Wizards of the Button

The work librarians have done throughout the last two decades has involved a particular and yet changing skill set. Read any current job description and tagged onto the end of it one can find the remnants of required tasks such as filing, organizing and having the ability to lift heavy boxes. This alone may make folks wonder why one might be drawn to this seemingly sedentary, conflict-free profession. But beyond the stereotypes of librarians another picture emerges; i.e., librarians embracing change. In the academy, what were once bibliographers are now subject specialists, navigating the library and information resources and new ways of educating. What also emerges are the wizards deep within the psyche of librarians who love this work; who love the methodological tracings that scatter information and re-order it so that what appears to be missing can be found.

"How did you do that?" Asks a patron who comes to the reference desk looking for a title he couldn't find in the online catalog. "I tried everything I could think of and couldn't find it."

"Well, I ran a search on a couple of different variations on the title you gave me - and then I tried another possible spelling of the authors’ name. Since we didn't appear to have it in our online catalog, I went to World Cat to see if there was a record for the title. Barring that, I did a random keyword search and found it that way." Some folks are patient enough to listen to the possibility that there may be a strategy involved in finding resources while others imagine that what we've done is to just press the magic button.

The Beloit College Mindset List has been published every year since 1998. This list names "the cultural touchstones" that shape the mindset of incoming freshman. It's quite startling for those of us from a different generation to imagine that for the class of 2014, few "know how to write in cursive." How is this possible? I remember being graded for penmanship. But the incoming class appears to be full of folks who tap their fingers on a keyboard rather than push the pen by right or left-handed force.

This makes me wonder about the hand skills that the industrial revolution modernized so that, for example, coal could be extracted in perfect measure by the push of a button (see photo). Are they lost skills, have the skills changed or are there other questions we haven't thought to ask? Have humanities librarians lost their edge with the onset of modern technology? I doubt it. What is more the case, I think, is that these large cultural gaps between generations require humanities librarians to understand a wider range of interdisciplinary subjects and resources and to always be at the ready; a wizard hat behind the desk to dazzle shell shocked patrons who, for example, believe that “Michelangelo was a computer virus.”

Context Matters

Despite the deluge of information available on the web, students and scholars still need to know how to locate a trustworthy source, whether analog or digital. As the following example demonstrates, this is a process that requires at least some basic grasp of the cultural and political contexts in which information is created. One cannot learn about a topic such as Russia's participation in World War II merely by plugging keywords into a new database on war-time operations, military decorations, and heroic feats. But one can use this database to discuss the meaning of open access, the reliability of government publications, and contemporary attempts to appropriate history for political purposes.

A People's Feat, the Russian Ministry of Defense's “freely-accessible, electronic repository of documents” about the Soviet Union’s participation in “Great Patriotic War” (aka World War II) is, at least potentially, a useful tool for research and teaching. This searchable, Russian-language database currently includes 310,127 historical documents and 787,534 records of decoration (which covers the first year of the war and constitutes only 2.6% of all decorations). The Defense Ministry expects to complete loading the remaining records by 2012.

But does the ideological agenda behind this new digital project belie its claims of free and easy access? What exactly does "free access" mean if a small, hand-picked, committee of political appointees is charged with making decisions about what to include (or exclude) from an official government website?

One of the Russian Defense Ministry’s acknowledged goals in launching this website was the need “to create the documental basement [sic] for counteraction to attempts of falsification [sic] of World War II history.” This clumsily-translated statement of purpose reflects President Dmitrii Medvedev’s controversial decision to set up a “Commission to Counteract Attempts at Falsifying History to Damage the Interests of Russia.” This so-called "Truth Commission" was formed in May 2009, a year before the celebration of the 65^th anniversary of Victory Day. It was felt necessary to create such a commission because some of the former Soviet republics (particularly Ukraine and the Baltic states) no longer celebrate Victory Day and often try to give what Russian critics have described as “extremely loose interpretations of history” – interpretations that not only question the motives of Soviet “liberators” but even seek to criminalize the actions of the Red Army.

Coming in the wake of post-Soviet Russia’s apparent retreat from press freedom, Medvedev’s move has elicited angry letters of protest from scholarly associations from around the world, including the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). It has been even more sharply criticized by bloggers, who have suggested that “the true goal of this operation” is “tapping into Russian nationalism, not actually promoting historical truth.”

Despite the controversy, and the selective nature of all government publications, the question remains: is “A People’s Feat” still a useful resource for students of World War II? Or is it so tainted by the regime’s ideological agenda as to make it virtually worthless? Perhaps only those who actually use the online database for research and teaching will be able to answer this question with any degree of certainty. So if you have used this resource, we'd like to hear your opinion.

Streaming video at Duke Libraries...we like to watch

Fall 2010 classes are almost upon us. The Library of Congress has just loosened its stranglehold on the creation of video clips from encrypted DVDs in the Higher Ed sphere (read Duke Scholarly Communications guru, Kevin Smith's, take on the new exceptions). On-demand/pay-per-view is predicted to displace DVD sales in the not-so-distant future. Online sites like Hulu and provide temporary access to titles, but these can disappear overnight. What is Duke Libraries' plan to collect new films as the tension mounts between our ability to give immediate digital access to patrons and the necessity to provide long term preservation as a top-tier research institution?

