Woman of the River

Richard E. Westwood, Woman of the River: Georgie White Clark, White-Water Pioneer, Utah State University Press, 1997.

I have had the generous help and cooperation of many people in getting this book together.  Karen Underhill and the staff at Cline Library, Arizona University, got me started and helped along the way by guiding me through the Georgie Clark collection and putting me in touch with Rosalyn J. (Roz) Jirge. This book would have been incomplete without the input and help from Roz.  She not only told me of her own experiences, but collected others' diaries, did interviews, transcribed taps of my interviews and supplied me with names and address of passengers and boatmen that were invaluable in my research. 

COMMENT

It's not uncommon to find a librarian listed in the acknowledgments of a book. This one has a nice description of a research strategy as well,  that includes tracking down people for interviews.  Sometimes the answer to a research question is not in the library collection but in knowing the right person to ask. This librarian happened to know that Roz Jirge was the right person. This kind of reference help is only possible when librarians have local knowledge.  Librarian training is focused on generic strategies to find published or archived information, but researchers are often focused on information gaps-- the biography that has not yet been written, the history that has not yet been told.  A recurring library story is about finding hidden treasure in dusty stacks or archival boxes -- the material that nobody has noticed and nobody has thought to use.

Thanks to this researcher, the historical memory of Roz Jirge has been written in a book that is now available in the library collection, and anyone can read the story of a river running pioneer.  Not so long ago, I took a river trip through Westwater Canyon at high water (30,000 cfs).  The river guides lashed the rafts together in "double rigging" that they said was invented by Georgie White Clark to run the big rapids in the Grand Canyon.  I'm glad those guides knew their river history!

There Should be a Public Option for Everything

Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L. Alstrott, "There Should Be a Public Option for Everything," New York Times, July 7, 2019, p,. SR10.

Throughout our history, Americans have turned to public options as a way to promote equal opportunity and reconcile markets with democracy.  For example, public libraries allow anyone to read, check out books or surf the internet.  This expands educational opportunities and guarantees access to information to everyone, but it doesn't prevent people from buying books at the bookstore if they choose. 

 COMMENT

     The oped argues that if capitalism is going to survive we need to reverse trends towards privatization of public spaces and deliberately offer  public options, government supplied goods and services that coexist with the private marketplace and that are available to all. The public library is offered as an example. People are still free to buy books and pay an ISP, but they also have the library as an option. The authors argue that "We don't have to choose between competitive markets and equal opportunity.  Public options are a way to mitigate the damage that comes with the worst aspects of capitalism while creating a common fabric that ties us together."

     With Republicans in Congress forming an Anti-Socialism Caucus, it seems essential to push this point. Privatization of everything is not only bad for citizens, it's bad for capitalism. Public options compete in a free-market, but they don't stop entrepreneurs from offering fancier, better, more convenient services to rich people.  Public parks don't stop people from having yards,  public transit doesn't stop people from driving cars, and the Post Office isn't the only place that can deliver packages. Sociologists are beginning to pay more attention to civic infrastructure that holds communities together and much of it consists of public options.  Ironically, "anti-socialism" that attacks public options is probably anti-capitalism as well.

   




   
   

SLC Airport Wants Public Input On It's New Master Plan

SLC Airport Wants Public Input On Its New Master Plan (Local Briefs), Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, 2019, p. A10.

The new $3.6 billion re-build of Salt Lake City International Airport was envisioned 20 years ago in the Airport's current master plan.  Now, the city wants to know what residents think the airport should look like 20 years from now.
..
It invites all interested parties to share ideas at a meeting July 17 from 6 pm. to 7:30 pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library.

COMMENT

Refreshments, parking validation and live streaming on Facebook encourage the public to weigh in on community planning.  The public library provides space for the meeting.  The notice of the meeting is published in a local newspaper, and presumably (I didn't check) listed in library events.  In any case, it's hard to know how citizens would discover this opportunity for public comment without the newspaper and the library.

Once Upon a River

Diane Setterfield. Once Upon a River: A Novel. 2018.

