I’ve read a couple of books in the last few weeks that are not as strong as I’d hoped on the library philosophy front, but are still definitely worth commenting on.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t – Nate Silver

I picked this up at the CAL 2013 convention, and it sat on my nightstand until I was between ILLs. I was hoping for something that would give me some theoretical underpinning for the intuitive predictions that I’ve consistently seen borne out.  (For example, for why my gut feeling was that e-book devices were a transitional technology and we shouldn’t waste precious IT and collection development money on them, but we should get e-book content in our collection absolutely as soon as we could find an affordable, user-friendly, consistent package supporting major-publisher content – and not a minute before.)

What I got was deeply geeky, fascinating, and interdisciplinary – just the kind of nonfiction I love to read for fun – but the practical application for the area of study I’m focused on can be boiled down to one chart on page 54:

One of the ongoing problems in libraries, and especially in the systems side, is the fine and difficult line between staying on top of tech trends, being ahead of our patrons and able to help them navigate change, and wasting precious resources jumping onto every new bandwagon for novelty’s sake.  Ultimately, the question of how deeply to invest in every new trend is grounded in predictions – of its short-term value and long-term value and transformative impact. Constant self-assessment of bias and ideology can only help me to make better predictions, give better advice, and contribute to the development of better models of service over time.

Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design – Henry Petroski

I think I may have actually read this book in my sophomore year of undergrad; I plowed through a lot of design theory that year. This book is so dry, you guys. SO DRY. I love the concepts, love the way Petroski frames the world, but it’s hard to get through.

The takeaway:

Design comes with a lot of baggage; it is the rare activity that has no impedimenta. Every design problem is laden with constraints and preexisting conditions and associations, which must be complied with and accomodated in some way. Every new thing becomes part of something else, and by its very introduction alters how the original thing is used.

…

Every test, redesign, and resulting piece of technology is a compromise between features and faults, between good and bad, between hot and cold. When engaged in design or redesign, whether as inventors or users, we can adjust the sides of our brains the way we adjust the faucets on our sinkes. taking care not to be overly left or overly right,… And what the correct compromise is depends… Under no circumstances can we fully escape risk.

Which is a lot of what Interop had to say, too. Things interconnect; they  change what they connect to, and are changed in the process, and it while it may be unpredictable it’s not unanticipated, it’s part of the process and failing to leave some conceptual space open to respond to how that transformation reveals itself is just sloppy design.

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) – Christian Rudder

This is just a fun, fun book. I’d hoped it might reveal more of what we as librarians can do to help people self-advocate, both in online searching and in the reference interview, while respecting privacy. It didn’t, so much, but it did affirm one of my fundamental beliefs: that at the end of every search, every survey, every tweet and post, is a human connection. Eventually, it’s about standing face-to-face, having a deeper conversation. I recommend it, absolutely, to everyone, especially everyone who works in any capacity to help others navigate information, not for any particular practical end but for the enrichment of understanding what it means to exist with one foot in a digital world.