Tracie D Hall: on information and imagination

Tracie D Hall is a Distinguished Professor of Practice at the University of Washington Information School and is a former Executive Director of the American Library Association.

By Seth Robinson

When was the last time you went to the library?

It might have been earlier this week, or this month. If that’s the case, good on you. Unfortunately, for many of us, its hard to remember the last time we visited our local library. In part, its behavioural, but in many places, its become a question of access. For librarian, scholar and activist, Tracie D Hall, getting people back into libraries—and reminding us of the value they offer society—has become a lifelong mission.

‘I became a librarian for a lot of reasons. I love reading, and I believe that the library itself is a foundational institution when it comes to democracy, but beyond that my goal is to create information access for all. It’s about illumination—not just caring for the book as an object—but putting light around both the book and the ideas it contains, so that as many people as possible can connect with it.’

Tracie has taken these principles and applied them as a public scholar and activist, in her work addressing censorship and ‘information red-lining’. It’s seen her earn the mantel of ‘library warrior’ and resulted in her being named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2023.

‘One of the things that I've spent a lot of time focusing on is censorship. Censorship rises when there's illegitimate power, or when the price of knowing is more expensive than not knowing. It’s an abuse of power that understands that literacy creates agency. Agency moves towards a liberatory space, that will always seek to defy those abuses of power, so it tries to cut literacy off’ says Tracie. ‘When I talk about information red-lining, what I mean is that we sometimes unknowingly—and knowingly—create conditions in which some people have access to the most sophisticated information, and others—in another area code, another province, another territory or right next door—do not. It’s our responsibility to understand that in as much as we want to spread ideas, we must deal with the barriers that prevent that spread.’ Tracie’s work has also addressed the challenges that come from the increasingly complex relationship between humans and technology.

‘The fact is, we’re not reading. We're not spending as much time face-to-face with each other. We have data that says that we're not spending as much time in dialogue. We are not interacting as much. And so, what's happening is that as our “human literacy”—which is about our reading levels, but also our understanding about how to be in community with each other and what those responsibilities entail—has decreased. As the information around us has become more sophisticated we’ve had to develop robust digital skills, but now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re consuming so much. Our time and ability to read is decreasing. As a result, the desire to outsource routine learning and processing to a machine has increased.

I became a librarian for a lot of reasons. I love reading, and I believe that the library itself is a foundational institution when it comes to democracy, but beyond that my goal is to create information access for all. Tracie D Hall

So, what I am afraid of is the part of artificial intelligence that we call machine learning. I'm afraid that our ability to interpret and apply information, to convert it into knowledge, is lessening. Our muscles are atrophying, and I’m worried about the cumulative effect this will have over the next twenty years, the next fifty, or on the generations of young people who will now be exposed to machine learning from when they’re one or two years old. We’re already seeing the data on the impact this has on cognition, the impact on what we call human intelligence, and I'm here to sound the alarm.’

The solution, according to Tracie, is to carve out time and create an environment where it’s possible for us to read deeply. If the world of digital media and constant notifications might be viewed as a professional eating contest, the library, and a chance to read a book, might be viewed as a chance to chew.

‘I think books provide opportunities for immersion. Reading is where you find your aspirational models. That's where you're going to scenario plan. Even if it's something about finding a partner, or how to deal with conflict in your family, or how to deal with the boss that you might be intimidated by, or how to deal with a feeling of shame, how to deal with some level of self-loathing . All of that happens in a book. You see yourself. Socrates reminds us that the unexamined life is not worth living. Now, that's a heavy statement. But what I believe to be true, is that we gain so much more when we delve deeper to understand who we are in relationship to the society around us, and who others are in relationship to that larger society. For me, that is the value of the humanities. I think it's necessary to get close to the root causes of problems. And the humanities is not just about problems, it's also about opportunities. It's about ways to imagine our future and ways to think about our past, our collective experience.’

It’s about illumination—not just caring for the book as an object—but putting light round both the book and the ideas it contains, so that as many people as possible can connect with it. Tracie D Hall

Books, and they’re capacity to facilitate imagination, are the perfect vehicle for the humanities to have this effect. We all have a memory of book that made a difference in our lives. For Tracie it was Heidi by Johanna Spyri.

‘It’s a book about a young girl, who is orphaned, who goes to live with her grandfather, who’s this gruff old man, but who she loves so much. It becomes a story about how she coaxes tenderness from her grandfather. Ultimately, he shows his love for her with these huge blocks of cheese that he melts in a fireplace over crusty bread. I remember at the time of reading it I was living with my grandparents, and my grandfather being a very sort of silent and stoic person. And I got this idea because we got a new stove. Everything was second-hand, but the stove had that little cutout with a glass window and it had a light. And I asked my grandfather if he could make me some cheese on a piece of bread, and if we could sit in the kitchen and watch it. And my grandfather pulls this chair for me, and without asking me why, we just sat there and waited for the cheese to melt on the bread in the oven.

For me, that was about acting out something that I had read. Now, I was doing this in Watts in South Central LA. That's about the furthest you can be from the Swiss Alps. Not just geographically, but in many ways culturally as well. But how I connected to this protagonist, Heidi, is that she realised that there was a possibility of tenderness in this man. And I wanted to see if I could tap into that. I come back to Heidi, because Heidi needed to navigate the world from this point of view of having to rely on others. And even as a child growing up, where I grew up and how I grew up, I knew that my survival was going to be contingent on my ability to not just connect with people, but from that connection to create a sense of responsibility, of mutual responsibility, of mutual investment in each other's survival. And I've always read for that type of understanding how to build deeper relationships with myself and others.’

Now, as we consider the kind of society and world we want to live in, picking up a book, fostering those deeper relationships and creating that sense of connection and responsibility for one another, seems like a great place to start.