Episode 10: Data to the Rescue?

Episode 10: Data to the Rescue?
Sept 2021
 Dave Lankes & Mike Eisenberg

We agree on something “data to protect you" is an oxymoron. Data can be dangerous–particularly in the hands of corporations, governments, hackers, scammers, & even well-intentioned non-profits, public service providers, and even libraries and librarians. Public libraries monitor patrons on social media to market services to better “meet needs.” School libraries create student Google profiles and capture user data. Academic libraries seek to address mental health issues identified through analysis of user data. We understand the well-meaning intentions to help. But do we really want anyone to be able to collect and aggregate all this data about anyone & everyone?

To make sense of the whole “data” thing, we are joined by Megan Oakleaf, Associate Professor, Syracuse University iSchool. Megan researches & teaches library value/impact, outcomes assessment, learning analytics, evidence-based decision making, information literacy instruction, and information services.  She is also Director of Online Engagement. Learn with us about data use and misuse.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Welcome to Libraries Lead the New Normal, where we are going to have some conversations about data, libraries, and whatever else comes up. I want to thank Ace Chicago Events, and also these days we're bringing support in from the Bowdenfolio at the University of Texas iSchool. This is a position where myself, David Lankis, and Mike Eisenberg, emeritus professor for the University of Washington School of Information, get together and yell at each other until we pretend we agree. We also bring in really smart people like we have today, which we will get to. But that's what we're here to talk about. Mike, what's up?

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Yeah, well, before I get to the what's up, this is podcast number 10. So I won't go through the whole reason for this podcast spiel, but I do want to say that uh we got to this point because in late 2020, Dave and I realized that we were both doing a lot of thinking about the life-altering changes that we're all living through and said podcasts are the rage these days. Why not formalize our conversations in a podcast format as we share and argue about what seems to be going on and what it might it all mean for people, life, the universe, and all things in between. And since Dave and I both subscribe to the It's All Information philosophy, and we wear our information-colored glasses and our huge library advocates, our unique take on things around us should logically be from a library and information perspective. So that's what we're doing here at Libraries Lead in the New Normal. We talk about disruptions, concerns, and issues, and changes related to library and information stuff. This podcast will be about 45 to 50 minutes. There are three parts. The what's up with Dave and Mike, the main topic for discussion. And finally, we'll highlight our two awesome library thinking. So let's get right to it. Dave, what's up with you?

SPEAKER_03 2:16

Well, unfortunately, what's up with me is my son is going to college. Now that's not an unfortunate thing, but I have to pay for it. That's the unfortunate thing. Uh, but we are this is orientation. And uh orientation is there's nothing like a good college orientation to show how well-meaning, well-intentioned human beings can truly create hell on earth for other people. What I mean by that is that orientation is where you go and say, well, this is how the buses work, and this is how you register for classes, and this is career services, and right, everything of a four-year college experience distilled down into 10 minutes. And what's hilarious is that every one of these presentations begins with a group telling you how they've used technology to make life easier for the for the college students. So campus security gets up and says, we know you're worried about security, no problem, here's an app. And then Career Services gets up and says, Oh, we know that you're worried about finding a job, no problem, here's an app. And then if you want to connect to your learning management system, here's an app, but the app doesn't work so well, so you'll also have to use the website. And while you're on the website, you have to go to the My Medical portal to input your COVID information. And after that, you have to sign up for Handshake because that's how you're going to be mentoring. And by the way, we've launched a new mentor. And by the end of it, I'm not kidding you. My son had to download 10 different apps. There were at least 40 different face social media handles put out, plus a ton of websites, of which he has no idea what they're for. And everyone was trying individually to make life better, but because there was no coordination, no working together, the only thing that they had to standardize was it all used the right color and it all used the right typeface as approved by University Communications. And so the WhatsApp for me, what's up for me is really just this sort of, and to realize as a director of a library science program, I was part of the problem as well because we were designing how what we put on our web page and new landing sites, and we never thought about how the orientation and the whole life in this university was going to impact the individual. So it was a sobering, sobering moment. What's up with you? I love it.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Yeah, I tell you, there's a company in that, and it's called the Aggregate App, you know, the one app that combines them all together and does that. Well, with me, um, I'm reading my yesterday Sunday New York Times, and there among the various articles and stuff, there's a thing about meetings of all things. And, you know, um way why do we have meetings and how do we improve meetings and all that stuff? And that's always been one of my bugaboos. When I was a dean, um, I would never allow information to be communicated at meetings. That had to be done before. And then the meetings were for deliberation, discussion, and decisions. And it all happened to happen quickly because we all say, what do we value? We value each other. We value people, we value getting together, we value talking to each other. How do we do that? Well, we meet. Those are called meetings, but everybody hates meetings. People shouldn't hate meetings. It's because of the way we run meetings. So it got me thinking about all that. But of course, I'm a frustrated retired person these days, and I have no meetings to run anymore, except with you, Dave. And that's why I'm trying to organize a meeting for us. But in all seriousness, you know, it it sounds like your your app thing that we, as we're thinking about going back to physical face-to-face interaction, what types of meetings do we need and what's going to happen with people that are working remotely and Zoom and all those kinds of things. And I think we really need to rethink how we have done this whole bit of getting together to share information, to deliberate, to make decisions, and to move ahead. And of course, the we have a wonderful example in that. It's called the Congress of the United States, because they do it so well. Um, so that's what's uh that's what's up with me.

