thelynxiblog

I am always drawn to events professing to talk about the future, especially if it gives me a chance to listen to William Gibson (@greatdismal) in person, and so I was at the British Library for one of their panel discussions in the series The Future: Science and Society, earlier this week.

The other commentators were by no-means lightweights in their respective fields (writers Cory Doctorow [@doctorow] and Mark Stevenson, economist Diane Coyle and chair Jon Turney) but obviously I was not the only starry-eyed Gibson fan in the room, which was packed with the sort of people who cannot resist treating their idol to a rambling monologue on metaphysics drawn from the random clutter of their inner psyche, during question time.

No matter – for in addition to hearing some of William Gibson’s clever, considered comments, I could not help the comforting smugness which enveloped me as it became clear that for many people in the audience, “the future” was all about information – (ha!). Mark Stevenson reminded us that “.. it is not called the information society for nothing..”.

Ostensibly, the discussion was to draw out ideas from current scientific research on what our future may look like – thus the mix of science/sci-fi writers on the panel. Although Mark Stevenson mentioned he had been talking to people at IBM and MIT who were engaged in “amazing stuff”, I did not catch what this might be. I did count four mentions of Star Trek though, and have to admit that although my almost word-perfect knowledge of the original series episodes far exceeds my knowledge of most of the other sci-fi writers that were mentioned, I feel well equipped to deal with the future as foreseen in the 1960s Kirk/Spock era.

The future, it seems, is very personal. And William Gibson commented that it is only possible to write about the future from the perspective of the present. He wondered about the reception that his first novel, Neuromancer (1984), would have had if he had described today’s world of personal wifi, AIDS, international terrorism and the non-existence of the Soviet Union in his early 1980s vision of the future. So I guess that hints at the future we envisage as being a product of our personal view of the present.

Diane Coyle provided the economist’s perspective – that the future is all about investment, and that investors rarely look beyond the next 5 years – the near future. There was then discussion around whether there were any “far future” ideas any more, and whether we were currently experiencing such an enormity of technological advancement that we were simply “rendering” what we already have – a rather good analogy from a member of the audience. Other voices commented on the fact that technology already exceeded its promise, and gave as an example the lack of augmented reality apps. I have seen some interesting early instantiations of augmented reality (Aurasma, and the Museum of London’s Street Museum app) but have to say for the moment I agree that it doesn’t propel me very far forward. Maybe in time though.

To information then, and the concern that so much information will never be digitized that finding it will be impossible. Cory Doctorow argued that Google had digitized over 90% of books anyway, and that the rest would soon be dealt with. I am not sure his figures are quite right – digitization is not always that easy or straightforward, and, for sure a lot of documents have not yet reached the scanner. The enthusiasm for digitized material may lead to relevant items being missed in a search – unless you happen to be an information specialist – the question being rather whether anyone is looking hard enough, in the right place, in the right way.

In response to the issue of relevant documents being lost within “too much information” Diane Coyle argued that it was about attention; most information can be found, but is missed because no-one is looking at it – for example if it is listed beyond the first page on the Google search results listing.

On the flip side, we moved on to “bit rot” where information is lost because the technology to read it no longer exists. Cory Doctorow again voted for confidence in technology, stating that if information was held on “spinning platters” then it could be transferred to another type of spinning platter indefinitely. No-one considered whether this was always cost-effective though.

And to one of my favourite concerns – that nothing is ever deleted, and the more dire the image, the more likely it is to pop up again and bite you at some inconvenient time in the future. “Its tweeted in stone” – William Gibson’s observation, seemed entirely apposite.

So what about the story of the future – and who writes it? I don’t think the discussion answered this, although I was pleased to think that the future will clearly contain a lot of information which will need to be organized, and that thus, LIS specialists could still find employment. Interestingly the information related concerns were all problems of the present, so at least we are recognizing that things that are problematic now may go on to be a bigger nuisance in the future.

Other discussion centered around what it means to be human, and what we mean by “progress” – more knowledge, or a “better society”. And what is a better society – longer lived? Better informed? And how can we know how the future will be fashioned by our present?

William Gibson wondered if the inventors of the pager knew how much it would change drug dealing.

Humanity’s motto, he concluded, could well be “ who knew?”

It must be the popularising effect of James Gleick’s new book “The Information”, because suddenly everyone I meet wants to talk about information: its history, its epistemology and Shannon-Weaver’s 1948 mathematical theory of communication (MTC), which became known as the mathematical theory of information. This is certainly good news for our information science course, where information has been considered from an academic perspective since 1961. I feel my time has come; all those hours spent memorizing equations to show that I truly, deeply understood how many signals you can push down a channel of a certain size, allowing for noise, have finally been rewarded, and I can now brandish my information-science credentials with a superior air of I told you so. Information is the new black, and everyone is wearing it.

I believed that I would forget Shannon’s theory entirely, as soon as the exam was over. It did not seem so relevant to my work at the time, which was with information resources in toxicology. Life, however, with a patient smirk, ensured that the ashes of the MTC rose like a phoenix 20 years later, when I was faced with presenting the mathematical good news to contemporary LIS students taking our Library and Information Science Foundation module as part of their masters. I dusted off my 1986 copy of Robert Cole’s “Computer Communications”, my notes still there in the margins of page 10, where I left them.

The issue I faced was one of presenting a definition of ‘information-science’, and of outlining its history as a discipline, to modern LIS students. Many of the papers considering the origins of information science gaze back in time to illuminate Shannon’s equations with a rosy pink glow, suggesting that his theory somehow led to the birth of information science as a true science (Shera 1968, Meadows 1987). This was the story in the 1980s, but in the 21st century, a more plausible thread is emphasized, the work of Kaiser, Otlet and Farradane on the indexing of documents, which suggests that the MTC was a bit of a red herring in respect to the history of information science. Rather then that information science grew out of a need to control scientific information, coupled with the feeling amongst scientists that this activity was somehow separate from either special-librarianship or the more continental term for dealing with the literature, documentation (see Gilchrist 2009, Vickery 2004, Webber 2003).

MTC

A look back at the original ideas and documents show that Shannon’s work was built on that of Hartley (1928). Stonier (1990 p 54) refers to Hartley:

“.. who defined information as the successive selection of signs or words from a given list. Hartley, concerned with the transmission of information, rejected all subjective factors such as meaning, since his interest lay in the transmission of signs or physical signals.”

Consequently, Shannon used the term information, even though his emphasis was on signalling. The interpretation of the MTC as a theory of information was thus somewhat coincidental, but this did not prevent it being embraced as a foundation of a true ‘information science’.

Shannon himself suggested that there were likely to be many theories of information. More recently, contemporary authors such as Stonier (1992) and Floridi (2010), have reiterated that MTC is about data communication rather than meaningful information.

Floridi (2010 p 42 and 44) explains:

“MTC is primarily a study of the properties of a channel of communication, and of codes that can efficiently encipher data into recordable and transmittable signals.”

“.. since MTC is a theory of information without meaning, (not in the sense of meaningless, but in the sense of not yet meaningful), and since [information – meaning = data], mathematical ‘theory of data communication’ is a far more appropriate description…”

He quotes Weaver as confirming:

“The mathematical theory of communication deals with the carriers of information, symbols and signals, not with information itself.”

Floridi’s definition of information as ‘meaningful data’ is more aligned to the field of information science as understood for our LIS related courses. Whilst we can still argue what is data and what is meaning, we can see that the MTC utilizes ‘information’ as a physical quantity more akin to the bit, rather than the meaningful information handled by library and information scientists.

