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.

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

What I've been learning so far from my storytelling course with iVersity?

So I have begun a new journey to improve my craft of storytelling by signing up for the online course "The Future Of Storytelling" on  at iversity https://iversity.org/courses/the-future-of-storytelling?r=c4bab. This course is interdisciplinary and taught by German professors, but done in English. And so far, the course has been transformational and inspirational.

One of my favourite moments in the course so far, is the lecture by/interview with Dr. Hans-Christoph Hobohm. In his session, Dr. Hans-Christoph Hobohm, an information science professor, presented in a library space, the origins and history of storytelling. Hobohm in his short 22 minutes video summarised much of what I have learned from my readings on storytelling from both my comprehensive examination and self-directed studies. He also added a new dimension or perspective to what I already knew. Hobohm suggests that storytelling, contrary to what Walter Benjamin and others have argued [1], has never ceased from being around us.  Hobohm in talking about storytelling from past to present, indicates that how stories have been told have changed with technology, but that stories and storytelling are continuously being told in every human epoch and generation.


I particularly enjoyed when Hobohm discussed storytelling in library and information science. He suggested that librarians are awakening to the idea that 'libraries are houses of stories' and as such have been inviting authors and people to tell their stories in libraries. He also talks about storytelling in knowledge management, archival science and oral storytelling. Here he discusses stories as a way of capturing information, tacit knowledge and even wisdom.

I also learned from him about Story cubes, a board game for storytelling (See http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/kids/toys/rorys-story-cubes-in-pdq/759751003180-item.html). This game has dice, which instead of having dots, the dice have pictures. When we roll the dice, we must tell a story based on whatever pictures come up. As I saw this game, I knew that I would love to acquire it and use it for not only teaching future courses or classes in storytelling, but also in developing my own storytelling skills as well as those of my children.

The change in my outlook was evident today when I stopped by Indigo Chapters bookstore to look for the Story Cubes in hope of purchasing the last remaining one in stock at my London store. IndigoChapters no longer was a book store to me, but a 'storeroom of stories'. Games and books were transformed into stories competing for my engagement and finances. However, I left the store without any items, but hoping that one day, my own stories would be in that bookstore, screaming out for someone to purchase it.

Note:

1. Walter Benjamin (1969) discusses that the production of print literature, movies and television for the masses has killed storytelling. However, while one can contend that oral storytelling culture has suffered from print literature and movie production, one could also argue that with movies and novels come a new form of storytelling, which is the position that Hobohm and my online storytelling course maintains.

Reference:

Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations, ed. and with an Introduction by Hannah Arendt. Trans. by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.

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.

Brief thesis update and "Storytelling on Blogs?"

It has been a while that I have blogged, since completing my comprehensive examination. I have now started the proposal. So, the new topic/title of my proposed thesis proposed is something like this:

"A study of entrepreneur blogs as social information spaces, information sources and sources of personal and organizational storytelling/narratives ."

Essentially, I am looking to do a content analysis of entrepreneur blogs to see the types of information they provide and if stories are also included. I am currently working on the proposal. Right now I am at the point in the proposal, where I am conceptualizing and theorizing about storytelling in blogs. One of the essential question is: Can blogs tell stories? Another question is: How does storytelling in blogs differ from oral storytelling? I would like to spend the rest of this blog posting beginning to frame answers to these two questions.

Blogs as platforms for storytelling

Without a doubt, there are persons out there that view blogs as being a platform for telling stories or personal narratives, especially for stories or narratives based on one's own life experiences. This idea is prevalent in a 2006 Pew Internet study on American bloggers that referred to bloggers as being the ‘Internet’s new storytellers’ in reference to their blogging mostly about personal life stories and experiences (Lenhart & Fox, 2006). Arguably, prior to the emergence of blogs and blogging, the Web was a place for hypertextual and hyperlinked documents, and to a lesser extent, a place for conversations through chat rooms and discussion fora. Laurel (2001) further suggests that the Web became a platform for storytelling largely due to the birth of blogging. Blogs in her view enriched the Web as a significant development in computer-based  or computer-mediated storytelling. Laurel argues that blogs enabled personal meta-storytelling on the Web, transforming Web search from a publishing and storage medium of hyperlinked documents to one also enriched by blogs with shared life experiences. Laurel’s views are also supported by Langellier and Peterson (2004), that argue that “one example of storytelling on the Internet” is the growth and emergence of “online journals and diaries” (p.160). These according to Langellier and Peterson (2004) recapitulate past experience and personal narratives of events.

