WebJunction

The dominant trend of the past half century has been the emergence of postmodern consumer capitalism. Public libraries are no exception to this trend. Indeed since the public library’s original mission was to sustain a rational public sphere of discourse, its decline into a consumer information service offers a particularly clear if not magnified example of the emergence of postmodern consumer capitalism. Both the library’s relationship to its clients and its internal organization have changed. 

Whereas before, clients were expected to adhere to the bureaucratic rules and procedures of the library, today they are increasingly viewed as customers in a marketplace. Features of a bureaucracy include impartiality, comprehensive written rules and procedures, and impersonality. Rules are objectively defined and applied impartially to all members and clients of the organization. But in a market all terms of service are negotiable at the point of transaction. Thus, under a market model, if a customer owes the library a fine, he can negotiate with the library to reduce or eliminate his fine. In the interest of “good customer service” and preserving its relationship with the customer the library may agree to reduce the fines owed by some customers who aggressively negotiate lower fines, while others pay the standard fine. The library might even choose to overlook stolen material if on balance it gains by doing so. Indeed since public libraries receive funding from third parties there is little incentive to do otherwise. This same laissez-faire attitude applies to all the rules of the market-oriented public library.

The basic principle of New Economy management theory is to replace bureaucratic structures with market mechanisms, or as Tom Peters put it in his 1992 book Liberation Management: “blasting the violent winds of the marketplace into every nook and cranny in the firm.” (quoted in Frank, 2000: 189) The market-oriented library prefers that its employees relate to one another as they would in the marketplace. Full time permanent employees are encouraged to view one another as “customers.” But the market-oriented library hires relatively few permanent full time employees with benefits.  It prefers to draw labor from the marketplace as needed on a temporary contractual basis. It does not value loyalty and discourages long term employment. It offers early retirement incentives to long term employees and then hires them back as temporary workers. It hires part time paraprofessionals or even opens its doors to poorly qualified volunteers.

Markets are flexible, dynamic processes. That’s why the only thing that doesn’t change, as we are constantly reminded, is change itself. During the New Economy era most changes were attributed to information technology. But machines don’t manage change. People in positions of power do. Machines, even computers, do only what they are told to do. Most of the changes we experienced during the New Economy era were due to aggressive market-oriented management policies, not to technology alone. Technology merely gives management the tools to carry out its policies. For example, if automated book selection replaces librarians that will only be because management has decided that critical judgement is no longer needed in book selection.

The greatest reduction of in-house labor during the New Economy era was due to outsourcing, reengineered work routines, removing layers of management and supervision, and downsizing; not to automation. Most technological innovations such as web-based catalogs improved the quality of service but did little to reduce labor needs.

Outsourcing allows an organization to replace an internal bureaucratic relationship to its employees with a market relationship to an outside vendor.  Outsourcing to distant locations  allows organizations to circumvent local government regulations and unions in search of cheap labor. In locations where labor is expensive such as the coastal cities of the Northeast or West Coast, back office jobs such as cataloging or book processing can be outsourced to companies in the Southeast or Midwest. Telephone and web-based reference services could someday be outsourced to India where there is a well educated English speaking population willing to work for lower wages and fewer benefits. But outsourcing can occur locally, too. For example, a library might hire an outside company to provide custodial services at lower cost.

New Economy management theory claims that by removing layers of supervision, and by replacing pyramidal chains of management with a distributed  web-like decision making network, we will be liberated from bureaucratic structures. But instead of liberating us these new management techniques merely create a more dysfunctional bureaucracy. A bureaucratic system that pretends to be a distributed network, but is not, is the worst of all possible worlds. In their contempt for bureaucratic rules and procedures, market management techniques tend to neglect the system of rules and procedures which check the personal power of managers. Furthermore, contradictions arise when web-like network structures are imposed on bureaucratic systems. A “flattened hierarchy” is one in which layers of supervision have been removed. But it is still a hierarchy. It is simply one in which there is less adequate and fair supervision. Attempts to replace pyramidal chains of supervision with web-like networks of supervision lead to conflict and confusion. They can also be unjust.

A bureaucracy is a top-down hierarchical chain of command and supervision. Typically the hierarchy is arranged in a pyramid. At the top of the pyramid a single individual manages and supervises a group of individuals at the immediate level below. Those individuals in turn each manage and supervise a group of individuals below them. Lines of command and supervision do not overlap or intersect with one another. Each member of the organization reports to one and only one immediate supervisor. If there is a conflict between an individual and that individual’s supervisor that they cannot resolve themselves, the conflict must be resolved at a higher level by the supervisor’s supervisor. However, in a bureaucratic system supervisory authority is based upon a rational system of rules and procedures known to everyone. A bureaucracy is based upon the rule of law, not personal will.

