Are You Experienced?

It turns out that Jimi Hendrix's inquiry was quite appropriate. Here at True Archives we have noted the rise of a new pair of buzzwords from the minions of Information Science. “User Experience” (or UX for the English-reading impaired) is a term bandied about that describes the effort to measure the efficiency of online tools for the attention-challenged masses. It seems that the process of dumbing down a web page so that your average browsing buffoon will linger before clicking away to YouTube is becoming a genuine subfield of study, and perhaps that is a good thing. In a world where fifteen seconds of fame is becoming about ten seconds too long for most people’s intellect, getting your message across quickly is essential. However, we at True Archives see a problem with this latest hula-hoop of the Biblioposers.

One definition of the word experience is “the knowledge or mastery of an event or subject gained through involvement in or exposure to it.” If that is the case, then User Experience must be regulated to the rubbish bin of failed efforts. No one gains mastery of historical investigation when Information Scientists continually make it easier for troglodytes to have the illusion they are doing actual research. Besides, no one can have the virtual “experience” of discovery once that discovery has already been made for them. These helpful online tools are the digital equivalent of a canned "hunt" at some safari club where rich guys pay to shoot a lion that has just been released from a cage.

Instead of making a digital surrogate of document, we would like to see the enhancement of “user experience” for researchers who actually get off the couch and come to our repositories. Stickers like the ones seen on election day proudly proclaiming “I researched!” might be in order. Perhaps free cocktails and snacks in the lobby to welcome historians before they enter the sanctum sactorium of the reading room would be a nice experience. Comfortable leather covered chairs, with real incandescent bulb lighting makes a great ambiance for the researcher. We might even try to improve our services, like a real effort to accelerate the retrieval of requested items. Who knows, those who experience amenities like that may learn to prefer it to a screen, and rediscover the delight in actually holding and reading a book. (We would elaborate on this last point if we were not so busy building a really cool historical photographs database for our library that allows keyword searching for images of our school...)

Libraries on the "Make"

Reacting to the “crisis of relevancy,” Biblioposers have gone to extreme lengths to maintain their continued employment. Libraries, once revered as the repository of printed human knowledge, have abandoned this duty as they grasp at any passing fad to attract supporters. An excellent example is the rise of the “makerspace” movement among libraries. Stocked with transistors and motherboards, these little electronic co-ops are just the sort of thing you would expect to see at a YMCA, cub scout headquarters or a senior center, but it stretches the limits of credulity to see them as an appropriate function of a library. What does hot-wiring a television remote control have to do with books, anyway?

Perhaps a better question to ask our angst-ridden cousins of the library world is, “Why stop there?” If stocking 3D printers with plastic goo for patrons to make Disney action figures is a proper role for libraries, how about a cupcake bakery, complete with flower, sugar, and colorful sprinkles? Then your growing cadre of illiterate users can work on upping the diabetes statistics for the nation. Perhaps an auto repair bay might be in order. I know its getting as hard to find an American who can work on his own car as it is to find one who reads, but such a service might help taxpayers look more kindly on the library. Hand loom weaving studios might be a great addition too, although the visual reminder of the first trade made obsolete in the Industrial Revolution might make Biblioposers uncomfortable as they face extinction in the "Information Age."

But really, libraries, as long as you are not using those books, why not send them over to the archives where they can be taken care of? After all, archivists have not added a Ronald McDonald playhouse to their operations and therefore may be able to find the room to store the printed legacy of the human race. Somebody’s got to do it, and you Information Scientists apparently don’t want to.

Bibliocide

Imagine a future where reading is unknown, where sentence structure is continually punctuated with the words "like" and "you know," where memorization skills are reduced to knowing which button to push. Difficult to picture? Just look around; it's happening right now.

There can be little argument that the widespread availability of cheap, mass produced books and periodicals in the late nineteenth century led to the formation of the most literate populace the world has ever seen. In a culture without distractions, reading became a popular, cheap form of amusement which was fostered by the rise of the lending library. Free circulation of literature and texts truly made the public library the "people's university." Sure, plenty of people were reading crap like "Deadwood Dick," but at least they were reading.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, where distractions in hand-held toys sap young minds of memorization powers, and libraries jettison books like a sinking ship throwing cargo overboard. Slowly young people are losing the ability to spend extended time periods perusing text, and the library has forsaken its primary purpose as a repository of those texts. So eager to appear "relevant," Biblioposers are touting eBooks as some sort of panacea that will reawaken the reading ethic among knuckle-dragging internet junkies. "Makerspaces" are taking the place of book shelving to allow library patrons the opportunity to hotwire garage door openers and produce effigies of Jennifer Lawrence on 3D printers. More and more floor space is devoted to screens and keyboards. As more Biblioposers pursue this tack, books become the victims, and have become the only thing with a spine in the whole library.

Archives must step forward to rescue the codex before it becomes extinct. Perhaps the future does not hold a populace that will resemble H. G. Wells' Eloi, or the drones who feature in the recent (and widely ignored) film Idiocracy. If so, they will be happy we rescued these under-appreciated artifacts; if not, at least they will be on hand to demonstrate to whatever alien race visits our planet a thousand years from now that a few brave souls tried to stem the tide of mass book murder. As it looks now, those brave souls will be archivists, and not librarians.

Buyer Be Aware!