How does blog storytelling differ from oral storytelling?

Langellier and Peterson suggest that blogs, while not being the same as oral communication, approximate oral communication more than traditional documents and written communication. They make the case that blogs are more like personal correspondence and writing than novels or newspapers.  Blogs make one's personal experience public. Yet the making of that experience public, does not change the intimate storytelling feel that accompanies oral storytelling. One by reading a blog, feels that a person is speaking personally to them. Blog readers express the views that while reading a blog, they feel that they are in the company of the blogger. Bloggers on the other hand, reveal the view that when blog readers respond to their blog posts, they feel a connection of familiarity as if those persons hanged out with them.


Langellier and Peterson make the case that blogs are like another window to real life, and that reading or writing blogs require bodily participation and is not a question of disembodied communication. People bodily participate in blogs by “the labour of vision” and through participation with their hands and keyboards, but forgoing "the obligation of reciprocal exchange” (Langellier & Peterson, 2004, p. 167). For Langellier and Peterson, blogs "extend the body's capability for storytelling", enabling storytelling to not be limited by geographic separation of the storyteller from the audience.

References:

Langellier, K., & Peterson, E. E. (2004). Storytelling in daily life: Performing narrative. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Laurel, B. (2001). Utopian entrepreneur. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Lenhart, A., & Fox, S. (2006). Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers. pew internet & american life project. ( No. 2012). Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2006/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019%202006.pdf.pdf

 

The library's role in edutainment: Supporting learning through fiction

In this blog post I wish to clarify an issue arising from a previous posting on this blog. The issue is the place of libraries in the 21st century. In a previous blog post, I argued against libraries seeking to establish themselves as places or spaces for recreation, and rather seek to market themselves as places and spaces for job creation and support for entrepreneurship. I was in conversation with a librarian, that hinted that libraries have always had a recreational role, which need to be reclaimed and not just an informational role. As such, I would like to take this opportunity to extend on the views, indicating that I do see value in libraries getting involved in what I call an edutainment role.


From my interactions with older librarians (especially school and public librarians), I know for a fact that we as librarians have understood for a long time the value of fiction in helping students learn to read and become literate. However, providing recreational material in my opinion is subsidiary to the goal of the intellectual development of users.


Hence there is a place for the provision of fictional stories and even games and gaming in libraries.
I recently read this article by Barack (2013) in the School Library Journal that illustrates how students can learn better writing and computer coding skills from fictional storytelling and even gaming. In Barrack (2013) students create interactive fiction game based on natural language that in turn helps them improve their writing skills by doing so.

The whole idea of learning skills from fictional storytelling is something that I am discovering for myself as I conduct research on storytelling and how such storytelling is being used by institutions and organizations (including the military) to prepare and train people for the future roles and work. It is within this framework, in which I am re-examining even the library's traditional organization of materials into fiction versus non-fiction shelving systems. While we currently separate these materials, I question the need to do so, especially in the online environment.

Two experiments that I have done using a small metropolitan Canadian library's Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) has confirmed to me that we can as librarians provide multiple ways for users to know about their world, through both non-fiction and fictional information sources.



For example, how would you like to learn survival skills if lost in a forest? Through reading a How to guide book for living in a forest? A newspaper article or a novel? Well it so happened that I was searching for a book on rivers (for my graphic novel idea) and came across a fictional book with the title The river that based on reviews seem to teach survival skills or at least it feeds the imagination for one to imagine the scenarios where they may actually need to learn to cope and survive: (See http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2915.The_River). Another experiment can be seen in my Narrating the OPAC presentation, where I discovered based on the OPAC entry for a fiction book based in a restaurant setting, that there was a section in that book containing recipes.


Further, after reading Roger Schank's Dynamic Memory, where he makes the case that people learn by indexing stories in memory, and being able to later retrieve something from such stories when they need to deal with a problem that calls for such information, I am convinced that one can learn much from reading fictional stories, especially those based on reality as opposed to fantasy (with the exception of science fantasy/fiction of course). This I even understand better as I attempt to research and gather information to inform my graphic novel.