This difference is set out  by Stonier (1990, p 17):

“In contrast to physical information, there exists human information which includes the information created, interpreted, organised or transmitted by human beings.”

Nonetheless, the MTC is still relevant to today’s information science courses because it has a played a pivotal role in the subsequent definitions and theories about information per se. And it is rather hard to have information science without an understanding of ‘information’. Many papers have been written on theories of information, and on the relevance of such theories to information science (see, for example Cornelius 2002).

MTC and other disciplines

The MTC provides the background for signalling and communication theory within fields as diverse as engineering and neurophysiology. At the same time that Shannon was writing, Norbert Wiener was independently considering the problems of signalling and background noise. Wiener (1948 p 18) writes that they:

“.. had to develop a statistical theory of the amount of information, in which the unit amount of information was that transmitted as a single decision between equally probable alternatives.”

Further (p 19), that

“This idea occurred at about the same time to several writers, among them the statistician R.A. fisher, Dr. Shannon of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and the author.”

Wiener decided to:

“call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics”.

The relationship of information to statistical probability (the amount of information being a statistical probability) meant that information in Shannon and Wiener’s sense related readily to entropy (anecdotally von Neumann is said to have suggested to Shannon that he use the term entropy, as it was already in use within the field of thermodynamics, but not widely understood).

“The quantity which uniquely meets the natural requirements that one sets up for ‘information’ turns out to be exactly that which is known in thermodynamics as entropy.”

Shannon and Weaver (1949) p 103

“As the amount of information in a system is a measure of its degree of organization, so the entropy of a system is a measure of its degree of disorganization; and the one is simply the negative of the other.”

Wiener (1948) p 18

The link between information and entropy had been around for some time. In 1929, Szilard wrote about Maxwell’s demon, which could sort out the faster molecules from the slower ones in a chamber of gas. Szilard concluded that the demon had information about the molecules of gas, and was converting information into a form of negative entropy.

The term ‘negentropy’ was coined in 1956 by Brillouin:

“… information can be changed into negentropy, and that information, whether bound or free, can be obtained only at the expense of the negentropy of some physical system.”

Brillouin (1956) p 154

Brillouin’s outcome was that information is associated with order or organization, and that as one system becomes organized, (entropy decrease), another system must becomes more disorganized (entropy increase).

Stonier (1992 p 10), agrees:

“Any system exhibiting organization contains information.”

A well-known anomaly becomes apparent, however, when over 60 years later we try to understand the correlation between information and either entropy or probability. A trawl through the original equations and explanations, and subsequent revisitations, reveals that an increase in information can be associated with either an increase or decrease in entropy/probability according to your viewpoint. Tom Stonier (1990) refers to this in chapter 5, but Qvortrup (1993) gives a more detailed explanation:

“In reality, however, Wiener’s theory of information is not the same, but the opposite of Shannon’s theory. While to Shannon information is inversely proportional to probability, to Wiener it is directly proportional to probability. To Shannon, information and order are opposed; to Wiener they are closely related.”

The correlation between the measurement of entropy and information did however, lead to the separate field of information-physics, where information is considered to be a fundamental, measurable property of the universe, similar to energy (Stonier 1990).

This field stimulates much debate, and is currently enjoying what passes for popularity in science. A recent article in New Scientist tells how Shannon’s entropy provides a reliable indicator of the unpredictability of information, and of thus of uncertainty, and how this has been related to the quantum world and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Ananthaswamy (2011).

Information-biology also appears to stem from work undertaken around the MTC. The connection between signalling in engineering and physiology was made by Wiener in the 1940s, and in 1944 Schrödinger, in his book “What is Life?”, made a connection with entropy as he considered that a living organism:

“… feeds upon negative entropy.”

Further that:

“.. the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.”

In the same book, Schrödinger outline the way in which genetic information might be stored, although the molecular structure of DNA was not published until 1953, by Crick and Watson (see Crick 1988). The genetic information coded in the nucleotides of the DNA is transcribed by messenger RNA and used to synthesize proteins. Information contained in genetic sequences also plays a role in the inheritance of phenotypes, so that informational approaches have been made within the study of biology (see Floridi 2010, also for discussion of neural information).

Information and LIS

For the purposes of our library and information science courses here at City University, we consider information as that which is ‘recorded for the purposes of meaningful, human communication’. Although I personally find Floridi’s definition helpful, information in our model is open to definition and interpretation, and is often used interchangeably with the term ‘knowledge’. In either case we regard the information as being instantiated within a ‘document’. The term ‘document’ also does not demand a definitive explanation, it merely needs to be understood as the focus of ‘information science’, its practitioners and researchers.

To complete the picture, when I became Program Director for LIS at City University London, I wanted to strengthen and clarify the way in which we defined ‘information science’, and particularly to explain its relationship with library science (Robinson 2009). I suggested that library science and information science were part of the same disciplinary spectrum, and that information science (used here to include library-science) could be understood as the study of the information-communication chain, represented below:

Author  —> Publication and Dissemination —> Organisation —> Indexing and Retrieval —>  User

The chain represents the flow of recorded information, instantiated as documents, from the original author or creator, to the user. The understanding and development of the activities within the communication chain is what library and information specialists do in both practice and research. As a point of explanation, I take organisation in the model to include the working of actual organisations such as libraries and institutions, information management and policy, and information law. Information organisation per se, fits within the indexing and retrieval category.

Our subject is thus a very broad area of study, one which is perhaps better referred to as the information sciences. The question of how we study the activities of the model can be answered by applying Hjorland’s underlying theory for information science, domain analysis (Hjorland 2002). The domain analytic paradigm describes the competencies of information specialists, such as knowledge organization, bibliometrics, epistemology and user studies. The competencies or aspects distinguish what is unique about the information specialist, in contrast to the subject specialist. Further, domain analysis can be seen as the bridge between academic theory and vocational practice; each competency of domain analysis can be approached from either the point of view of research or of practice.

There are many definitions of information science, and there are other associated theories or meta-theories. The latter of which may also be associated with a philosophical stance. Nonetheless, the model portrayed above has proved to be a robust foundation for teaching and research, yet it is flexible enough to accommodate diverse opinions and debate as to what is meant by ‘information’. It allows for diverse theories of information.

It is interesting to reflect on whether ‘information’ as understood for the purposes of library and information science has any connection with ‘information’ as understood by physics and/or biology, or whether it is a standalone concept. Indeed later authors such as Bateson (1972) have suggested that if information is inversely related to probability, as Shannon says, then it is also related to meaning, as meaning is a way of reducing complexity. Cornelius (2002) reviews the literature attempting to elucidate a theory of information for information science (see also Zunde 1981, Meadow and Yuan 1997).

At a recent conference in Lyon, Birger Hjorland’s (2011) presentation considered the question of whether it was possible to have information science without information. He writes that there should at least be some understanding of the concept that supports our aims, but concludes:

“.. we cannot start by defining information and then proceed from that definition. We have to consider which field we are working in, and what kind of theoretical perspectives are best suited to support our goals.”

I agree with him. I do not think we can have information science without a consideration of what we mean by information – but information is a complex concept, and one that can be interpreted in several ways, according to the discipline doing the interpretation, and then again within any given discipline per se. It is not an easy subject to study, despite its sudden popularity. The literature of information theory is extensive, and scary maths can be found in most of it. Nonetheless, it is essential for anyone within our profession to have in mind an understanding of what we are working with; otherwise it is impossible to justify what we are doing, and we appear non-descript. Understanding information is like wearing black. Any colour will do, but black makes you look so much taller and slimmer.

