Smartphones, eReaders, and Candy, Candy, Candy

The topic of eBooks and Smartphones are constantly coming up nowadays, and especially in my LIS classes.  For the most part, I have been able to get by with my Tracfone flip phone (free advertising for them?). I have been able to get by with just the ability to text and call people; it even has a crappy phone camera! So far I haven’t felt the need to surf the web while on the move (I don’t need to be on Facebook constantly like some people, I just happen to be on it a lot when I am on my computer. Okay, I might have a problem, which is probably why not having a phone with internet access is good for me, at least right now.) However, I hear of all of the apps and fun stuff that smartphones can do now and I find myself wondering, am I going to be behind the times? Am I going to fall behind technology and thus be less capable as a librarian if I do not fall into the trap of smartphones? On one hand I find myself hesitant to go that route, especially since tracfone’s pay-as-you-go system is all I have ever known, on the other hand I find myself wanting one so can keep up with the rest of the world.

            Now onto eReaders and eBooks. I personally will probably never have one as I do not care for reading off of a screen. I prefer a physical book in my hands and the tactile joy I get out of turning the page. I have nothing against their existence--I remember seeing a similar thing on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the hands of Captain Sisko’s son Jake and thinking it was cool. I think that people who enjoy them should be able to enjoy them and the cheap books, articles, etc. are awesome. I definitely think that they do belong in libraries, but physical books should still be part of library systems. As I kind of ranted on in my first post, I am against totally digital libraries and think they are a disservice to everyone even if they don’t realize it. (Add the bacon.) They are an awesome thing, I just prefer physical books. I do not, however, like how companies that sell eReaders are making physical books their enemy.  They belong to the same industry, they are just separate products. I feel it would be better for this industry if they teamed up together to further promote eReaders and physical books, but what the heck do I know I am only a writer and library student.

Also, on one topic mentioned in class, most writers I know are library junkies aka we like libraries and if you run into a writer that doesn’t like their books being in libraries ask them how their writing career is going for them. Money is involved, but as a writer I would rather write for the enjoyment of readers and get my book out to as many people as possible, which means libraries are awesome. Call me biased because I am going to be a librarian but libraries are cool.

            Now to a more personal note, I will try to tie it back into libraries at the end but if I don’t I think that there is enough above to appease you. In 511 this week Professor Lankes passed around bags of assorted candy to explain cataloging and metadata (another reason why I love this place, they get creative with their instruction. And they hand out candy.)  Before he passed them out, he asked everyone if there were any allergies, and for those of you that do not know or don’t remember, I am allergic to red food dye. Specifically Red Dye #40 but I avoid all red dyes just to be safe. Obviously there was the given shock and awe, especially from Professor Lankes (who also kept bringing it up to make his points, which I was okay with as long as he didn’t ask me if I could slide on a red slide or use a red napkin like my high school friends did). The shock and awe I admit is annoying despite telling people my entire life, no one expects the red dye allergy (doesn’t have quite the same zing as the Spanish Inquisition but oh well).

            I hate assorted candy bags (as well as starburst and other variety candy packs). The “fun-sized” Starburst are even worse as there is no indication of what is inside so I could end up with two pieces I can’t eat and a waste of money (I once bought a package of Airheads because it only listed blue dye on the outer package but when I opened it, half of them were red or had red in them. Not happy was a bit of an understatement, though it does present instances to share with friends). In the Wonka assortments they have nerds but it is always the red or the purple, never anything I can eat, thank god for banana Laffy Taffy or I wouldn’t be able to eat anything Wonka. 2/3 of the time I cannot eat the candy in the assortments because candy companies suck at equal amounts (M&Ms I could get 20 pieces or I could get 3 and then have to give the rest to others, this is more common with Smarties, and then have to give the rest to somebody else. Being color blind doesn’t help, especially since the colors I confuse are always the ones that would have red dye and their non-red counterparts). Most of the time they only list out the colors at the end or beginning of the ingredients list and they don’t separate out which is which (companies that make popsicles are notorious for this). Companies that do separate the colors out are awesome, and companies that don’t even use dyes are even better (Lays is awesome for going the All Natural kick. Product placement, product placement, product placement). Bringing this back to libraries though, the output of catalogs is metadata, and the ingredients on the back of the packages of candy qualifies as this metadata. Candy metadata sucks.

                Okay, so I was a little slow with the blogging this week, but I am taking the advice from my nonfiction professor in undergrad, no apologies. So, even though we were told that we did not have to post about 511, I think this week’s class was just too good to not talk about, and not just because of bacon cheeseburgers.

