tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14060671465265186282024-03-13T23:01:55.979-07:00Small Island LibrarianA work in process. Thoughts, reflections and ideas on librarianship from the English-speaking Caribbean. Entries will be revised and edited as thoughts become clearer and sharper, until eventually they are perfectly expressed in writing.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.comBlogger150125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-46990150881334995872018-04-23T20:20:00.001-07:002018-04-23T20:20:27.284-07:00My summary of the Politics of Libraries 2018 Conference<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There are many controversial topics in the profession of librarianship. Some topics more than others are uncomfortable, very sensitive, and professionally difficult to discuss for librarians. But one conference tackled many of these themes. In this post, I share about the inaugural<a href="https://politicsoflibraries.github.io/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> Politics of Libraries conference</a> 2018 at the University of Alberta. Themes covered included:<br />
• Critiquing librarianship for trying to be value neutral by promoting intellectual freedom over assuming social responsibility<br />
• The problem of monopoly in library technology services via the case of OCLC<br />
• studying the discourse that librarians, library users and authors/publishers use to represent or misrepresent fair dealing/fair use in copyright law<br />
• how language, and particularly English global dominance, inhibits linguistic diversity and negatively affects library services and users<br />
• provisions for academic librarians for academic/intellectual freedom<br />
• assessment of how many library science journals are open access versus commercially published<br />
• the problem of librarians using the concept of the "market place of ideas"<br />
<br />
In the break out discussions, I got the opportunity to lead the discussion of the theme of colonialism in libraries and how librarians can attempt to resist and move forward. This discussion raised three main points:<br />
• that colonialism manifests differently in different spaces and requires different approaches to address based on the particular case of colonialism that manifested itself. Caribbean colonialism was more exploitative than Canadian colonialism, where in the Caribbean, the colonizers created Caribbean society to serve European needs with Europeans who were looking to establish temporary homes versus Canada being a society absorbing French and Englishmen looking for permanent new homes and opportunities.<br />
• Colonialism continues to manifest itself in language assimilation and domination in both print and online technologies.<br />
• Librarians need to recognize indigenous epistemology and different knowledge or information perspectives other than those of the West which dominates library science.<br />
<br />
The other breakout discussion groups shared on Language/Terminology, which I felt was also related to the theme of colonialism and to Caribbean society with the current struggle in recognizing indigenous Creole languages. Some of the points mentioned were:<br />
• Language barriers are represented in library signage. Public libraries should use the languages of the communities they serve in their signage, while academic libraries should use such languages in library instruction<br />
• Multimedia technology can better address language barriers as they provide more than just text<br />
• Librarians need to recognize the value of other languages and not just English as well as to recognize our own problematic use of languages which can offend, included, exclude or "other" people.<br />
This summary only represents a few of the issues discussed, some of which deserve a full post's discussion.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-30083086326053807842015-12-31T04:38:00.002-08:002015-12-31T04:38:40.117-08:00Final post for 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
To my blog audience, I apologize for the lack of entries for the latter part of 2015 and for the famine of entries that will be coming for 2016. The year 2015 has turned out to be a challenging year for me. Further, considering that I now have dual identities as both a student and an employee, blogging becomes more challenging both in terms of time as well as in terms of institutional constraints. <br />
<br />
For the most part, I am contemplating to cease personal blogging and to put my writing in other spheres. Time demands this. I have a larger family (four children now) and I am now lecturing, which means that I had to keep up a publication record to secure tenure as an academic. As such, whatever articles that I would have published here will better serve my occupational interest if published in LIS trade journals, newsletters or other publications.<br />
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May you prosper in 2016.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-31912895290496272372015-06-18T13:24:00.000-07:002015-06-18T13:24:20.659-07:00How to survive clients that want information within 1 hour?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I attended the intermediate level educational program put on by the <a href="http://ci.sla.org/" target="_blank">Competitive Intelligence Division of SLA</a>, presented by Lynn Strand, the Principal of Outside Knowledge LCC. In this session, Lynn presents a Quick take session entitled: <a href="http://ci.sla.org/2015/06/08/conference-quick-take-session-what-to-do-when-they-say-give-me-everything-you-have-on-and-not-freak-out-because-they-want-it-in-an-hour/" target="_blank">"What to Do When They Say "Give Me Everything You Have on ... and Not Freak Out Because They Want it in An Hour". </a>Below are her 9 tips in bullet form which can be helpful to both special librarians and independent information professionals.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><strong>Don't panic</strong>. That does not help.</li>
<li><strong>Trust yourself.</strong> You can do this.</li>
<li><strong>They do not want everything.</strong> Just an overview. In fact, they really don't know what they want.</li>
<li><strong>Use "trends" in your search terms.</strong> This will retrieve information that provides an overview or that is broad in scope or focus.</li>
<li><strong>Use resources you already know</strong>. Exhaust the familiar first.</li>
<li><strong>Plan to search for 30 minutes and then give yourself time to put together your deliverable.</strong> Save some time to put together a final report on what you have found and don't spend all of it on searching for information.</li>
<li><strong>Have a flexible template.</strong> For doing research reports, you need to have a template that all you need to do is put in new content and not worry about formatting.</li>
<li><strong>Keep it to 3 pages or less.</strong> Right at the top of those pages, indicate three to four things the client must know. Hence, the most important information first.</li>
<li><strong>Do a Google file type research.</strong> Sometimes the commercial databases may not contain the information you are looking for. Hence, if this fails, use Google search for file types like pdf, ppt. or doc. in order to retrieve the information you need.</li>
</ol>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-60566713821649028372015-06-16T10:19:00.002-07:002015-06-16T10:22:05.298-07:00Distilling the career wisdom and stories of SLA 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I am gratefully to have attended SLA 2015 in Boston and in this post, I want to share some of the career wisdom and stories shared on June 14, 2015 from the opening and general session.<br />
<br />
For this session, as I listened to the career stories of the SLA awardees, I was impressed at the diversity of awardees featured. I saw international awardees from Asia and the Middle East, awardees that recently graduated as students and were newly active in the profession, and awardees that were faculty of library schools. <br />
<br />
In particular, I listened to two speakers. The first was the awardee, <a href="https://www.sla.org/get-involved/awards/awards-descriptions/" target="_blank">Marjorie Hlava</a>, who received the <a href="https://www.sla.org/get-involved/awards/awards-descriptions/" target="_blank">John Cotton Dana award</a>. Her career gems to me were:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><i>Employers allow us to learn their business and give us the opportunities to serve their needs</i>. Hence we are indebted to employers who give us opportunities to learn, grow and give back. They provide us with the opportunity to develop new skills and expertise, and to get experience and practice in serving the needs of others.</li>
<li>Since what we do in our daily jobs have changed, but the principles remain the same, we <i>must test assumptions to see if they are still relevant or not</i>. After doing this, we must remove barriers, give access to all members and remove unnecessary rules and regulation. </li>
</ul>
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Marjorie Hlava</div>
The next speaker that I documented career gems and wisdom from was the <a href="http://www.sla.org/attend/2015-annual-conference/general-info/keynote-speaker/" target="_blank">SLA 2015 conference keynote speaker</a>, Leigh Gallagher . Gallagher is a <em>Fortune</em> Magazine editor and journalist, and author of the book <em><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-end-of-the-suburbs-leigh-gallagher/1111675015?ean=9781591845256" target="_blank">The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving</a></em>. Gallagher was a useful speaker because she spoke about herself as a user of libraries and librarians as well as provided some advice for how librarians can better advocate for their value in business organizations.<br />
<br />
<em>Gem #1: The process of planning is more important than the plan itself</em><br />
Gallagher first described her job as being paid to become an expert on any topic by doing research. <br />
She spoke about how she always over-researched a topic just to be over-prepared. In this discussion Gallagher made the statement that plans are not really as important as the planning process. The planning process is more important than the document or plan itself. <br />
<br />
<em>Gem #2: Librarians need to develop and write business cases</em><br />
Gallagher also talked about the need for information professionals to document case studies when information helped a company to make a better decision. She described such case writing as a "show- don't tell- cases of how information provided helped a company make a crucial or critical decision.<br />
<br />
<em>Gem # 3: New names suggested for libraries</em><br />
Gallagher also suggested that information professionals consider alternate names to libraries such as the "Wisdom lab" or the "Wisdom Vault".<br />
<br />
Coming up in future posts: Tips that I gathered from other speakers and also a post on my own conference presentation with a link and embedded slide presentation .</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-11990408979774639032015-05-17T06:48:00.000-07:002015-05-17T08:14:48.304-07:00Re-positioning libraries as safe spaces for answering career-related queries<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I came across this news article about a young engineer who got two job offers (McGregor, 2015). He took to <a href="https://www.quora.com/about">Quora</a>, an online question-and-answer website, to ask for advice about which company's offer to accept. Representatives from both companies responded with one rescinding the job offer.<br />
<br />
This caused me to reflect on my first publication (Scale, 2008) that compared how libraries matched up to Facebook as a "social search engine". While I will not go into a detailed summary of the journal article, I just wanted to make a few points about how this young engineer's problem highlight a missed opportunity for the positioning of libraries and highlight what I think libraries can do to change this.<br />
<br />
Let me begin by mentioning that "social search" can be defined as the use of online platforms for locating individuals with the expertise to answer one's query (people search) or for locating information from search results informed by a community of users that input data into the online platform (human intermediary search) (Scale, 2008). Social search comes as a development of the Social Web or Web 2.0 era, where search engines and algorithms no longer dominate how users find relevant information online. Instead, human beings are now connecting online to retrieve information from online personal sources rather than documents.<br />
<br />
This brings me to the points I wish to make in this post. How do libraries position themselves in this era?<br />
<br />
<b><i>1. Libraries need to position themselves as social search engines which preserve privacy, contain little to no advertising and maintain the confidentiality of queries.</i></b><br />
<b><i><br /></i></b> <b><i>2. Learn from Apple's Siri for i-Phone & i-Pad. Promote and provide a listing of the types of questions that we librarians can answer or are good at answering. </i></b><br />
<br />
<b><u>Point 1</u></b><br />
<br />
Librarians need to promote to library users the benefits of getting their answers from us as opposed to the online competition. Sure enough, online sources can get an individual quicker access to people sources and information, but online also leaves a trail and the Internet does not forget. Librarians though will forget.<br />
<br />
We could even make this optional where users can be taken into a closed room, read a confidential non-disclosure agreement form to be signed by both the librarian and the library user, before the individual divulges their query.<br />
<br />
This brings me to a concern about virtual reference, which keeps a virtual memory of queries and does not forget. Luckily, virtual reference services can do so with the removal of personal identifying information. Nonetheless, I find it on the side of caution that such system by requiring authentic users to login can still keep track of where queries are coming from. So I am still kind of wondering about this and need to research this some more.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, I would advocate for librarians to be selective of which technology or technical solutions are used for the purposes of virtual reference. Even when we use online platforms, ours must be distinctive from our competitors that collect personal information and maintain a public record of such information.<br />
<br />
<u><b>Point 2</b></u><br />
I refer here to the experience of using Apple's Siri for i-Phone and i-Pad. Sometimes after using Siri, Apple's artificial intelligent virtual agent, I find that she presents a listing of some of the questions that she can answer and some of the information that she can provide.<br />
<br />
How do library users know what questions to bring to the library reference desk? In my experience, as a library user, users coming to the reference desk get varied levels of service and do not know with certainty if a competent staff member will be on hand to handle their queries. One unhelpful experience is sufficient to prevent a user from being a return client.<br />
<br />
Hence, it is necessary to reduce the chances of this uneven service delivery from happening in the first instance by highlighting what we are competent at answering. We must provide a way of assuring our patrons or users about the types of questions we can answer or provide information for and what they can expect us to answer or find answers for.<br />
<br />