SPEAKER_03 6:44

So you're gonna say that January 6th was just a large open format meeting? There, there you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Just in order to uh to share some information. All right. So we're gonna take a very, very short break. Uh, and then we're gonna come back, and Dave is gonna introduce our topic and our secret guest speaker. So, Yanni, take away the music. Here we go. Three, two, one, music.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

The use of data, data collection, data services, what we do with it is a regular topic, whether we're talking about schooling, whether we're talking about meetings, whether we're talking about materials and sharing and people, et cetera, data is a constant topic. And so today we're gonna take on a specific, two specific angles, one of which is the data to protect you oxymoron. That is that we really see a lot of times that people look at how we can use data to anticipate potentially negative events and therefore jump in to save them. We see this situation where we want to get collect data so that we can anticipate everything from insurrections to where we can anticipate potential bottlenecks, we can anticipate all these other things. And increasingly we want we are looking at data as means of um potentially looking at behavioral interventions. When we look at protected populations, we look at children, we look at college students, we look at different folks, and the idea is that if we can simply look into what they're doing in their data, we can prevent them from getting themselves into trouble, from hurting themselves, from hurting others, et cetera. And we want to talk about the role that libraries play in this. And so uh a couple of examples that have come up is that there was a discussion, uh, for example, about can we look at the kinds of articles and materials that are being read, and can database vendors then push that back to academic librarians so that they could use it to potentially do behavioral intervention on a regular basis? When we look at um uh K-12 settings and increasingly with one-to-one programs where we're handing out Chromebooks or iPads or MacBooks, you know, we're using a we're collecting a lot of data in uh on K-12 students and uh things like the Google Suite that's used in K-12. Google works really hard and says that we don't share that with the world and we don't share it for advertising sake, but they are collecting that data to not improve the product, but look at how they can do it for security. I'm on a panel here in South Carolina where we help issue get out broadband and funding for broadband to K-12 schools all around it, and we found that you know what used to be providing broadband was you know how to connect people to information resources. These days, a lot of bandwidth allocations and funding is going into security equipment, going into sharing video surveillance, going into shared locks, et cetera. And so we're seeing data being used in this surveillance. We're seeing it used for a positive or at least stated positive uh attribute of trying to help people or avoid potential problems. And this is increasingly coming as an issue to librarians because for a long time either we didn't want to touch data because we were worried about privacy, or we didn't know how to use that data. And at the same time, where's a lot of pressure, particularly in higher education, on how do we use data to prove and show our value? Right. That's a long way to go for the idea that we want to talk about data and how you know, how we can use it effectively to protect, but at the same time, maintain values and principles of librarianship and have those work within a larger setting. And of course, this means that normally Mike and I could begin yelling at each other and using different examples on a regular basis, but for a change, we thought we'd bring in someone who knows what the hell they're talking about. And so um, I've asked a good friend of ours to join us, Megan Oakleaf, who's an associate professor at the iSchool at Syracuse University, uh, where she is the director of online engagement at the iSchool and formerly director of instructional quality. Her research area is if you haven't seen her work, you must see her work on looking at academic library value, looking at the use of assessment and evaluation techniques. And I know in that area, particularly in higher education, there has been a uh regular and rather uh active dialogue about use of data in the services we provide and how we use them. So, Megan, are you there?

SPEAKER_00 11:35

I am, but I think knowing what the hell I'm talking about is setting a pretty high bar for uh sometimes. Not on this podcast.

unknown 11:44

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Very well, very well. And I sympathize with the uh new student orientation story that you told, Dave. I I was a part of a um grant a couple of years ago. Um was called Community College Libraries and Academic Support for Student Success. And after a few rounds of um survey and interview data, we um I was on the advisory board and the the team of researchers got around and decided that what we really needed to do was have libraries design an easy button or a single search, single service button for all of the things on campus because students have to you know navigate all of those different apps now, but always has been different services. So um, that was a great story to tell. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 12:32

Did did they do it?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

No, I don't think so. No, so that this was uh this was a project that involved many community colleges, and I would have to check in with some of them to see where they're at. There was a number of um services and suggestions uh that rose to the top, and then they went back to the students to find out which ones resonated the most. And so the it's Ithaca SNR did the research along with um an IMLS funded project with several community colleges, including um Northern Virginia, Pierce College, and and others. So uh we'll have to check with Christy Flynn and some other folks on on how that's going.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Can you talk a little bit about it? Mike.

