My task list vs. my job

One of the great questions of philosophy is the relationship between the one and the many. This is also the conflict between the universal and the particular. This has real practical importance in how you understand life.

Every day I go into work and perform a set of tasks. These include turning on the lights, checking in books, switching the server tape back-up, sending reminder emails, and requesting and supplying interlibrary loan. I can add more to this task list, but the task list is not my job.

Instead, my job is to help fulfill the mission of the library through circulation services. The Library’s mission is to instruct, facilitate, and mentor individuals to develop personal learning environments, find and evaluate information they need to thrive, and empower themselves to be lifelong learners. This mission provides information literacy instruction. Information literacy is my job, as a component of theological education and spiritual formation. Information literacy provides the ability to move from a lack of knowledge to competency to express previously unknown knowledge or skills to others.

Everything I do should relate back to telos, the goal, not merely checking items of a list. There are four components of information literacy according to the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). This organization defines information literacy as:

A spectrum of abilities, practices, and habits of mind that extends and deepens learning through engagement with the information ecosystem. It includes

·         understanding essential concepts about that ecosystem;

·         engaging in creative inquiry and critical reflection to develop questions and to find, evaluate, and manage information through an iterative process;

·         creating new knowledge through ethical participation in communities of learning, scholarship, and civic purpose; and

·         adopting a strategic view of the interests, biases, and assumptions present in the information ecosystem.  

I will come back to information literacy in another post, but it is easy to confuse a task list with a job. When the task is separated from the job, the task becomes irrelevant. The task list can easily appear to be the job. The particulars can envelop and obscure the universal.

Acknowleding Eusebius?

Names have significance, especially for publications. Names express intent and set the tone for the remainder of the document, blog, book, or journal. The name of this blog comes from Ernest Cushing Richardson's translation of Jerome's Lives of Illustrious Men,

But their situation and mine is not the same, for they, opening the old histories and chronicles could as if gathering from some great meadow, weave some small crown at least for their work. As for me, what shall I do, who, having no predecessor, have, as the saying is, the worst possible master, namely myself, and yet I must acknowledge that Eusebius Pamphilus in the ten books of his Church History has been of the utmost assistance, and the works of various among those of whom we are to write, often testify to the dates of their authors.

As someone who is part of the free-church expression of Christianity, I recognize there is a tendency for me to think that I have no predecessor. Challenges to Christian thought and practice seem novel. This apparently is not new. Jerome felt alone in relaying historical biography of those in Christian history before him. Yet he is not alone.

Thomas Oden believes that part of the problem within modern Christian theology comes from a desire for novelty over continuity with Christian tradition. (After Modernity… What?: Agenda for Theology, rev. ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1990, 22) This desire for novelty fails to acknowledge the illustrious men and women in the history of Christianity. The goal of this blog will reflect on the following issues:

1. continuity and discontinuity within the Christian tradition,
2. matters of importance to historical research within the Christian tradition,
3. discussion of genetic patterns within Christian thought,
4. proper research, information literacy, and attribution of ideas, and
5. general issues related to theology, Christian history, and theological librarianship.

Close down the Libraries?

I have been asked by multiple people, why can't the Library be digital. This question comes in many forms. The following article asks the same basic question:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/07/18/close-the-libraries-and-buy-everyone-an-amazon-kindle-unlimited-subscription/

Mr. Worstall asks a very good question. His question is more relevant to public libraries rather than academic libraries, but the question comes back to a definition of terms. With all due respect to Mr. Worstall's reasoning, he has made a category error.

According to Richard Rubin, libraries have seven values: "Service, reading and the book are important, Respect for truth and search for truth, tolerance, the public good, justice, and aesthetics."(Foundations of Library and Information Science, 3rd. ed., pg 405) I am not convinced that Amazon has the same set of values of librarianship.

The reason that Mr. Worstall has identified an organization that does not have the same values comes from the fact that Amazon is offering a collection of books rather than a library. In this article, he identifies Bath as his home library. http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/library-locations-opening-times-and-information/enquiry-centre

Mr. Worstall's home library provides arbitration services, hosts book clubs, and provides an archive for historical community information. Amazon does not, and cannot do these things. Amazon does not have antiquarian or archival sensibilities, as evidenced in the following story. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0

Additionally, the number of books in a collection is a bad metric of usability of the library. The number of books in a library does not matter, if they are the wrong books. http://online.wsj.com/articles/why-the-public-library-beats-amazonfor-now-1407863714

A library is more than a collection of books. It has an aesthetic, a philosophy, a mission.