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1999 Keynote Address, Milton T. Wolf

Senior Vice President for Collection Programs
Center for Research Libraries

I am a person of many opinions and some ideas; in fact, my definition of an intelligent person is one who can hold many ideas in his/her mind simultaneously, some that are absolutely contradictory, in perfect harmony. So, while I will share a number of opinions with you this evening (which I believe this evening), I am not so wedded to them that I can't change my mind. But I would certainly feel that I failed in engaging you, if I didn't make you think, and make you laugh.

Over the years, in the guise of a Librarian, I have taught many courses ranging from science fiction to cross country skiing, to global information dissemination to acquisitions of library materials. My students have been moved to give me numerous expressions of their gratitude, from the prosaic apple to the hand-dyed tie to whimsical poetic expressions. But the one I have liked the best is when a student gave me a sign for my office that said: YOU HAVE SOMETHING IN THIS LIBRARY TO OFFEND EVERYONE!

With that in mind, I invite you to sit back, enjoy your coffee (go the restrooms when necessary), and come along with me as I try, in Robert Frost's words from "The Mending Wall" to give no "offense," while we walk the line picking up what belongs to each, knowing full well that it wasn't elves that dropped all those stones.

THE WHOLE IS GREATER THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
There is more information available today than at anytime before in history. And by tomorrow there will be even more; by next year there will be twice as much as today! Even rabbits pale by comparison with information production. But with all the information that is out there, it seems more difficult than ever to get what you want, when you want it.

While my experiences have largely been with research-oriented institutions, it seems, unfortunately, that most libraries and not-for-profit information-providing institutions, like museums, archives and other cultural entities, are suffering from the same problems: too much information, too little money. And, please, don't humor me with that old saw about technology solving it for us. Getting useful information from the Internet is like filtering a cesspool for nutrition.

What you see, more often than not, is that "as the infrastructure of the digital library [museum, archive, etc.] emerges, a range of trends is gradually leading to the disappearance of human help in patron interactions." ¹

Like pumping your own gasoline, we'll all be soon pumping our own information, for "the logic [of digital resources], the pertinent concept is user self-sufficiency."² As the downsizing of our staffs and collections continues, we download more of our former services and substance to the end user.

According to the techno-nerds, who have been gradually placed in positions of authority by the New Corporate Power Structure (but more on that later), the grand purpose in all this is to make the end users "more self-sufficient in searching, retrieving, and evaluating information in a multitude of formats, and to prepare them for a world where information and knowledge currently doubles every year and is expected to double every 73 days by the year 2020."³

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not against utilizing technology to make life better. Nor do I want to throw out the technological baby with the bath water, for it certainly can help us filter through the mountains of data and facts that are threatening to push an information fire hose down our throats when all we want is a cool, informing drink. No, the real problem is that information and its technologies have become Big Business (some of it Silicon Snake Oil Business).

And Big Business's agenda has more to do with making money, the transfer of institutional information power, and the fear and loathing of publications and information artifacts with real content, i.e., content that hasn't been pre-approved (for our own good, you understand) by the corporate/research community. Serving people through non-profit institutions is not high on its priority list! To paraphrase Emerson, we either ride technology, or it will ride us.

But there are things that we can do, should do, to ameliorate this situation. While it is probably beyond our abilities to enter into the lists with the corporate power brokers to affect its continuous machinations to sell us bell-and-whistle baubles, submerging technologies, and ersatz Solyent Green wonder products, we can join together through cooperative ventures that cut across traditionally accepted barriers to pursue mutually beneficial partnerships. After all, we are really here to serve the information user. If we combine our collections and services, in a rationalized way, we can provide more from less, but we will have to jettison some of our antediluvian attitudes.

And one of these outmoded concepts is that of the self-sufficient library, museum, archive or any other information-serving institution. The traditional research library goal, for example, of building and maintaining large, self-sufficient, collections is not only anachronistic, it is also economically moronic. The rapid emergence and evolution of electronic technologies finally make it feasible for information institutions to build on local strengths and yet to collaborate on information issues across geographical boundaries. However, our pre-industrial mindset about ownership almost cancels out our technical prowess.

As long as cultural information institutions rank themselves by the criteria of ownership (volumes and manuscripts held, artifacts owned, photos digitized, staff employed, and budgets expended) and nothing else, they will continue to represent quantity not quality. "Build a large, monumental institution (preferably with lions and griffins guarding the front doors) and they will come" has been the hallmark of much of the cultural information enterprise for generations.

