Black border

Talking with my library colleagues. Since the economic crash of 2007-08, we in the public libraries have increasingly been dealing with needy customers, unemployed, homeless, etc., who can no longer get government help at any level except through the Internet and email. The public library is the ONLY walk-in, face-to-face social service agency left. And now we are being dismantled. As we learned last Thursday, of the 150 City employees being demoted or laid off for Fiscal Year 2012-13, 75 are in Jacksonville Public Library. Several of the "survivors" have already announced retirement by the end of the fiscal year. A good number of the bright younger folks who were demoted—some after having promoted within just the past few years into key positions—are looking for jobs elsewhere. This Friday we will find out how the rest of us "civil servants" are being reshuffled among our different locations. Across our nation, our governments seem not to understand or to care that breaking up long-established teams of skilled human service colleagues is far more expensive, in terms of the blow to productivity, corporate memory, morale and community relationships, than the payroll and benefits dollars they think their personnel cuts will save. They do not seem to understand or to care how severely these cuts will hit the most vulnerable members of the community (see Digital Refugees), those who depend upon public libraries as their sole access to government services and employment resources, which have been pulled back across the "Internet moat" into the stronghold of the e-technology privileged. Last public service agency standing...but for how long?

Thomas Friedman: "Today, average is officially over"

A discouraging, though not surprising, message from Thomas Friedman on the Opinion Pages of the New York Times.

In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle. But, today, average is officially over.

Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius.

Therefore, everyone needs to find their extra — their unique value contribution that makes them stand out in whatever is their field of employment.

Average is over.

We've actually known this was creeping up on us, but not wanted to admit it, at least since the early 1980s.

Thanks, though, to the so-called Great Recession—which we still steadfastly refuse to call a depression, since the corporations, the banks and the investors are doing fine and the breadlines aren't in public—thanks to the Great Recession, we cannot deny the reality any more.

From Libcom.org's 1930-1939: The unemployed workers’ movement

Of course, as first responders, public library staff have known the truth intimately from the time the bubble burst. We have been flooded with customers who have been faithful workers their whole lives yet who, now that they are unemployeed, cannot even apply for unemployment benefits, let alone jobs, if they are not Internet savvy.

Although this isn't why I went to library school, I'm now almost convinced that anything else public libraries do is secondary to helping these folks. I've written several different posts about our mandate to serve the digital refugees.

How do we do it? How do we convince our funders that such service is crucial to the public library's role in the community?

[See Note for some ways our library is addressing these questions.]

The second theme of Friedman's Op/Ed piece, addressing the chanages needed in American education, compounds the challenge:

There will always be change—new jobs, new products, new services. But the one thing we know for sure is that with each advance in globalization and the I.T. revolution, the best jobs will require workers to have more and better education to make themselves above average.

Here are the latest unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Americans over 25 years old: those with less than a high school degree, 13.8 percent; those with a high school degree and no college, 8.7 percent; those with some college or associate degree, 7.7 percent; and those with bachelor’s degree or higher, 4.1 percent

In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to buttress employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of G.I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to post-high school education.

Do public libraries also have a mandate to support public education in this way? I don't know, but we surely need to advocate on behalf of public education.

We need to say:

"No 'business as usual' while our public cannot sustain themselves."

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Note: Jacksonville Public Library is addressing these questions through its strategic planning, which in turn guides its budgetary advocacy with City Council.

For example, our FY 2011-12 Balanced Scorecard includes this objective:

"We will provide tools to help customers with social service and job seeking needs."

Tactics to help achieve this objective:

1. We will provide online resources aimed at meeting these needs.

Measure: Number of visits to new social service database (Right Service) and new Careers & Jobs website.

2. We will provide programs and classes aimed at meeting these needs.

Measure: Number of attendees of relevant programs and classes that have demonstrated benefit. These opportunities may be sponsored by JPL or by partners, such as WorkSource.

The benefit of the programs will be demonstrated by the percentage of WorkSource participants who find work and by evaluations of JPL-provided programs completed by participants.

Here are some relevant links on the Jacksonville Public Library website:

• Career & Job Resources
• Unemployment Benefits Help
• WorkSource/Jacksonville Public Library Partnership
• Computer Classes in Libraries

In addition, here are some links to state of Florida resources:

• Florida Project Compass Workforce Recovery
• E-Government in Florida Public Libraries
• Right Service
• WorkSource

Finally, at Jacksonville Public Library, we hand out copies of the Social Services to the Homeless Green Card to customers who need it.

It's the infrastructure, stupid!

On several occasions (here and here, for example), I have written about the ways in which America's compulsive yet unreflective striving after the "next new thing" in technology has driven us far beyond our capacity to make certain we take all of our people along with us.

An economy which is so broadly dependent upon consumerism must ever be coming up with new things to convince consumers that they want. And those consumers must ever be wanting new things—regardless of how well what they already have works and, far worse, regardless of how this drive toward the "new and improved" sabotages the ability of a community to sustain itself and to care for everyone.

This challenge to sustainability is compounded when we consider public libraries budgets, because the dynamics of public funding have compelled us to shift our focus from "doing library" to "satisfying consumer demand."