References

Ananthaswamy A (2011). Uncertainty untangled. New Scientist. 30th April. 2011, 28-31

Bateson G (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Ballantine: New York

Brillouin L (1956). Science and information theory. Academic Press: New York

Cornelius I ( 2002). Theorizing information science. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 2002. 393-425

Crick F (1988). What mad pursuit. A personal view of scientific discovery. Penguin: London

Floridi L (2010). Information: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press: Oxford

Gilchrist A (2009). Editorial. In: Information science in transition. Facet: London

Hartley RVL (1928). Transmission of information. Bell system Tech. Journal, vol 7 535-563

Hjorland B (2011). The nature of information science and its core concepts. Paper presented at: Colloque sur l’épistémologie comparée des concepts d’information et de communication dans les disciplines scientifiques (EPICIC), Université Lyon3, April 8th 2011. Available from: http://isko-france.asso.fr/epicic/en/node/18

Meadow CT and Yuan W (1997). Measuring the impact of information: defining the concepts. Information Processing and Management, vol 33(6) 697-714

Meadows AJ (1987). Introduction. In: The origins of information science. Taylor Graham: London

Qvortrup L (1993). The controversy of the concept of information. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, vol 1(4) 3-24

Robinson L (2009). Information science: communication and domain analysis. Journal of Documentation, vol 65(4) 578-591

Schrödinger E (1944). What is life? The physical aspect of the living cell. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge

Shannon CE and Weaver W (1949). The mathematical theory of communication. University of Illinois Press: Urbana

Shera JH (1968). Of librarianship, documentation and information science. Unesco Bulletin for Libraries, 22(2) 58-65

Stonier T (1992). Beyond information. The natural history of intelligence. Springer-Verlag: New York

Stonier T (1990). Information and the internal structure of the universe. Springer-verlag: New York

Szilard L (1929). Uber die Entropieverminderung in einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen. Zeitschrift fur Physik, vol 53 840-856

Vickery B (2004). The long search for information. Occasional Papers no. 213. Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Webber S (2003). Information science in 2003: a critique. Journal of Information Science, vol 29(4) 311-330

Wiener N (1948). Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine. Wiley: New York

Zunde P (1981). Information theory and information science. Information Processing and Management, vol 17(6) 341-347

Well that’s what the “happiness engineers” at WordPress think. When I logged on to this blog yesterday on my iPad, I found my carefully crafted reality had been re-mastered into dream magazine utopia. This was not, actually, a hack, but a crass attempt at getting on down with the kids, in association with #onswipe. Turns out this company specializes in turning websites into magazine dreams for reading on the iPad, and  WordPress felt that it would be super fantastic fun to force this redesign theme  onto all those boring WordPress blogs. Not funny. Not polite. Astounding arrogance on the part of WordPress. Ever heard of asking nicely first ?

“..oh but we announced this a week ago in our newsletter” … cried the happiness engineer, who recommended that I should read the WordPress godgiven newsletter prose regularly (yeah I have nothing better to do..) … no excuse guys – impolite and rude to change my stuff because you think it would look better your way – and there I thought that I paid for you to host my blog as I want it to look? Silly old me then.

The magazine dream re-mix choose a picture from my blog at random and used it as a ‘cover’. This happened to be a picture of University College London, which I had taken myself, and used to illustrate a brief posting on a research project there. The new format made it look as if my blog was written and produced by University College London, rather than a personal effort by me. Not laughing.

To say nothing about the complete lack of menus or contextual information which I spent hours incorporating into my blog. But hey – dreamworld – #onswipe is go go go.

This whole shabby debacle, which ended when WordPress hastily implemented a “shut this down now” option for writers, forces me to consider something nasty which I have been pushing to the back of my mind. Who owns my social media content?

I have read a lot of stuff about Facebook taking liberties with personal information:

• facebook will make your personal details available to search engines unless you act now

• facebook will make your personal details available to third party marketers right now and just too bad for you

• facebook sells your stuff to anyone who will pay them and you are totally frigid if you object – ya boo.

But I have so far avoided the thought that any social media site is a come on to those destined to spend their lives coding. Even if I don’t upload all those photos of me as a baby in the bath. Personal privacy is yesterdays news – social media content is a cybermall free-for-all.

Tempted to delete my blog and go home. But I like social media. I want the people who know who I am to read my stuff. I hope to be re-tweeted at least once a week. I am pleased if my students find my communications helpful/fun – I don’t mind if other library and information science professionals want to agree, argue and debate. But I don’t want my online persona (whatever that means exactly) to be parodied simply because it exists.

Is it that I have to accept that if I upload anything of myself to a social media site, the gleaming owners can re-mix the content howsoever they wish? Without telling me, and without any repercussions? Is this where we are in 2011? Is personal content so potentially valuable\invaluable? Hey let’s remix lyn and see how much she can be improved?

Are social media site owners nothing more than purveyors of content-manipulation? Photo-manip freaks cut and paste here? Thought this only happened in slash fiction (..er …seen some v good slash fiction manips..).

I was struck by the image-heavy focus of the #onswipe theme forced on my blog. Particularly by a random picture of me, horizontally cropped at eye-level and made into headline news. An image of a much younger me. Somebody I only dream about in later years. Really nice eyes.

And I recalled Wim Wenders’ movie “Until the end of the world”, in which one of the characters has a dream-machine – a device which records and subsequently lets her watch her dreams.

• Until the End of the World

• Brain Computer Interfaces for Manipulating Dreams

Well who wouldn’t rather sit watching a fantasy version of their life than face the reality of another day at the computer? Those dreams in which tiny moments of life are enhanced, where colours are brighter, in which we fly, in which we are forever young and skinny, – in which, after signing my book Brian Cox leans over to kiss me. ….

Doesn’t my blog look better the #onswipe way?

Real life sucks. Let’s spend all our time watching the dream-machine – how about a social media site for dreams …  how enticing to see what someone else dreams about –the ultimate social-media marketing coup. Don’t like your life – live your dreams – or even someone elses.

And why don’t we start by remastering my blog into something much more glitzy and totally devoid of anything I meant to convey.

No thanks. Maybe for some. But I am not quite despondent enough to give up on reality yet. So dear WordPress – get your own life, and please leave my tiny reality alone.

Persuaded to get up this morning by the thought of one of my favourite breakfast meetings, one of those regularly hosted by Sue Hill and her team, where eight lucky information professionals from diverse environments get together to consider the contemporary professional landscape.

We started by suggesting two words that we each felt represented the biggest impact on our work today, and then added in one which we felt embodied the most significant factor for change over the last 5 years. The ensuing discussion focused on the concepts identified in this simple but effective conversation starter. I suggested information-anxiety, and mobile.

The concepts fell, for the most part, into four categories: economy, technology, skills and organizational culture.

As would be expected, everyone felt the pressure of needing to achieve more with less, and the accompanying ‘de-motivation’ as candidate ways to economise failed to materialize due to services having already been rendered maximally effective and efficient. There was a feeling that excellence in service was no longer attainable, as physical resources, dependant on human care and attention, were downsized in unison with staff numbers.

Technology affects most aspects of our lives, and so again it was not surprising that discussion turned to how mobile devices and cloud computing are changing the workplace in ways we have difficulty imagining. We need strategies for cloud computing. And what of future technology? Can we imagine it? Who would have thought of mainstream smart-phones and augmented reality 5 years ago? Possibly secret Star Trek followers – and I’m not admitting to anything – but I did happen to hear that the science behind the Romulan cloaking device was now a reality (tiny reality – just a paperclip at the moment …)

Social-media received a mixed response. Some felt it was a ‘dumbing-down’ medium, which implied that trained professionals were no longer needed. Others pointed out that many organizations ban the use of these time-wasting, potentially ruinous applications. I am a social-media advocate. Genie and bottle. Be careful what you wish for though.

