Thoughts about librarians as publishers

This blog post is partially a reaction to a webinar I attended recently on the topic of librarians as publishers. The webinar, put on by the Ontario Council of University Libraries and the Public Knowledge Project featured three university librarians sharing their experience and knowledge from being responsible or library projects in hosting journals (See description of webinar at http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/6518).

While the webinar got me thinking more deeply about the topic of the roles that libraries currently play and can play in the future as publishers, I must mention however, that I have been thinking about this topic prior to 2013. However this event has motivated me to express some of my preliminary thought here in writing. As such, below I will outline five (5) current and future roles for libraries as publishers based on what I have observed and know about libraries:

1. Journal hosting - was the one role that the webinar focused on. his include hosting journals for faculty, academic societies and even for student societies. I especially liked the idea of the library hosting graduate and undergraduate student academic journals.
2. Monograph hosting - This too was mentioned in the webinar as a logical extension of journal hosting and possible future expansion opportunity for the university library with experience in journal hosting.
3. Bibliographies of a university's research - This one comes from my own observation of the research and development bibliography developed by the University of the West Indies Mona Campus Library entitled Research for Development Vols. 2: A Bibliography of Staff Publications 1998-2002. Unfortunately, I cannot find a copy on the Web to link too, but only a  catalogue entry in WorldCat. This initiative from my memory has a foreword that indicates the importance of the library as playing a role in disseminating information about university faculty's research to the wider public.
4. Bibliographic databases: This a logical extension of publishing bibliographies of a university's research. This too has been done by the University of the West Indies Mona Campus Library through the Mona Online Research Database (MORD).
5. Out-of-print books and previously unpublished historical works or manuscripts: For this, I foresee librarians especially managing special collections, getting forewords from knowledgeable faculty as well as contributing their own forewords about manuscripts or other out-of-print works that are within the library's special collection. these can be published as e-books or as print copies on demand, using print on demand technologies such as book espresso machines. Szkolar (2012)'s blog post explores this issue of book espresso machines and how libraries can use these to enter in publishing.

Discussion (or viewpoint):

Academic libraries in particular have the options of becoming publishers of e-books, e-journals, databases as well as print on demand resources. Public libraries too can extend themselves into these opportunities by courting established authors and even local authors to let the library host their works and offer print on demand with book machines. A further even radical proposal is that libraries can even bypass copyright collecting agencies in paying fees directly to the authors for the books/resources that were downloaded and printed (especially the printed ones).

Hence, libraries could naturally extend into a royalty management role, that publishers currently occupy, but as a nonprofit institution that seeks to be equitable in balancing the need for access to information with the right of the author to benefit economically from his or her intellectual work. In order words, I am radically considering the opportunity for libraries to replace publishers and copyright licensing and collecting agencies. After all, publishers and such agencies are actually middle men between libraries and the author. Why not eliminate the middle men, and allow authors to interact directly with their readers through libraries, similar to how self-publishing platforms like Amazon also allows the author to eliminate the need for working with a publisher.


Reference:

Szkolar, D. (2012, April 4). Espresso Book Machines: Should Libraries Offer On Demand Publishing?  Information Space [blog]. Syracuse iSchool. Retrieved at: http://infospace.ischool.syr.edu/2012/04/04/espresso-book-machines-should-libraries-offer-on-demand-publishing/

What my lived experience teach about how academic libraries can support post-secondary student entrepreneurs?

I have held very negative views about business for much of my youth, even at one time gravitating towards Marxism. However, my university years helped to bring me in touch with realities. After almost completing my Bachelors in Political Science, I started to be more conscious of the fact that I needed to be job ready. Further, I was not willing to walk into politics, which I had a new distaste for after encountering university student politics. It was only then within my university years, that I awakened to the possibility of being my own boss and starting my own company.

For throughout my education, I could not recalled being encouraged by teachers to pursue entrepreneurship. Career guidance was biased towards becoming professionals or getting jobs. I find that even children books published are biased towards getting children to think about traditional careers. This for me is why our librarians need to step into the gap and demand that our children publishers not only produce books for children on traditional careers, but also books on the life of entrepreneurs and consultants.

All this said, it is only within years of my transition from undergraduate to my Masters that I began to consider and even study entrepreneurship for myself. This led to my Master thesis and eventually my first book (Scale, 2012). Yet, the greater good that came out of this experience is that I realised by doing my Masters in Library and Information Science, how libraries could have played a more important role in shaping young persons into realizing the option of entrepreneurship as an alternative to career seeking and job search.

