Beer and Music, Music and Beer: 2016 edition

This year was a trash fire. It took Bowie, then Prince, and maybe our representative democracy, too. Look at this body count. Here's the soundtrack to the shit year it was.



1) A Tribe Called Quest - We Got it From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service: That this exists is impressive. That it's good is a minor miracle. Tip's lush production, always an underrated aspect of his game, is on point and he knows it, letting the beat in "Moebius" stretch out for DJs to use. As he's gotten older he's learned how to use his voice more, singing hooks and rapping double-time in addition to playing the abstract we know and love. Phife, rest in power, doesn't haunt this album like a specter; he's in it and of it, putting that Trinidadian patois to good use more so than in the past. Jarobi got more or less left off Tribe's top two, but he's back here, dropping gems. That vaunted Tribe chemistry extends to guest stars, as Tip and Andre 3000 trade off verses on "Kids" and folks who are basically members of the group like Consequence and Busta Rhymes know what to do. This isn't The Low End Theory or Midnite Marauders, but it might be their third-best, and since those other two are in the G.O.A.T. conversation, here we are.

2) Drive-By Truckers - American Band: Even before Trump became president-elect, artists were making protest music in 2016. There's nothing subtle about this record, but Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley's lyrics and riffs are spot on and I think it's DBT's best since Isbell left.

3) Shearwater - Jet Plane and Oxbow: This, forgive the reference, bird's eye view of America is lyrically powerful and understated, with Jonathan Meiburg embracing more electronic elements, integrating them into theatrical, operatic music that borrows from early 80s Bowie, prog, and Replacements-era American punk.

4) David Bowie - Blackstar: His parting gift to us is a searing, slow burn mediation on the end, full of his wry, sardonic wit. His best since either "Scary Monsters" or the Berlin trilogy, you choose. Regardless, what a way to go out.


The best of the rest, in alphabetical order:

Anderson .Paak - Malibu: He also dropped a mixtape with Knxwledge called "Nxworries." Get both.
Beach Slang - A Loud Bash of Teenage Feelings: Never has an album title been more correct.
Charles Bradley - Once 2016 started claiming bodies I was worried Bradley wouldn't make it out of this year. Peep his cover of Black Sabbath's "Changes" and stay for some of the best soul music around.
Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition: Yes, he did name a record after a Joy Division song, what of it? Anyway, starting with "Lost" Brown begins to tear into some utterly bizarre beats and the results are spectacular.
Car Seat Headrest - Teen of Denial: That deliberately ramshackle punk-tinged indie rock we all know and love.
Daughter - Not to Disappear: From shoegazey coos to indie wails, with electronics integrated, yet somehow sounding consistently whole.
Jesu/Sun Kil Moon - Jesu/Sun Kil Moon: Yeah, it's Mark Kozelek basically talking over crunchy riffs from Justin Broadrick. Your new lazy, hazy  weekend morning soundtrack.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree: Halfway through the making of this album's Cave's son died, completely changing the meaning of it. Try to listen without crying.
Savages - Adore Life: Less thrash subtext, more straight-up post-punk, still very good.
Swans - The Glowing Man: Eerier, and doomier, than in the past.
Vektor - Terminal Redux: A thrash-metal space-opera concept album with some left-field additions, like a choir. And somehow it works.
Yuck - Stranger Things: They dropped a lead singer and now I like them more even though they're still filtering 90s indie rock. Go figure.



Cheers: To the pure joy of Chance the Rapper. To "Identikit" appearing on an album. To R&B getting real weird thanks to Blood Orange, Frank Ocean, Bon Iver, ANOHNI, and yes, even Beyonce. To Iggy Pop and Bob Mould, long may they make records.
Jeers: To Radiohead putting "Daydreaming" as track 2, ensuring their album was a joyless slog. To Vinyl, because holy hell was that an awful TV show about music.

Singles

Radiohead - Burn the Witch; 21 Pilots - Heathens; DJ Shadow f. Run the Jewels - Nobody Speak; Chance the Rapper - No Problems; Beyonce - Daddy Lessons.

Beers 

A word on orange juice/milkshake IPAs. Some of the worst beers I had this year were in this category. For example, I had multiple beers from Tired Hands that were clearly not finished fermenting. I won't be ordering any IPAs from that brewery any time soon, and it's incumbent on local bars to implement some quality control standards rather than chasing trends. I recognize that this style can be done well - see below, and locally we have Aslin - but it's also possible to make juice bombs that are less opaque and consequently pleasing to the eye.

But on to the good news. The cozy bar at Right Proper Brookland, 3 Stars cool Urban Farmhouse, that kick-ass train board at Atlas,... drinking on-premise is where it's at in 2016. To wit, while I still enjoy Churchkey, and The Sovereign was the best new beer bar of the year, the prices keep creeping up above a dollar an ounce on an awful lot of beer at bars. Meanwhile, brewery-slash-restaurant Bluejacket has excellent renditions of both an ESB and a dark mild, on cask, on a consistent basis, for $6 per pint. District Chophouse continues to be overlooked; you can get a real good nut brown or oatmeal stout for $3.50 during happy hour.

To go along with The Sov, Anxo gave DC something to brag about in terms of both space and cider selection; there are plenty of cities that don't have what we do.

Ocelot made a name for themselves with hops, but Mike McCarthy honed his chops at Capital City, and it showed this year with an excellent pilsner and bitter to go along with all those IPAs.

DC Brau turned 5 and threw a cool party with bands and one of the more inventive 6-packs out there. Their collaboration with Port City on a dark lager, Zehn von Zehn, was my favorite.

3 Stars got their sour program up and running and pretty much immediately started making good beer. There's a reason Ricky Rose sixtels kicked so quickly.

Pekko Beer is bringing some real good stuff, much of it at H Street's Craft Beer Cellar, clearly the best new bottle shop in the area.

On the grey market front, Melvin Brewing out of Wyoming brought some excellent IPAs to the area for about a month around SAVOR.

As always, what follows is either new to the market or a new brewery release in 2015, in alphabetical order.