In the quest to procure new and exciting research collections for their patrons, archivists often go to great lengths. Having an excruciatingly boring tea with the Daughters of the American Revolution, singing loudly off key at a Rotary luncheon, or even attending a politically charged local meeting of “Fanatics in Search of a Cause,” are all ways archivists have sacrificed their comfort zone and even their sanity to butter up potential donors. Another source for good archival stuff can be found in online auctions, either the highbrow ones where astronaut patches get hawked next to Lincoln signatures, or the more commonplace eBay, a giant, never-ending garage sale of items classified ridiculous to sublime.

The problem with eBay is the use by some savvy buyers of “sniping” software that allows them to come in literally at the last second to dash your acquisition dreams to smithereens. But perhaps there are more sinister dangers from this online auction powerhouse. Suppose the Information Scientists, in their desire to stamp out all resistance from analog information lovers, decide to entrap our archival brethren with offerings that are not quite the same thing as advertised? Even Biblioposers could get into the act, exacting revenge from archives as they come to realize that we will, indeed, inherit the earth (as far as books go.) Bottom line: double check that auction listing description! There could be danger in the mailbox!

The Age of Unenlightenment

They work tirelessly to digitize the heritage of mankind, tag it with “metadata,” and make it available to the entire globe without charge through open access. It sounds like a boon to the human race, a team of superheroes who selflessly work to elevate our collective consciousness and bring an enlightenment to society unmatched since the seventeenth century awakening of our forefathers (and mothers). Yes, the Information Scientist is truly the savior of our species, and their work will not stop until all have reached an understanding of the universe akin to the gods.

Age of Enlightenment? No, we here at True Archives know that this is the dawn of the Dark Ages; a strange world without print, and without memory. The Information Scientists have been busy stirring up their witches brew since the dawn of the internet in the 1980s, but where, pray tell, are the masses of smarter people for all their efforts? Instead of using this electronic tool ostensibly built for edification, we have millions who use it for nothing more than idle browsing for merchandise or inane chatter. Most of the slack-jawed electronic addicts who no longer have to use any brain power to memorize phone numbers, or even directions to the nearest liquor store, are hardly using that spare cranial space to improve our collective lot. Worst of all, with the ongoing effort to digitize everything and destroy its analog counterpart, the Information Scientist is simultaneously promoting a google-brained generation that will no longer know how to read extended blocks of text, nor have the resources to even regain that skill in the future. Unless, of course, archivists step in to save those books.

Behold the Information Scientist and his minions! See them for what they are! Rage against the gathering gloom! Do not go softly into that dark night! See them for what they are! (Wait a minute. Didn't I just say that? I can't remember...)

This Mission Does Not Exist

Perhaps this is you. Your boss (or other important resource allocator) demands that you go out and collect an important batch of papers that you KNOW have been promised to another institution. Sure, you could say "no" and hope your professional ethics can protect you, but then again, who wants to really test THAT safety net? You have no choice but to appear in the enemy's territory and stealthily contact the donor, hoping that your Ryder truck won't attract any more attention on campus than a batch of freshmen playing "humans and zombies." You load up the boxes, get a signature on the deed of gift, and hie yourself off to your own repository and unload the loot.

Archives are not supposed to be a competitive business. Like Rodney King, we should all plaintively shout "Can't we all just get along?" when it is time to shake the bushes for new material. But sometimes bagging a trophy collection that your boss may want requires tossing the collection development policy to the wind, and a willingness to engage in covert donor contact. Be very careful, and burn this entry after reading.

The Doomsday eBook

In their never ending attempt to straddle the divide between electronic information access and books, Biblioposers know no shame. We have previously exposed their annual advocacy of the phony "Banned Books Week," but now we find an entirely new ritual they intend to promote. Read an eBook Day is a "celebration of modern storytelling" that encourages people to eschew print for a virtual reading experience on a computing device. The official website for this snake oil sale features a parade of glowing personal testimonials (although few contributors seem able to actually name a title they have read on their Kindles). Instead we find arguments that tout the convenience of the devices for readers whose hand arthritis prevents them from comfortably holding a real book. (Break from sarcasm: if these things help the disabled, they can indeed be considered a boon to mankind.)

Aside from physically challenged reader use (and the use by physically fit people who use them on their treadmill machines) we wonder if the widespread acceptance of eBooks is a good thing. There are a number of studies that question the true comprehension and retention of information gathered from a glowing screen. There may also be another, more evil, agenda at work here. Besides the built-in distraction features that allow shortened attention spans to skip from title to title (or even to break off to check email or cat videos) eBooks seem almost made to order for the excuses the Information Scientists need to justify their continuing disposal of print. Australian journalists have caught on to this doomsday scenario, and here at True Archives, we applaud their insightful warnings!

Bit by Bitmap They Are Building A Madhouse

The Information Scientists want us to make our material "accessible" by emulating their obsessive love affair with the internet. Claiming our carefully crafted finding aids do not go far enough in revealing the existence of documents, they demand we describe individual documents with all the care and exacting attention to detail as librarians of yore put into the cataloging of books. Unfortunately, the analogy is faulty, because the demands of the Information Scientist are more akin to the effort it would have taken Charles A. Cutter to catalog the individual pages of a given volume rather than a summation of its contents. And for what purpose, we may ask? To give the illusion of discovery to an end user? This Sisyphean task is more than just futile, it is maddening, and here at True Archives we sympathize with our brethren pushed to the brink of insanity because they are charged with dumbing down the process of historical investigation.

