Summarize your conversation using these questions, or whatever questions seem appropriate to you:
1. What meaning did you take from the conversation?
2. Share a standout story or quote for each of you.
3. What surprised, challenged, inspired, and/or delighted you about the conversation?
Our conversation catalyst began with the pairing of veteran librarian Christina (Tina) Stewart and freelance librarian Nancy Picchi. We have both contributed to this summary.
Tina, who has served as the director of the Wilmington Memorial Library (Wilmington, MA) for the past 15 years, has worked there for over 30 years. Her devotion to both the library and to her community is apparent from the moment she begins to talk about her life and profession. Nancy, who formerly worked at a small public library in New Jersey and has been a public library advocate for over 35 years, shares Tina’s commitment to public libraries and to the vital role they play in the life of the communities they serve.
During our telephoneconversation last week, we were delighted to discover that we share the belief that the public library plays a vital role in promoting the civic, intellectual, and social life of the communities they serve. In addition, we both believe that our communities and libraries need active and accurate local press coverage in order to flourish.
· Nancy formerly worked in two roles (first as the program & public relations coordinator and later as the Internet coordinator) in a public library whose tagline was “located in the heart of our community”; the public library where Tina serves as director is planning to promote its new tagline “community starts here.” Both hope that the Beyond Books confab will provide specific ways to engage the community so that these concepts ring true in the minds of residents who live there.
· Tina pointed out that both voter participation and people running for elected office have declined in her community. She asks us to consider “What is the library’s role in creating a higher level of civic engagement?”
· Nancy emphasized the importance of the library having a strong virtual presence and recommended that the library’s web site have links to a wide range of community and governments services. She feels strongly that libraries should provide the resources and guidance to help community members connect with local, state, and federal government and services.
· Tina’s library and Nancy’s former library both feature well-used local history collections. In Nancy’s former library, journalists for the local newspaper make frequent use of the local history collection and of the local historians and librarians who help organize it. Tina noted that the owner of the local newspaper in her community has agreed to allow the library to digitize retrospective microfilm of the newspaper as well as future years. Tina suggested that “local newspaper publishers need to be amenable to these kinds of agreements, which make local news and history more accessible to members of the community and beyond.”
· Tina noted that “the online ‘Wilmington Patch’ (http://wilmington.patch.com/), which went live in November 2011, has done an excellent job of reporting local news. Since the local print newspaper is a weekly publication, Patch has the advantage of reporting news as it happens. The Social Media coordinator for Wilmington Patch reports that ‘Wilmington has catapulted itself into the 3rd highest ranking in visitors for the entire state.’ Obviously people want to know what is happening in their town and are using online resources.” Tina also pointed out that if online newssites like Patch become the main source of local news coverage, the library may need to provide the computers and the computer skills to ensure that the majority of residents can access online news services such as Patch.
· Nancy indicated that libraries should focus on offering something to their community that no oneelse is offering: “In addition to providing a wide range of print and electronic resources, libraries can remain a vital part of the community by being that central place where people of all ages, educational levels, and political and religious beliefs can meet to share ideas and conversations about a wide range of issues. One way to do this is through book discussion programs that ask all of the members of a community to read and discuss thesame book. Another way to accomplish this is for libraries to offer community-wide courses based on open education resources. I explored this idea in a 2008 paper entitled “One Course, One Community: Engaging Lifelong Learners though a Partnership between Open Education Resources and Public Libraries.”
We look forward to continuing our conversation in person at the Beyond Books conference – and to extending it to include all of you!
I’m the librarian at The Christian Science Monitor. Here are my notes from my pre-conference conversation catalyst with my partner, Marla Crockett.
I asked her how she ended up saying Yes to attending Biblionews: Marla, who lives in the Washington, DC area, found out about this conference through a friend, Nancy Kranick, who was a past president of the American Libraries Association. Marla has been an anchor, producer, and news manager in public broadcasting. In 1994, she worked for NPR as part of an election project, to cover issues that citizens would need to know about to make an informed choice, beyond just the political ‘horse race.’
I was delighted to know she is a longtime subscriber to our publication, and even freelanced for it previously.
She wrote to me by e-mail: “I’m interested in seeing how members of each profession view their roles at the moment and the potential for collaboration. I’m pretty involved in the democracy and civic engagement end of things–and that’s where my heart was as a journalist–so I’ll be looking for signs of outreach to the public.”
Marla is very motivated by the principles of civic journalism – we conceded that is important and broad, and should be a topic we’ll cover at the conference.
What I found intensely interesting about Marla is that she is very involved with a movement intended to foster dialogue and deliberation – beginning with bringing people together for conversation, much like we are doing with this conference. She feels strongly that this is so needed, for people to discuss issues, recognize different points of view, and hopefully help people deal with problems.
“People are searching for ways to talk to each other,” she said. I am in agreement – even with the greatest communication tool the world has ever known – the Internet – we’re still falling short of ways to communicate.
Marla enlightened me to the fact there is a whole movement of people with this undercurrent of promoting discourse – called the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. http://www.thataway.org/. It has a listserv – that anyone could join.
I mentioned that this had been a periodic focus at the MONITOR, particularly through a series of articles called ‘Talking with the Enemy’ during presidential campaigns that encouraged people to engage in conversation with people of different points of view, even including articles with instructions on how to do this. http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1015/p10s02-coop.html I said I would definitely be reviewing the discussion on the list.