An ideal market is not a pyramidal hierarchy but a distributed network like the internet in which decisions are made independently at each node in the network. When a link is established in the network it occurs bilaterally with the consent of both nodes. If two nodes in the network cannot resolve their differences they simply discontinue their relationship and break the link between them. There is no central authority to resolve differences. Nor are there any universal rules except the basic principles of contract and reciprocal exchange.

Ideal markets don’t exist. They are theoretical models that apply to real world events only within certain strict boundary conditions. They assume, for instance, that all links in the network are consensual and that no node possesses unilateral power over another. In the real world we are connected to others in ways we did not and could not choose, and some individuals possess power over others. Markets cannot substitute for democratic systems of governance which allow us to make collective decisions about matters of common interest and the ties that bind us together.

New Economy management attempts to impose market structures on bureaucratic systems are disingenuous. Imposing a web-like structure of supervision or flattening the hierarchy by removing layers of supervision does not a market make. Power differentials remain. Links are not consensual or bilateral, and  workers have little opportunity to sever or reconstruct links within the organization at will as they would in a genuine free market. Nor do such strategies transform the bureaucracy into a democracy, since democracy requires rational deliberation in a public domain about matters of common interest. Even ideal markets fail to construct public spaces or to recognize common interests.

Librarian work routines have been reengineered by eliminating their role as gatekeepers of the culture. According to Twitchell (1992), between 1850 and 1950 high culture was separated off from popular culture by the presence of a gatekeeper who determined what would be admitted into high culture. At least until 1950, and perhaps as late as the introduction of the paperback book and the conglomeration of the entertainment industry in the 1970s and 1980s, the selection of printed texts was viewed as the most important function of the gatekeeper, because print was viewed as the foundation of the culture. In Umberto Eco’s fable about a medieval monastery, librarians serve as the paradigmatic gatekeepers of the culture. Due to the influence of Melvil Dewey and the defining down of the profession, librarians in the United States always had an ambivalent relationship to their role as gatekeepers. But if librarians in the United States had been partly reduced to clerical intermediaries in the process of selecting printed texts, at least they were still positioned at the gate. In the era of the New Economy there was no gate to keep.

Public libraries in the United States were never the exclusive preserve of high culture. For example, public libraries housed large collections of popular novels throughout the twentieth century. But at least until 1950 popular books were provided to the public because it was hoped that once the public’s appetite for them had been quenched they would turn to more elevating material. It was therefore essential that the librarian know the difference between high and low culture and be able to maintain a collection in both. Librarians in the nineteenth century were no different from other Victorians who worried about the rising tide of popular culture. “Americans through the Colonial and Federal periods were highly literate. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin and members of his ‘Junto,’ a Philadelphia literary society, formed the Library Company, offering access to books for the community; the Boston Athenaeum was founded in 1807. . . . But American society grew and changed in the early 1800s; by midcentury, the descendants of those early literati were as concerned as their European counterparts with a perceived decline in the reading standards of the public at large.” (Battles, 2003: 146) In the inaugural issue of the American Library Journal William Frederick Poole, who was the director of the Chicago Public Library, wrote that “there is in the mental development of every person who later attains to literary culture a limited period when he craves novel-reading; and perhaps reads novels to excess; but from which, if the desire be gratified, he passes safely out into broader fields of study, and this craving never returns to him in its original form.” (quoted in Battles, 2003: 148) Poole’s belief that it is the responsibility of the librarian to promote the intellectual growth and development of readers remained an important part of librarianship for much of the twentieth century. Librarians functioned as educators, and as such they needed to know something about their student-readers as well as the books they provided for them, so they could provide their student-readers with books that were at and above their stage of development.