A Scan For All Seasons

Sometimes people just do things because they can, not necessarily because it is a good idea. The famous mountain climber's rejoinder to the question of why ("because its there") was uttered by a fellow who died on the slopes of Mount Everest, and we heard recently of some poor unfortunate who choked to death at a summer hot dog eating contest. Sure, he might have been able to down thirty dogs in two minutes, but was it a good idea?

Scanning historical documents is another thing people can do that is not necessarily a good idea. They take the individual photographs or pieces of paper from a collection and produce terabytes of images that must have "metadata" applied to them. This is done so that people can feel like they are doing "research" in their pajamas at 2:00 am while taking a break from watching cute cat videos on the internet. But woe to that archivist who attempts to resist the insatiable demand of Information Scientists for documents to scan. Their predictions of death for any archive that does not "get with the scanning program" are supposed to be a metaphor for creeping irrelevance, but what if they mean it literally? Here at True Archives we get a bad feeling about all of this!

Up and At 'Em!

How many times has this happened to you?

Most days people are content to wait patiently at your front door for the opening bell, but every once in a while you get a researcher with a sense of entitlement that does not believe in posted hours. This is the guy who will lean on your doorbell just as you are adding creamer to your first morning’s cup of coffee, or scanning the email that came in overnight. Gone is your casual opening of the day, your precious few quiet moments prior to greeting the public. And generally speaking, this is the same guy who will immediately ask to examine a batch of records that are at the very back of your storage area, or even in a separate building! Here at True Archives, we say early birds should only get worms!

Breaking Really Bad

You know these guys:

These are the guys who send you sale catalogs with “autographs” of famous people, sometimes on crude rectangles of paper that are a result of slicing around the placement of other text on documents they were cut from.

These are the guys who offer you great bargains on ONE of the 145 Audubon prints that used to be in a four volume Havell Edition. (You can always buy the rest; one at a time, just like the original purchasers did!)

These are the guys who will sell you a “unbound” report from the U.S. Serial Set consisting of a lengthy letter from the Secretary of War describing the Custer fiasco.

These are the guys archivists and rare book dealers call the “Breakers.”

All archivists have dealt with breakers in the past, but here at True Archives we wonder if their offerings are due to increase or decrease? After all, as Information Scientists continue their relentless “weeding” of public repositories, the acquisition opportunities for a whole new generation of razor blade-wielding, dumpster-diving entrepreneurs increases. But if libraries slowly decrease their shelving by meticulously recycling and pulping their former inventories, the breakers will have no easily accessible supply of books to mutilate and try to sell piecemeal to us. Will the breakers, in the white hot rage of denied supply, then try to “break” the Biblioposers?

More Process, Less Whatever

It has happened to every archivist who has spent any time processing the personal papers of a nineteenth century family: the sudden discovery of a lock of human hair either pinned to a letter, or folded away in an old envelope. Victorians had a thing about hair, so much so that they actually created artwork out of the strands recovered from hairbrushes. Modern archivists also have a thing about hair, especially when discovering it in the soup they ordered for lunch at the local greasy spoon. Finding samples of the same stuff amidst the promissory notes and laundry lists of an 1880s era banker is probably more creepy than it is stomach churning, but it is unsettling regardless, especially when one considers other body parts that may turn up!

The Desolation of Smaugness

One thing that has always separated archivists from librarians is our commitment to the preservation of the items in our care. Librarians consider a book to be like a disposable razor: open the package and after a dozen shaves or so, toss it in the trash. Archivists, on the other hand, treat materials like Grandpa’s straight razor: keep it dry and clean and it will last a lifetime (and then some). Archivists have always been concerned with the long haul, allowing access under controlled conditions to maximize the life of three-dimensional information-bearing objects. For our pains, however, we have been maligned by Biblioposers as “dragons,” guarding our treasure trove from pesky little Hobbits who would steal from us. While we should take pride in such accusations, lets take a moment to explain our Smaugness.

Biblioposers love to put access to information above any other consideration. In creating “commons” for the commoners, Biblioposers love to bend over backwards for any motivation-challenged, thumb-typing Hobbit and show off the latest brain numbing tool served up by their masters, the Information Scientists. By comparison to their cheerful, helping presence at the reference desk, we archivists easily appear to be nothing more than snooty, elitist fussbudgets that don’t allow our researchers to use pens or even so much as bring a coffee in from the espresso bar. Here at True Archives we say never compromise your reading room rules to appear more "friendly" and "helpful." If Bilbo Baggins and his pals want to enjoy a few flagons of mead while they research, tell them to leave! Don't ever apologize for guarding the treasure of Erebor with all the ferocity of a Dragon.

In the Garden of Information Scientist Beasts

Here at True Archives we love hyperbole. By exaggerating the threat from the digital world that the Information Scientists want to create, we hope to at least to raise a few questions regarding its desirability even while admitting our alarmist rhetoric is doing very little about it. Exaggeration, then, leads us to today’s topic: the similarity of Information Scientists to fascists. Read no further if you cannot recognize a tongue in a cheek.