Hence even fictional stories based on real experiences do convey some information and truths about our world. Hence fiction storytelling has an appropriate place in libraries for the purpose of informing readers about their world and preparing them with the problem solving skills needed for future societal roles. Hence, like Laurel (2001), I am definitely concerned about the stories that are told today. For while art imitates real life, people in real life, also imitate art.

References:


Barack, L. (2013, April 3). California 10th graders improve their writing skills—Through an interactive fiction game. School Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/04/k-12/kids-game-class-teacher-approves-jason-sellerss-students-build-interaction-fiction-games-and-improve-their-writing-skills/

Laurel, B. (2001). Utopian entrepreneur. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Schank, R. C. (1999). Dynamic memory :A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people. Cambridge Cambridgeshire; New York: Cambridge University Press.

The Infographic as storytelling medium

I read an interesting article by Dylan C. Lathrop on Infographics as media for combining data visualisation with human narrative or storytelling. Lathrop is an insider in the infographics industry, and in his article, provides a history of the medium dating back to the 1920s to the present. Lathrop also discusses the affordances of infographic for narrative or storytelling, arguing that while companies want to tell the stories or narratives of traditional business documents with infographics, not all business narratives can be told with this medium. As I read his article, I couldn't help but appreciate this documentation of the medium and how its features constrain how one can tell a story.


References:

Lathrop, D. C. (2013, March 19). We've reached peak Infographic, and we're no smarter for it. Harvard Business Review Blog Retrieved from:
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/03/weve_reached_peak_infographic_and_were.html






 

Threats to the freedom to blog

In this blog entry, I would like to focus on the issues concerning the growing threats to the freedom to blog. My reasons for posting my views on the matter comes as a result of two particular developments within this month that I see as representing threats to the blogosphere. Specifically, one of the incidents is the case of Edwin Mellen Press suing a university librarian for libel (New, 2013).  Another incident is the issue of employees getting fired for user-generated content as reflected in the Applebee's waitress who posted a receipt with a customer's complaint regarding tipping (Stableford, 2013).

Both stories indicate the dangers of the growing powers of organizations and institutions to take away the freedom to create user-generated content via social media. Organisations and institutions today are able to take away the freedom of people to blog and share content via social media through

1. law suit for libel or defamation and
2. the threat of termination of employment. 

I note that today all human beings are affected by organisations and institutions. We are not only citizens governed by governmental institutions that regulate who are citizens and who are not, but we are also either employees of organisations or can be sued by them for rants or exchanges that we make via social media. As such, I note that the freedom of persons to blog, especially blogs critical of organisations or institutions including religious ones and businesses are in threat of being curtailed by:

1. threats of law suit
2. threats of disciplinary action from an employer

In light of this, I saw an interesting event by Harvard Business Review on Wednesday, 23 January 2013, the #HBRchat Topic, January 24: It’s My Job and I’ll Tweet If I Want To . While I did not participate, I noted the important questions the public chat raised:

Q1: How much freedom should employees have to discuss work problems online?
Q2: Are you comfortable using social media to complain about work?
Q3: Does your company have a policy about employee conduct on social media?

These are important questions that are increasingly relevant as our freedom to blog and share content via social media is now one that employers and other institutions are now monitoring or are planning to monitor in the future. We must note then that the freedom to blog cannot protect us from losing our jobs or from law suits from organisations and may indeed impact on what information we will be able to share and access on blogs in the future.

This brings me to the issue that such pressures will change forever the information sources that blogs are. Blogs will no longer become authentic and real sources of personal information. People instead will be censored and provide only information that they know they cannot get in trouble for. Imagine the world that this creates, where I want to find authentic and real information online about a company or an institution, and all I can find are positive stories and comments about the company and institution? No complaints? No criticism? No person's real thoughts or beliefs about that company or institution? Is that the online world that we want to live in and create?

Where are the values of freedom and freedom of information? Librarians and the information professional community need to speak out against this new online world order, where organisations and institutions are robbing individuals of the freedom to make authentic contributions to the blogosphere and user-generated content that gives us expanded realities about our world and the institutions and organizations that inhabit them.