Even if we do not have the sources to answer all our users query, we should be able know where we can refer users and provide a list of questions for which we can refer users if we do not have the answers. That is, librarians should also know what areas we can competently advise users so that even if we do not have the answers in our library, we can advise users about where to go next and explain the pros and cons of getting the answers from the sources we refer them to. (In a way, this points to a need for deep subject expertise).<br />
<br />
<b><u>Some of the challenges</u></b><br />
<br />
I do acknowledge that one of the challenges of doing this type of reference work is reduced library budgets and problematic staff shortages. In some libraries, the staff does not have the time to walk the users through a long decision-making process but stop short at just pointing them to the sources. This process makes the library little different from Google or original Web search that just directs users to the highest ranked or used sources that possess possible answers. This forces users to still have the work to determine the relevance and pros and cons of the sources retrieved. This is why I like the special library environment where librarians can provide a framework for extracting relevant and useful information and coming to a decision about which sources to use.<br />
<br />
<b><u>A possible way forward</u></b><br />
For me, the young engineer's question could be viewed as a missed opportunity to re-position libraries to the wider public as safe spaces to ask questions and conduct inquiry, especially about career and entrepreneurial information. I for one believe that a dedicated career information resource librarian should be in every public library. This person would specialize in helping users answer career related queries and help them locate career-related information for all stages of an individual's career journey. These librarians should be dedicated to answering reference queries related to career, business or entrepreneurship questions ad questions about choosing educational programs.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, every public library should know its users and the questions that users are most likely to need answers for and provide a dedicated subject librarian to address those questions. Again I realize that this is an ideal in the present time of austerity and economic uncertainty. As such, I lament that we need greater advocacy to let politicians, economists and other authorities that make funding decisions know that the quality of library services depend on the type of deep expertise that we provide in areas that are important to communities. For example, seeing that current authorities are interested in job creation, we can advocate that libraries can provide value to the labour market and the economy if given sufficient funding and staff to provide a dedicated librarian for career and business related questions. Of course, I realize that this means focusing on priorities that fit into the neo-liberal paradigm in which libraries are now working.<br />
<br />
<br />
Reference:<br />
<br />
McGregor, J. (2015, May 7). A young engineer asked for career advice online. Big mistake. <i>The Washington Post</i>. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/05/07/a-young-engineer-asked-for-career-advice-online-big-mistake/?wprss=rss_business<br />
<br />
Scale, M. (2008). Facebook as a social search engine and the implications for libraries in the twenty-first century. <i>Library Hi Tech, 26</i>, (4), p. 540-56.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-60725239075817014352015-04-29T22:55:00.000-07:002015-04-29T22:56:39.447-07:00A critique of "Intellectual property"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In my April 19, 2015 blog post <a href="http://smallislandlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2015/04/thoughts-about-copyright.html">"Thoughts on Copyright"</a>, I argued against extending copyright beyond 50 years after an author's death. My basic premise was that such an act was socially unjust and amounted to restricting the right to distribute information to a few creating an unfair and unnecessary monopoly over the distribution of creative expression. In response to that post, a colleague of mine responded especially to one of my points that copyright should be treated like patents. His argument was that the "economic worth of both a patent and copyright are realized differently". However, one of his response that triggered this blog post was the mention of the school of thought that conceptualizes "intellectual property" as "real property". Hence, the purpose of this post is to react to the school of thought that argues that we should treat "intellectual property" as "real property".<br />
<br />
Let us begin by first defining intellectual property. For this, I go to the World Intellectual Property Organization's [WIPO] website. According to WIPO (n.d.), "Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce" <span class="selectable" id="js-reference-string-0">(p. 2). In</span> my personal opinion, it is problematic to conceptualize "creations of the mind" or what I call creative expressions of the mind as "property". For the rest of this post, I want to advance two arguments against conceptualizing works or expressions of the mind as "intellectual property" or even as"property". By my use of the term "property", I mean equating works of the mind as land.<br />
<br />
<b>Argument 1: Equating works of the mind raises social justice issues</b> <br />
Treating creative works or expressions of the mind as "property" is an unjust idea that creates a class of haves and a class of have-nots that can be traced to the practice of feudalism. In feudalism, there were those who owned land and others that did not own land. As such, those who needed the land to create or use had to sell their labour, services or part of what they created to land owners or landlords.<br />
<br />
Treating creative works of the mind brings back this type of system, where individuals labour to create works and have to own or use those that own the material means for making those expressions of the mind tangible or material. This type of system to me does not reflect a just model upon which to base the market for the exchange of products or expressions from the mind. It favours those that own the means for creating and distributing media. In this case, the owners of publishing houses, recording studios or technological platforms function as the landlords that are able to cash in on the works of authors, even after they are dead.<br />
<br />
Second, treating the creative expression of minds in media creates new inequalities rather than enable a progressive open society that builds on the ideas of others and advance the welfare of all human beings. Just as how feudalism later gave rise to monarchy, where power and authority concentrated in the hands of a few, having creative expression of minds being treated as "property" will inevitably lead to the centralization of distribution of creative works in the hands of a few. What is to stop big companies from buying out smaller ones or pricing them out of the market?<br />
<br />
<b>Argument 2</b>: <b>Is "Intellectual property" really an appropriate term to refer to creative expressions or the labour of the mind?</b><br />
<br />
For this section of my critique, I wish to raise a series of questions.<br />
<br />
1) Are creative expressions of another person's mind worlds that we inhabit? Do we need to pay rent to inhabit or access such a "world"?<br />
<br />
OR<br />
<br />
2) Are creative expressions products of the mind that can do things to or for other people who find value in those products?<br />
<br />
3) For me the issue with "intellectual property" is that it is an inappropriate metaphor for what creative works of the minds are. Why do we select the metaphor of "property" for creative works of the mind and not another? And why does a global organization like WIPO want to enforce what is merely a rhetorical construction in order to create an economy out of it?<br />
<br />
Another question that challenges this metaphor or property is:<br />
<br />
4) Do we truly own our creative expressions even when what we "create" actually comes from recreating what we have learned from others?<br />
<br />
We create from what we have seen, experienced, heard or read. And even when we have something "original", we use language rules and other rules of discourse taught or given to us by society to translate that which we conceive into a mode of expression and onto a medium. As <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Davies and Harré, (1999) argue, we use language according to rules that “are explicit formulations of the normative order which is immanent in concrete human productions, such as actual conversations between particular people on particular occasions” (p. 33). In addition, whatever we create using language is based on “whatever concretely has happened before, and to human memories of it, which form[s] both the personal and the cultural resources for speakers to draw upon in constructing the present moment” (Davies & Harré, 1999). </span><br />
<br />
5) On that basis, isn't what we create using language and media as expressions of our mind really "private property" or something that should belong to the public?<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>My Conclusion:</b> <br />
We need to be critical of the idea of "intellectual property" and resist it. For this label of "intellectual property is socially and rhetorically constructed to liken creative expression to "property" or "land" or to something that can be owned.<br />
<br />
For me, a more appropriate metaphor is "intellectual labour" which recognizes that a person has done "work" or expended effort to use the rules of language and discourse to construct or translate an expression of the mind into a product that others can consume or make use of. As such, we should recognize and reward creators for labour and efforts involved in making the expression of the mind consumable and accessible to the public. However, such rewards should not extend into unjust political and economic privileges.<br />
<br />
References:<br />
<br />
Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1999). Positioning and personhood. In R. Harré & L. van Lagenhove (Eds.), <i>Positioning theory: Moral contexts of intentional action</i> (pp. 32–52). Malden, Massacghusetts: Blackwell Publishers.<br />
<br />
<span class="selectable" id="js-reference-string-0">World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO]. <i>What is intellectual property</i>. Retrieved from http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/intproperty/450/wipo_pub_450.pdf</span><br />
<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-61720529547402962492015-04-19T05:26:00.000-07:002015-04-19T07:09:03.554-07:00Thoughts about copyright<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Two events have triggered my expression of thoughts in this blog post. One is a dream that I had about sharing an article on Facebook and finding out that they suspended my account indefinitely as a result of what they called "copyright infringements". The next event was news circulated within my Jamaican library community about the bill before Parliament to extend copyright from fifty to ninety-five years. (I don't know which one is more irritating, although, I figure that the dream came in response to the news).<br />
<br />
Let me begin with the dream or the unreal event or what narratology scholar Georgokapoulou (2010) calls the hypothetical story. In the dream, I shared content from a news report on Facebook with quotations and my commentary. A friend reacted to the article and wrote a response. Then my wife was about to write a response, when all of a sudden she said she did not see my online profile any more. That was when I discovered on my attempt to login that Facebook "suspended" my account "indefinitely" for sharing content from the Associated Press that amounted to "copyright infringement". I felt that there was no means to appeal and that I was not warned before they took this action. I further reasoned that an algorithm had done this, as any human being would have seen that I shared only a portion of the text in quotes and added my own commentary to it.<br />
<br />
This leads into my next issue, the pending amendments to the Jamaican Copyright Act. I have not completely studied the act but have merely examined at it to confirm what my library colleagues have been discussing. The chief of peeves is this extension of copyright beyond 50 years to 95 years after the death of the author (See section 11-13a of "A bill entitled An Act ", p. 11). This to me is wholly unjust and unwarranted and I hope to advance three reasons why.<br />
<br />
<b>1. Unmeritocratic</b><br />
Giving copyright extension after an author's death does not benefit the author. It likely benefits the family of the author, the publisher or any other entity (individual or institution) that possesses the copyright. As a result, what this act enables is amounting to creating a new privileged class that do not work to earn their wealth but lives off the wealth and royalties of a dead person. This is unmeritocratic and is as just as having a monarchy or landed aristocracy. In other words, copyright after a author's death is giving rights to individuals and institutions to exploit a dead person's labour and live a life of privilege from such past intellectual labours. At the same time, these privileged individuals and institutions who have not done the intellectual labour to earn from the intellectual work are given the right to restrict others who want to benefit from the same work.<br />
<br />
<b>2. Treats intellectual property as superior to physical products</b><br />
Similar intellectual property like patents last for 25 years (or definitely less than copyright). Yet, patents lead to the creation of more tangible, useful and beneficial products for humanity. Why is it that copyrighted works need to be longer than a patent?<br />
<br />
This is especially questionable as popular culture changes and information gets outdated. Hence, I see no reason why copyright should last any longer than patents where a physical product created can be improved and changed for the better over time. <br />
<br />
<b>3. A justification for censorship and an unfair monopoly over ideas</b><br />
Now for this reason, I include the analysis or the example in my dream. For me, copyright amounts to restricting persons or institutions from distributing a work. This is okay while the author is alive, and perhaps even okay for a few years after the author's death in order for family members of the decease to gain some financial support after they have buried their loved one. However, to restrict the distribution of a work for almost a century after the author's death can in no way be seen as a credible way of supporting the family of the author, but as creating an unfair barrier of entry for others to share and distribute the author's work. It forces a monopoly over the author's intellectual property by a few. This is contrary to a free market logic and to a democratic ideal where individuals and institutions are free to exchange and share information and ideas unrestricted by the state. <br />
<br />
Given these reasons, I oppose any copyright limit extension. In my opinion, after an author's death, no one individual or institution should be given any right to benefit from the work of the dead author and monopolize the distribution of their ideas for any amount of time over 25 years.<br />
<br />
References<br />
<br />
"A bill entitled An Act to ammend the copyright act" (2015, April 2). Retrieved from <a href="http://www.japarliament.gov.jm/attachments/339_The%20Copyright%20%28Amendment%29%20Act,%202015.pdf">http://www.japarliament.gov.jm/attachments/339_The%20Copyright%20%28Amendment%29%20Act,%202015.pdf</a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24.0pt;">
