An introduction to my narrative information source analytical framework

In my previous blog post, I made mention of my shifting focus to study library consultants. My study however, will still retain a focus on the study of blogs and tweets (or Twitter) as sources of information as well as social information spaces. It is on the point of categorizing information sources that I want to blog about in this post. Specifically, I want to discuss my framework for information source analysis of blogs and tweets

I have created a theoretical or analytical framework for analysing the types of information sources that exist in blogs and tweets  that differs from the traditional categories of people and documents in much of library research literature. Instead I propose a method that classifies information into types of narratives, rather than into types of media/channels. In this sense, narrative information sources can transcend media and is increasingly applicable to the online and social media world, where the lines between storage medium and communication with people are blurred. In this framework, narrative refers to an account of either an event or an experience. This account can be told in varied ways where a person can either attempt to tell the account in a factual and objective way or can perform the account in an interestingly and aesthetically pleasing way to interest in one's audience (sacrificing some of the facts for emotional effect) (Gabriel, 2000).


In my model narrative information sources fall into four main types or genres:

• non-fiction (or objective) narrative information sources
• fictional (or imagination based) narrative information sources
• reality-based, but subjective narrative information sources and
• interpretative or referral narrative information sources

Non-fiction narrative information sources - is my term to cover categories of narratives such as those that exist in academic journals, newspapers, magazines and other documents that aim to be objective and present different viewpoints of an event or different experiences, or even the coverage of a single event or experience supported by fact gathering. The intention and purpose of non-fiction narrative information sources is to be accurate and objective in its reporting of an event or experience.


Fictional narrative information sources - is my term used to cover the set of narratives that are based on imagination or even re-imaging one's world or reality (real event or experience). In this account of an event or experience, the creator may use imaginary characters, create an imaginary world, embellish and reconstruct reality or experience in ways that violate what we know about the real world or simply be creative with their event or experience in order to make it interesting and appealing to their audience's imagination and emotions. Sometimes fictional narrative information sources (like parables) aim to instruct others about real world events or experiences.

Reality-based narrative information sources - for me are those narratives that are based on one's memory, viewpoint, or personal experience. These include biographical sources, auto-biographical sources, opinions and viewpoints, views or advice that comes out of knowledge that one possesses due to personal experience or the acceptance of the experience of others.


Finally, interpretative or referral narrative information sources - is the term I ascribe to the category of narrative information sources that point to or refer to other sources, interpret other sources, provide viewpoints on other sources, or summaries commentaries or reviews. These sources are essentially based on and provide information (whether opinion or facts) about other narrative information sources.

In conclusion, this is the framework that I hope to use when conducting my analysis of tweets and blog postings. However, it is still in the beta or development stage, and I welcome your comments on it. Nonetheless, my preliminary beta test analyses have made me excited about the framework. In my next upcoming post, I hope to blog about how I have been finding this analytical framework useful and effective in understanding blogs and tweets as business information sources. Stay tuned this blog for more exciting details.

References:

Gabriel, Y. (2000). Storytelling in organizations: Facts, fictions, and fantasies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Research Update: Shifting to study library consultants

For the past two months since beginning to teach and reflect on library management issues, my eyes have been open to the library consultancy industry. Since my original research interest was on studying entrepreneurs, I have seen this trend as an opportunity for me to shift my focus a bit for my research proposal, to the study of this particular type of "library entrepreneur". Currently I am considering a study of knowledge sharing by library consultants via blogs and tweets. This group is apparently underrepresented in the library and information science (LIS) literature. Most studies on librarians ignore this group of independent or self-employed workers or entrepreneurs, in favour of librarians employed to or working full-time in institutions.

So who exactly are library consultants?
I searched around four library dictionaries for the term "library consultant" and only found the term in Prytherch's (2005) compilation. According to Prytherch, the library consultant is:

an individual offering a range of professional skills and advice relevant to the operation of libraries. Usually these skills will be marketed on a commercial basis by a Freelance self-employed person who is not directly employed by the library concerned, but who may be retained on contract for a fee. (p.410)

According to Prytherch, an alternative, albeit broader term is the term "information consultant". the information consultant however is "a generic term used by self-employed Freelance individuals operating on a commercial basis in the areas of information handling and related fields" (Prytherch, 2005, p. 350)

