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

I came across this news article about a young engineer who got two job offers (McGregor, 2015). He took to Quora, an online question-and-answer website, to ask for advice about which company's offer to accept. Representatives from both companies responded with one rescinding the job offer.

This caused me to reflect on my first publication (Scale, 2008) that compared how libraries matched up to Facebook as a "social search engine". While I will not go into a detailed summary of the journal article, I just wanted to make a few points about how this young engineer's problem highlight a missed opportunity for the positioning of libraries and highlight what I think libraries can do to change this.

Let me begin by mentioning that "social search" can be defined as the use of online platforms for locating individuals with the expertise to answer one's query (people search) or for locating information from search results informed by a community of users that input data into the online platform (human intermediary search) (Scale, 2008). Social search comes as a development of the Social Web or Web 2.0 era, where search engines and algorithms no longer dominate how users find relevant information online. Instead, human beings are now connecting online to retrieve information from online personal sources rather than documents.

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

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

2. Learn from Apple's Siri for i-Phone & i-Pad. Promote and provide a listing of the types of questions that we librarians can answer or are good at answering. 

Point 1

Librarians need to promote to library users the benefits of getting their answers from us as opposed to the online competition. Sure enough, online sources can get an individual quicker access to people sources and information, but online also leaves a trail and the Internet does not forget. Librarians though will forget.

We could even make this optional where users can be taken into a closed room, read a confidential non-disclosure agreement form to be signed by both the librarian and the library user, before the individual divulges their query.

This brings me to a concern about virtual reference, which keeps a virtual memory of queries and does not forget. Luckily, virtual reference services can do so with the removal of personal identifying information. Nonetheless, I find it on the side of caution that such system by requiring authentic users to login can still keep track of where queries are coming from. So I am still kind of wondering about this and need to research this some more.

Nonetheless, I would advocate for librarians to be selective of which technology or technical solutions are used for the purposes of virtual reference. Even when we use online platforms, ours must be distinctive from our competitors that collect personal information and maintain a public record of such information.

Point 2
I refer here to the experience of using Apple's Siri for i-Phone and i-Pad. Sometimes after using Siri, Apple's artificial intelligent virtual agent, I find that she presents a listing of some of the questions that she can answer and some of the information that she can provide.

How do library users know what questions to bring to the library reference desk? In my experience, as a library user, users coming to the reference desk get varied levels of service and do not know with certainty if a competent staff member will be on hand to handle their queries. One unhelpful experience is sufficient to prevent a user from being a return client.

Hence, it is necessary to reduce the chances of this uneven service delivery from happening in the first instance by highlighting what we are competent at answering. We must provide a way of assuring our patrons or users about the types of questions we can answer or provide information for and what they can expect us to answer or find answers for.

Even if we do not have the sources to answer all our users query, we should be able know where we can refer users and provide a list of questions for which we can refer users if we do not have the answers. That is, librarians should also know what areas we can competently advise users so that even if we do not have the answers in our library, we can advise users about where to go next and explain the pros and cons of getting the answers from the sources we refer them to. (In a way, this points to a need for deep subject expertise).

Some of the challenges

I do acknowledge that one of the challenges of doing this type of reference work is reduced library budgets and problematic staff shortages. In some libraries, the staff does not have the time to walk the users through a long decision-making process but stop short at just pointing them to the sources. This process makes the library little different from Google or original Web search that just directs users to the highest ranked or used sources that possess possible answers. This forces users to still have the work to determine the relevance and pros and cons of the sources retrieved. This is why I like the special library environment where librarians can provide a framework for extracting relevant and useful information and coming to a decision about which sources to use.

A possible way forward
For me, the young engineer's question could be viewed as a missed opportunity to re-position libraries to the wider public as safe spaces to ask questions and conduct inquiry, especially about career and entrepreneurial information. I for one believe that a dedicated career information resource librarian should be in every public library. This person would specialize in helping users answer career related queries and help them locate career-related information for all stages of an individual's career journey. These librarians should be dedicated to answering reference queries related to career, business or entrepreneurship questions ad questions about choosing educational programs.