Georgakopoulou, A. (2010). Reflection and self-disclosure from the small stories perspective: A study of identity claims in interview and conversational data. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina, & A. Nylund (Eds.), <i>Telling stories: Language, narratiev and social life</i>. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.</div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.japarliament.gov.jm/attachments/339_The%20Copyright%20%28Amendment%29%20Act,%202015.pdf"></a>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-82723871729902213272015-02-27T15:10:00.000-08:002015-02-27T15:16:47.695-08:00Drone operated inter-library loans and document delivery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3 class="post-title entry-title" style="color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 26px; margin-bottom: 30px;">
On my weekend break from dissertation writing, an idea emerged to me from out of a conversation with my wife about the future of courier services. I do not know if you are all familiar with the news stories about experiments with drone-operated courier services. If not, you might be pretty interested in looking at these news articles about recent companies that have been launching drone delivery services (Hern, 2014; Howarth, 2013; Weiss, 2014). All of a sudden, the crazy idea dawned on me: "What if libraries could offer drone interlibrary loan and document delivery services?"</h3>
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The argument for such a service must first face the opposition of those who argue for the use of the Internet and e-resources for delivering information in the 21st century. After all, the Internet is one of the cheapest means of distributing information.<br /><br />However, I would argue that the premise of using the Internet to serve our clients is useful to a point. For one, let us assume that not all library users possess e-devices or even Internet connectivity. Further, persons without the skills to use e-readers would also encounter this as a barrier to using e-resources. A second problem is that some resources are not yet in electronic format, although this is changing with scanning services and e-publishers republishing content in electronic formats.<br /><br />It is still early yet, and drones while potentially useful, are still in the early stages of adoption by businesses. Libraries perhaps will not see the application of drones circulating library materials over some distance to the users for many years to come, but it is a good time to start thinking about it. Even if libraries do not deliver resources to users using drones, there might be a potential for public library systems to use drones to deliver resources to branch libraries or for libraries to engage in interlibrary delivery using drones to other library systems. As long as some library materials continue to exist in a tangible media or format, it may be still relevant for librarians to consider applying the new technology of the age to getting the user the information in the format that the user prefers. I would also consider this a great experimental opportunity for academic libraries serving students in distance education.<br /><br /><br />References<br /><br />Hern, A. (2014, September 25). DHL launches first commercial drone 'parcelcopter' delivery service. <em>The Guardian.</em> Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/25/german-dhl-launches-first-commercial-drone-delivery-service<br /><br />Howarth, D. (2013, October 16). "World's first" drone delivery service<br />launches in Australia. <em>de zeen.</em> Retrieved from http://www.dezeen.com/2013/10/16/flying-drones-to-deliver-text-books/<br /><br />Weiss, R. (2014, September 26). Germany's post office beats Amazon and Google with launch of world's first drone delivery service. <em>National Post.</em> Retrieved from http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/26/germanys-post-office-beats-amazon-and-google-with-launch-of-worlds-first-drone-delivery-service/</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-53892075635893242162015-02-25T03:29:00.003-08:002015-02-27T15:29:13.758-08:00Recognizing Andrew Carnegie as a hero in library history and library science<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="color: red;">[Edited February 27, 2015]</span><br />
<br />
For the wintry month of February [2015], I have undertaken to read leisurely the autobiography of the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (You can access this <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17976/17976-h/17976-h.htm">on Project Gutenberg</a>). This I do on the weekends, as I take a break from my dissertation work.<br />
<br />
One of the reasons for my interest in Carnegie is that he perhaps one of the most central characters in library history. The NPR ran a story on his legacy in establishing libraries in 2013 (Stamberg, 2013). However, the scope of his legacy goes beyond just funding the building of public free libraries to be managed by municipalities. In a previous blog post, I remembered pointing out that Andrew Carnegie's finances also went into establishing library schools (<a href="http://smallislandlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2013/07/changing-library-education-with-times.html">Changing library education with the times</a>). According to Rubin (2010), the Andrew Carnegie Foundation was very much involved in funding library education with the goal of producing graduates that would be able to effectively and efficiently manage the new libraries that were built by the foundation. As such, Carnegie's financial support underlies the foundation for library science and libraries not only in America, but internationally as well.<br />
<br />
Prior to reading his story, I thought that Carnegie had used a private library to conduct research on investments, that lead him to wisely invest in steel. Here, my biased perception towards libraries as places for supporting entrepreneurship associated Carnegie's financial support to libraries as being related to him benefitting financially from knowledge accessed in libraries. However, that narrative interpretation was "laid to rest" by reading his own personal account.<br />
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<br />
Andrew's autobiography tells of his story of poverty, where at his first job, his employment gave him the opportunity to access books from a private library. Carnegie felt that the experience of being able to borrow books and read improved him, and felt that this should be freely available to others. Hence, his commitment to using his fortunes to spread access to literature to the public.<br />
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One thing that I have recognized from Carnegie's story is that billionaires and the rich (or the 1%) as people today call them, are not necessarily villains as they are made out to be. It is these same billionaires that give away money to worthy causes to enhance the life and social experiences of others. Often, their motives come not from selfish ambition, but from pure desire to make their world a better place or help souls improve themselves. As such, I believe that we must resist the urge to divide people based on wealth into the 1% and the 99% and recognise that together, we the 100% have a role to play in making the world a community that recognizes the humanity of every human being.<br />
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<br />
References:<br />
<br />
Rubin, R. (2010). Foundations of library and information science (3rd ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.<br />
<br />
Stamberg, S. (2013, Aug. 1). How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into A Library Legacy. Retrieved from<br />
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/01/207272849/how-andrew-carnegie-turned-his-fortune-into-a-library-legacy<br />
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
Inskeep, S. (Host). (2014, July 8). Buddhist Monks Face Jail Time For July 4 Fireworks Display [Radio broadcast episode]. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display</a><br />
<br />
Read more : <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html">http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html</a></div>
<br />
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
skeep, S. (Host). (2014, July 8). Buddhist Monks Face Jail Time For July 4 Fireworks Display [Radio broadcast episode]. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display</a><br />
<br />
Read more : <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html">http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html</a></div>
<div style="left: -99999px; position: absolute;">
Inskeep, S. (Host). (2014, July 8). Buddhist Monks Face Jail Time For July 4 Fireworks Display [Radio broadcast episode]. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display</a><br />
<br />
Read more : <a href="http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html">http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-72541422993732642222014-12-13T23:24:00.003-08:002014-12-13T23:52:36.013-08:00An idea for the use of a 3-D printer in the library<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As I have been following up the maker-space movement in libraries, I remember conversing with a former library student who noted that he did not see the purpose of having a 3-D printer in the library. I also remember a retired LIS professor questioning the need for library maker-spaces. In this post, I reveal my one idea for how a 3-D printer and a maker culture in the library can fit into what I see as a traditional library mandate.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AQ9hK88Ull4/VI0y2kqmsEI/AAAAAAAAA98/xCgOJEqFnQU/s1600/IMG_1110%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AQ9hK88Ull4/VI0y2kqmsEI/AAAAAAAAA98/xCgOJEqFnQU/s1600/IMG_1110%5B1%5D.JPG" height="320" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">London Canada's maker-bus (October 2014)</td></tr>
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To begin, I must make it clear that I do not see the maker-space as a new trend or fad in libraries. For me, libraries have historically played a part in a "maker culture". What I mean by this is that for years, libraries have stocked up "how-to-do" or "do-it-yourself" books, audio-visual tapes and other resources. In addition, many libraries have traditionally offered programs or services such as art and craft sessions, where we encouraged users to be creative and produce creative works.</div>
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As such, I believe that the current interest in creating maker-spaces can only enhance what we have traditionally done. Now, we have the potential to combine the how to knowledge (books and other media, including YouTube videos on the Internet) with technology hardware and other tools as well as library space and programming (workshops and other events) to get people or users to make "stuff". </div>
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Consequently, my first suggestion or idea for libraries considering maker spaces is to get locals to make physical "media" for display in the library, namely self-made or custom-made:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>printed books </li>
<li>board games</li>
</ul>
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My main idea is that libraries can use 3-D printers to support local board game developers. This can be done primarily by printing game pieces. For example, my departmental library at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (University of Western Ontario) <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FIMSGRC/photos/pb.127268373993611.-2207520000.1418539006./735949556458820/?type=1&theater">3-D printed a miniature Starship Enterprise</a> among other things. What better way to support indie game board developers by helping them design and print their own game pieces? And don't just stop there! What better way to celebrate local, organic and homegrown independent authors of board games than by showcasing their works and creations in the library along with displays that inform others about their games. We could even permit users to play the games in the library and provide feedback for board game developers on their prototypes.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-57134715704224442432014-12-13T22:31:00.001-08:002014-12-13T22:31:52.802-08:00What I recently learned about OCLC<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For many of you who might not know me, I have an ongoing interest in entrepreneurship. However, I am awakening to the fact that a for-profit entity is but one of the varied options of entrepreneurship that someone can pursue. Alternate to the profit-driven enterprise, is the social enterprise (or socially-conscious entrepreneurship) as well as the non-profit entity. In this blog post, I want to share what I learned about the financial model of one of the largest non-profit entity in the library field, the OCLC.<br />
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If you are the library field, chances are, you have come across the name OCLC. If not, you may wish to read more about it on its website's <a href="http://www.oclc.org/en-CA/about/story.html">About page</a>. In short, OCLC is a large globally-spanning non-profit library cooperative (like a union of libraries) that has as its mission to share and organize library resources.Well, in <a href="http://smallislandlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2014/06/talking-with-vendors-of-inmagic-presto.html">summer 2014</a>, I blogged about a conversation I had with technology vendors that got me to question the financial model of OCLC as a non-profit as opposed to a social entrepreneurial venture. From that conversation, I realised that I had a gap in my understanding of the difference between a social entrepreneurial venture versus a non-profit entity. Hence, on Friday, December 12, 2014, I accessed the newly released OCLC annual and financial report to discover for myself the answers to two questions.<br />
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<b><u>Question 1: </u></b><br />
My first question was that OCLC refers to itself as a non-profit, yet charges for services. My question was what does OCLC do with the fees it charges?<br />
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According to the <a href="http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/financials.html">financial </a><a href="http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/financials.html">report</a>, the OCLC<br />
<blockquote>
<i>is a nonprofit, library cooperative. We operate in a business-like manner and are driven by our public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs—providing shared services, research and advocacy programs to deliver on these purposes.</i></blockquote>
Also, if I am interpreting the report correctly, the OCLC reinvests its "profits" (fees, earnings or incomes) into research and development so that it can develop new products and services that meet the needs of libraries and their clients or users. According to the report, OCLC's:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>operations and research initiatives are funded by revenues generated by services provided to participating libraries. Unlike alternative library services organizations, OCLC invests resources into new services and programs rather than distributing funds to shareholders. OCLC also maintains an investment portfolio, or Sustainability Fund, that is managed in a manner similar to an endowment.</i></blockquote>
<b><u>Question 2: </u></b><br />
My second question was how does OCLC make money? The above quotation to a great extent answers that question. In short, the report indicates that OCLC makes money from:<br />