References

New, J. (2013, Feb 8). Edwin Mellen Press sues university librarian for libel. The Chronicle of Higher Education Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/edwin-mellen-press-sues-university-librarian-for-libel/42193


Stableford,  D. (2013, Jan 31). Applebee’s fires waitress who posted receipt from pastor complaining about auto-tip. Yahoo! News Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/applebees-waitress-fired-pastor-receipt-193820748.html

The potential role of fictional stories in strategic planning

I am back (for a little while) to share some of the progression of my thoughts that have been informed by my comprehensive reading of scholarship in knowledge sharing and storytelling. In this particular post, I would like to focus on some preliminary thoughts on the issue of the role of fictional storytelling in planning.

I have read a few authors that has advocated the use of fictional storytelling in planning. In previous blog posts I mentioned how the education field (see blog post on Drake) and library and information field (see blog post on Nyström and Sjögren (2012)) have seen a place for fictional storytelling in planning for the future. I have also read Bennet and Bennet (2007), who discuss an instance where storytelling has been used in technology planning in institutions such as the United States Military. In this post, I would like to extend on these ideas with a few of my own.

First, I would like to assert a number of propositions, that I believe future researchers can test. Throughout this post, I use the term stories to mean the account of an event or experience:

Proposition 1: In the absence of factual data and statistics, one can use stories of the past as a precedent to plan for future events.

This is not a new idea. Organisational storytelling already points out that experts based their judgements on their prior experiences (Orr, 1996; Denning, 2005). I already observe that this activity is taking place in fields such as law, where lawyers and judges use prior cases to make judgements about what should be done in a present case. Doctors and other health professionals also use this method of referring to historical cases to make judgements about the treatment of patients in the present.  

Proposition 2: Even in the absence of stories in the past, one can use imaginative storytelling to predict the future.

This second proposition is already being used in some fields under names such as scenario planning or thought experiments. Scenario planning is used in the military; thought experiment in philosophy and game theory in economics. Scenario planning and game theory practices use imaginative or fictional storytelling to help reduce uncertainty and consider how an event may unfold if one take certain actions. Thought experiments on the other hand, utilise one's imagination to attempt to experience a phenomenon or phenomena (Brown and Fehige, 2011). It is on this basis that I argue that fictional storytelling can be deployed as a tool to help one contemplate future events, based on projection of the past into the future or speculation about how the present will change.

Conclusion
I conclude this post by suggesting that organisations and institutions can plan for the future through applying fictional storytelling. This is already done in a number of fields. I further argue that we can predict and perhaps even create the future by imagining worst case and best case scenarios. We can ask questions such as:

• What are the worst things that can happen if we take a particular action?
• What bad can happen if we do not address a particular situation?
• If we pursue a particular strategy, what good could come out of it?
• If we address a particular situation, what good could result from it?

As such, we can frame our planning in terms of tragic or epic stories. We can use tragic studies to tell us the dangers that we need to protect ourselves or institutions against. However we can also use epic storytelling to motivate ourselves or organisations to aim for new possibilities, goals and achievement. These are some of my preliminary thoughts on the matter, as informed by some of my readings, some of which I have not explicitly mentioned here. Hopefully, after my comprehensive examinations, I will have more time to develop on these ideas and even conduct some research and experiments to test the validity of my propositions.


References:

Bennet, A., & Bennet, D. (2007). From stories to strategy: Putting organizational learning to work. VINE: The Journal of Information and Knowledge Management Systems, 37(4), 404-409. doi:10.1108/03055720710838489


Brown, J. R. & Fehige, Y. (2011). Thought experiments. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/thought-experiment/.

Denning, S. (2005). The leader's guide to storytelling :Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint.

Drake, S. M., Bebbington, J., Laksman, S., Mackie, P., Maynes, N., & Wayne, L. (1992).


Developing an integrated curriculum using the Story Model. Toronto, ON: OISE Press.

Drake, Susan M. (2010) "Enhancing Canadian Teacher Education Using a Story Framework,"The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 1(2), Retrieved from http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cjsotl_rcacea/vol1/iss2/2

Nyström, V., & Sjögren, L. (2012). An evaluation of the benefits and value of libraries. Oxford, U.K.: Chandos Publishing.

Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking about machines: An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press.

Article on storytelling for entrepreneurs and [possibly] for libraries

I came across another good read on storytelling for companies and those who want to tell non-fiction stories.
Storytelling: Why Stories Attract More Customers by Social Media Examiner writer, Michael Stelzner. Hence, in keeping with my interest in library and information science considering storytelling as a method of conveying information, I review some of the points made by Stelzner and make a wider commentary on its application. In addition to my interest in storytelling for library and information science, I also have an interest in entrepreneur storytelling, especially as a librarian interested in entrepreneur/small business library services. As such, in this article, my comments and review will raise points relevant to both intersecting areas of interest.

