Look what I found in my bellybutton: a tale of activism, impotence and indolence

Well that's that... the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) will be going ahead with its rebranding exercise, and members will get to vote on a new name in September. Today's general meeting in London was attended by "over 94 people" (97 were apparently registered), and there were 1513 proxy votes. The motion on the table was: 

"This General Meeting believes the current rebranding exercise should be halted, believing it to be a distraction from the urgent tasks of advocacy for the profession, and a waste of scarce resources."

752 voted for the motion, 804 voted against and 16 abstained. There were 1572 votes in total from 1610 registered attendees and proxy ballots (wherein "no vote" was a possible response): approximately 10% of the total membership, if Wikipedia is to be believed.

There were something like 436 tweets on the Storify of the meeting's hashtag, from 108 different tweeters (more people than attended the meeting in person)... probably more if you let the hashtag run through the rest of the afternoon. That's a fair bit of attention and excitement for one vote, and I wonder how it compares to previous CILIP meetings. And to other library issues. As @publiclibnews said: " Can we get as upset about closures please?"

We can't, of course. Would that it were so easy. It's little effort to get excited about CILIP... a lot of us are members. We have a direct, identifiable stake. The targets are easy to determine. Everyone knows where they stand, roughly. To take arms against CILIP is nothing in need of soliloquy. It comes naturally.

Closures are a different matter, if only for the simple reason that one can only defend a library if it is actually being closed. It also helps to be a member of that library. Were my local library under threat, I would like to think that I would be out there and getting involved, but thankfully it is not. As for libraries that are under threat, I don't feel qualified to intervene. 

This is probably not the right attitude to have but it is one born of practicality as much as of provincialism: I am too far away from Gloucester to play a role in their fight, and when the Sheffield protests began it was a 50' bus ride away (at £5 a throw): a long excursion for someone who wasn't a member of that particular authority's service. It didn't feel sufficiently like my problem for me to get myself out of bed. Again, they came for the librarians in Gloucester but I wasn't in Gloucester...

The sense from the recent Umbrella conference seems to be that public libraries are a write-off. There is nothing to be done. Councils have no choice but to cut, and, in the grand scheme of council services, free books look like an expendable luxury. Break free of council control and you lose the protections inherent therein; stay in council control and you face death by a thousand cuts. 

Which brings me back to my last post. To treat library closures as a library issue is to fight a losing battle. In the "something's got to give" mentality, libraries are going to give (we could point out the expenses of local government structures, posh cars and consultancy but it just stays the execution a little). Because libraries are a luxury: a brilliant, fabulous luxury that we've felt it appropriate to afford for over a century, along with a host of other welfare luxuries, each one deserving to live. This is bigger than libraries. It's about local government provision en masse, and it needs a response in like. 

I don't know how to do that. I only know how to moan about how we should do that. It doesn't help that the Labour party is indulging in petty suicide again. Mark Steel and Owen Jones tweet a good tweet but so far remain trapped in their own echo chamber. The unions have merged themselves beyond meaningfulness, and 35 years of demonization has reduced their membership to ineffectual levels. The public/private wedge means that any public sector action is instantly decried before it begins, so we need to generate genuine, widespread popular support. The only way to do that is to make this about the welfare state as a whole, but how we build momentum without friends in high places is the most troubling aspect of all. 

The unfortunate bottom line is that we are not desperate enough yet to march from Jarrow. Until we reach pre-war levels of poverty we remain comfortable enough to sit here moaning while the powers that be undo every gain of the last few generations. It is serious and troubling but too risky and too much trouble to fight about. The Arab Spring is enough to put any member of the chattering classes off their talk of revolution.

And yet and yet something must be done. What will it take to get me and everybody else off our arses? Or should I just move to Finland?

I'll not move to Finland. I'll move to wherever the job market forces me to go, because I need a job and beggars are limited in their choices (this particular beggar has now limited herself to Yorkshire and so has even less choice than before). My own sector is not all that happy either, and I should probably be blogging about the problems of academic libraries... 

It's all related. It all comes back to that ideological struggle we were told was dead but which clearly is not. It's state funding versus private funding: socialism versus capitalism, and the old postwar consensus has got lost in the global market. The left and the right are very much at play, it is just that nobody seems to be representing the left any more. There's a sense that it's a done deal but it needn't be so. Assuming there's the will to stop it.