<br />
- fees or "revenues generated from services provided to participating libraries" and<br />
- capital investments that are managed "similar to an endowment"<br />
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Currently, the report indicates that OCLC is operating at a loss from fees charged to libraries, but is earning from its capital investments. Further, OCLC points out that it did not increase the prices for its products and services for X number of years. As the report states:<br />
<br /><br /><blockquote>
<i>OCLC has historically operated at break-even, with revenues that approximate the costs to deliver services and programs. However, for the past four years, OCLC has consciously operated at a loss. This loss is attributed to: [t]he decision to support the membership during a challenging economy with three years (2010–2012) of no price increases in the Americas and only modest price increases outside the Americas. In FY14, we increased prices by a modest 3% on average following a 2.75% increase in FY13....</i></blockquote>
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So, with these questions answered, my next question is what is the social entrepreneurial model and how does it differ from OCLC's non-profit financial model?<br />
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References:<br />
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<div>
OCLC. (2014). About OCLC: Our story. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.oclc.org/en-CA/about/story.html">http://www.oclc.org/en-CA/about/story.html</a></div>
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<div>
OCLC. (2014). Annual report. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/financials.html">http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/home.html</a></div>
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OCLC. (2014). Financial report. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/financials.html">http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/financials.html</a><br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-68836734264694533962014-10-28T03:10:00.001-07:002014-10-28T03:29:51.756-07:00Narrative information sources for medicinal care and the implications for LIS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For those who have been following up on my blog for some time, you might already be aware that I am interested in narrative research. Well recently, my university staged a lecture where an author, Dr. Vincent Lam, presented on the topic "Narrative in Medicine – Why We Need Stories in an Age of Evidence". The <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/414818382008822/">event </a>was held in the University Hospital | Auditorium A, Room B3-246.<br />
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So I attended the <a href="http://wordsfest.ca/event/reading-vincent-lam">lecture by Dr. Vincent Lam staged at my university's hospital</a>. Unfortunately, due to my mix up with the time, I arrived when the lecture was already in progress. Nevertheless, I was still able to get what I needed to hear and even got the opportunity ask Dr. Lam a question. In the next few paragraphs, I outline some of my take away points from Dr. Lam's talk. </div>
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Before outlining what I got from the talk, it is important to indicate my particular interest in the narrative turn in patient care and medicine. I particularly see this new emphasis on narrative based information sources as being important to libraries and information science. This narrative turn in the medical sciences has implications for librarianship, especially in terms of how we go about serving health related information sources. I also see the importance in this for those working as hospital librarians, as they too need to consider supplying biographical or narrative sources to health care providers. (Now back to Dr. Lam's talk.)</div>
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Dr Lam indicated that during the encounter between a patient and a health practitioner, the patient brings a story. Usually, the story is "something happened to me". Lam suggests that the health practitioner is then expected to hear and listen carefully to the client's story, and then to use his or her special knowledge and tools to explain the story. Lam also suggests that the health provider is also expected to tell the patient "what will happen next". As such, Lam suggests that doctors and health practitioners have a role to play as story interpreters as well as storytellers. In his words, "doctors are story interpreters" and "third party storytellers", offering story interpretations and storytelling to patients like the shamans and spiritual doctors of the age before modern medicine.</div>
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Dr. Lam also argued that health care providers can also benefit from being educated in the literary arts. He cited a study that indicates that reading literary fiction promoted empathy. In general, Lam stated that reading tough, difficult and challenging books was good for medical professionals as it would enable them to become more empathetic. This is needed as medical professionals tend to rely a lot on statistics and hard scientific numerical facts that make them less empathetic and understanding of their clients' needs. </div>
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He said that sometimes doctors need to put down their scientific spectacles in treating patients, and see the world through a different set of eyes. Lam suggests that it is really "easy to miss something about your tools because that is what you work with". It is always good to get outsider perspectives. And narrative information from patients who experience illness are as important as the scholarly or evidence based medical literature for this.</div>
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Lam also makes the point that patients rarely present information about what is happening to them in an easy form for doctors to use to make a diagnosis. Patients often do not use the medical terms and jargon when presenting their health problem. Instead, doctors have to collect, interpret and put the fragments of information presented by the patient together into a medical narrative, in order to make sense of it and to arrive at a diagnosis. Hence, in this regard, doctors also need the skill of understanding patient narratives and being able to convert such narratives into a medical narrative.</div>
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At the end of his talk, I asked him about his position on doctors reading autobiographies,watching YouTube videos and reading blogs of those who experience illness. His response was "very valuable" and that doctors should read these to supplement their scholarly readings.</div>
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My question was motivated from my recent discovery of a Masters thesis in the University of Western Ontario's institutional repository entitled:</div>
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<div style="min-height: 1em;">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="min-height: 1em;">
<a href="http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2095" target="_blank">Women's Stories of Breast Cancer: Sharing Information Through YouTube Video Blogs</a> - <strong>Jenna Kressler, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, MSc </strong><strong><a href="http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2095/" target="_blank">http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2095/</a></strong></blockquote>
<div style="min-height: 1em;">
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This interesting thesis title seems to suggest that a blog is not a medium,but a way of presenting information (genre). Hence YouTube Video blogs! (Or vlogs). The article also touches on the storytelling idea for sharing health-related information. The author also used narrative analysis to conduct her research, similar to the type of analysis that I am doing for my research on blogs and tweets. Finally, she conducted her analysis on the personal narratives of women victims and/or survivors of breast cancer.</div>
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<b>Conclusion:</b></div>
<div style="min-height: 1em;">
The narrative turn in medicine could spell hope for the value of the humanities in academia, Medicine is realizing and awakening to the idea that narrative and storytelling skills are important to its practice. Further, librarians have a role to play in serving medical practitioners with not just scholarly and scientific literature, but also biographies and other personal narratives of the persons that experience illness. Finally, librarians also have a role in not just providing the published sources of narratives, but also considering social media sources such as blogs and YouTube videos. Curating these may also be valuable to medical practitioners who need to supplement their professional understanding of illness with a deeper understanding of the patient's side of the story.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-59011427322669938462014-10-28T02:01:00.001-07:002014-10-28T02:08:15.243-07:00Blogging dilemma for an academic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of the challenges that I have discovered about blogging about my research or research interests as an academic is the potential problem of compromising the peer review process of academia. While I not sure if it happens in practice, I suspect it is quite possible that academics or practitioners who review papers that I submit to journals are able to discover that I am the author if they:<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>have been following up on my blog or status updates on social networks </li>
<li>are curious enough to Google search or snoop on the Web to discover the possible author of the paper they are reviewing or come across the information by accident while googling the topic.</li>
</ol>
<br />
Any of these will compromise the blind peer review process as it will remove anonymity about the author of the paper. As such, this raises a dilemma for me as an academic passionate about blogging and sharing my research with my online social and electronic networks. This reduces what I can blog about. I have to avoid blogging about my research until after it has been published, which can take some time. Hence, I can not post weekly or even monthly updates on my ongoing research findings or even any part of the research process.<br />
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This leaves me to consider what else can an academic safely blog about?<br />
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While I currently see some of my Jamaican academic colleagues blogging commentaries about current events in Jamaica, to me this seems quite risky as an untenured faculty. Unless one is providing scholarly analysis, one risks alienating university administration, politicians and potential donors to the university and to one's research. In this era of academic capitalism and the corporate university, it seems that an untenured faculty member needs to remain publicly neutral on issues, as an employee of an institution that seeks capital investment from various sources. In this new era, everyone in society is a stakeholder or potential stakeholder for the university. This includes:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Politicians (who may or may not be in power)</li>
<li>Students and alumni from all religions, political affiliations, sexual orientations, ethnic groups, race, etc. who are both customers and potential donors (or contributors to the university's endowment fund)</li>
<li>various non-profit entities and corporations who have funding, donations or other investment to contribute to the university's development or research.</li>
</ul>
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Consequently, the university, just like the secular state, must be inclusive, while at the same time, upholding traditional academic principles. Principles such as free speech, intellectual freedom, and diversity of thought, opinions and perspectives must coexist with an environment where all stakeholders feel that the university is serving their varied interests.<br />
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As such, it seems safer for academics to blog about pedagogy (how to teach their subject). But even blogging about pedagogy publicly is challenging, because we have to preserve the privacy of our students and what goes on in the classroom from the public.<br />
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Perhaps it is safer to blog one's reaction to information disseminated. This includes news, news articles, research papers or events such as video or conference presentations. Yet, it seems that academics may still need to be careful in selecting which issue published to react to, avoiding controversial topics. Blogging about hobbies seems safest. However, many times, our hobbies are not connected to our research.<br />
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As such, I wonder if in an era where blogging can land one in trouble with the law, do blogs give academics (especially the untenured ones) any voice? We are the university employees of a new era. An era where tenure is no longer guaranteed. An era where the university is adjusting to a new institutional status as an institution that seeks to attract capital investment from all stakeholders in society in order to maintain its survival.<br />
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Second, our own peers can victimize us during the blind peer review process if we blog about our research, depending on whether or not they like us. Even if they do not victimize us (especially in cases where they like us), blogging about our research potentially compromises the blind peer review process. This it does by making it easier to identify the author of a manuscript submitted for publication. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-31414180423814900252014-08-12T04:28:00.002-07:002014-08-12T04:36:05.022-07:00My experiences using e-book/audio book platforms and subscription services<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I took some time over the summer to experiment and explore a number of online e-book and audio subscription services. In addition, at the time I began my exploration, an article emailed to me from my network entitled "What’s better than Kindle Unlimited for $120 a year? This free alternative" (see Randall, 2014) also inspired me to think more about my experiment. The result is this preliminary report on my experiences using three e-book/audio book platforms or subscription services: <a href="http://www.readingrainbow.com/">Reading Rainbow</a>, OverDrive and Audible. The limitation, I have only attempted to use these platforms on one device, the iPad.<br />
<ul>
<li><i>Reading Rainbow</i> app for iOS - free version</li>
<li><i>OverDrive</i> - free through my public library</li>
<li><i>Amazon's Audible</i> - 30-day trial version</li>
</ul>
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I begin with the <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reading-rainbow/id512350210?mt=8">Reading Rainbow App</a> downloaded from the App Store. Reading Rainbow was a television program when I was a kid, and now that I am a parent with girls that like to read, I decided to check out this app. Rather than being an app that talk about books and featured children performing reading, the app was essentially a "Library of Children's Books, Kids Videos & Educational Games" (<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reading-rainbow/id512350210?mt=8">See the i-Tunes review</a>). After the long introductory video, the app visually organizes books by islands of interest (located in the sky) with interesting titles such as "the Animal Kingdom", "Genius Academy" and "Action Adventure & Magical Tales". The child can then navigate to an island of interest and access books and educational videos in that genre or topical island. In addition, the readers in the free version can check out up to five e-books into their virtual backpack. The reading experience is not only one where narration is provided, but to some extent, limited interactivity is built into the picture books, where readers can touch the page and experience certain (motion and sound) effects.<br />