In the article, Stelzner interviews Dave Kerpen, author of  Likeable Social Media and also the co-founder of Likeable, an INC 500 social media marketing firm. Kerpen is also the author of a new book entitled Likeable Business: Why Today’s Consumers Demand More and How Leaders Can Deliver. Kerpen therefore becomes the major source of the information in Stelzner's article, sharing his experience and practical advice on storytelling.

In the article it is stated that 'people love going to the movies and reading books...because we love to be engaged by stories.' In specifically talking about entrepreneur storytelling, the article states that 'everyone in business has a story to tell about how they started.' 'Wherever a company is started, no matter how big it is, it has a humble start'  and telling the story about how a company started can aid in making the company more 'likable'.

Stelzner's article also discusses how storytelling can be used convey non-fiction information. According to Kerpen, ones 'ability to take a piece of history and turn it into a story has to do with applying...traditional elements of storytelling with what really happens. Kerpen in Stelzner admonishes us to 'be truthful, but...embellish a little bit'. This I assume would be in conflict with my librarian's ethics of objectivity and telling the truth and nothing but the truth. Nevertheless, I also feel that librarians have a responsibility to convey people's ideas whether they be truthful, fictional or a blend of myth, legend and folklore.

Kerpen also advises that for our storytelling we must 'Make the characters come alive...set the stage and build a story that resonates with people.' He also advocates that with today's technology, storytelling is easier, cheaper and less risky, and that if it doesn't resonate with people, we can make changes and keep practicing and experimenting with storytelling until we get it right.

Kerpen also in final aspects of the article shares how social media has 'changed the barrier to entry to tell stories at scale.'

"It used to be that if you wanted to tell your story at scale, you had to buy your way in through media; for example, television or radio. You used to have to spend a significant amount of money on storytelling."

Today, this is no problem with the use of social media.

The article is useful to me both as an example of how business is using storytelling to convey information and continues to buttress my theories that libraries in order to keep up, will also need to explore this method in conveying information as well as in our offering of new and old services, especially via the Web. Currently, customers respond to stories, and libraries need to tell good stories in order to engage their customers. At the same time, as information providers and professionals responsible for information dissemination, we need to also consider whether or not using storytelling principles may be relevant for us to adopt in conveying non-fiction information. Can our profession begin a conversation on whether or not it is ethical for information professionals to use myths, folklore and even embellishments of the truth to convey important non-fiction information? Can our profession also ethically use storytelling which engages and takes advantage of people's emotions to lead them to truth?


Reference:

Stelzner, M. (2012, December 28). Storytelling: Why stories attract more customers. Social Media Examiner Retrieved from: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/storytelling-why-stories-attract-more-customers/#

Proto-type of a story-based information retrieval system for libraries

Sometimes, it is easier for me to communicate my thoughts via a slide presentation, rather than textual information. This blog post is one of those post in which I find it easier to communicate my ideas in a slide format drawing on storytelling concepts to express an online information system that I am thinking of which could be applied to the new library online public access catalogues. In this slide, the inspiration for my ideas or prototype comes from two authors: Schank (1982) and Laurel (1993) (see their references below).

References/Inspiration:

Laurel, B. (1993). Computers as theatre. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.

Schank, R. C. (1982). Dynamic memory :A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people. Cambridge Cambridgeshire; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Corporate online storytelling: for libraries?

I found an interesting read on movements towards corporate online storytelling this week in my Twitter feed. In Elliot's (2012) article for The New York Times, I discovered that Coca Cola is about to rebrand their online presence as an online magazine. In doing so, Coca Cola's new Web site is to reflect its marketers recasting 'communications with consumers as storytelling rather than advertising.' I quote:

'Just as attention is being paid to developing content ...for brand storytelling, an appetite also exists for corporate storytelling.'

Storytelling on Coke's Web site will be 'subjective, not objective...favorable to the brands, products and interests of the Coca-Cola Company.'

'Although the content comes “with a point of view,” Mr. Brown acknowledged, “we want to be a credible source.”'