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Oh, go ahead, Mike. No, this this is Mike. We're friends too, not just we are friends.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

We are friends. Should I tell the story about how I learned about you? Yeah, I've known I've I told Mike the first time I met him that uh I had known about him since I was in high school because my mom was a school librarian. So like introduced to this name a long time ago. Anyway, so I joke.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Yeah, no, you don't joke, and it's it's okay. It's fine. Um, but my my thing, I wanted to jump right in because of what you just kind of talked about that relates to how Dave introduced the topic of data. Have you noticed, or are you aware in your research and things, uh, just how much more data we are capturing about students on campuses than we ever did before? And what kind of things are we, the libraries and stuff, but also the whole campus doing with that data?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, so that's a that's an enormous question. So I, you know, my my research and the last two grants I've led, the Library Integration and Institutional Learning Analytics or Lila and Connecting Libraries and Learning Analytics for Student Success or Class to IMLS funded projects, has primarily looked at what the library is doing or might do, could do, um, but not currently doing with data. So a lot of um envisioning what might be, which is really hard. It's hard for folks to imagine something that's never existed before rather than some version of what has happened in the past. Um, but one of the things that has come across my radar in doing that work is in talking to others throughout higher ed who are tracking all kinds of things with different access permissions, obviously, for different things, whether it's where a student is via Wi-Fi or other, you know, just location uh focused technologies, um, that's typically only available to uh public safety, right? So if they need to track something down in a case of a of a crime or something like that, there's a lot of those that data available. Other folks are keeping track of um student affairs and engagement data, visits to the dining hall, visits to um uh you know, the rec center, um, thinking about health and wellness, uh, attendance in classes, whether that's um recorded by an instructor or with technology, just all sorts of things. Um, gate count or uh card swipes into buildings, lots of lots of data available. Um in libraries, not so much. Um there data exists, but it's typically hidden in log files and not easily accessible for um understanding the student experience at this point. I mean, obviously we've always had gate counts, we've always had um records of instruction sessions, um, but and unless so like serve other service points like reference or that kind of thing. Interlibrary loan has to keep records, circulation has to keep records. Some places dump it right away, some places don't. So, you know, there's long-standing um practices in place. Most of what my work has been in is in imagining a future in which we could use data more effectively, not just from sort of a deficit perspective of solving problems, although that certainly comes into it, but rather understanding what's going well so that we can replicate that, right? So, not just where is there a problem on the horizon or who is likely to encounter some difficulty, but how do we learn more about what helps students be successful? So, you know, Vincent Tinto, right? Like there's a Syracuse connection, we're all connected to Syracuse. Um, in some of his last um publications that he's written, he talks about how we know so many things about why students leave or aren't successful, but we know far less about what helps people who are able to persist and continue to complete their journeys. Um so he sort of admi uh, I don't know, exhorts us all to figure out what's working well, not just avoiding what's going badly, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 17:28

Well, because there's there's a negative precedent here, right? The the um one of the things that we see in in uh libraries have actually been instrumental in collecting evaluative data around the institution, but primarily in the performance of faculty. Um, you know, talking to a former dean, talking to someone who's in charge of online education before that quality control, talking to someone who's a director of institution, right? The idea that I get regular reports talking about the productivity of my faculty. I get a distribution of tenure track to ratios of in courses and how many are they teaching and how many hours are they producing. You get in terms of tenure requirements, you get the idea of citations and how much are they cited and et cetera. And and so we've quantified faculty in a very interesting way that I worry if we quantify our students in the same way, we'll see the kind same kind of push for productivity that that comes from what we can count as opposed to what we're really trying to get at. Is that am I being paranoid and tinfoiled hat here?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