The locals:

3 Stars and Other Half, Ricky Rose - American wild ale: The first offering from 3 Stars sour program is a winner, bursting with tart berries and finishing bone dry. There's a reason sixtels of this barely lasted an hour.
Atlas, Dance of Days - Hoppy wheat: The best beer they've made, IMO, and I really like their double black IPA, NSFW.
DC Brau, Belgian Space Reaper - Double IPA: I was skeptical that Mosaic hops would play well with this yeast, but the esters and the fruit are a winning combination.
DC Brau and Port City, Zen Vohn Zen - Dunkle: The best of the Brau collaborations, with a brewery that knows its way around a lager. Maybe with Brau's expansion we could get some more of this?
Devils Backbone, Smoked Porter: 5.5% and not too smokey, with just enough sweetness.
Jailbreak, Dusk 'Til Dawn - Imperial Stout: It doesn't hurt that I drank this surrounded by puppies, but I had a Dark Lord shortly thereafter and this is the better beer.
Manor Hill, Grisette: My favorite new canned beer.
Ocelot, Sunnyside Dweller - Pilsner: That this brewery took a medal for something other than an IPA is impressive.
Pen Druid, Earth - Saison: I need to drink more beer from Virginia. I bet this space has room for The Answer, Triple Crossing, and a host more.
Port City, Double Wit - Amaro barrel-aged witbier: The brainchild of ex-DCBeer-er Chris Van Orden, it's twice the Optimal Wit with oaky tannins and spice.
Port City and Schlafly, VaStly Mild: I drank two pints of this on cask in about 30 minutes.
Right Proper and Pizzeria Paradiso, Maslow - Farmhouse ale: As Pilsner-y as an ale is going to get, dry and crushable, too.
Victory and Bluejacket, Brett Dixon - Pale lager: Slightly overhopped and dry and just about perfect.
Anything hoppy from Ocelot.

National and/or new to market:

Allagash, Little T - Brett pale ale: We all knew Allagash would do a great job with this style. Morval!
Anchor, Our Special Ale - Winter warmer, I guess: I've been drinking versions of this for about 20 years and this one might be the best yet. If you like malt, this is the winter beer for you.
Foundation, Epiphany - IPA: It's a Heady Topper clone! And you might not have to wait in line for it! (But you do have to go to Maine.)
Deschutes and Hair of the Dog, Collage 2 - Strong Ale: Since this technique is all the rage, check out this well-integrated blend of barrel-aged versions of The Abyss, The Stoic,  Fred, and Doggie Claws. Massively malty, with notes of prunes, raisins, cherries, jammy Cabernet, and great barrel character.
Great Raft, Come What Mayhaw - American wild ale: One of the first beers out of their foeders makes excellent use of Hawthorne berries.
Lodgson, Seizoen Bretta - Saison: Even brettier than Boulevard's Saison Brett. Welcome to DC, fellas.
Lost Abbey and Wicked Weed, Ad Idem - American wild ale: One of the better sours at SAVOR. Fruity, tart, but balanced.
Melvin, 2x4 - Double IPA: For a few weeks around SAVOR this beer was everywhere in DC and it was glorious.
Modern Times, Fortunate Islands - Hoppy wheat: So many of this brewery's recipes originated here - thanks, Mad Fermentationist! - that it's only fair that we get the finished product.
Sierra Nevada and Mahr's Brau, Oktoberfest: This collaboration isn't as good as last year's with Riegel, but it's still pretty darn good.
Stillwater and Other Half, Rockstar Farmer - Belgian IPA: Or maybe it's a farmhouse IPA. Regardless, that Stillwater yeast and Other Half hopping do good work.
Trillium, Double Dry Hopped Fort Point - IPA: I am still not a fan of the orange juice-milkshake Northeast IPA, but this has some bitterness to go with the hop juice and it's damn tasty.
Wicked Weed, Garcon de Ferme - American wild ale: Nice to have them in market, too. Blending a saison into a golden sour ale and adding peaches makes for a beer that's dry, but not overly tart. Now we wait for the inevitable sale to a macro.
Anything hoppy from Singlecut.

Cheers!

Why Critical Librarianship? Or, the #whyicritlib Post

Hey #critlib! I'm moderating the chat on 12/15 about #feelings, and it involves homework. https://t.co/SxN43wmvei pic.twitter.com/voZt12VOkI

— Kevin Seeber (@kevinseeber) December 3, 2015

Many moons ago, when I was pursuing a PhD in political science, a professor I looked up to told me something that's stuck with me. Marxists, he said, don't often have the right answers, but they ask the right questions.

Gif via ina.fr and gifwave.com

So why am I a critical librarian?

• Because it's important to ask "who benefits?" and I wish more of us in the library and information sciences would follow in the footsteps of Sanford Berman, E.J. Josey, Hope Olson, Rory Litwin, and others in asking these kinds of questions.
• Because critical librarianship is, in large part, what you make it. It's one of the few places where I feel like I have a significant degree of agency in librarianship. I hear the critiques of the #critlib chats being an echo chamber, and while on some level I think that opinion is a valid one (this blog post might be evidence of that), if someone wants to propose a chat on a topic they think is under- or unexplored, they can and should do so. Last June I moderated a chat, attempting to critique whatever critlib is (movement, mindset, group, place,...) from the inside, and I suspect that with his questions above, this critique is something that Kevin would like to explore as well.
• Because I'm not neutral, and neither are libraries. There are intended and unintended policies and consequences that do real harm that I think we can mitigate. But only if we ask "who benefits, how, and why?"
• Because one of the highlights of my year, or any year, really, was being in a room with Jessica Critten, Donna Witek, Kevin Seeber, and Kenny Garcia, listening, talking, and learning. I've found fellow "critlibbers" to be friendly, kind, patient, smart, and caring, among other positive traits.
• Because as a community, critical librarianship keeps me accountable to myself, my ideals, and challenges me to continue to listen and learn and refine, among other things. 
• Because before I lurked in critlib chats, I was a critical political science student. A professor introduced me to the work of Michel Foucault, and that was as close to an "a ha!" moment as I'll have (I maybe even crossed a threshold, if you will). I got to spend a day with James Scott, one of my professional heroes. And then I got to apply critical theories from the social sciences and humanities to libraries, in theory, and in practice, thanks to people like Maria Accardi. 
• Because this is my life homey you decide yours.

Why do I identify with these ideas?

