e-mail symposium can be found. These debates involved eight
participants, who can be divided into two equal groups landing firmly on
opposite sides of the Google debate. At the core of these debates are
the values of librarianship. Originally set forth by S.R. Ranganathan,
library values can be condensed into five laws:
Books are for use.
Books are for all; or, Every reader his [or her] book.
Every book its reader.
Save the time of the reader.
A library is a growing organism (Ranganathan, 1957, p. 9).
The importance of these five laws to librarianship cannot be
underestimated. In 1998, Michael Gorman called these laws “an
intellectual framework for understanding all aspects of library work”
(Gorman, 1998, p. 22). They underlie the service ethic of librarianship:
“Libraries are about service or they are about nothing. In everything we
do, from an individual act of assistance to a library user to our
collective efforts to support education and preserve knowledge for
posterity, we are animated by the will to serve” (Gorman, p. 22).
In 1995, Michael Gorman reinterpreted these laws for the modern library.
His new laws do not replace Ranganathan’s laws. Instead, they build upon
them, so that they are applicable to a Googlized world. Gorman argues
that his laws allow librarians to keep the old values of librarianship,
as outlined by Ranganathan, while making room for new technologies like
Google. Gorman’s new laws are: 1) Libraries serve humanity. Gorman noted
that service, or “individual acts of help and the furtherance of the
higher aspirations of humankind,” was the dominant ethic of
librarianship. 2) Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.
This is an acknowledgement that libraries will house all kinds of
knowledge and information in the future. 3) Use technology intelligently
to enhance service. Librarians do not have to choose between being a
Luddite or a “soulless technocrat.” A balance can be found. 4) Protect
free access to knowledge. Gorman argues that allowing records of the
past to disappear is a form of censorship and that libraries, as centres
for social, political and intellectual freedom, must preserve all
records and make them available to all. 5) Honour the past and create
the future. Libraries must retain a sense of the past so that they can
continue with their missions to provide free access to all information.
At the same time innovation must be embraced: “Libraries need to combine
the past and the future in a rational, clear-headed, unsentimental
manner” (Gorman, 1995, p. 785).
Primarily, the self-proclaimed Resistors appeal to the professional
values of their readers. Steven Bell, one of the “Resistors,” challenges
librarians to retain their traditional values in his article “Don’t
Surrender Library Values.” He implies that librarians who follow the new
Google world order will do a disservice to their patrons by reducing the
complexity of a traditional library search into the simplicity of a
Google search, and as a result, missing the best possible sources (Bell,
2005). Bell wants librarians to create information-wise consumers, or at
the very least to put users on an “infodiet”:
“Think of the library as the carving station that’s been abandoned while
the diners line up for greasy burgers and fries. Too many students are
bringing a “supersize it” mentality to research, in effect asking
librarians, “Can you Google-ize that for me?” … [The] outcome of Google-izing
research: a junk-information diet, consisting of overwhelming amounts of
low-quality material that is hard to digest and leads to research papers
of equally low quality.” (Bell, 2004, p. B15)
Other Resistors worry about the loss of face-to-face contact with
patrons, blaming the rows of hunched-over computer users on the changing
value systems of librarians. In “Second Thoughts on the Paperless
Society,” F.W. Lancaster states that “today it seems more important to
have knowledge of new databases, new search engines, new word processing
systems, new communications protocols, and new gizmos than to know or
have concern for our communities of users” (Lancaster, 1999, p. 51).
The Googleizers herald the user-customized services and collections that
Google offers, along with the expanded access to information that Google
represents. They claim that the profession used to be about the
selection and control of information, but that now it is “about
finding.” Or, as Judy Luther, one of the “Googleizers,” states: “Gone is
the era where [librarians] are the gatekeepers, when we stand between
our users and their access to information” (Kenney, 2004, p. 45). In
“Google at the Gate,” they even caution against relying too much on
traditional library values:
“to equate the value proposition for libraries with their purchased
collections is akin to assessing an educational experience solely on the
basis of the textbook used. … Every library collection is wrapped in
services, and both the services and the collections reflect the unique
needs and interests of the library’s community of readers and learners.
