# Notes and highlights for The New Librarianship Field Guide (The MIT Press) Lankes, R. David --- ## 1 Librarianship—Full Stop ### Highlight (pink) - Page 6 · Location 180 the term “ radical . ” Some have implied that the term , with its encompassing rhetoric of improving society , calls up visions of jackbooted librarians storming a community to enforce a special sense of social justice . Nothing could be further from the truth . Librarians engage communities in a discussion of just what “ improving ” entails ; librarians are a part of that conversation , representing values and principles developed over millennia . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 9 · Location 237 It comes down to the root of “ community ” — the Latin communitas : a group of people sharing possessions and responsibilities . This applies to all communities ; be those possessions a building , a tax ID , a plot of land , or a set of values . ## 2 They Named the Building after Us ### Highlight (pink) - Page 14 · Location 286 We can see an implicit definition of librarians by their relation to institutional libraries , in the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association : We \[ librarians \] provide the highest level of service to all library users through appropriate and usefully organized resources ; equitable service policies ; equitable access ; and accurate , unbiased , and courteous responses to all requests . 2 ## 3 The Mission of Librarians ### Highlight (pink) - Page 17 · Location 337 Andrew Carnegie thought of libraries as “ the people’s university ” ; he built them around the world to ensure that people who governed themselves were educated . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 19 · Location 365 improving society through facilitating knowledge creation . ## 4 Knowledge Creation ### Highlight (pink) - Page 23 · Location 420 That is , a librarian seeks to improve communities and society through making them smarter . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 24 · Location 432 “ cookery , ” as he called it ) was a woman’s business ? How about the fact that , in the 200s for “ Religion , ” he assigned 200 – 287 to Christian texts , but only 289 – 299 to all other religious texts ( 288 is no longer used ) ? So that , for example , 278 is the number assigned to works of or about the “ Christian church in South America , ” whereas 296 is the number assigned to all works of or about Judaism . Do you still feel that libraries using his system are shaped by a single objective truth ? ### Highlight (pink) - Page 26 · Location 484 No , librarians aren’t in the information business — we’re in the knowledge business , and , as you’ll see , that puts us in the conversation business , which leads to some rather startling new types of services and practices . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 26 · Location 490 For librarians , “ knowledge ” is the set of beliefs held in relation to one another that dictate behaviors . This set is a network constructed through conversations and actions on our own and in larger communities . Note , knowledge is not equivalent to absolute truth . Truth is an area of pursuit reserved for philosophers and priests ( and apparently for Melvil Dewey as well ) . Instead , librarians are interested in what people believe , and how this will impact what they do . This is a scientific or rational approach . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 27 · Location 511 On the other hand , it also means that scientists never take a theory as truth . It is a working understanding only , a grounded and logically supported belief of how the world operates . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 28 · Location 524 As you look at rack upon rack of books in a library , don’t think of them as packets of knowledge . Instead , think of them as flints , waiting to spark something unique in each person who encounters them . ### Highlight (yellow) - Page 30 · Location 570 When a member asks a question , your first response should be a set of questions of your own , not a Google search . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 34 · Location 641 And what , as conversants , are we doing in our conversations with community members ? We’re exchanging language . ## 5 Facilitation ### Highlight (yellow) - Page 47 · Location 913 When I was an undergraduate , if I asked a question , the professor would give me an answer . When I was a master’s student , the professor would respond with “ What a great question … how will you answer it ? ” And , finally , when I was a doctoral student , the professor and I would spend all day trying to refine the question to see if it was in fact good . ## 6 Participatory Systems ### Highlight (pink) - Page 60 · Location 1159 Remember children’s story time at the library ? When do librarians offer it ? In many public libraries , they offer it in the morning when most parents are at work . Why ? According to the Population Reference Bureau , “ only 7 percent of all U.S . households consisted of married couples with children in which only one spouse worked . Dual - income families with children made up more than two times as many households . ” 4 So it would seem these public libraries have