Last year during the mid-term elections, the MONITOR hosted a series of ‘meetups,’ casual events where people were encouraged to come, ‘check your party at the door,’ and have a conversation. I was involved in trying to find locations for this – we tried to have it at a library but was told that they weren’t allowing outside groups to reserve a meeting room at that time. Events were held at a Starbucks and other small businesses in Boston and Washington. Marla mentioned that she was interested in these and had hoped to get more involved.
We talked about several institutes and individuals that are involved in this ‘under the radar’ movement, and it was encouraging to know. I thought it would be ideal for a library setting.
Eventually we reached the point where Marla expressed her ‘heartfelt goal’ for all of this work: that civic discourse – or just intelligent, balanced or wide-ranging points of view expressed – becomes mainstream.
This was a most enlightening and surprising conversation, and I look forward to what comes out of our discussions at Biblionews and in the future.
Here are the notes for the pre-conference conversation between Liza Barry-Kessler and David Weinberger.
Liza Barry-Kessler
Ph.D. Student
School of Information Studies
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
barryke2@uwm.edu
David’s Answers:
1. Why are you going to this conference?
David writes about the Internet. In 2007, he wrote a book called
Everything is Miscellaneous, about the way that online technology is
changing the way we organize information; that pulled him into the
library world, and he is currently co-director of the Harvard Library
Innovation Lab. He’s also had a long-term interest in what hyperlinks
are doing to the structure of writing; his latest book (“Too Big to
Know,” which comes out this Fall) includes a chapter about the future
of long-form writing. He’s also been a freelance features writer since
the 1970s, and has a practical interest in what the Net is doing to
journalistic forms.
2. An experience about the intersection of journalism and libraries:
Books and news articles have historically been disconnective media — they endeavor to provide all of the information the reader needs within the document, so that the reader doesn’t need to go out of the story. But the Internet makes it incredibly easy to go outside of the story. This challenges the fundamental form of both libraries and news media.
4. A question you hope will be answered at this conference:
In the past, both librarians and journalists have shared values such as the goal of enabling informed democracy, and protecting freedom of speech and opinion. However, as the medium changes, commonality of purpose may no longer be enough to maintain a commonality of practice. Information has become more disintermediated — people have more direct access to information. The role of curation is rapidly changing, and may leave librarians and journalists with less and less in common.
Liza’s Answers
1. Why are you going to this conference?
Liza is a first-year grad student in information policy, with a
concentration in law, ethics, and public policy. In her former life,
she was an attorney who did some work with libraries. She’s not a
librarian but has always been interested in their role as info
providers and protectors of intellectual freedom. Liza is funded
through a fabulous grant that U of Wisc Milwaukee was awarded, and
the opportunity came up go to this conference, also funded in part through
the IMLS Barriers to Access grant, she jumped at the chance.
2. An experience about the intersection of journalism and libraries:
Liza is most interested in looking at the intersection of the two
fields in terms of public access. Libraries value intellectual freedom
and free speech, but are also required by policies and legislation to
install filters on content. Inevitably, the filters catch
controversial topics that are interesting within a public policy
context — not just porn, but LGBT topics, sexual assault, etc. The
restrictions aren’t going away any time soon. How can they be gotten
around? There’s a role for journalists and libraries in that endeavor.
3. Some values and challenges shared by libraries and journalists
have surfaced. How can the relationship between the two serve the
public good?
Journalists and librarians generally have entered their fields with a
traditional idea of how to serve the public good. But the way our
technology and media universes have changed has transformed how both
journalism and librarianship are practiced. Liza doesn’t know how how
those two professional communities will transform themselves, but
there’s still a hunger for access to the information that people need
to govern themselves wisely. Remaining engaged in conversations about
how to achieve those missions is essential to serving the public good.
Our conversation catalyst matched up a journalist (myself) and a librarian, Alexa Pearce, who works at NYU. Both of us feel the need to more deeply understand the other’s profession, although Alexa has had more experience working with journalists than I have with librarians since part of her job is as a liaison with NYU’s journalism school. Her reason for coming to the conference: “I’m trying to understand journalism because I work with people who are becoming journalists.” She added, “I’m struck by the similarities between what we say our challenges are.”
I’m a freelance writer who has been working for an AOL site, DailyFinance, although that job looks like it’s ending given the Huffington Post purchase and a move toward hiring full-time staff in the company’s New York and Dulles, Virginia offices. (I’m based in Burlington, VT.)
Before freelancing, I worked for nine years at Bloomberg News, which had library that tended to be more reactive than proactive. As a freelancer who occasionally writes local news stories for Burlington’s newspapers as well as business articles for DailyFinance, I’ve relied on my own reporting, going directly to sources such as government departments or data trackers such as Nielsen to dig up information. I personally haven’t tapped Burlington’s library sources (our public library and the library at University of Vermont) for data or support, and I haven’t seen indications among reporters/journalists here in Vermont that this exchange is going on.
My mom, a librarian with an MLS, flagged the conference and suggested we attend, as a journalist-daughter and librarian-mother pair. I’m coming with open ears to learn about how the two professions might be able to work together.
Alexa noted that her job is to teach and put journalists’ ideas in context, while a big push in the journalism department is the “journalism of ideas.” The department talks about ideas and concepts, allowing for research to become integral to what journalists do. “We can link information much more easily than we have been able to do. It’s a way of adding value to journalism,” she noted.
