Recently Librarian in Black had an interesting post regarding honesty and blogging about work. She came to the conclusion that there was no happy medium - honest blogging is both career suicide and honest sharing at the same time. And I rather agree with her.

This isn’t an issue we talk about a lot, but it has been coming up more and more recently. There has been some critique of the bibiloblogosphere, saying that we’re not critical enough, and that we don’t deal enough with contentious issues. There isn’t enough dissent and there isn’t enough discussion of what actually goes on in the workplace. And I think that this is an interesting issue to address.

I can’t help but think that this is (or should be) more of an issue with library blogs - we are, inherently blogging about work (you may be a librarian by vocation, but it is still ultimately a job), but everyone is still too scared to talk about the specifics of what we do. There is, as LiB said, too much of a fear of reprisal. It is, however, this fear of reprisal (and the reprisal itself) that I find disappointing and strange.

We’re not, by and large, a cantankerous or troll-y bunch. I can count the kerfuffles I’ve seen in the bibiloblogosphere nearly on one hand, nothing like the average of most internet communities (and even when there are slight dramas, they are very rarely on the scale of internet warfare seen elsewhere). We’re not likely to say things that are massively detrimental to the workplaces in which we work, or the people whom we work with. At worst, I expect we may be slightly snarky, and there may be a slight workplace politics hiccup following a potentially ‘difficult’ post, if there were any at all. And, essentially, we are librarians blogging for other librarians. Where we work within institutions, our non-library colleagues are very unlikely to see what we have written, even if we are well known within the library-blogging fold. And our library colleagues and peers are likely to be sympathetic to the workplace troubles and frustrations that we all share.

But, sadly, our workplaces tend to be unsupportive of this honesty and sharing. It is uncomfortable, and unfamiliar, and they don’t know what to do with it. They may approve of, or at least accept, blogging as an academic medium, in which we can wax lyrical about the state of the information profession, and where the industry may be heading, or as a forum for letting more interested people find out about interesting new tools and services. But they are uncomfortable with what I think of as business casual - the ability to be professional, and take your work seriously, whilst still being a separate person, with ideas and opinions that may not always align with what is best for the company. I see my role in this blog as a business casual role - this is something I do for myself; I love the reading, writing, and conversations that I get to participate in from being part of it, and I would be (and was) blogging in some other capacity if I didn’t have this blog. But this is also a professional venture - this is a way of meeting other professionals in my field, expanding on my knowledge of the sector, improving my skills, and, ultimately, being better at my job, and any future jobs I will hold.

It is this business casual idea that makes me understand why in other professions it doesn’t put you at a disadvantage to have a blog. In industries where it’s ok to wear business casual to work, it’s probably ok to be writing business casual as well - think advertising, design, consultancy, and other types of web work and bleeding-edge millenium industries.

And this is where I think the frustration lies. We are web-workers - we are sharing in the zeitgeist of new technology. We know what the most engaged minds of our generation are thinking and doing. We are using the tools that they are using, and sharing the thoughts that they are thinking. We engage in the same communities, and participate in the same practices. But we are not them. They work from without, while we work from within. They work in industries where free-thinking and opinions and open-ness are valued, whilst we still, by and large, work within large dinosaurs of organisations, unable to keep up with the changes, even when they would like to.

I can’t help but think that it’s somewhat unreasonable to expect bloggers to never hold, or at least express, a negative opinion about their workplace, but would indeed, if I were employer, rather than employee, relish and appreciate the honesty and personality of my employees being able to express such an opinion. But, at the same time, I know that it’s hard for our lumbering dinosaurs of organisations to keep up with the nimble leaps and jumps that modern webworkers make.

And I don’t know what the answer to this is. If we challenge the system we will get knocked back (note: my shocking absence on Twitter and Facebook during the working day at the moment). But if we don’t challenge the system we won’t change anything. Personally, I believe in pushing the rules as far as they will let me go and to hell with the consquences! What do you think?

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So, I find this - A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection - (found via BoingBoing) more than a little worrying. I don’t have Vista, nor do I at any point plan to get Vista, but had I been considering it? This would have changed my mind.