     The character of Henry Daunt is inspired by the magnificent real-life photographer of the Thames Henry Taunt. Like my Henry, he had a houseboat kitted out as a darkroom. In the course of a lifetime he took some 53,000 photographs using the wet collodion process His work came close to being destroyed when, after his death, his house was sold and his garden workshop dismantled.  On learning that many thousands of he glass plates stored there had already been smashed or wiped clean for use as greenhouse glass, a local historian, Harry Paintin, alerted E. E. Skuse, the city librarian in Oxford. Skuse was able to stop the work and arrange real of the surviving plates for safekeeping. I note their names here out of gratitude for their swift actions. It is thanks to them that I have even able to explore the Victorian Thames visually and weave this story around Taunt’s images.  [p.461]

COMMENT

  This anecdote describes the preservation function of the library.  It's not just a “book museum,” but a multi-media museum as well. As is often the case, the librarian stepped in to rescue a valuable history collection only after part of it had already been destroyed. While librarians are sometimes criticized as "gatekeepers," it is also true that outside of bookish professions people may not recognize the value of media artifacts. 

The heroic librarian is specifically mentioned by name since the rescued photographs were the basis for a novel. Unlike Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, this novel doesn't reproduce any of the  historic images that inspired it.  The but the images are only represented in the writing. This kind of output from library materials is so much more imaginative than the carefully documented scholarly communication and undergraduate term papers we tend to associate with library research.  

   There are a number of books about Henry Taunt and his photographs.  In his day, he even wrote a river guide-- A New Map of the River Thames (1872), which inspired interest in recreational boating including what is possibly the best river-trip book ever written, Three Men in a Boat (1889).  

  

Book Publishers, Unbound at Last

Jane Margolies, "Book Publishers, Unbound at Last," New York Times, June 12, 2019, p. B6.

When Abrams Books recently moved to new offices in Lower Manhattan from its longtime home in Chelsea, it hired the consultants that companies typically calling for their expertise in audiovisual, m lighting temperature and ventilation needs,     It also hired a library consultant, who identified the first and latest editions of almost every title the 70-year-old publisher had ever printed, which were then line up on towering oak shelves.  The 10,000-volume library is the first thing visitors see when they enter the new workplace.     That may sound musty, but Abrams was striving for a modern workplace.  Designed by the architecture firm Spacesmith, the 41,0000-square-foot office has an open plan, m a spacious cafe and state-of-the-art technology.

COMMENT

     In a redesigned publisher's headquarters, the first thing visitors see is an impressive library of all the books Abrams Books has published.  The books serve as a kind of architectural decor that communicates the 70-year history of the company in a concrete way.  The author of the article feels obliged to take a dig at a company "committed to print in a world going digital," and yet the publishing industry has stabilized and is even beginning to grow again.  Maybe the world of reading has become as digital as it's going to get.  When ebooks started to gain a foothold, librarians who never studied calculus believe that the trendline of digital publishing would keep going up until nobody read print any more.  But in fact, not all curves are straight lines, and not all readers want ebooks.

     Librarians may sneer at the decorative use of books, but a photo with the article shows just how effective this design strategy is.  The library stacks are enticing-- they make you want to go in and browse.  If Abrams were going to publish your book, they help you envision it on the shelves of a bookstore or library.  It doesn't look musty at all.  It looks kind of magical, like a place I'd be happy to work. 

     

3 Million U.S. Students Don't have Home Internet

Michael Melia and Jeff Amy, “3 Million U.S. Students Don’t Have Home Internet,” Deseret News [Associated Press], June 11, 2019, p A3. 

     School districts, local governments and others have tried to help.  Districts installed wireless internet on buses and loaned out hot spots.  Many communities compiled lists of wi-fi-enabled restaurant and other businesses where children are welcome to linger and do schoolwork.  Others repurposed unused television frequencies to provide connectivity, a strategy that the Hartford [CT] Public Library plans to try next year in the north, end.      Some students study in the parking lots of schools, libraries or restaurants— wherever they can find a signal.…     In rural northern Mississippi, reliable home internet is not available for some at any price.      On many afternoons, Sharon Stidham corrals her four boys into the school library at East Webster High School, where her husband is assistant principal, so they can use the internet for schoolwork.  A cellphone tower is visible through the trees from their home on a hilltop near Maben, but the internet signal does not reach their house, even after they built a special antenna on top of a nearby family cabin.