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While Reading Rainbow was a hit with my first born who wanted me to subscribe so that she could access more books and return the books she had already read, I could not bring myself to do so, knowing that I had a free public library 15 minutes away from where I lived. Yet, considering that we had limited time to spend at the library each week borrowing books and that my first born devoured the books borrowed within 2 days, it seemed that access to e-books would perhaps be a better option for such a voracious reader. This brings me to the free library alternative, OverDrive.<br />
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In 2012, I blogged about my first experience using OverDrive (See <a href="http://smallislandlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2012/01/borrowing-e-books-and-online-videos.html">that blog post here</a>). However, at that time, I used OverDrive, I did so using the laptop. This time however, I used OverDrive with the iPad, and I must say, OverDrive is better used with iPad than a laptop. Just the portability alone and the fact that you can curl up into a chair without something warm or hot (especially in the summer) in your lap makes the iPad or tablet computer a better option for reading e-books or listening to audio books versus the laptop.<br />
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That said, to get started, you have to download <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/overdrive-media-console-library/id366869252?mt=8">the app</a> and get your library card in hand. (Setting-up can be quite a daunting process compared to Reading Rainbow's app). Once you are set up and learn your way around the app and the library's website, you are good to go. OverDrive is definitely not as intuitive and easy as ReadingRainbow, where you can just navigate to islands of interest. Rather, navigation here requires browsing images of book covers or tapping on hyperlinks organized by genre. However, the plus side is that you can search for what you want (whereas Reading Rainbow forces you to just explore what they have available). While OverDrive was great for downloading both e-books and audio books, I do not think it sparked the enthusiasm of my firstborn as much as Reading Rainbow. Nonetheless, my firstborn enjoyed listening to the audio books and hopefully learned some new words and how they are pronounced or sound, compared to just reading the text by herself.<br />
<br />
Another thing about OverDrive is that the collection is limited. For one reason or the other, the selection of books was particularly limiting for my peculiar interest in Judeo-Christian theology. I found few books (7 from four authors) discussing Jesus. On the other hand, I could not access the <i>Word of Promise</i> audio Bible that I had previously borrowed in CD-form from the same public library and had to settle for a less dramatic King James version. As such, I conclude that OverDrive perhaps may not be a platform to go for a specific hobby-related interest, but more what is the popular interest. Another down side to this, is that you only get 14 days to listen to or read the books borrowed. In addition, some books that you may be interested in may have to be placed on hold as someone else is currently reading or using the file. So you might have a queue waiting for an e-book or audio book to become available.<br />
<br />
<br />
That brings me to <a href="http://www.audible.com/mt/content-first/ref=cf_hp_t">Audible</a>. Audible requires setting up an account with Amazon or signing into your existing account with Amazon. That said, I was offered a 30 day trial version of the service, enabling me to download the app and experience it. It is from this app that I was able to access the <i>Word of Promise</i> audio Bible, which I downloaded and was able to listen to even without Internet Access. The strange thing about this was that my CD player and radio died 2 days after I downloaded the app (must have been jealous).<br />
<br />
Compared to OverDrive, Audible seemingly offers a greater variety of books for one's peculiar hobby-related interest. Further, you do not have to wait in a queue for a popular book. You can essentially get any book that you want for either a monthly or annual fee. Randal (2014) mentions that Kindle Unlimited charges $9.99 a month, but the fee for subscription to Audible is 14.95 per month. With this price, I will just stick it out at OverDrive and perhaps just buy the e-book that I really want that the library does not provide access to.<br />
<br />
<br />
Now listening to audio books is like listening to the radio. When I was a child, there used to be radio dramas. And listening to audio books, (especially fictional ones) or those that employ dramaturgical or theatrical elements, reminded me of those days when I'd listen to radio dramas. Yet, I am a more visual person, and eventually tune out audio as background noise (apart from the interesting fiction books like the ones my firstborn were listening to). Further, I can only listen to one book at a time and could not fathom downloading a new audio book daily, weekly or monthly. What this means is that I would have to download books that I'd want to hear for a year, and then listen to each book until it is completed, before going on to the next book. As such, I don't think paying $14.95 per month is justified for listening to audio books, just the same way that I am unaccustomed for paying to listen to radio stations with their annoying ads.<br />
<br />
That said, I end my report on my experiences here. Up next (in the future) is my report on the experience using Google Play as a platform for accessing e-books.<br />
<br />
Reference:<br />
<br />
Randall, T. (2014, July 31). What’s better than Kindle Unlimited for $120 a year? This free alternative. <i>Bloomberg </i>Retrieved from <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-31/what-s-better-than-kindle-unlimited-for-120-a-year-this-free-alternative.html">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-31/what-s-better-than-kindle-unlimited-for-120-a-year-this-free-alternative.html</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-5122109584105183042014-08-04T13:52:00.000-07:002014-08-04T20:34:30.649-07:00What the iPad and Tablets are good at?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So if you haven't gotten a tablet device as yet, I guess this post may be useful in helping you decide whether or not the device is a good fit for you and your lifestyle. Here in bullet points, I summarize what the iPad in particular and tablets in general are good at. While I conclude that the iPad is bad for typing, tablets in general are good for media consumption, and for some types of media generation. Here is my list of what the iPad is good for:<br />
<br />
With tablet technologies you can:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>read e-books</li>
<li>listen to audio-books</li>
<li>surf the web (with quality of web surfing limited to those sites that provide a mobile website)</li>
<li>check email (with quality of email access dependent on the email provider providing a mobile email app)</li>
<li>play games </li>
<li>watch video</li>
<li>take or capture photographs or video</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
However, you can't use the iPad to replace a laptop or PC. In fact, the iPad is best functional when synchronised with other devices (such as an iPhone, PC or laptop). This especially because not all Websites and Web services are fully functional when viewed by a tablet. Secondly, there are certain things better down on a laptop or PC with a large screen and a keyboard that is large enough for you to type 60 to 120 words per minute.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-30412628674547790572014-08-04T13:33:00.000-07:002014-08-04T13:33:25.286-07:00Mobile apps coexisting with the printed book?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I had the opportunity this summer to explore mobile apps on the iPad. In addition to experimenting with the tablet and mostly free mobile apps, I also completed my online course on "the future of storytelling". In this course, one of the final segments was on transmedia storytelling, which mentioned how the narrative of a traditionally published novel was extended through the use of mobile apps. Through this particular segment, I learned about <a href="http://mirrorworldnovels.com/">MirrorWorld</a> and <a href="http://mirada.com/">Mirada</a>. In this blog post or entry, I briefly introduce both MirrorWorld and Mirada, with some discussion of how these represent a new trend of convergence between traditional book publishing and mobile app development.<br />
<br />
To begin, MirrorWorld is one of the works of Mirada in modern storytelling that mixes both traditional and technological techniques to expand on a story world first told by a novel. According to Mirada's About page, Mirada is "a studio designed for storytellers" (Mirada 2014, "About"). They specialise in "synthesizing archetypal oral tradition with modern technique" (Mirada 2014, "About", para. 2). Mirada further dubs Mirror World as the "World’s First Living Storybook" (Mirada 2014, "Cornelia"). In my understanding of Mirror World, Mirada built a mobile app that functioned as a story engine or database that permits users to explore the story world and be immersed into an interactive experience while exploring the story. For more information on this (or if you want to check out the app for yourself), explore the following websites:<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://mirrorworldnovels.com/">http://mirrorworldnovels.com/</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.corneliafunke.com/index.php?page=app&lang=en">http://www.corneliafunke.com/index.php?page=app&lang=en</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
However, I just wanted to opine here that after seeing Mirror World and learning about the development of the app to expand on the novel, I think the future of traditional book publishing will persist. Hence, future books being published will have accompanying apps. These accompanying apps will expand the story world of the traditionally published book visually and otherwise. What this means in my opinion is that the printed book is not yet dead, but will co-exist in the future with apps that expands upon the narrative that the book tells.<br />
<br />
<br />
References:<br />
<br />
Mirada (2014). About. Retrieved from <a href="http://mirada.com/about">http://mirada.com/about</a><br />
<br />
---(2014). Cornelia Funke’s mirror world: Crafting the World’s First Living Storybook.<br />
Retrieved from <a href="http://mirada.com/stories/mirrorworld" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://mirada.com/stories/mirrorworld</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-16335164743825601692014-07-02T13:10:00.001-07:002014-07-02T13:15:41.208-07:00Can graduates consult fresh out of library school? A few thoughts <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For June, I have been putting together my thoughts and research on consulting and consultants in domains outside of library and information science (LIS). I have also been informally talking with independent information professionals and formulating ideas about my dissertation project, including possible conclusions and recommendations that I might want to contribute to the field. In this blog post, I want to share some of my thoughts (that I may not necessarily include in my final project). These thoughts are basically centered around providing answers to the question:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Can graduates consult fresh out of library school?</i></div>
<br />
In a recent conversation with a library student about my research, I mentioned that I am studying library consulting as a phenomenon. The conversation lead to her asking me several questions about library consultants and library consulting. One such question was whether or not library consultants need to have experience working in the field before doing consulting. Currently, it is the dominant paradigm that library consultants cannot be students "fresh out of library school". This view is not only held by MLIS students, but also practitioners and professionals. It is also embedded in the literature that basically defines a consultant as an "outside expert" that provides problem solving advice. Yet, my view is why does it have to be seen this way?<br />
<br />
When I look at MBA graduates, they leave business schools and immediately join management consulting firms, with little or no experience working in actual businesses. When I consider this, my argument is that how we teach MLIS students could also prepare them for consulting without actually working in libraries. In my radical proposal, a consultant does not necessarily need work experience, but could tentatively have two other criteria:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>an outsider perspective and</li>
<li>a specialty </li>
</ol>
<br />
When I look at MBA education and even management consulting literature, students are prepared for consulting. They learn methods and processes to do consulting through books such as<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>High Impact Consulting, by Robert Schaffer <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/High-Impact-Consulting-Consultants-Together-Extraordinary-ebook/dp/B001C6NCN8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402623917&sr=1-1&keywords=high+impact+consulting" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.ca/High-Impact-Consulting-Consultants-Together-Extraordinary-ebook/dp/B001C6NCN8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402623917&sr=1-1&keywords=high+impact+consulting</a></li>
<li>Flawless Consulting, by Peter Block <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Flawless-Consulting-Enhanced-Getting-Expertise-ebook/dp/B007MCRO4Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402624209&sr=1-1&keywords=flawless+consulting" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.ca/Flawless-Consulting-Enhanced-Getting-Expertise-ebook/dp/B007MCRO4Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402624209&sr=1-1&keywords=flawless+consulting</a></li>
<li><span class="TF">Stroh, L. K., & Johnson, H. H. (2006). <i>Basic principles of effective consulting</i>. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
Another thing about MBA education (I know these things partially because my wife did an MBA), is that they work a lot with real life cases or case studies. So while MBA students do not have work experience, they use these cases and case studies to practice their consulting methods and principles. Sometimes, MBA courses actually insist that students actually engage real companies and organizations and prepare their own cases and proposals for solving the problems in those cases. Considering this, I wonder if library schools could borrow some of these practices in library education in order to prepare library school graduates for consulting.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Then when I look at law education, I see law students as studying mainly cases. Is it possible that library school graduates could substitute work experience by being exposed to studies of various "library cases"?<br />