Recent sources have indicated that there are many library consultants (or at least in America). In a press release for the American Library Association (ALA) 2013 conference, advertised is a session where library consultants offer 30 minutes free consulting to librarians. For this event, here is the list of consultants expected to participate:

• Lori Bowen Ayre of The Galecia Group; 
• Liz Bishoff of The Bishoff Group; 
• Carson Block, Carson Block Consulting Inc.; 
• Nancy Bolt, Nancy Bolt & Associates; 
• Yolanda J. Cuesta, Cuesta MultiCultural Consulting; 
• Carole D. Fiore, Training and Library Consulting; 
• Donna Fletcher, Donna E. Fletcher Consulting, Inc./Library Survey Consultants; 
• Cheryl Gould, Fully Engaged Libraries; 
• Catherine Hakala-Ausperk, Libraries Thrive Consulting; 
• Stephen C. Maack, REAP Change Consultants; 
• Gretchen McCord, Digital Information Law; 
• Ruth Metz, Ruth Metz Associates; 
• Sam McBane Mulford, ideation * collaborative; 
• Kathy Page, Page + Morris; Paula M. Singer, The Singer Group, Inc.; 
• Melissa Stockton, Quipu Group; and 
• Richard L. Waters, Godfrey’s Associates.

Additional profile of the consultants participating is available on this website: http://www.consultantsgiveback.org/

Not only that, but ALA also has a section, the Association of Specialized & Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA), which offers the Library Consultant Interest Group.

Twitter also provides a channel for accessing the most recent news being shared on library consultant, as is evident on the embedded Twitter widget below:

Tweets about ""library consultant""

In addition, I have put together a crude slide presentation as part of a business/market research into the opportunities in library consultancy below:




Viewpoint:

In my view, this industry, made possible by new public management trends in public and school libraries, which has seen increasing opportunities for librarians to offer their expertise to libraries for a fee rather than becoming full-time employees. Rather than employing full-time librarians, boards and municipalities responsible for libraries seem to be contracting or outsourcing special projects or services to library consultants, while reducing qualified full-time library staff for less trained and qualified and cheaper labour. Depends on how you look at it, this is an opportunity or a crisis in contemporary librarianship.


References:

American Library Association. (2013. May 28). Consultants give back: free 30-minute sessions in Chicago co-sponsored by ASCLA and PLA [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2013/05/consultants-give-back-free-30-minute-sessions-chicago-co-sponsored-ascla-and

Prytherch, R. J. (2005). Harrod's librarians' glossary and reference book. 10th ed. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate.

Personal reflections of Jamaican Information Scientist on a presentation of Blacks in Canadian picture books

This post is perhaps unusual for my professional/scholarly blog, as it blurs the line between my spirit and work. It comes from my reflections and observations from personal experience, specifically, tackling my reflections at my 2nd Canadian Association for Information Science conference, where I attended the 2013 presentation: “Picturing Difference: Multiculturalism in Recent Nova Scotian Picture Books.” by Vivian Howard, Dalhousie University. To give a bit of context, I want to begin by discussing what the presentation was about, then discuss the points in the presentation that resonated with me and why. Finally, I want to discuss my emotional response to the presentation.

To summarize, Howard's presentation was essentially on picture books representing the Black Nova Scotia community. She focused on 3 picture books, (two fiction and one non-fiction). From I heard the topic of the presentation, having discovered that Jamaican Maroons were the first Jamaican immigrants to Canada, I anticipate hearing the mention of the Jamaican Maroon community that were immigrants to Nova Scotia. This came on around the second slide. As such, I felt emotionally connected to the presentation because it speaks of black people and particularly about Jamaicans. It reminded me of my UWI undergraduate days as a student of Political Science, where we studied our own history and institutions from our own skin colour and local perspective (a hidden value of studying at local universities).

There were other emotional points and inflections through the presentation that resonated with me. I saw in one of the picture books the mention of "natty dreadlocks" with the illustration of a dreadlocks man playing a drum. As I saw it, I definitely felt connected to this manifestation of a Jamaican spiritual identity within Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

It further got more emotional for me in the presentation, when I began to learn about Viola Desmond, Black woman, entrepreneur, and the "Rosa Parks" of Nova Scotia Canada, who "sat down for her rights" in order to fight against racial segregation. This information was presented from the non-fiction picture book by Warner and Rudnicki. (2010) and had special resonance with me, making me feel as if I was taking in a Black history month's presentation.