I don't think you should there's ever like a problem with being a little bit of a paranoid uh person when it comes to technology. I think that's always so I think of myself as um a cautious optimist rather than a productive pessimist. Um I have a lot of hope for the future and what and what might happen, as well as you know, definitely caution around what could go wrong. You know, I think in terms of understanding student experiences with libraries, at least in academic libraries, which is where my area of expertise lies, um, you know, we've we've had lots of different ways of understanding the student experience, um, but all of those ways have some issues, and the collection of data is no different, right? There are issues with that as well. So there's no there's no silver bullet, there's no panacea. But you know, in the ways that we've been trying to understand students, we we have lots, there's lots of problems that exist. So surveys might have really low response rates, they might have non-representative response rates. So that doesn't really, the picture of people who responded doesn't really look like the the the students that were in in academic circles, it would be students, though students that we're trying to connect with, or perhaps um in terms of some of the students we're most interested in hearing from, we don't have enough, um, even if it is a represent representative sample, we don't know, we didn't get enough responses to be able to really understand thoroughly their experience because that might be still be a very low number, sometimes not even reportable in order to protect identities. Um most of our approaches are self-report. So whether it's focus groups, interviews, surveys, those things might not be accurate. They might be what we want to hear depending on how well the instrument is written and how good the facilitator is in probing for like those qualitative approaches. Um speaking of qualitative approaches, many of them have really small samples rather than getting at the whole population. And there's a lot of labor on students to engage in a focus group, a survey that's lengthy, um, an ethnographic approach, you know, that that puts a lot of um, I guess, yeah, I guess the best word for it is labor, just time and energy and and and and generosity of their experience. And so, you know, I think looking at the data is another tool in that toolbox to get more of a um a pop, you know, the an understanding of what the population is really um doing rather than self-report. It should be well, it isn't always like so. If you're looking at easy proxy data, it wouldn't be everyone. It might be just be people off campus depending on campus policies and that sort of thing. But you're looking at a greater number of people, but with less depth, right? So looking at using the data might get you information about where you want to probe more deeply using those other approaches that will tell you why, right? So there's a problem or there's a bubble of success. Let's find out more about those two things, whether it's something that's going, you know, badly or or or going great. Um, let's save the labor uh not only of students, but also of librarians, to to sort of investigate those places, right? We don't start um a health treatment by digging in under the skin and kind of looking around, right? Like you do a blood test first, you do something else first to get a scan on the situation. So, you know, the the other thing is that always comes up is what are we really talking about tracking in terms of students or understanding or recording? And I think that all has to be driven rather than. A let's gather everything and then go on a fish fishing expedition. That's not how we do research, right? We start with research questions or problems to solve or things that we want to answer or respond to. So, you know, the kinds of data that libraries should keep should be driven by those questions as well.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

But I'm worried that, you know, I started this thing with a uh rant about all the apps that my son has to download now. And I think I think most of those are being produced primarily because it's people saying, hey, let's help them. This will make it simpler. Oh, oh, the kids the day these days with their intertubes and their MyFaces. Um, you know, and we produce an app we put in, and then suddenly we go, oh, we didn't realize that we can see every time someone logs in and every time where they are when they log in and the default setting here. And then I think sometimes people happen upon the data they're collecting and they don't necessarily understand the complexity of the situation they're about to walk into.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

So we need to buy ourselves an information professional, right? Like, you know, what's the problem with that app? We need an information professional. And, you know, part of what I've been doing with these projects is asking and gathering librarians together to talk about what do we really need to know and how can we control those things, right? So the second grant that I mentioned, the class grant, um, one of the major outputs of that is an interoperability standard or a library profile of a larger interoperability standard that allows librarians to decide for a particular use of a library space, library resource, library service, interaction with librarians, and so on. What do we want to know and what don't we want to know? And so it's completely custom, the structure is there. It's um like a JSON triple actor action object, student access resource. But you can de-identify any, you know, the any to any level the student from it's a person to it's an undergraduate um student to it's an undergraduate biology major to it's you know Dave's kid, right? So um uh we can also identify or de-identify the resource to access something or access this thing that's on their their syllabus reading list or something under this two-letter LC class or in this database or in this journal. So having conversations about what we need to know versus what we might just like gather. That's that's where you have to design.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Megan, what do we need to know? I mean, what are the what give me three big questions facing academic libraries? And it doesn't have to even be the graduate research library at Stanford, it could be Shoreline Community College in near my house in Seattle. What are what are the big questions that uh uh or or because it seems that uh the student view of library is still very traditional and I'll call it old school. Um uh I could be wrong about that, but uh what are the big questions that we need and what kind of data might white m we turn to?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Right, that's great. That's a great question. So um, you know, I've been expressing it as research questions in the grant work that we did. We express it as user stories. So as a whatever person, I want to know this, that, or the other in order to do this thing, this meet this goal, achieve and you know, fulfill a need, um, achieve whatever. So I can I can give you more than three if you we don't have all night. Um there's about 95, I think, in the Leela report uh written out. And some of them focus on students, others on faculty. Uh we were brainstorming with librarians, so there's a ton focused on what librarians might need to know, institutional researchers, um, senior like senior leaders at an institution, faculty, uh, student success advisors are some of the identities that we focused on. Um, so you know, students might want to know um to what degree they are reading the same kinds of things as their peers in a class, obviously not identified by exactly who in the class, but they might want to know if they're keeping up, right? So if you look at the My Learning Analytics that came out of the University of Michigan iSchool and in partnership with um uh campus units, not the library, at least not yet, um, if the My Learning Analytics tool allows students to look at documents in their course website and see who else has opened or viewed different resources, whether that's lecture content, um PDFs that have been scrolled away in the course, but not like through the library, um, because the library is not participating in that part at this time, um, or the syllabus or any number of things. And they can also scroll that by the grade that the other students are getting. So, what did A students look at? What did B students look at? So when we asked students, um, and we need to go back and continue those dialogues, when we asked students what they might want to know about, that was one of the things. Am I doing what other my peers are doing, right? Especially students who don't have um, who might be first in family and don't have other people to ask about what are these, how do how do I operate? How do what are the rules um uh for success in higher education? And obviously we want to make those rules more transparent and in some cases get rid of those things that are happening because they're unfair on their face. Um, but at the same time, while we try to dismantle those hurdles, we also have to tell students how to how to engage with them and how to overcome them in the meantime as we work at that.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