Is there nothing more sinister, more threatening, more scary than a movement dedicated to global domination? A cadre of "superior" thinkers who only want to conquer and control us for our own good? Have we seen this movie before? The answer is “yes,” and take a moment before you click away to the latest Miley Cyrus update allow for a brief comparison of those crazy, goose-stepping goons and the never ending onslaught of the Biblioposers.

1) Fascists have always been concerned about doing away with the “old order” and replacing it with a new system of conformity. Information Scientists also want to do away with the old order, changing our libraries into computer filled Starbucks parlors where books, if they are to be found at all, have been pushed to the periphery.

2) Fascists are obsessed with youth and strength, promoting the symbolic superiority of both in a society. Information Scientists are obsessed with the latest hula hoop of digital technology, including the use of “social media” to create “robust user communities”made up of clueless, slackjawed internet junkies. (Don’t remind me that I am using social media to warn you all about social media; who says I have to be consistent or even make sense on this blog?)

3) Fascists burned books. Information Scientists? Well, let’s be charitable and say they “recycle” books.

Make no mistake about it. The Biblioposers want to pulp your books and make you believe the screens of their Kindles will be just as good or better than ink on paper. Never mind the fact that the electronic text has all the permanence and retrieval veracity as a breath you took yesterday. When it comes to considering the future of the book, you’d best take several deep breaths before putting your trust in a “cloud” of Information Science promises.

Can You Make Paper Mache Out of a Webpage?

Libraries have been treating newspapers like bird cage liners for decades, taking yesterday’s edition from the little sticks on the hanging rack, throwing it onto a pile of its fellows in the corner for a week or two, and then putting today’s copy on the stick to start the process all over again. Eventually the stack in the corner had its purgatory status resolved by either being fed into the hell of the recycle bin or taken to the heaven of the microfilm room. Alas, the stop under the camera was only an illusory paradise, for after its filming the stack found its way to the rubbish anyway. Writer Nicholson Baker decried the practice as recently as two decades ago, but libraries and archival allies responded vehemently to Baker’s grousing, pointing out the ephemeral nature of newsprint demanded its migration to microfilm for long term preservation. Besides, argued the librarians, we don’t have the space to store all those stacks of crumbling dailies after their text is rendered onto a compact reel of silver halide film.

Fast forward to the new world order of the Information Scientist and the Biblioposer. To these nefarious characters even microfilm is a waste of space and their never-ending conspiracy to change “things” into “zeros and ones” has given them an argument for pitching even microforms into the insatiable “we-are-going-green” dustbins. Never mind the fact that microfilm can be read with no more fancy equipment than a candle and a magnifying glass, to the Information Scientist anything not on the screen is junk taking up space. In fact, with newspapers turning more and more to an online rather than physical presence, we can cut out the middleman entirely and simply “archive” the web pages of the New York Times.

Somehow that option leaves us cold here at True Archives. We are prepared to work undercover to save these artifacts and insist that the best place for microfilm and its “floppy disk” cousin, microfiche, is with us where it can be safely stored amidst other three-dimensional information bearing objects. While they are at it, let the “libraries” also give us their microform reading machines too; after all, those dinosaurs are just getting in the way of the computers.

Banned of Brothers

If you have any familiarity with American libraries you are likely aware of an annual ritual called “Banned Book Week.” This non-event sets up a straw man of censorship that allows Biblioposers the opportunity to throw self-righteous mud pies at a fictitious target. There are so many aspects that make “Banned Book Week” a farce, but lets try to restrict ourselves to a few obvious ones.

1. True cases of codex censorship actually occurring in 21st century American public or academic libraries are virtually non-existent. That leaves only public school libraries, and if we are going to talk censorship and restrictions on freedom in that venue we can also discuss dress codes, behavior requirements, yearbook composition, and a host of other activities where students of minor age cannot do as they please.

2. The idea that impressionable youth can be protected from unsavory influences by simply removing a book from a repository is so laughably quaint in the internet age that even some ardent Christian fundamentalists can recognize the futility of the effort. That's why they home school or set up religious academies where they are free to censor all they want. Certainly the Information Scientist can understand the waste of time it takes to ban a book since his job is to steer youth to the screen rather than the printed page anyway.

3. The biggest threat to the future of the book and reading is the library itself, whose management routinely tosses out volumes based on user metrics that easily demonstrate declining circulation of just about everything except DVDs.

Really, what use is it for the Information Scientist to cry crocodile tears over the decision of a local school board to remove Catcher in the Rye from the high school library? The real issue here is kids who do not read anything at all, which is a form of censorship that is self-imposed and impossible to stop. It is time to move the books to the archives, where they will be saved from the ravages of current societal indifference.

Dude, Where's my Brain?

A colleague of mine had me read over his research paper before sending it off for publication and within that essay he observed that it is now possible for a person to hold almost the sum of human knowledge in the palm of the hand. These little computer-telephone-camera-whatever devices have indeed allowed modern man to empty his head of any memorization from individual telephone numbers to the location of the nearest beer store. What a boon for mankind! No more to be shackled to such mundane tasks of memorization, but freed to gaze upon the stars (and look down at a little screen to tell you the names of those stars).

