a. de jesus

Defaults and Implicit Bias

I wasn’t going to write about this, but Bess Sadler’s Code4Lib talk, starting around 3.24 has inspired me to open up a little and start talking about some difficult things in librarianship.

I recently saw this reblogged on tumblr by thelifeguardlibrarian. In it, the post references this blog post from Nicholas Schiller, that talks about bad behaviour and institutional biases. He talks about embarking on a project to diversify the reading he does and starting off a personal hashtag of #diversity-50. For the most part, as far as his detailing his personal motivations and stuff.

Where it falls apart for me, is here:

In 2013 I’m setting myself the goal of reading 50 works by writers of color and other creators who have a cultural perspective different than my own. I think I have a lot to learn and this is a great way to start to fill in some gaps. I’d love it if other librarians and friends joined in. If you don’t share my need for an influx of new perspectives, will you share reading suggestions from your experience on great work that has been overlooked? Will you share this project with your followers on Twitter, Facebook LibraryThing, or Goodreads?

This paragraph says a lot about who he imagines his audience to be and about the default position he is operating from. Yes, he recognizes that he cannot (or at least was unable to) perceive the biases implicit in how he has been selecting leisure reading before, simply because his privilege prevents him from seeing it.

Yet, he invites friends and librarians to join it (yes, I saw the caveat about people not needing new perspectives). Yet. I read something like this and simply have to shake my head. Because this callout for people to join him, makes it very clear that he is expecting his audience to be largely white, hetero, and cis (which, I suppose is understandable given how un-diverse the librarian world is). I see something like this, and I think about all the ‘classics’ I was forced to read in grade school written by (mostly) white, hetero, cis men (with added white, hetero, cis women for ‘diversity’). About all these classics, which I’m told I cannot be considered either educated nor intelligent if I’ve never read them or unable to understand them.

Where it literally became a matter of self-preservation to seek out books and works by Asian authors, lest I truly get to a place where I believe that my inability to identify with or even understand the actions of all these white, hetero, cis characters somehow meant that I was the strange, alien with little ability to connect with the so-called ‘classic’ narratives.

Yet, his privilege is such that he can spend one year (only a year?) diversifying his reading on a voyage of self-discovery and improvement. Where he can write this blog post and, from the comments, get people mostly happy and celebratory over his position. Yet, growing up in a white dominant society meant that when my dad gave me Noli Me Tangere by José Rizal, I wasn’t in a place to understand why I needed to read that book (and ultimately ended up giving it away, unread).

What does it meant that I’ve already read many of the books suggested on the blog and in the comments? (Although, I have to say that I’ve almost entirely abandoned reading anything published via traditional media).

What does it mean that, in the comments, people can seriously suggest both The Feminine Mystique and Whipping Girl without the blog being sucked into a black hole of contradiction? (hint: the Feminine Mystique is transmisogynist and Whipping Girl is largely credited with coming up with that term in the first place and, plot twist, Whipping Girl is also racist).

What does it mean that I can read a post like this and feel utterly alienated for all the ways that it makes it very clear that this (like so many other things) is not for me.

And it makes an interesting tie-in with Bess Sadler’s talk on the diversity of tech librarianship (since he mentions a forth-coming post about technology and diversity somewhere in the beginning). Because… I am an academic librarian who works with tech. And I see this lack of diversity. And he mentions:

I want to work in places where “fit” is never considered as something to look for in a new hire. I want to hire new colleagues who don’t fit the status quo and can fill in our gaps and weaknesses with previously unconsidered perspectives.

Which, coming from the other end, where it has been studied and shown that simply having the ‘wrong’ name means that 30% of my resumes simply aren’t being read. He talks about ‘fit’ but not about the barriers to even getting to that particular point? Or the fact that even after you get hired, as a marginalized person you understand the bargain you’ve made:

That in exchange for this job, you absolutely must ensure that you meet any and all white standards for presentation and behaviour (google “Black women hair professional appearance” to see what I mean). That for this job, you are expected to ignore and shrug off any and all microaggressions that you will inevitably hear (and any and all outright overt oppression). That you will constantly struggle about whether or not to disclose your learning disability, just in case this means that you become disqualified for the position (even as you struggle to work within neurotypical standards). This list of bargains that marginalized people have to make goes on and on (and I’ve certainly omitted a great deal).