It makes sense that libraries should provide what our users ask for. Yet look at the differing connotations of these two words:

• patrons support libraries because they know we specialize in certain information resources and services which they need;


• customers bring shifting expectations, driven by consumerism, and insist that we constantly shift to satisfy those expectations.

Increasingly, the marketplace is chasing after the newest hi-tech online possibilities, whether they relate to entertainment or to need-driven information searches. That's fine for the commercial world, yet it places huge demands on consumerism-dependent public libraries. Unlike the commercial entities which make and market this stuff, public libraries do NOT gain direct revenue from providing what their customers demand.

We are now trying to satisfy the demands of "digital natives," our most sophisticated, prosperous and privileged customers, those who have moved their lives online. They use handheld devices and laptops, they download files, and they assume that the information they want will be available through social software channels.

Not only are we trying to satisfy these demands, we are promising such services and expanding our computer and Internet networks and offerings, for fear our customers will go elsewhere if we don't—and take public funding with them.

Here's the complication. As I've written elsewhere, the shift online isn't just for those who can afford computers, broadband connections, hand-helds and laptops, and who are fluent online consumers.

Digital refugees, those who do not have and/or cannot afford these devices, and those who lack sufficient computer and online literacy (and perhaps lack more basic literacy—including non-native speakers of English), also must do their most essential personal business online.

One can no longer apply for jobs, one can no longer even apply for unemployment benefits, except online!

In the past two years, we have seen a drastic increase in the number of digital refugees flocking to us for help with personal needs for which they formerly did not need computer access or savvy. All of this at the same time that our digital native customers are looking for sophisticated downloads and Web 2.0 interactions.

Here is the crux of my concern: this increased demand for computers and access and bandwidth is happening just as sources of public revenue are collapsing all around us.

I don't believe that funding is short only because of the economic crash of the last two years, which was driven in part by our unsustainable fantasy that we could grow without limit. It is also increasingly short because of the unwillingness of consumers to pay taxes for public services.

"I want to buy and buy and borrow and buy some more. Don't slow me down with taxes—which are just to take care of other people."

Now we struggle with public library computers and servers and networks—in fact, with a local and regional and national and perhaps global Internet—which are too old and too slow and too limited in capacity to handle the demand.

As a people we've been buying toys and not building sustainable infrastructure. Now, when our culture, our business, even our social safety nets, are wholly dependent upon computers and the Internet, we don't have sufficient public funds to keep up.

I find it reassuring that our local Library Board of Trustees recognizes how essential the technology infrastructure is.

I'm fairly certain our City leaders know this too—though I'm not as confident that they recognize how essential public library technology infrastructure is to the survival of the 21st century community.

A year ago at the annual meeting of the Florida Library Association, a keynote speaker pointed out that, in times of economic crisis, public libraries are first responders.

Clearly, we need to make sure our government leaders and our customers—and those citizens who are not our customers—understand this reality. We need to make sure they fund infrastructure, not just best-selling downloads and online applications.

I think we can do this, but it won't be easy. Americans have long gotten out of the habit of planning and paying for long-term needs.

Let's cross our fingers—and get to work.

Can I go home now (Case #2)

This week we have a guest case, from Brian Herzog of Swiss Army Librarian.

Brian's entry:

Patron: I’ve never used a computer before, so can you help me find a job on craigslist?

Sigh. For non-reference librarians, here’s why this simple request is especially hard:

• Almost any kind of job-related request can be difficult
  
• Most of the job resources available in the library are online, so having no computer experience is automatically a setback


• Craigslist? It is certainly a valid job search tool, but there are other places I’d be more comfortable starting off a computer novice (she never did tell me how she got referred to craigslist)

Sigh! is right.

Brian follows with a good explanation of why this is not the "teaching moment" some might think it is. But he also advocates for public libraries to find some solutions to the challenge.

Thanks, Brian.

Mike

On Library 2.0: or, Digital Refugees

I'm seeing a theme emerging in my own posts throughout this Learning 2.0 process: "This is really great, and I can appreciate its value to global culture...but I'm not interested in using much of it myself."

Hmmm...I guess this is why I named the blog The Surly Librarian. I could have called it Old Dog Librarian, except that I can learn new tricks. They just have to be ones I intend to use. Convince me that I might value using a trick and I will learn it.

That grumpy intro having been written, let me step back from personal preferences and intentions, and see what I want to say about 2.0....

I began with Tom Storey's introduction to Where will the next generation Web take libraries?. He describes what he sees as the plusses of Web 2.0. I have mixed feelings.

In Web 2.0, the Web becomes the center of a new digital lifestyle that changes our culture and touches every aspect of our lives. The Web moves from simply being sites and search engines to a shared network space that drives work, research, education, entertainment and social activities—essentially everything people do.

This "shared network space" has obviously changed the political and economic realities of the whole world...for the people who have access to it.

I don't object to the positive changes; I make use of them myself. In fact, I believe the opening out of the world of communication—across space and time, across every sort of political, cultural, ethnic, religious or other barrier—may be the most importance evolutionary step the human race has made since the development of empirical science.