Here at True Archives we know the illusion of knowledge is becoming more common than the genuine article, and we wonder what would become of our current generation of internet junkies should the earth endure a repeat session of the great Solar Storm of 1859. Back in those days the giant electromagnetic disruption only knocked out the telegraph systems, but imagine what would happen today? Aside from airplanes falling from the sky and hospitals unable to perform medical care, there would be millions of people unable to upload cute cat videos or post updates on what they had for lunch! Information Scientists would be mortified if such a catastrophe resulted in people actually referring to printed dictionaries, gazetteers, and encyclopedias to get their answers.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Books Yearning to Survive

Once upon a time there was a special place that gave meaning to surrogates we used in everyday life. We used to exchange these substitutes without a thought about their representational value because we knew they symbolically held the same value as items stored inside that special place. Then, one day, some genius decided the items in the special place were no longer needed, and the surrogates we exchanged were to be valued on faith alone. Obviously that did not work, and the exchange items have been floating in limbo ever since. I’m speaking, of course, about United States currency, which used to base its value on the gold stored at Fort Knox, Kentucky. There is a reason why Goldfinger wanted to get into that bastion, and why James Bond had to stop him: without gold the dollar has no meaning. So it is with the books in our libraries that the evil Information Scientist wants scanned and destroyed: without the books, their images have no meaning.

I wish True Archives could claim credit for this beautiful analogy, but it belongs to Carl Posy, Head of the School of Religion and Philosophy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former Academic Director of the National Library of Israel. Carl spoke at our library in 2012 and described his gold standard theory, one which I hope every archivist will take to heart. Biblioposers work hand in hand with the Information Scientist, cheerfully feeding original books into the maw of destruction because they have always viewed the codex as a disposable commodity. Only the archivist, dedicated to the preservation of three-dimensional information bearing artifacts, is in a position to save the book, just like James Bond saved the gold at Fort Knox. He never stopped to question "why"...

The Cursive Divide

Archivists of a certain age (your humble correspondent included) grew up in a world where kids in kindergarten were routinely handed a thick pencil, a sheet of highly acidic ruled paper, and instructed how to block out the letters of the alphabet. Years later, under the patient guidance of different teachers, these ancient archivists also learned to pencil their alphabetic characters in cursive, and perform feats of calligraphic composition that would occasionally result in a somewhat legible paragraph or two written out in relative speed.

Fast forward to the world dominated by the evil Information Scientist and his minions, where school children are first taught the block letters and then pushed into learning the keyboard layout, skipping cursive writing altogether. So what, you may ask, what does it matter if our upcoming generations never learn to sign their names like John Hancock? The problem lies in our archives, my friends. Think of all the nineteenth and early twentieth century documents that reside in your collections. That handwriting they bear will be as unintelligible as the proverbial chicken scratchings to people who never learned how to write cursive themselves. All the scanning in the world forced by the Information Scientists won’t change this situation. It will simply result in millions of digital images that few, if any, will be able to decipher.

All is not dark, however, and even I can see one advantage in this brave new world where people sign their names with an "x". Here at True Archives we take all our uncensored notes in cursive while seated in faculty meetings or lectures, secure in the knowledge that our scribbling will remain a mystery to our younger colleagues.

A Book! A Book! My Kingdom for a Book!

How much time do we spend attempting to give millennials the illusion of research? We scan, we type in metadata, we build search engines, and we neglect our mountainous backlog of paper resources, all to provide a superficial sampling of documents for cursory review. What are the results of this Sisyphean task? An explosion of in-depth historical inquiry based on the time honored tasks of internal and external criticism of primary source materials? Here at True Archives we laugh at that conclusion. There seems to be little hope of a new Herodotus appearing suddenly as a result of our endless labor in rendering digital surrogates. Even if a scholar was able to take our pathetic sampling of images to compose a monumental tome, who would keep and maintain it? Certainly not the Information Scientist, who loves holding the historian hostage to a world of byte sized snippets of facts, custom made for skim reading and shallow understanding. In the future, the heroic Archivist must step forward to save the book in addition to the material that makes composition of the book possible.

Deducing Dunces

I was talking to an Information Scientist the other day (I do actually know a few) and he reacted to my standard rant with a curious observation. After patiently listening to my unfounded theory that deep reading will be lost on future generations, and that their memorization skills will suffer accordingly, my colleague said, “I wonder what sort of creativity will be possible once that brain space becomes available.” After pondering this statement for a while, I realized where I had heard it before: Sherlock Holmes. In Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson is shocked that Holmes has no knowledge of the Copernican model of the solar system. Holmes dismisses his own ignorance by using an analogy to compare the human brain to a small storage attic:

It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

If Holmes and my Information Scientist friend are correct, we must ask then what exactly is “useful” information? Do we free up the millennial’s mind by forsaking deep reading only to fill the vacuum with cute cat videos and 140 character weather updates? Are the Information Scientists actually rewiring the human brain to focus on the trivial? Here at True Archives we answer a resounding “YES!”

A Frontier of Ignorance Mashup

Here in the True Archives world we say that those who get their information from an electronic screen simply lack the deep reading experience that leads to understanding, creativity, and historical perspective. We have no empirical evidence that this is true, but who cares? Lack of authoritative data never stops us from insisting that printed books belong in the archives, under the custodial care of archivists rather than Biblioposers. On rare occasions we can even cite scholars that agree with our hysterical, undocumented claims, like Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, the author of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change:

"When ideas are detached from the media used to transmit them, they are also cut off from the historical circumstances that shape them, and it becomes difficult to perceive the changing context within which they must be viewed.”

