I have often said that the librarians were needed in previous decades in order to help researchers find information, but are needed today in order to help researchers skillfully navigate the glut of information available. We do this through a variety of means. Librarians are the janitorial engineers of the information world. We make sense of it all. We organize the information into nice neat little piles called subject headings, wayfinders, and databases. We sort laundry from the information hamper — deciding which information should go where and with what other information and then folding it nicely and placing it on a shelf (or in a database…) for you to find easily.

Sorry for that analogy. Something within me would not let me pass it up.

Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine has an interesting article about Google’s accomplishments and whether the new age of search will render our neat piles of information less relevant. He writes,

The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.
…

At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach, one that requires us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality. It forces us to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later.
…

This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.There is now a better way. Petabytes allow us to say: “Correlation is enough.” We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into the biggest computing clusters the world has ever seen and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.
…

The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world. Correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.

There’s no reason to cling to our old ways. It’s time to ask: What can science learn from Google?

The question remains, though, what happens after Google? Libraries (though not all) will indeed weather the storm, but what they will look like on the other side is yet to be determined.

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Libraries, Research, Tech, Web | No Comments »

Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, commented today on Robert Darnton’s New York Times Book Review article, “The Library in the New Age”, which appears in the June 12, 2008, issue.

An excerpt from Robert Darnton, speaking of Google’s worthy but tip-of-the-iceberg book project:

Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don’t think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital re-positories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don’t count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns.

An excerpt from Dr. Mohler:

Professor Darnton’s approach is very helpful — especially for those of us who bear the stewardship of libraries and institutions of higher learning. The future will be digital (or whatever replaces digital media), but the future will also need the library. The library will remain as a citadel, where books need no batteries and reading requires no Bluetooth or wireless technology. The spirit of scholarship will always be most at home among books, and the soul committed to learning will always find nourishment in the library.

On a related note, Microsoft has suspended progress on it’s Live Search Academic counterpart to Google Books and Google Scholar. Read about it here. Has Microsoft given up on search? This would indeed explain why they attempted to buy Yahoo!, but would also leave Google as the only mass-digitizer of library content. Once again, libraries will no doubt need to pick up the pieces and bring order to the mess.

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Books, Libraries, Quotes, Research, Web | 1 Comment »

I have a vested interest in the future of libraries and will understandably rage against the dying of their light. My interest is both professional and personal, and though the professional literature says I should be concerned that my bibliographic responsibility and bibliophilic personality may soon be at odds, and though part of me laments this reportedly dubious future with an increasingly sentimental sigh, I am made more willing to see the centrality of bindings and casings go somewhat peacefully into that good night because of an even greater affection and purpose. The unique experience of encountering true eloquence in words and true elegance in print, though regrettably irreplaceable, is not the reason why I am a seminary librarian.

Kenneth Kantzer, in a 1983 Christianity Today article, recounted his perspective on the role of a library in preparation for ministry:

I began my own advanced study for the ministry when I graduated from college in the 1930’s. I sought an accredited school committed to a consistent biblical theology, with a scholarly faculty, a large library, and a disciplined intellectual atmosphere. I couldn’t find any. The nonevangelical schools had great libraries, strong scholarly faculties, and impressive reputations as accredited centers of learning. The evangelical schools had no libraries to speak of, unknown faculty (J. Gresham Machen, the last evangelical scholar, had just died), and no tradition of high scholarship. (”Documenting the Dramatic Shift in Seminaries from Liberal to Conservative,” CT 2/4/83)

Access to a large library caused Kantzer, at least in part, to choose Harvard over an evangelical institution for his Ph.D. studies. Other options did exist. Just not any with large libraries.

Today, it would appear that quite a few evangelical seminaries have libraries that measure up well. As R. Albert Mohler points out, books are more affordable today than at any point in history. This glut of available print has enabled seminaries to build formidable libraries — and just in time for the digital age. I read at least an article per week about the dubious future of academic libraries and the varying theories on how to help your library survive. Serial subscriptions in academic libraries have been on the decline for years because of their digital availability and rising print costs. This availability renders the content more ubiquitous (or, at least, access to that content) and payment is often a bit more budget-friendly. This is just one example of the modern change and evolution of information delivery in libraries.

Modes of information delivery change and evolve. They always have. These changes in the means of information propagation are always accompanied by significant cultural progressions as well, though the order of these two is often debatable (see Paradigms Lost: The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word). The point is that we are in one of those times. That may be unfortunate for libraries (time will tell), but it is not necessarily bad for the reason why I became a librarian.

Would Kantzer have chosen Harvard today? Perhaps. But not if the tipping point is access to information in the form of a sizable library like he faced over a half-century ago, and neither will future Kantzers in the next half-century since the information formerly housed in physical silos will be more ubiquitously available digitally. The challenge of academic research during Kantzer’s time was the scarcity of information. Reference services were needed by students to help identify, locate, and access necessary works. Today, however, the challenge of academic research is the glut of information, not the lack of it. Reference services are needed in order to help navigate this glut to identify what is truly helpful and necessary. This is a marvelous problem — and one which will likely relieve evangelical seminaries from keeping up with the Harvard Joneses.

