On Friday morning I took part in the PhD Forum, sponsored by ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology). I delivered a brief paper about my research so far and then benefitted from the advice and comments of a panel of experts. Key points included identifying terms for clearer definition in my research questions, considering how well my chosen methodologies are likely to answer some of these research questions and showing more clearly which methods are intended to answer which questions. This was a really useful and valuable experience for me - and should hopefully be good practice for a potential future viva!
The rest of this final day focussed on the official celebration of the 75th anniversary of ASIS&T with a panel discussion examining the history and future of ASIS&T in Europe, followed by three presentations on information science in Europe by Christian Schloegl, Lyn Robinson and Elena Corradini. I was particularly interested in some of the Italian theoretical work cited in the third presentation and came away with more references to follow up! Although the conference continued with three further presentions and an evening celebration, the need to catch my flight back the UK meant that these were the last sessions I was able to attend.
Overall, the week was a wonderful experience. It was an excellent opportunity to hear about research into issues affecting libraries in the digital age from across the world. I think the final thing I should say is "Hvala" to the organisers and hosts at the University of Zadar.
27 June 2012
LIDA 2012: part four
Another keynote presentation started off Thursday morning's session. Herbert Van de Sompel gave a talk on "The Web-Based Scholarly Record: Identification, Persistence, Actionability", discussing the dynamic scholarly record and the growing significance of non-traditional assets such as blogs and wikis in scholarly exchange. A brief survey of recent developments in this field included:
- PeerJ, an author-pays online publication system for biological science and medicine, including a peer-review journal option - with a one-off lifetime access payment plan;
- the Utopia PDF reader, which enriches PDF articles and documents by linking to dynamic content and to datasets (and can dynamically create citations from article metadata);
- myExperiment and Taverna for sharing research workflows;
- BioCatalogue detailing web services for life sciences;
- the idea of executable papers initially conceptualised by Elsevier to facilitate data sharing and to enable readers to input their own comparable datasets to test whether results are reproducable.
Later that morning, my supervisor and I presented our joint paper "Information Resource Development and "Collection" in the Digital Age: Conceptual Frameworks and New Definitions for the Network World". (Trying hard not to be distracted by the view from the conference hall, pictured above.) We discussed the technological changes affecting library collections over the last fifty years, and argued both for the continued value and relevance of the concept and terminology of collection in the digital age, and the opportunities and importance of adopting a networked approach to collection-related issues. There were some really interesting questions afterwards, particularly relating to the place of specialised terminology (such as "digital curation") within our framework. We argue that more specialised terminology can be useful at one level, but seeing these activities as still being part of "collection" development and management is crucial in order to avoid creating multiple silos of information and data, which may potentially dilute the impact of the value a library can add to these kinds of material by treating them as part of a coherent overall collection. Other issues raised included the importance of the process of selection and of some prospect of persistence or permanent access to materials. The morning session concluded with a paper by Luiza Baptista Melo, which included an interesting attempt to calculate a cost-benefit ratio for accessing electronic information resources in Portuguese academic libraries.
In the afternoon, three papers by Mats Dahlstrom, Isto Huvila, and Jela Steinerova explored different aspects of digitisation and digital scholarship. I found the third of these presentations especially interesting, particularly its suggestion of "information ecology" as an emerging framework for digital scholarship, stressing the importance of collaboration and complex relationships. This included a study of relationships between repositories in Slovakia, with many universities apparently having multiple collections of electronic documents, something which sounded to me a bit like the multiple subject or department-specific libraries in some UK universities.
Liz Lyon gave the afternoon keynote presentation on the topic "Incremental Change or revolution?: Libraries and the Informatics Transform". This coincided with the publication of the Royal Society's final report on Science as an Open Enterprise (another must-read text). The presentation gave some idea of the scale of the skills gap in libraries for dealing with data - particularly big data ("the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity"). A study by Mary Auckland for Research Libraries UK - Re-skilling for Research suggested that as few as 2% of faculty librarians have an understanding of core issues relating to research data, such as metadata requirements, and discipline standards and practices. The paper drew on the author's article 'The Informatics Transform: Re-engineering Libraries for the Data Decade' (International Journal of Digital Curation, volume 7, issue 1, pp.126-138) analysing the potential roles of 7 key groups of library staff (such as service directors, data librarians and IT staff) in developing library approaches to managing research data. A particularly interesting idea was that information professionals involved in managing data and making it useable should be formally recognised (for example, in publications). The afternoon sessions finished with another panel session, discussing some of the issues raised - "the digital future is now!".