Coca Cola is also not afraid to make mistakes with their online storytelling and magazine type site. The informant Ashley Brown, director for digital communications and social media at the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, states:

“I’m sure we’re going to make mistakes,” he said, “and readers are going to tell us.”

Implication for libraries

I think I am ahead of my time in LIS: advocating online storytelling for library websites when the field's not quite ready for it. Currently there have been moves within library schools to dispense with storytelling courses from LIS curriculum and library education (Sturm, 2010). Further, within LIS, librarians have predominantly seen storytelling as a service to children (Sturm, 2010). This is despite the fact that there is a growing interest in storytelling and the professionalization of storytelling for adults (Sturm, 2010). In fact, there is also growing interest in corporations for corporate storytelling (Greene & Del Negro, 2010). Hence, while business schools are becoming more interested in offering storytelling courses (Marek, 2011), library schools are thinking about getting rid of them altogether.



In my view, there needs to be a course within library schools that will deals with institutional digital storytelling. This is because, in the age of social media and Library 2.0, libraries need to move online and tell their stories. Libraries need to find ways of connecting with their users and potential users in the online world. We need content on our websites and a social media presence that is constantly updated and engaging, reminding our users that we are a channel to credible information sources. Our Websites must now be more like blogs or online magazines, with a constant flow of information. We should not only tell users what we have, but also post commentaries and view points, to represent the information that we have within our collections. In short, we need to take a page from Coca Cola's book on corporate storytelling. If Coca Cola is thinking about becoming a publisher, why not libraries?

Libraries are already telling stories within their walls. We have countless exhibits and exhibitions within our walls and some libraries have taken these and posted them on their websites. However, our practices are all being done without examining the theories of good storytelling, digital storytelling and even the theories of institutional or corporate storytelling. My questions are:

• Are library professionals equipped to tell good stories online and offline? 
• Are library professionals able to recognise what stories are worthy of being told?

Storytelling can be fictional, non-fictional or a mixture of realism with fiction as in the case with life writing or organisational storytelling. Libraries can use parables to tell stories that convey a truth about how libraries work. Libraries can tell stories to workers within the libraries or even to the users and other outsiders of the library.  In fact, I have written 3 blogs posts about how libraries can use storytelling to their advantage (See blog post 1, blog post 2 and blog post 3). However, none of these posts even begin to speak to how libraries can use online storytelling to attract library users and engage them in using the library's online or physical services. This is a gap that I am also studying at current.


At least one LIS scholar, Marek (2011) has begun to develop a body of knowledge on organisational storytelling for libraries, though aimed at library managers and administrators (see my blog post on Kate Marek) Hopefully, I will be able to develop a course after completing my comprehensive examinations and research proposal that will also address this issue. For indeed, from the start of my PhD program, my original interest has always been in using the Web and folklore to design a more engaging experience for library users. And so far, I have felt that my extensive readings have equipped me with the theoretical knowledge to do so.



References:

Elliott, Stuart. (2012, November 11). Coke Revamps Web Site to Tell Its Story. The New York Times. Retrieved from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/business/media/coke-revamps-web-site-to-tell-its-story.html?_r=0

Greene, E., & Del Negro, J. M. (2010). Storytelling: Art and technique (4th ed.). Santa Barbara, California, Denver, Colorado, Oxford, England: Libraries Unlimited.

Marek, K. (2011). Organizational storytelling for librarians: Using stories for effective leadership. Chicago: American Library Association.

Sturm, B. (2010) Storytelling. In  Bates, M. J., & Maack, M. N. Encyclopedia of library and information sciences (3rd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. 

How to design virtual agents as storytellers that provide non-fiction information?

I have been reviewing and reading some books informing me about how agents can be used in storytelling and information provision. One of these great books is the one by Laurel (1993) entitled, Computers as theatre.

Laurel’s (1993) foundation work has inspired some of the system or application prototypes featured in Prendinger and Ishizuka (2004) and Lombardo and Damiano (2012). It is Laurel that introduces to human-computer interaction designers the idea of the theatre as an interface metaphor for designing computer applications. For Laurel, the theatre, drama and performance are useful for instructing the design of computer interfaces and human-computer interaction.

Laurel begins her argument on the premise that there is need for a more humanistic approach to computer design. Laurel discusses that engineers designing human-computer interaction do not produce good humanistic design that will please human beings. She indicates that the engineering and mechanistic approach that dominates computer human interaction and design alienates wide spread adoption and use of computers, which can be corrected with the softer and more human appeal approaches of the humanities.

