Reveries of libraries, the twenty-first : MIDNIGHT MAPS

The last half hour of the week has its routines: empty the paper bin into the paper recycler, ensure emails have all been sent, check the doors are all locked inside and outside the building. A young student, maybe 20, enters the Library. She is checking for work spaces and asks if she can work at the desk near the window. Yes, I reply, but the Library will be closing in quarter of an hour. This surprises her, as she believes the Library closes at midnight. No, I respond startled, we never close at midnight. Why do you think that? Because, she says, it says ‘Closes Midnight’ on Google Maps.

I did not immediately think, is any library in Melbourne open till midnight on Friday? I didn’t ask her, is any library open until midnight? I was polite. This is a sort of reference question. No, I informed her, we are open Tuesday to Friday, on Tuesday we close at 8 and the other days normal, 5 o’clock. She was not taken aback, just mildly confused. How could Google Maps be wrong? I was thinking the same thing, but not because my evening plans had been ruined by Google Maps. She showed me her screen, filled with a spiffing picture of the Carmelite Library’s exterior, a red pin stuck into 214 Richardson Street Middle Park, and ‘Closes Midnight’. I handed her the Library brochure, inviting her to visit another time when the hours stretched ahead.

Our dreams about staying late in the library are of a special nature. We imagine ourselves safely surrounded by all of that history of thinking and writing. Stillness and silence are desired. Midnight in the library is somewhere that is all our own, even as we continue our reading under the lamp of anyone off the shelves, whom we can listen to on our terms, there in that silence the mind rests into and enjoys uninterrupted. ‘The Midnight Library’ is a series of children’s books by Damien Graves, if you live in the United States, or Nick Shadow, if you live in the United Kingdom. The author’s names add a touch of mystery and imagination. ‘The Library at Night’ is not only one of Alberto Manguel’s most achieved works, it’s one of the best and most enjoyable books ever written about the places. That he used night in the title, when libraries are as much daytime as night time residences, conjures our secret interest in libraries as locales where mysteries are kept safe until their time arrives to be (once more, or at last) opened up to new eyes, new possibilities.

If that impolite phonecall from that Google person had not put me off, if I had given them five minutes, would Google Maps now have the correct times of opening and closing? If the caller had given me their name, would I have been more patient? If they asked for my name would it have made a difference? Is Google the lord of time and space? Of course not. Then I have to think about the student’s query. In the absence of more accurate information, is midnight the default setting for closing time on Google Maps? Why can’t Google’s nameless caller lift the Library times off our website? Is everywhere in the world closing at midnight that did not answer the call from Google?        

In a century where everything turns into information, the invisible networks of Google and similar parallel universes cover our world with their satellite infinity. If everywhere is 24/7 then even ‘Closing Midnight’ sounds quaint and outdated, as nothing ever closes. That Google Maps is fallible is, nevertheless, a daily call out, even as our Global Positioning System (GPS), that directs our car to the front of the Town Hall, has us instead driving into a lake. At 5 o’clock I close the Library, hop on the tram, and think about what to prepare for dinner. I hope she found somewhere hospitable to do her homework on Friday night. 

What to do with Reference

Today Ros Devenish, Library Manager of the library at St Barnabas College in North Adelaide, posted this message to the ANZTLA-Forum, e-list of the Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association:

Hi everyone

As most of you know, I am pulling together a library from a huge donation of books here in Adelaide.

Very recently, my thinking about the placement of the Reference Collection has needed to undergo a review. I would like to know if any of you shelve your ref books by interfiling them in your Main or General Collection.  It seems that this is happening in quite a few university libraries and it would work well for us here at St Barnabas and would solve quite a few of my immediate problems with shelving and lack of space. With the decreasing need for large hardcopy reference collections this could work well for us into the future.

I would love to hear people’s comments, experiences as you have time.

With thanks

Ros

My reply to her enquiry was then sent to the same list: 

It has become apparent over the past twenty years, increasingly, that the purpose of Reference has changed. We all know the main reason, you’re looking at it as I speak.

Do your users go to Reference for answers to their questions? Does Reference offer other services that require it to stand alone as a discrete collection? Is Reference in your library an outdated function, and why?

These and other questions have been asked by librarians ever since the onset of online circa 1995. We live in an age when the most famous encyclopedia in English, Britannica, ceased print publication in 2010 and remade itself as an authoritative source, in contrast to its unpredictable cousin Wikipedia.

Here at the Carmelite Library we reduced Reference from over thirty shelves to about ten. Biographical dictionaries, Bible dictionaries, and many subject encyclopedias were transferred to the General Collection. Everything that had dated of an ephemeral nature was culled. Specialist subject dictionaries with information likely not to be readily obtainable online were also sent to the General Collection. What stayed as Reference were the Catholic encyclopedias (Old and New), the great French ‘Dictionnaire de Spiritualité’, other irreplaceable sets in hagiography and monasticism, and the language dictionaries. These last are the works still most consulted by users, the other mostly consulted by the librarians. Indeed, nowadays Reference is more a librarian’s specialist collection of works with information we will not find online and that is of vital daily use in our work. .