My role as a masters course director means I am always soliciting first-hand views on what sort of skills employers want from prospective new team members, although balancing this with the requirements for an academic masters can be problematic – the question of vocational training versus learning how to think and develop – quick fix for now or investment in a framework for life-long-learning? As already stated, technology is a key driver for change. Nothing stays the same and the systems in place today will be superseded in increasingly shorter time-spans. Technological-literacy, flexibility and adaptability are key aspirations for prospective job applicants, but how to capture this on a cv, and to stand out from the crowd is less evident.

I was concerned to hear that recent LIS graduates were perceived to have limited abilities in using query language for bibliographic databases – this is something they should definitely take away from any LIS masters course, and most alumni will agree that search was included on the curriculum. I wonder if the Google free-text search box is somehow overriding all our carefully planned lessons in Boolean logic? Perhaps we need to focus on information literacy in schools, as by the time students reach masters level, quick and dirty keyword addiction damage is done.

It was unanimously agreed that the focus on information technology management, rather than information management, meant that the higher paid role of ‘Chief Information Officer’ invariably indicated someone with a computing, rather than LIS background. Although as an aside, the importance of ‘softer’, information related skills may be being recognized in newer courses, such as the masters in information leadership (MIL) at City University. The feeling that for higher paid jobs, business, rather than LIS skills were sought was mentioned, and I am interested in pursuing evidence for this, and indeed to identify what exactly is meant by ‘business skills’.

On the positive side, the evaluative and analytical skills of a trained information professional were perceived to be highly valued, with clients preferring to engage with those who offered ‘added-insight’ to research results. This requires subject knowledge, and adds weight to my belief that information professionals also need to be subject specialists, and that LIS needs to remain a postgraduate profession.

The failure of many IT-led implementations was noted – it is obviously helpful to ask the users and creators of content about system requirements before spending huge sums on something designed for some other purpose entirely. Never happens though – except in systems design courses.

Organizational culture is changing to interpret and work with moving technological, economic, political and social factors. With lawyers charging in ever decreasing units of time, it is essential that information and research related tasks are undertaken by lower-paid information professionals, so that clients are not overcharged. Not sure I am entirely comfortable with information workers being openly worth so much less per hour than lawyers, but its one of those unpleasant facts of life. Often, the idea is to outsource this kind of work, rather than to develop a skilled, in-house team. It’s the economy.

Other observations were that there was a demand for information-skills training from clients themselves, (i.e. a mentoring role outside the LIS profession),  that increasingly innovation came from connectivity between specializations, and that we need to ensure we have the infrastructure to cope with the landslide of information  produced from government open-data initiatives and e-science. There is just too much information. Hence I end where I started, with information-anxiety. Which is now mobile.

Many thanks to Sue for her innovative get-togethers – and just to mention that her events also raise money, this year for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Growing Knowledge: The Evolution of Research

My colleague, Pete Williams, at UCL, is evaluating this British Library exhibition, which runs between 12 October 2010 – 16 July 2011. Please go along and support the future of research!

The Growing Knowledge exhibition will demonstrate the vision for future digital research services at the British Library, and provide a test bed for the evaluation of digital research tools and services that have the potential to support researchers’ needs. The exhibition will consist of a number of features including digital signage, video demonstrations, interactive welcome animations and a prototype “Researcher’s Desktop” application.

We at University College London are evaluating the exhibition, and would like to invite you to visit it and to give us your views. Your visit will allow you to sample each of these components. A researcher will be at the exhibition, and we hope that you will be able to talk to him briefly to tell him what you think of the exhibition.

The programme for each event will be as follows:

11.00: One of the curators will give an introductory talk about the exhibition
11.15: There will be an opportunity for you to explore the exhibition and try out the digital facilities. Our researcher may wish to talk to you about your views on the various exhibits.
12.30: Event closes.

A link to a short questionnaire will be sent to you very soon about your views on the exhibition and the issues raised.

Please register at: http://blgrowingknowledge.eventbrite.com/

Collections are anarchic, they exist for and are defined entirely by their own purpose, they have their own identity and exude individuality.

Collecting is not just about acquiring everything. Collections can be very small, representative (core) rather than comprehensive. Collecting is about making connections, considering relationships and rearranging until the collected items sit in the ‘right’ order – this latter being open to interpretation. When looking at a collection, it is possible to gauge how one thing relates to another, to see where there is duplication, and where there are omissions. Good examples make themselves known, as do poorer contributors. Collections are aesthetically pleasing to behold, and they exude a calming stability in a world of dizzying change. Although as living entities, collections may have to be restructured and reinterpreted over time, at least at any one moment, collections are finite and thus comprehensible. I have made collections from just about all of the things I possess. I seek out items I gave away years ago in order to ease the pain of the ‘gap in the collection’. Books, of course, but also old magazines, items of glass, crockery and anything from Liberty’s. I am immediately interested in someone who has a collection of their own. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts, and collections tell us things that isolated items cannot.

Which leads me to core listings, and resource lists. These surrogate collections furnish us with a manageable format via which to comprehend the real thing – they are often used to facilitate assembly of an actual collection, and they have traditionally been valued for their integrity and the effort expended over their construction.

The creation of resource listings is one of the fundamental areas within library and information science, (one of Hjorland’s¹ eleven aspects of domain analysis) and yet very little is written about their construction – there is no definitive way for them to be produced. Nor, I am rather sorry to say, is it entirely clear today that listings of any sort are valued in the face of ‘go google’ – the land of instant lists.

I have a longstanding interest in listings. I started my career thinking about the ideal (comprehensive) listing of toxicology resources, at a time when it was feasible to contemplate such a thing. Once the Internet rendered our world global instead of local, any hope of a comprehensive resource listing within any subject area vanished. Instead we were left with the representative listing, the expert listing, the popular listing or the ‘here are some resources you could try’ listing.

As part of my doctoral research, I scoured the literature for methodologies relating to the compilation of resource lists and subject guides. As a response to the void I postulated (Robinson²) that ideal resource lists could be created by locating items via a cascade style of hierarchical searching; one would search first for lists of lists (quaternary resources), then for lists (tertiary resources), then for value added (secondary resources) and finally for the first instantiation of a work within the literature (primary resources). I called this hierarchy the ‘fundamental framework of resources’

The idea was academic, because in the real world resource creators do not adhere to my framework. They often create hybrid resources (a list containing other tertiary as well as secondary items for example), and not all resources are entered into a higher resource (not all lists are listed in a list of lists, not every article is indexed in a database …) which make a systematic cascade impossible to follow. It would be great if we had a single world list of lists for every subject – a bit like the gopher system – alas a distant memory. Nonetheless, I concluded that searching systematically, across databases, the internet and within ‘level specific’ resources, for resources within each of the four categories, would result in a representative listing of resources within any area.

The problem, as exemplified by my attempt to create a toxicology listing, was one of overload. There were simply too many resources to make even the term ‘representative’ an obvious way to go on its own. It thus became necessary to apply some selection criteria, whereby an item was included in the listing if it was the only one of its kind, or it was exemplary in some way. Me-toos were cut out, so that the list offered good examples of resources from categories such as books, journals, library collections and databases. This particular piece of work was carried out a decade ago; today we are faced with many more modes of dissemination. And a much bigger task.