Who will stand up for the welfare state: libraries, education, hospitals and all? What will it take for us to do something? What will they do that will push us that little bit too far as to wrench us from our bread and circuses and actually kick up a real fuss? I include myself in this. Blogging revolutionary rhetoric is easy and requires little actual effort. I'm now going to drink some wine and play on the computer because real revolution is boring and hard work. Maybe that balance will soon shift. These blog posts are perhaps a sign of something happening: some flexing of my library-saving muscles. But until we do find a way to genuinely excite the population as a whole into some real widespread shock at the plight of public services; until there is a clear flag beneath which to rally, I fear this will remain a provincial pursuit. 

We all have different talents. Some are great public speakers and debaters, some can write a mean letter to their MP, some are amazing organizers, some have deep pockets, some are frighteningly good at propaganda, some are just extra muscle, signatories on the petition, votes in the ballot box. To bring us all together requires some sort of framework: some team of likeminded souls with the range of talents required to stick it to the right sticking places. I've already said that I believe the issue to be bigger than libraries, which rules CILIP out as far as I'm concerned, but that's not to say that CILIP doesn't have a role; that it can't have a role. Part of trying to fight for survival is trying to plan for what survival would mean, and there CILIP most definitely has a role. Indeed, CILIP needs to be part of the machine of protest anyway. The general movement has a shared aim, but does not prohibit us from working in smaller units, so long as those units cooperate. Librarian, nurse, teacher, social worker, consultant(?), member of the public employed in the private sector... We need CILIP to be a useful cog in whatever movement we manage to cobble together. We need it to represent us and to represent our interests.

CILIP is not a union. It is not a guild. Furthermore, we are not all members and this means that its power is greatly diminished. CILIP cannot pull strings. Unison is similarly hampered. Maybe we should start rattening the rolling stacks and book sorters to build up a critical mass. The truth is that most people in the world can't be bothered. We want a quiet life. Is that too much to ask? Other people are better than us at this sort of thing.

90% of CILIP membership (so an even larger fraction of librariankind as a whole in this country) did not vote in today's fun and games. That's a lot of people. And most of them are probably shaking their heads at the state the profession is in, and at what's happening to public libraries, and most of them would probably like to stay in a job too. Apathy is normal, especially where professional bodies are concerned. It doesn't mean that these people don't care, just that they've got other things to worry about. We all have. The proportion of librarians involved in various campaigns to save libraries is, I suspect, equal to, if not considerably greater than, the 10% that played today; all of us contribute somehow, when we feel it necessary or possible. It would be great to think that all c.15,000 CILIP members could be out on Kensal Rise and the likes, but it isn't practical. Just as it isn't practical for those same members to attend a general meeting held at short notice in That London. Activism can be an expensive pursuit or a local one.

We mustn't rush to criticise those that aren't actively involved in library campaigns. Someone has to be home doing the librarianing while the others are out saving the world. Some of our best campaigners are not full-time librarians, and it doubtless helps. Others give what they can, when they feel they can, even if it's just moral support. Both pursuits are vital, I suspect. Some of us, like me, are armchair supporters unsure of how to do more of if they could actually be motivated to do more beyond the momentary rush of blood. The important thing is that when they do come knocking we have something to offer, be it a model library service and a template of good practice, or blood, sweat, toil, tears and any other bodily fluids that we can bottle and throw at our enemies. Because in defending our service, we also need a service to defend. Cake is there to be eaten as well as had, and we would be poor librarians if we didn't take advantage of some cake.

All this rambling is my way of saying that I really should do more than I do but that I'm waiting for a proper vehicle in which to do it. We need to save libraries along with all the other local services, and we need to get everyone with us to do it. CILIP aren't going to lead on this. I'm not going to lead on this. Labour aren't going to lead on this. Unison might lead on this. Owen Jones would love to lead on this. Nick Clegg could lead on this but never will. For now nobody is leading on this and my blogs are getting more political than I ever intended them to be. Such are my frustrations: frustrations with myself, with CILIP and with the wider politics that is driving this predicament. I think its time I stopped writing for one night.