It sounds like you're crowdsourcing resources instead of curating resources.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Well, in that case, they're the faculty are selecting the resources and then the students can see what they're looking at. Now, that's not that that doesn't have there's no um insight into library resources. And so that's actually an issue at some other institutions where they're trying to use products to integrate like course readings with the library so that their students are going directly into the library databases. But if libraries are not ready to exchange that information, I've talked to at least one institution where the faculty and the instructional designers were horrified to discover that they couldn't learn what the students were accessing in order to design better, right? Because the library is like, well, we don't keep that, right? We don't keep that. Sorry, we can't help you. Um awkward moment to um deal with that.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

But that's right, it doesn't that's the crux. That's that's the pressure point, right? Because I mean the libraries are worried about traditional, you know, privacy and those things that we don't. And so our solution is we don't keep that. And yet the faculty and even the students are saying, wait, we need to know what other people are doing so we can do better. So again, I use the term crowdsourcing, that we can crowdsource the best of the best and let the best of the best bubble up.

unknown 28:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

So I think we have to talk about some of these. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, go ahead. Steve, it's your show. It's your and Mike's show. It's mine.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

It's well, it's just so there was a lovely new business model, and it was a coffee shop that tried to open up. It's around in Asia, and they started to open up in the US, and it was giving away free coffee. And they built on college campuses, and the notion is that students would come in, they would register their student ID with them, they would get free coffee in exchange for that company being able to look at their data. And the idea that people would, you know, wow, that's great. And I remember sitting in a class of freshmen, I said, How many people would be willing to allow the university to sell their data in order to have your tuition? And every student said, We would love it, let's do it. And then I started listing the kinds of things that a university knows about them, like when they came into their dorm room, who they came into their dorm room with, what they were, you know, what time, and what were they looking at on what websites at what time, in what place, on what platform, et cetera. And they started suddenly going, hmm. And so my question is that library that said we don't collect the data. Now, what I hear you saying is if they're saying we don't collect the data because they never sort of thought about it or thought through, and hey, that's a new thought, that's one thing. If they're saying we don't collect that data, we don't share that data because of these values of privacy, right? Those are two same effect, no data, but two very different reasons why. And I'm I'm I'm I'm hearing you say, you know, you can be in that second pool of you may not want to share the data, but you damn well better know why. Is that a fair statement?