<br />
I also look at the fact that sometimes consultants are engaged in organizations for their specialty. Sometimes, this involves their knowledge of a particular software, collection, or of a particular subset of users (say for instance LGBT users, or African-Americans, or Muslims, etc.) or because of their specialty in a particular language. In other words, there are cases in which work experience is unnecessary to consulting, particularly in cases where MLIS graduates already come with a bachelors degree in a previous area of studies. In other cases, MLIS graduates may have a niche hobby that enables them to be an expert or specialist in a particular area, such as Comic books, Graphic Novels, Star Trek or some game specialty.<br />
<br />
Finally, I look at my own experience as a MLIS student, where I actually performed information brokerage, information consulting and library consulting before graduating from library school without knowing that what I was doing had formal names and procedures. In some of those instances, the outcomes were not as successful as I would have wanted them to be. However, now that I have researched consulting and have come across principles, process models and methods for consulting, I felt that I could have been more effective in my library and information brokerage and consulting roles early on in my career. Had I been taught how to be an effective consultant in library school, I feel that I would have gotten better results in all those early freelance projects that I did as a student before graduating from library school. <br />
<br />
<b>Conclusion</b><br />
<br />
It is therefore my opinion that while the dominant perspective in my discipline is that library school graduates cannot enter into consulting directly after exiting library school, that this is not a function of them lacking work experience, but a function of the library curriculum not preparing them for such roles. My main support for this argument is that MBA graduates consult without work experience, and this is because they are provided with adequate curriculum and informational support. Secondly, I have argued that consultants are not only important because of their work experience, but sometimes because of their knowledge derived from their hobbies or personal experiences. Library students doing their Masters, with a degree in another subject, are highly likely to possess some niche area or subject that they are quite conversant if not an expert on. Finally, I feel that my own personal experience could have been enriched by a course that would prepare me for effective consulting. (Coincidentally, I am aware of recent grads that are also doing consulting and am sure that they too would benefit from such a course). So I say, let's think more about this.<br />
<br />
<br />
Reference<br />
<br />
<span class="TF">Kurian, G. T. (2013). Consultant.<i> The AMA dictionary of business and management</i>. New York: Amacom.
</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-52403232878727222122014-06-11T08:31:00.000-07:002014-11-03T07:40:01.904-08:00Talking with the vendors of InMagic Presto & MinISIS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Day 3 SLA 2014 conference June 10: Talking with the vendors</b></div>
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I had four unofficial priorities for this conference </div>
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1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Network with library and information consultants</div>
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2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>listen to talks presented by library and information consultants</div>
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3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>informally talk about my research ideas with library and information consultants</div>
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4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>experience SLA for the first time</div>
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However, on attending I found that I just went with the flow (giving up my own agenda) and sought to make the most of the experience. This included:</div>
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•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>talking and networking with employed librarians, which enabled me to receive valuable career advice and counselling</div>
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•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>formally joining AIIP (paying the student membership fee)</div>
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•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>purchasing Mary Ellen Bates' book on <i><a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Building-Running-Successful-Research-Business/dp/0910965854">Building & Running a Successful Research Business</a></i></div>
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•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>learning whatever I could from each presentation at the conference (especially those relating to social media or my other research interests)</div>
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•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and finally, talking with vendors to get updates on their products and what’s going on with databases today</div>
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It is the latter official goal that I want to discuss some more in this blog entry.</div>
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I spent the time listening to presentations from and chatting with the vendors of library systems and technological solutions. In total, I counted 4 vendors that I actively or passively engaged to learn from:</div>
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1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Intellixir LCC,</div>
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2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Elsevier – Scopus</div>
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3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Minisis</div>
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4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>InMagic </div>
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In addition, I sat in a session where librarians shared their stories about how they made the best of SharePoint for their Intranet and library services, which deserves its own blog post.</div>
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However, in this particular blog post, I want to discuss the 2 vendors that I spoke with who actually had clients in the English-speaking Caribbean: Minisis and InMagic. In fact, because I was aware that my colleagues from the region used these vendors, I took the time to learn about their updates and upgrades.</div>
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<b>InMagic Presto for DB/TextWorks</b></div>
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I spoke to Jason Buggy from Lucidea and had him demo the new Web-based interface upgrade for InMagic dubbed Presto and was impressed. New features include being able to incorporate blog entries and other social media such as discussion fora into the catalogue results. That’s right folks; the industry is ahead of academia, as they are already providing features for including blog entries and discussion forums in a library’s catalogue. Of course, the entries are based on what the librarian collects and vets. </div>
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In addition, a new feature that I also saw was that Presto enabled one to include the profiles of experts (picture, contact information and blurbs of experience/knowledge) into the catalogue or OPAC results. That’s right; the inclusion of people information in the OPAC results as well, so that one can showcase the knowledge experts or knowledgeable people sources </div>
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You can check out a brochure on Inmagic’s Presto here: <a href="http://www.inmagic.com/products/presto-technology/">http://www.inmagic.com/products/presto-technology/</a></div>
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<b>Minisis</b></div>
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With news that the National Library of Jamaica is moving beyond WINISIS and on to OCLC’s WorldCat, I was a bit curious as to what’s happening with MinISIS, which is a related platform. So I had a chat with Christopher Burcsik. While for this software, I did not get a demo of the features, I got some background information about the company and MinISIS. For instance, I learned that MinISIS was Canadian. In fact, the brochure that I accessed states that "MINISIS Inc. is a multinational corporation headquartered in Vancouver, BC, with regional offices in Ontario, Tunisia, and Trinidad and Tobago" (p.2).</div>
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While MinISIS was once free and based on UNESCO’s open-sourced WINISIS, its development was later funded and sponsored by the Canadian Government (personal interview). Eventually, the Canadian Government cut the funding to the software, forcing MinISIS to change its model from a publicly funded free software development to one where it had to charge fees to be viable. According to the brochure, MinISIS is a social entrepreneurial venture. While they charge fees for the software, they continue to support the development of the software to support the needs of libraries, archives and museums across the world that still depend on and possess databases based on WinISIS records. </div>
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I also got some insights from Burcsik, who argued that open source development of library software is not sustainable [especially for developing countries I would add]. He pointed out that there would be need for constant evolution and update, including creating new patches to prevent against viruses and hacking, for which librarians would not be experts in <i><span style="color: red;">[The whole time he was talking this, I was thinking about University of Prince Edward Island library’s <a href="http://islandora.ca/about">Islandora</a> open source project and wondering if Mark Leggott would strongly disagree]</span></i>. Burcsik also made the point that WinISIS basically could not survive beyond the efforts of the founder. As such, he suggests that only commercially drive software by companies driven by profits can continue to develop sustainable products for libraries (personal interview).</div>
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When I raised the issues of OCLC, it was suggested that OCLC, though claiming to be a non-profit entity, was actually between a non-profit and profit-making entity. It was also suggested that OCLC perhaps makes far more profit than MinISIS. This may be something that I might need to look into further. </div>
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Reference:</div>
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Minisis Inc. (N.d.). <i>Minisis Inc: Celebrating over 40 years of innovation in database technology</i> [Computer file/Brochure]. N.p.: Author.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-42180895469631814612014-06-10T05:23:00.007-07:002014-06-10T05:23:57.332-07:00Social media insights from Zena Applebaum @ the SLA 2014 conference<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Day 2 of SLA social media insights<w:sdtpr></w:sdtpr></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Day 2 of my first Special Libraries Association (<span style="background: yellow;">SLA)</span> conference and I'm thinking to myself, "this is
where I belong". Here I am, attending several presentations where
information consultants have similar assumptions regarding using social media
tools to find information as I do. Mining blogs, Twitter and other social media
platforms for insights seem to be the norm in the information consulting
industry. To information consultants, social media presents a very important
and free information source in addition to paid commercial databases.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Zena <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum</span>, Director
of Competitive Intelligence at Bennett Jones <span style="background: yellow;">LLP</span>, was
one such presenter that gave a <a href="http://sla2014.sched.org/event/db8c0c4fe1b010468310ab57b62d9eda#.U5aEzfldUrW"><span style="color: blue;">talk </span></a>on this subject. Two things fascinated
me from her presentation entitled "Social media-Turning noise into
action":<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The assumption that social media can be
information sources from which information should be collected <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That one can develop a social media collection
and acquisition policy (or procedures) to make decisions about what social
media data or information one could collect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is these points that I want to briefly review
and talk about here in this blog entry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">First and foremost, <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum</span> argues that social media sits between the
spectrum of primary research and secondary research. She further argues that
social media provides access to people essentially talking about themselves and
others without the researcher eliciting those responses. She further suggests
that on social media, there are both individuals and institutions that provide
information. Her questions are not so much whether or not such information can
be trusted or what's the value of such information, but how do we get at that
information. This is in contrast to my discussions with some academics and in
academia (including a few librarians), who are suspicious of social media
information and ask can the data be trusted and how can we know whether or not
the social media information is authentic or meaningful. Further, I've found
that from informal discussions within limited academic circles, that there are
doubts about collecting and storing such information, as social media
information is deemed to be either too trivial, ephemeral or lacking the authority
of traditionally published/secondary sources and primary sources. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second thing that impressed me about <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum's</span> talk was that she laid out
what seemed to be guidelines for getting or acquiring social media data. In her
presentation, she discussed the need for competitive intelligence specialists
to have a framework for monitoring and collecting relevant information from
social media. This begins by determining what she refers to as "key
intelligence topics". According to <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum</span> (2014)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Key Intelligence Topic - (<span style="background: yellow;">KITs</span>)
are those topics identified as being of greatest significance to an
organization’s senior executives, and which provide purpose and direction for
Competitive intelligence operations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">How do we determine these topics? <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum</span> suggests that we conduct a
series of interviews of a representative group of users from which we ascertain
the relevant topics to monitor media and social media for. Then we are to
grouped these topics into appropriate categories and get our stakeholders (the
senior organizational executives/users) to allocate a priority to the same.
