John Miedema

The idea of a Slow Library movement is compelling to many librarians. Although we have heard little recently on the subject, the idea seems to have a life of its own, surfacing from time to time, always with more than a little interest. The OLA Super Conference 2008, currently in progress in Toronto, Ontario, seems to be another one of those moments.

Some of you attended the OLA Super Conference in 2007. It could have been called Super Conference 2.0 with its strong focus on social software in libraries, or Library 2.0. Librarians were treated to excellent speakers such as John Blyberg, Amanda Etches-Johnson, and Michael Stephens. I was quite impressed.

Certainly some have wondered at times whether the accelerating emphasis on Library 2.0 has begun to occupy too much of the library conversation. Indeed, there has been a fair amount of recent talk about the limitations of Library 2.0. Some find the concept of a Slow Library movement appealing, although perhaps without a clear understanding of what that is. A statement at the Slow Library blog indicates that it is about “Education, Community, Local, Craftsmanship, People and Fun”. Sounds good. It embraces technology, but with a different approach. It could be said that Slow Library represents a better balance of people and technology, and that seemed to be a significant part of the agenda at OLA 2008.

A keynote speaker today was Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement is Changing the Cult of Speed. Honoré cited the examples of speed yoga, email during sex, and drive-through funerals as clear indicators of the absurdities in our accelerating culture. We seem to wake up only when we suffer a crisis of burnout, disease or the end of a relationship. There is a growing international movement dedicated to slowing down. It is the Slow Movement, and people everywhere are embracing it. It started with the Slow Food movement as resistance to fast food. Now there is Slow Cities movement to make cities more liveable, Slow Homes to counter the cooker-cutter development of houses, and even Slow Work which paradoxically increases our effectiveness on the job. Then Honoré mentioned the Slow Library movement. On one other occasion, the mention of the Slow Library movement was met with spontaneous applause. Today, it was met with at least a noticeable murmur (of approval?) across the crowd.

Another speaker was Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. I have not read his book, but I had heard about his sharp critique of Web 2.0. I confess I came to his session biased against him; personally, I favour Web 2.0 as long as the hype is kept at a minimum. I was a little surprised (perhaps even a little disappointed) at how moderate his arguments were. He takes issue with the anonymity of Wikipedia authors; good point, when the answer really matters. Google uses link popularity rather than authority to determine relevance; again, yes, unless I just need a quick answer. His most contentious view is that Web 2.0 is an extension of the anti-authoritarian values of hippies like Tim O’Reilly. But when challenged, Keen readily admits Web 2.0 might be useful for non-critical searches like finding pizza in your town, and he uses Google everyday. Most interesting was his prediction of the growth of curated technologies, such as Maholo the human-powered search engine, and even Google’s Knol. Certainly this is a promising prediction for librarians.

Ethan Zuckerman is a founder of Global Voices, a non-profit project seeking to “aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online”. Zuckerman observed that on today’s web, like minds find each other and conflicting views seldom enter into meaningful dialog. This condition dashes one of the original hopes for the Internet. Zuckerman presented a series of maps depicting participation in the Internet, with Africa being a notable exception. Global Voices selects content from these under-represented areas, translates it and distributes on their blog. Another presentation on eIFL.net discussed their efforts to help developing countries participate in the information age by bringing open source software to their libraries. Librarians of these countries assert that knowledge is the key to resolving their poverty.

Elizabeth May is leader of the Canadian Green party, and author of How to Save the World in Your Spare Time. She made a case for the connection between literacy, climate and civilization. Civilization is what is really at stake due to climate change. The earth will continue; even humanity may survive in some form after a disaster; but civilization will likely not be restored since we will have used up many of the finite resources that were required to build it. Literacy is one of the great achievements of our civilization. Literacy among women is an important part of the solution to overpopulation and the consequent human impact on the planet. Literacy is a key indicator in broader measures of human progress. In my view, literacy is what slow reading is all about, teaching us to notice connections and larger patterns in what we read, yielding more capacity to appreciate the relationship between our actions and the environment.

Are we still talking about Slow Library? Are all these ideas ideas part of it? Maybe. The conversation about Slow Library has been too quiet lately. Care to spark it up?