While the computer is traditionally conceptualized as a tool for advancing human work, Laurel argues that the computer is a medium rather than a tool that like the performance communication of theatre and drama, represents thought and creates a space for imaginative experiment and expression.

Laurel provides advice for interface design for human-computer interaction between interface agents and human beings, suggesting that interface agents should be designed based on dramatic characters rather than full-blown simulated human personalities, because dramatic characters can affect how human beings structure their thoughts, expectations and behaviours. If real-like characters are used, then people have certain expectations of real-like human communication. Laurel thereby provides instructive arguments to the design of virtual agents or artificial conversational agents or other role playing characters that interact with human beings and serve as interfaces to computer software systems. For Laurel, the agent characters of a system must pass a kind of anti-Turing test in order to be effective. It must be predictable, that persons can predict its actions with greater confidence and certainty than real people


For those that question whether or not fictional characters can be used to represent serious communication, Laurel provides an argument. In a section of her book, Laurel discusses how the Greeks used drama, showing that people of the ancient world never used storytelling, myths or folklore for trivial or entertainment purposes, but instead they used it to convey important information about past, present or future. In discussing Aristotle’s philosophy, Laurel points out that historically poetry was used to represent serious action and that the ancients deemed art as useful for moral instruction. In Greek drama, mythology represented their world and humanity’s place in it. In other words, Laurel presents arguments that indicate that the fictitious performance of storytelling was useful in helping ancient people think about their societies and suggests that this approach can also inform modern computer-mediated communication.

Laurel also provides an example of a project that features 3 agent characters/guides that provide multimedia access and narrative approach to navigating information in a database. The project also demonstrates the feasibility of using fictional characters to provide access to non-fiction information sources. In the project, the 3 agent characters or guides embodied 3 alternative perspectives about various topics in American history: a frontiersman, a Native American and a settler woman. These agents were designed based first person narrative account of incidents and topics related to the westward expansion in America. The sources of these accounts were derived from diaries and journals of real historical persons that experienced the expansion. The agents as such were cast as anthropomorphic storytellers performing stories in video format.  These characters represented and provided context to information sources in the database.

In order to establish the credibility of the agents, the agent performers through a video segment introducing themselves, describing their real-life professions and the source materials used and lessons learned. This established the agents as storytellers rather than fictitious characters, thereby reinforcing their credibility.

The agents by representing varied point of views allows for multiple representations of events and knowledge, while giving the user various perspectives from which to explore the content and the knowledge in the knowledgebase. Laurel suggest that this approach is natural in that in the real world human beings do not “navigate to” information, but rather experience information coming to them from a variety of sources (page 183).


Besides storytelling, Laurel describes the guides as recommending to users other information that the user might want to look at next in the database, based on the guide’s perspective and the information that is currently being displayed. The user can then click on the guide’s (hyperlinked) suggestion displayed in the guide’s suggestion box and the item or information will appear. Through the use of guide’s suggestion, information and action unfolds like an elaborate story created by one or more characters in collaboration with the user. Laurel suggests that this multimedia and narrative approach is natural in that it mirrors the kind of information that one receives in the real world, being varied, multisensory and having different effects on the person receiving the information. In addition, Laurel points out that the evidence suggests that information communicated as facts usually lose contexts and relationships, in contrast to information communicated as art or experience, which maintains and nourishes connections.

In conclusion, Laurel introduces the idea of agents as storytellers or performers that can be used to tell stories based on characters experience and point of views, and make/offer recommendations about other information to look at in databases based on the guide’s point of view and user’s current interest or curiosity.

References:

Laurel, B. (1993). Computers as theatre. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., c1993.

Lombardo, V., & Damiano, R. (2012). Storytelling on mobile devices for cultural heritage. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 18(1-2), 11-35. doi:10.1080/13614568.2012.617846

Prendinger, H., & Ishizuka, M. (2004). Life-like characters: Tools, affective functions, and applications. Berlin; New York: Springer. 

Story model applied to education can apply to libraries

I recently discovered Drake et al's (1992) story framework or model, and how it can be applied to helping in bringing about organisational and personal change in education.