I also listened to a video interview of Black author, Shauntay Grant, where it was evident that Grant did not intentionally plan to write the stories she did as picture books, but it was through coincidence that a publisher attended Grant's spoken word performance, and invited Grant to publish her poem as a children's book. Her two books if you are interested in checking them out are:

Up Home (2008)

The City Speaks in Drums (2010)

As I connected with the presentation and looked around the room and noticed that I was the only black visible minority there among the information scientists. Then it occurred to me, where were the others that looked like me in Canada? Where were the Canadian black information scientists and why were they absent from this conference?

References:
Howard, V. (2013). Picturing difference: Multiculturalism in recent Nova Scotian picture books. 41st Annual conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, June 6-8, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. (See programme at http://www.diigubc.ca/cais-acsi/en/)

Warner, J. N., & Rudnicki, R. (2010). Viola Desmond won't be budged!. Toronto: Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press.

Further reading:
Grant, S., & Tooke, S. (2008). Up home. Halifax, NS: Nimbus.

Grant, S., & Tooke, S. (2010). The city speaks in drums. Halifax, N.S: Nimbus.

Milan, A. & Tran, K. (2004). Blacks in Canada: A long history. Canadian Social Trends Sring 2004 Statistics Canada — Catalogue No. 11-008, p. 4. Retrieved from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2003004/article/6802-eng.pdf.

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.

Library online catalogues enhanced by harvesting online reviews

After a pause to prepare for teaching and work on some journal articles for publication, I have now returned my attention to my research proposal and in particular, my research problem. I have begun the process of narrowing down my idea again, and am exploring the possibility of studying "Blogs as narrative information sources for knowledge sharing". In this blog post, I just want to share with you some of my thinking through the issues as I formulate my research problem. Lets begin with a fictional story to represent an aspect of my problem.


Joseph searches the library online catalogue on restaurants. After reviewing the results retrieved, he shakes his head. Which of these resources should he check out? Which one will be worth his time? Why doesn't the library online catalogue provide any signals to advise him about the content in these resources? Does he have to go to Google or Amazon to read reviews for each material before taking the time to retrieve or browse them?

What Joseph contemplates is not far from reality. Libraries are already implementing online catalogues that draw on summaries and reviews from other online websites to help given readers more information about catalogue entries.  In my observation, I notice that the London Public Library (in Canada) uses the Encore, a product of Innovative Interfaces Inc., which facilitates reviews from library users/readers (Encore, 2012?), and even seems to harvest reviews and ratings from Goodreads.com. This is of interest to me, because I am developing a research proposal with the idea that one of the practical implications of my research is the harvesting of blog content to enrich library catalogue entries.

According to the overview of Encore on the Website:

Encore offers a suite of applications and web services that delivers a universe of information in ways that are intuitive, relevant, and, perhaps most important, familiar to today’s internet users. Through a single search box, Encore connects users to all the trusted resources the library collects or selects. Plus, Encore gives users ways to connect with each other and participate in your library’s information landscape.

How? Encore elegantly presents all manner of discovery tools, including faceted search results, Tag Cloud, Did You Mean…?, Popular Choices, Recently Added suggestions, and RightResult™ relevance ranking. It integrates federated search, as well as enriched content—like first chapters—and harvested data, and facilitates community participation with user tagging and community reviews.
 

Consequently, it appears that our online catalogues and discovery systems are already making use of online reviews generated by ordinary users to enrich the information in the OPACs.

Another Canadian library, the Toronto Public Library also uses a similar service called Syndetic Solutions™ from Bowker. According to its website, Syndetic Solutions™ from Bowker “is the premier source of specialized, high-quality bibliographic data designed to enhance library online catalogs”. It also offers Syndetics Classic™  which reportedly provides:

a wealth of descriptive information and cover images relating to videos, DVDs, CDs, audio books, and all types of books—from young adult chapter books to conference proceedings. Various elements of content are added weekly for over hundreds of thousands of new titles each year. Syndetics Solutions™ strives to provide a wide variety of the most useful and highest quality information available, much of which can not be found on online booksellers' catalogs and not available from any other source. New options are constantly being added to the service .