One of the reasons for this is mainly because it is simpler to amass quantities of things than it is to discriminate intelligently. Certainly, it is less controversial and time consuming than essaying the worth of the content, not to mention substantially less expensive than thoughtful selection! It IS selected information, driven by a defined intellectual goal or vision that makes an information institution -not the number of widgets housed within. We should not be ranking our institutions by the tonnage!

In libraries, for example, we are guilty of schooling several generations in the belief that their own library collection, if properly developed, could serve all the needs of its clientele locally -- with an occasional foray into interlibrary loan. The unfortunate result of this hubris, coupled with a long period of double-digit purchasing inflation and the concomitant downsizing of budgets, is that most library collections are becoming more homogeneous as libraries are forced to satisfy core, local needs of demand first.

In other words, a good portion of everyone's acquisitions budget is utilized in sustaining subscriptions to Time magazine, TV GUIDE, U.S. News and World Report, etc. It seems that information institutions are spending more and getting less! In short, librarians have put their clientele on a core collection starvation diet, depriving them of those nutritious sources that used to distinguish one library from another, those materials that enable thinking outside the box of commercially purveyed pabulum. This fast-mind-food-collecting syndrome, that focuses on the core at the expense of the periphery, is threatening information users with a severe case of content-deprived anemia, and it is creating golden arched MAC-LIBRARIES, where you can have it your way-except for content, and that, like the beef, is real scarce. I leave it to each of you-experts in other information areas-to see if the library shoe fits, and whether or not you want to limp forward in it.

Jim Davis, formerly the Western Regional Director for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, puts it this way:

If information can't turn a profit, it won't be developed or stored, regardless of its social value. The president of commercial database vendor Dialog was quoted in 1986 as saying "We can't afford an investment in databases that are not going to earn their keep and pay back their development costs."

When asked what areas were not paying their development costs, he answered, "Humanities."

Pharmaceutical information products comprise [even] a more dramatic example -- for instance, a 1991 World Health Organization report lamented the fact that development of new tuberculosis-fighting drugs all but stopped 25 years ago (even though three million die every year from the disease) because the drugs are "not a big profit maker." ⁴

And, in a recent article entitled "The Politics of Cultural Authority" professor Wayne Wiegand remarks upon the relationship between knowledge, as it is commercially packaged, and power. He says:

In the past 20 years or so an army of critical theorists …have been questioning the whole concept of "objective" knowledge, and analyzing connections between power and the values assigned to knowledge in its different forms. What they have discovered is that knowledge in any form is never disinterested, never totally objective, and that a discernible link exists between power and the kinds of knowledge people consider most valuable.

Because knowledge is never disinterested, powerful people with a vested interest in certain kinds of knowledge work hard to elevate that knowledge to a privileged position. There, they believe, it will have the best chance to influence everyone else. ⁵

In the present milieu of "cultural authority," librarians, curators, archivists are considered merely "handlers of information products" having very little to do with determining the value of those products. The corporate structure that dominates the publishing industry and calls the research tune for a significant portion of the academy, especially in the sciences, is making it very clear that they do not want information handlers to evaluate content, just serve up their prepackaged knowledge-and pay!

An article in this February's Wall Street Journal says, "Scientists are increasingly supported by for-profit companies, but a new study shows that critical fact is seldom revealed in published research. " ⁶

The article goes on to say, "The important person is the reader, and if the financial conflict might alter their perception of the validity of results, then the reader should have those conflicts revealed." ⁷ Right, but don't count on it happening soon. Powerful vested interests, in partnership with scientists, are packaging information mind-food for your thoughtless digestion. Fear not, it's for your own good. Like National Security, you are not to question the medical profession, the legal profession or the science/research complex.

Now it's true that we didn't get to this pitiful situation all by ourselves. Over the past 15 years, our budgets have been squeezed (I wonder by whom?) not only by funding cutbacks at our parent institutions, but by inflation, a dramatic increase in the number of worldwide publications, the impact of technology on how we do business, and the changing configurations in how we acquire resources for our collections (e.g., licensing agreements). (In Arizona, I understand, foreign wealthy investors pay big bucks for cowboy history artifacts, not to mention Indian ones, and then take these unique research materials home with them.) These realities have produced the very reasons for the homogeneity in our collections, and the excuses we give for their lack of diversity.

