The Proximity of Distance and The Continuing Education of Librarians

Dear reader,

There was something symbolic about the topic of the 7th annual meeting of the CASLIN seminar, the proceedings of which you have in front of you. At least for me. In earlier introductions to seminar proceedings I had found it interesting to place the present event in the context of CASLIN's short but rich history. Once again, a bit of history is most illuminating. It was 10 years ago this June that I initiated the first, tentative moves to help Czech libraries and it will be 10 years in the late Fall of 2002 that the initial CASLIN project was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York. Several years into the implementation, when the original project had passed its zenith and the new CASLIN Plus projects had taken off at full throttles, I was hit by the unpleasant realization that all these efforts could potentially amount to yet another case of "much to do about nothing." The belated cry of "Eureka" was precipitated by an unpleasant dream that was clearly a response to a status quo that kept staring me in the face. It was late January, I had just returned from my visit to all the participating libraries and I was just about to leave Prague for home and the Spring semester at my College. As is often the case with dreams, I don't remember the imagery but I do recall the affect. I woke up startled and in a cold sweat: what was the point of arguing about various library standards or, with the vendor, over what went wrong with system localization or, with ministers and rectors, over budgets or with library directors over the merits of library consortia, if the librarians themselves remained unaffected by the change? What would be the use of offering all the new possibilities to the reader if, when he or she stepped up to the circulations desk, they got the same short shrift, that dismissive treatment they had been accustomed to up to now? Of the several incidents that played their part in, what may soon seem like pre-history, two had clearly sunk in. The first has all the characteristic features of a rumor chain in which a friend of mine, a professor at Charles University, asked me on behalf of a colleague of hers who knew that my friend knew me, to explain whether the following was true: she, the colleague that is, responding to a notice that a book she had ordered was waiting for her at the circulation desk, received the following "confidential" advice from the attending librarian when she went to pick it up: "Lady, I suggest you photocopy it because, once the books are on the computer, we are going to stop lending them." "Was this true?," the friend of my friend demanded. "You must know, since you are behind the whole thing anyway."

I explained as best I could what would one day, perhaps, be the case and where I thought the information got garbled. Of course I had no idea where it got garbled nor what, in this story, was itself true. But then again, as is the case with rumor, the truth is of lesser importance than the fact of it. Regardless of who said what to whom and what the source was, the fact remained that such was the educated public's view of the library services and of the circulation desk.

My second source of concern came out of conversations I started to have with young people working in libraries, often associated with our projects, who were also enrolled in degree programs in library science. Judging by what they had to say, it seemed as if they were living out the not uncommon contradiction: What they were learning on the job was unrelated and way ahead of what they were studying in their degree programs.

My dream, like the encounters it reflected, was obviously not just my nightmare. Though it brought home to me, what was obvious to others, that the availability and retention of well-trained librarians are more than just a key ingredient of a well functioning library. It was and will continue to be a key problem for all the Czech and Slovak libraries undergoing the revolution in technical and public services. If anything, it became abundantly clear that the human resource issue was hitting crisis proportions. And not only in the CASLIN projects or for other libraries in these two countries. It was a serious issue for all the libraries of the former Warsaw Pact countries. In fact, as it was explained to me later, this problem was just as chronic throughout all the highly developed, post-industrial countries.

The topic received serious attention in 1997 at a Warsaw conference sponsored by the Mellon Foundation to discuss the experiences with library automation in the Czech and Slovak republics, Poland and Hungary. We heard discussions of staffing patterns and staff preparation for automation or human resource management. But I also learned about new, innovative efforts to augment the entrenched library education programs, such as the program in Torun, Poland.

The original CASLIN projects had a built in educational component, funded separately by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which aimed to cover and encourage three important activities. First and foremost came the training of the system librarians and through them, the training of the staff in the new library automation system. This training was provided by the vendors (ExLibris and, in the case of LINCA, the Czech provider of BIBIS). While we may have underestimated the enormity of the task, we certainly underestimated it's cost. And not only the financial cost. The learning curve was high, the software itself unsettled and the timing difficult to manage. Nevertheless, it is the one area in which the need for continuing, technical education of librarians was first tackled and toughened out. Everybody learned a lot about the perils and importance of learning from this hands-on experience. The second aim was to help introduce libraries to the importance of public relations for, the argument was, if the libraries are going to change and take on a new, key role in the information-obsessed world, it had to be able to represent itself to the public and even educate it, i.e., play it's part in preparing its the new users. The results of this undertaking varied tremendously and, I will dare say today, the degree of success or failure was itself a clear though complicated indication of how foresightful and genuinely interested the leadership was in the re-invigorated library system (the difference between the two countries in the 1990s in this instance, as well as others, was particularly striking).

