Literacy

Deborah Brandt, Literacy in American Lives

With such a fascinating topic, I was expecting something a little livelier. Once I made it through the introduction, though, I enjoyed the case studies and historical analysis of them. There seemed to be a theme of how people use literacy, not only for personal gain (employment), but also to champion causes (20) and to wage “document wars” (51). Literacy almost becomes a weapon, used to slander enemies and to prove points. On the one hand, affording literacy this powerful status means that we view it as vital and that more people end up learning to read and write, but it also takes on negative aspects and is used to maintain social and class boundaries. Literacy works to spread equality and to ensure that it’s never reached.

It’s interesting to me that Brandt chose to study writing instead of reading (or instead of both), and that she claims it’s one and the same, more or less. In another course I’m taking, we read an article about literacy in colonial America and how incredibly separate writing and reading are. We do consider them inseparable today, but there’s still a distinction to be made. Brandt points out the moment in history when radio- “learning to listen”- joins reading and writing in most people’s lives (84). The medium is also very important, isn’t it? It affects what we write and how we write.

The example of the shift in Dwayne Lowery’s union organizing duties (52-57) was very interesting. His position changed from one where verbal negotiation skills were key to one where they simply didn’t matter because everything was communicated through written documents. It strikes me as a case where the shift to increased written communication doesn’t make much sense—real discussion and compromise are best done in real-time. Over-use of documents contributes to the feelings of overwhelming bureaucracy that Levy points out in Scrolling Forward—maybe it’s time to figure out where we can cut back.

Brandt points out differences in the ways that literacy learning occurs in African American communities and suggests that schools, places of work, and other “sponsors” of literacy should adopt some of the same strategies. I’m a firm believer in the separation of church and state, so I’d be hesitant to add the religious aspects that are so prevalent in some literacy learning, but I do think schools do a good job of teaching literacy in different ways—through reading, yes, but also through games, real-life applications, and television programs.

The chapter on reading and writing was by far the most interesting to me. It seems very true that families engage in communal reading but rarely in communal writing. I didn’t want to show my writing to my parents past a certain age (8 or so), and they didn’t ask to see it. Aside from cards to relatives, we didn’t write things with my parents, though my sister and I wrote joint stories sometimes. And yes, writing is a vent for emotions, and is sometimes done in secrecy, but sometimes reading is, too. I had reading nooks in the woods behind my house and in a park nearby. I’m not sure that the distinction is as sharp as she draws it, but it’s still fascinating.

Brandt says on page 162 that writing was described as an emotional release by white and black women but only by black men. From her small sample size, I don’t suppose we can draw any firm conclusions about whether it’s even a trend, but if so, why is it that white men don’t see writing in that way? Or is it just something they failed to mention in the interviews?

One last comment. Brandt speculates that parents’ jobs may be more important than their education level to a child’s literacy (184). The opposite is true in my case, as my mom worked as a retail clerk but reads avidly in her spare time and my dad works as a realtor but hasn’t read a book in years. I don’t remember work-related papers lying around, but my mom’s library books were always in a stack on the kitchen table. I see the relationship between parent’s job and child’s literacy, but not so much the lack of relationship between parent’s education and child’s literacy that her statement seems to imply.

Minneapolis Library Closings

I don't want to clog up the class blog, but this bit of news from my homewtowmade was rather sad.

Readings for Week the 8th

Redmond Kathleen Molz and Phyllis Dain, Introduction and The Mission: Consensus and Contradiction

A long but very readable article about the history (and current state) of public libraries. I was especially struck both by the comment that the mission of libraries has been ambivalent and dichotomous (11) and, similarly, that an organization is most effective when it concentrates on one task (37). I think we’re scrambling, trying out many different things to stay in business and to stay exciting and recognizable and desirable to a population of busy, distracted people. Our mission is all over the place; we try to do a great many things. Part of the problem is solved by librarians taking on different roles (so we have librarians who do only cataloging, and librarians who only work with children), but with new roles being created constantly, it’s hard to stay on top of things and focused. If we can’t decide what our ultimate goal is, how can we aim towards it? For the most part, I don’t have a problem with the library getting more involved with providing community entertainment. I do worry that it could eventually undermine the educational goals of libraries. If we’re too focused on patrons who want a free Borders Books, we lose sight of those looking for a quiet and scholarly place to study, and those looking for help finding their tax forms. I liked the quote from poet Karl Shapiro: “The availability of books of all levels, not simply the best or the greatest books, I see as a stimulus to the creative mind.” Agreed.

