Week 9

In Palfrey’s “Hacking Libraries,” I was interested in “data rot” and the concept of “many librarians have come to see their primary job as serving people at various stages of their lives:” “libraries will continue to be helpful guides.” While I was reading this, tones of self-defense and self-preservation lingered in my head. The problems mentioned for the internet seemed easily-fixable, and the problems mentioned for libraries seemed like they were just trying to catch up with the internet. Also, with the condescending-esque need for guidance, how will this work in the future where youth, who have internet intuition, don’t need guidance? So, my question is, do you imagine a future (not immediate) where libraries are obsolete? Instead of a future with both libraries and internet as separate, important entities, could you imagine the internet adopting the library and it’s purposes mentioned? How do you think newer generations (my generation) intuitive, intimate knowledge of technology as common will affect these issues over time?

In class we talked about the merits of both digitization and traditional libraries and if there is a room where both could work together. One of the things that challenged the idea that digitization is all-good is that we still don’t have the appropriate technology to fully implement our ideas about how libraries and digital copies of books would work together. With my essay being on the digitization of borges library and its limits in digitized form, I hear constantly here and there the limitation of todays technology. Though I think there is truth in this, that limitation of our technology limits our ability to create the fantastical library, I think that the past also plays a huge role in limiting us. The pre-existing networks, copyright etc all contributes to why we cant really “change” as drastically as we hope/or don’t hope.

It seems to me that there can really be no objective categorizing because our biases are the lens through which we perceive and interact with the world. I’ve always held the belief that objectivity is not something to be reached or to be found, but something that exists within all of us. I think that listening to all subjective opinions and reaching a consensus is the way we can create a somewhat “objective” method of categorization. I think of it like taking the best of all sides and from there we can find a solution. The problem that may arise with that is the fact that some views are so different from each other that sides will feel that there can be no agreement can be reached. Also, who gets to sit at these discussions? I feel as though the topic of discussion would be reviewed again for it’s importance. Is it better to reach that consensus or just remove categories all together? Also, I’m confused about the statement of gay and lesbian studies being what homosexuality is and queer theory being what homosexuality does. At first I related it to “theory vs practice”, but my confusion came from the fact that the word “theory” in queer theory actually refers to a practice. Can you explain how queer theory is a practice instead of a theory like the name suggests?

In Drabinski’s article, on page 13 she claims, “a queer theoretical approach calls instead for queer solutions: shifts in analytical approach that take seriously the contingency of these apparently stable structures…they should highlight and make visible the fundamental paradoxes of classification and cataloging from a queer perspective: in order to be accessible to users, materials must be fixed in place and described using controlled vocabulary. However, this fixing is always fundamentally fictive; classification and subject heading decisions are always made in a context that is subject to change.” Considering this statement about queer theory in libraries, where is this theory’s place in the digital age? In the conversation of going from print to digital in libraries, there is always the question of how do you go about deciding what parts of a collection to digitize. On top of this, how would you transform the physical space in the library to foster better collaboration with the digital? How does queer theory fit into this?

I was thinking about the library as a place of accessibility and symbol of “leveling the playing field”. After reading the piece, Queering the Catalog, I had second thoughts. When I think about the future library as an institution, I wonder how people in power are attempting to change the organization, labeling, and categorization of books and information. When it comes to the idea of correctness, how do we know that the decisions being made are correct? To some extent can we question the idea of bias, where everything is subjective to the individual? How can we argue that the library will become a place of correctness when we don’t even know what correct is? When we think of the library as a place that should be a sanctuary of information for all patrons that enter, how far will changing the library change the landscape of information and interpretation?

Some jumbled thoughts after thinking about tomorrow’s reading.

Today I had the misfortune of waking up to my high school email address ceasing to exist. I received the account in 5th grade, and, as of this morning, eight years of google docs, sentimental email exchanges, goofy chats, and research papers were gone to the wind. The end of an era, my childhood, and my first brush with technology. It must’ve felt somewhat like digitizing an archive and getting rid of the originals, only to realize that the technology is out of use and all is lost, or categorizing an entire library, then discerning that your labels and categories no longer make sense in the society you have organized for. Even better, writing a book and realizing that the long-held classifications it fit into for publishers no longer exist. How do the gender, economic, and racial categories of old authors speak to and mingle with newer, fluid books, seated side by side on shelves?

In an individualized world of spectrums, how does one group information into binary categories? Today’s anthropologists and scientists often laugh at the term “race,” as it has little biological meaning and was created by humans to categorize society (and our books about the people living in it) based on appearance, rather than genes. As individual races cease to exist in their historic capacity, keeping in mind they are expected to in the upcoming decades, how will the histories of those races change? Are books written, subconsciously, for the categories they fit into, and what happens when those are defunct?

How do the topics presented in “Queering the Library” translate to an age in which information distribution isn’t defined by the systems of categorization used in libraries, but rather by the algorithms used in search engines like Google? Do you believe that the extent to which these algorithms influence people’s consumption of information online is as pronounced as the influence of systems of categorization in libraries? If so, what are some solutions for this problem?

I remember at an early age being at The Book Expo America with my dad, who is a book publisher. He had a meeting with the buyer for Barnes and Noble over how to organize the new age section of the book store. The buyer was going around, meeting with various publishers and trying to find the ‘best’ way to organize that section. For the buyer, best probably meant most sales while for my dad, best probably meant the most sales of his books. Naturally then, there were some points of conflict. Queer theory never came up though if I had to guess I’d say that similar issues probably apply to bookstores as well, the difference being that there is now a strong for profit motive. So, in an ideal world how do we go about organizing the book store? What factors to we consider? Which do we negate? How do we find a balance between the book sellers, publishers, political correctness and any other factors that are in play?

We currently live in a digital age. While digitization seems like the inevitable future of libraries—since it is extremely easy to access—it still has problems of its own. Digital information is harder to preserve, more expensive, and faces issues, such as “data rot” and an uneven distribution along socioeconomic lines. Furthermore, it seems that much of a material’s essence comes with its physicality, so when a book is digitized, it’s somehow changed. As a class, we’ve explored several futuristic libraries (including the Library from Dr. Who’s Silence in the Library) that still contain physical books instead of a fully digitized catalog. Moreover, many people have a great aversion towards reading eBooks, because they feel that it somehow takes away from the literature itself or their overall reading experience. How should libraries go about digitizing themselves (to fit our new digital age) in a way that they can both serve the public interest, but still retain the essence of the materials? Should digitization only be employed as a back-up to the real thing? Do you see fully digitized libraries in our future?