A matter of emphasis
Not a few would-be library reformers, inside and outside libraries, have a lamentable habit of turning their suggestions into mandates or scare tactics. “Libraries must…” “Librarians must…” “Library schools must…” “If libraries/librarians don’t… le déluge.” The Loon won’t swear she hasn’t done this, in fact, but she’s trying to break herself of the habit in non-blog contexts (here at Gavia, the Loon will be as oracularly apocalyptic as she cares to be), because it is wholly unpersuasive.
Let the Loon count the ways:
- Sometimes the thing that (supposedly) must be done is a thing already being done. The next speaker who tells the Loon that institutional repositories need mediated deposit or redesign for Google-friendliness risks a sharp beak through the carotid artery.
- Sometimes the thing that must be done is organizationally or otherwise impractical. The next speaker telling the Loon that IRs need allies among top-level library and campus administrators risks that same beak-thrust. “Who bells the cat?” is sometimes a useful test for such dicta.
- Sometimes the speaker hasn’t appropriately considered the population of potential or actual beneficiaries of the thing that must be done. Rural librarians complain bitterly (and not without reason) of online-presence and online-service “libraries-must” dicta that don’t take into account the dearth of local Internet access.
- Sometimes (this is particularly often true of external critics) the speaker is, shall we say, insufficiently well-informed about the logistics surrounding the thing that must be done, much less the difficulty and expense of implementing it. The word “just” (as in “if they’d just…”) often signals this variety of ignorance.
- We’ve all seen prophecies of doom. Many of them. We’re still here. Ergo we are automatically and rightly jaundiced about prophecies of doom.
- The same jaundice extends to libraries-must statements.
The Loon thinks change advocacy can be done better. In fact, she thinks it must.
Could you be more specific about who is saying what? As someone trying to get a mandatory open access policy for library faculty passed (vs. a voluntary one which we all know doesn’t work) this post seems like ammunition for the other side.
It’s the Loon’s general policy not to. In this particular case, the phenomena under examination are common enough that the exact writing that touched off the Loon’s ire doesn’t need to be singled out.
How is suggesting that certain rhetorical techniques don’t work and should be rethought “ammunition for the other side?” To the Loon, that seems useful critique.
I’m all for critical thinking, but the rhetorical technique you criticize is calling for a mandate. So as someone fighting off anti-mandate sentiment on a faculty self-archiving policy, this post doesn’t help. Sometimes a mandate is the only thing that works. Or are you opposed to self-archiving mandates too?