Well, it is with this new understanding, that I have resumed studies as a PhD student. And as such, I now attempt to operate as a potential student entrepreneur, interrogating the academic library system to see how it could support me in this endeavour. As such, I just want to share briefly some of my own findings/observations (which may or may not be peculiar to the university system that I am within:

1. Most of the resources for entrepreneurship and career development are located within the business library.

This is problematic, as the business libraries in both universities that I study at are usually separated from the general library collection that social science, science and even humanity students access. Hence, unless they actively browse the library catalogue for such resources, there is little way of serendipitously discovering these resources.

2. Only business students get adequate training in using and accessing business databases.

This is problematic because, only business students will have the competence of knowing when to check a business database to find information, the strength and weakness of each and knowledge of which database to search for particular information. 

To some extent, select library students are introduced to these databases (especially if they are undertaking a business resource course). Nonetheless, all the rest of university students are excluded from this insider knowledge that could help inform their business planning and research.

Conclusion:  The way that the business library resources are separated from other disciplines, excludes students from other disciplines that do not take business courses from exposure to business resources and even the knowledge in how to use these resources to assist them in researching and planning businesses. 

Alternately, there are business incubators on campus. However, in my experience, business incubators and librarians operate separately, and not in partnership.

Recommendations:

1. Academic librarians must do something to reduce this unequal access and exposure to business resources. We cannot just leave all business resources within the business faculty, and not permit other students from other disciplines to not gain exposure to these resources.
2. Academic librarians must also approach business incubators with a partnership to train student entrepreneurs in business resources and the use of the library resources to support their business research.

When we have done this, we as librarians would ensure equal opportunities for all post-secondary students to not just seek jobs, but also to become entrepreneurs.

Reference: 

Scale, M. (2011). Written information and planning in Jamaican small businesses: A usability approach. LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing
https://www.lap-publishing.com/catalog/details/store/gb/book/978-3-8433-5946-7/written-information-and-planning-in-jamaican-small-businesses
or

http://books.google.ca/books/about/Written_Information_and_Planning_in_Jama.html?id=y25IYgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Critique of tablet adoption in academic libraries

It is been a while, as due to teaching, writing for publication and doing my own research (as well as networking), I've been unable to maintain this blog. However, today I've been able to get some space to put down some ideas that I have been mulling over for some time. This concerns the adoption of tablets in academic libraries in particular. Based on an article in the Huffington Post and my own research and evaluation of the features of tablet devices (which should come out soon in an article in Library Hi Tech News), I am taking the opportunity in this post to contribute to the librarian discourse on tablet adoption in libraries.

In April, the Huffington Post Canada  (2013) reported Thorsten Heins, BlackBerry's CEO, as predicting that the market for tablets will decline within five years. While Heins may not provide a very strong basis for those predictions, it may be worthwhile for librarians to heed his words and consider carefully whether or not to invest in tablets within the next 5 years or perhaps consider laptops as alternatives.

The main problem with librarians adopting tablets that I have found documented in the literature is the mismatch between the tablet being designed for personal use, whereas library adoption of tablets typically seek to facilitate multi-person usage. This is pointed out by Lotts and Graves (2011) who applied the iPad technology to reference services and found that their use of the iPad for reference services conflicted with the intended design, as librarians sought to make the iPad available for use among multiple librarians. Baggett (2011) also suggests that tablet applications or apps are designed for personal or individual use rather than for multiple users of an institution. Hence, these sources both point out that adopting tablets, whether for use among multiple librarians or multiple library users, is a mismatch of the use of technology with its intended design.

Instead, I recommend that libraries consider the future technologies that may be more relevant for our situation. In my view, libraries should have smart touch screen tables (rather than tablets) that can serve as online catalogues, e-white boards, and devices for reading or accessing e-resources and the Web. For these purposes, smart touch screen tables are better than tablets for libraries, as they have larger screens. The technology is already here, with interactive touch screen table vendors such as Digital Touch Systems providing such technology (http://www.digitaltouchsystems.com). As librarians, we perhaps need to take the initiative and be innovative, discussing and negotiating with such vendors, rather than just adopting every new technology fad.

References:

Baggett, M. (2011), “Technology: A new wave of tablet computers”, Louisiana Libraries, Vol. 73 No.3, pp. 13-17.

