On the planned death of innovation

I’ve had many arguments regarding the evaluative benchmark: “demonstration of ability to be innovative.” In support of my claims [and just sheer snarkiness] I supplied the following definition to provide a framework or context for my claims :

Assuming the Oxford English Dictionary definition is accepted for our purposes, I repeat the definition here for clarification: “[t]o change (a thing) into something new; to alter; to renew” and innovative as “[h]aving the character or quality of innovating.”

Unfortunately, this did not move my case forward and when I asked for their definition of innovation, one was not supplied. Thus the argument stalled.

I was quite pleased when I read a section of Crawford’s book Shop Class for Soulcraft on tacit knowledge and expertise. It seemed to explicate the idea of innovation within the context of work, and not theoretical work but through exposure to real things. “The expert is not expert because he has a better memory in general, but because the patterns of chess [the example he used] are the patterns of his experience (170).” Intuitive judgements are the “experienced mind…integrating an extraordinarily large number of variables and detecting a coherent pattern. It is the pattern attended to, not the individual variables. Our ability to make good judgements is holistic in character, and arises from repeated confrontations with real things: …in a manner that may be incapable of articulation (168-169).”

It is in the recognition of patterns one creates the foundation for innovation and creativity, in my opinion. Based on experience, one may recognize patterns be they complete or incomplete, and with this comes a consideration of new ways to deconstruct, reconstruct and even construct new approaches to old problems or newly discovered issues.

Crawford talks innovation better than I do, and in doing so states that tacit knowledge can not be reduced to simple rules that anyone may follow. The desire for rules, when faced with tacit knowledge, results in the development of placeholders representing the complexity of the thing without the essence. Thus competencies have become an attempt to encompass and ultimately control tacit knowledge as, upon investigation (paper under review), competencies are commonly reduced to a prescriptive list of activities or skills bypassing the tacit knowledge implicit in the operational (behaviour/attitude) and conceptual (meta-competence) dimensions of competency. Unfortunately the image or perception of control is becoming more important than the actual grasp offered by tacit knowledge. Thus competency is being reduced to dimensions that may be quantified and controlled. 

And this drive to quantify competencies is ultimately engendered by a neoliberal desire to reduce expenditures related to tacit knowledge. If a job may be reduced to a set of rules (or appearance of a set of rules) anyone can do it, which reduces/negates the cost related to expertise and introduces more bodies in competition for that job, driving the expense down. 

What is truly scary about this approach? Remember the “when is google good enough” and "when is good good enough" discussions? It has become, for example, when is some software good enough, such that the internal costs related to expertise and continuing expertise may be reduced or eliminated internally, reduced and transferred to a company that will manage your systems for you? When is the appearance/placeholder of expertise enough, even though the software doesn’t actually do what you need it to do/want it to do/desire to build it to do, such that social and professional responsibility for tacit knowledge in your field may be ignored in favour of dollars saved or resources allocated to other projects (likely ones not requiring tacit knowledge)? Yes, management gets to determine priorities and allocate resources but we get to ask: what is driving that activity and is it complementary or in line with our professional responsibilities/values and ethics? Under this reign, can innovation and tacit knowledge thrive? I think not. Especially as in parallel, library administrations continue to absorb any opportunities to flex tacit knowledge muscles into their ranks.

apologia for being boring

I snickered as I read this blog entry on "rock star/reality tv celebrity librarians", especially when I read the following instruction (which I agree with): 1) Never talk about libraries or library work. Libraries are boring, especially if you work in one...and realized oops, I'm guilty of ignoring this instruction.

So here I am, continuing to write in my blog about professional identity. I guess the difference is I KNOW it is boring, and of relevance to a very small portion of the library world, maybe .000001% if I cared? But the topic is of interest to me and I need somewhere to flesh out my ideas for my research.  So please y'all, this is my apologia re: the instruction above: forgive me my soapbox and don't forget to turn me off or tune me out if you're not interested....

And don't worry, I won't be offended if you don't read my published research either. I perform research as my own curiosity drives me to this research, to poke at things that niggle at me, like an itch requiring a good scratch. And the demands of my profession require publishing of me. I don't research and publish to add content to our body of knowledge that is meaningful to the broadest swath of librarians, I publish at a vanity level...to better understand the things that intrigue me irrespective of what interests you, as publishing adds a rigour to my musings that isn't present if I just read. Thus I shall continue to ignore such an instruction...after all, the blogger above just blogged on librarians...

