My Utopia

Generally the material that I am required to read for my LIS classes is BORING!! I find the most interesting LIS articles either on the listerserv or from my own research. For my Urban Library Seminars course, which I absolutely positively love, we were assigned to do a lot of reading this past week. My favorite article was called The Public Library in Utopia by Kevin J. Hayes. Although, the article is filled with various viewpoints I chose the three that most appealed to me.

First, Edward Bellamy’s ideal public libraries were conveniently open twenty-four hours a day (Hayes, 2010). In Bellamy’s utopia “no public service or convenience is ever suspended at the present day, whether by day or night, the year round (Hayes, 2010). When my classmate discussed this idea, he posed the question, how accurate have the predictions from this article proven to be? Last week I learned that in October, the Undergraduate Library will be open twenty-four hours. There’s an extended study area in the UGL that is open twenty-four hours from Sunday-Thursday. Now, the entire library will be open all day everyday for students and/or faculty who would like to use it.

Next, the article makes mention of how libraries were designed in the past. The stacks were designed so that librarians were able to keep an eye on the patrons and supervise everyone using the stacks (Hayes, 2010). Is it me, or does that sound completely ridiculous? Granted, they’re some patrons I find it necessary to monitor but only because they exhibit inappropriate behavior. Really, who has the time to sit and watch a patron’s activity while he/she is in the library? A librarian once told me something that I never forgot, in reference to children using the unfiltered computers in the adult section. When I asked why she didn’t stop children from doing this she said “we’re not babysitters.” My point exactly…

Finally, the article concludes within a description of the ideal public library. In fact, the last sentence reads, in utopia everyone knew how to use a library (Hayes, 2010). It is believed with any library, that the librarian must at some point show patrons how to access and/or use the library resources. While I do appreciate when a patron approaches the desk with some idea as to how to use the library catalog, I thoroughly enjoy showing he/she how to use databases or find articles. The day when everyone will know how to use the library is a scary day for me because if everyone will know how to use it, what then becomes of the librarian?

References

Hayes, K.J. (2010). The public library in utopia. Libraries & the Cultural Record, 45 (3), 333-349.

Religious Search Engines For A Thousand, Please

This week in the School of Library & Information Science, a student emailed a link on the listserv for SLIS students to check-out. The link lead to an article on NPR titled Religious Search Engines Yield Tailored Results. You can imagine that this email got people within the school buzzing, but is it really that big of a deal? Based on the dialogue it generated I’d say so, which is partly why I decided to discuss it in my blog this week.

Shea Houdmann runs SeekFind, a Colorado Springs-based Christian search engine that only returns results from websites that are consistent with the Bible (Nosheen, 2010). He says SeekFind is designed “to promote what we believe to be biblical truth” and excludes sites that don’t meet that standard (Nosheen, 2010). But SeekFind isn’t the only search engine carving a niche market among religious Internet users (Nosheen, 2010). There is also Jewogle for Jews and I’mHalal a Muslim search engine that started in the Netherlands (Nosheen, 2010).

As a Christian, I have never used a Christian search engine and I don’t plan to start in the near future. Although, checking out SeekFind might not be such a bad idea! My searches take place primarily on library catalogs and databases due to the nature of my school work. In my spare time, I have no problem using Google, Yahoo, and/or other search engines because they have yet to compromise my faith or spiritual growth. If something should come up that I don’t agree with I may be tempted to select it for hilarity or curiosity sake without having damned my soul to Hell (Pun Intended).

According to Michael Gartenberg, a partner at technology research firm Altimeter Group, these religiously centered search engines are bringing new users to the web (Nosheen, 2010). But not everybody has been supportive of the idea. Some people call it censorship (Nosheen, 2010). Some who oppose such search engines argue that allowing people to only access material that they already agree with will lead to an intolerant society (Nosheen, 2010).

Final Thoughts: I greatly disagree with the comment about people accessing material through religious search engines leading to an intolerant society. Culturally, and faith wise I believe that religious search engines are cool! To see people pulling together and creating technology that they prefer is fascinating. That’s good news to me! Religious search engines are no different than an angry parent coming into a library and demanding that a controversial book be banned. In fact, couldn’t one argue that despite the book being controversial it’s a least promoting literary interest within her child and perhaps others? Faith-based or religious search engines can be viewed in the exact same light because while they may censor/filter results, they are drawing new users to the web.

References

Nosheen, H. (2010, September 13). Religious Search Engines Yield Tailored Results. National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129709336

What's The Point?

Dearest Blog,
I have gotten out of my system the frustrations and anger in regards to the recent changes at the UGL. I don’t want every blog entry from here on out that I write to drip with disdain. I also don’t want to ignore things that make little to no sense here at the Undergraduate Library. Perhaps every library has policies or procedures they follow if a tornado were to hit their building. Or if a group or high school students are repeatedly being disruptive and causing a disturbance in the library. My favorite policy or procedure at the moment is how to handle pornography.