Initiating an annual CASLIN seminar series was our third aim. The apparent success of this undertaking is amply documented by the simple fact that they have continued to take place way beyond the initially projected (and budgeted) three years. And I encourage the reader to look at the earlier published proceedings to get a sense of the topics covered. As I noted last year, the organization of the most recent seminars has undergone an important shift: they are as much about the ongoing projects in Czech and Slovak libraries as they are about the exposure to cutting edge developments presented by foreign experts. And this year's seminar was no exception. In fact, and this is indeed the reason for my historical detour, it is not only logical and but also very satisfying that the Luhaeovice seminar was devoted to the very idea of the continuing education of librarians. Which is why, considering my bad dream of years ago, I would even call it symbolic.

The call for new and invigorating approaches to all forms and stages of education has become a rallying cry in all regions of the world. It may not be far fetched to suggest that it matches the call of environmentalism as one of the key issues of the present era and for good reason: Both of them are guiding principles that increased globalization will have to contend with. The proliferation of regional conflict, abject poverty, the increased use of torture, the senseless slaughter of hungry, innocent bystanders all of this feeding the insatiable greed of the pompous few, is matched by an increased awareness of these events. To a nauseating degree, as we sit in our comfortable chairs and serf the net or watch the news and wonder whether this horror has anything to do with us. Of course it does, it has everything to do with us. As does the fact the wealth and poverty of nations is transnational and the culture we call our own is as much identical with that of distant others as it is different from that of our own neighbors. It is not just the international quality of production and consumption of popular culture, to take one example, it is also the fact that the illicit drug trade connects crime in Prague with crime in New York and, worse, shows up positively in the GNP of both countries. It is not so much the case that the world is turning into one undifferentiated stream of consumer products but rather that the established social, political and cultural boundaries are being hotly contested and radically redrawn through a multiplicity of means among which the new information technologies play and will continue to play a transforming part, most likely exceeding the impact that the increased speed and decreased relative cost of transportation has had over the past century and a half.

Only fools (and, unfortunately, there are a few among those who occupy decision making positions) would deny the effect that this has on education and, to get to the point of this year's seminar, on the role of libraries and on their own educational needs. As we struggle with the imparting of basic skills we are faced with new ones, such as computer literacy, which is becoming more essential to every day life, to work and even to survival than knowing the special techniques of one's trade or, for that matter, driving a car. In fact, as many skills become obsolete, unless we are ourselves ready to retool and society has the means to do so, so will we. But what does a general education consist of? And where are the sources of knowledge and who is there to help us figure our way through the ever increasing information overload?

Just a few years ago we spoke about libraries without walls, we must now pay attention, as librarians, to classrooms without walls. Obviously, the former did not imply that there would be no need to renovate and rebuild library buildings, although it would affect what the needs of the new building would be. It did mean that these buildings were more akin to hubs within wide networks of libraries, librarians and resources accessible in a multiplicity of formats to a much broader, even international, network of users, that libraries would be driven by "just in time" as well as the traditional "just in case" strategies. The same holds for education: we need more and better equipped classrooms and not just for the young but also for the middle aged adults and even the retirees. As school buildings include information gateways in the form of internet access and mediated classrooms, the they also engage in long distance learning using the same technologies to provide access to their students in distant places and at other times. Continuing education is soon becoming the norm, not the exception, and the role of information technologies is once again the factor that is making this possible but, also, driving this need. In order to stay "on top" I must stay informed and for that I must know how to work and live in the world increasingly governed by information technologies. This is not and must not be thought of as a privilege for the select few.

