blogcutter

In his latest blog post, David Headley of Goldsboro Books in the U.K. asks: Do you trust an algorithm to tell you what to read? :

​​​​​https://goldsborobooks.com/blogs/news/do-you-trust-an-algorithm-to-tell-you-what-to-read?mc_cid=79cf372777&mc_eid=47fc6ebfe4

He makes some valid, if rather obvious points about trapping you into reading what you've always read and closing off the delightfully elusive and ineffable processes involved in serendipity.

Here's how I would respond.

No, I wouldn't necessarily trust an algorithm. But depending on how sophisticated the algorithm is, it can be an interesting parlour game to find out what the recommendation system thinks I might like. If some of its suggestions sound appealing, I would certainly see if my library or independent bookshop has them available, and find out more about them.

If I'm able to devise my own algorithm or search strategy, or if I have some flexibility to refine theirs, that's great too. That's precisely what I used to do in my working life as a librarian, whether conducting a reference interview, looking in available reference sources, consulting with colleagues or following up on my hunches. It's what I still do now if I'm looking for reading matter.

Can hunches be automated? I think the jury is still out.

Of course, people tend to be consistently inconsistent too. What I'm in the mood for right now may not be what I feel like reading next week or next year. Moreover, telling people they should not or must not read something because it's erroneous, disgusting, hateful or obscene will often make them all the more determined to get their hands on it. Banning a book can be a sure-fire recipe for its success.

I do think sometimes very basic recommendations like "If you like Author A, you may enjoy Authors X, Y and Z" are somewhat useful. There are familiar comfort-reads and then there are challenging or interesting reads that you'd like to discuss with others and that make great book club selections.

Human reader advisory services are still a thing, both in bricks-and-mortar libraries and online. There are plenty of good independent sites out there too. Here's an extensive one I found recently and really like:

catherinerosegunther.com

How do you decide what's going to be your next read? Do you generally read one book at a time or do you generally have two or three on the go at once? And where do magazines, newspapers, newsletters etc. fit into the overall picture?

Warning: Libraries and reading may have beneficial effects on your health. This according to a Japanese study:

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20250624/p2a/00m/0li/017000c

Interestingly enough, libraries can benefit even non-readers, which I guess makes sense too, given the services and community spaces many libraries have on offer, apart from their collections.

According to this study, the benefits are particularly apparent when it comes to seniors:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827325000163

In any case, if I ever reach the stage when I need to be in a nursing home, I'll go willingly ... provided the home has a well-stocked and well-staffed on-site library!

I recently spent some time in Ireland, attending the World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) and seeing a few of the sights. Was it worthwhile? Unquestionably. The conference was a big deal in Dublin, with signs all over town welcoming the delegates. For the most part, we were lucky with the weather, I went to some great conference sessions and library visits, met some interesting people, did some sightseeing. More on all that in a forthcoming blog post.

That said, there are definitely some challenges involved in travelling anywhere, but especially internationally, during a pandemic.

WLIC is the annual conference of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and is held in a different city every year. Up to this year, I'd been to two WLICs: one in Quebec City in 2008 and one in Lyon, France, in 2014. This year's Dublin WLIC was originally supposed to take place in 2020 but when planning was already well underway, registrations accepted, flights and hotels booked... COVID intervened and proved to be rather more than the temporary snag that some of the organizers had initially expected. Of course, the conference was cancelled. But in short order, conference organizers at IFLA and their members in Dublin were actively planning for WLIC2022.

The official airline for WLIC Dublin was Aer Lingus. It's not an airline I would use again. Let me explain.

I booked a flight back in 2020, at a preferential conference rate. When air travel came to a screeching halt with COVID, the airline offered me a voucher for the full amount I'd paid, to be valid for 5 years from the date services resumed. There was at least a strong hint that if I agreed to a voucher as opposed to holding out for a cash refund, it would be a very quick, easy process and I would have my voucher in hand within a couple of weeks or months. I knew that I wouldn't be travelling for a while but I also knew I still wanted to go to Dublin for the 2022 conference. All in all, it seemed like a reasonable offer. So I accepted it.

