Antifragile Libraries pt 1: Antifragility and collections

I recently read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's excellent book Antifragile: how to live in a world we don't understand. It's a rather sprawling, heavily footnoted opus - but with time to reflect I think Taleb has a great deal to teach librarians.

Given the word count Taleb assigns to railing against bureaucrats, corporations, universities and government institutions, he may be less than impressed by my application of his ideas to academic, corporate and public libraries. He does make an exception for municipal government, however, so perhaps he would let public librarians like myself off the hook.

Taleb is a big fan of the private library, one that allows its owner to read wherever her interests take her. A wonderful idea, of course, but one that many humans, due to a lack of means, simply cannot realise. The public (or, in some cases, academic) library can make up for this if it is managed well.

Antifragility

Firstly Taleb introduces the concept of 'anti-fragility'. The anti-fragile is not just robust, surviving shocks and instability. To be anti-fragile is to benefit from instability. A supermarket chain with a long just-in-time perishable food supply chain is fragile. A gun smuggling operation is anti-fragile. A publicly listed bank is fragile. A small Sharia bank is (probably) robust. A money-changer is anti-fragile.

Taleb further explains that anti-fragile systems or entities tend to be made up of a large number of fragile entities. So in biology a species or ecosystem may be fairly anti fragile, but this is because of variation between fragile individuals within it - the weaker individuals die faster and fail to pass on their weak or sub-optimal genes. This natural selection takes place more rigorously in unstable environments. For the fragile individuals this may lead to a quick death, but for the population at large it leads to greater strength and resilience.

Antifragility is all about risk (which is unsurprising given Taleb's long standing interest in risk). Instability means an increase in unquantifiable risks. If increased risks/chances benefit you (to a point), you are anti-fragile. If they damage you, you are fragile. If they make little difference (to a point) you are robust. Another way of thinking about this is in terms of of 'optionality' - the more options you have, the more anti-fragile you become.

Taleb gives a fair amount of space to the concept of iotragenics. This is a fancy word for the law of unintended consequences. An iotragenic medical treatment is one that is undertaken to fix some condition, but in the process causes or exacerbates another medical problem. So chemotherapy kills cancer cells, but it also kills all the white blood cells that fight off viruses, thereby weakening the patient in a potentially fatal way. Iotragenics is the reason the Hippocratic Oath instructs doctors to 'First, do no harm'.

Taleb argues that our modern (or, more accurately, Modernist) culture ignores the risk of iotragenics and is addicted to 'acting', rather than seeing the advantages of, well, not acting. Taleb calls this the 'via negativa' approach.

Finally, Taleb crystallises an ethics based on his idea of the fragile-robust-antifragile triad. This ethics is based on a simple proposition that whenever anyone makes a decision to take a particular action, they are making a decision about risk. The trick is, the risk is not always born by the person making the decision. Taleb's triad can be used to consider who carries the risk, and whether the person making the decision has 'skin in the game'. His triad then looks like: [no skin in the game]-[skin in the game]-[skin in the game for the sake of others]. Of course, the banking industry has a phrase for when the person taking the risk has 'no skin in the game' - moral hazard. Taleb keeps things simple - if you don't have skin in the game, any decisions you make that increase downside risk are unethical.

Antifragile libraries

So what does this all have to do with libraries?

It has become a cliche to write that these are uncertain times for librarians. As information professionals living through an information revolution, it is hardly surprising that much of the discourse between librarians concerns change, uncertainty, and how to deal with it. Traditional models for information exchange and distribution have proven to be rather more fragile than was assumed. Taleb's ideas provide us with a framework to guide ourselves, our libraries and our communities through the chaos - not just surviving, but thriving. By becoming anti-fragile, uncertainty becomes our friend.

Left leaning barbells

We can start with that most longstanding and traditional library activity - physical collection management. Library collection management has increasingly moved from 'j