26 June 2012
LIDA 2012: part three
Wednesday morning began with two presentations on the topic of information seeking behaviour. Colleen Cool presented the findings from a study of information behaviour associated with frustration while searching digital libraries. This study used social interaction theory to explore the behaviour of 20 searchers in help seeking situations involving digital information resources and their self-expressed levels of frustration, with digital libraries seeming to inspire greater frustration than other types of online resource. Particularly interesting were the findings showing different behaviour patterns depending on whether the frustration took the form of participants blaming themselves or blaming the system (participants blaming themselves seemed to be more likely to persist with their searches, despite their frustration). In the second presentation, based on a paper by Polona Vilar, Tomaž Bartol, Jan Pisanski and Primož Južnič, asked the question "Are librarians familiar with information seeking behaviour of teachers and researchers in their respective institutions?". Two Slovenian studies have explored the information behaviour of scientists and librarians' perceptions of these information behaviours. The survey of researchers suggested that people are not enthusiastic about library services, and have difficulty identifying the services provided by the library. There was an interesting observation about the role of the library as a social space, rather than a storage space - this is something which I might have thought was more associated with undergraduate level students, but which seemed to potentially apply to the career researchers and academics, too.
A panel discussion about curriculum design for LIS courses involving digital content in library services followed - a video of this discussion is available here. This included presentations giving a genuinely international perspective on curriculum design in this area. Makiko Miwa described a revised LIS curriculum in Japan (I thought the summary of core curriculum areas on pages 5-7 was particularly clear and useful), Ron Brown from the University of South Carolina, who described the use of cutting-edge technology, such as 3D scanners, and the role of relationships and partnerships in developing courses and Yin-Leng Theng from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore dicussing her university's MSc in Knowledge Management course and research work on reuseable learning objects.
In the afternoon, Christine Borgman introduced the second part of the conference programme, setting out some of the key challenges for libraries in the digital world, including the "data deluge", the need to develop local and global infrastructure for managing digital objects, challenges in identifying and preserving access to digital objects and determining who should lead in developing policy in this area (funders, publishers, data repositories, or universities...). Alyssa Goodman Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University offered a acientist's perspective on crowd-sourcing, data sharing and data citation tools (such as Harvard's Astronomy Dataverse) and using social media in astronomy. Particularly impressive was the example of a photo posted on Flickr of a cluster of stars which were then accurately located using Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope tool, and the positive impact of using this tool to enthuse school students about astronomy.
A poster session took place in the evening - this included some really interesting work including a poster by my superviosr summarising results from a study of innovation in research support services in academic libraries in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand; a poster summarising research into belief in a just world and online piracy; the grey literature typology described in Monday morning's workshop session and a summary of the Croatian experience of both thematic and domain wide web archiving - which aims to make archived content available over the web (a big difference to the proposed UK regulations in this area).
25 June 2012
LIDA 2012: part two
Tuesday's sessions began with a talk by Eileen G. Abels "Change: Opportunity or Threat for Reference Services in the Digital Age". This began with the classic quotation attributed to Asimov "the only constant is change" accompanied by some illustrations of changes taking place in the shift to digital. The key questions posed by this talk were how libraries can find new ways of doing new things, as well as new ways of doing old things (such as equipping roving librarians with iPads to provide connected and cool reference services, or using QuestionPoint consortial aproaches to provide local, regional and international services), and how libraries can look to lead in this time of transformation, rather than just following in the slipstream of change. There were some really pertinent, challenging ideas - I was particularly interested in the quotations from Brian Mathews (2012) Facing the future: We don't just need change, we need breakthrough, paradigm-shifting, transformative, disruptive ideas - a paper which went straight onto my reading list. The paper concluded with some helpful tips on identifying opportunities for new services and on dealing with change.
Later in the morning Tian Xiao Zhang delivered a paper on the experiences of St John's University Libraries (New York) in using Pay Per View article purchasing. Crucially, it could provide a way to "unbundle the big deal", although the presentation also described some major potential drawbacks, including limited user controls and a shift in responsibility for policiing potential misuse of content from the publisher to the library. This contrast was borne out by two statistics in particular - 592 articles within the trial period were downloaded from previously non-subscribed publications, suggesting improved access to content for customers, but more than a quarter of downloads were made by a handful of people systematically downloading materials.