While journalists and librarians share some values, there are other ways in which the professions view information differently, Alexa pointed out. “Access to information is probably the biggest piece of that that presents the biggest challenge,” she noted, adding that the conflict between librarians and publishers is similar to the clash that can occur between libraries and journalists. “How do you come up with sustainable models for making information accessible and having an economic backbone?” Alexa pointed out.
I added that the ideas/questions posted on Bibionews of whether libraries are poised to become public-access media centers or could operate a news collective is a fascinating one, but that I feel there are conflicts between what libraries provide and what journalists seek to offer that could throw up barriers to this. Journalists want to provide context and shape the way news is presented, while libraries represent open access to information that’s given without an editorial perspective. This could become a hurdle for the two professions working together on a collective news service.
Librarians are respectful and want to get people from point A to point B on their research, Alexa said. She added that although it’s hard to be neutral in any context, librarians are seeking to be in a neutral place, without any editorial opinion.
Our discussion moved into new ways of providing community news, such as Twitter and local listservs. Both of us agreed that we find Twitter an efficient way to get caught up on what’s going on locally and in the world, although Alexa noted that there are issues with archiving Twitter and making it both easily searchable and organizable. But using libraries as a way to capture ephemeral material that’s published either formally or informally on the Web would be a useful task for libraries, Alexa noted.
I mentioned a local listserv in Vermont called the Front Porch Forum (site is here: http://frontporchforum.com/), which has been written about by Bill McKibben and was a Knight News Challenge winner. It provides a way for local residents to post issues (robberies, town meetings, voting information, etc.), but it’s slower than Twitter, as it takes a day or two for postings to be emailed to subscribers, and is limited to small neighborhoods. Perhaps libraries could provide a forum allowing residents to post news items, questions or local events on a more timely basis, I suggested.
Both of us agreed that mobilizing readers to contribute to the news has pitfalls, such as the trustworthiness of the contributions. I questioned whether a librarian is an appropriate professional to monitor such a public-access news site, especially if the discussion devolves into dangerous areas such as libelous statements.
As for what we bring to the conference, Alexa noted that she’s curious and engaged, a creative thinker. She is looking forward to some blue-sky discussions where she can contribute, even if it’s removed from what’s realistic at the moment. She’s a good listener. I’m a skeptical and logical thinker, but open minded. I’m hoping to learn about what’s possible for libraries and journalists, and how that could translate to a small-city market like Burlington.
One key point from the pre-convention catalytic conversation yesterday between Amy Penwell and me: there’s a huge need for folks in the education establishment in general, and journalism and library science in particular, to impart the critical thinking skills that will enable consumers of information to sort out (reliably) the credible from the non-credible. An aside (and this comes from me, not from the conversation with Amy): I’ve just finished with the Lucas Cioffi video, and my conception of what journalism (even the ”reinvented journalism” — whatever that turns out to be) can and should be/do is about 180 degrees different from his. I look forward to exploring that difference of opinion nin Cambridge. (No time for more just now, and I’m just enough of Luddite that I much prefer direct to online conversations, anyway.)
Louis Battlen is a librarian who has an idea for a bookmobile in neighborhoods. He is also a free-lance writer from Ashfield, MA, two hours from Boston. He is looking for creative work while he is living in rural MA. He raises sheep and chickenson his farm. He seems to be passionate about a meaningful life: libraries, children and communities. He is very curious about JTM and is looking forward to meetimg JTMers.
Hello All,
As one of the (minor) instigators of this event, I’m looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible in Cambridge.
My Conversation Catalyst partner is Mike Kittross, aka J. Michael Kittross, who began his career as a radio journalist a very long time ago. I began my career in public relations about half as long ago, and began working in libraries about half of the intervening years.
Our initial conversation lasted a good two hours, as did the second; the third was shorter as we both had deadlines to meet. Suffice it to say, we found many things to talk about, many similarities, a difference or two, and a shared enthusiasm for continuing to discuss issues of libraries and journalism, among many other topics.
Beyond journalism–he’s the editor of Media Ethics magazine–Mike has a daunting resume in academic posts, military service, and passionate interests in film, television, libraries, and more.
Surprisingly, we live about three miles apart, in Seattle. Even more surprising is the highly unlikely fact that both of us have our very own ”Valhalla Vikings, Gasoline of the Gods” faux credit cards, relics of a 1950s radio promotion attributed to advertising comic Stan Freberg. Anyone else with such a card is invited to bring it to the conference for comparison and general levity.
Both Mike and I are coming to BiblioNews because we want to have a voice in the discussion, and to bring our varied experiences together with the rest of this innovative group to see what happens.
We share the belief that there is far too much ”information” and too little critical evaluation and ”understanding” these days; we both have a common hope that by collaborating, libraries and journalism can raise the quality of ”understanding” through engaged, active civic discourse.
Mike loves books–and would love to see libraries devise ”global book clubs.”
My particular aspirations are:
– Finding willing advisers to help me refine an online newsroom for information research
– Developing a basic model for libraries and journalists about how to organize and conduct civil discussions about civics, information literacy, political issues, and fact-checking between now and the 2012 General Election.
All ideas, comments, and interesting stories are most welcome, in person or online.
We are Jackie Rafferty, director of the Paul Pratt Memorial Library in Cohasset, MA, president of the Massachusetts Library Association (MLA), MA chapter councilor to the American Library Association (ALA), and a member of ALA’s Presidential Taskforce on Equitable Access to Electronic Content; and Eugenia Williamson, a staff writer at the Boston Phoenix who frequently reports on the publishing industry.