Hence to begin the process, <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum</span> recommends
that we analyse who are our stakeholders (or users) and what decisions do they
make. In addition, we must also ask:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">•What knowledge do the users need?<br />
•What intelligence can we provide?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The second step in the process is to define what
she terms the "collection plan" </span><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Using my collection development training, I would
call it the collection development/acquisitions policy/procedures. However, her
term may indicate less formality in the process)</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. This involves determining the producers of the
information that one needs and how to locate them. In <span style="background: yellow;">Applebaum's</span> presentation, this analysis
of the sources that need to be monitored involves asking:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">•Who has the information you need?<br />
•Who is their audience?<br />
•What social media will they use?<br />
•How do you search those platforms?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In my own experience as a librarian, the first
two steps are similar to the process that I go about when identifying and
determining which publishers (and vendors of commercial databases) to contact
for what materials are needed for my library. The last point relates to how do
I find those publishers (or vendors) in order to make those purchases </span><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(nowadays, we just deal with agents rather
than contacting the publishers directly. Unless we are collecting rare books or
items)</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<w:sdt contentlocked="t" id="89512093" sdtgroup="t"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 1.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-CA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><w:sdtpr></w:sdtpr><w:sdt docpart="3F26CC595D8A4CC8B9712E600018615D" id="89512082" storeitemid="X_C91FFA58-A145-4453-B4AD-C07747A31876" text="t" title="Post Title" xpath="/ns0:BlogPostInfo/ns0:PostTitle"></w:sdt></span>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">So when I examine this, I conclude that the
skills of collection development are as relevant to social media information as
they are to books and other items collected by libraries. In basic collection
development policy we decide the purpose of our collection, its scope (and or
limitations) and the types of decisions that we will make as to what sources to
acquire or omit from the collection. Further, while we may not write it into
our policy, we may implicitly establish procedures or a process to go about
acquiring items for our collection. All this reinforces the idea to me that
librarians can apply their skill sets (acquired from experience with
traditional media and library sources) to new media and information sources/resources.
The issue is whether or not we deem social media to be sources that we must
collect, store, preserve and provide for our users to access.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
References:<br />
<br />
Applebaum, Z. (2014). Social media – Turning noise into action. Presented at Special Libraries Association 2014 Conference, June 8-10, Vancouver, BC. Retrieved from http://sla2014.sched.org/event/db8c0c4fe1b010468310ab57b62d9eda#.U5aEzfldUrW.<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-78068791114072508592014-06-09T04:37:00.000-07:002014-06-09T04:44:07.263-07:00Social media sites are essentially "databases"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I once read that Facebook was a database (Arthur, 2009). I have even read that blogs were databases (Miles, 2005). And now I've heard that LinkedIn is a database. My new conclusion is that all social media are databases!<br />
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<span lang="EN-JM">My conclusion came after reflecting on some tips on LinkedIn and other social media use from Sean
Campbell, CEO of Cascade Insights. In his
<a href="http://www.cascadeinsights.com/sourcing-social-media-competitive-intelligence-market-research-teams-presented-sla-2014-conference-vancouver-bc/">presentation at SLA</a>, Sean discussed the subject of how to get a hold of people to talk to using social
media (Campbell, 2014). </span>His basic
premise is that people talk about their work life story online using social
media. If one wants to know about an industry, one can use social media tools
to find those who talk about this industry. He argues that social media
[specifically LinkedIn] are databases from which we can mine and extract individuals,
groups and communities that talk about subjects relevant to providing insight
for industries. As Sean puts it, the ordinary LinkedIn User does not see their profile as a database, but to LinkenIn employees, a person's profile is but one record in a large database of people information. </div>
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The same can be said for Facebook. According to Garde-Hansen (2009), Facebook is a "database of users and for users" and each user's page is "a database of their life" (p. 141). Garde-Hansen (2009) therefore argues that while users experience Facebook as a place where they upload "non-textual content (their profile image, the profile images of their friends, shared photographs, functional icons, gift images and application icons)", this hides the "visibility of Facebook as a pre-programmed set of pathways to a database" (p. 140-141).</div>
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<span lang="EN-JM">This truth also applies to Twitter and Google (and basically all social media sites). In a 2013 <i>Wired</i> magazi</span>ne article, it is mentioned that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google "teamed up to create what they call <a href="http://webscalesql.org/">WebScaleSQL</a>, a custom version of MySQL designed just for large scale web companies" that operate large databases (Finley, 2013). Further, blogs and blog content management systems, a<span lang="EN-JM">ccording to Miles (2005), also </span>draw upon and store content of text, images, data and media objects from a database, and chronologically arrange or displays the content through templates accessible through a Web browser. So the truth is, that while we experience a clean, customised and personalised screen when uploading our user-generate content and viewing the stories told by our friends and others, we are essentially viewing records of a database that we update and input data for. In this regard, if we join any social media site, we essentially become data entry personnel. </div>
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<span lang="EN-JM"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-JM">References:</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Campbell, S. (2014). Sourcing with social media – For competitive intelligence and market research teams. Presentation at the Special Libraries Association 2014 Conference, June 8-10, Vancouver, BC. Retrieved from<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Finley, K. (2013, Mar. 27) Google and Facebook team up to modernize old-school databases<br />
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<span lang="EN-JM"><i>Wired </i>Retrieved from </span>http://www.wired.com/2014/03/webscalesql/</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 36.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-indent: 0px;">Garde-Hansen, J. (2009). MyMemories?: Personal digital archive fever and Facebook. In Garde-Hansen, J., Hoskins, A., & Reading, A. (p. 135-50). </span><i style="text-indent: 0px;">Save as… digital memories</i><span style="text-indent: 0px;">. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="text-indent: 0px;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Miles, A. (2005,
May). <em>Media rich versus rich media (or why video in a blog is not the same
as a video blog)</em>. Hypertext paper presented at Blogtalk Downunder, Sydney,
Australia. Retrieved from http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=76. [Last
Accessed 23 August 2012].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-31297231066986692172014-06-08T19:09:00.001-07:002014-06-09T03:31:21.683-07:00Information consulting today: Some insights from Marcy Phelps @ SLA 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I arrived at my first session of my first SLA meeting with the stress of:<br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>having lost my cellular phone between Toronto and London</li>
<li>Coming straight to the conference convention centre with my luggage to discover that there was no bag or suit check available, which meant that I had to lug with suitcase and suit carrier to all the sessions,</li>
</ol>
<div>
Nonetheless, my travel stress could not take away from my gaining some insights from Marcy Phelps, the principal or founder of Phelps Research. According to her website:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Marcy M. Phelps, founder of Phelps Research, provides professional research, analysis, and research training services that help clients make better business decisions. She founded the company in 2000 after obtaining a master’s degree in library and information services from the University of Denver. (Phelps Research, 2013)</blockquote>
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<span lang="EN-JM">The session that I attended from which Marcy Phelps presented was entitled “Data Visualization” (Phelps, 2014). However, the session yielded more than just insights into Data Visualization. In addition to the information on data visualization, Phelps provided insights into the modern trends and shifts from information brokerage to information consultancy (a topic already discussed in this <a href="http://smallislandlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2014/05/conceptualizing-library-and-information.html">previous blog post</a>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-JM"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-JM"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-JM">Marcy
Phelps provided a very interesting context to her presentation on data visualization that highlights the shift in information work of locating sources for clients and providing value added services to the information retrieved. Drawing on her
experience as an information broker and consultant for a number of clients
including marketing agents, Marcy Phelps
suggests that in the past information brokerage was about librarians being in
business to help clients find more and better information. She however suggests
that today, the clients no longer want more or better information, but actually
want more value added to the information. In fact, her argument is that clients
are drowning in information, and do not have the time to deal with the large
quantities of information. She further opined that clients don’t have the time
to sort through a while lot of information and as such want information
professionals to provide them with information that is “decision ready”
(meaning information that they can use immediately to make decisions). </span>Now they
want to know what does the information mean? They do not want to search for the
story but want information professionals to supply the meaning of the information
to them.</div>
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<span lang="EN-JM">Phelps went
on to discuss the steps and process to be undertaken in creating or adding this
value to information for clients, by using and creating visual analysis and presentations
for information. (This discussion itself warrants its own blog entry). However, another key insight that Phelps stressed was that librarians need to use their reference interview skills in the process to get at what clients really want from the data or information that is to be supplied. She mentions that this is key, in order for the information professional to deliver the value-added result that clients demand. She went on to suggest, that sometimes clients have a hunch or theory and wants the information professional to conduct the research to prove their theory. Our research as information professionals in this regard is to provide the message from the data that clients need to know and use to make their decisions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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A question
was asked of Phelps as to whether or not she has to provide clients with
information for which she did not agree with the decisions that they intend to
make. Phelps in response stated that this is why she always includes an
executive summary or a cover letter contextualising the information being
supplied as well as presenting the limitations of the data.</div>
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These few insights into the work of information consulting are indeed valuable for the troubles and expenses associated with my conference attendance. It is further insightful for me to be in such conferences to be part of the community of practice surrounding information consulting work. And hopefully, all these insights will transfer into helping me better understand my thesis research. And there's more to come. :)</div>
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<br />
References:<br />
<br />
Phelps, M. (2014). More than pretty pictures: A guide to data visualization for info pros. Presentation at the Special Libraries Association 2014 Conference, June 8-10, Vancouver, B.C. Retrieved from http://www.phelpsresearch.com/Portals/0/DataViz-Adv-SLA2014.pdf<br />
<br />
Phelps Research (2013). About Phelps Research and Marcy Phelps. Retrieved from http://www.phelpsresearch.com/AboutUs<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-75001748838893473142014-06-05T19:12:00.003-07:002014-06-05T19:12:58.060-07:00Gearing up to attend SLA 2014 conference and more<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This week I gear up to attend the Special Libraries Association (SLA) conference, my first librarian & information professional practitioner based conference in several years. Since beginning my studies, I have focused primarily on networking and presenting at academic conferences. However, next week will see me not presenting, but rather just attending presentations and networking with the practitioners, some of whom are library consultants, the population that I am interested in studying.<br />
<br />
<img alt="SLA2014_Btn_Attendee" src="http://www.sla.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/SLA2014_Btn_Attendee.png" /><br />
<br />
As I spent the day planning and scheduling the sessions to attend, I realised that at least one of those sessions or presentations was targeted at consultants. Cindy Shamel from Shamel Info Svcs & Ulla de Stricker from de Stricker Associates will present on Saturday June 7, 2014 at 8:00 am - 12:00 pm the presentation entitled "Maximizing Consultant-Client Partnerships: Key Success Factors" <a href="http://t.co/8Ps8DODk8r">http://sched.co/18OutIV</a>. This I will miss, as I fly in on the next day.<br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 24px; text-indent: -30px;"><br /></span>
I decided to look up any other sessions on consultants and some how discovered this "Consulting: Managing the Expectations" http://sched.co/Z3YPQ4. As I was adding it to my schedule, I realised (mournfully) that this session was presented at last year's (2013) SLA conference. <br /><br />Apart from the plans to attend SLA, I want to also report this week on a number of finds pertaining to the subject of library consultants. Firstly, I found an additional article discussing the work of a library consultant from a report based on personal experience (Holt, 1984).<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Secondly, I wish to report that after conducting a search on Linked in I discovered:</div>