Pushing bellybuttons

In politics it is an observed phenomenon that when a party loses long-held power it inevitably gazes upon its navel. It then proceeds to tear its navel apart, destroying its electability until such time that the party in power has itself lost it. Public libraries are in serious trouble and academic libraries have some pretty big issues to overcome too. Those are the fights we need to be fighting right now, and for that reason this blog has until now been mum on the whole CILIP rebrand business.

That is not to say that one should not seek to redress problems within the camp at the same time as prosecuting a battle. A well disciplined army may be essential to the victory. There is a fine line between addressing problems at home and burning down the house, and fear of the latter can leave us too scared to light the candles of our extended metaphor. I've made fun of CILIP's name in the past, and something more straightforward would certainly buy extra airtime in a media war of words.

But the way CILIP has gone about the rebrand exercise has been bothersome: bothersomely secretive, bothersomely botched, bothersomely expensive and bothersomely delivered (this post by Tom Roper expresses some of the bothers quite effectively). Now ok, CILIP are a registered charity: the product of lots of lovely people doing hard work in their own time for not much thanks; we might expect (and indeed accept) some degree of inelegant botchery. But they're a charity that exists to represent "information professionals", and frankly stuff like the rebrand consultation report and indeed the exercise as a whole is an embarrassment to the information profession. If any chartered institute should be able to do this sort of thing well (and without the need to use an agency, no matter how 'cheap') then it's surely ours. But hey ho, there we go...

The people at CILIP may have felt it necessary to move this particular deckchair at this particular time, and would have probably expected the move to be met with widespread enthusiasm (it was my first reaction, until I saw the survey). But they moved it right in the middle of the Punch & Judy show and in a way that churned up all the sand on the beach into one really unpleasant sandstorm. The methodology misfired in a big way and has perhaps highlighted deeper problems with the organization. Be our body called CILIP or Information UK, the more pressing issue is that it is not currently geared up to do the job we really need it to do right now: primarily to save public libraries in the face of the biggest wave of shock therapy this country's faced since the more overt privatisations of the '80s and '90s. A name change is not going to solve this (though it might well help in communication, or even just in morale for a profession seeking some self-validation)... it needs a wholesale rethink of what our body is for and is allowed to do. We need a war machine, not a think tank. I personally would love to see something a lot more like a Library Union, though that model would not be without its own problems. Quite what we want is, frankly, part of the problem...

We keep fixating on names. The old chestnut of whether the name "librarian" holds us back was raised at the Umbrella conference today. As a cardigan wearer I feel that our stereotype is a positive one, all the more so for being tangible and identifiable. And I suspect it is easier to mould a stereotype than to attempt to build a new one from scratch. A rose by any other name will still smell of Jif. Big brands can force us into saying Snickers if they're really persistent, but "sex worker" is still just a euphemism. In my view, "librarian" is a good hook we can use, and it has a lot of support, even if it is support that doesn't fully understand what we do. I've blogged a couple of times about the 'Frank Skinner' effect and how it can play both ways. Babies and bathwater require an effective detergent.

The thing is, we haven't got time to sit here squabbling. We may need CILIP to be something it can't be, but by the time we've voted in Michael Foot, lost our Gang of Four, told ourselves "we're alright" and diluted our principles just when we didn't need to, there won't be any libraries left to save. There'll be neither librarians nor information professionals. There'll just be a lot of K6s filled with Catherine Cooksons, and nobody there to clean up the mess.

The issue is bigger than libraries. The latest government spending review slashes another 10% off central funding for local councils that are already struggling to provide the public services that are their raison d'etre. Libraries start to look like a luxury and will continue to feature high in the pecking order of stuff to cut. Perhaps as the cuts take their toll on other areas of local government provision there may be an opportunity for greater unity: the camel's back may finally snap as it gets pressed against the wall, and we will all feel the need to do something at last. We're not there yet, but that, it seems to me, is the angle we need to take. To try to fight for our survival in terms of "libraries/librarians are really important" is not going to work against the divide-and-conquer slashing that pitches us against social care services. We need to make a general stand, something those at the bottom of the wood-pile may be unwilling to do so readily (they came for the librarians but I wasn't a librarian...). We have to fight this in terms of a defence of local government provision (and even state provision more generally) as a whole. But can we do it without sounding like a bunch of Marxists and potentially alienating swathes of the middle classes? Is it all just going to come down to a general strike, another winter of discontent, and who knows what else? Or will we all just sit on our hands and watch the welfare state get dismantled and sold off because those that understand are too idle and those that don't don't?