We shared two lengthy phone conversations and a few emails about the impact of electronic media on libraries and the demise of investigative journalism.
Jackie told Eugenia that e-content has become increasingly inaccessible to libraries. Publishers use digital rights management (DRM) to limit libraries’ use of electronic materials and refuse to support library resource sharing.
Further, reduced library funding threatens their – and, by extension, the public’s – access to information. Digital publications proliferate, and print publications are rapidly becoming digitized. Jackie says: “The rapid proliferation of electronic content (e-content), combined with library inaccessibility to e-content, is undermining the historic library missions of providing equitable access to information for all people and of preserving the recorded history of humankind for future generations.” (visit http://www.equacc.ala.org to learn more)
Technology has also given rise to new communications paradigms such as self-publishing and citizen journalism. Jackie wonders what librarians and journalists can do to support responsible citizen journalism that incorporates both research and fact checking. She sees an opportunity for transparency in citizen eye-witness reporting, but worries that citizen journalists have inadequate means of proving the veracity of their reporting. She also worries that sound bytes, devoid of facts, perpetuate false information.
Says Eugenia, “Though I’m an arts reporter, I see my colleagues working hard and delivering important investigative journalism all the darn time. In my hometown of Chicago, the alt-weekly there (the Chicago Reader) laid off a number of its investigative journalists. There’s a tremendous article about this in the Columbia Journalism Review here: http://www.cjr.org/feature/justice_for_john_conroy_1.php”
Jackie and Eugenia agree that the demise of (professional) investigative reporting and journalism can have extremely negative effects on society. Jackie wonders what libraries can do to stop this decline without losing their role as neutral purveyors of information.
Neither of us can wait to attend the conference!
@EugeniaWilliamson – if you and Jack haven’t already, check out http://libraryrenewal.org/ which is trying to tackle the electronic distribution issues. I’m sure there are other sources, but I just heard about this one through a conversation with their president Michael Porter aka http://www.libraryman.com
April 3, 2011, Preliminary conversation between Alpha DeLap and Saul Tannenbaum
Tell me about your work and how it led you to saying yes to this workshop. What outcomes would you like for yourself and your organization/work from these sessions?
Saul: I work for a community television channel and am interested in the possibilities this type of a conference will open up. In some ways the link between librarians and journalists seems relatively novel, that said I’ve spent a lot of my life in libraries and one could argue that the Internet is the modern day library so though I’ve drifted away from libraries in everyday life, I would like to begin to re-invest in the libraries as spaces that can truly bridge the digital divide and re-charge civic engagement.
Alpha: I am a graduate student in library science at the University of Washington. I consider myself to be a writer, a teacher and voracious lover of the printed word. For me, the love of stories and their ability to transform people’s lives is what brings me to this work session. My belief is that both journalists and librarians are stewards of a society’s stories.
Tell me about an experience you’ve had which points to the potential at the intersection of journalism and libraries.
Saul: One example is Tufts medical library, an environment that moved away from the idea of the library as “a repository of the holy book” towards a community center with courses, printed resources, and of course, very importantly, coffee.
Alpha: One example I can think of is the Suffern municipal library in upstate New York. This was a small municipal library that had enough resources and support to create a physical and intellectual environment that encouraged civic engagement through its programming, its physical layout (meeting rooms, café, printing center, computer labs) and its staffing (librarians with a range of subject area expertise and experience with outreach to diverse users).
What do you value most about yourself? What do you yourself bringing to this workshop?
Saul: My ability to see connections whether others might not. Also, I value my range and breadth of knowledge in a number of subject areas. I consider myself to be a vacuum cleaner of information.
Alpha: Me, I’m a lover of people’s stories. I also value my ability to remember almost every person’s story I’ve ever heard. I am also a trained academic moving into pratice and thrilled about it: praxis!
2016. Librarians and journalists have a vibrant relationship that is catalyzing civic engagement in many communities. What is happening? How does this new environment function? Who does what? What is now possible as a result?
In 2016, libraries in urban and rural areas are spaces for true community reflection and debate. Funding is stable and increasing. Libraries continue to be repositories of printed texts, paper and electronic, but they are also training grounds for 21st century skills, especially those related to digital literacy. Libraries provide forums for local civic conversation and teach basic skills to document and curate current events. Libraries also include space for rotating collections with a range of themes that stimulate local conversations regarding societal issues and concerns. Librarians are fluent with multi-media tools and journalists are actively involved in library training programs, mentoring users and library staff, in journalistic writing and the use of digital equipment. Libraries contain multi-media equipment for check-out and provide space for editing and screening of media artifacts. In many ways, libraries become the 21st century internet-based equivalent of public access television, providing the technical infrastructure and support services in an inclusive, content-neutral framework allowing for all community voices to be heard.
Bibliobooks blog post
Summarize your conversation using these questions, or whatever questions seem
appropriate to you:
1. What meaning did you take from the conversation?
2. Share a standout story or quote for each of you.
3. What surprised, challenged, inspired, and/or delighted you about the
conversation?
Jacob Caggiano and Jack Brighton mashed up this blog post from several email
exchanges and a long phone conversation. We felt it would flow better as a jointly
authored piece, or at least give us a chance to speak more clearly. Peggy’s questions
provide a helpful framework, so we’ll go ahead and hang our answers on them…so
to speak.