So, in other words, as Information Scientists work overtime to marginalize the codex they are destroying the ability of future generations to actually understand what they are reading on the screen! It’s like a whole new frontier of dumbness! Is it not time for the Frontier Archivist to deal with this threat????

Mission Creep

Here in the True Archives world, we know who the "creeps" are that seem to be gaining in power every day; the dreaded Information Scientists. First they came to libraries with their MARC records and their automated catalogs. "Don't worry," they soothingly hissed, "This will just make finding books so much easier for your patrons." But then finding the book itself was no longer the goal. Once the purpose of the computer morphed into finding pixels instead of the codex, the book became an obstacle to be removed. Only the heroic archivist can see through their nefarious plan to eliminate print and paper, and react by expanding repositories to accommodate the book as well as documents. But what if archivists fall asleep at the switch? What if they do not heed the call? Will they awake twenty years from now into a bizarre world of screen-obsessed skim readers? Impossible, you say?????

Like a Fire Bell in the Night

Thomas Jefferson can be faulted for a lot of things (especially things we needn't dwell on here) but his warning quoted in our title today regarding the rending asunder of the United States was prescient to say the least. Here in the True Archives world we constantly preach about the dangers of jettisoning the codex for a brave new world of superficial skim readers, and occasionally we get a few allies in our warnings. The historians at Colby College know the disappearing book portends a disappearing intellect, and that millennials will never learn to craft engaging historical essays without the constant referral of the legacy of those who came before. But the Information Scientist doesn't care about history any more; in fact, he relishes in the creation of an entire generation that thinks, acts, and speaks as if they just landed on the planet. This betrayal of Clio is indeed one of the darkest aspects of the digital age.

Development Dangers

All of us who toil in the vineyards of archives know we are the prime partner of our host institution's fund raising people. After all, who has the coolest stuff in the library? Not the Information Scientists, who can only point to their sterile rows of computer monitors where one may sit and look at the same mind-numbing stuff that everyone else is dawdling over. Our stuff is unique, rare, and sometimes bizarre, but it is always interesting, and that is why the development people love us so much. In the True Archives world, we relish the role we play in helping rich folks find some worthwhile place to stash their disposable income, but at the same time we want to make sure it is THEIR income they are forking over!

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is True Archives

By now it should be obvious that my lone voice, crying in the wilderness of cyberspace, is simply one more example of the abandonment of print. After all, if I was truly devoted to the dissemination of information on paper I would have started a real magazine with the title True Archives. But instead here I sit, using computers to create my mocking covers and then turning to the likes of Twitter to broadcast them as widely as possible. It doesn't matter. In this universe I don't have to be consistent, except when it comes to attacking that ultimate villain, the Information Scientist and his loathsome sidekick, the Biblioposer!

If the Shoe Fits

Biblioposers love to present themselves as hep, a-go-go advocates of the brave new world of Information Science. They loathe the old image of pencil-stuffed-hairbun-wearing dowagers and want to be seen as full partners in cutting edge technologies that are threatening to stupefy the planet. But every once in a while they must play to an audience that remembers books and their profession's former identity as custodians of the codex. When that happens Biblioposers trot out the old symbols again and reclaim their time-honored role. The duplicity becomes more obvious as books disappear to make room for more computers and services that are totally alien to the institutions that Andrew Carnegie so nobly funded. In the True Archives world, we can see past the disguise.

Why Dontcha Just Scan That Old Stuff and Toss It?

Millennials want to be able to push buttons and then say "Look Mom, I am doing research!" We can only imagine the depth of historical inquiries that are based on such "drive-by" analysis of primary source material, but the problem with this approach goes far beyond the superficiality of the produced essays. There is a sense that once archival material becomes digitized, the need to retain the paper original is gone, and that archives simply waste resources by maintaining environmentally controlled storage spaces for ink on dead tree by-product. The evil Information Scientist greedily views our plush reading rooms and controlled storage space as opportunities to expand their empire of personal computer screens. Their arguments for deaccessioning historical documents will only become more strident as time goes on.

FutureWorld

Don't you just love retro science fiction? It seems pretty quaint now to think about early "atomic age" predictions of Godzilla-like monsters rising from a primordial muck activated by radiation. But the Information Scientist is giving us a future just as frightening: a world where attention spans are shortened and literacy is no longer dependent on reading. What would happen to aliens like Michael Rennie in The Day the Earth Stood Still if they came to Earth and found a population so engrossed with their electronic toys that they didn't even notice the visitation?

But I Need My Crutch

What's on at your local movie theater? Check the internet. What's the capital of Albania? Check the internet. What does it mean when my throat is sore and my tongue is coated with some bizarre green slime? Check the....well, you get the picture. We no longer consult reference books to answer the myriad questions that arise every day because everything we need to know is a mouse click away. Unfortunately those reference books used to have an authority that was implied by their very publication, and that implied authority seems to have transferred now to anything we see on the screen after completing our "Google" inquiry. The Information Scientist says we need him to tell us if the words we see on our screen are to be trusted, but who's asking? Certainly not the millions who ask and click every day, happily evaluating the results themselves for good or ill.

Let's Mix It Up!

