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.

New Poets of Native Nations

Heid E. Erdrich, ed. New Poets of Native Nations. Graywolf Press, 2018.

     Although a few poets of Native nations are now producing work within the mainstream of American literary publishing, very little poetry by Natives reaches a large audience-- few readers are exposed to multiple indigenous authors at a bookstore or library or even in an academic course. There's simply not enough of our poetry out there where readers can find it.  There is no current basis upon which others might understand what poetry by Native Americans is today, in the twenty-first century.  Consequently, I have witnessed editors and prize jurors choose poets they think are Native American. The result is that more often than you would imagine, what is selected is work by non-Natives.  This poetry not only misrepresents the lived realities of Native people, but it does our communities real harm by presenting another's views as our own. 

 COMMENT

     You'd think that someone, maybe academic librarians, would be working harder to collect Native American poets.  But poetry doesn't  tend to circulate much without encouragement and these days it's unfashionable to collect for the sake of bibliography.  In order to persuade my own library to buy such such poetry I've had to suggest a purchase for my own personal use, even for books by poets like Sherwin Bitsui or Orlando White who had recently been in town to give readings and workshops.

    Poetry is an especially weird genre. Everyone wants to be a poet, but nobody wants to read poetry. Well, I do. I even like to write reviews of poetry books. I think one barrier to poetry is that it's actually quite difficult to figure out which poetry to read. Poetry resists descriptive reviews so you have to experiment a bit to discover what you like.  There is a lot of truly dreadful poetry out there, so you also have to be confident to recognize it as dreadful and move on.

     That's why Heid Erdrich has performed such an important service to introduce us poetry readers to some Native American  poets she likes (she's a wonderful poet herself, BTW). [1]  Here's a book that we librarians can catalog and simply pull off the shelf when a student or professor is seeking Native American poets. It would be even better if we bought some of their books.  There's a bibliography of sources on pages 281-284 in case any librarians want to order some.

[1] Guidelines for the Treatment of Sacred Objects

Local Programs Fire Up Readers

Scott D. Pierce and Sheila McCann. Local Programs Fire Up Readers, Salt Lake Tribune, May 31, 2019, p. D1-

     Schools are wrapping up, the weather is warming up, and June is a day away.  Another clear sign of summer: Libraries, businesses and others are gearing up to engage and reward summer readers.…     The theme of this year’s challenge is “A Universe of Stories,” honoring the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.     Last year, almost 28,000 kids from infants to age 12 sing up along with 7,500 teens and more than 23,000 adults, said Liz Sollis, communications manager for the [Salt Lake] county library system. “We’ve actually seen a huge increase in adult participation over the last few years, “ she said.

…    

Four reading trackers for its summer reading program are available: Babies & Toddlers, Kids, Teens, and Adults, each with suggested activities.  The [Salt Lake City] system also suggests going paperless by using its Beanstack site online or by downloading the Beanstack app. 

COMMENT

This article is a local tie-in to one reprinted from the Washington Post.[1]  It lists summer reading programs at local libraries, businesses and other organizations that offer prizes and rewards for reading.  

   As an avid reader, I feel somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness of rewards.  I mean, to me getting time to sit and concentrate on reading already seems like a pretty big reward. However, it’s clear that the programs are popular and they serve a purpose if they make reading fun again. Museum and sports events tickets, free books, and food rewards might work for some people. Choosing what to read may also be the first step in developing self-directed lifelong learning skills that aren’t dependent on classroom teaching.

    The Salt Lake Public Library system is pushing a digital book subscription, which also seems questionable.  Unless kids are using a dedicated e-reader, anything on screens offers far too many distractions that interrupt reading.  Use of ebooks probably also means fewer trips to the library and consequently less immersion in the possibilities such as audio books or graphic novels.  In many library stories, a profound coming-of-age experience happens when kids first move from the juvenile section to the regular stacks.  That transition simply can’t happen online. 

   Digital reading seems even more dubious when it comes from an overtly commercial source.  Scholastic Read-a-Palooza, described in the article,  is an online summer reading program that logs the number of minutes kids read and unlocks digital rewards.  This is beginning to sound a lot less like pleasure and a lot more like the usual schoolwork drudgery, specially if parents can spy on reading minutes. Personally, I would not suggest going paperless. I’d suggest that the long, lazy days of summer are the perfect time to immerse oneself in the kind of absorbing deep reading experience that only print can offer.  The real purpose of summer reading, after all, is not to do better on standardized tests but to rediscover the joy of reading books that are not homework. 

[1] How to Draw ‘em In.

Rear

How to Draw 'em In

Karen McPherson, How to Draw ‘em In: Here’s a Magic Formula to Keep Your Kids Reading Through the Summer. [Special to the Washington Post] Salt Lake Tribune, May 31, 2019, p. D1-

It’s a challenge for parents to make reading a pleasurable priority in their family’s life.  But summertime actually is a perfect— an crucial— time to experiment with some of the following strategies, recommended by children’s librarians and reading experts.…Many children’s librarians also recommend adding a “game” aspect to reading. Signing kids up for summer reading programs at the local public library is one easy way to do this.

COMMENT

     The paradox of reading is, it’s one of the most enjoyable of all possible ways to spend time but when kids have to read for school they resist.  Too much screen time also seems to be discouraging kids from reading. The Kids and Family Reading Report (2019) says that 14% of kids ages 9-11 read no books during the summer— double the number since 2016. [1] Reading is essential to educational success, and librarians are cited as experts on how to make reading fun again with the following strategies:

• Let kids choose
• Expand the definition of reading
• Make it a family priority
• Make reading social
• Make it a game

The writer also suggests signing kids up for summer reading programs.  It’s probably not just the prize incentives, but frequent summer trips to the library that encourage reading. Shelves of graphic novels are irresistible, even for many kids who think they don’t like reading. 

