Nov
15

They Are Coming for the Library.

Pardon the pun, but it’s the oldest trick in the book. Viking invaders pillaged Irish monastic libraries; Alexander the Great built his library using the seized collections of others; the British burned the infant Library of Congress during the War of 1812;  the Nazis bombed and emptied museums all over Europe; and the United States and the United Kingdom willfully permitted the destruction of Iraqi cultural institutions. If an invading force wants to demoralize and humiliate a people, the first thing to do is erase their cultural record. It may seem like a quaint concept in an age where we believe that everything is electronic and therefore permanent, but witness the outrage this morning as people learn that one of the casualties of the eviction of Zuccotti Park was the 5,000 volume People’s Library. It is an effective tactic, whether the destruction is purposeful or not.

It is appropriate to be infuriated by a crime against information and speech. But make no mistake: One way or another, failing a plan to counter them, the police were always going to destroy that library. As long as the relationship between law enforcement and the protestors was tense, as long as the right of the people to inhabit that park was contested, that library was a target. The librarians, as students of their profession’s history, should have known what the police were going to do even before the police themselves realized it.

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  • Posted on November 15th, 2011
  • Posted by rainabloom
  • 15 Comments »
  • Filed under: libraries, occupy wall street
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Apr
14

What Does “A Google a Day” Teach Its Users?

Since the beginning of April, a Google-based game has been published as a daily question online and in The New York Times. Called A Google a Day, it is designed to invite users to test their search skills by attempting to answer questions using a backdated, spoiler-free version of Google. Like the Times crossword, above which it appears in print, the questions grow more challenging over the course of the week. On Google’s official blog, Daniel Russell, the User Experience Researcher who designed the game, suggests we think of A Google a Day as a sort of trivia game, but with questions made necessarily difficult because you have “the power of the world’s information at your fingertips,” an assertion that affirms and echoes Google’s mission statement.

A Google a Day does challenge users to think about the way that they construct search engine queries. It also points users to lesser-known aspects of Google’s capabilities. There are, however, two pronounced and problematic things that A Google a Day teaches us  -

  • We should rely on Google not only as a means to information, but as an end in itself and
  • Evaluation is not a discrete and necessary step when we search for information.

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  • Posted on April 14th, 2011
  • Posted by rainabloom
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  • Filed under: Google, information literacies
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Apr
06

The Information Literacy Teach-In, Part One.

In “The Radical Liberal Strategy in Action,” Jack Rothman tells us that the first teach-in originated at the University of Michigan on the 16th of March, 1965 (Rothman 33). He gives credit for the invention of this form of political action to Arnold Kaufman, a colleague, who devised the idea as an alternative to a proposed faculty work stoppage in protest of the bombing of North Vietnam.

The stoppage had been decided upon and announced on very short notice and was met with severe criticism from other University of Michigan community members, who were concerned that this action would negatively impact pending budget talks. Those who had pledged to participate were called the standard names. The words “radical” and “subversive” were hurled as epithets (36). Governor Romney called it “about the worst type of example professors could give their students” (35). Talk of the bombings was lost in the noise created by the anger over the pending stoppage.

Several individuals, including Rothman and Kaufman, had agreed to participate in the stoppage, as there were no alternative means of collective dissent presented. Feeling uneasy about this choice, they met to discuss the matter. The assembled faculty did not want to back down from their decision to act – they did not want to appear cowed by peer and governmental pressures. During what Rothman tells us was a lengthy and uncomfortable discussion, Marshall Shalins, a colleague in Anthropology, said, “Let’s have a teach-in. Let’s have a teach-in and let it run all night. Not only will we teach our regular classes on the scheduled moratorium day, but we’ll continue teaching straight through until the following morning. That will show them how strongly we feel about the bombings – and about teaching” (38).

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  • Posted on April 6th, 2011
  • Posted by rainabloom
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  • Filed under: information literacies, teach-in
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