Week 9: Class Reflection (It actually is week 9. I was not wrong in my previous titles!)

For the first half of class on Thursday we spent some time talking about our breaks, and Kristin brought up some great points about her visit to a great archive while she was in Hawaii. She was discussing all of their artifacts, and how so much of it was physical, and there was a sense of awe and reverence for the physical items. It brought up something which I think has been bothering me about the School of Information program: all of our emphasis on being "cutting edge" means that everything is digital. It makes it seem like every library or archive is handling almost exclusively e-books or digitizing their holdings. The program practically ignores the "traditional" physical aspect of librarianship or archivism. It's been bothering me in particular since my visit to the Kodiak Public Library in Kodiak, Alaska. The library director was recently hired in October to open the new building, and she has years of experience in libraries, both in leadership positions and otherwise. She said to me, "Right now, I'm dealing with major technological challenges. The Sirsi system hasn't been updated since 2003. I just realized that my staff (none of whom are professional librarians) didn't know they could have two windows open at once on the computer. They thought that in order to check their email, they had to close out of the circulation system, check their email, and then re-open the circulation system." She handed me paper documents to look over. When I visited the classroom my friend teaches in, they did everything in paper. My friend doesn't have internet at home. Now, Kodiak, Alaska is not exactly the prototype of America, but even so, it made me remember that even just a year ago before I came to SI my life was not entirely digital. And I think it's important to remember that once we leave SI, we will be dealing with a lot more physical objects than we currently do, and not everything we do every day will be "cutting edge." I definitely appreciate the emphasis on technology because it means that I will likely have the skills necessary to continue to be relevant in the future. But at the same time, it's important to remember that beyond SI not everything is digital. During lunch, the KPL director asked me, "So how did the library school transition to the School of Information? How did it become so tech-heavy?" And I tried to answer with the reasoning that I've been given, which is basically that the founders saw technology as the "next frontier" and a natural extension of teaching and learning which compliments the library mission, but somehow it seemed like a hollow and incomplete answer. I'm still thinking about it. Her understanding of the tech people at SI was that they were there to do the tech stuff that libraries need, and that isn't the case. They could, in theory, end up working for a library doing tech, but that isn't their main goal or focus. It's given me a lot to think about.

So after the brief discussion of shell necklaces and ceremonial spears, we started talking about whether shopping at Walmart or shopping at Whole Foods was preferable, since stocks "everything" and Whole Foods is a kind of curated collection of foods which are "good for you." Somewhat surprisingly, (and I must say I'm pleased, because Whole Foods is just ridiculously expensive) the class, at least those of whom spoke up in class, seemed to agree that shopping at Whole Foods wasn't necessarily any better than shopping at Walmart, since cookies are cookies whether they contain high fructose corn syrup or not, and people can be fooled into thinking that everything at Whole Foods is good and they can choose anything there and still be healthy. Of course the cost question came into play, since as graduate students we are all living on a, er, "limited" budget. I know I hate that Whole Foods is the only grocery store on my way home, so occasionally I'll stop to pick up a few ingredients for dinner. What would have cost me under $10 at Meijer costs me $25 at Whole Foods. And they're not even specialty items, just a can of tomatoes and  tortilla chips and shredded cheese, right? I can't stand that. Whole Foods I think is great for some things (I really like their wood-fired pizzas!) but I really would not say that Whole Foods is a better experience than Walmart, or another major grocery store (Meijer4Lyfe). And I'm glad that we felt that way, because as it turns out, Kristin was using it as a metaphor for the state of libraries today. Libraries are becoming more Walmart-y than Whole Foods-y in the sense that librarians are no longer cultivating collections of only "good, educational" books/materials. In a push to become more communal spaces and to have greater applicability to the larger community, libraries are stocking everything instead of just "what's good for the public." I think this is also in part because of the literacy initiative which basically says that a person reading anything is better than a person reading nothing, and that all materials have value. And just as in the grocery store, I know that I certainly read the labels and pick foods that I know are good for me, with the occasional treat from the dark side. I think that a conscientious reader can do the same in a library.