The Dangers of Uniformity
By Walt Crawford
American Libraries Columnist
Senior analyst, Research Libraries Group
Column for October 2004
Does your library have the one best dictionary—and that’s all? A single encyclopedia? Shakespeare’s best play—and that’s your only drama? The King James Version of the Bible, to the exclusion of all other religious works and commentary? Do you only collect sound recordings of baroque music, Leonard Bernstein, hip-hop, comedy, or Russian nationalist composers? Or do you have just the single best recording in each genre?
Probably not. Most library collections celebrate diversity and multiplicity. I suspect most of us would question the idea that there is a single “best” in each of these categories and even more the idea that the best is all you need.
So why do so many of us look for single solutions to current problems, single technologies, single media? Why do so many writers, futurists, and speakers tout X as “the future” rather than “a part of the future”?
Answering multiple choices
I’ve used the slogan “And, not Or” for more than a decade. There’s another slogan that goes along with it, one that I believe to be at least partly true in most walks of life: “The answer to most multiple-choice questions is Yes.”
That requires some clarification. I’m talking about real-life multiple-choice questions, ones that are often phrased in terms of a single choice: “Is the future for fiction e-books, audiobooks, or print books?” “Should reference work be done over the Internet in real-time chat, via e-mail, at a reference desk, or by walking around to see who needs help?” “Should library databases offer Google-like single boxes, simple fielded search options, or complex Boolean capabilities?” “Will scholarly journals be electronic-only, electronic and print, or print?”
In each of those cases, and in most similar cases, the best answer is Yes. All of those are correct, certainly across the range of libraries.
Monocultures and other dangers
Some computer experts are speaking out on the dangers of monoculture—a situation in which there’s only one cultivated crop, one prevailing idea, or one computer system in use. The obvious cases of computer monoculture are Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook/Outlook Express. Most malicious worms and viruses show up on these platforms. That may be partly because of coding problems, but it’s also because those platforms represent 90% to 95% of the entire personal-computing market. PCs represent a monoculture, and that’s probably as unhealthy for personal computing as a single-species forest or pasturage is for the environment.
Similarly, single solutions may be tempting answers to problems, but they’re usually dangerous and unrealistic answers. A monolithic solution is likely to cause more problems than it solves—and it’s not likely to replace the current situation.
The main danger with most monolithic futures and single solutions is that people put too much faith in the power of a single future. When you stop buying print journals because the future is all-digital, the next step may be for your university president to decide that all of the future is digital, so who needs a library?
If a library chose to stop acquiring print books because e-books are the future, it would be out of business long before e-books became a significant part of the overall book market (which they probably will, at least within niches).
Many of us want to see open access cause serious changes in scientific, technical, and medical article publishing—but insisting on or assuming a future in which all sci-tech publishing is open access is both improbable and problematic.
Coping with multiplicity
Which is better? LC classification, Dewey, or UDC? Should material be cataloged using MARC21 and AACR2R, described using Dublin Core, or with metadata generated automatically from the text itself? Should audiobooks be audio CD, MP3 CD, downloadable MP3, or cassette? Should library systems be integrated commercial offerings, linked offerings from separate vendors, or open source software developments?
If you believe you know the answer to any of those questions, I’ll suggest you’re wrong. You need to maintain open possibilities. In most cases, you need to allow for a future of multiple options within your own library. Most new media complement rather than replace old media; most new technologies that survive do so by expanding usage and finding their own niches, not by knocking out existing technologies.
Avoid the dangers of uniformity. Look for multiplicity whenever it’s possible. It works for your collections; it should also work for technological and media futures.
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