While librarians selected some books simply because their readers wanted them, they also selected books based on critical standards. Typically, librarians read critical reviews of books before selecting them. Librarians were well read and many reviews were written by librarians. Today the trend is moving away from selecting books on the basis of reviews or critical standards. Librarians’ work routines have been reengineered to allow less time for reading. More and more books are selected only because they have high projected sales figures or they are in high demand. At the far end of this trend librarians no longer select books for their collections. At the far end of this trend we find automated book ordering systems that reorder titles based solely on their circulation or the number of requested holds, similar to the automated book ordering systems in corporate chain bookstores. To paraphrase Twitchell, shocking as it may seem to William Frederick Poole, the chief monk at the Chicago Public Library may soon be a technician looking at small blinking numbers on a computer screen. “Get me some more Danielle Steel and Stephen King,” he says. Automated inventory systems are becoming the new gatekeepers, but what they admit into the library bears no resemblance to high culture. The principle of selection becomes quite simply, “give ‘em what they want.” Pander to your public’s every wish; flatter them; patronize them; but don’t try to educate them. The lack of critical standards attests to the nihilism at the heart of postmodern consumer culture.

As the role of the gatekeeper disappears from public libraries, popular culture overwhelms high culture, entertainment replaces education, and images replace print. Libraries now include large collections of videos as well as bestselling books written for movies. We are told that there is no difference between image and print because both contain information, and since the business of the library is to supply the public with information, we must provide both. But there is a difference between information and knowledge. Words are better able to convey abstract ideas and the knowledge they contain than images. Images may be more entertaining than words, but entertainment is merely the consumption of information for the purpose of obtaining pleasure, not knowledge. Insofar as the library becomes a purveyor of images it becomes part of the consumer economy.

The retail model is being applied to reference work as well. If you visit a Barnes & Noble’s bookstore and ask a general reference question -- say, “What is the population of China?” -- they will either look at you with a blank stare or make an uninformed guess as to what kind of book would have the answer to your question. That’s because Barnes & Noble’s doesn’t hire reference librarians. They hire poorly paid clerks who are trained to answer directional questions -- in other words, to locate specific titles or subject areas on the shelves. If you ask a reader’s advisory question -- say, “Can you recommend a good work of historical fiction set in colonial New England?” -- you will get a similar response. Retail clerks aren’t expected to know anything about books or how to find information in them. They are there only to fetch books for you and to do it in a personable, friendly manner -- service with a smile. Their job is really no different than waiting tables in a restaurant. They receive training in customer service, but not reference or reader’s advisory service.

Chelton (2003) is right that the quality of reader’s advisory services in most public libraries is poor, but she fails to explain why. The tenor of her article places the blame on librarians, and excludes their perspective. The reason reader’s advisory service in most public libraries is poor is that like clerks in a corporate chain bookstore, librarians are receiving more training in customer service and less training in reference or reader’s advisory service. Partly that’s because that’s what the public expects. “Customers” are much more likely to complain if they receive poor customer service from librarians than if they fail to get an answer to their reference or reader’s advisory question. Indeed, customers ask far more directional questions than reference questions and ask even fewer reader’s advisory questions. “Customers” have probably had more experience as shoppers than they have in libraries and tend to bring their expectations from their shopping experiences with them to the public library. Consequently, library administrators emphasize customer service over reference or reader’s advisory service. Some have even hired marketing research firms to evaluate customer service in their libraries. One such firm, Service Evaluation Concepts, hires “mystery shoppers” to visit local establishments such as restaurants, hotels, gas stations, as well as libraries, as a consumer of goods and services, to evaluate customer service.

Once material selection, reference and reader’s advisory are taken away from librarians, nothing remains of their traditional work duties but library management and customer service.  Since these two remaining duties are different, and require different levels of education and training, they can be split into two separate roles.

Martin Gomez (2000), the director of the Brooklyn Public Library and candidate for president of the ALA during the New Economy era, proposed that the library profession establish an undergraduate degree program in library science to train paraprofessionals. This new class of library employee would have “increased responsibility for most of what we call ‘traditional’ librarian responsibilities.” Another class of library employee with graduate degrees in library science “would no longer do collection development, cataloging or reference work but instead direct this work as performed by others with undergraduate degrees in library theory and practice. Librarians with MLS degrees would operate on a higher plane, developing and evaluating programs and institutional policies designed to meet community needs.”  

But since material selection, reference and reader’s advisory are being phased out of the postmodern library of the 21st century, in practice Mr. Gomez’s paraprofessionals would spend most of their day at the “information desk” delivering “customer service.” Since they will not be performing many “traditional librarian responsibilities” it will surely occur to some future leader of the profession to dispense with undergraduate training in library science and hire any literate person they can find with adequate customer service experience. According to Mr. Gomez’s vision librarians with graduate degrees will serve as managers of the library. But surely some future leader of the profession will see that individuals with degrees in business management or public planning are better qualified to be managers than librarians. This is the route by which librarians will be removed from libraries.

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