Many, many, thanks go to my colleague, Jason Fowler, and my new friends at The Association of Librarians & Archivists at Baptist Institutions (ALABI) for inviting me to give a presentation on Patron-Centered Spaces in Nashville last week. I enjoyed my brief time with them, and look forward to attending as a member in the future. They have graciously posted my manuscript for all who are interested.

I argued for Augustine’s definition of community from City of God, and then discussed the implications of this definition for a library’s physical and virtual spaces. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Popularity: 36% [?]

I don’t have a Kindle. I have never used a Kindle. But I love the concept.

I do have books — lots of them. I love the concept and the craft of books. But I’m not a librarian for the sake of books.

I say these things because I agree to some extent with both of two opposing viewpoints on the Kindle’s impact on the culture of words and the future of books, both of which were published at theAtlantic.com.

Sven Birkerts’ article of March 2, 2009, “Resisting the Kindle,” laments the potential world created by the Kindle revolution in which “libraries survive as information centers rather than as repositories of printed books.” Professionally, I am actually fine with that. I am a librarian not primarily to preserve information but to make it available in ways that our students find helpful and accessible. Personally, however, his recognition that our literature is deeply contextual and historicized resonates with me. Consider:

Why, then, am I so uneasy about the page-to-screen transfer—a skeptic if not a downright resister? Perhaps it is because I see in the turning of literal pages—pages bound in literal books—a compelling larger value, and perceive in the move away from the book a move away from a certain kind of cultural understanding, one that I’m not confident that we are replacing, never mind improving upon. I’m not blind to the unwieldiness of the book, or to the cumbersome systems we must maintain to accommodate it—the vast libraries and complicated filing systems. But these structures evolved over centuries in ways that map our collective endeavor to understand and express our world. The book is part of a system. And that system stands for the labor and taxonomy of human understanding, and to touch a book is to touch that system, however lightly.

I think, though, that Matthew Battles’ article of March 5, 2009, “In Defense of the Kindle,” along with his 2003 book on the “unquiet history” of libraries, has helped to soothe my personal bibliophilic concerns:

Yet the culture of letters has always been subject to disruption and transformation. Indeed, since the advent of print, technologies of the book have changed dramatically, and with them the book’s place in society. The world of letters not only transcends these technological changes—it thrives because of them. Were that not the case, the cultural continuity that Birkerts holds so dear would have been lost long ago.

In other words, We didn’t start the fire. It was always burnin’ since the world’s been turnin’.

Popularity: 46% [?]

“When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments.” (II Timothy 4:13, ESV)

– Apostle Paul, writing to Timothy as an old man imprisoned in a hole in the ground for spreading Christianity.

The Mamertine Prison is now a tourist destination included on many guided tours of Rome. Back then it was a literal hell-hole for the prisoners who were lowered into this cave-like underground dungeon through a hole in the ceiling. It was here in which the Apostle Paul was likely imprisoned near the end of his life.

Dark. Cold. Lonely.

And yet, he wanted his books. Why? What possible purpose could books serve for someone who knew what it was to have divine truth pour out through his own quill? Paul planted churches, invested in people, taught and discipled those who would teach and disciple. He penned two-thirds of the New Testament. And when the end seemed near, he wanted people … and books?

Lord willing, I will spend the next few posts attempting to answer this question and the implications for ministry in general and the ministry of theological librarianship in particular.

• Post I. The purpose of books/parchments for Paul
• Post II. The look of that purpose/need today
• Post III. How we as theological librarians can meet that need.

Popularity: 36% [?]

I realize the title of this post sounds more like a Poirot novel, but I am actually refering to another example of mysterious book provenance I found in our library today. In 1851, the London publisher Thomas Bosworth published a second edition of Cases of Conscience; or, Lessons in Morals: for the Use of the Laity by Pascal the Younger (a.k.a. Pierce Connelly). The book is more of a pamphlet, and so was easily published together with a letter to W. E. Gladstone, Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford, who apparently held to some rather appeasing positions regarding the validity of the Church of Rome. The author attempts in this letter to convince Gladstone of the inconsistency of Romanism with true piety.

