Annoyed Librarians

There is a very important matter I need to discuss with you. Please meet me in the southeast corner of the lower level of the Mall parking garage across from the hotel at 2 am. I know the identity of the Annoyed Librarian. ¹

I'm not sure whether you've been following the latest controversy in the world of library blogging (Did I really just pass up an opportunity to use the word "blogosphere"?).  I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage because I'm newly acquainted with most of these blogs, but let's see if I can summarize.  There is a blogger known only as the Annoyed Librarian whose postings in her eponymous (pseudonymous?) blog are known to irk a lot of other library bloggers who like neither their content nor the masking of the author's true identity.  Things got even more emotional in the the last few weeks as Library Journal hired the Annoyed Librarian and began hosting her blog on their site, increasing both the profile of her blog and the irksomeness of her detractors.  The Journal of Access Services has thrown further fuel on the fire by publishing an entire issue devoted to the work of the Annoyed Librarian.

Several bloggers have speculated about the true identity of the Annoyed Librarian with guesses ranging from former ALA Director Michael Gorman to fellow bloggers like Meredith Farkas², and others have threatened to out her if she doesn't identify herself (I'm thinking about a long, vague, rambling post on One Big Library which has since been removed³ but which was seconded by librarian.net⁴).  There's even been lame attempts at Watergate jokes, with the shadowy figure of Deep Link working as an informant for intrepid bloggers.

So what do I think about this whole controversy?  Well, for one, I'm not sure the issue here is really about blogging under pseudonyms at all.  As the Annoyed Librarian points out, the creators of the library-themed comic Unshelved get no flack for their pseudonymity, nor do several other popular library blogs.  The issue is really about disliking the Annoyed Librarian, which I can totally understand.  I am quite often wholly put off by the tone of her posts.  For example:

Sometimes it seems that I'm the only librarian who believes that public libraries should have some sort of purpose larger and more important that [sic] subsidizing the puerile entertainment desires of the mass of people who can't afford Netflix or videogames.  Some naive people think that the masses should provide their own puerile entertainment and public institutions should contribute to the public good.⁵

What don't I like about that paragraph?  Well, for starters, the classism inherent to the idea of "the masses" which the librarian stands apart from and deigns to serve.  I'm also not so fond of this particular tenor of sarcasm-- which makes me wonder if the Annoyed Librarian is, in fact, Ann Coulter.  And then there's the idea of railing against the "puerile" which is a concept that just makes me think of think of the Comstock Laws or the trial over Lady Chatterley's Lover, or Jesse Helms railing against Robert Mapplethorpe-- I can't imagine myself ever thinking it okay to deem something puerile.

A few days later in a new post the Annoyed Librarian decided to rephrase this idea (not because there was anything wrong with the tone of the first post, mind you, but because an awful lot of her readers seem to have been "thick librarians" who didn't get her brilliant and eloquent argument).  This time around she clarifies:

This whole discourse about what libraries need to be doing and how they should change has no persuasive power when hard times come. We need arguments that show libraries are necessary for the republic and librarianship is a serious profession where the leading voices in the field aren't telling us the problem with libraries is that they aren't frivolous enough. Library 2.0, video games, and dance parties aren't going to save anything or persuade anyone that libraries are worth saving. The purpose of public libraries isn't just to get more people through the door by any means necessary. Libraries have a grander purpose that seems to be ignored most of the time. If libraries become identified as Internet cafes or video-game rental stores, no one's going to bother to fight to save them because they won't think they're worth saving.⁶

See, this is an argument that I have a lot more sympathy for.  In fact, I think I've expressed some similar concerns in my own blog, and in ways that, I have to acknowledge, have sometimes been sarcastic or mean-spirited.  I've poked fun at the reading taste of book group ladies and criticized the idea of performing reference interviews via Second Life which are both snobbish ways of pointing out that I also believe that too often libraries are ignoring the idea of a grander purpose and turning their backs on the idea of serving a vital role as an institution for educational advancement.  And it's here that the Annoyed Librarian spells out the role that she should be playing, and that I should be playing-- which is not to write whiny posts prophesying the End Times of an educated civilization, or demonizing fellow librarians, but to do something constructive-- to make the case for a grander purpose for libraries.

¹  The Annoyed Librarian: Unmasked?, The Medium is the Message, 10/18/08.

² I'm REALLY not the Annoyed Librarian (nor am I annoyed), Information Wants to Be Free, 11/18/08.
³  Dear Annoyed, One Big Library, 11/21/08
⁴ Dear Annoyed..., librarian.net, 11/21/08
⁵ Librarians, Amuse Us to Death!, Annoyed Librarian, 10/27/08.
⁶ Take Two, Annoyed Librarian, 11/12/08.

Is PowerPoint Making Us Stupid?

This week I started thinking about a long-term assignment in my Evaluation class to write a professional research project proposal which will be presented to the class in an oral presentation.  It's likely that many of us will use PowerPoint in this presentation, which I have no experience with as a presenter, but have experienced extensively as an audience member.  In researching PowerPoint, I came across Edward Tufte's excellent pamphlet "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint", excerpts of which are also available on his website.

Tufte is most widely known for his 1983 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, in which he critiqued the proliferation of chartjunk, or the extraneous decoration of graphs, and argued that every visual element in a graph should signify data.  In the 2003 pamphlet and a more recent essay on his website Tufte applies this critique to PowerPoint presentations in which only 30-40% of the average slide is devoted to content with the balance belonging to clip art, logos, and other design features.  He argues that PowerPoint presentations tend to suffer from a number of flaws.  For instance, the program encourages presenters to rely on bullet outlines and hierarchical multi-level lists that obscure or only imply the presenter's posited relationship between list items.  Also, the spacial limitations often cause presenters to segregate data and analysis on separate slides rather than side-by-side.  Tufte applies these arguments to a PowerPoint presentation that Boeing gave to NASA concerning the possible damage to the space shuttle Columbia during its final mission, and argues that several common limitations of arguments made via PowerPoint presentation contributed to the official underestimation of the threat of this damage which resulted, unfortunately, in the destruction of the ship and the loss of its crew during re-entry.  This analysis was eventually incorporated into the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's final report with the recommendation that NASA should end its organizational reliance on PowerPoint presentations in favor of technical reports.

Tufte's aims much of his dismay at the institutional sanction of PowerPoint presentations, mentioning, for instance, the PowerPoint policies at the Harvard School of Public Health, which encourage the use of no more than six lines of text per slide with no more than six words per line-- limitations better suited to reading primers, he argues, than scientific analysis.  He contrasts this to a seventeenth century chart of causes of mortality (which includes such colorful causes of death as gout, grief, and plague-in-the-guts) that clearly and efficiently organizes twenty years' worth of deaths on a single page.

Ultimately, the thrust of the essay is that businesses and academic institutions are adjusting their presentations to suit the limitations of the presentation technology rather than adjusting the technology to suit their presentation needs.  PowerPoint was conceived for the convenience of presenters and at a huge expense to the content and to the audience of the presentation.

I'm glad to have read this essay in time to think about alternative means of presenting my research proposal.  I was thinking I'd I'd want counter the ubiquity of PowerPoint with something more original anyway-- now I have a justification for that decision.