I type as one of the idle. I'm all fingers, me. Words without actions. More libraries will close. Massive unemployment in our sector. Until the metaphorical faeces hit the other blades of the fan we will just have to keep fighting each individual fire as best we can. Perhaps the sand kicked up by CILIP might be useful after all...

Not so easy come...

The following post is dredged up from February when, for some reason I forget, I forgot to publish it online. As you will see, this is the second time I've dredged it up. Let us hope for York's libraries that it again proves third time lucky...

Yesterday, for the second time in my life, I moved out of York. In spite of all its tedious flatness and tourist jam, York is very dear to me, and it is always sad to be leaving. 

A month ago Francis Maude gave York council some money to farm off their library services. I don't know where they are with these plans, or what will come of them (this site offers some background), but I do know that one must deal wisely with pawnbrokers. 

What follows is a post dredged up from the "abandoned" bag. It's a brief account of the struggle to create York's public library, and is cribbed heavily from a chapter in The Noble City of York (ed. Alberic Stacpoole, 1972). I present it now merely as a reminder not to casually destroy the hard efforts of others...

In 1850, the Public Libraries Act scraped into existence. Boroughs with a population in excess of 10,000 would be able to fund the building and staffing of a library for a halfpenny on the rates. This was extended to 1d in 1855 to include the costs of stock. Not everybody was keen on the public library idea, and this post takes a look at the struggle to create a public library in York. 

The York Herald were one of the leading campaigners for a library. Of the existing libraries in the city, it was the Herald's view that: 

• The Minster Library, Yorkshire Museum Library, and Subscription Libraries catered only for a small minority.
• The Railway Library was limited to company employees.
• The circulating libraries' stock was substandard and of "doubtful utility", with rates in considerable excess of the financial burden of a public library service.

But it wasn't until the 1880s that broader opinion began to shift, momentum being developed via a series of public addresses on the topic. In 1882 a poll was held to determine the appetite for a public library and the rates increase its creation would demand. 3,045 voted for a public library, 4,309 voted against. In a city that charged tolls on its bridges, many felt that a rate increase might be put to more practical use in the abolition of such charges. 

Five years later, the council saw the Queen's Jubilee as an opportunity to create a commemorative public library. It calculated that £12,000 would suffice for a library and gallery: £5,000 from public subscription, the rest from sale of other holdings and from loan. Another poll was held, and again the proposal was defeated (by a margin of 817 votes). 

It was central legislation that forced the matter, assisted by the acquisition of an existing library building. The Technical Instruction Act of 1889 would apparently only benefit councils that had a school board or public library. A new campaign was launched, and the York Institute offered their library building for £4,100. Another poll was held, and it was third time lucky by a majority of 2,961. The library was taken on in 1891 and formally opened in 1893 with a staff of Librarian (£170pa), Assistant Librarian (£70pa) and two boys (on 5s and 6s pw).

Forty years of campaigning, and the library was still only brought into being as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. Things so often come into this world kicking and screaming and we must ensure they do not more gently slip away from us. The effort expended in creating our public library system may need to be matched if we are to prevent its demise.

Yesterday there were reports of job cuts. It's a long way short of problems elsewhere in the country, for now at any rate, but doubtless a call to vigilance.

Calling out the Fire Engines

Recently I acquired a Kindle Fire. Despite its name, a Kindle Fire is not an ebook reader (or a flint book). Rather it is a tablet device. Its operating system is a rebadged Android. It is the second time I've played with an Android tablet, and I have found both experiences somewhat bothersome. Part of this bother is, of course, the suspicion of the new, but there's something more fundamental at work, and this post is going to be me trying to put my finger on a trend in personal computing that I find genuinely concerning. 