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Yeah, I think I think you have to be ready to defend that, you know, and I think the other thing that we're sort of looking at here in this conversation is that faculty and instructional designers that work at your institution are part of the educational team along with librarians. And this idea that librarians don't trust faculty or don't trust student success advisors or don't trust, you know, all the entire the tutorial services, there's a little bit of vocational awe there going on, right? Like only we care about privacy. Forget about those mental health professionals and the and the health center. Like they don't care about privacy. They have no, they're just Johnny come lately to this conversation. So there's, you know, there's a little bit of like we know better than everyone, um, that we I think we need to investigate. If ever, if there are others on our not outside vendors, if there are other people on the educational team taking taking care of students that think that some of this information is valuable so that they can design courses better, like maybe we should like ponder that a little bit and allow that in. And I think also we've got a couple different issues here. So we talk about privacy as this monolithic thing, right? There's not having the data at all. There's anonymizing or despecifying the data, there's having the data but protecting it and keeping it confidential. And are there always breaches? Yes, there are always breaches, but there's lots of things we can do to mitigate that risk, right? We have chief privacy officers that we can work with. We've got, we don't even have to go it alone. In fact, librarians are probably not, in some cases, best positioned to go it alone in terms of keeping the data safe. So we need to think about that. We also need to think about the cost to not having that data in terms of educational equity, right? So we were just talking about understanding the student experience, finding places where the readings didn't get read because students were overwhelmed on week three, or, you know, all the ways that you can redesign curriculum if you know more about the student experience. But we also have in our code of ethics this notion of not just equality, but equity, right? So everyone gets what they need to be successful, not necessarily the same thing for everyone. And so, you know, I think we need to we need to allow the data to tell us about the students' experiences because if we aggregate everything, anonymize everything, average everything, we're gonna design for average. And who is average? White men and sometimes white women, right? So, you know, we leave those people at the margins that are already there and we say, oh, the hell with it. And that that might be predictable for a very white profession to think that we know best. We are gonna keep that data, we're not gonna keep that data at all. Not only we're not gonna keep it and keep it private, we're not gonna keep it at all because we are comfortable with what we're doing, and what we're doing is just fine and dandy. And if we have, we haven't intended to introduce inequities, but if that's the impact of what we've been doing for a long time, and we have reason to believe that that could be the case if we don't have enough diff divergent voices in in our community, um, you know, we're okay with that. Let's just keep going. There's no problem here. There's nothing to see move along. And so, you know, I think if we want to uncover those problems, if we want to help students get over those hurdles and get rid of the hurdles um at the same time, if we want to um design equitable services, we need to think about doing both. This is not a Boolean or, this is a Boolean and, right? We protect data and we can do our work in terms of equity. And to think that we have to choose one or the other is I would say a false choice. And also marginalizes libraries. Yeah. But we can't trust that. Right. When we're uncounted in the total student picture, we we make the total data picture of the campus incomplete and therefore, you know, like it we are hampering other people's decision making and trying to understand what to do better for students. Um, and we're not serving ourselves. And this is where people get into that trap of saying we need to do this for for demonstrating value. I haven't talked about demonstrating value, right? We're talking this is about students and understanding their student experience and getting rid of things and being part of that. And being part of that. And, you know, if we if we have this data, we are just as likely to find out that we are doing all kinds of things wrong as we are to find out we're doing some things right. And so I think it's really right. It's yeah, I think it's really, I think it's gonna be a mixed bag, right? And I also don't think it's gonna be something where we can pull out just ourselves because we are part of an educational team on campus that supports students. And so this, I think it's really old-fashioned um or misguided or just not well thought out to think, oh, it's just gonna be us and we're gonna prove that we're valuable end of day, and who cares if we sell out student data to do it? That's not the conversation we're supposed to be having. That's not the conversation that's important.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

Well, it's exciting about it.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

I just wanted to say something about vendors. I have a conversation about vendors. Okay, so I think in some cases, suppliers, the vendor community, um, are actually, in terms of libraries, populated by librarians and they share some of our values. But at the same time, they are businesses and they are, you know, they are operating under some different um values. So we need to think about coming to the table and articulating what we need and expect and looking at those contracts again and figuring out where we didn't do our due diligence before because we didn't know. But now that we know better, we should do better. Um, and but not necessarily thinking about that as a you know sort of pugilistic setup in terms of library vendors, um, but rather how can we come together to do what we're all trying to do, right? It's in their best interests to help us help students. So I don't know about those other campus vendors and like what their motivation is, but in terms of library land, um, you know, I don't think we should, you know, whistle a happy tune and assume everything's okay. I think we have to to do our work, but I also think that finding places where we have common ground can be helpful. And vendors can sometimes help us do things with our data that we don't know how to do ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

Well, and what's exciting about what I'm hearing, and very much fits into what started this podcast, which is figuring out how libraries can play leadership roles post-COVID and new normal, is when when now when you're talking about a data librarian, I think a lot of to this point, I look at a lot of IMLS funding, I look at a lot of different position announcements, data and librarian is almost always defined as someone who helps capture, collect, curate, and archive research data from faculty. And the notion that, you know, you're, as you said, a proactive information professional who can go out and um can honestly say, look, we're in an information landscape. We're producing that in our instructional settings, we're producing that in our library, we're producing that in our classrooms, we're producing them all over the place. One of the areas that I know that our university was worried about was how do we build portfolios and capture data for all the things that happen outside of a classroom from activities and workshops and community service and such. And if we could have, and so one of the roles I see, what I'm hearing is that a data librarian is someone who can really help the institution wrestle with the kinds of information that we can be seeking, should be seeking. Um, you're you're talking about the levels of access to that, who has a much more nuanced view than what can we grab out of this mailing list for recruitment and what can we grab from the from the uh location data from the public service or public safety office, and really have a proactive idea of how this can pull together because jumping back to the idea of the sort of commoditized data-fed faculty model, one of the things we know that's problematic when we talk about all this productivity, right? So instead of talking about what makes a good student or how does a student what makes a good faculty member and how are they productive, is we know that some of the data underlying these systems is garbage. I mean, there's just like you know, you look at it and you're like, you decided that these 20 journals over here didn't count. You're just, you know, and so having someone. Right. Oh, right. And and then the worst part is we moved to these new economic budget models where you know, I remember, you know, we just moved to our responsibility center management, and they told me that I had uh 110, you know, 110 students in my Libr 101 class last semester. I said, that's great, that's not my class, that's over at the library. And, you know, right? And so, and so when you're gonna break tuition down, yes, I would love to claim that, right? And so I I think this role of a librarian, librarian being proactive in using data ethically, efficiently, and effectively to understand the the life of the student, how to improve the performance, and then to understand in a holistic way so that they're an advocate working across the entire uh enterprise versus just in there. I that's that's a really I love I love that concept, and I'm so glad that you are here tonight to say something useful. Yeah, I think it's really important. I think it's go ahead, Megan.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