Then I waited. The Aer Lingus site kept boasting during 2020 that 50%, then 75%, then 95% of vouchers had been issue. So where was mine? I followed up several times by e-mail and was met by a wall of silence.

The months went by. 2021 came and went. I guess I didn't seriously panic until early bird registration for the 2022 conference opened and there was still no sign of my voucher. I phoned the toll-free number on their site and waited endlessly on hold. I completed forms on the Aer Lingus site. I did eventually get an e-mailed reply and it was all pretty unbelievable.

Aer Lingus Agent claimed they could only issue vouchers in Euros, UK pounds or US dollars. This directly contradicted information on the Aer Lingus site indicating that all vouchers would be issued in the same currency in which the original booking was made. I briefly browsed the flight schedules to see if I could figure out how to book a return flight from a Canadian destination and pay (or even just see the prices) in anything other than Canadian dollars. I replied to Aer Lingus Agent's e-mail explaining my dilemma but any hopes of a prompt reply were soon dashed.

So what to do? Well, Aer Lingus was supposed to be THE official conference airline, right? And I was already registered for the conference. So I sent off a plaintive e-mail to the conference organizers, asking: Do you have a contact person at Aer Lingus who could help me with my voucher/booking problems?

And honestly, I cannot praise those folks highly enough! Almost instantaneously (even allowing for the 5-hour time difference between Ottawa and Dublin), they gave me contact details for an Aer Lingus person who could help. At first, she suggested maybe I could identify the specific flights I wanted and she would book them on my behalf. This I did, but over the course of the day, I think she decided that her suggestion was not really that practical after all. She said she would arrange for a refund to my credit card of the full amount I had paid (back in 2020) and it would be processed within 3 to 5 business days.

Sure enough, I saw the refund in my online banking 3 days later. Wow.

I must admit, however, that my gratitude did not extend to using the money to re-book with Aer Lingus. Instead, I looked at flights on the two major Canadian airlines I'm familiar with, Air Canada and Westjet.

In my next instalment, I'll let you know what happened next.

Happy International Special Librarians Day (ISLD) everyone! It has been 30 years since the first ISLD was announced. For that occasion I, along with many other colleagues in my profession, got a special kit from the Special Libraries association. I still have some items from that kit, most notably a coffee mug from which I drank my breakfast coffee this morning. The pens have long since been lost, discarded or given away but I do still have one or two pads of the sticky-notes and pin-on badges from that kit.

Every year there is a slightly different theme or slogan - the first was "Information Beyond Borders: Building Global Partnerships" and had a globe logo which was on all the publicity materials. Later, the name of the occasion was changed to Information Ethics Day:

https://targetstudy.com/knowledge/day/238/international-special-librarians-day-information-ethics-day.html

The idea of information ethics struck me as being particularly important as I read the recent book by Richard Ovenden (director of the Bodleian Library at Oxford), Burning The Books, in which he looks at instances of the destruction (whether deliberate or otherwise) of human knowledge in the form of books, archival documents and digital files throughout history.

Earlier this week, final drawings are to be released for the new superlibrary - a combined Ottwawa Public Library and Library & Archives Canada to be built at 555 Wellington:

https://inspire555.ca/welcome

All of which brings me to the recipient of my donation this week, the LAC (Library and Archives Canada) foundation:

https://lacfoundation.ca/

Books and reading have played a huge role in keeping me semi-sane during the pandemic and the long stretches of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders. I'm sure many, many people around the world feel the same way. So happy reading everyone, whatever your particular literary poison!

As in Libraries, Archives and Museums? Though nowadays they seem to use the acronym GLAM (the G standing for Galleries) or even the much less acronymically inclined GLAMR to include Records management as well. Sometimes we may not recognize the significance of events at the time they occur but 2020 has become for a huge swath of the world's population The Year of the Pandemic. Many of us are capturing history in the making, but archivists are perhaps at the forefront:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/hindsight-2020-how-archivists-work-to-remember-a-year-most-would-rather-forget-1.5213265?fbclid=IwAR2gzxmpcIIWT8CFgqanPYYBz5VDazVn4yFjhIiVOHtD_bXEPqkiZ6zfE3g

And most of it is far from GLAMR-ous.