Smart libraries will continue to take advantage of any and all
opportunities to improve access to resources and service to their
communities.” (Flagg, 2005, p. 44)
Resistors all share the common theme of praising traditional library
values and skills as the only way to forge a place for librarianship in
the future. Googleizers, on the other hand, say that if librarians do
not adapt to the new Google world order, the profession will be left
behind, wondering what went wrong. However, other than saying that “good
enough is good enough” (Kenney, 2004, p. 46), they offer very few
concrete and innovative paths for the profession’s future. Most
Googleizers believe that by simply increasing access to information,
they will have done their jobs. A few advocate the adaptation of
traditional library values for the digital arena (Abram, 2005, for
example), offering a middle ground between total acceptance of Google
and total resistance, but these adaptations do not resolve the central
dichotomy of the Google debate: do librarians submit to or resist the
siren song of Google?
The future
Librarians have been speculating about the future of the profession for
many years. The Internet and “cyberspace” have had a big impact on those
speculations. One of the more common threads of thought is the complete
disappearance of the library as a physical institution:
“Librarians or the competence of librarians, transformed into something
slightly different or nearly similar, in the future will be of interest
to all kinds of information or knowledge industries and activities –
private or public. However, the institution or department which is
called the “library” can look to a much more insecure future.” (Bakken,
1998, p. 82)
One of the more extreme and intentionally puzzling views of the future
is put forth by Charles Martell in his two-part essay “The Disembodied
Librarian in the Digital Age.” He calls for a revolutionary, not
evolutionary, change in the library profession: “The common view among
librarians is that the changes in their profession are following an
evolutionary, rather then a revolutionary, pattern. From this
perspective, relatively few adaptations will be required of them.
However this vision is too narrow” (Martell, 2000a, p. 12). Martell
believes that the digital age will completely alter what it means to be
human, both conceptually and consciously. He sees this change coming in
the dichotomies between time and space, mind and body, real and virtual,
and humans and technology.
His writing is heavily influenced by William Gibson’s use of the term
“cyberspace” in his 1984 novel Neuromancer:
“Gibson’s vision is bold. His metaphor is powerful. It dwarfs our common
perceptions of the Internet. His understanding of cyberspace was formed
by reading reports from MIT computer labs and watching kids playing
video games at the arcades on Granville Street in Vancouver. “These kids
clearly believed in the space these games projected”.” (Martell, 2000a,
p. 15)
In Martell’s view, cyberspace has huge implications for the library
profession. Gone are the days when the physical building was the centre
of the library. In the digital age, the virtual space created in
cyberspace by librarians will become central. All library services will
be virtual, making current service philosophies marginal. Librarians
will have to move from a value-neutral approach to service, to a
value-added approach (Martell, 2000b).
Martell believes that his approach to future librarianship is
revolutionary. However, it ultimately sounds very much like the
Googleizers' approach to modern librarianship. He believes that keyword
searching will make the traditional controlled-vocabulary search
irrelevant, although “whether users will be more successful in
retrieving relevant information as a result of these changes is unclear”
(Martell, 2000b, p. 105). However, like the Googleizers, he is not
overly concerned with the quality of the information gathered, but
rather the user’s ability to access information. He sees three trends
conspiring to make access the central issue in librarianship: 1) the
erosion of funding to libraries, 2) the rapid growth of electronic
information, and 3) the increasing utility of this information for
teaching and research. As librarians provide access to electronic
information, they will free themselves from the physical world of the
library, and start to enter into the disembodied world of cyberspace
(Martell, 2000b). And, he cautions that “if librarians are unable to
find comfortable roles in cyberspace with new value-added products and
services, it will be difficult to maintain the relevance of
librarianship as it exists today” (Martell, 2000b, p. 111).
