[Publib] Darien Revisited

[Backwage at aol.com]

A quick gloss on the Darien Statements; a fuller analysis will follow,  
meaning that I'm going to write it over again, but only after a couple of 
drinks  tonight.  If this were an assignment in a college class, I'd fail the  
writers for lack of imagination, very poor writing and not having demonstrated 
 any particular thesis whatever.  My remarks in brackets. 
M. McGrorty 
-----------------------------   
The Darien  Statements on the Library and Librarians
Written and endorsed by  John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor 
The Purpose of the  Library 
The purpose of the Library is to preserve  the integrity of civilization. 
[Somebody has been drinking.  Though the authors attempt in advance to  
excuse this sort of verbiage by saying their statement is “grand,” it is  
actually grandiose, and inaccurate.  Civilization, by which most people mean the 
accumulation of culture and  learning, has neither integrity in the sense 
of reputation nor integrity in the  sense of undefiled wholeness.] 
The Library has a moral obligation to  adhere to its purpose despite 
social, economic, environmental, or political  influences. The purpose of the 
Library will never change. 
[Only individuals have moral  obligations.  Otherwise, a library  could be 
immoral by failing in its obligation.  Institutions can’t have obligations; 
they  can have generally accepted roles.  The Catholic Church doesn't have a 
 moral obligation--its priests and worshippers do.] 
The Library is infinite in its capacity  to contain, connect and 
disseminate knowledge; librarians are human and  ephemeral, therefore we must work 
together to ensure the Library’s  permanence. 
[Hardly.  Were that true, the library would be  about the size of the solar 
system.  If the authors were thinking of the capacity of the internet as a  
component of the library, then they ought to refer to that—and the internet 
is  not the library any more than publishing is.  The library is dependent 
upon both,  controls neither and at best has some operational relationship 
to both.  Librarians are human; there’s a  surprise.  They are  ephemeral; 
who knew?  Really, did anybody assume otherwise?  And if we must work 
together, it is not  because we all die, nor because we are human, but because our 
systems operate  optimally through cooperation.] 
Individual libraries serve the mission of  their parent institution or 
governing body, but the purpose of the Library  overrides that mission when the 
two come into conflict. 
[Most definitely not so.  The purpose of the library as an  institution is 
debated and debatable, and there is not a library system in  existence which 
perceives that its parts or branches owe allegiance to any set  of rules in 
opposition to those put out for the whole.  Nor do those sub-parts 
subscribe to  that.  This statement is not only  untrue, but there aren’t half a 
dozen librarians on earth who would accept that  the branches need to “preserve 
the integrity of civilization” at the expense of  any plan or design in 
competition to their rules and  regulations.] 
Why we do things will not change,  but how we do them will.   
[Sure our reasons for doing things  will change.  Always have  changed.  
The role of the library  expands, and contains our reasons for doing things 
for different reasons.  An astonishingly naïve  statement.] 
A clear understanding of the Library’s  purpose, its role, and the role of 
librarians is essential to the preservation  of the Library. 
[Nice thought, and I wouldn’t alter  that, though it’s not true.  The  
library has limped along for a century or more though many librarians can’t now 
 and might not ever have been able to recite precisely why the place ought 
to  exist, and even though their reasons might have been radically different 
from  one another.  Besides, the public,  who writes the check for all 
this, has only a vague feel-good idea of what the  library is for, and they 
consistently support the  institution.] 
The Role of the  Library 
The  Library: 
    *   Provides the opportunity for personal  enlightenment.  
    *   Encourages the love of learning.   
    *   Empowers people to fulfill their civic  duty.  [duties, unless you 
think  there’s only one] 
    *   Facilitates human connections.  [I will leave that alone for now 
though  it is the worst sort of vague jargon] 
    *   Preserves and provides materials.  [That’s the best we can  say?] 
    *   Expands capacity for creative expression.  [more  anon] 
    *   Inspires and perpetuates hope.  [“perpetuates” is not true, and can
’t  be.  And hope—just hope?  For  what?]