Huffington Post Canada  (2013, April 30), "Thorsten Heins, BlackBerry CEO: Tablet will be dead in 5 years", Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/30/blackberry-thorsten-heins-tablet-dead_n_3186040.html

Lotts, M. and Graves, S. (2011, April), “Using the iPad for reference services:  librarians go mobile”, College & Research Libraries [C&RL] News, Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 217-220.

My latest discoveries on library chatbots: Pixel

This week, I learned through Michael Sauers from #NCompassLive Tech Talk about Pixel, the chatbot at the University of Nebraska– Lincoln Library. You can meet Pixel, the reference library chatbot at http://pixel.unl.edu/ and/or view the YouTube presentation on Pixel:





While listening to the presentation, I learned a couple of new things myself. The presenter DeAnn Allison raises the point that chatbots can flatten one's website, and reduce users from having to navigate to get information. Instead, users can just ask a question and the chatbot could provide the information or even the hyperlink to enable the user to get where they want to go, without having to click through several links. Lorna Dawes, the co-presenter, also made the point that chatbots are very useful for library websites that are very dense. As she made this point, I immediately thought of the  Library of Congress website, which I believe is very dense, yet full of useful information. If there is any library that should get one, in my opinion it is the Library of Congress.

The presentation also gave me an opportunity to reacquaint myself with Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML), the language behind the open source chat bot movement. I also learned about Program-O (Open Source PHP MySQL AIML Chatbot software) http://blog.program-o.com/ as another open source software for creating one's chatbots.


Another thing that I discovered or realized during the presentation was the importance of taxonomies or ontologies in developing chatbots. This I realised as DeAnn Allison discussed how she used Library of Congress Subject headings to inform the AIML of a library chatbot. Allison (2012) also has an article on chatbots in the library if you want to check it out.

Reference:
Allison, D.  (2012). Chatbots in the library: Is it time? Library Hi Tech, (30) 1: 95 - 107.

DOI:	10.1108/07378831211213238

Blogs in the library Catalogue? Feedback from conversations

So I showcased my poster on "Blogs in the library catalogue?" at the Technology in Education Symposium at Western University last Friday, March 8, 2012. The poster was the collaborative work of three of us in the Sociodigital research lab of which I am a lab member. The title of the presentation read: Blogs in the library catalogue? An investigation into the informational value of blogs for scholars and students


The abstract of which read:

We argue that blogs can be a valuable information source for library users. Blogs can be used to inform the research and academic work of scholars and students.  Despite their informational value, early views were skeptic towards the informational value of blogs because often librarians are more aware of blogs as tools for marketing their libraries or for promoting library resources and services. Currently some libraries have created what are known as catablogs – using blogs to store bibliographic information about their collection. With the exception of law librarians that have found blogs to be useful sources for accessing legal documentation, the current discourse on the value of blogs as information sources by academic librarians is limited and does not take advantage of the full potential that blogs have to offer as information sources. With the proliferation of blog creation by academic scholars and experts as well as institutions, we argue that there are countless reputable blogs that provide current and relevant information to students and scholars on their topic of interest that libraries could make accessible and promote on the library’s website and even its catalogue. We will discuss examples in our poster. Often blogs that are external to the library are not really considered and made accessible in the library’s general collection of resources. In fact, academic libraries should be able to find, acquire and point its academic users to relevant, reputable and credible blogs for information. After all, blogs are perhaps the most current information sources, continuously being updated with the views and interpretations of experts.

I have not included the full arguments here, but just want to reflect and post on the feedback to the idea as presented via poster at the symposium and based on my conversation with the few that engaged me on the topic.


In general, I only conversed about the poster with a handful of persons, but those who stopped by seemed receptive to the idea of blogs as valuable information sources that the library could direct library users to. In essence, I found I was able to defend the idea very well as persons raised their concerns. However, at least, the persons I conversed with all seem to value blogs as information sources, that they did not question its information value, but rather only wondered about the technical and other feasibilities of including blogs in the library catalogue.

• One wanted to know if the catalogue is the appropriate place for them, especially given some of the ephemeral nature of some blogs. I suggested that libraries already have in their catalogue links to e-resources, and for blogs such as the APA Style blog, that already has a printed monograph, we could easily add another link to its blog via its monograph's catalogue entry. 
• Another pondered about the lack of peer review and about quality control. I did discuss with him how librarians could phase in the inclusion of blogs in the catalogue that would take care of that issue. First we could start with the blogs that accompany established publications such as books, magazines and newspapers, and later include those bloggers cited in the literature or recommended by faculty.
• One librarian stopped by and mentioned that she used a library blog for her students, but would think about the issue of recommending blogs to students.
• Some persons also felt that blogs are so ephemeral that they perhaps did not belong, but I did talk about the fact that some magazines cease publication as well, and libraries have to deal with such serial publications already that may start up and disappear after a while.