We may have finally arrived at that crossroads where our self-aggrandized collecting provincialism is resulting in less information rather than more for our clientele. Approximately two percent of today's publishers account for 75% of U.S. titles produced. And the pricing and copyright practices of many of these commercial publishers have so constricted the flow of information that it is not an exaggeration to say that they, in effect, control the major research publishing venues.

In truth, there is an well-entrenched, global commercial monopoly on the distribution and approval of ideas, and we, as selectors, often contribute to its hegemony by our slothful collection habits. "Content," too often, has become what our commercial enterprises define and distribute, and we often unwittingly purchase -largely because few institutions any longer can afford to devote the number of staff hours required, or the money necessary to the time-consuming, professional job of evaluative selection!

Again, it much easier to let the computer automatically renew our subscriptions, shuffle our artifacts-even if it is a lot of intellectual detritus, or let the patron slurp around the Internet where you can get lots of hits of unauthenticated bilge and dross.

It reminds me of the innumerable "All-you-can-eat" buffets in Las Vegas: "plenty of porcine razzle-dazzle that sends you home lighter in the pocket and heavier in the pants. Wasn't it Marie Antoinette who said, "Give them Laughlin, Nevada!"

While we can make strong arguments that our shrinking budgets, the financial demands of supporting computer technology with funds previously earmarked for services and collections, and staff downsizing all have reduced the time and funds available for analyzing the worth of our current and retrospective acquisitions, I think it is equally true that we are not seeing the opportunities for positive change that lie before us, if we can only agree to communicate, cooperate, and collaborate!

Like Francis Scott Key watching the attack on Fort McHenry, I wonder if we will ever realize the information power of "e pluribus unum." While we ostensibly sing the song and talk the talk of hanging together, we, in fact, more often hang separately when it comes to resource sharing and cooperation. As one wag recently observed, partnership is often another word for seeking funding from some outside agency. And once we get the money, we frequently go our own ways -- until the next funding proposal or consortial agreement promises something for nothing.

Collaboration means more than electronic access to virtual collections; it also means pursuing partnerships that provide gateways to physical information, sharing our staff-even sharing our buildings! But our traditional attitudes about ownership must be overcome if we are to re-orient ourselves to the challenges and rewards of constructing complementary information resources that contain all the diverse materials our clientele need. Otherwise, we are going to continue to build boring, vanilla, cultural information institutions that are content-deficient, and unlikely to lead to a healthy and diverse society of respectful dissent--not to mention a more democratic forum for the critical examination of ideas.

As Justice Holmes once remarked, "Every idea is an incitement." You can find out about a President's love life, his haircut, clothes--even what he had for breakfast, but don't worry about being "incited" by thought-provoking issues that deal with the health and welfare of a community.

Working in cultural information institutions is no longer for the feint of heart, and if we don't learn to work more cooperatively, we will be hung separately by an economic-political machine that is as relentless as it is blind.

If we are going to see more clearly, we will have to envision and enact our future roles differently than in the past. . If the traditional concept of creating and maintaining large self-sufficient collections of books, manuscripts and artifacts is not yet dead, it is only waiting on the arrival of the taxidermist for the coup de grace.

Our future actually lies in giving away our information institutions to our communities, in combining our resources and in facilitating and interpreting the cultural information dialogue. Paraphrasing Dylan Thomas, let us not go gently into the commercial info night, let us rage, rage, against the dying light of content, substance, and value. Vow that you will not be just an information handler of pre-packaged commercial pabulum, engineered to reduce your communities to thoughtless, unexamined lives. The silent majority all live in graveyards!

Robert Archibald, president of the Missouri Historical Society, exhorts cultural institutions "to abandon the pedestals of authority that wall us off from those we serve and enter into the fray of discourse about important things in our communities." ⁸

He goes on to say that "We no longer ask isolated questions such as 'What should we collect, conserve, exhibit, publish, research or what programs should we offer?' These are strategies and resources. The questions we ask now are focused on what strategies and resources can best facilitate discussion of enduring community concerns." ⁹

Counter the commercial information juggernaut with the principles of inclusion and collaboration. We can revitalize our non-profit cultural information centers if we understand that "successful community collaboration requires shared vision, a shared plan, and shared resources. Unless this is agreed to at the outset, relationships will be difficult and the results one-sided. [For] successful collaborations build trust and relationships, magnify resources, and achieve results that exceed the separate capabilities of collaborating organizations." ¹⁰

As for technology, it can certainly assist us, especially in communicating and enacting our collaborations, but beware of those pollyanna techno-nerds who assure you that there will be cost savings because of computerization. The research to date argues against such a sanguine, if not deceitful, view. Much to the chagrin of the computerholics, the overall productivity of U.S. industry during the past twenty years, a period of massive institutionalization of computer systems, has actually decreased slightly.

