Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

I was talking with friends over thanksgiving dinner about google (you can tell I can’t stop thinking about google!). We agreed that it is problematic that there is very little public discourse on google despite their increasing expansion into all areas of the cyberworld and it’s infrastructure. We were speculating why there is no public discourse:

1. Ignorance: Maybe people have no idea what are the implications of google’s expansion in our daily life. They don’t perhaps don’t realize that google tracks our search terms, serves advertising based on our email content, etc.
2. Fear: It’s interesting that there are no critical views on google among librarians or higher education. It’s possible that people think that there will be the possibility to work with Google in the future (University of CA and University of VA are two recent sign-ons) and they don’t want to jeapardize by criticizing them. Many academic institutions are already working with them and many others want to join the race.
3. Conflict of interest: A large number of people are already associated with Google in one way or another. So it is difficult if not illegal for those people who know best about google’s inner workings and practices to criticize those practices because of their position.

Whatever the reasons for the lack of public discourse, silence is not the solution. If ignorance is the reason then we have to find the way to educate our public and ourselves. If fear is preventing the public discourse then we need to create a community where we can engage in critical dialog and encourage people to discuss about how the decisions we make now will affect future generations of library users and the world’s citizens. If conflict of interest is the reason then we have to ask ourselves whose interests are being looked after?
I think this is the time and I hope we don’t wait too long.

I thought no one was reading my blog since I haven’t posted anything for a long time. But since I restarted the blog a couple of days I found out that my friend, Jim Jacobs, was picking up my new blog posts via RSS. I guess you never know who will read your blog in cyber world

Speaking about Jim, I had a chance to talk him on the phone today. I always think he is one of the library world’s visionaries but few library administrators recognize his brilliancy since he is way ahead of them (and I’m not trying to butter him up ).

I mentioned to him about my mental struggle with google as a library tool. One thing he pointed out that I think is really important is the concept of transparency. No one knows how google works. There are so many mysterious layers between google search technologies and users.
This is crucial distinction between libraries and Google. When I teach a library class to students I am able to teach how knowledge is organized in the library and how Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings and LC classification that we use are biased and western culture/dominant ideology-centered — for more, see for example, Sanford Berman’s Prejudices and Antipathies.

With Google, I can’t teach students about the intricacies of how knowledge is organized and why, in google’s search results, certain links are on the top and the others are not. Worse, I don’t even know what is included and what is not included. Google claims that they will organize the world of information, but I am wondering whose world they are talking about.

Organizing knowledge is inherently subjective and its subjectivity has to be revealed in order to challenge the oppression/bias embedded in our culture. One thing that the library community can do while they are dealing with Google is to point out to their user communities about google’s opaqueness in terms of how things are organized and be aware of it’s implications.

Google is getting to be an evil empire (maybe it’s already there) but I don’t know what to think of it. Working in an institution that has a partnership with google is not that easy for someone who thinks google is evil. I am wondering how people who are working in Microsoft deal with their company’s evilness. Worse, as a librarian it is impossible to get away from google. I guess I can promote scroogle and their google scraper search (check out the Firefox scroogle search extension!) but there is no google scholar or google books version of scroogle. As part of my everyday job, I have to struggle with questions like:

• Should Google be branded on our library site or not?

• Should we promote google books and google scholar and if so, then how?

I don’t have any grounded answers for these questions.So what should be done? Can we boycott Google? Should we? Can libraries create their own tools? Unlike other products or companies where a boycott could work (think Walmart or MS software), not using google will not work because they’re so ubiquitous and branching out from search into wifi infrastructure, email, Web apps like Writely etc. Additionally, how many other information products that libraries use are produced by unethical corporations? LexisNexis?
Many librarians are struggling to cope with the feeling that google will take over the library and their jobs. However, I think we have to remember that libraries are different from google despite google’s claim that google and librarians’ missions are similar (I just found out). Many librarians think google is our competitor, but if we compete with google then we will lose. Think about how much money is behind google and how many people work for google.

I think we have to go back to our roots and our fundamental library mission as an educational institution. I will be thinking over the holiday weekend on the issue of google and libraries and hopefully come up with philosophical premises that I can share with our staff and let them know where I stand on this.

I attempted to start my own blog a year ago and thought that I needed to have space where I could write and share information about what I care and am interested. However, with my busy schedule and participating in other blogs I killed my own within a few weeks. However, I think it’s time to resurrect it because I feel there is something in me asking to start again.
On that note, I went to Labortech conference and attended a workshop on blog. One of presenters, David Sliver, Professor in Media Studies at USF and happened to be a good friend of mind! He gave very helpful tips to people who want to blog but no time. Below are the 5 tips:

1. Start a collective blog - no need to rely on one person’s contribution
2. Use Already Existing Information (AEI)
3. Write about daily work and include articles that relate to what we do
4. Blog your allies as well as enemies
5. Blog about success and future victory - no matter how small our success is we should let people know.

Thanks David for the tips!! I will kick off my new start with your tips!