As for the year of the LAM? Well, we'll have to wait until 2027 for another Year of the Sheep, also sometimes called the Year of the Ram or the Year of the Goat.

Meanwhile, 2019 was a Pig of a year, when the virus first started to go hog-wild. We're still in the Year of the Rat, and rats are of course associated with great plagues and disease and death. We've paid the piper as best we can this year, but he's already marched off with a lot of the world's population, more oldsters than youngsters.

But take heart - 2021 will be the Year of the Ox, beginning around early February and with new vaccines providing herd immunity, perhaps we will all be as strong as oxen!

Apparently John Cleese wants to be buried along with all his unread books:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/books/review/john-cleese-by-the-book-interview.html

I wonder how that would work. Would there be a John Cleese Cryptic Memorial Library that people could actually visit? Specially sculpted bookends with hollowed-out interiors, each holding a teaspoon or so of his cremated remains?

More likely, I suspect, is that everything would be permanently encased in a very large coffin under Mount Cleese, entirely closed off from public viewing by those of us above ground.

I guess that's fine if you believe in an afterlife and can picture him living on in the underworld, happily enjoying his books. But we're a long time dead. Surely he would run out of reading material sooner or later?

For librarians and archivists keen to preserve our documentary heritage for posterity, it's a little depressing to think of somebody hoarding away the books he never had time to read, preventing anyone who COULD realistically enjoy them from doing so! Perhaps the family could compile a list of books being buried and maybe even retain digitized copies of some of them, particularly the ones that are out of print or utterly unique.

As I mull over how I could better organize my own personal library, I'm thinking about devising some annotations to explain why a few select books are particularly important to me or why they might be of particular interest to key people still here after I'm gone.

At my mother's final digs in a retirement residence, she only had room for one small bookcase. And yet, sometimes less is more. In a weird sort of way, I felt I gained a better understanding of her after she was gone, just from the limited choice of books she kept with her to the end.

I've always had a hankering to stay at one of the Library Collection of hotels. Like the Library Hotel in New York City. Or the Hotel X in Toronto. Now, though? I could not in all good conscience stay there after learning how this luxury hotel is treating its workers - or in some cases former workers:

https://workersactioncentre.org/taking-a-stand-for-workers-rights-and-income-supports-under-covid-19/

Hotel X recently changed its subcontracting arrangement, leaving 200 employees out of work and out of pocket for the hours they have already worked and severance pay to which they are entitled. In Ontario - unlike Quebec, for example - the new subcontractor can apparently wash its hands of any obligations its predecessor had to these mostly minimum-wage employees. And frankly, that stinks.

Over 40 years ago, I recall watching a film called something like The Hottest Spot in Town. What was that spot, you might ask? The public library! And today, after five months of self-isolation as potential Covid-19 hot-spots, most Ottawa area libraries have re-opened for in-person browsing:

https://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/contactless-returns-and-holds-pickup-service

Certain precautions and restrictions are in place, of course. But in some ways, things are actually a little nicer than before. The loan period has been extended to four weeks from three. They'll hold a hold for you for two weeks instead of just one. Overdue fines have been suspended (a number of library systems, though not ours, have done away with them altogether).

It's not just people who've had to go into quarantine - it's books too! But the quarantine period for books is a little shorter: three days instead of 14. Technology may already be several steps ahead of our sometimes clunky human protocols and procedures - apparently a device already exists to kill Covid-19 on books in a mere 60 seconds:

https://mailchi.mp/ristech/the-lab-results-are-in-steri-book-kills-covid-19-in-60-seconds?e=b8cb32e68f

Perhaps we could replicate that in human clinical trials?

Does the order in which we re-open things reflect the priorities we as a society place upon them? Or only the priorities of a few chief decision-makers? And who ARE those decision makers? Politicians? Health experts? Businesspeople? Behind-the-scenes advisors? Professional lobbyists? The people who inspire the most collective guilt in us because of past injustices?

