Manchester Debate

Ladies and Gentlemen and Directors of Computing, I have the very great honour to propose the motion that Librarians are better equipped to run merged information services than directors of computing. You will note that the motion does not address the issue of whether merged services are appropriate. That is an old battleground. It simply asks who is better equipped to manage such services. I hope to represent to you that by nature, inclination and training librarians are more literate, more numerate, more institutionally adept, more capable of handling stress, more sociable and with a greater grasp of reality than the tenuous realism of what I must charitably call their peers and as such are better equipped to manage such services. Had this been a lecture its title might have been Librarians are from Venus, Directors of Computing will be coming from Mars but have stopped off for a couple of quick halves on the way.

You see before you the acceptable face of Directors of Computing, Dr Jordan. The acceptable face and yet, when I phoned him up earlier this week to have a little discussion about the nature and content of today’s debate, the cut and thrust of elegant discourse, the ready rapier-like wit of the academic, the excitement of intellectual challenge, all that he promised me was that his talk would consist of ten minutes of personal abuse. In fact, despite the caring exterior, like all computer managers he lacks the power of conversation, but not regrettably the power of speech. And so I, like the Welsh rugby coach must get my retaliation in first.

There he sits, pink of cheek, cuddly of figure and crumpled of suit, the Frank Dobson of UCISA, attempting to explain why academic services are safe in the hands of computer managers although waiting times on the network keep growing despite the service levels promised in the manifesto and the millions of pounds poured into ever larger networks and unshielded twisted pair. I thought that unshielded twisted pair was Malcolm Read and Ron Rogerson until I began to manage a converged service.

But there is a less acceptable face of computing. Recent work at Cranfield Business School has identified computing managers as losers, unable to form relationships except with valves, men with no raincoats but dirty Macintoshes. You recognise them around you. Shirts open at the neck and sandals open at the toe, unable to tie a simple knot at either end of their anatomy; the last bastion of the tanktop, where the only flair is in their nostrils. And is it not ironic that in a trade (for I cannot call it a profession) a trade called computing, they cannot count beyond one, having failed to move from binary to secondary school. A trade which threatens to bring the world to its knees next year because they cannot conceive of a number higher than 99? A trade which promises that at the end of the millenium the lifts and car park barriers will stop working. Well I have news for them. The lifts don’t bloody work anyway and the car park is always full. What they lack in intelligence they more than make up for in stupidity. One of the few merits of SCONUL is the statistics which it has kept for over a generation. There are standards and norms for libraries but not computing centres. Computer Centre Directors have no idea of comparative institutional spend or space norms. Yet how can they adequately massage statistics unless they know the numbers. And so I put it to you that Directors of Computing are in fact innumerate .

They lack the strategic vision and world view of librarianship, for which a century is but a grain of sand. Computer managers are little more than horny [pause]- handed sons of toil whose vision of optimal office automation is networked coffee. And if librarians are like their pets aren’t computing directors like their machines:

They have a lot of data but are still clueless

They look nice and shiny til you get them home

It’s always necessary to have a backup

The lights are on but no one’s home

Only computer scientists could have invented the URL, the only form of organising knowledge which makes the Library of Congress classification scheme look elegant.

Then there are their literary tastes. I know librarians who still publish on Montesquieu, who read classical literature in the original, who sit on panels awarding modern literary prizes; indeed one has but to mention Philip Larkin to demonstrate the rich literary mainstream of which librarians feel a part. And what great giants of life and literature do computing staff cling to? Science fiction authors. Computing Centre staff trade well thumbed and pizza stained copies of paperback books about fantasy worlds and fantasy lives since they cannot cope with reality. And what great new genre have they brought us? MUDs, Multi User Dungeons where they can indulge in fantasy and role play rather than face the real problems of real users and vicariously achieve the success which eludes them in real life. So I put it to you that Computer Centre Directors are culturally inept.