decided to offer a service to an elite few families who can afford to have one parent stay at home with their children and bring them to story time — or have their nanny do so . Not exactly a neutral decision . ## 7 Improve Society ### Highlight (pink) - Page 71 · Location 1371 the scientific method that has been so powerful in pushing forward human achievement is designed to develop not the only , not the true , but the most likely explanation of a phenomenon , until such time as a better ( more scientific ) explanation comes along . That said , realize that true science emerges not from a linear rational approach to a problem , but from a thick froth of argument , hunches , passions , and obsessions . ## 8 Librarians ### Highlight (pink) - Page 73 · Location 1397 How do you become a librarian ? There are three means of entering our profession : by degree , by hire , and by spirit . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 74 · Location 1406 Those who become librarians by the third means — by spirit — don’t have a library degree and may not even have the word “ librarian ” in their job title , but they clearly have the same mission , skill set , and service outlook as professional librarians . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 83 · Location 1605 During the service Betsy was giving out new books to the children in the program . One of the girls started to cry . When Betsy asked what was the matter , the girl said , “ This is the first new thing I have ever owned . ” That book wasn’t about reading , that book was a tool for a child creating the knowledge that she mattered . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 87 · Location 1677 The people who use a service and those who will go to bat for it are different people . This may be surprising , but it’s true . We have research on this . When seeking support , therefore , engage as advocates those most likely to step up . 5 Generally , these are activists who have a long history of involvement and who are connected with many others ( Malcolm Gladwell calls them “ Connectors ” and “ Mavens ” ) . 6 ### Highlight (pink) - Page 90 · Location 1723 As a librarian , you must be prepared to critically examine your goals and services . You must understand that , in any community , there are structures of power and privilege , haves and have - nots . To be clear , this is not just a matter of the rich and the poor . If you’re a medical librarian , do you answer the doctors ’ questions before the nurses ’ or medical students ’ ? Or if you’re a bank librarian , do you prioritize the needs of executives over those of the rank and file ? All too often , librarians rely either on tradition or on convenience to make these decisions . ## 10 What Is a Library? ### Highlight (pink) - Page 96 · Location 1813 So we can now define a library as a mandated and facilitated space supported by the community , stewarded by librarians , and dedicated to knowledge creation . ## 11 Saving Money and the World ### Highlight (pink) - Page 104 · Location 1895 On the one hand , information wants to be expensive , because it’s so valuable . The right information in the right place just changes your life . On the other hand , information wants to be free , because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time . So you have these two fighting against each other . 1 ### Highlight (pink) - Page 112 · Location 2102 For example , if you want to know any law enacted by the U.S . Congress , you can search the Library of Congress’s THOMAS database . 27 Or if you’d like to learn about research funded by the National Institutes of Health , you can search the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database . 28 ## 12 A Platform for Knowledge Development ### Highlight (pink) - Page 118 · Location 2289 communities will want to share beyond books , to expertise , capital , ideas , spaces , software , data , experiences , services , and / or stories . ## 14 Academic Libraries ### Highlight (blue) - Page 133 · Location 2555 management and depth at the master’s level , or depth and research skills at the doctoral level ) , ## 18 Coda ### Highlight (pink) - Page 159 · Location 2968 Librarians stand shoulder to shoulder with outcasts and privileged alike to seek common ground for success and equity . ## Observations from the Field ### Highlight (pink) - Page 160 · Location 3397 The problem is not that the field of librarianship has expanded , but rather that , in an attempt to stay true to traditional library values , library science and information science have begun to diverge . Library science is seen as the domain of service , values , and human intermediation ( including cataloging and reference ) . Information science has become the domain of data , technology , and automation . The problem , of course , is that librarians need to understand technology , data , and automation to best empower their community members and information professionals need to understand that systems represent values and need to empower communities . . ### Highlight (pink) - Page 160 · Location 3426 As data librarian extraordinaire Kimberly Silk says , “ You need data and stories . The data make the stories real and the stories make the data matter . ” 3