You could Yeah, I think a couple things about that. You know, number one, that you know, those those flawed faculty assessment systems do tell us something, and that's that we have good fac we know we have good faculty that are not well represented by those things. So let's dig into why, right? So so people who focus on practice, people who focus on, you know, um uh making an impact in their communities rather than only, you know, not that this has to be separate, um, but that only are publishing in academic journals, folks who are interested in diversity issues, they are not well represented in these machine, these machines. Um, and so you know, we need to dig into that and and figure out what we can do to also fix our tenure and promotion and other underlying systems related to that. But back to the data librarian, you know, I think that um there are lots of folks on campus who have areas of expertise. One of the ways that we might be able to partner with them is by bringing the, like, as you said, the data librarians' expertise in as well. And that they carry with them a lot of our values and ethics that, like I said, we're not the only ones with them, but we have maybe a unique perspective on some of those things. And so adding to the sum of the whole. But I think that some of the things that those data librarians might be tempted to do, which is to organize the data, is only scratching the surface. They need to help um the rest of campus think about being parsimonious, right? Being by driven by those questions and problems. Um reevaluating and assessing constantly for bias in the system, not set it to go and let it run, right? Like this pretend idea of AI, right? It's not, it's not artificial. It came from us, right? So like making sure that we're constantly, that constantly is being reevaluated, protecting data with privacy policies, practices, personnel, and so on. That that sort of is baked into what we should learn in library school, right? Um, you know, using uh data descriptively rather than trying to make long-range predictions. The best way to find out, for example, that a student is likely to drop out is to the registration deadline is passed, who's not registered? That's not a long-range prediction. That's using your descriptive data to say, oh, I think that this might be a problem. Let's reach out to those students and say, hey, how's it going? Not, I understand you're failing, but rather, how are you doing? Is there anything we can do to help? Right? So there's a lot of ways that an information professional can bring um what might not be totally unique, but a different flavor of perspective to some of those issues.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Well, uh, we're gonna have to leave it there. Believe it or not, we have uh reached the end of our discussion, well over 30 minutes, and uh it was great. I want to conclude it, and I'll maybe I'll give each of us a minute to do it. Um my conclusion, though, is what you're talking about is not just a model on campuses and for libraries in the academy. It's also in schools and the public, but even beyond that, it's in every aspect of human life. Uh I'm a senior citizen these days. I know I don't look at and whatever. I don't have an Apple Watch and whatever, but I'm actually going to be getting one, not because of the watch part of it, but because of the health monitoring aspects of it and the use of data that way. And I am I worried about the data and the privacy and all those other issues? Absolutely, and all that. But like you said, it's not black or white, it's not an either or. Or something just because we think it's good for the bottom line. Or of course, what they realize is they're going to run out of human beings on the planet to uh to hire for their warehouses. So that's my my conclusion is what you're talking about is is really is central and and and the insights are uh essential for higher ed, but they're also in so many other areas. And Dave, why don't I give you a chance and then we'll give Megan the last word.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

Well, uh just really quickly, what I'm this has been amazing, taking away, and Megan, I love that idea that sort of the arrogance that we know better and that we're not part of the whole process may be leading to blind spots, which can be um hurting equity and hurting uh what we're ultimately doing, and the proactive nature that getting our house in order and then uh moving forward, I think is is essential. And so uh, you know, the the the idea that privacy is not a monolith, that privacy is a is a set of nuanced human decisions throughout the process based on our values, and we need to be part of that conversation if we're going to influence it. So I really, really appreciate that perspective going forward. So take it, take us out. Last words.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