• Because I've never not been critical. I grew up in New York City in the 1980s. My parents told me not to walk on Amsterdam Avenue (also called Murderdam or Cracksterdam), to take Broadway instead, and I began to ask questions. I saw how people who weren't white were treated. By police, by teachers, by peers, by the law. That was the start. It took me a while to find the theoretical frameworks to help me process what I saw, but I'm glad I did. 

Why do I participate in these chats?

• It's more often the case that I lurk, listening, liking tweets, saving things for later. I feel like I have a voice, however limited, in this profession, and I want to hear what others have to say. The last thing librarianship needs is another cis het white dude taking up space. That being said, thanks for reading, and thanks to Kevin for asking. 

The Beerbrarian Moves On

I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my job I am not my

— F. W. Popov (@jacobsberg) May 17, 2015

Over the course of eight years, I held three positions at my former place of work (MFPOW). For more than half that time, I served as Director of Library Services. I started as a paraprofessional, with "Specialist" in the title, got an MLIS on the job, and worked my way up. I'm grateful to them for the opportunities and growth, and I hope they're as proud of what we were able to accomplish as I am. No doubt they took a risk in making me a director. Working with other library and university staff, faculty, and academic administration, we were able to

• modernize the library, including adding discovery services and a link resolver.
• promote the use of open educational resources (OERs) to the point where every introductory science course uses them, saving our students a lot of money.
• hire, train, promote, and maintain a diverse library staff 
• break down silos by cross-training all library staff on both public and technical services, with robust documentation.
• create a culture of experimentation, where staff aren't afraid to fail and learn from it.

But all those things cost a lot. They cost political capital. They cost emotional labor. And after those eight years, I got the sense that there wasn't much more I could do except maintain. I got the sense I wasn't wanted anymore, but I tried to stick it out. I was lonely as a middle manager, operating between university administration and library staff, and balancing those two often-competing roles was tough. I wasn't happy. I let it get to me. To their credit, the powers that be realized this. The timing wasn't perfect, but hey, it rarely is. I should have started my job hunt earlier, and I shouldn't have taken MFPOW for granted-- if you're thinking about going on the job market in "six months," start now! Though we occasionally disagreed on strategy and tactics, the mission of my former place of work remains a worthy one, and I wish them the best of luck. It's telling that the staff who remain, including the current university librarian, are people I hired and trained. It's a nice legacy to have. Onward. 

I came to librarianship as a failed academic, having dropped out of a political science PhD program. This new job gives me a chance to put that other Masters to good use (I applied for pretty much every Political Science Librarian position on the east coast, but never got past phone or Skype interviews--more on this later), and is right in my wheelhouse in terms of what my dissertation was to be: an examination of the role, or lack thereof, the globalization of the English language plays in state language policies, if you're wondering. I'll also get to work with area studies materials and other resources from my poli sci days.

In addition, I hope to bolster my skill-set. Some front-end web development, often involving integrated library systems (ILS) and learning/content management systems (the LMS is the scene of one of my better failure stories); more project management; more committee work; and maybe more instructional design. Also, a chance to turn a weakness, marketing and outreach, into a strength; and an opportunity to explore what critical librarianship looks like in a special library, as this position is in the academic wing of a federal library.

That being said, it's not an academic library, at least not in the traditional sense. I want to find out what I like more: librarianship or higher education. I want to make sure I'm not in the former as a way to stick around the latter.

I wasn't the job I left. I am not the job I just accepted. We are not our jobs. Not the ones we left. Not the ones we want to take. You are not your job.

Let's see where the day takes us.

I could go the rest of my life and never make a slide as good as this one. #claps2016 #critlib #sneakpeak #spoilers pic.twitter.com/Y7DmWlvAoj

— Kevin Seeber (@kevinseeber) November 20, 2015

Reconceptualizing "Fit": Theory, Practice, Praxis

As presently constructed, the practice of hiring based on "fit" is problematic. Fit too often means "people like me" to hiring managers, which perpetuates a vicious cycle of homogeneity.



In librarianship, that homogeneity is reflected in the demographics of our profession: white, cisgendered, middle-class, and predominantly female, with men both historically and presently overrepresented in positions of leadership (I am a data point here) and those pertaining to library technology.

Evidence shows the number of women in senior leadership roles has increased over the years. From the 1930s to the 1950s it was the natural order for men to be heads of academic libraries, particularly major research libraries. Research studies of the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s provide evidence of a shift from the assumption that various personal and professional characteristics could be identified to account for differences in the number of men and of women recruited into senior positions in academic libraries. Despite this, women remained vastly under-represented in director positions in academic libraries (Delong, 2013).  

This over-representation continued into the 1990s, and persists today.

Fit is an excuse for unconscious bias, as well as an excuse for the conscious kind. Norms of what a librarian "should look like" in terms of race, class, and gender identity, among other factors, are all enforced via fit. The homogeneity of librarianship is overdetermined, but I suspect that fit plays a role in why it looks nothing like the United States population. Librarianship is not even remotely representative.

It gets more depressing: American Library Association membership is getting less diverse in terms of race, and according to data (pdf) from American Community Survey Estimates Applied to Institute for Museum and Library Services and National Center for Education Statistics in 2009, there were over 118,000 librarians in the United States. Under 600 of them were black men.

This sameness has deleterious effects. It leads to groupthink, to monoculture. More diverse groups get better results in terms of:

• creativity and innovation
• decision-making
• problem-solving
• scientific research

In part, this is because social diversity is a form of informational diversity.

Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching consensus will take effort. (Source is the above link.)

In the language of the market, diversity improves your bottom line.

And yet, I hire on fit. That's come at no small cost. I know I've been unable to hire people I think would make great librarians because of fit.

Applicant 1, you are brilliant. You will be an amazing librarian, probably a better one than any of the other applicants I've seen in this round of interviews. You understand our mission and you're already committed to it. You've lived it. You code switched three times in the interview in ways that felt organic and natural, not forced. But you won't become a great librarian here, and I'm disappointed in myself for writing that. I realize that oftentimes a discussion of "fit" is an excuse for all sorts of biases in hiring, especially in academia. However, fit applies here. As a manager, I have no idea, none, how I would harness the frenzied energy and passion you would bring to this job. I get the sense that you would kill for librarianship. These two things, the energy level and enthusiasm, terrify me. Our styles do not mesh. There is a mentor out there more suited to your needs. You'll find that person. But not here.