Hence Syndetics Solutions™ seeks to enhance the online public access catalogues of libraries through displaying descriptive data about the resources within the library's collection that can signal to readers the content within particular resources. Among the the descriptive data are summaries and annotations, tables of contents, author notes, book reviews, topical headings, images of book covers, and actual excerpts from within the books (Bowker, 2011). Of interest here are the reviews, of which Bowker (2011) reports that Syndetic Solutions product, Syndetics Classic, offers more than 2.8 million reviews as part of its enrichment elements. According to the its FAQ page,  Syndetics Solutions harvests its reviews from the following publications:

Library Journal - coverage beginning with 1985

School Library Journal - coverage beginning with 1985

Publishers Weekly - coverage beginning with 1985

Criticas - coverage beginning with 1999

Booklist - coverage beginning with 1988

Choice - coverage beginning with 1988

Horn Book - coverage beginning with 1985

Kirkus Reviews - coverage beginning with 1983

New York Times – coverage begins with 2007

Doody’s Reviews – coverage beginning with 1993

Quill and Quire – coverage beginning with 1996

Voya (Voice of Youth Advocates) – coverage beginning with 1993

As such, Syndetics, unlike Encore, does not harvests its reviews from any ordinary person online, but rather from selected and "trusted" publishers.

My viewpoint on this matter is that while "authoritative" and "trusted" reviews by so-called "experts" are useful, we cannot ignore the ordinary or lay person's own review. According to a Technorati (2013) report, "blogs rank among the top five “most trustworthy” sources" that consumers use to make purchasing decisions (p. 4). Further, a study has shown that a good portion of consumers (approximately 70%) trust in and value online reviews similar to personal recommendations (Anderson, 2010).  In addition, it has been found by Johnson et al. (2008), that blogs have been deemed as highly credible sources of information for those who use them (albeit biased sources). As such, the data shows that in the online environment, online users desire authenticity, candid remarks, the biases and personal viewpoints expressed in online reviews in general and in particular, those views expressed on blogs. Which is why, my current research in validating blogs as information sources and narrative artifacts for knowledge sharing is important.



References:

Anderson, M. (2010, Nov 29). Local Consumer Review Survey 2010 – Part 1. BrightLocal Retrieved from: http://www.brightlocal.com/2010/11/29/local-consumer-review-survey-2010-part-1/

Bowker (2011). Syndetics classic: Enrichment elements. Retrieved from http://www.bowker.com/en-US/products/syndetics/classic/enrichment_elements/book_reviews.html


Encore (2009, May 22). Twelve libraries launch Encore 3.0: Libraries implement ratings, reviews, new discovery features, and more. Retrieved from http://encoreforlibraries.com/2009/05/26/twelve-libraries-launch-encore-30/

Encore (2012?). London Public Library (Canada) patrons embrace social participation. Retrieved from http://encoreforlibraries.com/2012/08/20/lp/

Johnson, T. J., Kaye, B. K., Bichard, S. L., & Wong, W. J. (2008). Every Blog Has Its Day: Politically-interested Internet Users' Perceptions of Blog Credibility. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), 100--122. Retrieved from ttp://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/johnson.html

Technorati. (2013). TechnoratiMedia. 2013 Digital influence report. Retrieved from http://technoratimedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/tm2013DIR.pdf

 

Narrating the library catalogue revisited

This post emerges as reflection on discussions with various persons about the library's reader advisory services and how the OPAC can help in this process. If you have been following this blog for a while, you will recall that I have been working on papers as well as presentations on how one can narrate (or use storytelling techniques) to present OPAC results. From the varied interactions with persons on this subject, my thoughts on this subject matter has evolved considerably.

A fellow PhD, after attending a presentation on my thoughts on the idea of using storytelling in the OPAC, mentioned to me that  many catalogues are adding readers' recommendations and advisories. For example, she noted Toronto Public library, sending me this example. She further suggested that by using readers' recommendations and advisories, librarians do not have to be responsible for the content; instead the content will be supplied by the system and the users or readers that generate it. She further pointed out that summaries and reviews incorporated in OPACs can be retrieved from APIs (e.g., Amazon, or some other sites). I have also personally attested to this myself in a previous blog posting, whereby using readers' reviews from goodreads.com, I was able to construct some picture of what a particular book was about. The same is true for Amazon.

In these cases, user generated reviews, stories or narratives about what a book or document is about, are already to some extent being incorporated into library OPACs  as alternatives information sources to inform or signal to other readers the potential content one can expect to find in a book. This is important, because for some books, like graphic novels, one needs to be made aware in advance, what one might see (or not see). However, I will get back to this point in another post, in which I hope to tackle graphic novels in libraries as a separate reflection.