What are these “value-added” services? According to Martell, librarians
in the future must anticipate the needs of their users by compiling user
profiles and use information. This value-added librarianship actually
tramples on one of the core values of modern librarianship: the right of
users to have their privacy protected [1]. Is this trampling truly as
revolutionary as Martell hopes? No. Instead of revolutionizing the
profession, Martell simply adds fuel to the Googleizer and Resistor
dichotomy, for he proves to the Resistors that succumbing to the siren
song of digitization and Google will only erode, and eventually destroy,
the profession.
The Right to Communicate:
a possible third way
Is the debate over the future of librarianship destined to be stuck in a
Googleizer vs. Resistor stalemate? Is there a possible Third Way? The
middle ground offered by Stephen Abram is certainly a tantalizing
option, for he seemingly offers a way for librarians to have their
digital cake and eat it too. If librarians are to heed Martell’s call to
real revolutionary action, then another option must be considered: the
librarian as an advocate for communication rights.
The framework for the right to communicate for this paper will be based
on the article “The Internet and the Right to Communicate” by William J.
Melver Jr., William F. Birdsall and Merrilee Rasmussen. In the article,
the authors state that:
“The development of the Internet challenges traditional conceptions of
information rights including freedom of speech, copyright, universal
access, cultural, lingual, and minority diversity, and privacy. The
discourse surrounding these rights typically deals with each in
isolation. As well, these discussions strive to adapt long established
understandings of each right to the new technological environment.” (Melver,
Birdsall, and Rasmussen, 2003)
They believe that the only way to properly address the challenges of the
Internet is to address the needs of information freedoms with the
human-rights framework of the right to communicate. For Melver, Birdsall
and Rasmussen, “the ability to communicate is the essence of being
human”; consequently, the right to communicate is a basic human right.
The right to communicate has its roots in the United Nations Declaration
of Human Rights:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of
the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement
and its benefits. (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the
moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or
artistic production of which he is the author.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the
rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized
(United Nations, 1998) [2].”
These articles are, however, unable to cover the rapid change in
communications brought forth by satellites and the Internet. For
example, Article 19 is only concerned with the “free flow of information
or content rather than … the process of communication” (Melver et al.,
2003). For Melver, Birdsall and Rasmussen, this narrow scope excludes
the possibility of horizontal and interactive communication. This
concern is based upon Jean d’Arcy’s concept of “mass media mentality,”
which is the acceptance as “normal and ineluctable a unilateral,
vertical flow of non-diversified information” (Melver et al., 2003); in
other words, the acceptance of a one-way content distribution through
broadcast media. The emergence of communication tools, such as the
Internet, challenges this vertical communication flow by allowing
“communication interactivity,” which demands a rethinking of “patterns
in terms of the era of … the computer … rather than to attempt to force
tomorrow’s tools into today’s structures” (Melver et al., 2003).
The right to communicate is inherently difficult to define because it
simultaneously encompasses traditional rights and freedoms, which
occasionally conflict with each other (for example the rights to freedom
of expression and privacy might conflict with property rights), while
attempting to create an entirely new human right. There have been many
debates over the content of the right to communicate; however, none of
them has resulted in concrete agreement between all involved parties
[3]. What has emerged is a framework for future actions where “the right
to communicate, in contrast to traditional freedoms of one-way
communication, would embody a conception of participatory, interactive,
horizontal, and multi-way communication” (Melver et al., 2003).
What separates the right to communicate from both the Googleizers and
the Resistors is its attempt to rethink communication. Both the
Googleizers and the Resistors seem content to “force tomorrow’s tools
into today’s structures” (Melver et al., 2003). On the one hand, the
Googleizers want to simply allow access to the content of the Internet.