I work at a library with a staff of nine; we need to get along. There's an awful lot of cross-training that goes on, six of us can copy-catalog and four are interlibrary loan wizards, for example. Fit matters. And if we are to avoid the silos within libraries I've seen elsewhere, it matters even more.

What I want to do is to rescue fit, to reclaim it, because the fit described at the top of this post should not be the fit we think of. That fit leads to the decline of organizations. That fit, looking at the demographics of librarianship, above, perpetuates white supremacy.

If hiring based on fit is like a puzzle, then the homogeneous practice of fit is like choosing the same piece, over and over again.



The theory of fit, however, is different. Hire people that complement each other, that minimize each other's blind spots, and that come together to form a complete organization. That should be fit.



Do you have skills other people don't, do you think in ways that other people don't, do you have life experiences that other people don't? If so, then you fit, because those are plusses, and we'll try to get at that in the hiring process. Then we'll try to get at it in our workflows, creating safe spaces for voicing dissent and fostering experimentation.

The more organizations that do this, the more hiring managers and human resource departments that do this, the closer we'll come to having a praxis of fit instead of what we have now.



DeLong, Kathleen. “Career Advancement and Writing About Women Librarians: A Literature Review.” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 8, no. 1 (2013): 59–75. http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/17273.

The #acrl2015 post

The 2015 Association of College and Research Libraries conference is in Portland, Oregon this week. Here's where I'll be.

Wednesday, March 25th:
Critlib Unconference. Critical theories and librarianship at Portland State University.
Battledecks. Even The Wall Street Journal is on it.

Thursday, March 26th:
There's so much going on with regards to conference sessions that I'm still narrowing down where I'll be when on this day and the next.
Everylibrary is hosting a reception at Deschutes' brewpub in the Pearl District in the evening. One of my favorite library organizations and favorite breweries, together. For those who don't imbibe, the ginger ale at Deschutes is fantastic.

Friday, March 27th:
Presenting a paper, Faculty Perceptions of a Library: Paneling for Assessment," from 11:20-11:40am in room D135-136. Here's the abstract:

This paper introduces librarians and library staff to “paneling,” a technique employed here to analyze the discourse around and within how faculty perceive an academic library at a small university. The concept of panels comes to librarianship from anthropology, and shows great promise as not only an assessment tool, but also one that informs library practices and behaviors.

Watch this space for more on the topic.

The conference reception is Friday night. It involves desserts and drinking in museums, two things I am fond of.

Saturday, March 28th:
The Portland Farmhouse and Wild Ale Festival. The timing on this was excellent, and a bunch of librarians are going to this after Lawrence Lessig's keynote. Have a gander at the beer list so far.

Speaking of beer, here's what's on my radar in Portland: Upright Engleberg Pils, Breakside IPA, Pints Schwartzbier, and Upright Fantasia and Lodgson Peche n Brett, if I can find those last two.
I'm staying within walking distance of Cascade, Hair of the Dog, and Commons, among others, and I hope to visit Gigantic as well. In sum, for both libraries and beer, I'm like a kid in a candy store here.

Cheers!

This Is How I Work

So it's come to this, I'm participating in what's basically the chain letter of blog posts. First Megan Brooks called me out on twitter, then Jessica Olin tagged me in her blog post. So, here goes. I'm Jacob Berg, and this is how I work.

Location: Washington, DC.
Current Gig: Director of Library Services at My Place of Work, a small, Masters degree granting university.
One word that best describes how you work: Width.
I'll explain. At present I am the sole full-time library staff member, and we have six part-time staff members, three of which are librarians. The other three are in MLIS programs. For the fall 2014 semester, I've been a solo librarian, solo staff member, for more than half of your average "normal" 8:30am-5:30pm, Monday-to-Friday work week. We're hiring, so help is on the way, but in the meantime, I spread myself thin. Circulation/Access Services, Reference, Instruction, Systems Administrator, Cataloging, Webmaster, and more. Thus, width, not depth.
Current Mobile Device: iPhone 4S.
Current Computer: An HP Compaq tower at work, a MacBook at home.
Current Tablet: Second generation iPad.

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without? Why?

• Google's suite of apps comes in very handy. We use the calendar to schedule part-time staff; g chat to keep each other up to date in real time; forms to record reference and circulation statistics; and docs to collaborate. 
• Outlook. Our students have gmail, and for some strange reason, faculty and staff continue to use Outlook. Emails, scheduling, creating tasks,... it's useful, but I bet I could live without it.
• Dropbox. Very useful for moving documents and other digital items around from one place to another, making it easy to work from multiple computers. 
• Evernote. Pretty much anything I read that I think will be useful at a later date gets saved in Evernote with tags. As a librarian, I have an impressive controlled vocabulary. I also use Evernote to digitize pen-and-paper note taking at meetings, though sometimes I take notes on a phone or tablet. The paper must be yellow. Always has been, always will be. 
• Twitter. I can't afford to go to every conference I'd like to. Library twitter is like a 24/7/365 conference. Articles, blog posts, and other useful items get shared. There's networking, there's inside jokes, there's gifs. 

What’s your workspace setup like?
I have a wall-mounted second monitor and when combined with a hospital bed table, they turn my workspace into a standing desk. I get to work just before 8:30 and sit until about 10, then I stand until lunch, and stand again after lunch.

My office is just off the main room of the library, with close proximity to the reference desk (yay) and copier/printer/scanner and fax machines (boo).
I have a white board that is very useful for planning and mapping.
Toys.

I grew up taking the 1 to the 7 to go to Mets games. That's my happy place, even if the team is a never-ending source of frustration. Plus people bring their kids in to the building, and they can play with the trains.

What’s your best time-saving shortcut/life hack?
Can I take a moment here to note that I abhor the term "life hack?" It's awful.
Anyway, as soon as you find something that's useful, do something with it so that you can find it later. In library-speak, make it discoverable. Evernote does the job nicely for me. Your milage may vary.

What’s your favorite to-do list manager?
I use the native Notes app on my phone and tablet, as well as tasks and flags in Outlook. I get satisfaction from crossing stuff off or checking it off.

Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can’t you live without and why?
I have a 160GB iPod classic. I had dreams that maybe Apple would come out with a 320GB version, but instead they're killing it off. I like music, a lot.

What everyday thing are you better at than everyone else? What’s your secret?
I like to think that because of the wide array of roles I've had in libraries and my interest in both theory and practice, I do a good job of seeing the big picture and focusing on the details.