If anything, I left more persuaded that I need to write a journal or magazine article defending the need for academic libraries to include blogs in their library catalogues.

Notebooks as information sources for academic libraries?

This week I stumbled upon a link to an academic conference showcasing: scholarship on note taking and note writing entitled Duly Noted: The Past, Present and Future of Note-Taking. I appreciated reading the blurb for the conference as it did provide a case that studying note taking and writing notes are important as writing does play a role in oral processes and oral communication in our modern or post modern world.

According to the blurb posted by Stockman (2012), note taking scholarship involves the study of the activity of "jotting down of things people say". To study this, researchers analyze the artifacts or objects of  note books or written notes.This area is perhaps difficult to study, as notes are meant to be ephemeral, and those surviving do so because their disposal was neglected by their creators and eventually found their way into libraries and other institutions that took steps to careful preserve them.


Another area of study in note taking scholarship is the annotation of books. This involves the study of the notes that people make in published books. Based on the blurb, it seems that one of the data source which one could use to observe note taking is academia, especially college students, who both take notes based on lectures as well as may annotate their text books. Stockman (2012) does point out that this practice is not only a feature of modern times, but indicate that note taking has been a practice seemingly as old as the history of writing.  Torah and Talmud scholars have engaged in note taking practice and textual commentary, as well as ancient scholars noted stuff on clay tablets and parchment.

Why should we care?

It is easy to note that not all persons write notes that are legible and that not all notes are useful. However, libraries have always had the knack for sorting through the universe of information and selecting very useful resources and information that are relevant to meeting the information needs of their present and even future communities.

Notes are in fact ephemeral information sources, usually done for the purpose of reminding or preserving something for memory. It is clear that today, people engage in digital note taking and that even some blogs and Twitter may function as that for some persons like myself. I note stuff to retrieve it later for future use when it becomes relevant to do so. However, even noting stuff in a public media reveals that a person believes that his or her personal notes can have some public value, beyond private use, study and purposes. This brings me to the issue of libraries and how they should view or treat notes and note books and even annotated textbooks.

Position 1: Libraries should collect notes and notebooks. Especially university libraries. And especially student notes from a course. And even notes from faculty. 

This is based on the assumption that students who have completed a course would be interested in sharing their notes or donating their notebooks to some repository to help other students. I can remember from my own university days, that students voluntarily passed on their notebooks and course materials to other students pursuing the course that they already completed.

Another assumption I have made is that university students would seek out course material from previous years and want to access such material to get a sense of what a course is like and what may be covered. Again there is no guarantee that the notes taken from a previous year will be covered in the present, but it may still be useful to the students.

Most importantly, faculty would be the greatest beneficiaries of such note taking preservation strategies, as faculty would be able to view what students noted and compare with their own notes. In addition, new and old faculty could both benefit, by reviewing what was covered in a previous course.


Position 2: Libraries should have at least one copy of an undergraduate textbook to be dubbed the annotated copy.
 
While libraries prefer users not to annotate their resources, they should in my opinion reserve and permit at least one resource (out of mutliple copies) to be annotated by students with pen or pencil. The rationale for this is kind of weird, born both out of personal experience and experience with the current Web 2.0 trends.

In a weird way, I believe that students like to see what others who have read the book before have to say about it and especially specific points. I myself enjoy looking at what others thought about an idea expressed by the author. I have read books annotated by others that have commented on which points expressed by the author was weak or strong. In addition I have read  a book where a student annotated unfamiliar words to a more familiar words so that one would not have to reach for the dictionary to look them up. As such, the practice I believe is a useful one for students who read the book after, depending on quality of the annotation.


In addition, Biblical scholars also annotate and intersperse the Bible with commentaries and notes. In the online world, this practice is resurrected, with many persons commenting on books read and other media and publishing those comments for other to see. It is therefore in my opinion, human and natural for persons to annotate and comment on ideas in books, and have an interest in what others found interesting, important or useful in a book. This permits conversation.

However, the problems with this is that, like the online world of practical jokers (or trolls) and the offline world of bathroom graffiti artists, we will have some useless and poor quality annotations. Quality control would be an issue, but I do not think that this has to be a limitation that prevents libraries from even experimenting with this practice.