You know, I think the most important thing, last oh, I don't I never get a last word with you two. So um I'll take advantage of this. So the the students, you know, really are always at the core. And so when we're thinking about um students monitoring their academic health, the way, Mike, you want to monitor your health on your wristband? I think the most important people to, you know, this is not new, right? We learned this in library school, user-centered design, user-centered perspectives. Um, we need to think about the students, getting them involved in how do they want their data handed back to them, making it all transparent. What is going to be the most valuable? How would you like to see it? What's going to make you feel good, bad, and different? What do you need to make decisions? Uh use metacognition and really drive your own path. The agency issue is essential. And so taking this data over in a corner is no good. We have to give it back to the students and stay in communication with them about how it's going to benefit them the most. So thanks for the opportunity to talk about this. It's been really fun.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

Yeah. Yeah, it has been fun. And we hope you'll come back. And uh, if you have something that you say, you know, I want to talk about something, uh, just knock on our virtual doors and we'll allow it. Thank you so much, Megan. Uh, we both greatly appreciate it, and we know our listeners are gonna greatly appreciate it. So we're gonna take a very short break again and then come back uh with our awesome library thingy. So, Dave, I hope you are uh ready to jump right in and take us to a break with the music, please, Yanni. All right, Dave, how about your awesome library thingy for this episode?

SPEAKER_03 47:14

Okay, so I'm gonna cheat a little. This is not specifically a library thingy, but I think it's gonna be something for libraries and librarians to think about. Uh, there's an article um in Gizmodo today, but it's out in several talking about uh Amazon's just releasing a new uh Alexa will read to your kids, but there's a catch. Uh you might want to get in the habit of deleting voice recordings every few sessions. What they've done is identified about 700 books. And if you pay, if you're a prime member,$3 a month, the um the echo device will read with your child. So it will say, What are you reading? The child will say, This is the book I'm reading. And you as a parent or the child can decide to read with the child, can help the child if they're having trouble, can alternate back and forth. In essence, um, can provide some not so bad literacy instruction. Um, I mean it's not complete, but it's it's a really interesting concept. And um, you know, a lot of times as librarians, when we do reading enrichment, we do youth, we do story times, and the idea is to get kids excited about material and reading, but we don't necessarily have the ability to do it sort of one-on-one and talk about some of the mechanics of it. So I just I to me it's a very interesting place that that uh Amazon is taking that bit of technology. Uh, and I think it's something that when we look at now that we're in this virtual setting and we're looking at use of AI, all these kinds of things. Um, and within it, just as an interesting part, within it, they do talk about that part of the way this has been made available is because they've been listening to and feeding in children's inquiries and and recordings of discussions with Alexa into AI algorithms. And once again, the other thing I'm going to take away forever, but I will cite you, Megan, is the idea that it's not artificial. We know it came from somewhere, it came from us. That's right. So, yeah, so interesting choices. What about you? Good.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

Well, I was all set to talk about pop-up libraries for the summer. Uh, I read a few articles about this, and uh it's good to see it on the local news. Even in the Warren County, Kentucky public library, they're uh, you know, bringing the library out to the kids and where they are on the ball fields and in other settings. I thought that was great. I also saw at the Niles Community School District in South Bend, Indiana. I just thought that stuff was great. But because uh we're recording this during the unprecedented heat wave out in the Seattle uh and Northwest region, I also came across an article that the Snow Isle Libraries, and actually I live right near the Snow Isle, uh, which is Snohomish County and the island counties, they have been preparing for the heat wave with using libraries as cooling centers. They've been opening the libraries early and on the weekend so people can go in and cool off in this unbelievable, record-breaking heat every day. And again, you know, we talked about that some of the Charleston stuff, Dave, and other things that libraries just go out there and they see a need and they feel it. And that's what's great about libraries and the field. So with temperatures of 100, 105, 112 in Seattle, Washington, which it never happens, uh, in Arlington and Lake Stevens and the Snow Isle libraries are opening up just to cool down people. I thought that's a pretty awesome library thingy.

SPEAKER_03 50:56

That is indeed. And with that, we come to the end of another podcast. Um, I think we got to find some sort of click and clack send-off. But I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank Megan Oakleaf for bringing some thoughtful consideration to this podcast for a change. Um, and I want to thank Yanni from Ace Chicago Events, our producer and sound guy. Uh Ace Chicago Events has a variety of production services in the Chicago area and online virtual and streaming. Take a look at A Chicago Events. Please subscribe to this podcast, rate us and listen on Apple, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Please share a review, and it's very important to get out the word and let us know. Let us know how we can do a better job, who we should be talking to, other questions. Our emails info at librarieslead.org, or check us out on our Facebook group, Libraries Lead in the New Normal. And we even have a website because we have a website, which is www.librarieslead.org. Remember when that was cool, Mike? All right, now we're old. Yes. Thank you, Mike.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Megan, again. And uh, take us out. We'll see you next time.