What do you listen to while you're at work?
Our local National Public Radio station, WAMU, in the morning, at least up until about 1pm or so, and then music after that, either via Spotify or my iPod.

What are you currently reading?
Longform journalism, because truth is stranger than fiction.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is meaningless, but I vacillate between INTJ and INFP. I think I was more introverted ten years ago than I am now.

What’s your sleep routine like?
I try to be in bed by 10:30 and I get up at 6:30am.

Fill in the blank: I’d love to see _________ answer these same questions.
Public librarians, people with non-traditional, flexible hours; people who work from home; and fellow library directors. If that's you, please share.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
I write a fair amount about the interplay between structure and agency in librarianship. I wonder if it started with my dad telling me it was better to be lucky than good. Now you know where I get my sardonic wit from. I think about luck, what it means, who has it and who doesn't, a lot.

The Ada Initiative Needs Your Help

Hi, I'm Jake, a cis het white male librarian. You may remember me from such posts as

• An Open Letter to Male Librarians
• What I Saw, What I Heard, What I Read: On Codes of Conduct
• Meanwhile, in the Archives: On the Society of American Archivists

Well, I'm back. Why?

Because of this:

this made me laugh and then want to cry real bad RT @v21: this is like a little koan pic.twitter.com/2rjGKRB04S
— Aimee Fleck (@aimeefleck) September 5, 2014

Starting today, September 10th, 2014, and for the next five days, a group of librarians and information professionals will match donations to the Ada Initiative, up to $5,120, provided one gives via this link.

This group of LIS professionals is made up of Chris Bourg, Mark Matienzo, Bess Sadler, and Andromeda Yelton. Please thank them, then empty their wallets.

Donate to @adainitiative through our #libs4ada link, @mchris4duke, @ThatAndromeda, @anarchivist and I will match it! https://t.co/c6COPP0xGo
— Bess Sadler (@eosadler) September 9, 2014

Here's what the Ada Initiative does.

The Ada Initiative supports women in open technology and culture. Stuff we do:
Anti-harassment policies used by hundreds of conferences
Ally skills for men so women don't have to fight sexism alone
Feminist conferences for women to share lessons learned and support each other
Training women to fight Impostor Syndrome and stay involved in open tech/culture (source)

Does the fight against sexism interest you?

It’s like the Indiana jones opening sequence. “steady, easy…” *rubs fingers together* pic.twitter.com/o7YCKmr8Ub
— Paul Black (@MrFist) September 5, 2014

If you're like me, you live on the Internet, and probably see a lot of disgusting, bigoted behavior rooted in misogyny. To wit:

#GamerGate and #notyourshield are 90% white guys from 4chan pretending to be women and PoC pic.twitter.com/Cv7fBJwFDd
— 4chan Being From-er (@a_girl_irl) September 4, 2014

and this. And this.

Trolls probably aren't going to go away, but the Ada Intiative helps eliminate and mitigate the effects of that behavior. It's a worthy cause.

"Teetering on the brink of an epiphany" pic.twitter.com/XZbeJ3uKVU
— iestyn lloyd (@yezzer) September 5, 2014

You may have also noticed similar behaviors at conferences, necessitating the need for Codes of Conduct, and training. Well, the Ada Initiative does this, too, so please give early, and give often. Conference codes of conduct don't just help women, they protect other marginalized people from harassment. I would very much like to see my friends and colleagues enjoy conferences. I think conferences are improved by representative and substantive diversity and should be safe spaces. More importantly, I would like all of us to not deny each other's humanity.

Open technology and culture are for everybody. Conferences are for everybody. The Internet is for everybody. Video games are for everybody. Humanity is for everybody.

Please thank these information professionals for matching donations, because as one intrepid tweeter puts it:

So CLOSE and yet so far, little egg. RT @v21: this is like a little koan pic.twitter.com/1Baby0ChuR
— Kevin Veale (@krveale) September 5, 2014

No cookies, please. I have enough to eat. Just money, time, effort, and behavior.



That link again: https://supportada.org/?campaign=libraries. It may get you a sweet sticker, too.

Thank you.

What I Saw, What I Heard, What I Read: On Codes of Conduct

I have two stories to tell, in chronological order.

First, my then-girlfriend turned down a graduate school program in the sciences in no small part because she was tipped off by female graduate students that the program was hostile to women, and that multiple influential faculty engaged in sexist and harassing behaviors.

Second, I saw male tenured faculty members target female graduate students during a dinner, after hours at a political science conference when I was also in grad school. The faculty divided up the grad students before sitting at the table, isolating each woman. Looking back on it, it seemed like wolves hunting in a nature documentary.* I talked over and around the faculty members closest to me in an attempt to stay in contact with the women. Some seemed to just want the attention of a younger woman. Others may have wanted more. The two targets of this behavior now have PhD's and tenure-track jobs; I hope, and am somewhat confident, that this incident only took place at dinner, with no repercussions in the form of silencing, gaslighting, and the like. We three graduate students reported this to our Graduate Studies Director, and that was the last I heard of it. The next year, at another political science conference, one of the perpetrators stared more than a little too long at a female companion while in the elevator.

So when you see me retweeting pieces about the American Library Association's Statement of Appropriate Conduct at ALA Conferences, boosting signals, the stories above, and others that either I'm not ready to tell, or aren't my stories to tell, are why.

Lisa Rabey has more stories, both hers and others, here (especially on page two). Some of those are below, loosely in the order they were tweeted, since Will Manley's piece was published and then deleted. If I missed any, please both accept my apologies and let me know, either via the comments, or twitter.

Why ALA http://t.co/tZcRfzWvVK via @GaviaLib // On conference codes of conduct #libraries
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 3, 2014

The above link mentions race as a factor in harassment as well, which is a cleavage absent from many of the others for a variety of reasons, chief among them that librarianship and Masters of Library and Information Science programs are overwhelmingly white.

