My summary of the Politics of Libraries 2018 Conference

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 Politics of Libraries conference 2018 at the University of Alberta. Themes covered included:
•      Critiquing librarianship for trying to be value neutral by promoting intellectual freedom over assuming social responsibility
•     The problem of monopoly in library technology services via the case of OCLC
•      studying the discourse that librarians, library users and authors/publishers use to represent or misrepresent fair dealing/fair use in copyright law
•      how language, and particularly English global dominance, inhibits linguistic diversity and negatively affects library services and users
•     provisions for academic librarians for academic/intellectual freedom
•      assessment of how many library science journals are open access versus commercially published
•      the problem of librarians using the concept of the "market place of ideas"

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:
•      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.
•      Colonialism continues to manifest itself in language assimilation and domination in both print and online technologies.
•      Librarians need to recognize indigenous epistemology and different knowledge or information perspectives other than those of the West which dominates library science.

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:
•      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
•      Multimedia technology can better address language barriers as they provide more than just text
•      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.
This summary only represents a few of the issues discussed, some of which deserve a full post's discussion.

Final post for 2015

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.

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.

May you prosper in 2016.

How to survive clients that want information within 1 hour?

I attended the intermediate level educational program put on by the Competitive Intelligence Division of SLA, presented by Lynn Strand, the Principal of Outside Knowledge LCC. In this session, Lynn presents a Quick take session entitled: "What to Do When They Say "Give Me Everything You Have  on ... and Not Freak Out Because They Want it in An Hour". Below are her 9 tips in bullet form which can be helpful to both special librarians and independent information professionals.

1. Don't panic. That does not help.
2. Trust yourself. You can do this.
3. They do not want everything. Just an overview. In fact, they really don't know what they want.
4. Use "trends" in your search terms. This will retrieve information that provides an overview or that is broad in scope or focus.
5. Use resources you already know. Exhaust the familiar first.
6. Plan to search for 30 minutes and then give yourself time to put together your deliverable. 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.
7. Have a flexible template. 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.
8. Keep it to 3 pages or less. Right at the top of those pages, indicate three to four things the client must know. Hence, the most important information first.
9. Do a Google file type research. 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.

Distilling the career wisdom and stories of SLA 2015

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.

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.

In particular, I listened to two speakers. The first was the awardee, Marjorie Hlava, who received the John Cotton Dana award. Her career gems to me were:

• Employers allow us to learn their business and give us the opportunities to serve their needs. 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.
• Since what we do in our daily jobs have changed, but the principles remain the same, we must test assumptions to see if they are still relevant or not. After doing this, we must remove barriers, give access to all members and remove unnecessary rules and regulation.

Marjorie Hlava

The next speaker that I documented career gems and wisdom from was the SLA 2015 conference keynote speaker, Leigh Gallagher . Gallagher is a Fortune Magazine editor and journalist, and author of the book The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream Is Moving. 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.

Gem #1: The process of planning is more important than the plan itself
Gallagher first described her job as being paid to become an expert on any topic by doing research.
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.

Gem #2: Librarians need to develop and write business cases
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.

Gem # 3: New names suggested for libraries
Gallagher also suggested that information professionals consider alternate names to libraries such as the "Wisdom lab" or the "Wisdom Vault".

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 .

Re-positioning libraries as safe spaces for answering career-related queries

I came across this news article about a young engineer who got two job offers (McGregor, 2015). He took to Quora, 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.

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.

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.

This brings me to the points I wish to make in this post. How do libraries position themselves in this era?

1. Libraries need to position themselves as social search engines which preserve privacy, contain little to no advertising and maintain the confidentiality of queries.

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. 

Point 1

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.

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.

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.

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.

Point 2
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.

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.

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.

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).

Some of the challenges

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.

A possible way forward
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.

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.


Reference:

McGregor, J. (2015, May 7). A young engineer asked for career advice online. Big mistake. The Washington Post. 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

Scale, M. (2008). Facebook as a social search engine and the implications for libraries in the twenty-first century. Library Hi Tech, 26, (4), p. 540-56.

A critique of "Intellectual property"

In my April 19, 2015 blog post "Thoughts on Copyright", 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".

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" (p. 2). In 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.

Argument 1: Equating works of the mind raises social justice issues
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.

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.

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?

Argument 2: Is "Intellectual property" really an appropriate term to refer to creative expressions or the labour of the mind?

For this section of my critique, I wish to raise a series of questions.

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"?

OR

2) Are creative expressions products of the mind that can do things to or for other people who find value in those products?

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?

Another question that challenges this metaphor or property is:

4) Do we truly own our creative expressions even when what we "create" actually comes from recreating what we have learned from others?

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 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).

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?


My Conclusion:
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.

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.

References:

Davies, B., & Harré, R. (1999). Positioning and personhood. In R. Harré & L. van Lagenhove (Eds.), Positioning theory: Moral contexts of intentional action (pp. 32–52). Malden, Massacghusetts: Blackwell Publishers.

World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO]. What is intellectual property. Retrieved from http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/intproperty/450/wipo_pub_450.pdf

Thoughts about copyright

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).

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.

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.

1. Unmeritocratic
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.

2. Treats intellectual property as superior to physical products
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?

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.

3. A justification for censorship and an unfair monopoly over ideas
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.

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.

References

"A bill entitled An Act to ammend the copyright act" (2015, April 2). Retrieved from http://www.japarliament.gov.jm/attachments/339_The%20Copyright%20%28Amendment%29%20Act,%202015.pdf

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.), Telling stories: Language, narratiev and social life. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Drone operated inter-library loans and document delivery

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?"