That the computer has changed how we work, however, cannot be denied; that it has encouraged constant reorganization, as we all hurry to fit in with the machines' new bells and whistles (euphemistically called "re-tooling, or staff training"); that it now accounts for the most significant outlay of increasing expenditures in most organizations; that a burgeoning group of computer tenders and tweakers continues to grow; and that, in some places, information technology has become a substitute for individualized information service, is all too true. Like the bank teller, the knowledgeable, personal reference service provider, the information interpreter, has been replaced (for your convenience, of course) by a machine.

Yet, in libraries, with all our new technology, the most recent study of interlibrary loan done by the Association of Research Libraries came to the conclusion that even though volume is up over 50%, there has been no significant change during the last decade in the two-week turnaround time for getting books and information between libraries!

When the cost of technology decreases the money available for acquiring the astronomically increasing universe of publications, when copyright law becomes a barrier to the exchange of information and can be used as a monopolistic club to fend off competition, when content is determined by "what sells," the intellectual stagnation that follows inevitably results in a less kind and less gentle society.

As information professionals, as interpreters and guides to the information gateways, we should encourage a more discriminating use of information, that is our forte, and we should do all that we can to promote this aspect of our expertise. Interpreting information is the mark of professionalism.

The worldwide explosion of information works in our favor: for almost everyone is now burping up information junk. There is data, data everywhere, but not a lot to think. As Sue Myburgh, a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia, notes

This dichotomy is situated in the encounter that takes place between the information retrievalists, on the one hand, and the data retrievalists, on the other; those who labor with qualitative research methods, as against those to whom quantitative research is all.

Put another way:

The field of information retrieval can be divided along the lines of its system-based and user-based concerns. While the system-based view is concerned with efficient search techniques to match query and document representation, the user-based view must account for the cognitive state of the searcher and the problem solving context. ¹¹

Both methods require sophisticated knowledge of the information universe, but the user-based one is a tailored process, as unique as the individual; or as the community that the information institution serves--and it is in this arena that most of us, in this room, excel. This is our turf, our metier, our future. Forget the personal trainer, the personal banker, it's the personal information provider whom everyone will want! It's "content" that people will pay for, go to museums and archives to view, touch and learn from. And we are superbly placed to interpret and present information, making it meaningful and accessible to those who need it. We don't just dispense information; that's what bookstores do. We educate by providing possible interpretations, by adding value-even by advocating.

Certainly we must be sensitive and aware of the latest buzz, largely manufactured by today's increasingly yellow journalism, but we must also be professionally tuned to the underlying issues. And we must constantly customize our limited resources to the needs of our communities, realizing that "as the digital era explodes" our institutional walls, "the definition of community takes on worldwide dimensions."

So let's not get caught up with the behemoth Publisher/Government/Research Complex or the engineers who, having lost sight of their objectives, redouble their efforts. They are already burying their heads in the information morass that they have unwittingly created. By the time they get it straightened out, we can be even further down the information road, doing what we do best: collecting, conserving, exhibiting, servicing and interpreting the complex information world.

This is not to say that we should not lobby for modifications to the present political/economic structure, to point out the fallacies of commercial information legerdemain, to educate our clientele about the intricacies and the vested interests of the Information Age, but we should be spending more time, the majority of our time, doing what we can do, should do, and, if done well, would ameliorate considerably the "crisis" we face -- not to mention the goodwill we would accrue with our users.

Collaboration is not just a front for getting grants or making consortial purchases; it is not a buzzword, it's a life style (in many ways it's like marriage: love, honor and negotiate). Collaborators don't care whose on top. Collaboration means "sharing" control -- sometimes even not being in control. And what is this craven need we seem to have for autonomy? And where has it actually gotten us? A series of vanilla cultural information institutions with more technology and less staff.