Pornography isn’t always an issue that comes up at the UGL. I’ve only had a few encounters where it was discussed. Once a male patron came to the Information Desk to inform me that a man near him was watching porn. While he didn’t appear to be offended by what the man was watching, he wanted to alert staff. Thank you sir, I replied without being quite sure on how to handle this matter.

Up until that point, a couple of librarians told me that they were unaware of any policy that existed to prohibit patrons from watching porn at the UGL. Of course, if patrons were watching child pornography this had to be addressed and if it wasn’t child porn, the “porn watcher” was well within his/her rights.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, after the implementation of the Combined Service Desk. As I sat in the GSA lounge one afternoon, I noticed a row of files dedicated to different policies/procedures at the UGL. In a matter of minutes, I was flipping through the files when I noticed a policy/procedure dedicated to the issue of pornography. Immediately, I took out the sheet of paper and devoured every word from top to bottom.

To my surprise, there really isn’t a whole lot you can do if someone is actually watching porn at the UGL. If a patron comes to make a complaint about it because he/she is offended, the staff person holds the right to confront the accused person. The staff can ask the person viewing porn to move to a less visible computer, but the patron holds the right to refuse to move. Should he/she refuse to move, the employee can suggest to the person making the complaint to move to another area of the library.

Final Thoughts: The fact that I just so happen to find this particular policy/procedure along with others in the GSA lounge indicates the ineffectiveness of communication within the UGL. I’ve been working here for well over 6 months and am just learning the policy/procedure for handling pornography. Here in lies my questions, what’s the point of creating various policies/procedures if they’re just going to be tucked away in a drawer never to be openly shared and/or discussed amongst staff? Who is benefitting from having topics of this nature stored away in a drawer?

Welcome to My Nightmare

Pissed, Bothered, and Angry. All of the mentioned words describe emotions felt during this week. This week marked the beginning of fall semester at WSU. My blog/thoughts leading up to the implementation of a combined service desk at the UGL beginning fall semester couldn’t have been more accurate.

Pissed: Let me elaborate as to why I was pissed. I worked Thursday morning and was busy from the time I got there until the time my shift at the desk ended. It’s the beginning of fall semester, which happens to be Wayne’s busiest semester so being busy was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was to run around like a chicken with my head cut-off trying to learn circulation terminology. I lost count of the number of times I went to find a circ supervisor to have he/she educate me on issues relating to circ. To me, all of this could have been avoided had there been some type of training and/or preparation prior to the start of fall semester. While you cannot plan for everything, you can at least prepare.

Bothered: I became bothered a few hours into my shift when I noticed a circ student assistant sitting on a computer browsing the latest fall fashions! Mind you, the desk would slow down periodically, but for the most part was busy throughout the morning. As she did this, two supervisors sat in cubicles behind her preoccupied with perhaps their own work-related interests? Anyway, she would take time between surfing the net for clothes to make her way to work the circ desk if she noticed a line. Later, I had to go upstairs and found this same staff person “shelving” books with a bag of potato chips in her hands!! I thought to myself, shouldn’t you be down at the desk working the long lines? I was also bothered by the fact that I never knew where my new supervisor was for most of my shift. There were times, he just happened to pop back up and then he’d pop right back out…

Angry: Towards the end of my shift I became very angry. A little back-story is necessary. Earlier this week, a circ employee felt it important to share with me that the Librarians were never going to come over to the desk to relieve us for breaks. Why? Some Librarians, specifically those employed at the UGL, are not for the whole “combined service desk,” and have no desire to support it. I embellished the last sentence from a personal belief, which I believe was later confirmed.

On Thursday, one of the Librarians came over to the desk. Of course, she asked how things were going, to which I responded, “There going.” Translation, she came to be nosey and get an update so she could go back laugh and/or gossip about things with her colleagues. Next, she asked if I had gotten a break and I said no. I should’ve kept my mouth shut because she went on this tangent about unions and them having to give us our breaks. Since she appeared to care so much about the travesty of my not getting a break, it appeared to be the perfect time to interject what I had been told by the circ employee. The Librarian had the nerve to act appalled in hearing this which prompted her to admit that the Librarians didn’t want to come over to the desk.

Before this whole combined service desk was implemented, a few Librarians at the UGL were responsible for relieving the Graduate Student Assistants for breaks. The minute we moved over to the circulation desk, they stopped relieving us. My guess is that they want to be exempt from doing circulation-related work because of their Master degrees in librarianship.

Excuse me, but aren’t the four GSA’s employed at the UGL working towards completing their Master’s degree in the same field? We may not have the actual degree yet, but it is hoped that after we earn those degrees we don’t become foolish enough to believe that a piece of paper eliminates us to participate and adapt to change. I can personally say, I didn’t do cartwheels up and down the halls at the announcement of a combined service desk, but the decision was made regardless of how I or any of the other GSA’s felt about it. Not coming over to the desk and not relieving us for breaks isn’t going to take away from the fact that there is a combined service desk at the UGL. I don’t understand how two groups of people, Librarians and Circulation/Access staff, at an academic institution can both refuse to work together and adjust to change. Until that’s understood, welcome to my nightmare…