COMMENT

         In this story the library is both a helpful internet hot-spot and a nuisance because it isn’t open long enough hours. The public library and school library are theoretically places where kids can use the internet, but in practice students are sitting out in the parking lot. Why haven’t any adults noticed this?  Couldn’t they open the buildings for internet-enabled study halls?  How come the assistant principal whose own children have no internet at home has never had a talk with teachers who casually tell students to learn math from YouTube videos?  The article reports that 1/3 of houses in their town have no computer and 1/2 have no internet.  It seems easy enough for teachers to poll their students to find out how many have home computers or home internet. 

     Frustratingly, the article quotes a teacher who refuses to hand out assignments on paper because, “I really need you to get familiar with the technology because it’s not going away.”  The cruel irony is, some students can’t “get familiar” with it unless they have time to do online work at school. Due to the digital divide, pushing internet use outside of school hours just becomes  a harsh and damaging lesson in social inequality. It’s not clear whether students with home internet get better grades because they learn things online (doubtful, considering how distracting it is to be online), or whether the “convenience” of requiring online  homework just creates an extra barrier that causes students to do worse without it just because it’s so hard to turn things in. 

     

    Regardless, it’s clear from this story that the digital divide is in part an artifact created by digital haves who refuse to accommodate the reality of digital have-nots. In fact, the most common computer that people have is a smartphone, which is close to useless for typing term papers. Teachers and librarians should try using the systems they are imposing on their students and patrons. They might find out that it’s not such an educational necessity after all to force students into battle with buggy, frustrating, poorly designed software just to turn in a multiple-choice worksheet.  If unrealistic expectations are undermining education for 16% - 18% of students, it seems like educators should put a lot more thought into whether their requirements for online homework are educational or arbitrary. 

Student of the Game Aced Final

Julia Jacobs, "Student of the Game Aced Final: Emma Boettche, a Librarian from Chicago, wrote a mater's paper on 'Jeopardy!' Clues, New York Times, June 4, 2019, p. C6.

     Before Emma Boettcher arrived at the "Jeopardy!" studio in California on a Tuesday in Mach she hadn't heard of James Hozhauer.
     Boettcher, a 27-year old librarian at the University of Chicago, did not know that the contestant she would soon face had already won 32 games, amasses $2.46 million and established himself as one of the game sho's greatest players of all time.  Games are prerecorded, usually five in one day; Holzhauer's first win would not air until April 4.
...
     As a book and theater lover growing up outside Philadelphia, Boettcher first tried out for "Jeopardy!" in high school.  As she continued to chase her goal, her father, Kevin Boettcher, bought her books on topics that she needed to bone up on, such as sports.
After finishing college at Princeton, she went to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where she studied information science.  While there, Boettcher decided to write her master's paper on her longtime obsession with a certain game show.
     In her 70-page final paper, Boettcher explored whether certain characteristics of a "Jeopardy!" clue could predict its difficulty level.  She said she wanted to determine if a computer could predict whether a clue was easy or difficulty based on the words it was using or the length of the clue.  In essence, she was asking if there was a material difference between a $200 clue and a $1,000 clue. 

COMMENT

   OK, maybe librarians deserve a little of that vocational awe.  A Master's theses on Jeopardy! clues sounds like a candidate for an Ig Noble Prize, but it seems to have been a useful piece of scholarship. Hozhaur is a professional sports bettor who was using a sophisticated statistical strategy to successfully beat the TV trivia game. He was zeroing in on Ken Jenning's record when the librarian beat him.

     This is the first story I've encountered that contains any description of professional education for librarianship. Although the reporter seems dubious that anyone would bother to study the difficulty of questions, in fact, I have co-authored such a paper myself. [1]  Unfortunately, librarians have spent a fair amount of ink trying to prove that most reference questions aren't all that hard.  The goal is to replace trained reference librarians with cheaper part-time student help. In most such studies, shabby research methodology is based on circular logic that pre-defines certain types of questions as "easy/directional" without ever evaluating whether such questions are actually easy to answer. 

  In any case, if I wanted information help, I'd far rather ask someone like Emma Boettcher with a passion for information than an under-paid part-timer.
 
[1] LeMire, Sarah, Lorelei Rutledge, and Amy Brunvand. "Taking a Fresh Look: Reviewing and Classifying Reference Statistics for Data-Driven Decision Making." Reference & User Services Quarterly 55, no. 3 (2016): 230-238.