Drake (2010) states in an article indicating:

The purpose of this reflective essay is to explore a “story” conceptual framework that university faculties may find useful to deepen understanding of current educational issues. It has been used in a variety of ways including curriculum development and as an effective instructional strategy for analyzing complex issues and teaching future teachers to think analytically and critically.

Drake (2010) also sees storytelling as a 'powerful way of making meaning of the world'. While Drake's model seems to be applied to education, I think it is fitting that librarians and information professionals also see the relevance of using this model to analyse libraries and our past and future directions.


While her model is not directly related to my research (as I am more interested in applying a story model to developing web-based library services), I see the story model as important for assessing, evaluating and enhancing library education as well as the future of libraries. One of the contributions that I think the story model can do for the library profession is to help us think of the new story that we want to write for the future of libraries in relation to the stories that the media and society is writing about us. There is a new story being written about libraries today, and we need to participate in listening to the stories that others outside the profession are telling about us, as well as to participate in writing this new story.

As I write this, I realise how influenced I have become by my organisational storytelling readings. Works of David Boje etc. have been internalised. As I see libraries as organisations, I also see the relevance of organisational storytelling to librarians and information specialists. I encourage you to read Drake (2010) or Drake et al. (1992) to be acquainted with the story model or framework, and try fitting libraries and LIS concerns and issues into the framework.



References:

Drake, S. M., Bebbington, J., Laksman, S., Mackie, P., Maynes, N., & Wayne, L. (1992).

Developing an integrated curriculum using the Story Model. Toronto, ON: OISE Press.

Drake, Susan M. (2010) "Enhancing Canadian Teacher Education Using a Story Framework,"The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Vol. 1: Iss. 2, Article 2.
Available at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cjsotl_rcacea/vol1/iss2/2

How storytelling can be used for library development? Part 2

In part one of my review of the authors Nyström and Sjögren (2012) who cover in 2 chapters how storytelling can benefit the development of libraries, I focused on customer, user or patron storytelling (to me it does not matter what we call them, though some LIS persons are at war over the semantics). In this entry I wish to focus on chapter 7 of their work, in which they discuss the persona method.

The persona method creates a fictional user based on real data about users, including the stories that are collected from users and the statistical results of surveys. In this method, this fictitious person represents the entire group of users believed to act similarly and need a particular product or service. This fictitious representation of users is a way of aggregating what is known about a range of users or nonusers. This fictitious person is then placed in a specific context, and a storyline created to describe that user or non user (or the group to which the person belongs). In this sense, the persona method reverses the principle of organizational and even personal storytelling.


In personal or organisational storytelling,  people construct stories that represents a real event happening to real people (Gabriel, 2000). These stories created are symbolic representations of a real event that is filtered by one's own mind and memory (Gabriel, 2000).  However, with the persona method, the story is begins by characterising real people or persons and then constructing an artificial event based on these persons who are the main characters in the story. In this sense, persona is like the method of novelists, while personal and organisational storytelling is in the tradition of memoirs and other lifewriting forms.


Nyström and Sjögren advocate that one of the advantages of applying and creating personas is that it enables the retention of details revealed from data collection in organizational memory. They argue that the method also simplifies the communicative task of getting employees to understand, identify with and care about the targeted group. In this sense the persona method helps to aggregate quantitative and qualitative data into a narrative or story format that makes for easier communication and presentation to employees and even funding partners.

The persona method according to Nyström and Sjögren is a tool to be applied for strategic development or scenario planning, for marketing and for the designing of web services. Nyström and Sjögren also discusses the history of the method, describing it as being developed in the mid-1990s by designers of computer based systems. The method has been applied for designing websites and Internet services to ensure that these are functional for certain target groups. (For those wanting more coverage on what the persona method is, please check http://usability.gov/methods/analyze_current/personas.html, or the last reading below).


References:

Gabriel, Y. (1991). ON ORGANISATIONAL STORIES AND MYTHS: WHY IT IS EASIER TO SLAY A DRAGON THAN TO KILL A MYTH. International Sociology, 6(4), 427-442. doi:10.1177/026858091006004004 

Nyström, V., & Sjögren, L. (2012). An evaluation of the benefits and value of libraries. Oxford, U.K.: Chandos Publishing.

U.S. Government: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. (nd.). Develop Personas . [ONLINE] Available at: http://usability.gov/methods/analyze_current/personas.html. [Last Accessed July 10, 2012].