They do not take the next conceptual step of dealing with the complex
issues that the Internet poses: intellectual freedom, property rights,
cultural and linguistic rights, and privacy. These problems are ignored
when the focus is solely on access to information and content.
The Resistors, on the other hand, are content to cloak themselves with
potentially outmoded professional values and ethics. Let us return to
the core values of librarianship as originally set forth by S.R.
Ranganathan, and Michael Gorman’s five additions, to see if these core
values are outmoded. Values one, two, and three are primarily focused
upon the content of a book (or other information packages), rather than
the process of communication. Books, and other traditional information
packages, communicate their knowledge in a vertical and non-diversified
way. One cannot directly communicate back to a book, journal article, or
CD, for example, even if that object has found its audience, and vice
versa. The fourth value simply addresses the accessibility of vertical
information. The values that come closest to addressing the concerns of
Melver et al. are values five through ten. Each of these values begins
to address the concept of communication. However, all, except for value
five, still place the librarian in the position of information
gatekeeper, not communications advocate. Excluding value five, to be
discussed shortly, nine of the core values of librarianship are
concerned with the vertical and unilateral dissemination of
non-diversified information.
Value five, “a library is a growing organism,” allows room for the right
to communicate in modern librarianship. If the concept of library is
taken to mean more than simply a physical building, then this value can
eclipse the other nine to make room for a new set of values based on the
right to communicate. Concern about the future of the physical library
is what fuels much of the Resistors’ defiance of the realities of the
Internet. In “What is a Library Anymore, Anyway?,” Keller, Reich, and
Herkovic (2003) worry that once the local content of the library is
replaced with the global content of the Internet, the library, as it is
currently conceived, will cease to exist. They want librarians to
continue to be information gatekeepers: “[We] need to be deliberate
about what we gather, control carefully what we do gather, and even more
deliberate about discarding information” (Keller, Reich, and Herkovic,
2003). How then do librarians move from being information gatekeepers to
communications advocates?
During a lecture on October 26, 2005, William F. Birdsall discussed his
belief that librarianship would become the paradigm profession of the
Twenty-first Century. He stated that the traditional values of
librarianship were no longer enough to sustain the profession because
they were based on the concept of an informed citizen exercising his or
her democratic rights with information supplied by government and the
broadcast media. Birdsall believes that the concept of an informed
citizen should be replaced with the concept of a communicative citizen,
or a citizen who is active in the communicative process of democracy,
and not a passive recipient of information and content. The library,
both as a physical place and as a concept, is the perfect social
institution for people to exercise their right to communicate. The
primary resource of the library would cease to be the books and other
information packages, and become the staff. He outlined three steps that
librarians should take to become communications advocates:
Librarians should help to develop the definition of right to communicate;
Librarians must re-examine their values under the view of the right to
communicate;
Librarians must take the lead as advocates for the right to communicate.
Birdsall’s three steps will be difficult for librarians to take. As the
arguments reviewed in this paper show, the future is hotly debated.
Perhaps Birdsall is a little optimistic in his first step. Instead,
perhaps the first step should be for librarians to stop arguing over
topics like keyword searches versus controlled vocabularies, and the
effect that Google is having on libraries and their patrons. What both
sides of the Google debate share is a deep concern for the future of the
profession. If the profession is to have a future, it must start to look
at alternatives to the current debate. It must open itself up to all
future possibilities and remember why Ranganathan wrote his Five Laws of
Librarianship: to serve the library patron. The right to communicate
offers librarians a new way of serving their patrons; a way that is not
concerned with divisive debates over searching terminologies and
Internet search engines.
Conclusion
The right to communicate will not resolve all of the concerns that
Google poses to the profession. It may indeed create, or at least fuel,
concerns over ownership of the media and telecommunications industries.