            I know what you are probably thinking, “Bacon cheeseburgers? I thought you were in Library School not McDonalds College.” It is in relation to my groups blog thread pertaining to our professor, David Lankes’ book, The Atlas of New Librarianship. (Our thread is over, but feel free to join into the conversation on the next groups post at http://www.newlibrarianship.org/wordpress/?p=2348) One of the issues that was brought up during the conversation was the issue of Librarians improving society, one poster said it was wrong for librarians to tell society what to do (or at least that is the gist of what I got). So, for some strange reason I decided to be politically correct and say that we were merely facilitating the addition of knowledge to society through, if I may so myself, a brilliant analogy to a bacon cheeseburger, the bacon obviously being the added knowledge because obviously bacon is awesome (can you tell I have been craving bacon all week?). I basically said you can choose to add the bacon (knowledge) or not.

            In class we started talking about the thread and obviously this issue came up again and Professor Lankes went on probably the most inspiring rant I have heard. He said that we do tell society what to think because we are part of society and we have just as much a stake in it as anyone else and to say that we do not for whatever reason is an insult (paraphrasing I don’t think he actually said that in those words). I think one of my favorite parts is he called me “Burger” in order to get my attention (I was writing down another of his quotes but obviously it got cut off and it is incomplete in my notebook which kind of bothers me) and said “We add the bacon!” Meaning we add the knowledge, we tell society what should happen. Though, I think the most inspiring thing he said was “No one changed the world by standing around and waiting to be asked.”

       That bacon cheeseburger looks fantastic, why do I do this to myself?

            In my 511 class this week my professor talked about the word “radical.” He stated (if I am remembering correctly, my notes seem to believe so) that librarians are radical. However, radical in biology means core, as opposed to what we usually mean when we say radical, extreme.  He seemed to suggest that librarians are both radical in the extreme sense and radical in the sense that we are the core—of libraries, of society, of an apple, take your pick, though probably shouldn’t go with the apple, people might start thinking your weird like they know I am (I take weird as a compliment just in case you were thinking I was being negative).

            I have never considered myself radical, of either definition. As far as the core, I have just never stopped to think about it. Personally, I don’t like writing about myself and I don’t want to think more of myself than I actually am. This brings us to why I don’t see myself as extreme.  I always ere on the side of caution, sometimes to my detriment, and I take a long time to think and make a decision. That’s why I don’t go to restaurants very often…that and I am poor.  I guess I am a little extreme, I switched to a creative writing major in undergrad and I have taken the plunge into grad school, for Library and Information Science no less. Perhaps it just takes another way of looking at yourself, like we have to look at libraries and more specifically our mission as librarians.

            Another thing I want to talk about is something that got me riled up. One of my friends posted on her Facebook (mentioning another social network on a blog, what are the rules of that?) that in her life she always chose female jobs, one of which she listed was in a library. I half-jokingly responded that librarianship was co-ed. Then later another one of her friends, a guy no less, posts that maybe men just don’t want to be in a place of higher learning and that he has never seen a guy in a library except to get a book for a class. He may have just been trolling, but I had to defend my people, which include male librarians. I went on a rant of how there were plenty of men that go to libraries, and there were plenty of male librarians, including many of my professors and classmates. I did concede that it is a field dominated by women, but to deny the fact that there are male librarians is the same denial women have fought against for decades, most notably in the United States with the suffrage protests. Thoughts?

Where are we going?

           Yesterday in my 511 class the question was brought up whether a library could exist without a community. Also brought up was the idea that it was the librarian that made the library, and not necessarily the room with books. The general consensus in the class seemed to be that the physical library could exist; however, its purpose would not be served since there was no community. Therefore there would be no real need for the librarian. This brings up the question: can the librarian exist without the library? Does this mean we are moving towards completely digital libraries?

            According to our professor, David Lankes, our mission as librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in our communities. Our increasingly digital age certainly gives us a new definition of community. It could be as small as the 2000 person town I come from or as large as the world itself.  However, does this mean we are moving away from the room with the books completely? Yes, we need to change and adapt to the technological world, and though much of a librarians tasks may now take place on the internet. Take me for example, I was averse to adopting twitter and blogging (despite being a writer, there was just something about blogging that didn’t feel quite right for me, perhaps it was the lack of going through rewrite after rewrite) and here I am at Syracuse tweeting and blogging away. Okay, maybe not that much but something exists where it didn’t exist before. Beyond all this technology though, I do not believe that physical libraries are dying, we will always have community members that would rather read a book that sits in their hands, that get the tactile enjoyment out of hold a book and turning its pages, than reading it off a screen. In fact I am one of those people. And personally I feel it would be a disservice to the community, and though it may not necessarily be a detriment to society, it would not be an improvement and would be working towards a dangerous future. I feel I have gone off a rant that has nothing to do with the class though so I will end this here.

            If anyone has suggestions on how to improve my blog, they are welcome, as long as they are reasonable.