Some people believe that the digital age has released an entirely new world of “mash up” possibilities; the mixing and blending of different genres to create new art and literature. For example, the musical group “Gangstagrass” has experimented successfully with mixing traditional bluegrass music with hip-hop rap, and the popularity of books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies shows us the possibilities of blending classic literature with pop culture themes. But these mash-ups are nothing new. I particularly like this science fiction/western comic book that represents a mash-up from the 1940s, which of course True Archives has mashed-up again to assist in our never ending battle against the evils of Information Science.

Oh! What You Do To Me!

Does the internet really make you stupid by lessening your powers of memorization, or is it a helpful tool that allows one to memorize that which is important over that which is trivial? I don't know, and neither do you as you sit staring at this screen. All I know is that everyone at True Archives believes we are facing a generation of dummies, much as writer Mark Bauerlein has suggested. Even if you don't believe that, there is little arguing the impact of the internet on the library profession as it moves quickly to make obsolete traditional librarian skills. Still, the Biblioposer tries to make a place for him/herself in this brave new digital world and insists on a role as a mediator between the user and the information the user scans with increasingly brief comprehension. At the same time, the Biblioposer waxes eloquent about how much he loves books and reading, even while promoting the very tools that erode the practice.

Just Kidding, Really!

How many times have you heard someone preface a racial, ethnic, or profession based joke with the phrase “Some of my best friends are_______________.” I am as guilty of this weaseling equivocation as anyone here in the True Archives world, especially when it comes to my colleagues in the library world. For the most part I have been reluctant to use the word “librarian” when I denounce the reasons for the rapid decline of books and reading, choosing instead to beat up on my straw man the Information Scientist and his sidekick, the Biblioposer. However, librarians keep walking into my trap, either by rejecting the name of “librarian” for their profession or expanding their definition of it to include such inanities as gardening and "read-to-a-dog" days. As silly as these sideshows seem, it is librarian’s embrace of the internet to the exclusion of all else that really marks them as willing participants in the mad race to total digital dependency. In my past twenty years at this institution I have seen the reference section of books dwindle down to a few pathetic shelves, and rarely do I see my colleagues consult them when fielding the infrequent reference inquiry at the desk. A quick “Google” or other database scan and the questioner is sent on his way, no wiser for the elucidation that came so effortlessly.

The Archivist as Western Hero

Like most children born in the 1950s, I grew up on a steady diet of television and movie westerns. There is something so compelling about the myth of the frontiersman, a law unto himself, taming a rugged landscape filled with human and animal peril. What has interested me in the western in recent years is the universality of its appeal, and even though millennials no longer sit through a tale of dusty streets and showdowns, the formula of the western is played out again and again in other genres such as science fiction and police dramas. I feel the Information Scientist would be the perfect villain for a western: cold, ruthless, and powerful. What better role for the archivist than that of the western hero? Chivalrous, quiet, competent, and possessed with a deadly six-gun accuracy, the archivist could face the threat with real (reel) panache!

Out With the Old, In With the New

For decades librarians and archivists have been microfilming newspapers and then discarding the originals. This practice seems to have been universally accepted in the past because under the right storage conditions microfilm can last over 300 years, while a newspaper will become brittle within months. Again, writer Nicholas Carr was one of the first to decry the practice of discarding newspapers, and if I recall correctly he even proposed starting a private archive to store stacks and stacks of old issues from various publishers. If true, this practice seems even more quaint when we consider the modern practice of scanning the microfilm for digital image storage, a format that allows free text searching and all kinds of research possibilities. But wait before you go softly into that good night. Paper has something a digital image will never have; a demonstrable authenticity as to the information available to the planet at a certain time and place. Take that, Mr. Information Scientist!!!!!

Use It, or Lose It

There are those who believe that the millennials are so mesmerized by their electronic toys that they no longer can compose, or comprehend, an English sentence. Abbreviations, phonetic spelling, and anacronyms abound in their personal communications, so much so that a block of text properly spelled and punctuated presents an almost Byzantine puzzle that defies their feeble efforts at decoding. Of course none of this has been proven, or even suggested, by scientific researchers, but that is no obstacle here. In the world of True Archives, we can take our anecdotal sampling of reading-challenged youngsters and extrapolate a future devoid of literate humans. Like the Eloi in "The Time Machine," those who come after us will be more akin to lotus eaters than ravenous scholars. What can be done about this abandonment of deep reading?

The Devil is in the Details

I love comparing the Information Scientist to the Devil. So much evil all wrapped up in one nice little straw man. What could be more nasty than someone who destroys books? The image of brown shirted storm troopers gleefully torching piles of books is one of the more enduring symbols of evil in the twentieth century, but the image of the Prince of Darkness is even more broad when one wishes to illustrate an ongoing effort to make the world miserable. Oh, don't worry, I will get around to depicting the Information Scientist as a Nazi in due time, but meanwhile here are a few hellish interpretations for your enjoyment.

Attention Spans, or Lack Thereof

As I understand it there is little solid research to demonstrate the alleged shortened attention span of millennials due to their increasing reliance on electronic devices. Writers such as Nicholas Carr have presented compelling arguments to advance the theory, but it seems the scientific community is far from agreeing on the subject. Indeed, I have seen some studies that suggest more of a subject's brain is engaged while playing a video game than when doing deep text reading. However, in my world of True Archives I don't have to cite factual studies. It is my opinion that the digital age is making us stupid, and that Information Scientists revel in the growing dependency on their Frankenstein monsters.