One strategy we're implementing is investment in streaming video databases. We now subscribe to a number of products that allow for easier browsing, keyword searching at the segment level, and embedding clips and even (dare I say it!) entire films in course management software like Blackboard. Alexander Street Press' American History in Video and Ethnographic Video Online, Films on Demand from Films Media Group, and PBS titles brought to us by NC Live Video Collection, join the BBC Shakespeare Video Collection as packages of streaming video that make thousands of titles available to Duke patrons.

Alexander Street Press' offerings will soon include the option of downloading to mobile devices. And a new streaming video library, Asia Pacific Films, will be added to Duke Libraries' subscription holdings by the start of the fall 2010 semester. All products provide the capability of creating playlists of custom clips and annotating for teaching purposes.

Let me also take this opportunity to recommend the two moving image collections available in our Digital Collections, AdViews, and the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive that are accessible via Duke Libraries' YouTube channel and iTunes U.

Film titles in streaming video products are available anywhere, anytime. These databases are well-equipped to address one of the needs articulated above--ease of discovery--while leaving the question of long term access out of the equation for the time being. First things first.

Stay-tuned for future posts that will answer really pressing video questions, like why doesn't Lilly Library have TMNT on Blu-ray!?!

CSI: Library

In the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, librarians, archivists, and researchers work to discover the clues inherent in materials such as Ethiopic manuscripts, forged poetry, Confederate publications, false imprints. Despite this bibliographic work, is there a more passé word in the humanities than bibliography? When every day brings more commentary on the popularity of e-books and the obsolescence of printed media, the study of physical books, and the compiling of lists of books, can seem hopelessly retrograde.

And yet nothing is ever as simple as it seems. “The Career Risks of Scrutinizing the Physical Side of Books,” an article by Jennifer Howard in the July 11, 2010 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, examines the state of the field of analytic bibliography (the study and description of the physical composition and layout of books), finding a variety of approaches to teaching and practicing bibliography at different institutions. While it does seem that faculty positions for those specializing in the analysis of physical books can be hard to come by, there are also factors that I think indicate the field may be due for a renaissance:

• Bibliography is inherently interdisciplinary. To study books as physical objects, scholars need to know something about chemistry, botany, and mechanical engineering, in addition to more traditional areas of inquiry in the humanities and social sciences such as the history of technology, labor and business history, public policy, economics, and art history. Bibliography can bring together scholars from a range of fields for discussions on how best to understand not only the production and distribution of texts, but their disciplines themselves. 

• Bibliography contributes to understanding cultures, not just texts themselves. Cultural studies benefit greatly from bibliographical studies. Studies of hidden information embedded in a physical text, such as sources of paper and bindings, place and date of production, distribution methods, and quality of printing can lead to insights on the meaning of a text for a culture: who it was intended for, when it would have been known, how much the information it contained was valued (or not).

• Bibliography can show us how and why books were and are useful. Production and distribution of texts are changing very rapidly. A grounding in the physicality of bibliography could become more and more essential for understanding history and literary history if contemporary physical books come to be seen less as utilitarian carriers of information and more as aesthetic or luxury objects. 

• Bibliography is being rebranded. If we factor into the discussion growing programs in the History of the Book, the Book as Object, or the History of Text Technologies, the state of analytic bibliography seems quite a bit more vibrant. Maybe it would seem even more vibrant if it were given the CSI treatment as “Literary Forensics.”

Here in the Duke University Libraries, librarians specializing in specific subject areas used to be called “bibliographers,” or (to be literal) experts on the books in their field. They are now called “subject librarians,” responsible for a range of resources including databases, websites, e-journals, and, yes, books. And yet the work of bibliography continues here as elsewhere.

Will Hansen

European Fiction in Translation

It is generally acknowledged that in the era of globalization, migration across linguistic borders creates cross-cultural awareness and increases the need for translated fiction. One might expect, therefore, that literary translations would constitute a sizable portion of the American publishing market. According to the Translation Database, however, last year only 365 fiction titles from around the world were actually translated into English and published in the United States.

These troubling figures raise a number of questions of interest to digital humanists: How do publishers identify writers and works from abroad for translation? What do publishers need to know about the average American reader in order to figure out what would sell or find critical acclaim, if not commercial success in the US? Why is it that writers who are on the best-seller list in their own country flop in the US? What are the best sources for reviews of foreign fiction of potential interest to the American reading public?

These questions, and more, were discussed at a panel on European Fiction in Translation at the recent national meeting of the American Library Association in Washington, DC. The event was organized by Heidi Madden (Librarian for Western European Studies at Duke University) and Melissa VanVuuren (Librarian for English at James Madison University) for the Association of College and Research Library’s sections in Western European Studies and Literatures in English.

This program’s website includes links to publishers of translation, sources for book reviews, as well as a short bibliography on issues and trends in translation. However, perhaps the best starting points for exploring the topic of European fiction in translation are the websites of the panelists themselves. In particular, be sure to check out Chad Post’s Open Letter; Alane Salierno Mason’s, Words Without Borders: An Online Magazine for International Literature; and the presentation by Dr. Edwin Gentzler, Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of The Translation Center, University of Massachusetts (Amherst).

Heidi Madden, Ph.D.