So how then, to create resource listings in 2010? My interest has been stirred by joining the working group behind the creation of an updated edition of the Core Collection of Medical Books, under the auspices of CILIP’s Health Libraries Group. The last Core Collection³ was published by Tomlinsons in 2006.

The idea is to stick to a listing that just covers books, in order to bring the project within a manageable framework, but even then we come up against the issue of e-books and electronic access. The group favours including only works available in print, although some of these may be available as electronic editions, and in time, it may be that some works are missed if they are only available in electronic format. It was thought that this decision could be revised for a future edition.

Other considerations were the intended audience, previously stated as small to medium libraries, and the level of texts to include. It was considered that any constraints on potential audience should be removed, and that even though the listing would have a UK focus, it may be helpful to libraries internationally. The size of the listing was considered, currently around 1000 items, and the method of publication – another printed edition was favoured unanimously, but the group are using LibraryThing to solicit new items to be considered for inclusion, and comments on items in the existing list. It was suggested that if items received no comments, that they should be removed, but this was undecided as ‘no comment’ may not mean that an item should no longer be considered core. A date of no earlier than 2005 was mooted as a limit for publication date, as medicine progresses rapidly and texts date quickly. It was thought that this would be waived in a few cases where older texts are still believed to be valid (in psychotherapy for example).

Finally, the methodology for creating the listing, which for now is constructed from the last listing, plus any additions sent in by volunteer LIS workers contacted largely via lis-medical. This method was agreed to be limited, and an extension to the deadline for comments/submission was proposed so that more LIS professionals could be asked to contribute (CHILL and UHMLG members). The group also conceded that input from clinicians would be valuable, although probably time consuming to extract. I raised the issue of systematic searching by expert LIS staff within each category, but this was perhaps expecting too much time and effort from already time-poor staff. It was felt that an expert eye (LIS professional in our group) should assess the entire list in order to identify any obvious gluts or gaps; this highlights the strong desire of the group to bring the core collection into being as this is quite an onerous task. The third part of the methodology would be editorial, checking the text for publication etc.

The final aspect for consideration was the categorization used, or tags (the latter used with LibraryThing). The current tag list has been copied from the last edition, and the group will consider whether any changes should be made in the form of new tags or division of older joint tags such as ‘pharmacology and toxicology’ into separate headings. The tags have not been taken from any existing medical vocabularies, and the group has no plans to change this at the moment. It was decided, however, that we would not encourage free tagging, and that anyone suggesting an item for the list should use an existing tag.

The ease with which LibraryThing can be updated and maintained raises the question of whether the list needs to be finite – as theoretically new suggestions can be added in at an time – there is then the question of a mechanism for editorial control though.

So, the group intends to make a final call for comments and additions, whilst the group lead will look over all the entries to identify subjects (tags) where input is needed. We will meet again in the new year to consider our final material, and our options for producing a printed version, which despite the ready availability of the core collection on LibraryThing, was felt to be highly desirable.

Two companion works are already available; the Nursing Core Collection⁴ and the Mental Health Core Collection⁵. Further details can be found on the CILIP HLG website, from the link above.

It was my pleasure to meet a group of like-minded collection and resource list lovers, and I wholeheartedly admire their dedication to this project. I will post an update in the new year.

References

1) Hjorland B (2002). Domain Analysis in Information Science: eleven approaches, traditional as well as innovative. Journal of Documentation, vol 58 (4) 422-462

2) Robinson L (2000). A Strategic Approach to Research using Internet Tools and Resources. ASLIB Proceedings, vol 52 (1), 11-19

3) CILIP Health Libraries Group (2006). Core Collection of Medical Books 2006 5^th edition. Tomlinsons

4) CILIP Health Libraries Group (2010). Nursing Core Collection 2010 4^th edition. Tomlinsons.

5) CILIP Health Libraries Group (2009). Mental Health Core Collection 2009 2^nd edition. Tomlinsons

The title of this one-day event caught my eye  because of its relevance to the content of our library science masters’ course, and the sessions,  arranged by the Association of Independent Libraries, did not disappoint. An added bonus was that the lectures were delivered at the very lovely Royal Astronomical Society in Mayfair – a significantly motivating factor in persuading me to attend.

The day focused on web 2.0 applications, the fate of public libraries in the face of funding cuts etc., the (apparently) idealistic aspirations of google books, changes in the publishing industry and the restrictions on knowledge access resulting from copyright. All topical aspects that any LIS professional, as well as masters student, should find compelling.

Gwyneth Price, Institute of Education, took us through her thoughts on web 2.0 applications and their use in the library and for information literacy. I have been long been an advocate of social media, and was interested to hear Gwyneth’s experience of  introducing blogs, wikis, media-sharing, social-networking and current awareness tools to facilitate new ways for the library to engage with its users. LIS workers have been associated with the promotions of information literacy for many years, now, although I think it is something they have always done. There is a much greater recognition of the role of library professionals as teachers, these days, and Gwyneth highlighted the work of the 9 month LASSIE project (undertaken with Jane Secker, LSE, completed Jan 2008), funded by the Centre for Distance Education at the University of London. This project explored how social software  (used as a synonym for web 2.0 applications) might enhance distance learners’ use of libraries. The resulting case study reports, available from the LASSIE website, suggested ways in which web 2.0 tools could be used in the broader capacity of library engagement and outreach. If you are not familiar with this project, I think it is worth taking a look at as part of any effort to both get to grips with what is meant by web 2.0 tools and to understand library related approaches to their implementation.

Outlining her experience with specific tools, Gwyneth referred to  the overheads in time and effort needed to set up and maintain a library blog – her response to encourage a regular supply of postings was to create a staff blogging rota  - once engaged with the blog, staff enthusiasm rose considerably. With respect to social networking software, Gwyneth felt that this was an area best covered by the VLE – as students tended to use FaceBook for social contacts, and the VLE for academic ‘networking’. Mention was made of LinkedIn, for professional use. Wikis were used as a repository for library FAQs – i.e. as a way of capturing the effort made to answer queries to avoid duplication, and media sharing tools were helpful for distributing resources, especially YouTube for training videos, and Delicious for web links. Finally, Gwyneth suggested a viewpoint which I share, in observing a move away from RSS feeds to Twitter . RSS feeds and readers, although entirely workable and useful, somehow always cause the greatest number of puzzled looks in my CPD web 2.0  classes – and I concede that, I too, glean most of my current awareness from Twitter – although in their defense, feed readers are still the best solution if you follow selected blogs or websites for updates. Gwyneth did not mention Netvibes – which is good for pulling all your information sources into one – so I will do so  for completeness. Finally, came a mention for TAGXEDO, a tag cloud generator, and its ability to produce tag clouds in a variety of shapes – find one to suit your mood.

Tim Coates presented his plans to secure the future of our public library service, in which he announced the formation of Library Alliance, a new, not-for-profit, non-governmental body, being launched to help improve the  public library service, funded by charitable donation. (Tim’s speech). Tim is often described as ‘controversial’, and whilst it may be that his views do not always suit everyone, his consistent support for public libraries is undeniable. Tim asks the question “can libraries survive in times of austerity?” and suggests that we should consider the reasons why people use libraries. This is one of the places where differences of opinion can creep in, as the exact reasons why people do or do not use public libraries are not agreed upon anywhere (though doubtless studies aiming to elucidate these reasons exist). Tim’s suggestions as to why people use libraries include reading the books (!) and an appreciation of an inspiring space. It is not just for the technology. Tim emphasizes the need to improve stock,  access and opening hours, and that it is important for public libraries to do what the public wants – but this is another area where controversial opinions enter the arena; not everyone is agreed on what the public wants.  Tim emphasizes the trend to link public library services with the agendas or ambitions of local councils, and ultimately government – he counters this with the 1964 public libraries act, which says that ’public libraries are for the benefit of those people who wish to use them’. This arguably, does not necessarily link with the ambitions of government targets. Should not public libraries address the needs of the individuals who use them, rather than the state? And whilst co-location of social (and other) services within libraries may be convenient for them, it does not improve the library service per se. Tim is a very well known speaker, and I will not attempt to digest his speech further; please see the link above to his actual words. To end with however, Tim feels that the financial management of public libraries is rather poor, and that with some improvement, libraries can indeed survive.