#libtechgender: conference codes of conduct as seen from your world & mine http://t.co/mslYE6kIMM via @ThatAndromeda // Best take I've seen
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 3, 2014

Creating safe spaces vs. freedom of expression http://t.co/SYAhtAP6lk via @librarianmer // On the Code of Conduct
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

RT @himissjulie: George Carlin, MLIS http://t.co/p5pDyzhn0T
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

That ALA Code of Conduct: http://t.co/3L2KlwtgRr via @wawoodworth
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

The ALA Statement of Appropriate Conduct: a FAQ http://t.co/CiSJVWyRPo via @ThatAndromeda
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

Why ALA Needs a Code of Conduct | Backtalk http://t.co/3vE2aFigt2 via @LibraryJournal @ThatAndromeda
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

Accentuate the Positive http://t.co/2VNmYaI5HA via @himissjulie #libraries
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

RT @satifice: on the 'don't do bad things' maxim http://t.co/0XyuD1JLho
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 2, 2014

RT @GaviaLib: New post: In which the Loon endorses anti-harassment codes of conduct http://t.co/S3kYtf6YEi
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 1, 2014

RT @DanielCornwall: I endorse the ALA Conference Code of Conduct http://t.co/HJzyB4iQUH
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) January 1, 2014

Sadly accurate, via @satifice http://t.co/MDsTVcz7Um #libraries
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 31, 2013

Well said RT @ashuping: Thoughts on bullying...: cc licensed via:http://t.co/5WHeG17NrF is probably... http://t.co/zmc07wdTjN
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 31, 2013

RT @MagpieLibrarian: My Reaction to Will Manley's post: Codes of Conduct, Freedom of Speech, and Male Privilege http://t.co/rkgDUqUoPw
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 31, 2013

RT @librarianwilk: Libertarianism, dignity, and the ALA Code of Conference Conduct http://t.co/3ytOtburas #libraries
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 31, 2013

Fully backed, on the ALA Code of Conduct, et al. RT @satifice: so vague http://t.co/cyafRtRCkK #libraries
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 31, 2013

RT @librarian_kate: New blog post: in which I draw parallels between the ALA Code of Conduct & the Supreme Court. http://t.co/nvDU8JTdzM
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 31, 2013

So there RT @mciszek My thoughts on Will Manley's critique of the ALA Statement of Conduct at Conferences: http://t.co/QwOcfNY1jV #Libraries
— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) December 30, 2013

* And yes, the aggressive male, the prey... that is an awful, harmful stereotype. And I felt it all the same.

Elsewhere on this site: An Open Letter to Male Librarians.

On Failure: “Elizabethtown: Embedded Librarianship as Overreach.”

The following is a web-based version of a presentation given at the Fall Program of the Association of College and Research Libraries, Maryland Chapter, at The Johns Hopkins University on Friday, November 15th, "Library Secrets: Confessions of Falling Flat and How to Get Right Back Up."

"As somebody once said: There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the nonpresence of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a feeassscoe, a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folk tale told to others that makes other people feel more alive because. It. Didn't. Happen. To. Them." - Orlando Bloom, Elizabethtown

As a library director, I fail a lot, so it was really just a matter of which failure to present. I chose this one in part because I consider it our, my, most epic spectacular failure.

Our fair campus. All photos, charts, gifs, graphs,... from the slides.

We wanted to drive traffic to the library website and to the library building.

Main Reading Room, State Library of NSW, Sydney (NSW)

In the second semester in which faculty were supposed to use a learning management system (LMS), we in the library asked to be "embedded" in a few select courses. We gave students, faculty, and staff a semester to become familiar with the LMS, but we were still very new to the platform, and that's true of not only the students and faculty, but also library staff.

Drie pantertjes geboren in Artis, Nationaal Archief

By embedding ourselves in the LMS, students and faculty would get increased access to librarians and one-click library assistance, in addition to content tailored to their needs via our LibGuides, which are not actual LibGuides, but built out of WordPress. In turn, library staff would get increased access to students and faculty, allowing us to expand our digital presence and footprint. We would also have a better handle on student assignments because syllabi were all in the LMS. It was win-win.

Speaking the language of assessment, we came up with student learning outcomes as well.

• become better and more rigorous researchers   
• be assisted in developing better critical thinking skills in organizing and executing their research assignments become better academic writers to include more knowledgeable use of citations, references, and bibliographies 
• become greater consumers of library services

Profit!, icanhazcheezburger.com, Initial image via KSB Photos

However, moving from theory to practice, operationalizing, was tricky.

Theory v. Practice, Scott Brinker, chiefmartec.com

We started small on purpose, with a pilot program that was going to target three (3) courses. However, after an email was sent out to gauge faculty interest, the program expanded dramatically.... to sixty-three (63) courses.

Airplane! gif, From the film, thegameboycolor.tumblr.com via Giphy

Nonetheless, the eager library staff went into these courses, via the learning management system. We introduced ourselves, linked to relevant resources such as our research guides, and started discussion threads.

Spongebob, from the show, Reaction Gifs

Across sixty-three courses, guess how many interactions we had with students and faculty on these discussion boards.

Three! Three interactions!

McNulty, The Wire, Reaction Gifs

Again, three.

Three flamingos, Unknown 8-bit video game, pixelian.tumblr.com via Giphy

We, the library staff, didn't understand. What was wrong with us? Why didn't people like us? Why didn't they use this platform to ask us questions, to get help, to interact?

Overly Attached Couple,  Patrick Gill and Laina Morris, Know Your Meme

 As you can see from the image below, people were interacting and participating, just not with us, the library staff. The dismal data we collected went into a file I named "Elizabethtown."

Why Elizabethtown? Because it is a movie about a disaster that is itself a disaster. Meta! In the film, Orlando Bloom plays a disgraced sneaker designer whose latest product has flopped. He comes home for his father's funeral.

"As somebody once said: There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is simply the nonpresence of success. Any fool can accomplish failure. But a feeassscoe, a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions. A fiasco is a folk tale told to others that makes other people feel more alive because. It. Didn't. Happen. To. Them." - Orlando Bloom, Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown poster, Paramount Pictures,
IMP Awards

The film is also notable because it gives us the "manic pixie dream girl" trope. In The Onion AV Club article that contains that term, the film is called a "Bataan death march of whimsy."

Based on that horrible data, library staff pivoted to the autopsy.

Captain America Prop Auction - Iron Man 2 armor, Flickr user Doug Kline
for PopCultureGeek.com

We learned that some faculty never turned on the learning management system or built out courses therein, some faculty had no idea what to do with the LMS, the roles library staff would play in the LMS were too undefined for both students and faculty, and we library staff had overreached and overshot. The LMS was still too new; to the extent that there was an organizational culture around the LMS it was nascent.