The letter itself is interesting reading, but the mysterious part is the handwritten, 4-page, note I found tucked within the book. The handwriting is rather hard to read (for me, at least), but it appears to be commending this publication along with the Church of Rome’s reply (which is not included in our binding). My best effort at interpreting note with links to images of the pages:

[page 1]
Blendworth _____
Hon. dean -
Feb. 6, 1859

My dear _______ /
I am very anxious / to put before you two / pamphlets written by / a friend of mine of / distinguished ability. / Their titles are “Cases / of Conscience or Lessons / in Morals for the use / of the Laity” by Pascal / [page 2] The Younger and / these men _____ Pascal / the Younger. / The Church of Rome’s / Defense against Cases / of Conscience with a Reply. / I consider these Pam- / phlets as one of the / severest blows, which the / Church of Rome has / received in modern / [page 3] times – a blow from which / she cannot recover – / Pray tell me the name / of your London bookseller / that _____ send you a / copy of each (of which I / expect _____ exceptance) / in kind to forward – / Should you like the Pam / phlets, those ____ will / kindly recommend them / to others; as it is a great / [page 4] object with my friend / (whose name I _____ _____ / mention) to sell his _____ / In this once well off, he / is now alas! in needy / circumstances -/
My archdeacon (_____) / says “this reply” is one of / the cleverest things he has / ever seen -/
_____ are my dear _____ / In _____ /

Edw. L. Ward

My best guess at the identity of the author is Edward Langton Ward, rector of Blendworth until his death in 1881.

Any help you can give me in deciphering the script of this note would be appreciated, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else. The next to last unreadable word appears to be the same as the second unreadable word.

Don’t you just love books?

Popularity: 40% [?]

We must all admit that the librarians of Southern Seminary are, in all seriousness, a hip, edgy, stereotype-busting lot. Realizing that we are not your average librarians, I picked up Librarians in Fiction (by Grant Burns) in which is offered a list “reasonably representative of the dark side of librarians”. I include it not to point out the similarities (I for one, couldn’t find any), but to court a greater appreciation for the exceptional librarians at the disposal of our seminary community. The list:

awkward bald chunky condescending cranky cruel desiccated devious dirty disagreeable dreary dry dull dumpy emaciated exhausted feeble florid friendless frightened frustrated glowering hesitant huge humorless hysterical idiotic ill-tempered inhuman interfering lonely mincing myopic narrow nasty nervous neurotic odd old maid pale peculiar portly possessive red-faced repressed sad sexless sex-starved shapeless sharp-tongued shy slow sly spinster stiff thin tired tortured trapped ungainly unhealthy unlovable unnatural unscrupulous vengeful waxen wilted withered wizened

Burns, Grant. Librarians in Fiction: A Critical Bibliography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co, 1998. p2-3

Popularity: 32% [?]

I never used to think Mr. Bean was all that funny. I must be growing up at long last because I think this is hilarious. Just don’t try it in my library. If our Archives and Special Collections librarian doesn’t dispense his humble but effective justice upon you, my Patron Services staff will catch you at the door with an undeniable efficiency. Doubt me? Don’t even try.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Readex Digital Institute
Speaker: Paul Duguid, School of Information, University of California, Berkeley.
“The World According to Grep: Seeing the World through a Search Window”

Popularity: 34% [?]

Speaker: Meg Bellinger, Director of the Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure

Popularity: 29% [?]

Agreed.

… as digitally stored information becomes increasingly accessible, libraries will need to provide more spaces for people to study. John Wilkin, the librarian at the University of Michigan has noted that “… we have more than just about any institution in terms of electronic resources available to our users. … And yet, at the same time, people are coming to the library in greater numbers. Our gate count goes up, our circulation stays high … people come together to use resources.” Libraries will increasingly be places of interaction and study, and students and faculty will require more help indentifying reliable and trustworthy information, accessing that information, and using it.

From Daniel O. Aleshire, Earthen Vessels: Hopeful Reflections on the Work and Future of Theological Schools (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) 88.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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.

Popularity: 22% [?]