1. What meaning did you take from the conversation?
We began the conversation by discussing the idea that journalism has arrived at a
transitional moment. Jacob started describing what is obvious to him: the shift from
one-to-many media, to a many-to-many system. “Basically I’m part of this hybrid
generation, where I grew up with old media, then transitioned to new media while
becoming an adult,” said Jacob. “When I was 13, AOL was really popular, and I was
connecting with people across the universe. The premise is that we’re not just a
one-way or two-way medium, but a multifaceted system where anyone can be a
publisher, or a celebrity, and the barriers of entry have been reduced and there’s no
gatekeeper.” I think Jacob is in that perfect spot to understand the previous media
system, without being locked into its habits of thought. This could be an advantage
for him over the kids I see going through J School who have no concept of a pre-
Internet world. But that’s a big topic for another time.
Jack began his journalism career in 1987 as a public radio producer and host. “So
before Mosaic, before Gopher, and before the Newsgroups if you remember what
I’m talking about. Radio, TV, and newspapers were it,” he said. “When the web
came along, I was lacking in whatever brain chemical induces people to freak out
about change. I loved the complete feeling of freedom it gave people to express
themselves in ways they never could, to engage in conversations without barriers
or gatekeepers, and to tell stories to a growing global audience.” So while the idea
of many-to-many media appealed to Jack from the get-go, we both reflected on how
difficult this shift is for so many people.
We also discussed the trade-offs we’re all experiencing as we use the array of social
media tools, e.g. connectivity versus privacy. When we push those little ‘like’ buttons
we now find all over the web, we’re helping Facebook know more and more about
us in the aggregate, but for us that information quickly disappears below the fold of
our status page. We’re uploading our social media content (pictures, video) to the
cloud, but who owns the cloud and where does our stuff go? Will our content persist
and be findable in the future? We should think about these things, even though we
don’t.
We found ourselves in agreement that this moment of transition has some great
opportunities, but we need to address some of the pitfalls and no one has perfect
answers yet to issues like privacy, security, and openness.
2. Share a standout story or quote for each of you.
Jacob: “I’ve been very interested in broadening the definition of who is a journalist,
but does that restrict you from having an opinion? It seems like people are starting
to accept that there’s no such thing as objectivity, and that pretending to be
objective is really hiding your point of view. Have a point of view but have it with
integrity.”
Jack: “The tension is between reporting and advocacy or activism. I’ve arrived at
a place where think much of this concern is exaggerated. Historically, journalism
made a difference: if you reported on corruption, unfair laws, or problems within
communities, things changed. For most of its history professional journalism had
a real impact. Of course this can go too far, and there is such a thing as becoming
a political partisan. I think a journalist can take a stance for objectivity while still
arriving at clear and reasonable judgments. But in recent decades the profession
has adopted a notion of objectivity which suspends all possibility of judgment. The
result is a sort of blind and bland stenography that supplies facts but no impact.
Then we wonder why people don’t pay attention.”
Jacob: “I think everybody coming to this conference agrees that there’s a great
match between journalists and librarians. A journalist has to be ready to go report
on the fly, where as a librarian is engaged in more long-term organization. Let
journalists be the storyteller, and librarians be the organizer and archivist. Sort of
like Batman and Albert…though I don’t want to restrict roles, I like the dynamic
between the two, where one handles the tech and maintains the headquarters,
and the other hits the streets and interfaces with the public.”
“I would like to see citizens comfortable know that if there is a story worth telling
they can tell it. And if there’s a story worth finding, they can find it. And it would
be up to them to decide if they want to do these things. My vision, there would be
standards for storing, classifying, and cataloging information as it’s published. The
mission is straightforward, it’s a matter of ironing out the kinks on the technology
side, and then funding and support from the community, and participation.”
Jack: “The center-margin structure of the familiar media system is way too slow
for the Internet age. Like it or not, we now have a many-to-many media system and
everyone can play a part. What is the role of the “traditional” media organization
employing professional journalists? We have not answered this question very well
as yet, but have instead dug in our heels and refused to recognize how technology
has added new dimensions to the media universe. And we’re no longer at the center.
“I think journalism by 2016 must be deeply engaged in community conversations
to truly understand what issues and concerns need to be addressed, and by
whom. In 2016, citizens will play the largest part in telling the stories of their own
communities, histories, and interests. Established media entities will facilitate a
conversation about civic life that has a positive impact where it needs to. The result
is we build knowledge upon knowledge that everyone can successfully use. Libraries
and librarians will be integrated with journalism at the DNA level, and we will no
longer think of them as foreign territories. IT will be part of this model as well.”
3. What surprised, challenged, inspired, and/or delighted you about the
conversation?
Jack: “It didn’t really surprise me to find that Jacob is a smart, focused person who
thinks about these issues on a daily basis. It does inspire me that while he’s working
several jobs doing journalism and media production, he’s also participating in
Journalism That Matters and every other opportunity to meet with other people
trying to find the way forward. Jacob mentioned the phrase “public space” several
times, and it’s clear that he is committed to the idea of the public sphere. I think
many of us are likewise committed, but we don’t speak out about it enough in
conversation and professional practice. Jacob impressed me greatly in speaking to
the role of journalists and librarians in the public sphere.”