Michael Gorman, Human Values in a Technological Age: A Librarian Looks 100 Years Forward and Backward

I saved this article for last because I thought it might be boring (I’m easily prejudiced by tiny type), but I actually really enjoyed it. The telephone IS still the greatest network we’ve created; crazy. Though its impact is primarily on communication, and I’d argue that the Internet tackles both communication and information, a much taller order. Maybe they can both win the prize. And hey, I was born in 1980, not far off from Groman’s 1984 example (7), and despite being bombarded with distractions (both visual and auditory), I managed to have a serious love for the quiet, the introspective, and the academic. Perhaps fewer people manage it now than in past generations, but I’m not so sure about that, either—I’m inclined to say that some people are and always have been attracted to the flashy and the busy, and others prefer things a little slower. I agree that as a profession we’re over-focused on technology. We haven’t gotten our old systems right yet, but we’ve in some cases abandoned them to pursue new tracks. How do we achieve balance?

Steven R. Harris, Discourse and Censorship: Librarians and the Ideology of Freedom

It took me a long time to catch his drift, but by the end, it couldn’t have been clearer. I was glad to read a critique of the Library Bill of Rights, and think some of his criticisms are very valid. We do need to stand up and take authorship and responsibility for the points in the Bill, both in how they’re worded and how we carry them out. I agree that librarians need to be more active about partnering with alternative presses and in national intellectual freedom issues (such as the bandwidth distribution), but what’s lacking here is an acknowledgement of time. I assume that most librarians are busy people, usually with more on their plate than they can accomplish in a day. Finding reviews of books from alternative presses, or scanning over the books themselves when no reviews can be found, is far more time consuming than trusting a mainstream source. Similarly, crusading for intellectual rights comes at a cost to other aspects of library work. I agree that these things should be done, but putting them into practice may be more difficult than it seems.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, Why Thomas Jefferson Would Love Napster

I find copyright law a bit depressing. The ever-increasing length of copyright protection benefits established institutions at the expense of newer artists or inventors, and leads to an overall decline in creativity. Vaidhyanathan describes the problem as undemocratic and makes a strong case for it. Jefferson wrote that the reader of an idea “cannot dispose himself of it,” and of course that’s very true. Copyright would be a sticky issue anyway, but in thinking of it as property, and saying that ideas can be copyrighted, leaves us in an even stickier mess. I’m not sure I understand its implications fully, but what impact has the DMCA had on libraries?

Week of 7

Occupational Outlook Handbook

I read a slightly older version of this when I first started thinking about library school in 2003. It strikes me as mostly good news, especially the part about how 3 in 5 current librarians are over age 45. I also learned a few interesting things I hadn’t known or thought about, such as union statistics. The high percentage of part-time librarians is also nice—it’s a field with flexibility and with standards already in place for those who want to cut back on hours. I don’t have a sense of how big the profession is. 159,000 doesn’t mean all that much to me without other numbers. How many police officers are there? Doctors, social workers, politicians?

Klaus Musmann, The Ugly Side of Librarianship: Segregation in Library Services From 1900-1950.

It’s all pretty sad and ridiculous, but not surprising. I’d be curious to hear how other marginalized groups have been treated by libraries throughout history. The Japanese during World War II, for example. It’s a little scary how powerful libraries can be in enforcing cultural prejudices… or, I like to think, in counteracting them.

I was thinking about the following situation, described as happening in the East and Midwest: “....special services turned out to be merely the establishment of additional school deposits or the location of an extra branch in an African-American residential section while allowing black readers full access to other libraries within the same system” (87). My first thought was that this wasn’t so bad. If St. Paul were to open a Hmong library in a predominantly Hmong neighborhood, but keep allowing Hmong people access to all libraries, would that be so terrible? I’m not sure, but my instinct is no. The difference, though, is that recent Hmong immigrants might have very different and highly specialized information needs, while presumably black Americans do not. Musmann states further on the page that libraries claimed to have large “Negroid” collections without explaining what that meant. What were the perceived information needs of black people between 1900 and 1950?

Roma Harris, Information Technology and the De-Skilling of Librarians; Or the Erosion of a Woman’s Profession.

Well, this was depressing. I think Harris presents things as a “no-win” situation that’s a little too bleak and pessimistic. I hope. She says, for example, on page 5 that “both [consulting and teaching] are inherently short-term in nature.” At the rate that technology changes? Absolutely not! I can’t foresee a time when we won’t need intermediaries of some sort to help us learn about and manage technology, or at least to use it more efficiently. Still, I see some truth behind what she says. Some traditionally female jobs in librarianship are threatened, and how will that change things? How will it change things as non-librarian information engineers take over key library roles? As a woman, I sometimes feel almost obligated to pursue management or technology-heavy positions. I feel almost guilty that I’d rather work with children or disadvantaged people. I’m not sure how children’s librarians fit into Harris’s picture. She mentions them in the beginning with catalogers but then not again. I think as long as our public libraries are intact, children’s librarians are not a segment that can be disposed of in the same way as catalogers (“ignored and undervalued”, yes). I can’t picture a storytelling machine that could make a real person obsolete. At least not yet.