Facepalm from The Naked Gun, Paramount Pictures, Reaction Gifs

We were so busy wallowing that we overlooked the good.

Dr. Who in the Rain, from the television show, Reaction Gifs 

This widget we created and put on every in-course LMS page did give us some good news.

As it turned out, our LMS was responsible for a non-trivial amount of traffic to our website.

While we cannot control for time, and there are certainly other factors at play, traffic is clearly up in the second semester of LMS use. It could be the case that students were getting used to the LMS in the second semester, and that they were using the library more as a result of our one-shot library instruction sessions and information literacy efforts, for example. We chose to interpret this data as even though the discussion boards and embedding were a disaster, there was a silver lining here.

That second link from our MLS to the library website is actually from the gradebook section. That is, students check their grades, then directly head to the library website. Pretty impressive.

So at the least, this aspect of embedding made us happy.

Happy Dog from Analog, Japanese game show, Reaction Gifs

We chose to draw a few lessons from this failure, chief among them that our users have a comfort level that we library staff need to be aware of.

Cornell West on Real Time with Bill Maher, HBO, Reaction Gifs

• Library staff can’t be everywhere, all the time
• There’s such a thing as being too “high-touch”
• Trust your communities

Related posts:
Failure, Organizational Culture, and Library Management.
A Modest Defense of QR Codes in the Library.
Copyright for Educators.

Elsewhere on this site, explore the tag "failure."

New Year, New Library: New Library (kind of)

It's been quiet here for the last month as we train new staff and bombard the campus with information literacy one-shots. In addition, much of my free time has been taken by volunteering for a local charter school that, like many schools in Washington, DC, lacks a school librarian or school media specialist.
To wit, for the 2012-13 academic calendar there are approximately sixty (60, 6-0) schools in DC that lack a librarian or school media specialist, covering between 16,000 to 17,000 students. There's plenty of blame to go around, starting with the Mayor, Vincent Gray (sample inflammatory statement from the mayor, "[W]e decided we would leave education to educators"), the Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, and individual principals, who decide whether or not to staff a school library. There is more sadness this way:

The results of a Freedom of Information Act request show that in FY11 and FY12, the money appropriated to DCPS [DC Public Schools] for library and media services was overwhelmingly used for other things. It paid for other things like building repairs, maintenance to HVAC systems. More than $400,000 was used for testing. DCPS used $80,000 of these funds to pay for a San Francisco-based consultant to develop a strategic plan for its Office of Family and Community Engagement.

This school, which one of my children attends, moved into a new facility last year, and this year finally has space for a library. But no librarian or school media specialist, and that's where parents like me come in. I suddenly find myself a Chinese-language cataloger (it's a Chinese-immersion school), blindly fumbling around, guided by ISBNs that may or may not lead me to a record, relying on Library of Congress Subject Headings that may or may not exist, and eyeballing the height of books to make a cataloging judgement. I've cataloged in Cyrillic before, with the help of a cheat sheet, and in Japanese, which I used to speak, but Chinese is a whole different animal.

On the plus side, the school has selected Follet's Destiny as an integrated library system, and it's easy to use. Within about fifteen minutes I felt comfortable with it, and this ease of use will allow teachers to check out materials to students. Double plus, some other parents are also librarians, and we've all taken active interests in the new school library.

In addition, the school is going to experiment with giving students raspberry pi (not pie, though that would be good, too), so I may be talking a bit (more) about programming in this space.

In the meantime, if you'd like to help DC's schools, please sign this petition. Thanks.

Library and Craft Beer Bullies

I have the strange fortune of being in two industries, one as an employee, the other as a blogger, that perceive themselves as being bullied. The former is librarianship, the latter is craft beer. There's no shortage of ink, digital and actual, spilled over this in librarianship. We're the victims of budget cuts, subject to the whims of vendors. We're not in control. When we exercise what agency we have, we might think we're driving, but the correct analogy is probably closer to downhill skiing. We're heading down a path, dodging trees, trying not to fall, but we think we're going to end up in the valley regardless of what happens on the journey. "Yes, there is a teleology here."

Or so the story goes. I find a tension in the discourse around this subject: that libraries and librarians are agents, are superheroes, and yet at the same time find themselves objects, acted on, then perhaps reacting. I prefer to think of it as complexity. Agents at one moment can be structures the next, and the opposite is true as well.

Craft beer defines itself, in large part, by what it's not. It's not bland, light, made with adjuncts, not made in fifteen locations. It's not macro beer, made by Bud, Miller, Coors. And yet what it's not is a myth. Craft beer can be all those things, though perhaps in two rather than fifteen locations, and even owned by the large companies mentioned above. Like libraries, craft beer has a chip on its shoulder, feels oppressed, and, perhaps like libraries, with good reason. To wit, a document that purports to show the incentives offered by one distributor of beer, Reyes Premium, to remove Devils Backbone, a Virginia craft beer, off of local draft lines. 

If this document is genuine and accurate, this could be considered evidence of a distributor paying its employees to remove a craft brewer from a draft line in favor of Blue Moon. It’s my opinion that Blue Moon sucks, as does Shock Top, which is also mentioned in the photograph. These beers masquerade as craft, but are made by MillerCoors and InBev, respectively. The best thing I can say about them is that they might get you to move up to Allagash White. These beers are to craft beer what “useful idiots” are to Lenin.* 

That being said, selling beer is the job of any distributor and its employees. Distributors are paid to put products in bars, restaurants, and on the shelves. These bonuses (if genuine) are incentives for a sales force; this is a common practice in other industries and businesses. People who love craft beer have a tendency to romanticize this industry while forgetting that it is also very much a business. People strive to make good beer for a living, but without turning a profit on that beer, we’re left with hobbyists, not an industry. 

On the other hand, bonuses, incentives, and commissions that involve cash introduce the potential and possibility of kickbacks. One can easily envision a situation in which an employee of a distributor splits his or her bonuses with people who work in bars, restaurants, and stores that sell alcohol, or even that the bonuses come from brewing companies themselves. MillerCoors and InBev have deeper pockets than any craft brewer. DCBeer is not suggesting that this is the case here, nor do we have evidence that such practices are occurring in this or any instance. We merely have a photo posted to Twitter. However, there have been discussions of this behavior in the past, and no doubt there will continue to be more in the future.

