Archive Highlight; "Selection Bias"

The Telelibary passed 2000 calls this month, and is headed next month for its 5(!!!!!) year birthday. As such, I’ll be giving it the spotlight for a few Archive Highlights, starting with this wandering anecdote that does (eventually) get somewhere.

~~~~

When I was in college, my classmates and I often attended panel discussions, visiting lectures, artist talks, and other cultural programming. This was in no small part because food was typically served at these events, and at a new University that didn’t even have a functioning cafeteria until the end of the first semester, we were starved for variety (and like many young people, just generally starving regardless of how much food was available). At one such program, we were dismayed to learn on arrival there would be no food, but the presenters attempted to hold our attention regardless with a tantalizing pitch; a photographer had spent 24 hours photographing our city of Abu Dhabi, taking one shot a minute, and wanted to present his amazing results. Despite my growling stomach, my interest was piqued, and so my classmates and I borrowed some patience and took our seats to watch his presentation.

This patience would not last long.

As a premise the work was interesting, and the artist (an American expatriate in the city for work) began by showing us composite images of all 1440 photos, which featured a pleasing ombre as daylight washed in and out of the frames. “My goal was to document a day of life in the city;” said the man, unknowingly inviting us to be his problem. He began to dive into the individual images, and to discuss how he had accomplished the many mechanical challenges of the project. “I set a timer on my phone for every 60 seconds.” He explained. 

“How did you choose what to point your camera at?” Asked one of the students.

“I just shot what was interesting to me when the timer went off - I tried not to think, and to make snap decisions.”

“There are a lot of men, but I don’t see many women in these photos,” pointed out another student; “particularly not Emirati women.” 

“Well,” the man stumbled, “I didn’t think it would be proper to shoot them without permission”

“What about that one?” A student asked, pointing at the newest image in the slideshow of an Emirati woman walking away.

“Well her back was turned”

“Did you ask any of the men for permission?”

This went on for quite some time until the moderator stepped in to end the interrogation. I’ll admit that at least part of what informed the vehemence of my criticism of this work was the lack of snacks, but I think another significant part was actually how interested I initially was in the project. As an initial premise (and a physical feat), “I took a photo every 60 seconds for a day” was exciting, and the claim to “document a day of life in the city” felt notable for a city I was still fascinated and befuddled by. But the results fell flat, and this incident would prove to be the beginning of my general disinterest in “I like it” as a sole curatorial guide. If there were a more systematic and controlled approach, this project could have been an interesting dataset - one whose output would be capable of telling us something. Otherwise, if the man had thought in advance about what he would (and would not) shoot, and had articulated a set of rules, the resulting images would have shown us a glimpse of a defined perspective of the city. And all these points boiled down to the least interesting outcome: asking that man a question about any given image was the end of a conversation, not the beginning; Without a framework, we couldn't hold the art (or the artist) accountable to anything.

Almost a decade later, I was curating book excerpts for the Telelibrary, just about a month and change into an operation I had expected to last two weeks, when some User finished one of their selections and asked me the inevitable question: “why did you just read that? Who chooses these books?”

I stumbled through some kind of deeply unsuccessful answer, and left the call acutely aware of how that amateur photographer in Abu Dhabi must have felt under our withering, unfed barrage of questions. I also left resolved to do better. By June of 2020, I had worked up this statement, which the System now reads to any User inquiring a out how Selections are selected:

“Selections for the Telelibrary are made to maximize the following considerations. A selection should:

- vary enough from other selections to demonstrate the breadth of the written word and provide surprise and uncertainty; 

- contain distilled, distinct tones and flavors;

- challenge and reverse traditional imbalances of representation (both in subject matter and authorial voice); 

- provide safe spaces for exploring themes and concepts relevant to human connection in general and major current events in particular;
or

- provoke joy, delight, wonder, or awe.

Every selection must accomplish one of these in order to be considered, and the ideal selection accomplishes as many as possible.

Additionally, no selection is valid for consideration until it has deeply moved and been deeply loved by at least one person.”

In reading this in 2025, I’m struck by how that last line has a hint of “I just shot what was interesting to me” — but I think there’s nothing wrong with that, and in fact think the disclosure is important. Realistically, I don’t read potential selections with a checklist. Instead, I’m guided first by what excites me instinctively—and then crucially, I follow that impulse by asking “does this selection accomplish my goals?”

Clearly, these rules are a reflection of my values, and they were designed as such. But I also think they function as being good experience design. Below this Official Statement, in brackets, I wrote another note for my own guidance:

“As a rule of thumb, any 3 random selections a User makes should feel like leaps with enough of a range that the User cannot guess what will come next.”   

I’ve written before about how The Telelibrary was built largely on the impulse to create “revelations of space” over the phone—which is fancy devised theater talk for the feeling of being in a room and suddenly discovering it’s bigger in there than you thought. Having a rubric like this helps me take the impulse of “the next reading should feel different” and be more specific about what ‘different’ might mean, or the different ways to achieve it. This rubric is also very helpful as I cycle new material in and assess the balance of selections: does the current collection as a whole address these considerations? Do most calls that complete randomly feature something from each of these goals?

And then of course there’s the original basic framework for success; can these choices start a conversation, or do these answers end one? On this subject, I defer to the Users of the Telelibrary:

COMPLAINT 1 360 See Audio

Hi there, this is Patrick [REDACTED]. I'm calling in regards to the Telelibrary's selection. I was recently using the service, and I'm sure you can find in your records there was this edition of this book called The All-American Girl, and some chapter on plantains and some bizarre game.

And I just have kind of questions and concerns about why that would be included and prioritized as a selection when potentially there's many, many, many, many other interesting things worth including. I'm not sure if it's possible,  but I wonder if comic books can be included in the Telelibrary.  I'd be very fascinated by the system if it would be able to include that.

A recommendation I would have, because I'm looking at it on my desk,  is called New Gods by Jack Kirby, a seminal work. And maybe, you know, if Netflix can have visual descriptions for visually impaired audience members,  maybe the Telelibrary could incorporate that for visual artwork—visually-based artwork storytelling. Thank you.”

This User went on to contribute exactly the content they recommended, and in turn, other Users contributed their thoughts:

Complaint about the Complaint #1, User Log Book Vol. 4

User #280

“Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information, enlightenment, and plantains. ” — Article 3, Library Bill of Rights, American Library Association (edited)