I did not become a seminary librarian in order to introduce pastors-in-training to books. I became a librarian in order to be a part of something much larger. The experience of losing yourself in a library of books is indeed marvelous (remember William of Baskerville’s lingering experience in the abbey library?), but the experience of losing yourself in order to gain Christ is of infinitely greater worth. If the library prophets are right and the coming generation will know less of libraries but have greater access to information, then seminaries — though filled with book-lovers — stand to gain the most. As the amount of available information increases with the ease of access to that information, more pastors will find a seminary theological education a viable option for them. Investing truth in those who will invest in others also is the calling of ministry, and the present revolution means that services such as our library’s new digital repository may help advance the purpose of the seminary and push resources, services, and training out into the lives of those desiring to be equipped for the work of ministry.

As for the library? I do hope we are not yet reading the library’s elegy and that the library’s remarkable ability to withstand the “forces of change and the power of princes” will indeed prevail, but as Matthew Battles rightly points out,

From age to age, libraries grow and change, flourish and disappear, blossom and contract–and yet through them all we’re chasing after Alexandria, seeking a respite on Parnassus, haunted by the myths of knowledge and of wholeness that books spawn when massed in their millions. The divine irony that Borges discovered while groping his way through the stacks strikes the sighted librarian just as powerfully: preserving themselves, the books elude us.

But to borrow from both Dylan Thomas and Umberto Eco, I will rage against the dying the light before we hold the empty name of yesterday’s rose. All the more, however, should I borrow from our Lord himself: “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30, ESV)

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Books, Libraries, Poetry, Quotes, Research, Tech | 3 Comments »

Jason Fowler, one of my gifted colleagues here at the library, has been diligently working away at developing an application that would take the tables of contents from our library’s most frequently used theological journals, make them available online, (wait for it……) publish RSS feeds for them, and (wait for it……) even publish discipline-specific RSS feeds for them! From our library’s announcement:

The James P. Boyce Centennial Library would like to announce the beta test of a new web service designed to deliver the table of contents from some of our most frequently used journals and serials to our faculty and students. JTOC, short for Journal Table of Contents, is a an application that provides online delivery of this content through a series of web pages and RSS feeds. JTOC allows students and faculty to keep abreast of what the library acquires in their field or favorite journals. To begin using JTOC, please visit http://library.sbts.edu/jtoc.

The library’s goal in designing JTOC was to create a simple system that would allow the content to be delivered in a quick and timely manner. Because text entry is generally a time consuming exercise, and because scanning is quick, the library’s staff decided to use images to distribute the content.

How should one use JTOC? The most useful way to use it is probably through setting up JTOC’s RSS feeds in a feed reader. Most often, this can be done within JTOC by simply clicking on an RSS feed button that looks like this –> . JTOC offers a variety of feeds. The main feed allows you to keep up with the library’s most recently received journals, but JTOC also serves feeds for specific journals and subject areas.

When you click on a feed button within JTOC, Firefox will give you several options for managing your feeds. Many find the most useful method for keeping up with feeds to be Google Reader. If you select this option in Firefox, and you have a Google account, you can add the feed directly to your Google Reader. When you use Google Reader, you do not even have to visit the JTOC site to see the new journals the library acquires.

The library hopes that you find this new service valuable to your research. Please keep in mind that JTOC is still in a beta test phase. We ask for your patience as we discover any issues that might arise with it.

Well done, Jason.

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Libraries, Research | 1 Comment »

An article in today’s New York Times (online) by Katie Hafner summarizes a lawsuit brought by three academic publishers against Georgia State University’s appropriation of their content for digital course reading packets. It states, in part:

In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Atlanta, the publishers — Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Sage Publications — sued four university officials, asserting “systematic, widespread and unauthorized copying and distribution of a vast amount of copyrighted works” by Georgia State, which the university distributes through its Web site.

…Indeed, as the printed word is put in digital form, holding onto rights seems to many like climbing up the slippery sides of a glass. The case centers on so-called course packs, compilations of reading materials from various books and journals. The lawsuit contends that in many cases, professors are providing students with multiple chapters of a given work, in violation of the “fair use” provision of copyright law. The publishers are seeking an order that the defendants secure permissions and pay licensing fees to the copyright owners.

Our own library is preparing to launch an institutional repository where digital content will be kept and made available to students/faculty/public depending on the nature of the work and its copyright status. This the very reason why I will be attending a conference on copyright management and libraries later this month at Ball State University up in Indiana. It appears to be a helpful conference, but theme is almost too corny even to mention. Librarians can really be a ridiculous bunch, but we appear to be among the few who are pushing the use of bleeding-edge technological advances for the legal dissemination of information. And yet Georgia State gets sued. Another half-dozen or so libraries have revised their policies for copyright management (which were likely fairly detailed already) in response to publishers’ concerns in the last year.

When will publishers learn that the availability and accessibility of information is directly tied to its usage? When was the last time you bought a music CD without listening to part of it online or at Barnes and Noble first? Similarly, in my humble and often incorrect opinion, the NIV translation of the Bible outsold the NASB translation because the NASB people were more restrictive in their licensing rights for use in publications, programs, curricula, etc… Again, accessibility is directly tied to usage in today’s world.

Admittedly, I do not know the details of this lawsuit. Nor am I acquainted with the copyright policies of Georgia State’s libraries. I do, however, plan on keeping an eye on this lawsuit. It is likely not as clear-cut as the NYT story reports it, nor is it as clear-cut as commercial copyright violations. Copyright law and its application to academic libraries is increasingly murky. And I have been tasked with our own library’s copyright clearance for reserves, e-reserves, and potentially for helping to navigate this issue with our forthcoming digital repository. I just finished revising our copyright policies last year and now I feel like I should do it again because the application of the law keeps changing. If we as librarians cannot keep up with it, how can we expect faculty to understand? Copyright conference, here I come.

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Libraries, copyright | No Comments »