SEAALL Institute: Dispelling Stereotypes

SEAALL Institute
Law Librarians and Legal Technologists:
Building Synergies in the Net Age
Thursday April 12, 2007

Dispelling Stereotypes That Affect Services and Users
Speakers: Tom Bruce, Research Associate and Director, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School
and Lori D. Martin, Library and Research Services Manager, Bradley Arant Rose & White LLP

Notes:
musical prelude to this session: Dueling Banjos!

TB
prefaced that the session was going to be deliberately provocative

fading topic – lingering tensions

cosmic factors

• different perception of the business
• perceived zero-sum game

LM
lack of connection – no more water cooler
in firm, everyone is below the lawyers
in firms, IT is now the budget with a target on it
IT staff with one year of technology college paid double what MLS librarians get

TB – top five IT complaints about librarians

1. librarians undervalue process
2. librarians won’t experiment (dismissing not-fully-developed and open source technology)
3. librarians demand resources without planning or notice
4. having been a subordinated profession, librarians are looking for someone to subordinate
5. bundle of complaints common to all users seeming worse because more is expected of librarians (in other words: librarians should be more competent)

#1-4 made up 15% of complaints, #5 was 85%

librarians personalize technology problems: “YOUR network is down” (no one ever says “your book has a bad typeface”)

LM – top five librarian complaints about IT staff

1. IT believe that end users can’t do anything right
2. IT inconvenience people for no reason (server shutdowns and upgrades are cruel psych experiments)
3. they hide
4. IT want us to be self reliant, but won’t explain
5. IT staff keep all the good toys

how to respond to those who don’t want to learn?

LM comment on Tom’s list: people DO ask how books work

Thoughts:
Being new to the profession and technically inclined, I can identify with and understand items on both lists.

Ironically, complaint number two about librarians (won't experiment) is an issue--less than a full-blown complaint--I sometimes have with some of our tech staff. Example: groaning that I installed Firefox on the reference desk computer.

Complaint number five about librarians is something I wholly empathize with, having been through library school with quite a few classmates who couldn't open a PowerPoint presentation from a flash drive and switch it to presentation mode, to name just one example. One hopes they will catch up at some point before they graduate, but it is Not Good that there isn't some kind of technology skills requirement for entering LIS programs, or at least a tutorial requirement for those who need it. Ability to work with technology is an absolutely necessary foundation of library and information science.

I've felt mild cases of all the complaints about tech staff, but more as an accumulation over the course of other jobs than anything I feel specifically as a librarian. Here is a good place to say that going into the Institute, I wondered how much value I would find in it, because I don't feel any particular conflict with or resentment of our IT staff, but I did find it quite worthwhile, especially the practical ideas in the first session.