There's more information, and speculation, here.

Both in libraries and beer, much of any alleged bullying happens behind the scenes, away from the public. The paying public doesn't see the how and why of that draft line moving from one beer to another, or the how and why of an ebook or journal that's no longer available. It our job in both those fields to acknowledge, publicize, and fight that bullying without coming across as whiny or shrill. The solutions are also similar: education, outreach, marketing. We're targets; let's adapt.

* The initial DCBeer.com post attributes this quote to Marx. I have corrected it here. Photo credit to twitter user @wort2yourmom.

Toward a Unifying Field Theory of Librarianship, Or Not.

 Ahhh, the social sciences; forever concerned with measuring up to the natural sciences. Today's attempt at turning librarianship and library science into physics, or at least (re)starting the discussion, comes from the excellent In the Library With a Lead Pipe, a must-read blog if you're a librarian, which puts posts through something like peer-review, except that it's the same circle of peers doing the review for the far majority of posts. The search for "a philosophy of librarianship" is problematic for many reasons, chief among them is that doing so is a hunt for a moving target. No doubt physics has changed in the last thirty years, but it's still the study of matter (a media) and motion (actions of said media). Large swaths of a physics textbook published in 2012 don't look much different from one written in 1982, nor does a lab. A library, however, with a few notable and forlorn exceptions, looks very different, and the study of information, of making it searchable and accessible by a given community, has gone from the print medium to multiple media, some of which only exist as a spec on a hard drive, mainframe, or server. And so the Lead Pipe article, written by Emily Ford, begins with the sad tale of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) "digital literacy corps," for which librarians were apparently not consulted (even though they were). Ford assigns blame for the alleged lack of consideration to the deep cause of a lack of a philosophy of librarianship. The author's goal 

here is not to contribute to the groundswell of victim rhetoric that surrounds the de-funding and de-professionalization of librarianship. Instead, I aim to shine a light on what I think is happening. Namely, we haven’t yet sussed out the philosophy behind what it is that we do.

And yet Ford leads with the very discourse she decries, understandable, since everyone I know in the profession bemoans libraries' and librarians' lack of power. Interesting, then, that the word "should" occurs so often in this article, as a philosophy of librarianship is, by definition, an invitation to argue over norms, normative concepts, and power. Biology is the study of life, not what life should be. The latter is eugenics, a word that, again, understandably, has some negative connotations. This is not only a conversation as to what librarianship should be, but also a conversation about the conversation. 

Sound ideas about what librarianship is and what its goals are permit us to claim a degree of autonomy in institutions where we might otherwise serve as mere functionaries rather than as the professionals we are. Without a philosophical foundation, we lack a basis for making decisions regarding how to change our institutions in response to external forces, with the potential result that we do not play the role that we should in decision-making.

That's a quote from Rory Litwin, approvingly cited in the article, but one can substitute any other group of social scientists, those who practice normative science. A hallmark of any reputable and established social science is putting old wine in new bottles, and so it is with a philosophy of librarianship. James Periam Danton, again cited in the Lead Pipe article, properly historicized librarianship in 1934, arguing that it should be

derived from the predominating ideals of that society. Consequently, before a library philosophy can be formulated, there must be an understanding and recognition of the ideals and purposes of the society into which that philosophy must fit.

I find nothing to disagree with in the above two quotes, which to me seem to lend support to library science as Kuhnian "normal science." Geology took a long time to come around on plate tectonics. We take a long time to come around on library science syllabi, on linked data and the semantic web, and on the angst that comes with measuring ourselves via natural sciences. I wonder if digitization has or is creating a paradigm shift, a punctuated equilibrium, but one that cannot touch the "hard core" of librarianship, if one intersubjectively exists.

The Semi-Sovereign Library

The outcome of every conflict is determined by the extent to which the audience becomes involved in it. That is, the outcome of all conflict is determined by the scope of its contagion.- E.E. Schattschneider

Ford and Lead Pipe want to have this conversation. In doing so, they're attempting to determine the scope of the debate, via their audience (of which I am a part). I don't know Lead Pipe's site analytics, but anecdotally the blog is popular on social networks like Twitter and Google +. However, both those, as all social networks are, often function as an echo chamber. This may be an issue with Lead Pipe's "peer review," and it's definitely and issue in those media. Lead Pipe may be preaching to a choir by engaging its readership. I have my analytics and I know how that goes. Any fight for the soul of librarianship, or at the least a discussion over its values and philosophy, won't take place via that, or this, blog. Rather, a larger discussion of a philosophy of librarianship will take place in a world in which not every, and indeed not most, librarians are on twitter. A damning proxy statistic: fewer than one-fifth of dues-paying American Library Association (ALA) members, the very people one would think would have "skin in the game," so to speak, voted in that organization's 2012 annual election. Again, over eighty percent of librarians who pay money to belong to an organization couldn't be bothered to vote to determine that organization's leadership. That should be the real audience here, not the librarians on social media, which are epiphenomenal in the larger scheme of things. Our peers, it bears repeating, may not be our tribe. So I wonder if Lead Pipe's arena, its audience, of which I am a part, is one voice in a void. A welcome voice. Perhaps even a necessary one. But I worry that "a call to praxis" is a call to a praxis. There are many roads to Damascus. Librarianship is multifinal, from a path, from a philosophy, there are many potential outcomes, some of which I may like, others I may not. A call to praxis may limit these options, and may impose path dependence rather than healthy experimentation, may create a situation in which some tactics are more equal than others. 

Librarians are not heroes, super or otherwise. We are agents navigating structures, some of which we helped to create. #libraryontology— Jacob Berg (@jacobsberg) July 11, 2012

As Ford argues, let's continually examine why we do what we do, what works and what doesn't. That's a praxis I can get behind, but it's not the praxis. That Decemberists' song? It's great. But it's vague. It's unclear from the lyrics why we fight. And maybe that's why it works for me. Why I fight might be different from why you do. Let a hundred flowers bloom. Do good, or do less bad, or less wrong. Make as much information possible to as many people as possible in as many ways as possible. On this, I hope we can agree. Besides, you don't want to be the natural sciences anyway. None of that stuff can be replicated. Good night, and good luck.