Jacob: “Jack told me that although he’s a bit older, he doesn’t feel like an old timer. I love interacting with media veterans like him who are embracing the rapid changes and are here to help usher the younger generations along. I’m also grateful that he’s put so much thought and energy into handling the massively complex task of standardizing the archiving process with his work on the PBCore system. One thing I mentioned to him was my utmost respect for people like him who are getting their hands dirty with the heavy tech that the rest of us consider too dry or complicated to deal with. I can’t wait to meet him and the others in person, I just wish we had more time!”
Anne Raci, an MLIS student at Dominican University, majored in journalism as an undergrad and worked as assistant editor at a daily paper outside Chicago after graduating. She is now the database coordinator at American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Her search for classes that would help her with the technical side of her job led her to the MLIS program, and there she has found “the perfect fit” for what she values and hopes to do in her professional work.
My name is Jamie Helgren and I am in my final quarter of the MLIS program at the University of Denver. I work as a research fellow at Library Research Service, a unit of the Colorado State Library, where I have enjoyed the opportunity to incorporate some of my undergraduate journalism experience in researching and reporting relevant information to librarians in the field. I hope to pursue this combination of my professional interests throughout my career, as I continually notice the similarities between journalists’ and librarians’ work.
Anne and I are in similar positions as MLIS students with backgrounds in journalism, and we are both approaching the BiblioNews gathering curious to hear what everyone is saying and/or doing about collaboration between libraries and news organizations. We agree that such a partnership has potential and are eager to know how conference attendees visualize it. Both of us are full of questions rather than possible solutions, and wonder if the collaboration that others envision might simply involve journalists using the library for research and news sources, or the library becoming a publisher of community news?
As we discussed how this partnership might look five years from now, our thoughts turned toward communities’ perceptions of blending the library and the newspaper. Would either be taken as seriously, or valued as much? How might the reputation of either change as a result? How can we prove to communities that this is a valuable partnership? How can we create a structure and framework now that will be sustainable on a large scale in the long-term?
This conference seems to offer the opportunity for people with both big ideas and specific goals to plan how to make this work, but with so many people from different backgrounds involved, it could be a challenge to get everyone focused enough to move from brainstorming to creating an action plan. Anne hopes to leave the event not merely thinking that it was an interesting conversation, but with measurable steps she can take to act on any decisions made. I am excited to make connections with people who have similar goals and interests; as I am just beginning my professional career, I am in a position to devote time and energy to these efforts, and hope to meet people at BiblioNews who are ready to start implementing their ideas and need help!
(POSTED BY BILL DENSMORE on behalf of Mary Chute)
A Conversation between:
Mary Chute, Deputy Director for Libraries, Institute of Museum and Library Services and
Denise L. Mc Iver, IMLS Scholar and MLIS Student, St. John’s University
“When a community loses its memory, its members no longer know one another. How can they know one another if they have forgotten or have never learned one another’s stories? If they do not know one another’s stories, how can they know whether or not to trust one another? People who do not trust one another do not help one another, and moreover they fear one another. And this is our predicament now.”
–Wendell Berry, “The Work of Local Culture”
http://neweconomicsinstitute.org/publications/essays/berry/wendell/the-work-of-local-culture
A bit about our respective backgrounds:
Mary has a wealth of experience as a professional librarian – she’s been with the IMLS for nearly a decade where she is tasked with responding to the needs of the library and museum community, and facilitating partnerships and initiatives with other Federal agencies such as workforce development with the Department of Labor. Mary has been both a State Librarian as well as a Library Consultant. She understands that librarians in all environments “have the power to empower other people – to enhance their lives in profound ways”.
Prior to entering the Special Libraries/MLIS Program at St. John’s University in 2009, Denise has been involved in the entertainment industry and has worked in story development for CBS Entertainment, in television production, and more recently as a publicist in the music industry. She is also a journalist and writer whose feature-length articles have appeared in consumer and trade magazines. In 2002, Random House published her non-fiction book Droppin’ Science: Straight Up Talk from Hip Hop’s Greatest Voices.
We both felt that the questions Bill provided offered us the opportunity to explore how we see our work, and how we hope to contribute to the conference. Denise felt that there is a need to dispel the fear that appears to be shaping our lives and especially today’s political discourse which is why Mary shared the quote from Wendell Barry which is noted above. We felt Berry’s quote was relevant to our conversation because we both sense that as a society, we’ve become so fragmented and we have somehow lost the ability to connect and share our experiences. What if instead of using the media to provoke fear that we used it to create shared experiences?
We both agreed that it was critically important, now more than ever, that community members share their stories, and we’d like to see how storytelling can be used as a bridge to understanding. Mary briefly described how the IMLS did a partnership with David Isak’s StoryCorps that in 2010 provided the winning institutions of IMLS’ National Medals for Museum and Library Services with a StoryCorps community visit. During these visits not only were stories of the power of the institutions captured, but staff members had the opportunity to observe and engage in the process of capturing oral history episodes.
It’s seems intuitive that the more we know about each other, the more we understand our commonalities, and the more cohesive and inclusive a community will be.
What we hope to bring and take away …
Mary and I both agree that Beyond Books will offer ample opportunity to develop actionable strategies to create an agenda which can make a true impact upon the lives of our community members. It is important to engage our communities, to encourage critical-thinking, and to offer more than “one-note” political discourse. Access to the information and to the expression and exchange of a wide-range of ideas allows for community empowerment.
“I would like to see that all voices have a place, and we work to encourage a desire to understand; that we use our skills and knowledge to build trust between individuals and other members of their communities,” said Mary.