The whole process of reducing and culling Reference has freed up space without in any way losing the essential contents of those works judged necessary for the future.

Other libraries will have different stories, but for us it was a way of dealing meaningfully with a part of the collection that was no longer serving its intended purpose.

Exactly how we do Reference today, in all its aspects, should be a session of a future ANZTLA Conference. Reference does not go away, even when our Reference collections do.

-         - Philip Harvey

Spirituality in the everyday: Contemporary understandings MARIAN DE SOUZA

The fourth Carmelite Lecture for 2017 was delivered on the evening of Tuesday the 24^th of October by Dr Marian de Souza.  Here are the key points from her powerpoint slides.

The use of the word ‘spirituality’ is used with much frequency in today’s world.

The phrase ‘I’m spiritual but not religious’ had 79,900,000 hits on Google in October 2015. 

However, the wide usage has led to problematic understandings of the concept of spirituality today.

Findings from a project to examine how people from different disciplines and worldviews understood spirituality:

There were two distinct concepts which we termed traditional and contemporary understandings of spirituality. The first originated in religious frameworks and was God related.

However, as other disciplines and professions started looking at the word, the understanding and therefore, the application changed. Spirituality was recognized as a distinct human trait.

If we examine spiritual characteristics such as truth, justice, beauty, freedom, caring, joyfulness, mystery, awe, wonder, empathy and compassion, we find these traits in many non-religious people.

More importantly, every one of these words is generated by the relational dimension of Being. 

They all indicate that something other than the self has prompted the particular experience in the self. 

In other words, it is the self’s awareness of its own response, through the senses, to something other which triggers the perceptions, sensations, experiences or emotions that are captured by the words associated with spirituality.

My original research built on Nye’s theory of relational consciousness and generated the concept of a relational continuum, along which the movement reflects the growth of human spirituality in terms of having a raised awareness/consciousness of oneself as a relational Being. 

The end of the continuum leads to the realm of Ultimate Unity where awareness of Self is that Self is part of the Whole which also comprises Other.

Thus, I would argue, human relationality is the essence of spirituality.

If we translate this understanding to practice it would require that

 - we live our lives with an awareness of our connectedness to everything other than self – we live as a relational Beings.

- developing empathy for the Other who is different from ourselves

- recognizing that deep connectedness can lead us past the point of relationality – where Self becomes one with other.

- nurturing our spiritual selves by finding moments of transcendence in the everyday.

Mirror neurons help us to read the facial expression and actually feel the suffering or the pain of the other person. Iacoboni argues that this is the foundation of empathy and possibly of morality, a morality that is deeply rooted in our biology (2008, p. 5).

Keysers (2011) contends that: ‘Mirror neurons ‘mirror’ the behaviour and emotions of the people surrounding us in such a way that the others become part of us’.

Ramachandran calls them ‘Gandhi neurons’ because they blur the boundary between self and others (2011, p. 124).

Australia Today

The diversity of Australian society in the 21st century has created some wonderful opportunities for intercultural and interreligious activity with many efforts at communal and governing levels to maintain and promote social cohesion. 

However, these significant changes have led to some tensions associated with religious and cultural differences, largely due to the rise of Terrorism and Islamophobia, where there is a fear of the Other who is different.

The security associated with belonging and being accepted invariably inculcates a sense of self/identity and place which constitutes the spiritual wellbeing of an individual or community. 

When this is suddenly removed, it has a detrimental effect on the individual’s self-assurance, self-confidence and, therefore, his/her spiritual wellbeing.

Many young people experience this loss of belonging and identity.

In  a plural world where media exposure enables individuals to view many ways of being, multiple identities have become the norm, more consistently than in the past.

Tensions can arise when one identity construct conflicts with another.

Nonconscious learning which can be an impediment to our spiritual nurturing

The parallel information processes of the brain lead to conscious and non-conscious learning. Most social and education systems have ignored the role of nonconscious learning in encouraging the development of stereotypes which can lead to hidden prejudices and biases (Myers, 2002; Wilson, 2002). 

Needless to say, this is a significant factor in pluralist societies where ‘them and us’ scenarios often arise.

A common human element is the fear of the otherness of other which is often a result of socialization? 

Until our fears are brought to light and a person acknowledges its residence within the dark shades of his/her nonconscious mind, it remains out of sight but continues to project its negativity onto the Other.

It is only by facing up to that which we fear or which provokes in us a sense of unease that we may realize it is much less significant than we had made it out to be; the tiger’s growl becomes a kitten’s purr and the threat of the unknown becomes safe because it is familiar.

A way forward 

Australians need to have knowledge and empathetic understanding about the different religions and cultures that have become part of society. Without such learning, the religiously and culturally different Other will remain ‘them’ and it will take, at least, another generation before they will become ‘us’. 

Therefore, we need to encourage children to recognize that a world view that is different from their own is not wrong or something to be feared. Instead, all the different world views and belief systems complement each other to make up the whole.

Acceptance, empathy and compassion for the Other who is different should, potentially, promote social cohesion and nurture spiritual wellbeing for individuals and their communities.