# The New Librarianship Field Guide  ## Metadata - Author: [[R. David Lankes]] - Full Title: The New Librarianship Field Guide - Category: #books ## Highlights - 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. ([Location 180](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=180)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=237)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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 ([Location 286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=286)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=337)) - Tags: [[pink]] - improving society through facilitating knowledge creation. ([Location 365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=365)) - Tags: [[pink]] - That is, a librarian seeks to improve communities and society through making them smarter. ([Location 420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=420)) - Tags: [[pink]] - “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? ([Location 432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=432)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=484)) - Tags: [[favorite]] [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=490)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 511](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=511)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=524)) - Tags: [[pink]] [[favorite]] - When a member asks a question, your first response should be a set of questions of your own, not a Google search. ([Location 570](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=570)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - And what, as conversants, are we doing in our conversations with community members? We’re exchanging language. ([Location 641](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=641)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=913)) - 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. ([Location 1159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1159)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 1371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1371)) - Tags: [[pink]] - How do you become a librarian? There are three means of entering our profession: by degree, by hire, and by spirit. ([Location 1397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1397)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 1406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1406)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 1605](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1605)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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 ([Location 1677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1677)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 1723](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1723)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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. ([Location 1813](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1813)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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 ([Location 1895](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=1895)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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 ([Location 2102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=2102)) - Tags: [[pink]] - communities will want to share beyond books, to expertise, capital, ideas, spaces, software, data, experiences, services, and/or stories. ([Location 2289](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=2289)) - Tags: [[pink]] - management and depth at the master’s level, or depth and research skills at the doctoral level), ([Location 2555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=2555)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Librarians stand shoulder to shoulder with outcasts and privileged alike to seek common ground for success and equity. ([Location 2968](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=2968)) - Tags: [[pink]] - 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.. ([Location 3397](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=3397)) - Tags: [[favorite]] [[pink]] - 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 ([Location 3426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B01FLE5JGY&location=3426)) - Tags: [[pink]]