Why Librarians MUST resist neoliberalism

Are you an ALA accredited librarian? If you are, one assumes you support the concepts of public good, democracy, and intellectual freedom espoused by the ALA:

ALA’s CoreValues of Librarianship webpage (June 2004) states: “A democracy presupposes an informed citizenry;” “ALA promotes the creation, maintenance, and enhancement of a learning society;” “We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom;” “… reaffirms the following fundamental values of libraries…that libraries are an essential public good and are fundamental institutions in democratic societies” and; “The broad social responsibilities of … [ALA] are defined in terms of the contribution that librarianship can make in ameliorating or solving the critical problems of society; support for efforts to help inform and educate the people of the United States on these problems and to encourage them to examine the many views on and the facts regarding each problem….”

IFLA’s Codeof Ethics, released in August 2012, states “Information service in the interest of social, cultural and economic well-being is at the heart of librarianship and therefore librarians have social responsibility.” Also, “Librarians and other information workers support and participate in transparency so that the workings of government, administration and business are opened to the scrutiny of the general public,” “…have the right to free speech in the workplace provided it does not infringe the principle of neutrality toward users,” “…counter corruption directly affecting librarianship, as in the sourcing and supply of library materials, appointments to library posts and administration of library contracts and finances”

Unfortunately the neoliberal ideology is one-dimensional in that the market is the “arbiter of social destiny (Rule, 1998)” and decisions under neoliberalism are determined by market imperatives. I’ve talked a bit about neoliberalism here. Under neoliberalism public good and intellectual freedom, along with democracy, are subservient and/or nonexistent as they are contrary to this ideology. Democracy as an ideology is diametrically opposed to neoliberalism. Democracy has an “affiliative and dialogic mode (Duggan, 2004),” where choice is paramount. There is no choice in neoliberalism as the market decides.

How does this play out? What activities/events occur to show the creep of neoliberalism into libraries? The attack on professional librarianship reflects the introduction of the neoliberal ideology in libraries. Are you noticing reduced or no discussion around pertinent professional issues? Are you hearing the term “management prerogative” more often? Do you even get to hear about issues that impact your professional responsibilities, except after the fact? There is a lack of transparency regarding decisions made by library administrators, a lack of discussion around decisions impacting the practice of librarianship, and when was the last time you saw your library’s budget? When was the last time your management accepted a recommendation that was contrary to their expressed wishes? Are your Committees handpicked by management versus elected? Are you being increasingly isolated by management, e.g. it  is not the failure of the library but you failing the library and you not keeping up your end of things…as opposed to us working together for the betterment of the library? Meetings for open dialogue degenerate as management prerogative rises (does anyone else notice the spooky resemblance to your parents’ response “because I said so?”) and requests to explain management positions and decisions are left unfulfilled. Do contract negotiations include controversy over control over your work, career (what career? says the cynic in me, I’m just a piece in a game of checkers, not even chess) and workload? How about Librarians as cheaper faculty? Depredations on academic freedom? 

Why is this important? It is important because neoliberalism in libraries narrows the scope for defining options/participating in a democratic dialogue for librarians, which ultimately impacts our users. Do wish to work in a place where management is given free reign to make market-based decisions about what is best for its workers and users without reference to either group? I’m pretty sure the workers (Librarians) can expect union-busting, since salaries and benefits are currently based on negotiations and not what the market decides. Open source, open access and freedom of information? Forget it. Information is a commodity and a market. And the users, well, they’ll have no voices, or representatives defending those voices, unless they represent a market with a large enough voices that can drive decisions.

 “Librarians and other information workers distinguish between their personal convictions and professional duties. They do not advance private interests or personal beliefs at the expense of neutrality. (IFLA 2012)” Luckily for us, neoliberalism is an ideology clearly in conflict with librarianship’s core values and ethics, which makes it obvious we should be resisting. There can be no neutrality when and where the public good comes under threat, intellectual freedom is resisted and democracy comes under fire, whether within our workplaces or society. It is clear that democracy is an ideology and we can certainly make a decision to resign this ideology in favour of another but that other shouldn’t be one that shuts down options and reduces decisions to unilateral, market based ones.

Those who support or implement neoliberal ideology are not the enemy. The enemy is the ideology itself and it is incumbent on every librarian to resist ideologies that threaten our core values and ethics, be you an administrator or line librarian. The difficulty has been in recognizing this as a threat, and continues to be in educating ourselves to this threat and to options for non-violent revolution.