And how about social skills. Well having just returned from the conference of the Scottish Library Association I cannot in all honesty claim that Librarians display greater sobriety than Directors of Computing, but it is probably fair to say that this is the only form of what in Islington we call social intercourse in which they indulge. I have been to conferences of librarians enlivened by Tai Chi sessions, by the singing of Celtic laments and harpists, by poetry readings even at breakfast, whereas at Computer Conferences the ability to recall the events of the previous evening is generally considered a social solecism and Dean Martin’s view that if you lie on the floor to drink you can’t fall over is all too evidently approved of. Concepts such as user surveys and customer care, the integrated approach to user support and indeed the recognition that users matter comes from a long centuries old appreciation by librarians that users are at least a necessary evil, whereas computer centre directors assume not that the god is in the machine, but that the god is the machine. It is indicative of their responsiveness to change that Directors of Computing cling to departments called computer centres while librarians increasingly talk of library services. Compare this to Librarians. More often than not their importance has been recognised in university statutes as officers of the university. The roll call of librarians who have moved on to greater things, often as political leaders is a glittering one. Professional training in librarianship was undoubtedly a formative influence in the careers of Mao Tse Tung and Golda Meir, Casanova and the Iron Butterfly Imelda Marcos, even such great actors as Arnold Schwarzenneger. (and if you don’t envy his acting, envy his bank balance) Can you name a single computer manager who has risen to greater things?

Management skills are another obvious area of comparison. We need not dwell on these and I offer only an examination question to justify the claim that Directors of Computing have no management skills. “compare and contrast the management skills shown in the MAC initiative and the eLib programme.”

Converged services are now the norm in British universities, apply in 20% of American universities and are beginning to appear in Europe. In six cases out of seven it is someone trained as a librarian who heads the service. For Dr Jordan to speak against the motion requires him Canute like to oppose the tides of history. And the proportions are hardly surprising. The Cranfield study shows computer managers as a cadre of people more comfortable with machines than users, with no institutional loyalty, their gods are UNIX and Macintosh, Java and Oracle, usually with a degree in a related but inappropriate discipline such as physics and therefore insecure in their professional roles. Roles as ephemeral as the manufacturer of wing struts for biplanes, or hula hoop factory managers. And it is a discipline with little practical grounding even after half a century with computing staff unlikely to trouble the thoughts of the editors of learned journals. But mark the librarian. 4000 years of professionalism, degree courses even in such disreputable quarters as University College London, a huge and flourishing professional literature. Computing literature resides in unreadable software manuals which contain such gems as “press any key to continue or any other key to stop.”

And so I would ask you to reflect on the fact that Directors of Computing with certain notable exceptions such as my colleagues at the University of Strathclyde and at King’s College London are innumerate, illiterate, incontinent and inappropriate to the senior management positions which are merged information services. The very name information services gives the game away. IT managers think computer literacy is knowing the phone number of the nearest Sun representative.

And so I beg to propose the motion that Librarians are better equipped to run merged information services than Directors of Computing.

I would then ask Dr Jordan to speak his mind – for he has nothing to lose, he is after all, as informed as a newt.

Summary

The advantage of a library background is both a sense of literature and history compared with those who see Terry Pratchett as the acme of civilised reading. Librarians in the audience will be familiar with the most famous son of the Stoke Newington Dissenting Academy – and that’s not the forerunner of the University of North London – Isaac Watts, who largely gave the hymn its place in English worship. He was a sort of Nostradamus it transpires, foreshadowing not just convergence, but this very debate and even one of its speakers:

He speaks first of convergence:

There is a land of pure delight

Where saints immortal reign

Infinite day excludes the night

And pleasures banish pain..

The sheer quality of multi-skilled high status library staff or saints is clearly seen.

And compared to computing services – known here as Canaan

So to the Jews old Canaan stood

While Jordan rolled between

He goes on to describe the unconverged, afraid to move to the promised land:

But timorous mortals start and shrink

To cross the narrow sea

And linger shivering on the brink

And fear to launch away

He then makes a direct appeal to this audience to support the motion:

Could you but climb where Moses stood

And view the landscape o-er,

Not Jordan’s stream (stream of nonsense), nor deaths cold flood

Should fright us from the shore.

The last time I saw Dr Jordan, he was walking down Lovers Lane holding his own hand.