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Caldecott Diversity - What do we do?
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_ttmd.com>
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 11:02:33 -0400
Oftentimes in these discussions, the focus is on "fixing" the problem by changing the membership of the awards committees or getting publishers to be more risk taking or wanting librarians or booksellers to make more effort to promote some group (gender or race being the primary ones) literature. These disparities have been recognized, documented and discussed for forty or fifty years, the proffered solutions have remained the same for forty or fifty years, and the solutions are either not implemented or are pursued and do not succeed in rectifying the perceived disparity.
I think what the data and discussion is pointing towards is that there are two bedrock issues that are driving non-representative outcomes - both of them driven by the market and individual choices and not likely rectifiable via awards, publishers, or librarians/booksellers. I suspect that continuing to focus on awards, publishers, and librarians is a red herring that will continue to yield little or no change unless the other two issues are addressed.
Issue 1: Bibliocentricism - Different cultures value books and reading in different ways as revealed by number of books read, hours spent reading, money spent on books, number of books in the home, number of people writing books, number of people pursuing careers in publishing, number of people pursuing careers involving books (librarians), etc. I refer to this as a culture's degree of bibliocentricism. Differences such as these are what make cultures different and such differences have all sorts of consequences that are more or less desirable depending on one's value system.
Clearly all races, gender and orientations are able to access the publishing world: virtually all groups have at least one representative that has been published, and/or recognized or awarded. The issue is not hermetic exclusion but representative proportionality. While different groups are over or underrepresented, there appears to be no evidence that there is intended exclusion other than that based on commerce and that the participation in the world of books is driven by commerce and individual choices.
Issue 2: Time intensive achievement - Whatever field in which one is involved, those that are recognized (by awards or earned rewards such as fame or income) share the common trait, not of gender or race or other attribute, but of intensity of time effort and continuity of effort. It appears people make life choices (married or single; full-time or part-time; primary earner or supplemental earner) which determine the extent to which they are likely to have the capacity to invest the time to excel at a given outcome. If we want a difference in the distribution of outcomes, the challenge is to encourage people to make different choices.
I am not seeing any evidence that indicates conscious discrimination on the part of publishers, award committees, etc. to bias the results against one group or another and there is much evidence against that hypothesis. There are irregularities in the distributions but they seem to be driven by differences in bibliocentricism and by the time intensity of achievement.
Given that all the traditional solutions (more diverse award committees, etc.) have not gained any traction in forty years perhaps it is time to try something new.
Regrettably, if the above diagnosis is correct, the ocean we are trying to boil is pretty large. I don't know how to change culture wide values, and am concerned about the ethics of attempting to do so. However, I can think of a couple of very tactical actions that might make a difference, both conceptually quite doable, though one would be expensive. Plus one strategic action.
1) Change the CSK award so that it has only one primary goal. Currently it has four goals (at least) - Promote African American authors; Promote books about African Americans; Be inspirational; Promote understanding. Any one of these would be a challenge. In business, it is very common to find businesses or divisions that suffer from goal proliferation. Any organization can be superior in only one thing, all other worthy goals have to take backseat. Other goals aren't insignificant and don't have to be ignored but the focus has to be on the most important goal. The CSK numbers for its winners (domination by few authors, low citations, few number of editions, number of winners out of print, few translations and few languages) all indicate to me that they are struggling to fulfill their potential. My suggestion would be to choose as a primary goal the recognition of new and rising African American authors regardless of subject matter or objectives. Go for the best. But regardless of which goal they choose, cho ose only one.
2) Improve data. What we really want to know is how many times how many people read which books over what time durations. With that information we are able to identify the most important books. All other rankings reflect an effort to impose value judgments as to what people ought to read. Right now the data quality is so low that we are having to use all sorts of proxies for what we really want to know. Is it feasible for ALA to take the lead on creating a consortium of publishers and libraries in order to collect anonymized data so that we could actually tell which books are being read the most over long time spans? Such collaborations are done in other industries. There is no obvious reason it couldn't be done here. With this cleaner data, there is greater insight into the demands of the market. Some of the things within the book world which we consider to be important may not be considered important at all by the reading public. We can't know that easily with the current quality of data. If we are selling
something the public isn't buying, then we need to be able to know that more easily than we do now.
3) Focus on growing the reading public. It seems like a lot of our conversation is advocacy-based and arguing about what people ought to be reading (fiction vs. nonfiction, literature vs. entertainment, poetry vs. prose, majority vs. minority, aesthetics vs. utility, etc.) rather than a desire to know what the public wants to read. Instead of seeking to impose a set of expectations, it seems like it would be more useful to understand the reading public first. Given that in OECD countries half the population do not electively read a book in any given year and that of those that do read, they average only six books a year, the reality is that of 308 million people, the types of issues we talk about are often of interest and relevance to only a few hundred thousand people, if that. Disparities in awards won't disappear as long as we are focusing on the wrong root causes. There likely won't be a change in the disparities of awards and book sales so long as there are major differences in bibliocentricity between groups. Changing the composition of award committees is unlikely to change that.