The analogy is not accidental, it speaks to an increased mutual dependence of both. As the character of the library changes, educational institutions are need to reassess the central role that library services are to play in the educational process. This is most obviously felt at my own university in three areas. First, the classic library has absorbed what had become separate but overlapping divisions: academic computing services and audio-visual and instructional technology services. The result is a single, integrated organization we call Library and Information Technology Services (LITS for short). And you can read more about this process in the presentation by our director, Susan Perry, who spearheaded this transformation. Second, librarians are increasingly more integrated into the classroom and course work, whether they conduct a class in the first few weeks of a semesters course to introduce the students to the use of information for the specific needs of the topic under study (For example, in my course on linguistics I have a librarian responsible for the social sciences give a presentation on sources and search engines, etc. relevant to this topic) or offer their own workshops on, for example, web design, presentations or internet publishing. Third, and this is both of critical importance and controversial with some of our faculty, librarians are placed in the position of teaching professors how to use the new technologies for their research and teaching. On the other side of the coin, librarians are faced with the continues need to train and retrain to barely keep up with new technologies within a confusion of claims over their use and merit. And this too takes place in a multiplicity of ways: 1. in technical services new skills are needed to process documents and with the continuous upgrade of systems or, even change to new systems, one's job must include ongoing attendance in training workshops. It also requires keeping an eye on new technological developments and even in participating in their development or modification for specific uses. This is particularly true, for example, in areas of conservation and digitization. 2. In public services, reference librarians are de facto acquisition librarians as well since, as information brokers, their knowledge of what is available and how to find it is not confined to printed reference catalogues or other forms of databases. It requires continuous, self motivated web research in the field of one's expertise, and this is no easy task under the best of circumstances. They are also put in the position of teaching users how to use the new technologies without which they cannot find what they are looking for. Simultaneously, they are placed in a position of working with clients who know more then they do. Add to this the fact that, increasingly, all this takes place "on-line" rather than in "face-to-face" interaction and you are looking at a very complex situation in which what it means "to be present" and who is "the teacher" and who is "the pupil" has taken on new dimensions. Continuous education and long distance learning will increasingly enable the new rules and redefine the established rules of the game.

All this sounds just fine and dandy. The reality of it poses new challenges that are once again costly. It will take time and money and much dedication and, what worries me most, it may receive but short shrift-but much ideological hoopla-from those who depend most on a steady flow of newly educated citizenry: the government and the private sector.

The work represented in the present volume reflects the work of several libraries and librarians in the United States, England as well as in the Czech and Slovak republics. They cover a whole series of initiatives, from library curriculum development, continuous education of librarians and the regrouping of libraries and IT services, to library centered initiatives in long distance learning. Once again, this seminar has presented a balance of views on new trends at home and abroad including the concluding panel discussion, in the effective "fish-bowl" arrangement introduced last year, that gave space to a uncompromising exchange of specific ideas, complaints and calls for a more comprehensive and concerted efforts to remedy the situation in both the Czech and Slovak republics. And, you may ask, how come I know this when I myself was absent from the seminar this year? It answer is simple: I watched the panel discussion last week, on the internet, on my laptop, in my small study hidden inside the stacks of our university library. How telling!

As always, the success of the CASLIN seminar is the work of everyone who took part in it. Including the ever gracious hotel management and their employees, the drivers, the sponsors who helped pay the bills and the incredible Mr. Ota Brídl, out interpreter of years. The guest lecturers were terrific and their workshops, like their talks, much appreciated. But special credit must go to MOLIN's Training center for Continuing Education for Librarians in the Czech Republic who hosted the event. The topic of this year's seminar was the brain child of Pavla Kánská (MU) who, together with Dana Lošťáková (UP), Hana Študentová (SVKOL), Gabriela Krčmařová (NKCR) and Zuzana Řepišová (MU) formed the organizational board. Saša Škyříková and Jitka Zahradníková kept a keen eye on logistics and Martin Svoboda, with the assistance of Zuzana Řepišová, ran the labor intensive "fish-bowl" discussion.

As for myself, with all due respect for the wonders of long distance proximity, I will always prefer the face-to-face encounters over the virtual ones. I missed not being able to sit in one room with everybody else and promise to make up for it next time around.

Andrew Lass
Jižní Hudličky

October 31, 200