We shared a great belief in the tremendous potential in today’s youth. Denise he expressed her eager anticipation with regards to her current educational program and her commitment to the role librarians can play in helping those most at risk explore, develop critical thinking skills, and self define. She added: “As one of the greatest countries in the world, I believe that ‘to much is given, much is required’. And, as a new librarian interested in issues of social justice, I’d like to use my skills to encourage the exchange of personal storytelling. I believe that when we share our stories, another thread is sewn into the fabric of our communities.”
Using the StoryCorps “model,” one idea that emerged from our conversation is to train community members in production where they interview and curate stories from the life experiences of other members of their community. The pairings could be intergenerational (e.g., a young Latina with a senior citizen) or interracial (e.g., an African-American/Latino or White/African-American). The idea is to create a “mash-up” honoring our diversity and our humanity.
Debbie and I connected over e-mail; she has a full calendar of conferences leading up to the confab. However, we found a lot of common ground in tackling our questions!
Our hopes for outcomes of the confab related to our backgrounds and work
Debbie: I have been focusing on community engagement in my studies. In my work, I am a library director in a small academic library. I see that libraries are changing dramatically as journalism, banks, higher education, etc all are. Both journalist and librarians are format neutral. I want to come away with ideas that we can work together to adapt to the needs of the future for our communities. Both librarians and journalists are concerned with researching, evaluating and distilling information. It would be a dramatic loss if we lost that.
Jordan: Our research at UW related to public access computer use and training in libraries encompasses the consumption of local news stories as a component of civic engagement. In my own research, I am also using Bonnie Nardi’s framework of the public library as an “information ecology,” meaning the richness of information exchange in the library is facilitated by its space, people and resources. With regard to these research areas, I would like to take away a better understanding of the consumption of news within libraries and how librarians can help citizens to inform themselves. Furthermore, I am interested in the role library digital literacy programs and public access computing can have on participation in and creation of citizen journalism, testimonials, and impact statements related to local issues.
What is the common ground between journalism and librarianship?
Debbie: Both groups provide information to the community and have similar values. Both have interests in collaborating with, disseminating and evaluating information that comes from the government.
Jordan: The US Impact survey work in libraries, conducted by UW and funded by the Gates Foundation, indicates that finding information on local issues can be a primary goal of the public computer user. In addition, libraries as a space lead to interactions among people from all walks of life; for this reason, the library can be powerful venue for storytelling and assessment of on-the-ground community needs.
How can journalists and librarians serve the common good?
Debbie: I was at a conference a few years ago between journalists and computer scientists at Georgia Tech. The computer scientists were trying to figure out what was going on with journalist so they could do it themselves. It was not a collaborative situation. I would like to see this group of people to work for the ultimate goal of engaging community and providing quality information.
Jordan: I see a body of knowledge journalists have that can be critical to literacy in the digital age; libraries already work to promote digital literacy (e.g., how to work a mouse, start a session on the computer, and perhaps formulate a resume from scratch) but a deeper level of engagement with current events and online documents requires the ability to discern legitimacy of sources once they are found. Journalists can navigate information sources in this manner; their ability to verify sources and data are complimentary to that of librarians, who are experts at meeting informational needs.
What we bring to the confab
Debbie: I find that I can find the good things and make them better by looking at them a different way. I think about the future realistically. I feel I have a better than average understanding of the point of view of people at different generations. I have a talent for seeing people strengths of people and helping to work on those talents. I hope that we find a way to connect groups together to encourage journalism to flourish.
Jordan: Meeting information needs in a humanistic way is my top priority. Like a librarian, who must determine what a patron’s real information need is, I assess problems by probing users’ suggested solutions (i.e., technology users and information seekers generally speak in solutions rather than problems). For this reason, I try to be a good listener, and to understand the motivations of those I am trying to help without judgment. In attending a conference with both journalists and librarians, I hope to connect the points of strength each profession offers and to formulate an idea of the challenges each faces to perhaps contribute solutions or collaborations that may be mutually beneficial.
Our vision for libraries in 2016
Debbie: Community member, governmental officials and journalists create news online through things like blogs. Libraries and e-government will collaborate to provide information. Citizen journalists will provide information. Journalists will provide current information, editing and provide special issue reporting. Libraries will provide sites and equipment for citizens to create multimedia information. Libraries would also provide training and forums for communities.
Jordan: Libraries will offer information portals, possibly on their home pages, where individuals can seek community information. Local news items and issues will link to options for getting citizens more involved in civic life, including discussions led by journalists or local leaders, perhaps hosted at the library. The library and/or local news outlet – or even an independent journalism advocate, such as ProPublica.org – will offer multimedia presentations with in-depth testimonials. At a conference just today – SeaChange UW ’11 – an anthropologist who studies communities in crisis after natural or industrial disasters commented during a group discussion that, with the collapse of print & local media, most primary sources are now government and industry officials. We need more statements, more input, from regular people related to local issues to give a more holistic view of impacts and needed actions – libraries may be a great venue to educate people about their voices in the community, and a place to learn how to contribute and act on local issues.
Anna Lisa Raya Rivera (Anna) — former magazine editor and Columbia journalism school grad, current Rutgers library and info sci grad student, and future conference roommate of mine — got to know each other a bit over the phone yesterday.
BiblioNews seems to be a perfect fit for Anna, as it brings together her past, present and future — after graduation, she hopes to advance information literacy, especially in underserved communities, through designing products such as search engines. She’s also intrigued by how actively conference goers get to participate in determining what’s going to happen next week. This will be good for her, because she’s a highly collaborative, open source-adocating, go-getting doer.