[1] Kids and Family Reading Report 7th ed. (2019).

Public Pushback

Tay Wiles. Public Pushback: Arivaca, Arizona, Became a Magnet for Anti-Anti-Immigrant Activists Locals Wouldn’t Have It. High Country News, May 27, 2019, p. 12-17.

This time, the townspeople called in outside support: They invited Jess Campbell to the meeting. Campbell works for the nonprofit Rural Organizing Project in Oregon, which helps communities organize around issues ranging from defunded libraries to hate crimes and far right extremism.

COMMENT

     The border town of Arivaca is dealing with the nuisance of out-of-town, self-appointed anti-immigrant militias. The non-profit that is helping with the situation has a mission of advancing democracy, including preventing the loss of rural libraries.  

     Librarians themselves have not always understood that reductionist access to information is not the sole function of a library.  Sociologists have identified  libraries as part of a social infrastructure that creates strong, resilient communities. The activists know this and recognize libraries as community centers. They suggest that members can "partner with local schools, libraries or historical museums to reach your entire community."  This suggestion also suggests that there may not be another source of community information, possibly when small, rural communities may exist in a news desert. 

The Presentation on Egypt

Camille Bordas, "The Presentation on Egypt," New Yorker, May 20, 2019, 69-75.

     Punishment, at Peters Elementary, meant going to the school library during lunch break and reflecting on your behavior. Danielle had her habits at the library, a favorite spot.  At this point, she knew where everything was, so she went straight to the wildlife section and picked out a book about sharks. She wanted to know if they build houses, like she'd told her mother they did. She was pretty sure they didn't, but maybe they did something else that was impressive. 

COMMENT

      In this fictional short story Danielle is nine years old.  She is being punished because she brought a cigarette lighter to school.  The library establishes Danielle as the kind of friendless kid who prefers the library to the playground.  The story centers on withholding information and keeping secrets.  Earlier in the story, Danielle's surgeon father has persuaded the wife of a dying man to pull the plug by suggesting that even if the man is "asleep" he might be suffering. "Aren't most of your dreams horrifying?" the father asks, talking about himself, of course.

Let's Party Like it's 1994! (Sigh, Well, Perhaps Not.)

Caity Weaver, “Let’s Party Like It’s 1994! (Sigh, Well, Perhaps Not,) New York Times, May 29, 2019, ST1.

     By the fourth of fifth day of 1994, I’d stopped impulsively grabbing at empty spaces on my desk for my cellphone.  But my reflex to quickly Google things never deteriorated. I began compiling my questions — a list of itches to be scratched at a later time — and spent the finals day of my week at the Brooklyn Public Library, to see what percentage of answers I could find in books. About 17 percent, it turned out.  While I was not able to learn the location of the nearest FedEx, the best-selling compact mirror of all time or the name of a green Chanel nail polish I had recently seen in a discount store, I did learn the ingredients in Coca-Cola cake where Josephine Baker was born (St. Louis) and what happened to Joan Lunden after 1994.

 ...

     I copied down the Dewey Decimal number for her 2015 book “Had I Known,” and located it on a shelf. The subtitle took the wind out of my sails— “A Memoir of Survival.”  In the first pages, I learned that Joan had gotten a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2014.  The news made my silly assignment feel stupid.  Impudent, even.  Joan had seemed to delight in her health on the tape in 1994.  Twenty-five years later, it was a success to be surviving. 

COMMENT

     The conceit of this article is that the 21-year old author is attempting to re-inhabit the pre-Internet Gen X past where,without Google at her fingertips, the library has to do. In 1994 the library would have had a shelf of phone books including Yellow Pages and it would have been easy for librarians to find the nearest FedEx. There would have been glossy women's magazines with ads for fashionable nail-polish colors. Nowadays, the Internet is the only way to find information about businesses and ephemeral fashion trends.  The problem is, without the phone books and magazines there will be no record of these things.  25 years in the future, it will be much harder to tell what people in 2019 wore or ate because there is no time-stamped record.

     The writer doesn’t say, but I imagine that the Coca-Cola cake recipe was in some kind of Southern cookbook along with cultural context for why anybody would make such an awful-sounding desert.  Food history is an important kind of cultural history-- in order to re-create the past the author reports on trying flavorless “diet” recipes from a 1994 cookbook called Cooking Light.  On the Internet recipes are disassociated.  there's no sense of foodways. Knowing what people ate in the past may seem fairly trivial, but in 2019 the Lancet EAT Project has identified the food system as an existential threat to human existence.[1]  

   The "silly" assignment leads Weaver to two unexpectedly profound experiences. One is a confrontation with the passage of time, thhe other a quiet state of mind that emerges when the “mental screaming” induced by technological stimuli begins to calm.  Perhaps instead of boasting that libraries aren’t quiet places any more, librarians in 2019 might do better to  promote the advantages of mindfulness that are  inherently connected with deep reading and the library experience. 

   In fact, researches have found that mental capability improves though electronic disconnection and contact with nature. [2] “The commotion” induced by technology began in 1998 when Microsoft started to bundle a web browser with its software.  Doing the math, that's the same year the author was born. 

[1] The EAT Lancet Commission on Food, Planet & Health
[2] Atchley, Ruth Ann, David L. Strayer, and Paul Atchley. "Creativity in the wild: Improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings." PloS one 7, no. 12 (2012): e51474.