Ronald E. Wyllys
Address delivered at the Graduation Convocation of the School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin, 2003 May 17
Dean Dillon, faculty colleagues, graduates, and other friends, I greet you as fellow believers in the high importance and value of library and information service.
The text for my homily today comes from the contemporary prophet, Robert Allen Zimmerman—better known as Bob Dylan. His song, "The Times They Are A-Changin'", ends with the following verse:
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast.
The slow one now will later be fast,
As the present now will soon be the past.
The order is rapidly fadin',
And the first one now will later be last.
For the times they are a-changin'.
This is a day of change within a time of change. Yes, that's a statement that has been true on every day in the history of the world, but it's also a statement that has special meaning for some of you here today: those of you who are, today, changing from being students pursuing a degree to being graduates who will, officially and legally, receive your degrees during the University's 120th Spring Commencement Service this evening—which, incidentally, I urge you to attend.
Congratulations to you graduates! You've worked long and hard to arrive here on this occasion, this day of special change for you. It's also a day of special change for your families and friends, who celebrate your change with you. Furthermore, it's a day of special change for the faculty and staff of the School of Information, when we see our joint labors with you reaching fruition today as you blossom into graduates. You'd probably be surprised at how happy we are to see you achieve your degrees. It truly is a day of joy for us too.
But my theme is that this is not just a day of joy; it is a day of change. Change is always with us; change always has been with us, and with our ancestors, back into the dawn of life.
I turned 73 earlier this week, and I've seen a lot of changes. The older I've gotten, the more important it seems to me to be aware of history and of what has brought us to where we are, and to take time to think, at least occasionally, about what has been vs. what is. It's an old truism that you can't really know where you're going unless you have a good idea of where you've been. That's true for individuals, for nations, for cultures, for professions. We all need to think from time to time about where we've been. I'm using this occasion to urge you all—and especially you graduates who are formally entering our profession today—to do this:
As you go through life, take time every once in a while to think back over your career and your life. Think about what has changed, and give some consideration to which changes have been good, and which have been mediocre or even downright bad.
Let me give you some examples of looking back to notice changes. It was 31 years ago, in April 1972, that I was hired as a member of the faculty of what was then the Graduate School of Library Science. In those days the only computers around were mainframes, though all of them were slower, and most of them less powerful, than the desktop computers we all use casually today. In 1972, you did not use a computer casually. Instead, you planned carefully what you wanted to do; you keypunched data cards and program cards; and you turned those cards in at a computer center, to which you would return 24 or 48 or 72 hours later to get your results, in the form of either a stack of paper printouts or another deck of punched cards, or both. Contrast that with today, when we feel impatient whenever our desktops take more than a second to perform a complicated operation.
I arrived at this School in 1972 to find that the School's computer facilities consisted of one teletype terminal, almost hidden in a corner of the Cataloging Laboratory. That terminal could communicate with the University's academic mainframe computer at the magnificent rate of 10 characters per second. That's equivalent to about 80 bits per second in today's usual measure of communication speed. In contrast, nowadays speeds of merely 1,000,000 bits per second seem slow to many of us.
In 1972 touchtone telephones had been around less than 10 years, and most homes and offices still had those rotary-dial telephones that you may have noticed in old movies. In 1972 direct dialing of international telephone calls was still in the planning stages; even to call Mexico City or Toronto, much less Buenos Aires or Paris, you had to ask an operator to place the call for you.
In offices in 1972, the most advanced writing device was the IBM electric typewriter that used a ball to strike the ribbon and print characters. That machine was a real advance over the older typewriters that had their characters on bars that flipped up and hit the ribbon. Electric typewriters were just starting to show up in homes; in fact, when I began my doctoral studies in 1969, I celebrated by buying myself an electric portable typewriter on which to write my term papers. Xerox machines had started to appear in offices only a decade earlier, but carbon paper in one's typewriter was still widely used to make copies—after all, those Xerox copies were too expensive to be made casually. (Those of you who don't know what carbon paper was can find out from your parents.)
But that was a mere 30 or 35 years ago. 51 years ago, when I first started working with computers, a big computer was one that had all of 1024 words of Random Access Memory, or RAM. My home computer today has 512 million bytes of RAM, or roughly 500,000 times as much memory, and some of you may have even larger amounts of RAM in your personal computers. Furthermore, today's RAM memories are 100s of times faster than those of computers in 1952.
Today the BIG information phenomenon is the World-Wide Web. All of you, I am certain, have had experience with the Web; most of you have had a great deal of experience with it. Yet, as my students know quite well, the World-Wide Web is barely 10 years old. For all practical purposes, it really started with the public release of Mosaic, the first Web browser, in April of 1993, 10 years ago last month. The era of the Web, an era that has brought enormous change to our profession, has from my perspective occupied only the last one-third of my time in this School.
Perspective is often surprising. That's why I'm urging you so strongly to think from time to time about the history of our profession. That's why I urge you to reflect, from time to time, as you go through your career in our profession, on where you've been, both professionally and personally. When you do that, you may sometimes find yourself surprised.