Just one non-trivial example: The Chinese government could not prevent global awareness of it's negligence and political manipulation following the earthquake in May, and people across the globe have been able to coordinate with each other to send aid, all because of this "shared network space."

However, as I keep saying, I am extremely concerned for the millions, perhaps billions, of people who do not have access, or, if they do, lack adequate skills, education and savvy to navigate the high-speed, consumer-oriented world to which the Web caters.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I have an ethical concern over the cavalier way in which contemporary American society neglects and abandons those who cannot "keep up" with the latest in social, economic and technological interaction.

There is a moral tradition of responsibility for the well being of those less fortunate than oneself which seems to have fallen out of the American mindset. We may pay lip service to the notion of the digital divide, yet we don't generally see a moral obligation to help digital refugees to cross the divide.

Non-trivial example: JPL cannot realistically afford the staff time it would take to help non-computer savvy customers to apply for employment, unemployment, welfare benefits, etc., all of which must be done online. It's not our mandate. We aren't funded to do it.

However, the government agencies which do have the mandate to provide such services send their customers to us.

This leads me to my second comment, responding to part of Rick Anderson's Away from the “icebergs” piece. Here's the passage which bothers me:

Reliance on user education: Libraries are poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching....

We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning.

Obviously, we’ll help and educate patrons when we can, and when they want us to, and the more we can integrate our services with local curricula, the better. But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons.

Anderson perpetuates the conventional fantasy: namely, that our only obligation is to make stuff available, the "newest, most improved" stuff, for those consumers who know about it and want it.

My professional training and ethics focus elsewhere. As a librarian, I understand my primary role to be helping customers learn how to access and use information resources for themselves.

If all of my attention and skills and time much be committed to dumbing down technology so that customers can use it without having to think about it, then I may be in the wrong profession.

I am greatly distressed that learning how to learn is no longer a core expectation of our culture. I'm not interested in cooperating with the abandonment of that expectation.

Call me old fashioned. It's a moral as well as a practical issue for me.

Thanks,
Mike

Note: See my next post for an article I had bookmarked before I read Rick Anderson.

It's called "Getting The Most Out Of Your Library," by Williams Hicks of Digital Web Magazine, and it could be read as a counterargument to Anderson's "Away from the 'icebergs'."

Poor Richard Redux: A Manifesto

Note: I originally posted this essay in October of 2006, on Destination NEXT on the General Discussion board. Since you have to be at a staff workstation or logged into the City's remote link to get access to Destination NEXT, I'm reproducing the essay here.

I want to propose something far more radical than the "get with the future," market-driven message we library professionals are hearing these days. The focus of that message is almost wholly on competing for consumers who expect the latest in automated and online delivery of public library services. I did hear that warning and take it to heart in library school seven years ago. However, I joined and remain in the profession because of a more sacred set of librarianship values.

The roots of the American public library lie with Benjamin Franklin and his peers, who believed that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" depended upon free and equal access to information. They thought it important that information and the ability to search for, have access to and use it should not be solely the province of those privileged by prosperity or status.

Franklin himself began as an apprentice tradesman and built his career from scratch. He wanted to be sure that any other American had the means—underwritten at public expense, if necessary—to do the same. He knew that he had made his success through his own literacy, through his access to information, and through his freedom to use it, independent of the mediation or control of others.

We now have a culture in which only those with the advantage of computer and Internet access and the knowledge of how to use these tools can even get to much of the daily information which is most important for living successfully in American society. Even many basic government and commercial services are now almost inaccessible without the ability to connect to and use websites, online forms, email, office software, etc.

I’m sure that others of my colleagues have had the experience of trying to help someone who was told by an employee of the unemployment service, “Go to the public library, get on our website, and fill out the application.” Likely others have had to help a middle-aged or immigrant job hunter, possibly one with a lifetime of competence in his or her trade, now trying to find and complete the mandatory online application for a new job. You all have your own examples.

The new jargon refers to those who have grown up in the online world as “digital natives.” Those of us who entered the work world before PCs, but who have had the privilege of learning to use and perhaps of owning them, are “digital immigrants.” We somehow manage to keep up—sometimes holding on by our fingernails—as e-technology speeds away from us.

My concern here is for the very large population of immigrant and native residents who are “digital refugees.” Whether or not they know how to use these new technologies, our culture now expects them to join the “wired world” if they want access to the benefits and prosperity America has claimed for its successful citizens.

As our library system leaps ahead toward a 21st century refit, which will increasingly automate basic circulation and search services, I believe it is essential that the staff thus freed from mundane tasks be redirected with all deliberateness into what used to be called “library instruction.”

Every branch should have staff with the training, the resources and—especially—the dedicated time to teach people computer and Internet literacy. It should become a core service, developed and coordinated system-wide, for us to seek out and assist those who are struggling or being left behind in this digital age. It could be part of every public service staff person’s job description and performance plan to create, contribute to or participate in such instructional activities.

We library staff all have the advantage—the privilege—of having built successful careers in this new world. Yet if our library’s mandate is only to satisfy the consumer wishes of people who are already “on the cutting edge,” then we are failing the basic purpose of the public library: to make certain that everyone has free and equal access to what we provide at public expense.