<div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>1,154 results for "library consultant" (within quotation marks)</li>
<li>and a further 6,901 results for library consultant without the quotation marks.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<div>
The latter search revealed that some of my friends or persons within my LinkedIn network qualified as library consultants or at least did some library consulting in the past. From these findings, it seems to me that library consultants and library consulting is far more prevalent than what is documented.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All this comes in stark contrast to Service Canada statistics that documents that 0.0% of the Occupational group 5111 (which also includes the term "library consultant") are self-employed. (See <a href="http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/qc/job_futures/statistics/5111.shtml" style="color: #0068cf; cursor: pointer; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 22.719999313354492px;" target="_blank">http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/qc/job_futures/statistics/5111.shtml</a>). This data again raises puzzling questions. Are those who are library consultants under-reported in self-employment statistics? Is it that those who report themselves as library consultants are not necessarily self-employed? Or are library consultant jobs considered a full-time contractual employment opportunity? These issues and more I grapple with as I prepare for my committee meeting which coincidentally will be after I return from SLA. </div>
<br /><br />Reference:<br /><br />Holt, R. M. (1984). Library consultant: Career or dead-end job? Library Trends, 32(3), 261-277.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-81183854541784354932014-06-05T17:44:00.000-07:002014-06-05T18:13:15.640-07:00Blogs as social technological spaces<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I have been searching for ethnographic studies of blogs in lieu of locating sources to inform my methodology for my own doctoral research. To keep you up to speed on my research ideas, I have narrowed down my research to doing an ethnographic analysis of blogs and tweets for the narratives they present on the identity, work and profile of library consultants and library consulting. My new direction has therefore sparked my interest in ethnographic methodologies on online social worlds. As a result, in this blog post, I wish to share on one of the readings about this methodology as it relates to the environments of blogs. This reading I want to report on is Amanda Lenhart's (2005) Masters thesis.<br />
<br />
Since my comprehensive examination I have been following some of the work of Lenhart, whose name I am acquainted with from Pew Internet Research Centre. Lenhart is one of the authors of Pew Internet Research's reports around blogging (See Lenhart & Fox, 2006).<br />
<br />
Apart from her literature review defines blogs identifying blogs as having headers, side bars and posts among other technical features, in the methods section, Lenhart articulates that blogs are both technology and spaces that both reflects culture and around which culture is built. It is this concept that I feel is very important, that blogs are not only technology with specific features, but also social technology around which culture develops.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
A second important idea that I derived from Lenhart's thesis is the idea that institutions are encroaching on this once personal and individual technological and social space. In the introductory chapter of her Masters thesis, Lenhart mentions that institutions are co-opting blogs and in their attempt to 'engage with the universe of blogs, their instinct is to regulate and to control, to bring blogs in line with the values embodied within the institution' (p. 4). She continues:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Still, bloggers themselves relish their location outside of institutions—free of<br />
gatekeepers deciding what is important or meaningful enough to publish, but also free<br />
of people and organizations whose livelihoods are based on the accuracy and<br />
compelling nature of the information they present. In the next few years it will be<br />
interesting to see how blogging and institutions negotiate with each other. Will blogs<br />
become an institution of their own, complete with codes and ethics of their own<br />
creations? Will they be subsumed into another institution? Or will blogs fragment and<br />
be absorbed by all types of institutions based on content, gathered as a tool to forward<br />
and foster certain public goals of any given institution? Or will blogs successfully<br />
remain completely outside of institutions? Or all of these things at the same time?</blockquote>
Later, Lenhart (2005) stated that blogs allow "those who are traditionally silenced by institutions to have their voices...heard..." (p. 156). This jibes with an earlier popular post that I published on how institutions have been entering the blogosphere in order to curtail individual's freedom of expression in these spaces (See <a href="http://smallislandlibrarian.blogspot.ca/2013/02/threats-to-freedom-to-blog.html">Threats to the freedom to blog</a>).<br />
<br />
References:<br />
<br />
Lenhart, A. B. (2005). Unstable texts: An ethnographic look at how bloggers and their audience negotiate self-presentation, authenticity and norm formation(Doctoral dissertation, Georgetown University).<br />
<br />
Lenhart, A., & Fox, S. (2006). Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers. pew internet & American life project. ( No. 2012). Retrieved from <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2006/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf.pdf">http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media/Files/Reports/2006/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf.pdf</a><br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-85052717093444453332014-05-16T05:25:00.002-07:002014-05-16T05:25:12.464-07:00Conceptualizing library and information consulting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As I continue with my research (or sense-making), I want to report on my evolving and ongoing conceptualization of library consultants. So far, it has been a scavenger hunt to find literature that clearly conceptualize library consultants and library consulting.<br />
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Currently, I rely mainly on De Stricker's (2008) as the most recent book to discuss library and information consulting. From her perspective, library and information consultants are not narrowly confined to those formally educated as librarians. She argues that while some library and information consultants are formally educated in librarianship, others possess informal education from experience or expertise in working within library settings, from which they offer library-related expertise and services. De Stricker also defines library and information consulting as consisting of both librarians offering “skills to a variety of clients (not necessarily libraries)” and of “other types of professionals (e.g. architects, staff training experts)”. She provides a nice little quadrant or diagram to show the scope of library and information consulting from which I could use to have a clear picture of the activities that fall under library and information consulting.<br />
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However, from my reading of blogs and tweets on the subject and further published library literature, I have come up with a diagram to model what a library consultant looks like conceptually (You can click on the image to make it larger).<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="319" scrolling="no" src="https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=206ED2CF6E97730A&resid=206ED2CF6E97730A%216966&authkey=AKobgoovwYxPmPg" width="320"></iframe><br />
In theory, a library consultant can be a qualified librarian or some other professional without library school credentials that brings about either:<br />
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a) a change or transformation in a library system, library or library staff<br />or<br />
b) creates or establishes a library system or library where there was none.<br />
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Technically, information consultants are not necessarily library consultants (even if they have an MLIS or library-related credentials). Information consultants can only be classified as engaging in library consulting when they:<br />
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>offer information consulting services to librarians (which may lead to transfer of skills or knowledge to librarians) or </li>
<li>when their information consultancy involves transforming a library system or a library, as in the case of an information consultant providing advice about a library's collection development.</li>
</ol>
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Currently, this is the understanding that I have derived from my varied sources about library consultants. But I'm open to receiving comments that will help me accurately understand the nature of job or occupational identity of library consultant. (Unfortunately or fortunately, the librarian's mind is to put concepts into discreet categories or neat little boxes).<br />
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Reference:<br />
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Broughton, D., Blackburn, L., & Vickers, L. (1991). Information brokers and information consultants. <i>Library management</i>, <i>12</i>(6), 4-16.</div>
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<div class="gs_citr" id="gs_cit1" tabindex="0">
De Stricker, U. (2008). Is consulting for you? A primer for information professionals. Chicago: American Library Association.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01802804488576558866noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1406067146526518628.post-64842530740105983582014-05-07T16:00:00.001-07:002014-05-07T16:19:51.154-07:00Library consultants and the implications for library education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In this post, I continue discussing the need for a changing library education paradigm that will not just prepare our graduates to work within libraries, but also prepare them to work as library consultants. I have duly noted a speech delivered by one of my former professors, Fay Durrant, at a meeting of the library association of Trinidad and Tobago. As I read it, I came across some words of interest, which I quote below:</div>
<blockquote>
"As most of you know, the Department of Library and Information Studies has a mission to educate librarians from the CARICOM region. We have always been interested in understanding the future of libraries in the Caribbean, as this is of necessity related to the dimensions and focus of our teaching and research. With faster change in the information sector there is even more interest in determining future directions in relation to the areas of focus for our programme. We therefore seek to identify, on an ongoing basis, the current and anticipated trends and future activities in the information sector.</blockquote>
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Today I would therefore like to discuss with you some of the changes in our environment, and some of the responses which are being developed by libraries in the Caribbean and globally.</blockquote>
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The Department offers education in library and information studies, and produces graduates who now work mainly in government and academic institutions in the region....I expect that more opportunities will arise for\ our graduates to work as consultants, and as information brokers for organizations in the public or private sector."</blockquote>
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Durrant's (2006) words capture so well my views and what I want to say. Library schools have traditionally prepared students and graduates to work in libraries. However, LIS curricula, with the changes in society have evolved to address broader information environments in addition to library specific operations (Rubin, 2010). Despite this evolution in curricula to prepare graduates to work outside of traditional settings of academic, public and school libraries (and even special libraries), library curricula is yet to address the issue of preparing students to become entrepreneurs and to use their LIS related skills as independent knowledge workers or professionals not employed to a specific institution. LIS curricula in this regard is geared towards providing a workforce for institutional employers. <br />
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Yet, while librarians are employed in a variety of setting, there seems to be a growing number of qualified librarians who are self-employed. This seems to be evident in<span class="EOP SCX251987368" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 20px;"></span><span class="TextRun SCX251987368" style="font-family: Calibri,Sans-Serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 20px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX251987368" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span>the ASCLA Library Consultants Interest Group's (LCIG) latest report where membership is reported as growing from 32 to 63 members within the space of a year (Smithee, 2013). Yet, it is perhaps necessary to scrutinize this phenomenon some more with the empiricism of scientific methods. If I could only get my thoughts together into a coherent and logical research proposal. <br />
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Reference:<br />
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<span class="TextRun SCX10732892" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20px;"><span class="SpellingError FindHit SCX10732892">Durrant</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCX10732892" style="background-color: inherit;">,
F. (2006). The future of libraries and implications for the Caribbean.
Address to the Library Association of Trinidad and Tobago (LATT)
Ordinary General Meeting. Held at National Library and Information
System Authority (NALIS), November 1, 2006. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX10732892" style="font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX10732892" style="background-color: inherit;">Retrieved from </span></span><a class="Hyperlink SCX10732892" href="http://eprints.rclis.org/8861/1/DurrantFayThe_future_of_libraries_and_implications_for_the%E2%80%A6.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="TextRun Underlined SCX10732892" style="color: blue; font-family: Times New Roman,Serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: underline;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX10732892" style="background-color: inherit;">http://eprints.rclis.org/8861/1/</span><span class="FindHit SCX10732892">Durrant</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCX10732892" style="background-color: inherit;">FayThe_future_of_libraries_and_implications_for_the%E2%80%A6.pdf</span></span></a> <br />
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<span class="TF">Rubin, R. (2010). <i>Foundations of library and information science</i> (3rd ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
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Smithee, J. (2013). Report from the Library Consultants Interest Group. Interface (02706717), 35(3), 1. Retrieved from <a href="http://ascla.ala.org/interface/2013/09/report-from-the-library-consultants-interest-group/">http://ascla.ala.org/interface/2013/09/report-from-the-library-consultants-interest-group/</a></div>
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