Here's a perspective that I hope will strike you as surprising: Most of you—I hope all of you who grew up in American schools—will at least have heard of the famous debates that took place in the campaign for U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1858, between incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas and a little known railroad lawyer by the name of Abraham Lincoln. (Just to remind you: Douglas won re-election to the Senate, but Lincoln—through his eloquent and forceful opposition to slavery in the debates—became well enough known to run for, and win, the Presidency in 1860.) Now for the surprising perspective: I was born closer in time to those 1858 debates than to today.
Carrying the perspective even further back: if I'm still around on July 4, 2007, I will have lived through more than one-third of the entire life of the United States. I confess that it surprises me to think of myself as occupying that long a span of history.
And what about you? If you're 30 today, then by the time you'll be ready to retire, at 67 according to the Social Security Administration, the year will be 2040; the U.S. will be 264 years old; and you will have lived through more than one-fourth of the life of the U.S.
You are a part of history, a bigger part than you think. Bear that in mind as you work in your careers, as you live your lives.
What will you have done during the 30 or 40 years till your retirement? Whether you wish it or not, you will be involved in changes in library and information service. You need to work to make those changes be good ones, be changes that keep alive the social conscience of our profession, the spirit of service to people, despite the onslaught of increasingly rapid technological changes.
A recent study illustrated the effects of such onslaughts. The study was done by a former student of mine, Bob Gaines, the Texas Library Association's Librarian of the Year in 2001. He studied the use of the TexShare databases—the online databases that the Texas State Library makes available to public and academic libraries throughout Texas, funded by the tax dollars of all of us. Bob found that "In spite of concerted efforts since the mid-90s, small and mid-size public libraries are not using the databases as much as larger libraries [on a per-capita basis]."1 Bob's finding raises the obvious question, Why?
My strong suspicion is that Bob's finding is a result of the fact that small and mid-size public libraries in Texas have a considerably smaller proportion of trained, professional librarians on their staffs than do the larger public libraries. In short, for me this is compelling evidence that what we try to teach students in this School has succeeded in equipping our graduates with the tools they need to cope with changes such as the recent appearance and availability of online databases. But it's also clear evidence that there are communities of users who are not yet properly supported by professional librarians and information specialists. And it's also a warning to each of you that throughout your career you will have to work to keep yourself up-to-date with new tools and modes of information service. Don't let yourself be a barrier.
Here's another example: A couple of years ago Associate Dean Mary Lynn Rice-Lively arranged a series of breakfast meetings between local business leaders and students and faculty of this School. At one of these meetings, Robert Fabbio, a co-founder of Tivoli Systems and the founder of DAZEL Corporation, said, "I'm not sure why you invited me here, because I can't imagine how you could do anything for my business."2 Well, before that meeting was over, Mr. Fabbio learned some things, and he wound up admitting that his previous view of what this School's information professionals could do for his company had indeed been much too narrow.
Here's a further example: About a year ago, a Texas state agency invited applications for a system-analyst job involving information management. One of our graduates applied. When the manager of the agency department with the vacancy looked at our graduate's application, he tossed it out—simply because our graduate was a librarian. Fortunately, the agency's human-resources director insisted that all applications had to be seen by the agency's review committee. After our graduate's application got full and fair consideration by the committee, he was selected as the top candidate, and he got the job.
These examples show what a need there is for you graduates to work to change and broaden the perception by the general public of what librarians and information specialists really do and can do.
You school librarians, especially, need to work to make your students understand how broad the world of information is. Teach them not to be satisfied with settling for the first few hits that Google turns up for them, but to evaluate what they find, and to think and learn about alternative sources of information.
Here's an example of how to make good changes: A former student of mine, from my very first year of teaching in this School, built on her education here and her subsequent experience as a school librarian to launch the "Read for Your Life" campaign throughout Texas and to found the annual Texas Book Festival. She went on to promote "Reading Is FUNdamental" throughout the country and to found the National Book Festival. I first knew her as Laura Welch, but nowadays she goes by the last name of Bush.
So, what conclusions do I want to leave with you? At least these:
• Change is always with us;
• The rate of changes, both technological and social, is increasing; and
• You will do yourselves a service by thinking, from time to time, about the changes that you have experienced in your lives and in your careers.
Bear in mind that you will have opportunities, from time to time, to help determine what those changes will be. Take careful thought about them, and help to make them good changes.
Here's how to make changes: Take time to think about the things you do in your daily routine, and from time to time try doing things a little differently—hopefully a little better. See what works well and what doesn't. Take time to think about the things that you and others are not doing, and about what needs to be done. Then tackle at least one thing that needs to be done; deal with it; and move on to another need.
When you retire, I want you to be able to look back on changes you've helped to bring about, and to feel proud of what you have done. I want you to have done your best to make what you do, be something that you have loved doing.
And now, it 's time for me to finish and let you get on with the big change that we have gathered here today to celebrate: Your graduation.
Thank you, and hurray for you graduates!
1Personal communication from Robert S. Gaines,
2003 May 14.
2Quotation reported to me by Martha E. Richardson,
an attendee at the breakfast.
Last revised 2003 May 17
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