But how are these two things connected? The #diversity-50 project and employment? He calls it his middle ground, spending time learning and listening. Which I suppose is a good thing (particularly his understanding that he shouldn’t try to lead in this respect). But. And I realize this is an entirely selfish concern, his (or other’s) reading 50 diverse works this year won’t help me with my current job search (my part-time contract is nearing it’s end and I haven’t heard anything about an extension).

And this is exactly (if buried) the point: the things he is discussing in his blog post are… almost abstract concerns to him. Yet, they are immediate and critical issues for me. I have to worry about making rent now. Moreover, I have to worry that even making this blog post will serve to make me even more unattractive to potential employers, because I am breaking one of the more strongly enforced bargains: that people like me are acceptable as long as we remain silent.

Thoughts on Bess Sadler’s 2013 Code4Lib Talk @eosadler

I met Bess at Access 2012 (after corresponding with her in my capacity as an intern with Islandora) and she was definitely one of my favourite people there.

Anyway, Tara Robertson has been plugging her Code4Lib talk — starting about 3.24 or so on Facebook and so I decided to watch, despite my general resistance to watching videos (I don’t really like them and often would prefer a transcript).

It is a great talk because Bess specifically mentions the need for greater diversity at Code4Lib, which if it is anything like Access, I can understand why this is something desirable, especially since it is pretty clear to see that a great deal of people on the tech side of libraries are white, cis men.

(Which, by the way, it is pretty great to see that both gender identity and gender expression are covered by the new Code4Lib community guidelines since, yes, I have experienced transmisogynist and racist micro-aggressions from people in the community.)

Of course, it would have been nice to hear a mention of race but I understand that this isn’t necessarily going to be a focus on Bess’ part. I do wonder, though, what the racial breakdown of tech conference like Code4Lib is.

It is important, though, to have this and other discussions. To really attempt to build a community with diversity as a goal, rather than an afterthought.

Once again, thanks, Bess, for being wonderful and inspiring.

So, I saw a link to this post “Moving On” by Kathleen Fitzpatrick tweeted by John Dupuis.

He highlights the one question that allowed her to move on and make a big change in her life (and it is big, since few people walk away after the long slog to get tenure).

This question is: “Do you want to change the world?” (her answer, obviously, was ‘Yes’ and she isn’t implying that tenured professors never change the world. Not the focus).

I find it interesting, though, to think about. Mainly ’cause (as I said on Twitter), what if the answer is: “I already have.”

Sometimes I feel like too little credit is given for the small ways for how we change and impact the world. Our mere existence means that we’ve changed the world (the world would be entirely different, had any of us not been born. Indeed, this sort of thing is the bread and butter for science fiction and possible worlds.).

Just a thought to leave you with: What if you’ve already changed the world?

On the added ‘value’ provided by publishers

This article in the Guardian, written by an employee of Springer, asks us to consider the value that publishers still contribute to academic publishing, noting:

It does not take a huge intellectual leap to see how all of these activities benefit science and research. It is, however, hard to imagine how anyone with an internet connection could do this with the speed, efficiency and added value with which publishers operate, while still maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. In short, all of the activities outlined here cannot be done without the large investments in people and technology that we make via the fees that we charge.

Of course, the added value he mentions are things like editing, publicizing, management, infrastructure, distribution, etc. Basically all those things that publishers do. It would be fairly easy to address his comments point-by-point and show how there are increasingly more alternatives to traditional publishers and that this model is not the only one for adding value to research.

I’m not gonna go there. More interesting to me is noting the one thing that the author doesn’t really address: sustainability. He is happy to say that the publishers are necessary because they do all these things that no one else, apparently, is capable of doing. But he doesn’t address the most basic issue that academic libraries (by far the largest consumers of academic research), have with publishers: that their current model is unsustainable.

The current push for OA and other alternatives to traditional publishing is not only a reflection of changing cultures and trends in scholarly communication, but simply because academic libraries cannot afford to keep up with fees. It really is that simple. But this author provides little indication that he is aware that this is the fundamental problem.

Would this crisis exist if publishers weren’t continuously ensuring that subscriptions fees outpaced library budgets? If, rather than maximizing profit, they were actually concerned about research?