Nonetheless, every public library should know its users and the questions that users are most likely to need answers for and provide a dedicated subject librarian to address those questions. Again I realize that this is an ideal in the present time of austerity and economic uncertainty. As such, I lament that we need greater advocacy to let politicians, economists and other authorities that make funding decisions know that the quality of library services depend on the type of deep expertise that we provide in areas that are important to communities. For example, seeing that current authorities are interested in job creation, we can advocate that libraries can provide value to the labour market and the economy if given sufficient funding and staff to provide a dedicated librarian for career and business related questions. Of course, I realize that this means focusing on priorities that fit into the neo-liberal paradigm in which libraries are now working.


Reference:

McGregor, J. (2015, May 7). A young engineer asked for career advice online. Big mistake. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/05/07/a-young-engineer-asked-for-career-advice-online-big-mistake/?wprss=rss_business

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

Using Virtual Agents and Blogs for Knowledge Management

I just concluded my reading of Zhang's (2005) article discussing Web-based Knowledge management systems. In the last statement in the section of future trends and conclusions, Zhang suggests that automatic and intelligent knowledge extraction and retrieval (knowledge agents) should also be studied for Web-based knowledge management. This got me to think about how virtual agents can serve as knowledge agents that potentially automatically extract and create knowledge. In this brief post, I will summarise or briefly post on the idea of how virtual conversational agents or chatbots can serve as a codification strategy for Knowledge management.

In Zhang's (2005) article, a study is mentioned that discusses the codification strategy of knowledge management, where knowledge is extracted from human beings through an interview guide, that allows them to talk about their tacit knolwegde in a  way that it can be stored in databases and retrieved for use by anyone in the company. My idea essentially builds on this principle, which I will outline below:

1. The virtual agent is configured or programmed like the famous ELIZA program to be an interviewer, to ask questions to elicit stories and extract from persons what they know by asking clarifications and prompting long responses or statements.
2. Responses or the ensuing dialogue can then be saved so that the transcript can later be posted on a blog for persons to retrieve when needed. The blog will then be manually tagged for the content it contains and given titles and other attributes to indicate the content of the knowledge. Blogs also will enable full search capabilities for locating content matching user keywords.

These ideas I will further develop (after my comprehensive reading examination) and possible submit to a technology-based journal. But for now, just dropping these few ideas in the embryonic stage. As usual, comments are welcomed.


References:

Zhang, R. (2005). Knolwedge management on the Web. In M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Information Science and technology (pp. 1770-1777). Hershey, PA: Idea Group. doi:10.4018/978-1-59140-553-5.ch311.

Prototypes of virtual agents that provide business information

While browsing Chatbots.org, I have discovered prototypes of virtual conversational agents that do provide business (or company) information online. They are available on this online directory: http://www.chatbots.org/platform/facebook/

I have even discovered pre-existing virtual agents that offer legal and financial information online: http://www.chatbots.org/industry/finance_legal/

Even though I have not evaluated these agents as yet, (which might make for a useful future project), I believe that these discoveries support my perspective that conversational agents can be used to convey business information. It is just a matter of deciding what knowledgebase or database of business information or even company information that one wants a conversational agent to store.


Hence, I see that business librarians can perhaps adapt the conversational agent towards providing company information. Already in business information there is what we commonly call the company profile (See Abels & Klein, 2008, p.42 for definition of company profiles) . Or industry profile for that matter. Hence, a conversational agent could be designed to answer questions about what company produces what products and services. Information provided could also include whether the company is publicly traded or private. The agent could also be designed to indicate the ownership structure of the company.

Reference:

Abels E. G. &  Klein, D. P. (2008). Business information: Needs and strategies. Bingley, UK : Academic Press/Emerald.

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.