Michael Popham, Oxford Digital Library, talked about Oxford’s collaboration with Google Books, and the lessons learned from their combined efforts to digitize the Bodleian’s estimated 1 million holdings of out-of copyright, and mostly out-of-print 19th century material (this arrangement was different from Google’s projects with Harvard and Michigan). The project stemmed from the desire to widen access; currently 60% of those who use and work in the Bodliean Libraries have no direct connection with the university.  The card catalogue offers only limited information to readers, and  access would be greatly enhanced by digitizing and indexing entire books.

Michael reminded us that Oxford’s “digital library” began in the 1960s, when machine readable text was made available for scholarly research purposes. The Oxford Text Archive was founded in the 1970s.

The project built on work  with Proquest  to convert Early English Books Online, from microfilm images, into fully-searchable texts. This effort proved  slow and  expensive, so the offer from Google to assist with digitization was viewed as a chance to cut the waiting time and costs for improved access. Once digitized by Google, one copy of the item files go into Google Books, and a second into the Oxford Digital Asset Management System. There is a link from the Oxford Libraries Information Service (OLIS)  catalogue to the copy in the management system.

The details of the project revealed that digitization relies on good planning and a lot of work, requiring effort from all the staff concerned. Google provides the metadata checks, the digitization, quality assurance, OCR and indexing, reprocessing, mounting of  files in Google Books and preservation of the master files. Bodleian staff carriy out the item selection (33% of the items are too fragile to scan and a further 33% are the wrong size.), handling and re-shelving. Google retains the master files as the images are large, and storage requirements are onerous. Google committed to the project (commencing in 2005) for 20 years, and for now the content is free – what happens after 20 years is as yet undecided; so far 388,000 of the 1 million items have been digitized.

The process of digitization is a craft – with highly specialized equipment being used by skilled operators to obtain accurate images, whilst not damaging the original works in any way. Devices that hold pages in place using gentle air pressure for example – but still not every item is suitable for digitization.

There are some issues, one of which is that Oxford has no control over how Google uses the images; Google aims to promote the material to end-users, not just scholars. The digitization process itself can have hiccups, resulting in images of the operators hands and blank pages in odd places. There  are things that cannot be digitized, including fold-out pages and missing pages. Copyright is another minefield, as laws between countries differ. Whilst the UK has the 70 year rule (i.e. copyright ends 70 years after author’s death), other parts of the world (e.g. the US) do not. For the moment Google attempts to determine where in the world a reader is situated, and to apply copyright restrictions accordingly – not always with the greatest accuracy as sometimes the date of the author’s death is not known. However, despite the drawbacks, there is now the potential to analyse texts linguistically, and to find things beyond the possibilities offered by print on paper. Michael gave the example of attempting to locate an early use of the phrase “.. beginning of the end and the end of the beginning ..”. Google’s skill at marketing also helps to draw attention to special items in the collection including first editions (Emma, Origin of the Species) which can be seen be anyone all over the world.

Moving on to publishing, John B Thompson, Professor of Sociology at Cambridge University,  considered the changes in the industry between the 1960s and the present day. Publishing has an intrinsic link with libraries; how authors disseminate their work and how users find it. LIS is concerned with both scholarly publishing and with what John Thompson refers to as ‘general trade publishing’ – i.e. book publishing in general. The talk focused on changes brought about by the dual action of the economic downturn, and the digital revolution. Both these aspects are well known as drivers for change within the LIS field too, and the consequences for the publishing industry echo throughout the information industry as a whole. The talk centered around John’s research into the book trade, detailed in his new publication “Merchants of Culture“, which I have added to my reading list for our library science masters. Whilst John’s previous book, Books in the Digital Age, (also on our reading list), considered scholarly book publishing in today’s society, Merchants of Culture considers the wider world of “general trade publishing”,

“..that is the world of general interest books that are aimed at a wider public and sold through high street bookstores”

how it is organised and how it is changing. John introduced “the logic of the field” as his model for how US/UK publishing works –  emphasizing that publishing in other locations works to different rules. His fluid and engaging presentation summarized his book very well in a short space of time – starting with changes from the 1960s including A) the growth of retail chains, leading to a decrease in independent booksellers and the number of people in the trade choosing books, a shift in the way books are stocked and sold, and the hardback revolution as mass marketing increases sales, B) the rise of literary agents (not seen in Europe) and C) the emergence of publishing corporations. This has all lead to a polarization of the field, where there are no medium sized publishing houses, just very large enterprises and very small ‘indy’ presses. You either have a lot of money to fund winners, or a very small amount to fund esoteric chancers. Once a book is a success, major funding will be required to publish a second tome. We face a preoccupation with ‘big books’ – the hoped for best sellers.

“Hype is the talking up of books by those who have an interest in generating excitement about them…. buzz exists when the recipients of hype respond with affirmative talk backed up by money.”

It matters what people think. But we now have “extreme publishing” and “shrinking windows” where a book has six weeks to sell or face withdrawal. High returns though – 30% on average.

The day ended with Martyn Everett, former librarian and Chairman of Saffron Waldon Town Library Society, talking about how re-interpretation of copyright is restricting access to information.

“Knowledge is stifled by restriction and censorship”

Martyn drew a comparison between today’s knowledge commons and the historical commons where land was shared for the general good, highlighting the desire to share underlying the ethos behind many of today’s information workers. Businesses such as Amazon and Abe Books offer realistic alternatives to public libraries as books can be sourced cheaply and quickly. The “long tail” purpose of libraries is eroded by such services, as they are often quicker than ILL. Where does this leave libraries ? Furthermore, research collections are often denied to members of the public  - what is the role of open access here ? And what of copyright held by organizations rather than the individual authors ? Should not publicly funded research by readily and freely available to the public? Good question and one which is regularly in the discussion forums. And what of the content of public libraries ? Martyn noted the lack of books on anthropology available on shelves for public browsing – is this true ?

I was fortunate to be able to have a look around the library before I left – amazing collection including star charts and paintings of comets, and very early photos of the solar eclipse.

.. As I was leaving, we returned to the comment that there are no anthropology books in the public libraries anymore – I suggested that dumbing down was reason – ‘no’ replied our speaker – it was a more complex issue than merely dumbing down – this issue deserves more exploration – however, I do wonder whether the public gets what the public asks for from its libraries – which is clearly not anthropology. There is a feeling that librarians should protect the public from their own failings, stocking the Times Literary Supplement recommendations just in case someone has an epiphany. (What does the public library act say?) Should they though? Do people want to chance upon something life-changing, improving, inspirational or even just useful from the library ? I hope so. I mean isn’t that why we do this?

August. The month for writing. And my attention is caught by the recent PEW Internet report which suggests that US millenials will continue to share information as they get older and take on more responsible roles. In other words – privacy is what people did in the past. ‘Sharing’ is the new black.