Anna’s journalism background, and especially her deep experience with fact checking (One of Anna’s previous jobs was editing at “People.” Can you imagine how difficult it must be to substantiate the material that gets published in “People”? And at how fast it’d have to get done, too!), are serving her well now in her new career. She expected everything she touched in print to be absolutely true and perfectly written. Now, she wonders how untrained people know how to wade through the flood of information out there on the Internet to find the good stuff. And she gets great satisfaction from helping with these searches.
I come to the library-journalism connection from a different perspective. My experience with libraries is only as a user, a user who’s always loved libraries — bc I love reading, and old books, and also because I love that we live in a country where people can borrow books for free, basically on the honor system that they’ll return them.
In my work as a journalist, my colleagues and I have, for years, thought of libraries as one of the perfect places to recruit new news sources. We believe everyone has knowledge and expertise that could inform news coverage, and we try to get more people involved in our news process through the Public Insight Network (http://www.publicinsightnetwork.org) — over 100,000 people across the nation who have agreed to let us ask them questions about topics we’re reporting on.
We know library patrons are diverse (in all ways), and have admired the strong relationships libraries have built with their communities and users. So we’ve wanted to work with librarians to find ways to offer patrons a voice in the media. I couldn’t ask for a better conference than this one for inspiration.
It’s a bit difficult to summarize our conversation because Anna and I discussed many things, a bunch that didn’t relate to the BiblioNews — like that her high school was near my grandmother’s apartment in LA. But the standout quote is easy: “I’m kind of a hardcore Latina.”
And Anna’s conclusion from her example of where she’s observed journalism and libraries coming together will stay with me because it’s one of the core beliefs behind my team’s work: So many people have stories, but we won’t know them without asking.
Dorothy Jean Carner, head of the U. of Missouri Journalism Library, and I spoke today about our shared interests in the upcoming conference. She noted her deep concern over the preservation of digital content — news, photos, audio, multimedia — which commercial newspaper owners often don’t care about, yet the community does and posterity will. So how to get these interests in alignment? Dorothy mentioned how some libraries are experimenting with the LOCKSS system, “Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe,” which distributes content to multiple nodes to ensure its preservation in an efficient way.
Dorothy also expressed concern that librarians have a different approach to community engagement than journalists; libraries are neutral providers of information, while journalists tend to have a point of view and be more proactive.
I share Dorothy’s concerns about unmet public needs. I think there are LOTS of public interest concerns that are not being well-served by contemporary news organizations (because they are not seen as profitable or profitable enough) which might be well-served by a tech platform and bottom-up revenue model. What the market considers financially unattractive, a community-managed commons might consider entirely feasible, drawing upon the volunteer participation, in-kind community support (the schools, local businesses, etc.) and through innovative revenue models that together support a shared tech platform. The idea would be to federate many (unmet) public interests….for serious journalism, for archival preservation of a community’s history…. for a public square to discuss issues of the day…. for a community-owned “Craigslist”…. for servicing the info needs of public schools; etc., etc., onto one tech platform with a new institutional form, perhaps drawing upon the best of what libraries and newspapers have been historically, but pointing in new directions.
We both agreed that young people, especially the “digital natives,” may have some imaginative new ideas for bring to the table. And we both agreed, also, that the conference should be a provocative meeting of minds that hopefully will suggest some constructive new directions.
Karen Gill from the Newport News Public Library System and I (Jeanine Finn from the School of Information at UT Austin) had a great conversation this morning.
There are many shared values between journalists and librarians — both are positioned within their communities as trusted sources of information and are dedicated to informing citizens.
We share some challenges, for example, Karen noted, “Librarians and journalists are both challenged by prioritizing the need to provide entertainment that will draw the public while also providing information to create an informed citizenry that is able to uphold the American ideal of democracy. The question of ‘Do we give them what they want or what they need?’ and/or ‘How do we do both?’”
Some of our differences include our approaches to balancing timlieness and credibility. For example, librarians are interested in providing the most thorough and accurate information from the most credible source. While journalists are also interested in this, they often are operating under intense deadline pressure that doesn’t allow complete perfection but rather must go with the best they can get to meet their deadlines. How can we learn from each other’s modes of operating to balance the best of both approaches?
I shared some of my experience with Radical Reference — a librarian collective (the “radical” describes the novelty of our approach rather than the politics) that supports the work of independent journalists and researchers.
Karen shared some of what she learned from writing her master’s thesis on the relationship between civic engagement and newspaper readership — very relevant to our future conversations I think.
What surprised me? I am pleasantly surprised by the optimism of journalists about their role in educating citizenry. In my opinion, we in the library world often wind up being somewhat “behind the scenes” in our communities. I think parternship with journalists would be useful in helping more of us take a more pro-active view.
Lucas Cioffi 3:18 pm on April 7, 2011 Permalink |
Hi David, I wish we were able to chat in Cambridge. Are there any ideas in your future of journalism that are mutually exclusive with mine? I’m guessing that you have different priorities but not opposite priorities; is that the case?
I’m interested in seeing libraries become public spaces that blends online and in-person dialogue on local and national issues. I’d like to see libraries adding a knowledge-creating role to their traditional knowledge providing role; knowledge creation would be possible by facilitating dialogue and deliberation among people with diverse perspectives on public issues.