Of course, there are a few on both sides of the spectrum who completely reject the whole concept of a phased re-opening. It's either: (a) We can't even BEGIN to think about venturing out into the wider world until there's a reliable vaccine that's accessible to all; or (b) Let's just get back out there and let the chips fall where they may - life is the survival of the fittest! But most of us fall somewhere in between the two extremes - we just can't quite seem to agree on the right balance of risks and rewards.

Take schools, for example. The demand for 5-day-a-week in-person instruction beginning in September. And now that bar re-openings have begun, there's a "schools before bars" movement afoot, mostly from parents of school-aged kids. Some prominent public health people are also questioning the re-opening of bars at this stage too. But now there's also a growing chorus of concern from families where one or more members has a compromised immune system. They worry that they'll be pressured to send the kids back to school too soon, putting their lives and health in jeopardy. Strangely enough, I've heard nothing about, say, a "libraries before bars" initiative, although surely libraries are also important components of the educational process, and arguably THE central component when it comes to life-long learning!

I suppose a lot of the discord arises from the U.S. situation, where many states have been hard-hit by the virus and have been obliged to backtrack on their re-openings or double down on closing things in the first place. And certainly Canadian border towns like Windsor have been particularly vulnerable to U.S. mismanagement of the problem.

For those who are hunkering down for the long haul, prepared to put everything on hold until they can get vaccinated, I'm actually thinking we may get one sooner rather than later:

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirusvaccinetracker/

No guarantees, of course. But if we could get a vaccine into doctors' offices and pharmacies before the flu season of 2020-21 gets going in earnest? That might be doable, I think.

It has been pointed out by a number of international organizations that accurate documentation becomes MORE important during a crisis, not less.

This may relate to political and legal actions - we still need to know where we stand with regard to our governments and our laws, we still have basic rights and we still should be confident as citizens of a democratic society that our rights and freedoms are being upheld. In that regard, I say kudos to Trudeau fils for NOT invoking the federal Emergencies Act. He did attempt to push through some rather draconian budget provisions which would have severely restrained parliamentary oversight, but
when that happened, the opposition parties worked as opposition parties are supposed to, and those provisions were modified. With a few notable exceptions, I've been reasonably satisfied with how the politicians in Canada are working together.

On the other hand, we do still have a problematic divide in this country between the information-rich and the information-poor. Some twenty to twenty-five years since home internet became fairly commonplace, there are still a lot of communication gaps and breakdowns, particularly now that you can't go to a library or internet café or visit a friend to use e-mail or other internet. It's partly an urban/rural thing and partly a matter of income distribution and other factors too.

There are some noisy Bell trucks in our neighbourhood right now installing fibre or cable or whatever. I'm told that should give us faster and more reliable internet service although the nitty gritty techie details of it elude me!

But aside from the difficulties in accessing cold hard facts and information, there is a certain level of CULTURAL poverty that sets in during a lockdown. You can't physically visit museums or art galleries or go to concerts or conferences or gastronomic events or craft fairs even in your OWN home town, let alone travelling and seeing the world! Yes, we're very fortunate to have the option of virtual visits to all these landmarks. And to the extent that we don't, it does certainly highlight the importance of further expanding electronic documentation of our heritage and culture. People increasingly see the need for it, whereas previously they might have considered it an appalling waste of money and other scarce resources. Here are a couple of links I found interesting:

https://librarianship.ca/news/statement-duty-to-document/

https://en.unesco.org/news/turning-threat-covid-19-opportunity-greater-support-documentary-heritage

It's been said that when a new technology comes along, it doesn't necessarily supplant previous ones. For example, we still listen to the radio even though we also have TV and video and Netflix. There's still a market for vinyl records even though we have CDs and MP3s and all manners of streaming. Of course, formats do become obsolete too - think 8-tracks and diskettes amongst others.

So yes, for now it's a bonus to be able to let our thumbs do the walking. But I have to say, I'm still looking forward to getting back to some of the OLD normal!