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.

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 .

Information consulting today: Some insights from Marcy Phelps @ SLA 2014

So I arrived at my first session of my first SLA meeting with the stress of:

1. having lost my cellular phone between Toronto and London
2. Coming straight to the conference convention centre with my luggage to discover that there was no bag or suit check available, which meant that I had to lug with suitcase and suit carrier to all the sessions,

Nonetheless, my travel stress could not take away from my gaining some insights from Marcy Phelps, the principal  or founder of Phelps Research. According to her website:

Marcy M. Phelps, founder of Phelps Research, provides professional research, analysis, and research training services that help clients make better business decisions. She founded the company in 2000 after obtaining a master’s degree in library and information services from the University of Denver. (Phelps Research, 2013)

The session that I attended from which Marcy Phelps presented was entitled “Data Visualization” (Phelps, 2014). However, the session yielded more than just insights into Data Visualization. In addition to the information on data visualization, Phelps provided insights into the modern trends and shifts from information brokerage to information consultancy (a topic already discussed in this previous blog post).

Marcy Phelps provided a very interesting context to her presentation on data visualization that highlights the shift in information work of locating sources for clients and providing value added services to the information retrieved. Drawing on her experience as an information broker and consultant for a number of clients including marketing agents, Marcy Phelps suggests that in the past information brokerage was about librarians being in business to help clients find more and better information. She however suggests that today, the clients no longer want more or better information, but actually want more value added to the information. In fact, her argument is that clients are drowning in information, and do not have the time to deal with the large quantities of information. She further opined that clients don’t have the time to sort through a while lot of information and as such want information professionals to provide them with information that is “decision ready” (meaning information that they can use immediately to make decisions). Now they want to know what does the information mean? They do not want to search for the story but want information professionals to supply the meaning of the information to them.

Phelps went on to discuss the steps and process to be undertaken in creating or adding this value to information for clients, by using and creating visual analysis and presentations for information. (This discussion itself warrants its own blog entry). However, another key insight that Phelps stressed was that librarians need to use their reference interview skills in the process to get at what clients really want from the data or information that is to be supplied. She mentions that this is key, in order for the information professional to deliver the value-added result that clients demand. She went on to suggest, that sometimes clients have a hunch or theory and wants the information professional to conduct the research  to prove their theory. Our research as information professionals in this regard is to provide the message from the data that clients need to know and use to make their decisions. 

A question was asked of Phelps as to whether or not she has to provide clients with information for which she did not agree with the decisions that they intend to make. Phelps in response stated that this is why she always includes an executive summary or a cover letter contextualising the information being supplied as well as presenting the limitations of the data.

These few insights into the work of information consulting are indeed valuable for the troubles and expenses associated with my conference attendance. It is further insightful for me to be in such conferences to be part of the community of practice surrounding information consulting work. And hopefully, all these insights will transfer into helping me better understand my thesis research. And there's more to come. :)

References:

Phelps, M. (2014). More than pretty pictures: A guide to data visualization for info pros. Presentation at the Special Libraries Association 2014 Conference, June 8-10, Vancouver, B.C. Retrieved from http://www.phelpsresearch.com/Portals/0/DataViz-Adv-SLA2014.pdf

Phelps Research (2013). About Phelps Research and Marcy Phelps. Retrieved from http://www.phelpsresearch.com/AboutUs

My first student 2 business networking conference & recommendations for the future

Flier from the conference

 

So I attended my first Student 2 Business networking conference at the London Convention Centre, March 6, 2013. The conference gave me the opportunity to network and speak about my research interest and listen to business professionals in ICT, Marketing & communication. Basically, from my conversation with a handful of business professionals in these industries, two research questions came up :

1. how can one (a company) make money from social media? and 
2. how can LinkedIn be better exploited as information source and tool for companies and businesses?

Another person even requested of me to send ideas about making an effective viral video that would effectively promote a message to a particular demographic. This is a challenge that I am yet to fully take up, though I am still pondering on some preliminary ideas.

I met no library students at the conference. Only business, computing, art and graphic design students. This was despite the fact that there are potential jobs in the industries represented for librarians.

Since it was the first time that I attended a networking conference, it was a unique learning experience. I learned about networking for jobs in Canada just by observing the Canadian students asking the professionals questions. I also tried my own approach, not really asking questions about the industry, but just sharing my interests to find out who or which company had similar interests.

However, I also received feedback from the business professionals on some of my ideas as well as to what they as outsiders saw as my key strengths: analysis and problem solving .

 

Recommendation

Based on my experience, I have three recommendations:

1. I would like to see Caribbean universities also stage networking conferences for students to network and mingle with employers. I know we have career fairs and mock interviews, but I think we must also teach our students networking skills. I must note however that this student2business conference was not hosted by universities, but more so by an agent or institution of the London municipality. Despite that fact, I feel that universities must also consider the need to teach and give students the practice and the skill of networking, which is a most crucial skill required in today's global world. This is especially important considering the importance of social networks in helping one to get work done as well as to identify opportunities and create innovation.
2. I would like to see separate networking conferences for graduate students from undergrad students. Networking conferences have the potential for being spaces where grad students can share their research /research interests via posters and get feedback from professionals, who could also indicate some of the research questions and problems that they would like answers to. Undergraduate students are primarily interested in getting jobs and/or getting advice about jobs and their fields of interest or industry. As such, when the two are hosted in the same conferences, employers are there primarily with the expectation of finding out who they can hire soon. However, practitioners could also benefit from hearing and networking with graduate researchers, as well as graduate researchers could also benefit from getting feedback about the feasibility of the application of their research in the real world. I think, as such, we need to create such connections that research and practice will converge, and a networking  conference seems to be a place for such connections to occur.
3. LIS schools need to encourage their students to attend such networking conferences to get jobs in places they may not necessarily think about, as well as to promote the profession. It is not good for LIS students to only network among librarians and library employers, but we also need to mingle with businesses, nonprofits and government institutions, who are alternate employers to public and academic libraries. Especially in a time where libraries are facing severe financial and economic constraints, with threats of closure, LIS schools need to start enabling our students to think more about how we can apply our skills in other domains apart from libraries. In addition, LIS schools need to help students learn the same networking skills that business students learn and practice, which can help them get jobs in any field or industry. Hence, we can not afford to isolate our students to talking solely with library professionals, but must also push our students to share what they are learning in library school with persons in other sectors, and get feedback about how what they are learning may be transferrable to jobs outside of traditional librarian jobs.