Hmmm – but what to share? Reality? The endless repetition of school, college, work, kids, cleaning and credit card bills?? Of course not. When did someone you follow last tweet about cleaning the oven? They didn’t. Social media requires us all to airbrush our lives into the kind of unreality mirrored on the covers of magazines – the ones where Madonna looks younger than her daughter and you are left feeling short and fat. Social media demands that we all use a special effects filter before uploading ourselves. We only tweet the nice things – specially chosen for their wit, charm, educational value and sheer brilliance. Are you sitting on the sofa watching a soap opera whilst eating mostly carbohydrate? No. Bet you are reading something on your college reading list, attending the ballet, practising the violin or spending quality time with the children – and for certain you are writing a book – an article at the very least – and that’s what it says on your facebook status … It’s a bit exhausting – keeping up the charade. Hoping that no one you know ever sees the real you – the un-airbrushed horror. That, of course, is why I work as an academic from the seclusion of my attic. Ha! And at least having entered adulthood before computers were invented networked, (not a day over 28) I have escaped the need to drag around all the people who attended primary school with me (except Clare x). Nor do I have any idea what happened to those with whom I went to high school (except Sara x). At least I have been able to move on – and quietly forget all those ‘friends’ who were never interested in me in the first place. But what of the millenials? Will it be easy to act as a managing director, when everyone on your friend list remembers you having a desperate crush on your French teacher when you were 11? (.. real life event edited for sensitive audience) .. Perhaps we will enter into a kind of bartering system, where no one mentions your bad calls, and you, in return, do not mention theirs. But …. oooh – the temptation. Remember all the times you thought you looked great/funky/clever/sexy/amusing ? Well 30 years later those photos have a very different value. Only instead of fading in a box in the attic they are freely available on the net. And you don’t have to be a politician or a lecturer to squirm and flinch – anyone can experience the toe curling embarrassment at being reunited with their past. Pointed shoes/pink hair/rocky horror/snogging the guy who married your best friend  -  all give your followers cheap thrills. I have written previously on the niceties of ‘deleting’ (see Delete by Viktor Mayer Schonberger…) – where stuff you upload has an expiry date, after which it self-implodes. But the technology is not quite there yet. So if you upload it – it stays for good. For the amusement of all. Especially your children. And anyone who works for you.  And what of de-friending? Will it become as socially acceptable as de-cluttering your wardrobe? Carthartic perhaps? But can you ever be invisible to someone just by de-friending them? Nah … go google …. or friend a mutual friend ….

So what to do ? How much should we share? How much can we get away with?  (ok – 36 then ..)  and in any case what is everyone else ‘sharing’ about you? Worried who has access to your medical records ?? How can we stop them? Ever been ‘tagged’ in a photo you didn’t sanction? What about a video of all your lectures Lyn, even the ones you haven’t really delivered before and where you look like a troll ?? Especially those. In high definition.

Sigh. Can’t take on the entire world. Just have to hope that I haven’t said anything REALLY BAD or worn anything REALLY  UN-PHOTOGENIC. I am in fact, rather a non-entity when I Google myself, (yeah sad), but nonetheless, I have given some thought to my social media profile. As an academic, I think it is beneficial to project a warm, savvy persona – someone who has  insight into library and information science, and an interesting way of commenting on and interpreting the ideas of others in my field. I would hope to be convincing as someone you feel should be in charge of the class. So everything I tweet, blog or facebook does have a bit of a spin. I don’t mention bad hair days, or who I’m dating right now – I do try to mention anything relevant to LIS, and of course anything which will persuade you that I spend all my time reading, watching science programmes (… Brian Cox and Jim Al Khalili), attending lectures, exhibitions and art galleries, with just the right amount of cookery school classes, 80s pop concerts and walking on the beach in the rain – all to convince you that my life is really absolutely fabulous.

(ok – 49 then).

So, December 31st, and all the books lying on my attic floor are still there. They have progressively accumulated since last January, and whilst I have every good intention of promoting them to their ‘proper’ place on the shelves, they remain where I first put them, in little huddles on the floor. The reason they are still resident on the carpet, where the Bad Persians spitefully spike their corners, is that I have no more room on my shelves.

I get older painlessly, endlessly absorbed with taking everything off one shelf, dusting, and believing that it will now be possible to squeeze more in than before. As I return the volumes I become distracted by something as I leaf through the pages, and time slips away as I engage with something I have owned for ages, but never focussed on before. There is then the dilemma of whether a book should be in place A, with X Y and Z, or in place B with E F and G? Should my books on Lithuanian libraries stay alone in my attic with LIS related material, or should I unite them with their natural co-habitees of books on Lithuanian places, folk tales and cuisine (currently downstairs with travel, fiction and cookery respectively..)? Should my Ladybird book of ballet stay here with the other ladybird books or should I separate it from its same size siblings and put it downstairs with the other books on ballet? Maybe I should have two copies of these things..? No. Definitely no. There is no more room on my shelves.

In his book ‘The Library at Night’, Alberto Manguel devotes a whole chapter to ordering (The library as order). His dilemma in arranging his collection offers me some solace.

He writes that as a boy, he would decide:

… to place them by size so that each shelf contained only volumes of the same height.

But that

… sometimes this order would not satisfy me and I’d reorganize my books by subject: fairy tales on one shelf, adventure stories on another, scientific and travel volumes on a third, poetry on a fourth, biographies on a fifth. And sometimes, just for the sake of change, I would group my books by language, or by colour, or according to my degree of fondness for them.

Once a category is established, it suggests or imposes others, so that no cataloguing method, whether on shelf or on paper, is ever closed unto itself.

And  later, in adulthood, when creating his own library, he writes on the subjective and personal nature of the organization of private collections:

Why stash the works of Saint Agustine in the Christinianity section rather than under Literature in Latin or Early Medieval Civilizations? Why place Carlyle’s French Revolution in Literature in English rather than in European History, and not Simon Schama’s Citizens? Why keep Louis Ginzberg’s seven volumes of Legends of the Jews under Judaism, but Joseph Gaer’s study on the Wandering Jew under Myths? Why place Anne Carson’s translations of Sappho under Carson but Arthur Golding’s Metamorphoses under Ovid? Why keep my two pocket volumes of Chapman’s Homer under Keats?

Ultimately, every organization is arbitrary.

Not just me then.

Then there is LibraryThing – and the need to not only to add in all my books (scanning in the covers for the more ancient or foreign ones), but to devise a scheme to tag them all according to where they are on the shelves, and consequently to which category I feel they should belong. Although any electronic catalogue allows for the possibility of placing an item in more than one category by adding multiple tags, this does not help in my quest to create the ideal collection, in the ideal order, with all the books on the shelves. And sadly, on the topic of social networks for books, Alberto Manguel is silent.

But, dear reader, there is more to this prose than the story of how I maintain a collection of books rather than just a stash beside my bed. The truth is I collect quite a lot of things. I mean collect them rather than just happen to give them space in my house, because they are obtained specifically in relation to the other things which I possess. They are organized. I organize them. Endlessly, never to my complete satisfaction, and occasionally (designer handbags) to facilitate gloating. And there is never enough space to present my collections on the shelves and in the cupboards, in the way in which I would like.

I have been driven to contemplate my true nature as I read “An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World”, written by Frances Larson, in which she investigates his compulsion to collect just about everything. Whilst the word ‘obsessive’ is not mentioned, the negative consequences of Wellcome’s desire to collect ‘everything’ are painful to read about.

His marriage failed; his need to control not just the objects his buyers found, but  any subsequent research ideas that ensued, caused significant friction between Wellcome and his employees, and perhaps most sadly of all, he collected too much. The process of collecting overshadowed the desire to learn from, or enjoy, the things collected. Most of his collection was in storage, destined to be partially dismantled after his death.

