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Comment on Convenience and its Discontents: Teaching Web-Scale Discovery in the Context of Google by Convenience and its Discontents: Teaching Web-Scale Discovery in the Context of Google

Sun, 20 May 2012 14:37:36 +0000

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Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Hal Grossman

Hal Grossman — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:25:45 +0000

I found the Darnton piece rather condescending. His opinion that critics of the CLP are shrill, yet “deserving of respect” is typical. I’d like to recommend another article, “Lions in Winter” by Charles Peterson, in the current issue of n+1. You can find it at: http://nplusonemag.com/lions-in-winter

Peterson has a good sense of the huge unknowns that we live with when it comes to how information will be stored, transmitted, and accessed in the years to come. He’s also right on target when he attacks the notion that getting more people in and out of the building must make the library more democratic:

“The main building is in effect the university library for every local student, teacher, and professor who isn’t at NYU or Columbia. That’s a strong claim to a democratic purpose.

This isn’t to say there shouldn’t be a large and attractive circulating branch at the center of Midtown.”

He also spells out how Mid-Manhattan could be rebuilt without gutting the Central Library’s role as the world’s most open research library.

There’s a lot more in Peterson’s article, including a fine discussion of the undemocratic, business-oriented way in which the NYPL makes decisions and tries to market them, along with the culture of fear it’s created among its librarians.

I can’t recommend this piece too highly. And there’s not a shrill note in it.

Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Laura Braunstein

Laura Braunstein — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:46:39 +0000

The Darnton piece in NYRB is excellent, and I would highly recommend it as a sane, reasoned contribution to this debate. The NYPL is facing the same issues that all research libraries deal with — how do you enable access to potentially unlimited information resources on a limited budget, and with limited facilities? Thank you, Polly, for this post — the MaRLI program seems like a bold move forward, and I hope it will provide a model for other research libraries that struggle with the cultural change to consortial agreements.

Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Stephen Francoeur

Stephen Francoeur — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:37:07 +0000

It’s been pointed out to me that Anthony Grafton didn’t write that New York Review of Books piece; Robert Darnton did. My bad.

Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Stephen Francoeur

Stephen Francoeur — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:48:15 +0000

NYPL board member Anthony Grafton just published a piece in the New York Review of Books that makes a compelling budget argument in favor of the plan. It sounds like the plan to remake a Mid-Manhattan library as a somewhat self-enclosed institution within the central library building would help it retain that intimacy that commenter Benjamin Franz advocates for. Grafton also raises an interesting point about the finite amount of underground shelving space below Bryant Park and about the outdated preservation controls in that space. Hal Grossman's point about how the branch library system would lose funding and attention, though, is interesting. I don't know enough about NYPL budgets to know how efforts to move the CLP plan would negatively impact the branch system, but I do know that historically the branch libraries have long felt like the poor relations in the NYPL system (all the more reason to earmark any donations you make to NYPL as being for the benefit of the branch libraries). I'm cautiously optimistic that this plan will be a good thing even though I am worried with each passing year that the city is less and less interested in supporting its public libraries.

Comment on Georgia State E-reserves Case Roundup by Long-Awaited Ruling in Copyright Case Mostly Favors Georgia State U. « African Studies library

Mon, 14 May 2012 17:02:46 +0000

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Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Beth Posner

Beth Posner — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:46:39 +0000

I think it will be great for people/readers at all stages of life to see real lifelong learning (young children, senior citizens, students, researchers) at the CPL, where they can connect with others in groups, and work in quiet spaces as appropriate. Libraries have always served people with all sorts of information needs. And, there is already a great new children’s space there, as well as space for serious studying. Meanwhile, as for access to print material, this can still be maintained through interlibrary loan networks, and regional depositories in New Jersey, IF these are funded,managed and staffed as priorities, and not as peripheral services. People can order items online, and then use them at NYPL or, for interlibrary loans, they can even check items out from NYPL or their local library. The bottom line for libraries and librarians is connecting people and information and the more people the better!

Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Around the Web: The ugly underbelly of coder culture, Used-book stores in the digital age and more : Confessions of a Science Librarian

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:01:40 +0000

[...] The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics [...]

Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by Hal Grossman

Hal Grossman — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:28:28 +0000

Polly, you make the argument somewhat more effectively than Anthony Marx does, but I am still baffled why this radical plan is needed. Moving a couple of million books to New Jersey may serious research a little harder or a lot harder; we won’t know for a couple of years. Don’t be shocked, though, if NYPL puts a lot of resources into rapid turnaround times in the beginning, then pulls back and degrades service over time.

There are problems with the Central Library Plan besides any impact on the work of someone like Caleb Crain or Edmund Morris. I work with college students mainly. They tend to be unsophisticated, even sheltered, if you can believe it. But sometimes one of the more ambitious ones could use a book or two that CUNY doesn’t own, but NYPL does. Going to the research library is already intimidating for a first-time user. If the CLP goes through, our students will now have to request the materials they need and show up on a later day. They’re often not great at time management, and this will be another hurdle to jump over, if they don’t give up instead. It will diminish the value of the research library as a substitute — for some of our best students — for what college students at Columbia or NYU take for granted. And that’s a shame.

Another issue that you don’t mention is the way in which the CLP would pour scarce resources into the building at 42nd & Fifth, at the expense of the neighborhoods. To pay for the CLP, the NYPL is scrapping plans for regional libraries in Upper Manhattan and on Staten Island, similar to the one just off Fordham Road in the Bronx. The Bronx Library Center seems like a success to me, and if providing internet access to working people is the goal, then it seems that the need is in Washington Heights and Inwood, more than on Fifth Avenue in midtown.

But the Bronx, Washington Heights, Staten Island — these are unsexy locales, aren’t they? If you want to create buzz, radiate glitz, and wow tycoons, you need to do whatever you do somewhere in Manhattan below 96th Street. And I’m afraid that this attitude is a lot of what motivates the Central Library Plan.

Comment on The New York Public Library Central Library Plan and its Critics by LaRoi

LaRoi — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:54:29 +0000

As a former employee, I was saddened by the turn of events in recent years concerning New York Public Library and its intention to change the very fabric that was for many New Yorker’s, a mecca for self-learning. NYPL has always suffered from this notion of “secrecy” ever since I was employed there back in 1973. The upcoming mega-million makeover, the closing of several key mid-town libraries like Donnell; the laying off of many librarians with little or no in-depth explanations of NYPL’s future plans leads me to wonder just how City of New York administrators tolerate this kind of action. That money talks is obvious-but at whose expense?
There was a time for many of us who actually live and work in New York felt a great pleasure in visiting some of our ‘treasures’ (libraries, museums, and theatre) here in the City. It would appear that the powers-that-be- are only interested in how much money tourism can bring into our City since it appears that as “native New Yorkers” many of these treasures are either charging exorbitant entrance fees, or the crowds are just too thick to traverse.
What will happen to the many seminars, and workshops given by NYPL? And what about the people who are working in the trenches? Where do they go since those making these decisions may be the ones left behind to run this new flagship library? What voice do we now have when our own Public Library appears to have turned its back on us?