The Role of  Librarians 
Librarians: 
    *   Are stewards of the Library.  [do what, serve  drinks?] 
    *   Connect people with accurate information.  [And inaccurate  
information—that’s part of the role.] 
    *   Assist people in the creation of their  human and information 
networks.  [Winner of worst jargon award for this  hour, in tough competition.  
Also  meaningless.] 
    *   Select, organize and facilitate creation  of content.  [“content” 
means  happy.  Libraries have  contents—material and otherwise.   Try 
again.] 
    *   Protect access to content and preserve  freedom of information and 
expression.  [Try  ‘materials’] 
    *   Anticipate, identify and meet the needs of  the Library’s 
community.  [Their  communities, and no, I don’t grant you leeway for a first draft 
that’s been  posted on the internet]

The Preservation of the  Library 
Our [Whose? Those three authors’  methods?  And what would those be?]  
methods need to rapidly change to address the profound impact of information  
technology on the nature of human connection and the transmission and  
consumption of knowledge. 
If the Library is to fulfill its purpose  in the future, librarians must 
commit to a culture of continuous operational  change, accept risk and 
uncertainty as key properties of the profession, and  uphold service to the user as 
our most valuable directive. 
[Whose methods would those be?  Those of the three authors?  And what 
methods would those be that are  so outdated that they need to be rapidly 
changed?  The next sentence is really bad, the  worst sort of tech-speak.] 
As librarians, we  must: 
    *   Promote openness, kindness, and transparency  among libraries and 
users. 
[Kindness.  Say it to yourself and try not to  snicker.  Blessed are the  
librarians, for they promote kindness among users.] 
    *   Eliminate barriers to cooperation between the  Library and any 
person, institution, or entity within or outside the Library.  
[“Any person, institution or entity . .  .”  Reads like an ordinance.  And 
what exactly would that mean, in  English?] 
    *   Choose wisely what to stop doing. 
[First, stop putting together stuff like  this which weakly replicates the 
Library Bill of Rights without any rigor in  analysis.] 
    *   Preserve and foster the connections between  users and the Library. 
[Excellent.] 
    *   Harness distributed expertise to serve the needs  of the local and 
global community. 
[Dude, there is not nor will there ever be a  phrase such as “distributed 
expertise,” I don’t care how many times you’ve heard  it in library tech 
conferences or over ale at the local brewpub.] 
    *   Help individuals to learn and to use new tools  to create a more 
robust path to knowledge. 
[“Robust.”  Isn’t that one of those hot descriptive  terms whose best 
substitute is nothing?]  
    *   Engage in activism on behalf of the Library if  its integrity is 
externally threatened. 
[I thought the point of this exercise was to  demonstrate that the ‘
integrity’ of the library was in fact externally  threatened.] 
    *   Endorse procedures only if they guide librarians  or users to 
excellence. 
[And of course, working librarians so often are  asked for their 
endorsement of policies or procedures.  And the use of ‘excellence’ here is  exactly 
as valueless as when the right-wingers used to invoke the term in their  own 
exhortations, as “In Pursuit of Excellence.” 
    *   Identify and implement the most humane and  efficient methods, 
tools, standards and practices. 
[Humane.  We are apparently euthanizing pets  here.  Bad  use.] 
    *   Adopt technology that keeps data open and free,  abandon technology 
that does not. 
[Wow.  They ended a sentence with ‘not.’  I would have bet nobody would do 
that.  Not.] 
    *   Be willing and have the expertise to make  frequent radical 
changes. 
[Three major grammar errors in a short  sentence.  Breathtaking.] 
    *   Hire the best people and let them do their job;  remove staff who 
cannot or will not. 
[Who hire?  Remove by what rationale?  Oh  sure, why not.  Just say 
whatever  comes to mind.  Let’s have some more  wine.] 
    *   Trust each other and trust the users.  
[So spectacularly vague it makes the  previous “content” look like an 
honors  thesis.] 
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