It is disingenuous to the extreme for publishers to expect anyone to believe that their primary goal in publishing is profits, not some altruistic goal to help humanity. This is a business for them. They will do only what profits them and their share holders, and any benefit to humanity from their product (research) is incidental. Just as any environmental damage by oil companies is incidental.

(No one has once said, as far as I’m aware, that the people employed by publishers shouldn’t be allowed to make a living at what they do. Indeed, their labour is valuable and, like everyone, they should be compensated accordingly. But there is a vast gap between this notion and the notion that scholarly communication should be a billion dollar industry whose profits, by and large, are *not* being put back into the community where most of their product comes from.)

Fun archival discoveries and the vageries of metadata

One of the tasks in my current position is verifying the veracity of metadata generated by students workers in the course of digitizing a set of archival photographs.

The very first set of negatives I opened included small prints with descriptions written on the backs. These descriptions weren’t included in the dc.description field, which is mainly student generated image descriptions. While I didn’t quite know what to do or where to put them (while I realize that all DC fields are repeatable, our current workflow/database for this set of images doesn’t actually allow for more than one dc.description field), I pretty much figured that it was important to record them.

Imagine my surprise that the image descriptions would create an interesting archival and metadata conundrum. As I transcribed the descriptions it became clear that the information on the envelope containing the negatives was actually incorrect. Although, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I had to ask a colleague for some help in reading the handwriting at the back of the pictures. In any case, the descriptions rather helpfully had names. Both of the people within the pictures and of locations. Combined with the year, I was able to find out more information.

The envelope identified the pictures as being in Africa. When, in fact, they were taken in Indonesia. In Womena and the Baliem Valley, to be exact. Why? Because the photos were of famous mountaineer Heinrich Harrer and Russell Kippax (Harrer is particular famous for being the subject of the biopic “Seven Years in Tibet” that Brad Pitt starred in). The pics are from his 1960′s expedition to climb Puncak Jaya.

Really cool stuff.

Interesting too is figuring out how to describe this, since the original envelope (with the incorrect information) is obviously a part of the archival history of the pictures, but so are the image descriptions on the print. All in all, we worked out a reasonable solution.

I’ll link to the pictures and collection when they’ve been ingested!

New Job

Just a quick post saying that I’m starting work this Thursday at York University as their new part-time Digital Projects Librarian.

I’m really happy about this.

It is, in many ways, the perfect starting position for me. Both allowing me to build on what I learned working with Islandora but also giving me enough time to study outside of the job to extend that skill set (I just enrolled at an online class with Waterloo in an intro to PHP and SQL).

Basically this is the start of my career and I couldn’t be more pleased.

The team at York seems awesome and I’m very much looking forward to working all of them.

Is self publishing substantively different that regular publishing?

And therein is the essential fact about self-publishing: Digital and print-on-demand technology has made the manufacture of books and their distribution through the Internet vastly more accessible than the traditional publishing model. But for every instance of a self-published work that gains meaningful traction because its author succeeds in finding an audience for it, the overwhelming majority of books do not.

via The Cruel Paradox of Self-Publishing – Peter Osnos – The Atlantic.

Reading over this article and quotation, I’m unclear how they are framing self-publishing as much different.

Unless, I’m deeply mistaken, there is also a huge percentage of traditionally published works that do not sell well. Even the fiction ones. Perhaps they’ll necessarily do better than a hundred copies, but the vast majority of published works, traditional of self, are not best sellers.

And even if a copy is bought, say by a library, does this sale matter if the book never actually circulates? Ask an academic library just how much of their collection has never circulated (it can be more than half). Ask a public library just how much of their collection has never circulated.

Then again, this is the problem with framing reading and publishing in a purely economic framework.

Would it not be better to have a hundred sales where you are fairly certain that most of the people who purchased actually read the book, or to sell a book to (for example) every library but never actually have it circulated or read?

On community pop-up libraries in Vancouver

The structure stands at the side of a quiet residential street in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, along a popular bikeway and under a canopy of trees.

Those who are new to it do double-takes as they pass, often cranking their necks, then doubling back to see what the display is all about. Among those who are familiar with it, its description is varied: It’s a library; it’s a hang-out; it’s a neighbourhood symbol of pride. (source)

I have mixed feelings about this. Mainly, I love community driven/created projects like this because it means that the project will be perfectly tailored to the community’s needs.

What makes me sad about it is knowing that something like this means that people in the community are not seeing the actual public library as serving their needs.