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.

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.

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.


References

Hern, A. (2014, September 25). DHL launches first commercial drone 'parcelcopter' delivery service. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/25/german-dhl-launches-first-commercial-drone-delivery-service

Howarth, D. (2013, October 16). "World's first" drone delivery service
launches in Australia. de zeen. Retrieved from http://www.dezeen.com/2013/10/16/flying-drones-to-deliver-text-books/

Weiss, R. (2014, September 26). Germany's post office beats Amazon and Google with launch of world's first drone delivery service. National Post. Retrieved from http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/26/germanys-post-office-beats-amazon-and-google-with-launch-of-worlds-first-drone-delivery-service/

Recognizing Andrew Carnegie as a hero in library history and library science

[Edited February 27, 2015]

For the wintry month of February [2015], I have undertaken to read leisurely the autobiography of the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (You can access this on Project Gutenberg). This I do on the weekends, as I take a break from my dissertation work.

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 (Changing library education with the times). 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.

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.


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.

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.


References:

Rubin, R. (2010). Foundations of library and information science (3rd ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.

Stamberg, S. (2013, Aug. 1). How Andrew Carnegie Turned His Fortune Into A Library Legacy. Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/01/207272849/how-andrew-carnegie-turned-his-fortune-into-a-library-legacy

Inskeep, S. (Host). (2014, July 8). Buddhist Monks Face Jail Time For July 4 Fireworks Display [Radio broadcast episode]. http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html

skeep, S. (Host). (2014, July 8). Buddhist Monks Face Jail Time For July 4 Fireworks Display [Radio broadcast episode]. http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html

Inskeep, S. (Host). (2014, July 8). Buddhist Monks Face Jail Time For July 4 Fireworks Display [Radio broadcast episode]. http://www.npr.org/2014/07/08/329731421/buddhist-monks-face-jail-time-for-july-4-fireworks-display

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/how_8568887_cite-npr-apa.html

An idea for the use of a 3-D printer in the library

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.

London Canada's maker-bus (October 2014)

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.

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". 

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:

• printed  books 
• board games

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) 3-D printed a miniature Starship Enterprise 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.

What I recently learned about OCLC

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.

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 About page. 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 summer 2014, 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.

Question 1: 
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?

According to the financial report, the OCLC

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.

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:

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.

Question 2: 
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:

- fees or "revenues generated from services provided to participating libraries" and
- capital investments that are managed "similar to an endowment"

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:

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....

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?

References:

OCLC. (2014). About OCLC: Our story. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/en-CA/about/story.html

OCLC. (2014). Annual report. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/home.html

OCLC. (2014). Financial report. Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/en-US/annual-report/2014/financials.html

Narrative information sources for medicinal care and the implications for LIS

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 event was held in the University Hospital | Auditorium A, Room B3-246.

So I attended the lecture by Dr. Vincent Lam staged at my university's hospital. 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. 

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.)

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

My question was motivated from my recent discovery of a Masters thesis in the University of Western Ontario's institutional repository entitled:

Women's Stories of Breast Cancer: Sharing Information Through YouTube Video Blogs  - Jenna Kressler, Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, MSc http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2095/

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.

Conclusion:

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.

Blogging dilemma for an academic

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:

1. have been following up on my blog or status  updates on social networks 
2. 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.

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.

This leaves me to consider what else can an academic safely blog about?

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:

• Politicians (who may or may not be in power)
• 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)
• various non-profit entities and corporations who have funding, donations or other investment to contribute to the university's development or research.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

My experiences using e-book/audio book platforms and subscription services

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: Reading Rainbow, OverDrive and Audible. The limitation, I have only attempted to use these platforms on one device, the iPad.

• Reading Rainbow app for iOS - free version
• OverDrive - free through my public library
• Amazon's Audible - 30-day trial version

I begin with the Reading Rainbow App 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" (See the i-Tunes review). 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.

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.

In 2012, I blogged about my first experience using OverDrive (See that blog post here). 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.

That said, to get started, you have to download the app 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.

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 Word of Promise 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.


That brings me to Audible. 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 Word of Promise 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).

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.


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.

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.

Reference:

Randall, T. (2014, July 31). What’s better than Kindle Unlimited for $120 a year? This free alternative. Bloomberg Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-31/what-s-better-than-kindle-unlimited-for-120-a-year-this-free-alternative.html

What the iPad and Tablets are good at?

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:

With tablet technologies you can:

• read e-books
• listen to audio-books
• surf the web (with quality of web surfing limited to those sites that provide a mobile website)
• check email (with quality of email access dependent on the email provider providing a mobile email app)
• play games 
• watch video
• take or capture photographs or video

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.

Mobile apps coexisting with the printed book?

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 MirrorWorld and Mirada. 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.

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:

• http://mirrorworldnovels.com/
• http://www.corneliafunke.com/index.php?page=app&lang=en

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.


References:

Mirada (2014). About. Retrieved from http://mirada.com/about

---(2014). Cornelia Funke’s mirror world: Crafting the World’s First Living Storybook.
Retrieved from http://mirada.com/stories/mirrorworld

Can graduates consult fresh out of library school? A few thoughts

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:

Can graduates consult fresh out of library school?

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?

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:

1. an outsider perspective and
2. a specialty

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

• High Impact Consulting, by Robert Schaffer 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
• Flawless Consulting, by Peter Block 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
• Stroh, L. K., & Johnson, H. H. (2006). Basic principles of effective consulting. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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.



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"?

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.

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.

Conclusion

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.


Reference

Kurian, G. T. (2013). Consultant. The AMA dictionary of business and management. New York: Amacom.