Swimming in the sea of irrelevance

There's an excellent article in the Times Online today about Google's continuing efforts to digitise everything it can lay it's hands on, including the content of libraries. It contains a warning.

"Google is a profit machine. Nothing wrong with that, as long as we don’t delude ourselves into thinking it is an entirely neutral source of information."

Well fair enough, and non-neutrality is definitely something to bear in mind when searching Google, but surely libraries, being much more selective than Google, can hardly claim to be neutral either? I don't think neutrality is the issue here. What libraries do that Google makes no attempt to do is to be selective and to select on grounds of quality.

All this reminds me of that classic, which I think I've referred to here before, Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he says [my italics]

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy."

Another thing that libraries do is to give 'swimming lessons', and surely those are needed now more than ever.

Creativity - what's that got to do with libraries?

As one of the very few people at the Creativity or Conformity conference who was what they call support staff rather than academic, perhaps I should try to account for the relevance?

One great benefit was that I got to take part in discussion of the issues and concerns of those who I'm supporting. I take 'support' to mean that my job is to make it easier for other people to do their jobs, and I think it's likely that I can do that better if I understand what it is they are trying to do.

Another was that it made me realise that while libraries are excellent at supporting the traditional style of learning (individual, based on the written word and existing knowledge in the subject area) they are not so great at facilitating more creative styles (collaborative, visual, lateral thinking, idea generating and problem solving.) Our physical spaces and our resources and (dare I say) our rules, are very much geared towards the former.

I've seen some examples of what others are doing to make universities and their libraries more active in support of creative learning. The projects involving iLabs and c-spaces * in particular were something that I think we should be aware of. Of course these things take time and resources... but let's not start singing that old song again (see previous post!)

*
Essex
Coventry
Bedfordshire
UEA

Conference: Creativity or Conformity? Cardiff 2007.

I think what I like best about the concept of creativity is its tendency to be positive. It's so very easy, especially at work, to slip into negativity. We would do wonderful things but we haven't got the money, we haven't got the time and, of course, they won't let us. It's a familiar refrain rather like one of those irritatingly catchy Eurovision songs that gets stuck in the back of your mind and you can't get rid of it. It's annoying how hard it is to get rid of, and I've caught myself humming it quietly now and then even since the conference.

As someone said in one of the final discussion sessions (apologies for paraphrasing and for not even being able to remember who I'm paraphrasing!) what it comes down to in the end is, never mind the excuses, did you make any difference or not?

Blogging about having nothing to blog about

It has been pointed out to me that I haven't updated my blog this year. Which is odd, when you think about it, as no-one ever reads it. It's quite spooky really.

The thing is, I haven't actually done anything worth blogging about yet this year. I expect I'll have lots of things to say after next week's conference though, so watch out for updates next Thursday or Friday.