I am of the Domesday Disc Generation: my childhood idols were Maggie Philbin and Fred Harris, and there was a home-computer in our home since I was three. I accept that my generation is not like other generations: those before us for whom computers were a confusing novelty, and those after us who have never typed "GOTO 10" with a sense of anarchic delight. We are special. We grew up with the computer. We played silly games together in our childhood, amazed by the simplest things. In our teens we got all surly and it all became about speed and whizzy graphics and sex and violence. Then we went to university together and got the internet and fell in love with its anarchic global community where all things were held in common, programs were shareware, and content was self-made. And now... now we're in our thirties and all the hippies are working in the banking sector...

(Any excuse to use this photo again)

The first thing that happens when you turn on your Kindle Fire is that it asks you for your name and credit card details. No messing about... it's straight in there with it. You don't have to tell it these things but it is very quiet regarding the alternatives. It's not the most welcoming of introductions. We'll leave the form-filling for now and get to the meat.

There's a handy email client (though you'll need to give Amazon some personal details before you're allowed to set it up), and a built in browser called Silk. Silk is an integral part of the machinery in much the same way that Microsoft would have Internet Explorer be an integral part of Windows. Microsoft keep getting fined for doing this sort of anti-competitive practice, but that's a PC and this is just a tablet. It's lower technology.

It is, too. I had presumed that tablets would be laptops without keyboards, and perhaps the iPad is (I don't know; I've never used one). But this is not a netbook with a broken spine; it's a large mobile 'phone without telephony. This is an important detail, because it means that the Kindle Fire lacks considerable functionality. Browsing the internet is browsing with blinkers on: we see it through mobile eyes. Even in "experimental mode" (effectively browsing by proxy) we are hamstrung by the odd missing bit or bob. 

Don't get me wrong, though. Having a slightly sawn-off internet on a mobile 'phone is amazing, it really is. I'm not knocking it at all. And having the same on a piece of technology the size of a thin paperback is also pretty nifty. I readily confess that the ability to pull out a little piece of internet less than a quarter of an inch thick is bloody brilliant and we are living in the future. But realistically, a bit thicker and you could have a netbook with proper laptop-level functionality, and a bit smaller you could have a mobile 'phone (which is also a 'phone, and which takes up less room in your bag). In that regard, a tablet seems a bit... compromised.

But I don't really have a problem with that, and there will be plenty of people who will find such a device brilliant. The problem is not that it is a glorified mobile 'phone.

Or rather, it is, but in a different way. In the 2G days, when mobile 'phones were telephones with a bit of very ropey internet sew on, 'phone companies (very much corporate entities) sought to capitalise on our bored commutes by offering applications for download, usually in the form of games and usually for a small fee. And because these were alien technologies on bespoke operating systems, and because we didn't have the right USB adaptors (or the inclination) to try hooking up to our PCs in search of online communities of hobbyists making things for fun, and because, also, the fees for these downloadable entertainments paled in comparison to our other network charges, and because we were bored and on the bus, we stumped up a quid for Pacman and amused ourselves.

This model developed, chiefly at the hands of Apple, a company with a cultishly insular approach to its product-range. Now people were buying gizmos for their 'phone as a matter of course. Some apps were works of genius, and very handy tools to have on a mobile device. Others were the sort of tat that's been available as freeware on Tucows for years.

While, as somebody from Yorkshire, I am saddened at this seemingly growing commercialisation of the app market, there are still free apps, and the shareware market was always well-populated by trialware and crippleware programs as an inducement for you to part with your pennies. I don't mind the odd app costing money, providing there is an open market and alternatives for tight people. My problem is that the market is not really open.

Apple take a particularly restrictive approach to app distribution, with users being forced to use the Apple app store unless they jailbreak their machine. Kindle (like Google before it), is not so evil. While Kindle emphatically steers its users towards the Amazon app store (use of which requires your name and address as part of an Amazon account), there are alternatives. This is perhaps as well, for the Amazon app store is not exactly bulging with goodies (though it is by no means bare).

Kindle Fire is a rebadged Android

I said before that Kindle Fire is a rebadged Android. This means that any app made for Android will likely work on a Kindle Fire too. Great! There's loads of apps that have been made for Android! Download all teh apps!

Unfortunately, the Android app store, Google Play, will only allow you to download something if you have a properly badged Android. The Kindle Fire cannot retrieve these goodies. This is somewhat frustrating.