Marie L. Radford and Gary P. Radford, Librarians and Party Girls: Cultural Studies and the Meaning of the Librarian.

I wonder what Wayne Wiegand thinks about this article. I see the connection they’re making about how using a cultural studies perspective is one example of widening our tunnel vision, but the relationship between the two articles seems pretty tangential. I haven’t seen Party Girl, but I heard about it my second week in the program from some second-years and the Radfords did a good job summarizing in an engaging way. How did we come to have a stereotype that’s more fixed than many other professions? Is it because not enough people know a real librarian? In preparation for the website review assignment for this class, I’ve been looking at dozens of librarian-related websites, including all of the ones mentioned in the article. In the end, I’m not so bothered by the stereotyping. I think it’s almost flattering that librarians have gotten so much attention. Maybe I’m just in the right circles, but I don’t feel like people really think librarians are the stereotype, possibly because it’s so over-exaggerated. I think harm is done when people see librarians as intimidating or only rule-enforcers, and that’s something to work on changing through Hall’s three methods (and, honestly, mostly through our own conduct as librarians), but as for the bun-and-glasses routine, let’s all have a laugh.

Book II, Part II

David M. Levy, Scrolling Forward, Part II

I was fascinated that reading didn’t become a silent activity until the 12th century. I find it just annoying when somebody reads aloud to themselves—I love being read to, but I would have gone crazy as an 11th century monk, I think.

What was with Levy’s very weak attempt at a biological connection on page 111? He says if our DNA carries “traces of our ancestors” perhaps that might explain why we have such a strong connection to books. If he’s going to explore it further, fine. If not, it only weakens his argument.

I’m not sure how I feel about the thought of future librarians as “enablers” (134) who exist to help others organize their private libraries. First of all, won’t there still be some need for organization of institutional documents? Cultural documents? (Yes.) Secondly, it just doesn’t sound like as much fun. It doesn’t involve introducing people to new things that they might not otherwise have found. It doesn’t build a feeling of community, though it would provide more intense one-on-one engagement. What are some other future scenarios we can envision? We can do better than this.

Let’s talk about the document some more. I thought we’d reached a pretty good definition with “talking things”(23), or things whose primary purpose is to talk for us, but Levy raises some more good questions on page 157. The electronic document—what is it? Is it just the computer file? Is it the file plus the computer? The file plus the computer plus the printer to make it tangible? These are good questions. I’m voting for just the file for the moment.

I enjoyed the philosophical bent of the last part of the book. I wasn’t expecting anything so deep from a book about documents and technology (personal prejudices?) but was glad that Levy put in some very personal, subjective thoughts. Our thinking about documents isn’t entirely rational, and some of what ties us to books is of course nostalgia, and sometimes a “sensitive” argument deserves just as much weight as an objective one.

Book II, Part I

David M. Levy, Scrolling Forward, Part I

My roommate saw this book on the kitchen table a few days ago and asked me what it was about. I’d just read an entire chapter about a deli receipt. I started in on the history of numbers (and how we had no zero!) and letters and the meaning of documents and was surprised when she responded, "I want to read it." You know a book is good when it sparks dinner-table conversation. I had heard that people were buried in wool for a while to avoid using valuable cotton and linen, and I’d heard some stories about uppercase and lowercase, but this book artfully weaves interesting historical facts with sensible critique and interpretation. I find myself almost in dialogue with the book, asking it questions and debating what it has to say.

Levy handles the subject of digital documents so well. He points out that paper documents aren’t static, though their changes are slower. Leaves of Grass seems to be a perfect example, having gone through so many editions, and it’s true for many books—but I’d say in the end that although some books undergo many changes and versions, the means to enact such changes are built-in online and therefore much more likely to occur. Levy looks at van Leeuwen’s digitized Leaves of Grass and makes a very good point: it’s not enough to scan in the pages of a book. The result is inferior to the book, because that particular content was meant to be physically laid out in a book format. The same content could (and should) be taken and adapted for an online environment. Similarly, a printed version of a web page sucks. It wasn't meant to be a paper document.

Levy says that we have come to attach value to documents now based on their output as “information delivery vehicles” (57), or how accurately, cheaply, and quickly they provide information. Stating our preferences in these terms leaves some things out, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we also value documents for their scope? Their history? Their beauty, even?

More soon.