Wellcome believed that only a complete collection would be worthy enough to display, one which would truly tell the story of the history of medicine. He believed that by arranging the items in his collection, contrasting and comparing, making connections, previously unknown facts and understanding would be revealed. But in the meantime, he died:

… Wellcome ran out of time. The story that might have emerged from all his frantic collecting – the great history ‘of the art and science of healing’ that he intended to depict through his rarities – was never finished. The collection was never exhibited en masse, polished and consistent, as he intended it to be.

Yet, perusing the fantastic legacy that is now the Wellcome Collection and Library, it is impossible to say anything other than that Henry Wellcome’s activity was worth it.

So what about my collections? Well I don’t think I collect anything with a view to having everything. I think I first thought of this when attempting to compile a list of toxicology resources for my PhD – too many even a decade ago for the most ardent of resource collectors. My approach has evolved to aspire to a representative sample of what is available (e.g. LIS books, colored frock coats and SpaceNK products). After all, there is no more room on the shelves. And I doubt that anyone will consider my collections a legacy.

But I do enjoy being organized and I naturally form collections from the things I have. I have to put like things together and take great pleasure in thinking of ways to do this. My great uncle’s bible and his stereoscope, for example, may seem unlikely shelf sharers, and yet I place them side by side in the cupboard because they are the only things of his that I posses, and so even though I have other bibles, this particular one sits alone on a box of cards intended to generate 3D images at the beginning of the 20th century.

Sometimes I discover new things from arranging the old things. Recipes for example. All the cut out ideas from magazines and newspapers could so easily sit in a heap, good for nothing except artful clutter. Yet when organised according to savoury or sweet, and even crudely subcategorized, I find a pattern in the type of food I felt drawn to, and a renewed interest in cooking something nice to eat. And then who hasn’t enjoyed making playlists from all the CDs which lay forgotten in their rack, as soon as all the tracks are loaded onto iTunes – the software arranging the random pile of sound history into something new and attractive – hateful to those who admire the concept of an entire album, but smashing for those of us who only ever liked one track anyway. And the same for photos, and papers as well as books. What about all those old letters and postcards? Is there anything that cannot become a collection? Cleaning products, the contents of the fridge, knitting patterns, crockery … mmm  I can see where Wellcome had a problem – its all so interesting, placing like things together, establishing differences, seeing what is missing, and what has previously passed unobserved.

My earliest collection was one of books by Enid Blyton – and then when I was eight, I started to collect trolls (see mimi above) – each named and dressed in clothes I designed and made myself. Easy to see where I came from.

But it is December 31st , and so before another year passes, I am going to the fridge to find cheese and champagne – and yes … the cheeses are stored according to country of origin… but no – I don’t collect champagne – I drink it as soon as it is chilled. Happy New Year. xxx

Bibliography:

Larson F (2009). An Infinity of Things: How Sir Henry Wellcome Collected the World. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Manguel A (2006). The Library at Night. Yale University Press: New Haven and London.

Forgetting things is annoying isn’t it? Anniversaries, names of places and people, poems, formulae, book titles, the postcode, the name of the singer and where you left the keys. Names are a nightmare. In the midst of an intellectual exposition I can recall the faces, the clothes and when/where we last met but the white bubble above the head where the name should be remains tauntingly blank … the contents sneaking back at some later point in time – if I’m lucky there will be time to reassure my audience that the memory was not a fantasy, but often the forgotten monikers return hours later, when I am trying to remember something else. A better memory would save so much time – no need to re-read prose on which I have already spent hours, or to go through every CD until I find the title of the song I just can’t remember. Top of the annoying list has to be forgetting the perfect wording which drifted effortlessly into my mind an hour or so ago .. and yes, my pile of notebooks (write it down when you think of it) is now so unwieldy that I need to index them. Ha.

But help is at hand in our information society, where we co-exist alongside our digitized books, music, photos, videos, diaries, lists, contacts and ideas. Once uploaded into cyberspace all the stuff we need to remember is permanently recorded for us – just waiting to be plucked out of the ether by the right keyword. Free text indexing gives us endless points of access, a name, a place, a date or subject, can produce our media like magic. Remembered or forgotten, it is all still there, just waiting patiently. The electronic box in the attic. Even things we gave away and forgot about for decades can be retrieved from services such as Ebay, Abe Books and Amazon. The antidote to regret.

And in our work, preservation of material is often our main focus. We professionalize the art of selecting what to remember and the best way to remember it – in archives and records management, and even in libraries. The challenges of digitizing and preserving material in a society where yesterday’s format is something you were using this morning, are things we thrive on. We are keeping the past alive for the future.

And yet … something about this permanent, digital shoebox has troubled me for about a year now – since I began uploading myself into the ether, in fact; I mean – how long does this digital shadow trail after us? Well forever duh…. even when we die. Not a new worry, and of course, not a new answer, but I am prompted to write after listening to Vicktor Mayer-Schonberger talking about his book “Delete – the virtue of forgetting in the digital age“, in which he raises the question of whether there are some cases in which forgetting is better than remembering. As an aside, the book is a good read, and I recommend it to anyone taking our LAPIS module next semester.

Returning to my concerns, I think there are two facets to the wonder memory of cloud computing and USBs. The good bit is that public domain data can be preserved for everyone – the bad bit is that so can personal data. And whilst I accept that it is often hard to define what is public and what is personal (personal letters found in an attic and published after the authors death ..?) it is clear by now that much of what we hope will remain personal, is is fact, horribly public.

I have often read of how you can never delete a Facebook profile – you merely deactivate it. Is this the same for other social networking sites? A permanent record of the person you were when you were 11 ( or 35 …) – sitting there waiting to be hacked in the present or pillaged in the future?

What happens to all those primary school friends to whom you bestow complete access to what’s on your mind and in your photographs – do you starkly unfriend them (no quotes – this is a real word now) as you evolve, or do they slither after you years into another life. Remember anyone from primary school ? High school ? Are they still part of your life? (ok – with two exceptions I can say no – but then look what I grew up to be (ha again!)) The thing is that it is hard to move on when our digital shadow bites at our heels even in the dark.

Viktor raised issues of ‘amusing’ photos being retrieved to ruin someone’s career, and of seemingly buried, throwaway admissions being retrieved 40 years later to serve as a reason for being refused entry to the US. Others quickly furnished the event with perhaps more chilling examples – ever posted your undying love for someone on your social networking site ? Ever cried over the keyboard as you ‘delete’ your entire profile and start again using your middle name?

Ever conducted an affair by email ? Did it end badly ? Did you use del *.* ? Did he? It’s all still on a server somewhere isn’t it ? Maybe copied to someone’s USB. Waiting.

And to add to our woes Google keeps details of every search undertaken, and results clicked on for 9 months (this was reported at the event and I have not checked this definitively) – all linked to a specific ip address. Do you keep clicking on his website ? Sad. Worse – everyone at Google knows.

After 9 months the Google data is anonymized. But how hard is it to pinpoint someone from anonymized data if you are determined ? Hmmm.

So what’s the answer? How do you publish your fabulous lifestyle to your cohort without risking future ridicule or consequences? How can we ensure that the contents of the box in the attic remain something poignant yet personal? Do we have to self-censor all the time ? Viktor Mayer-Schonberger suggests the use of ‘expiry dates’ on electronic media, so that our past does not have to haunt us. In the meantime, dear reader, do not marry into royalty, or enter politics.