Charles
Received on Fri 17 May 2013 11:02:33 AM CDT
Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 11:02:33 -0400
Oftentimes in these discussions, the focus is on "fixing" the problem by changing the membership of the awards committees or getting publishers to be more risk taking or wanting librarians or booksellers to make more effort to promote some group (gender or race being the primary ones) literature. These disparities have been recognized, documented and discussed for forty or fifty years, the proffered solutions have remained the same for forty or fifty years, and the solutions are either not implemented or are pursued and do not succeed in rectifying the perceived disparity.
I think what the data and discussion is pointing towards is that there are two bedrock issues that are driving non-representative outcomes - both of them driven by the market and individual choices and not likely rectifiable via awards, publishers, or librarians/booksellers. I suspect that continuing to focus on awards, publishers, and librarians is a red herring that will continue to yield little or no change unless the other two issues are addressed.
Issue 1: Bibliocentricism - Different cultures value books and reading in different ways as revealed by number of books read, hours spent reading, money spent on books, number of books in the home, number of people writing books, number of people pursuing careers in publishing, number of people pursuing careers involving books (librarians), etc. I refer to this as a culture's degree of bibliocentricism. Differences such as these are what make cultures different and such differences have all sorts of consequences that are more or less desirable depending on one's value system.
Clearly all races, gender and orientations are able to access the publishing world: virtually all groups have at least one representative that has been published, and/or recognized or awarded. The issue is not hermetic exclusion but representative proportionality. While different groups are over or underrepresented, there appears to be no evidence that there is intended exclusion other than that based on commerce and that the participation in the world of books is driven by commerce and individual choices.
Issue 2: Time intensive achievement - Whatever field in which one is involved, those that are recognized (by awards or earned rewards such as fame or income) share the common trait, not of gender or race or other attribute, but of intensity of time effort and continuity of effort. It appears people make life choices (married or single; full-time or part-time; primary earner or supplemental earner) which determine the extent to which they are likely to have the capacity to invest the time to excel at a given outcome. If we want a difference in the distribution of outcomes, the challenge is to encourage people to make different choices.
I am not seeing any evidence that indicates conscious discrimination on the part of publishers, award committees, etc. to bias the results against one group or another and there is much evidence against that hypothesis. There are irregularities in the distributions but they seem to be driven by differences in bibliocentricism and by the time intensity of achievement.
Given that all the traditional solutions (more diverse award committees, etc.) have not gained any traction in forty years perhaps it is time to try something new.
Regrettably, if the above diagnosis is correct, the ocean we are trying to boil is pretty large. I don't know how to change culture wide values, and am concerned about the ethics of attempting to do so. However, I can think of a couple of very tactical actions that might make a difference, both conceptually quite doable, though one would be expensive. Plus one strategic action.
1) Change the CSK award so that it has only one primary goal. Currently it has four goals (at least) - Promote African American authors; Promote books about African Americans; Be inspirational; Promote understanding. Any one of these would be a challenge. In business, it is very common to find businesses or divisions that suffer from goal proliferation. Any organization can be superior in only one thing, all other worthy goals have to take backseat. Other goals aren't insignificant and don't have to be ignored but the focus has to be on the most important goal. The CSK numbers for its winners (domination by few authors, low citations, few number of editions, number of winners out of print, few translations and few languages) all indicate to me that they are struggling to fulfill their potential. My suggestion would be to choose as a primary goal the recognition of new and rising African American authors regardless of subject matter or objectives. Go for the best. But regardless of which goal they choose, cho ose only one.
2) Improve data. What we really want to know is how many times how many people read which books over what time durations. With that information we are able to identify the most important books. All other rankings reflect an effort to impose value judgments as to what people ought to read. Right now the data quality is so low that we are having to use all sorts of proxies for what we really want to know. Is it feasible for ALA to take the lead on creating a consortium of publishers and libraries in order to collect anonymized data so that we could actually tell which books are being read the most over long time spans? Such collaborations are done in other industries. There is no obvious reason it couldn't be done here. With this cleaner data, there is greater insight into the demands of the market. Some of the things within the book world which we consider to be important may not be considered important at all by the reading public. We can't know that easily with the current quality of data. If we are selling
something the public isn't buying, then we need to be able to know that more easily than we do now.
3) Focus on growing the reading public. It seems like a lot of our conversation is advocacy-based and arguing about what people ought to be reading (fiction vs. nonfiction, literature vs. entertainment, poetry vs. prose, majority vs. minority, aesthetics vs. utility, etc.) rather than a desire to know what the public wants to read. Instead of seeking to impose a set of expectations, it seems like it would be more useful to understand the reading public first. Given that in OECD countries half the population do not electively read a book in any given year and that of those that do read, they average only six books a year, the reality is that of 308 million people, the types of issues we talk about are often of interest and relevance to only a few hundred thousand people, if that. Disparities in awards won't disappear as long as we are focusing on the wrong root causes. There likely won't be a change in the disparities of awards and book sales so long as there are major differences in bibliocentricity between groups. Changing the composition of award committees is unlikely to change that.
Charles
Received on Fri 17 May 2013 11:02:33 AM CDT
