Context
I was looking at new children's books in my library's catalog and noticed that two picture books had parts of their titles on the spine labels instead of parts of their author's last name. Using the title on a spine label is a standard practice for items where no single author is immediately obvious, but since I could see the author's name in the same catalog record, I didn't understand why it wasn't being used.
When I asked the head cataloger about the discrepancy, she said they were marked that way because the "author" was an illustrator, not a writer, and "the rules" said that was how she was supposed to do it. After some discussion we decided to throw out the rules in favor of letting these very similar books be next to each other on the shelf.
Commentary
Have your eyes glazed over yet? I told you it takes special skills to be a librarian, one of which is actually caring about this stuff! And if you want to see some people who really care, you should take a look at the recent PUBLIB discussion on "Dewey or don't we?" (starts here, ongoing as of this writing).
I believe my discussion with the head cataloger today was generally more rational and fruitful than the Dewey discussion, which got me thinking about how people argue (Yay, she's not going to talk about cataloging anymore!). A lot of the Dewey discussion seems to follow this template: "X is what happens to me when I go to a bookstore; this experience should cause all public libraries to respond by doing Y."
I'm not saying that talking about one's own experience is bad; I'm confused by the assumption that personal experience is so generalizable. Why do we believe, despite mounds of contrary evidence, that other people experience things the exact same way we do? I didn't go to the head cataloger today and say, "I couldn't find both of these books when I wanted them; we must recatalog them right away!" Conversely, she didn't say, "when I go to libraries that don't catalog by the rules I can't find anything!" Instead we discussed what the rule was and whether we thought it would generally be helpful to bend it under this particular circumstance.
This kind of tunnel vision not only makes it hard to find solutions, it can make it difficult to see that you're even having a disagreement. I've had this exchange with more than one person:
Me - My opinion on this matter is different from yours.
Not Me - No, no, I'm just not explaining myself properly. What I mean to say is . . .
Me - I understand what you're saying. I just disagree with you.
Now, I see that this may just be good manners at work, a belief that it's not polite to argue with someone. But I also see an undercurrent of "any rational person possessed of the same facts I have would come to the same conclusion." I think it's related to the instinct people have to say, when confronted with the fact that I'm anti-death penalty, "but what if someone murdered your loved one? Wouldn't you want revenge?" When I'm in a certain mood I'm tempted to reply, "Oh my God! I've never thought of that! You've completely opened my eyes! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
What did you see today?
1/15/2009
I saw announcements about the Inauguration
Context
I was reading PUBLIB again today, and people were talking about setting up TV sets at their libraries for patrons to watch the President-elect Obama's inauguration ceremony. You can see an example of what I'm talking about at this link.
Commentary
I like this idea of providing a communal space to watch the Inauguration. My bachelor's degree was in history, so I know the importance of sharing these events with each other.
That being said, I have no plans to watch the Inauguration and I certainly don't intend to head out for Washington to attend. I like Obama and voted for him, but the whole inauguration party thing just makes me go "meh."
Some of this can be attributed to the fact that I'm not a very social person, so being in a crowd with a couple million of my closest friends is not very attractive to me. Plus I don't care much for parades except the Tournament of Roses (everything's made of flowers! What's not to like?). I figure the highlight of the day will be Obama's speech and I'm sure that will be both recorded and described. Shoot, I'm sure they'll hit all the high points on The Daily Show, so what else do I need?
I guess another thing that's going on is I wish we weren't treating this as so much of a big deal. I won't claim to "not see color" like Stephen Colbert (Wow! How many references to Comedy Central can I put in one blog post?), but I do try to not see people in Jim Crow terms, where one drop of black blood makes you black. Aren't we inaugurating both our first black president and our 44th white one?
On the other hand, if we're going to talk about Obama being black I don't want this to be a rare occasion. The bigger the fuss we make the more it seems that way, like we're not accustomed to the idea that African-Americans can actually flourish in our nation. Barry Sanders is famous in the football world for NOT celebrating his touchdowns. He always just handed the ball to the ref and went back to the bench. Why? Because he always knew there was another one coming up soon! What if we behaved that way in regard to having an African-American president? Just the first of many . . .
Here's what I think is the biggest deal about the Inauguration: how embarrassing is it that the United States elected its first black president 15 years after after South Africa did?
What did you see today?
I was reading PUBLIB again today, and people were talking about setting up TV sets at their libraries for patrons to watch the President-elect Obama's inauguration ceremony. You can see an example of what I'm talking about at this link.
Commentary
I like this idea of providing a communal space to watch the Inauguration. My bachelor's degree was in history, so I know the importance of sharing these events with each other.
That being said, I have no plans to watch the Inauguration and I certainly don't intend to head out for Washington to attend. I like Obama and voted for him, but the whole inauguration party thing just makes me go "meh."
Some of this can be attributed to the fact that I'm not a very social person, so being in a crowd with a couple million of my closest friends is not very attractive to me. Plus I don't care much for parades except the Tournament of Roses (everything's made of flowers! What's not to like?). I figure the highlight of the day will be Obama's speech and I'm sure that will be both recorded and described. Shoot, I'm sure they'll hit all the high points on The Daily Show, so what else do I need?
I guess another thing that's going on is I wish we weren't treating this as so much of a big deal. I won't claim to "not see color" like Stephen Colbert (Wow! How many references to Comedy Central can I put in one blog post?), but I do try to not see people in Jim Crow terms, where one drop of black blood makes you black. Aren't we inaugurating both our first black president and our 44th white one?
On the other hand, if we're going to talk about Obama being black I don't want this to be a rare occasion. The bigger the fuss we make the more it seems that way, like we're not accustomed to the idea that African-Americans can actually flourish in our nation. Barry Sanders is famous in the football world for NOT celebrating his touchdowns. He always just handed the ball to the ref and went back to the bench. Why? Because he always knew there was another one coming up soon! What if we behaved that way in regard to having an African-American president? Just the first of many . . .
Here's what I think is the biggest deal about the Inauguration: how embarrassing is it that the United States elected its first black president 15 years after after South Africa did?
What did you see today?
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