More than just a rant about the powers that be, this is a blow-by-blow analysis of the ways in which Window’s new platform is attempting to cripple your system. Microsoft doesn’t want you to be able to use your product, that you bought with your money. They don’t want you to be able to have ownership of your own content. Microsoft want to be able to own and control every aspect of the system you use.

It’s a lengthy article, but one that I think is well worth reading. Peter Gutmann undertakes a examination of all the ways in which the extensive ‘content protection’ in place in Windows Vista hinders the user and the product they have bought. As he states in the executive summary:

“Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability,technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effectsof the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server).”

Or, as he puts it more succinctly - the Vista Content Protection Specification may well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

(The Microsoft response to this is here, by the way, but is so filled with spin and double-talk as to be nearly meaningless)

As Jim Allchin, recently Co-President, Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft, who retired the day Vista shipped, was quoted as saying, “LH [Longhorn — now known as Vista] is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem.”

And what implication does this have for libraries? Well, quite a few things, really. If older versions of Windows are no longer supported, it may result in organisation being forced into costly upgrades, or be denied support. If manufacturers are forced to be Vista compliant, the price of both software and hardware will rise, in order to meet increased development costs. Crippling DRM may drastically slow down, if not halt, digitisation projects. We could be looking at library management systems that won’t migrate, costly software rewrites, or, worse, having to start systems again from scratch.

What it does mean, is that libraries need to be looking elsewhere than in proprietary systems. We will need to look into moving away from Windows towards Linux or even (gasp!) Macs to run our libraries. Moving towards Open Source library management systems. Making the most of web applications that don’t need to be tied to an OS. Investigating alternate resources, rather than settling for the same old thing, time and time again. Be the ones that champion new initiatives in your organisation. Explore the alternatives, do the research, and come back with a business case to sell. Because if we can’t do the research into the available alternatives, who can?

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Lore Librarian today posted to an interesting article on Law.com entitled Law Librarians Should Learn to Drive Their Stock Up.

Though it does indeed, as Lore Librarian points out, start a little tritely (I can’t say I’ve ever been known to shush, or be shushed in a law library, and it’s just that kind of image we’re trying to move away from), the article is actually quite interesting. Particularly as it isn’t written by a librarian.

Librarians wages are all over the place, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of consistent industry standard, and what’s more, compared with other professional industries, we are not paid a comparable wage.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services in the US, in a recent study on the future of library workers found that:

law firms are looking for librarians who not only have both a master’s in library science and a law degree but who alsohave expertise in law, business, finance, science and/or medicine. And an MBA, fluency in a foreign language and technological know-howwouldn’t hurt either, a panel on law libraries found. Many are expectedto manage resources and handle research requests across multiple offices.

And that there? That’s an awful lot of skills. Skills that should be recognised.

We provide an invaluable, but often undervalued service in our firms. We are increasingly on the cutting edge of new technology and information. We are expected to provide multiple services at once (researcher, knowledge manager, press searcher, marketer, IT consultant, cataloguer, administrator, general dogsbody and finder of things, to name a few). We are a professional industry, often with more qualifications than the lawyers we work for. But if we don’t stand up and make a case for ourselves, we are never going to be recognised for the service we provide, whether that recognition is fiscal or otherwise. (how many of you work for firms that don’t recognise what work you do, and don’t see the value in what the library does for the firm?)

But, as the article says, there are things we can do. Start charging back our time - we’re doing work for clients, there’s no reason it can’t be charged back. The libraries income isn’t likely to be comparable to that of a fee-earner, but it’s still going to be more than nothing, and that’s something. Prepare reports - tell management what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, how much time you’re saving for your fee-earners, how much money you’re making the firm. Raise your profile within the firm - don’t make people come to you. Be out there on the floors, asking people what they need, telling fee-earners what you can do for them - make yourself seen and people will start to realise how much you do for them.

And if all else fails, I say call a strike. You just see how quickly the firm realises how much they value your team when you all don’t do your jobs for a week :)

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