The Plot Against the Book

In addition to inventing the generic villain "Information Scientist," it has been necessary to concoct a global conspiracy against print to warn people about. In all truth, I don't see how the accelerating pace of print obsolescence we are observing in American higher education could be done any more efficiently if there actually was such a plot. As libraries continue to weed collections to gain floor space for more computers, and as millennials continue to foster reading habits that prefer bite (byte) sized chunks of text, the future for the codex looks dark indeed. So dark that one can almost imagine a world where a cabal of information scientists meet secretly to plan the destruction of the last printing press on earth.

The Archivist and Accessioning

Aside from my tiresome rant against the rising tide of print disposal and the shortened attention span of the millennials, my covers sometimes display aspects of daily life for old school archivists like myself. In my twenty-seven years in the profession I have found a growing trend among those who hold collections of manuscripts and books to overvalue their worth. This is odd, since all the signs around us are pointing to a world where print has no value at all, and where books donated to libraries are simply put directly into book sales or chucked into recycling bins. Perhaps the misconception of donors regarding the value of their materials is due to the influence of high profile auctions, or television programs like Antiques Roadshow, where astronomical prices are set on rarities. This puts pressure on archivists like myself to tread a careful line between convincing the donor their material has worth for research, but little value on the open market. Negotiating can be a very tricky business, and so I present . . .

Biblioposers vs. Archivists

I coined the term "biblioposer" to describe those information scientists who want it both ways. The biblioposer is an information scientist who never tires of presenting his profession as the arbiters of the internet while simultaneously gushing over his role as a custodian of books. To be fair, the two functions are not mutually exlusive, but there seems to me something hypocritical about working tirelessly to replace print while expressing one's love of its format. Biblioposers are great advocates of Kindles and their ilk, the electronic toys that are supposed to replace the codex for the dwindling masses who still find pleasure in deep reading. I suppose they take this stance because embracing hand held computers represents the middle ground between the excesses of the digital age and the slower pace of analog perusal. Make no mistake, though. The biblioposer is only pretending to love books, while working overtime to destroy them.

The Information Scientist as a Straw Man Villain

Who can we rage against when we find the weather or the tide does not suit us? Are these not natural occurrences that, outside of a religious explanation, have no source of responsibility? It is much the same with the "Information Age," a natural process set in motion by human innovation that has increased the access to ideas and images far beyond what Gutenberg or any of his contemporaries would have envisioned. There is no one person, or group of persons, to "blame" for the death of print, the increasing irrelevancy of the codex, or even the shortened attention spans of our younger planetary citizens. That is why I have invented the "Information Scientist" as the nebulous cause of all this change, and presented him/her as an evil entity focused on nothing less than the destruction of our collective heritage. In setting up this straw man I have been assisted by graduate schools of Library Science (of which I am an alum) who have jettisoned the word "library" from their institutional labels. (Contemporary librarians seem almost embarrassed of the title, and bemoan its branding connotations with dusty shelves of books and stern faced dowagers who shush the noisy.) Now that that the formerly named library schools are churning out information scientists rather than librarians, they seem obsessed with presenting their graduates as modern, a-go-go professionals whose internet savvy qualifies them to be the mediators in any person's search for relevant material online. The problem with this image is that contemporary internet users really see little need for the intervention of a third party to tell them if their Google hits are trustworthy or not. Indeed, the upcoming generation is rapidly becoming capable of finding anything on the internet that they want without instruction, and a growing number realize their search results are better vetted by those whose education is rooted in the discipline at hand. Thus the librarian, in his transformation into an information scientist who jumps between the user and the computer to claim authority as a judge of its quality, is doomed from the start. In other words...

Introductory

This blog will be a place where I can display, and interpret, all of the altered pulp magazine and comic book covers that I have created over the last few years.  I am a working, "old school" archivist who arranges and describes three-dimensional, information-bearing objects.  To put it another way, I analyze and interpret documents and photographs to create inventories that assist historians, genealogists, and other interested parties in finding them.  When I first started in the business in 1987, computers were just starting to take over the world and Al Gore had yet to invent the internet.  I learned a way to describe materials in large groups, called "series," and create finding aids that would point to relevant materials in the most general way, usually by listing folder titles found within individually numbered boxes.

But something happened over the last twenty-seven years, and I am not convinced it is a good thing.  Desktop computers, and the networking of the same through the internet, has turned my profession upside down.  No longer are people content to actually read a finding aid inventory, they now demand to see relevant documents on screen, just like the latest YouTube cat video or their friend's Facebook postings.  This has forced archivists like me from the previous generation to begin slowing down our traditional work to satisfy an endless stream of requests for individual images, and trying to meet these demands by the millennial generation is much like feeding peanuts to pigeons from a park bench; they will never be satisfied. 

To vent my frustration at this situation, and to whine endlessly about what I see as the demise of deep reading and literacy to be found among the millennials, I began altering magazine covers to reflect my angst.  This blog will allow those covers to be viewed by the same people I am mocking, and the irony of using the internet to complain about technology is certainly not lost on me.  So, without further ado, here is the first cover I ever created to point out the tensions between the traditional practice of my profession, and the unsavory developments that are altering it, and society, forever.