Reflections for Information Professional Transformation

Neoliberalism meets Marx’s Means of Production

It is clear that the digital revolution is changing the nature of libraries. There appears to have been established processes, relationships,  and stability in how libraries made books available to their users which have been upended by the nature of the digital medium that is the Ebook.

These reflections are based on reading 29 pages of
Morris, C. & Sibert, L. Chapter 6, Acquiring ebooks. In S. Polanka (Ed.), No shelf required : E-books in libraries [ALA Editions version] (Chapter 6, pp. 95-124). Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=598919

The critical issue to me seems to be the sale of an item that our technology provides very simple reproduction of. Even if Marx never considered the ramifications of being able to reproduce an item with the pushing of buttons control + A, Control + C, Control + V this is now the world we live in.

For the publishers of content this leads to the creation of more and more restrictions embedded within the medium, for the consumers of content it leads to a lessening of value due to the explosion of availability and sharing.

The same dynamic has affected the industries of music, visual art, as well as writing. The truth is we have not developed the solutions that allow content producers to be recognised and supported in ways that are sustainable to their practice and fair for their talent or contributions in the modern context. Despite the presentation of success for those individuals who break through all the barriers to achieve stardom or even merely attain the threshold of making a living wage the market suppresses the diversity and compensation of these individuals as externalities to be minimised in the sale of content.
This is evidenced in the claim from Macquarie University that average income derived from practising as an author is $ 12,900 in Australia.

Now that I’ve described the chasm we face in getting to where we need to be I will now look at what models have emerged to discuss where libraries are in the digital resource context regarding Ebooks.

Some libraries ( certain academic research libraries) are refusing to engage in purchasing these works at all as the risk of corporate failure removing access to purchased works is too great.

Publishers are debundling their fees into greatly fragmented models so you may purchase a license for a work, then have to pay for the platform to host it, and then potentially also for updates to both of the above going forward.

Some libraries are using the same models of acquisistion for print and Ebooks and just waiting till they have the physical version in order to process both simultaneously despite the inefficiency of waiting 6 – 9 months for physical copies to catch up with digital access.

Aggregators work across different publishing companies to provide offerings to libraries that greatly simplify the licensing negotiations for each work. It is noted that the library needs to protect itself from 3rd party copyright infringement if the aggregator does not negotiate as required on their behalf and that some publishers will not work with aggregators as they act as middle men taking a cut of potential profits.

Patron Driven Acquisistion holds the most hope to me as a responsive path forward as it involves giving library users a large amount of access to titles for a relativley small outlay by the library and then purchases are made based on demand for titles within the system. The most common protocol I have heard of was for the first 3 accesses to be temporary loans and for the 4th use to trigger the purchase of the work. The benefit of this system is the more costly decisions of permanent purchase are left to the wisdom of actual users as guided by a swarm level of intelligence.

Other models include subscription packages which are predominantly works that no longer sell in print and publishers are trying to eke out last dollars out of.

Perpetual access where the library gains permanent use of the system but has to generally pay ongoing fees for the system that delivers it.

Pay per view which is what it says it is.

Publishers may offer previews to selectors of a page, chapter or whole work there is no standard. The reviewer can find it hard to know if all of the same content (images, graphs, etc) is in the electronic version as the print book. The purpose of the library is to spread information far and wide whereas the publisher is seeking to extract the maximum monetary value from the works they hold.

I am interested to see how this part of the GLAM sector evolves.

Such a pleasure to move onto a new topic.

However disturbing to once again have the teacher librarian role situated as fighting for the necessities of existence, in this case for funding.

Framing the advantages of a functional school library in terms of increased achievement whether in literacy or NAPLAN is suggested. Though the calculus of working at a school in the first place where the principal requires convincing of the existence or basic funding needs of a library is problematic to me.

The TL is the steward of the collection which can be collectively a significantly sized financial asset. Management of the funding resources therefore goes not only into acquisition but also maintenance and repair. Funding impacts on how many roles are employed within the space and thus how many volunteers can be managed also.

Collaboration is the key to maximising the benefits as a solo school librarian can only interact with so many students in a day. Through the management and promotion of the collection the necessary interactions can occur through other stakeholders and that can be where the valuable experiences are enacted.

I have just returned from volunteering as a panel member for a discussion on GLAM Education roles as part of my role on the committee at ENVI for our first crossover event with New Cardigans a library originated GLAM organisation. I got to reflect on many aspects of our work from the casualisation of the workforce, the siloing of GLAM professionals , and due to sitting beside twitter star Alissa (@lissertations) I had a discussion of some of the epistemological conundrums I uncovered as part of the Annotated Bibliography assignment.

I was concerned about bias. That my personal experience would color the selection  of resources and thus exclude equally viable alternatives. Alissa responded that GLAM institutions and practitioners are inherently biased and attempting to ignore or censor this fact led to negative outcomes.

I realised that my selections were based on the strengths of my knowledge and that includes both lived experience as well as the navigation of selection aids. The fact that I lived for years near Lake Burleigh Griffin which is surrounded by the Federal cultural institutions, that I worked within one of them, and that I have some expertise in navigating them enriches what I am able to offer knowledge seekers.

The annotated bibliography is just an offering to engage. Not a mandated curriculum. The issues of diversity of the lived experiences of Australians vs the fact of a national curriculum and standardised testing are a different question to wrestle with and can wait for a later time in this course or my career.

 

Reviewing Hughes-Hassel & Mancall’s (2005) decision-making model for selecting resources and access points that support learning shows a hierarchical linear system of priorities where each threshold can exclude a resource from further consideration before any of the later qualities are considered. This is inherent in the flow chart model and why I would consider such a linear system to be incompatible with the holistic decision making process involved in acquisitions for a collection. Examples of specific criticism of these flow chart stages that I would like to draw attention to include the ‘Fits the teaching/learning context’ and ‘Is consistent with current knowledge base”  where recreational reading, as the opposite of taught texts, is not embraced or for the student to encounter alternative epistemological systems not embraced by the western mainstream. I still remember my excitement when I discovered the book called Ethnomathematics : A Multicultural View of Mathematical Ideas which provided me with mathematical perspectives I had hungered for and foundational alternatives of basic concepts which enrich understanding through contextualisation  of the systems we use. This book presumably would not have made it as it wouldn’t fit with the current knowledge base being taught in the school.

So now that I’ve critiqued those who have come before me from my position of limited experience dealing with collections now I will propose some ways forward that mitigate the issues I’ve described above of hierarchy, linearity, and exclusivity. I will also note that the flow chart is a process rather than the collection policy and the policy is what can guide effective outcomes.

Firstly I advocate for the establishment of stakeholder advocacy groups empowered and emboldened to put forward items for the collection. Groups could consist of teachers, students, or parents and these bottom up organisations would be accountable to their peers and guided by the collection policy whatever process they used for decision making. These groups would supplement the selections and decisions of the teacher librarian.

Secondly I advocate for filtering the decisions through the principals lens of pedagogy and other priorities as without alignment with the power structure obstacles will be encountered with increasing frequency.

Thirdly I advocate for breadth when possible and representation of demographics in the school communities population within the resources held in the collection to ensure that those who I want to see using the library can see themselves in the library.

 

 

Hughes-Hassell, S. & Mancall, J. (2005). Collection management for youth: responding to the needs of learners [ALA Editions version]. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/lib/csuau/detail.action?docID=289075