We CAN lower the costs of the information unit, if we cross pollinate with other institutions. The sum of our parts IS greater than any one of us. We are building one cultural information resource and it's time we became conscious of this and moved with that purpose.

Surely, this alone can serve as a blueprint for the journey we must embark upon if we are to hang together. We may have finally arrived at that crossroads where not relinquishing some of our local control to pursue the common good means that we are denying our constituents less information than they otherwise would have. Or, as in Arizona's case, conserving less and less of the State's unique historical materials because of a lack of collaboration.

The best summation I can provide you is by Jordan M. Scepanski, currently Executive Director at the Triangle Research Libraries Network:

Among the first steps that can be taken in re-thinking how service to the public is rendered is for librarians [curators, archivists and other cultural information providers] to assert their professional expertise. The obvious problem with information today is its overabundance. There is more of it than can be handled.

Peter Lyman, of the University of California at Berkeley, has pointed out that libraries originally were created to deal with the problem of information scarcity; that is, to bring together in one place, for the use of the many, items that were few in number so that they could be shared. Now there is too much rather than too little.

There also is too much of too little. That is, so much of the information that is overwhelming everyone is of poor quality or of little value. There is a lot that is of little consequence. If the traditional library, then, was the answer to a paucity of information, the new [information specialist] is the solution to its plenitude. There has never been a more critical need for the talents of professionals who not only know how to find information, but how also to evaluate it. The role of the [information specialist] can no longer be one of pointing the way for the user, nor even of just teaching that user how to find what is needed. [We] must now teach both how to find what is needed and how to assess what is found. [We] are information experts, and that expertise extends beyond knowing where to look for things. [We] do know how to differentiate good data from bad, current information from that which is dated, reliable sources from that those that are less so.

To change, public service [information specialists] have to be recognized as information experts and accept that they are so. No longer can they, or society, heed that old admonition, drilled into so many in [professional] schools, that [we] don't make judgments about the information [we] help people find. If [we] don't make such judgments no one will, and clients will be the worse for [our] timidity.

[We] should return to the public librarian's approach of an earlier era, that of the "reader's advisor," the librarian whose knowledge of the disciplines and of [the] literature and of the reader's interest and needs allowed functioning as a guide and a counselor. [We] once again need to guide and counsel. [We] need to advise and to teach. ¹²

It is time for us to re-dedicate ourselves to the value-added things we bring to the information arena, to facilitate the information gateways for our users, to collaborate across institutional and geographical boundaries, to share our dwindling resources and magnify them through cooperative strategies, to create an international conspectus for preserving the recorded knowledge of civilization, and to put our always limited funds toward our overarching visions.

Over the years it has become almost a cliché to urge people to "think globally, act locally." Could we possibly add a parenthetical addendum to "act locally (with global intent)"? After all, whether you realize it or not, we are building, and conserving, a global information resource treasury. And you are one of its contributors!

1 Heckart, Ronald J. "Machine Help and Human Help in the Emerging Digital Library," College & Research Libraries, V. 59, no. 3 (may 1998), pp. 250.

2 Ibid.

3 Bosseau, Don L. "Where Are We Now? Some Thoughts About Expansionism," Journal of Academic Librarianship, V. 24, no. 5 (September 1998), p.390.

4 Jim Davis. "The Incompatibility of Capitalism and Information," Intertek 3.4 (1993): 19.

5 Wayne A. Wiegand. "The Politics of Cultural Authority," American Libraries 29 (January 1998): 81.

6 King, Ralph T. Jr., "Medical Journals Rarely Disclose Researchers' Ties," Wall Street Journal (February 2, 1999), p. B1.

7 Ibid., p. B4.

8 Archibald, Robert, "Narratives for a New Century, " Museum News (V. 77, no. 6 (November/December 1998), p. 37.

9 Ibid., p. 40.

10 Ibid., p. 42.

11 Sue Myburgh, "The Clash of the Titans: Information Retrieval vs. Data Retrieval," in Information Imagineering: Meeting at the Interface, eds. Milton T. Wolf, Pat Ensor, and Mary Augusta Thomas (Chicago: American Library Association, 1998), pp. 53-54.

12 Jordan M. Scepanski. "Public Services in a Telecommuting World," Information Technology and Libraries 15 (March 1966): 44.

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