There are other app stores, though it can be tricky to tell other app stores from dodgy app stores, especially when one doesn't have tooltips and right-click functions at ones disposal to help navigate the net. There's also the possibility that the app's creator hosts a copy for direct download. However, this is alarmingly rare, particularly with big corporate manufacturers. In the interests of storage-space, bandwidth and convenience, most app creators seem content to leave distribution to the central app store. If you're barred from that store, as the Kindle is from Google, you're cut off in an alarming way. Welcome to the cloud.

The app store curator will say that a directly accessible, centralized app store is not an instrument of anti-competitive practice so much as a tool of convenience and a means of ensuring security. The truth is that the centralized app store is all three. For a conventional Android user, with a well stocked warehouse and competing outlets, it's hard to find too much to moan about. But the Kindle Fire demonstrates the shortcomings of trusting in one central repository. Manufacturers of Android apps could also submit to Amazon, of course, and this would solve a good deal of the problem. Likewise, Google Play could raise some of its restrictions. While I have deeper misgivings about relying upon what are effectively geared up to be corporate monopolies, in the case of the Kindle Fire there are more pressing troubles.

Which brings us to ebooks.

There's a menu item called "Books". But it's only a book if you got it from Amazon. If you got it from somewhere else you'll have to find it in "Docs". And you won't necessarily find it in "Docs" either because that's your documents folder and not your downloads folder. To get to any downloads you've made you'll need to use the directory browser in Open Office. 

This presupposes that your Kindle let you download the book in the first place. It is loathe to do such things. For something that capitalizes on its ebook-reading abilities, it doesn't half put up a fight.

The reason I acquired this Kindle Fire was so that I could test the availability of my university's ebook provision. Out of ten different ebook providers we use, Kindle DRM foibles or provider site restrictions mean that half will not permit texts to be downloaded and read on the Kindle Fire via the Silk browser. Using the third-party Opera Mobile browser rather than Silk, one can access texts from two more, bringing coverage to a slightly more respectable 7/10, but Opera Mobile is not available in the Amazon app store (I found my copy via a back-door link posted by an Opera techy on their help forum) so that option isn't really an option for our students. To make matters worse, the five problematic providers include the three we rely upon for most of our titles. So any student who thought a Kindle Fire might be a useful investment for their studies is in for a bit of a frustrating time if they're hoping to fill it with ebook texts.

Oh... and one of the ones that doesn't work does work if you download a third-party PDF reader, but then that reader takes over your file associations and goes on to block some of the other providers, so that's not much help. Another provider is due to launch a Kindle app soon, my response to which is a cry of frustration.

I'm a bit worried about the whole app thing to be honest. For a start I see a lot of apps as a way of selling people something they already have. Why, for instance, would you use a Twitter app on a Kindle Fire when you can access Twitter (or even Tweetdeck) through your web-browser. The cynic in me sees it as an effort to fool paying customers into mistaking what constitutes online content and inadvertently racking up connection charges. That's not to say that some apps aren't genuinely useful programs that by far enhance anything you can do through a browser. But most aren't. When faced with the whole app shop thing, and things like the annoyance that is Windows 8 out of the box, my eye starts to get a bit twitchy. There is undoubtedly something useful about the app as bookmark, or the app as a simplified tool for a mobile device, but we must be alert to the fact that a simplification, while easier to use, may well be a less functional and more restrictive experience. We must be especially careful that we do not standardize the wrong way. The most alarming thing about Windows 8 is the loss of functionality, but that's a story for another time.

For all these problems, there's no denying that the Kindle Fire is quite a nifty little thing. I do love the way you can type by sliding your finger across they keyboard rather than hitting each letter in turn (probably a technology many of you are familiar with from other devices, but new to me), and as someone with a 2nd generation 'phone, it's nice to have a handbaggable device I can hook up to a pub's wi-fi. But if I want an ereader, I'd rather it have an Etch-a-Sketch screen and less restrictions on what I'm allowed to read or call a book (Kobo or Sony seem likely candidates) and if I want a baggable internet device I think I'd just go with a 3G mobile 'phone or (with a bigger bag) a laptop. That, as I say, is just a consequence of my personal needs. The restrictive nature of DRM and app culture are far more concerning, and represent the real turn-offs for me. For those reasons alone I would not recommend the Kindle Fire. In the evil stakes these are minor misdemeanours but better to put our foot down now before things get out of hand, eh?