Melver et al. are understandably concerned about corporate media
dominance, which reduces “the ability of citizens to seek, receive, and
impart information.” It is well known that Google’s PageRank software
does miss much of the information that exists on the Internet, and, if
Google’s user domination is to continue, valuable communication
opportunities might be missed. This, however, is an opportunity for
librarians to demonstrate that they are the library’s greatest resource.
Instead of either submitting to, or opposing, Google, librarians should
use their skills to show users their communications alternatives. That
would be a first, if small, step in moving toward a profession based on
advocacy, not gatekeeping.
The question of how librarians can become communications advocates, and
not information gatekeepers, is not easily resolved. The core values of
the profession must be re-evaluated — this will cause great discomfort
and a lot of debate. It requires that librarians re-examine the
profession with an eye to real-world solutions and not science-fiction
fantasies. Martell was right: we do need a revolution. Librarians must
resist the urge to further divide the profession into Googleizers and
Resistors. They must instead re-examine their core values so that even
if the future is a “kaleidoscope” of constant change, we are able to
adapt to the change, and not force those changes to adapt for us.
|
|
Stephen
Abram, 2005. “The Google Opportunity,” Library Journal, volume
130, number 2 (1 February), pp. 34-35.
Frode
Bakken, 1998. “The Possible Role of Libraries in the Digital Future,”
Libri volume 48, number 2, pp. 81-87.
Steven
Bell, 2004. “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer an Appetizing
Alternative to Google,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, volume
50, number 24 (20 February), pp. B15.
Steven
Bell, 2005. “Don’t Surrender Library Values,” Library Journal,
volume 130, number 9, (15 May), pp. 79.
Gordon
Flagg, 2005. “Google at the Gate,” American Libraries, volume 36,
number 3 (March), pp. 40-44.
Google
Book Search Library Project at
http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html, accessed 28
November, 2005.
Google
Technology at
http://www.google.com/technology/, accessed 28 November, 2005.
Michael
Gorman, 1995. “Five New Laws of Librarianship,” American Libraries,
volume 26, number 8 (September), pp. 784-785.
Michael
Gorman, 1998. “Five Laws of Library Science: Then and Now,” School
Library Journal, volume 44, number 7 (July), pp. 20-24.
Mark
Y.Herring, 2005. “Don’t Get Goggle-Eyed Over Google’s Plan to Digitize”
The Chronicle of Higher Education, volume 51, number 27 (11
March), pp. B20.
Michael
A. Keller, Victoria A. Reich, and Andrew C. Herkovic, 2003. “What is a
library anymore, anyway?” , volume 8, number 5 (May),
at
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_5/keller/index.html,
accessed 28 November, 2005.
Brian
Kenney, 2004. “Googleizers vs. Resistors,” Library Journal,
volume 129, number 20 (December), pp. 44-46.
F.W.
Lancaster, 1999. “Second Thoughts of the Paperless Society,” Library
Journal, volume 124, number 15 (15 September), pp. 48-50.
Thomas
Mann, 2005. “Google Print vs. Onsite Collections,” American Libraries,
volume 36, number 7 (August), pp. 45-46.
Charles
Martell, 2000. “The Disembodied Librarian in the Digital Age,”
College and Research Libraries, volume 61, number 1 (January), pp.
10-25.
Charles
Martell, 2000. “The Disembodied Librarian in the Digital Age, Part II,”
College and Research Libraries, volume 61, number 2 (March), pp.
99-113.
William
J. McIver, Jr., William F. Birdsall, and Merrilee Rasmussen, 2003. “The
Internet and the Right to Communicate,” , volume 8,
number 12 (December), at
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/mciver/index.html,
accessed 30 November, 2005.
S.R.
Ranganathan, 1957. The Five Laws of Library Science (2nd
ed.). London: Blunt and Sons, Ltd.
R.E.
Rubin, 2004. Foundations of library and information science (2nd
ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.
United
Nations “All human rights of all: Fiftieth anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, 1948-1998: Universal Declaration of Human
Rights,” at
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html, accessed 30 November, 2005. |