Source:

Stockman, Sebastian.  (2012, November 9). Duly noted: The past, present, and future of note-taking.  The Altantic Retrieved from: http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/duly-noted-the-past-present-and-future-of-note-taking/264533/

Considering gamification of work and study and applications to libraries

I have not been sharing much of my informed research or opinions recently. Much of that writing is taking place in my papers for the directed reading courses. In fact, until the end of August, I may not have much to say about my thesis ideas and its evolution, as I am currently saying it else where and revising it as I 'perform' it in narrative in those papers to submitted.

However, I do have some ideas to share. For example, I am thinking about improving human productivity through what is known as gamification. For those who have never heard of the term gamification, you can check out the definition on the website Gamifying Education.org or Lee and Hammer (2011). I recently learned the term after attending the CAIS conference poster sessions, where I interacted with a poster presenter that discussed applying gamification to create an app to help persons conserve energy and help the environment.

Earlier this week however, I thought about gamifying the research process, especially for persons who have to conduct literature review or readings,  by creating an app that awards points or some scoring system for each research article read. To make it more interesting, make the app run on Facebook so as to gamify the research process and make it social: where persons can compete with their Facebook friends or other colleagues to see who read the most research articles.

However, now I am thinking about it as a tool that managers could use to increase productivity in the work place. Each worker participates by inputting the number of tasks, and check off each that is completed. In the end, the computer scoring system would indicate their score awarded for each task completed, as well as comparisons with other workers. The computer game system could then distribute awards like the most productive worker - with the most tasks completed in relation to the number of tasks they have to get done.


For university libraries too this system could be rolled out for both students to engage their use of the library's resources and for staff. For students, the resources read could come from the online library catalogue or OPAC. Students could check off resources read and the system automatically calculates how many pages were read and compares their scores with other students in their discipline or faculty or course. Libraries would also get feedback about what students are reading that could inform collection development, as well as to indicate alternative metrics of the value that libraries provide, not just storing the number of hits on a resource, but rather the number of unique hits and number pages and resources read by all students within any given time span.

Library managers could also apply the system to library workers, as a project management tool to help make workers more productive by motivating them to perform through achieving high scores, which can result in both virtual and real rewards.

What do you think?

References:

Gamifying Education.org (2012). "What is gamification?". [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/ [Last Accessed July 6, 2012].


Lee, J. J. & Hammer, J. (2011). Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother? Academic Exchange Quarterly 15(2). Available at: http://www.gamifyingeducation.org/files/Lee-Hammer-AEQ-2011.pdf

Young Adult-Owned Business Information Resources for Academic Librariesss

My vision is to see academic libraries provide support for student entrepreneurs to start new businesses. I strongly believe that academic libraries have the existing resources to do so.

Today I went to the Business Library at the Ivey School of Business building and in its reference collection used several resources of value to the small business owner or entrepreneur. There where directories about who buys what; sample business plans, business plan templates, industry profiles and other resources.

I am contemplating collecting a list of resources that academic librarians can use to provide information to students who want to start small businesses.

However, I may first want to make the case for young business owners:

Today, 'more young persons have abandoned traditional corporate career paths in favor of increased autonomy and financial rewards that are possible through entrepreneurship.' Hillstrom, updated by Magee ('Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (YEO)' Encyclopedia of small business / Arsen J. Darnay, Monique D. Magee, editors.3rd ed. Detroit : Thomson Gale, c2007.)

This is evident from a number of articles:

• Muhammad, Tariq K. 'From Buppie to Biz-Wiz: Forget Corporate America - Generation X is Choosing the Entrepreneurial Path to Success." Black Enterprise. January 1997.
• "Entrepreneurial Enthusiasm" Black Enterprise. February 2004 vol 34 #7- p. 32
• Smith. D. (2004, Nov). Students of enterprise. Entrepreneur vol 32 # 11 p. 108 Entrepreneur.com  http://app02.secondact.com/article/73166-3
• "Turn classmates into customers" Black Enterprise vol 33 # 3 October 2002, p. S2.

Some resources that I saw as very useful include:

• For Reference book - Small business sourcebook.(2008). Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research Co.,
• For Periodicals - the Black Enterprise and Entrepreneur magazines.
• For Book - Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Creating What Matters Most: Building Attitudes, Behaviors and an Action Plan for Success in Your Own Business. - Mary S. Moore (1994). Courage Press

However, as my problem is practically oriented, I have the great challenge of converting this into an academic research proposal.