This was followed by Bob Pymm's presentation which posed the question "E-books, e-audio and public libraries: is it lift off or steady as she goes?". This was the first paper I had attended to focus on public libraries, based on a study of e-book and e-audio use in the public library system of Canberra, Australia. The paper suggested a period of "slow evolution, not revolution" in e-format use in public libraries - without quite the sort of scale of shift occuring which e-book publishers may be suggesting. In the system studied, the emphasis seemed to fall on providing access to content (e-books as files for download) rather than hardware (circulating e-book readers), and readers seemed to favour e-content (both e-books and e-audio) similar to the most popular types of printed content, particularly fiction. One particularly interesting point for me was the observation about the potential opportunities for libraries to use e-formats to record and preserve user-generated content, engaging local communities by being able to "collect their stories literally".
During the lunch break, I went on a tour of the Zadar City Library (pictured above, with some more photos of inside available at the City Library's website). I found the library really impressive. It opened in 1999 and features included an extensive programme of cultural and educational events and a Kinect / Xbox system, set up for customers to use - younger ones playing games and older users finding it a great way to keep fit! It also had some very well-designed and creative publicity material. However, one major drawback seemed to be its charges for full library membership (with borrowing rights) - even though the charge is relatively low.
In the afternoon, presentations included Roswitha Poll's summary of progress in revising the ISO standards for library services. Ann-Louise de Boer gave a presentation on leadership traits, skills and competencies for librarians in the digital age. I found the analysis of the potential gap between current skills distribution and recommended skills areas for development (including visionary leadership) particularly interesting. The day closed with a panel session, discussing whether research can help education in digitial libraries. Key points included questioning whether the LIS curricula provide the skills needed to curate new materials (including research data), emphasising the multidisciplinary nature of digital librarianship, suggesting the importance of reviewing the digital repository process and providing opportunities for researcher and student publishing. Lynn Silipigni Connaway emphasised the need for libraries to be proactive and to define their users clearly. Christine Borgman also emphasised the importance of understanding the networked nature of the research process and the need for librarians to be involved in research from the data creation stage onwards and Marie Radford suggested that the librarian has a dual role - both educator and researcher. This led to discussion of some big questions about the nature of the LIS core curriculum and the need to avoid becoming preoccupied with inward-looking discussions if librarians really want to shape "the new information infrastructure".
19 June 2012
LIDA 2012
This week I'm attending the biennial Libraries in the Digital Age conference in Zadar, a stunningly beautiful town on Croatia's North Dalmatian coast. I'm involved with a couple of papers later in the week (on Thursday and Friday) and I will write more about them then.
Monday morning's sessions began before the conference formally started with Petra Pejsova's workshop 'Grey literature: from hidden to visible'. She described the work of the National Technical Library of the Czech Republic in this field including a National Repository of Grey Literature and its involvement with the international grey literature network, GreyNet. This presentation also included a demonstration of OpenGrey, the successor to OpenSIGLE (since June 2011), although still provided by SIGLE (Systems for Information in Grey Literature in Europe). One particularly interesting exercise during this session involved examining and commenting on a typology of grey literature - which seemed to me to be quite an impressive attempt to define more clearly the somewhat ambiguous meaning of this term. It was particularly interesting to see discrete format types - such as websites and datasets - which are often collected and managed separately included in this typology.
The opening speeches welcoming participants to the conference summarised the two main themes of the conference:
This was followed by Lynn Silipigni Connaway's paper "'I always stick with the first thing that comes up on Google': Motivating student engagement with the digital information service environment"*. This described the information behaviour of groups of high school students (the "emerging" phase"), undergraduates (the "establishing" phase), postgraduates / research students (the "embedding" phase), and respected scholars (the "experiencing" phase), as identified from a study which used semi-structured interviews, diaries and an online survey. The results were sobering - as information sources, librarians were rated lowest by student participants although academic faculty and teachers were rated highest. Student comments included "Google doesn't judge you" - in contrast to librarians who, that respondent felt, did judge. The presentation ended with an appeal for librarians to judge contexts and situations carefully in order to give the most appropriate possible service and to be aware of the barriers created by jargon.
The afternoon parallel sessions began with a presentation by Jette Hyldegaard and Haakon Lund on "IL web tutorials: constraints and challenges from an HE perspective" which discussed the findings of the SALLY project which evaluated three Norwegian information literacy tutorials using usability tests, focus group interviews and questionnaires. The paper ended with recommendations to integrate information literacy tutorials "with students' social practice" and with course pages (to ensure they are not seen as library stand alone services). The SALLY project was also described in the final afternoon parallel session, "Evaluating the role of web-based tutorials in educational practice: using interpretative repertoires and meaning negotiation in a two step analysis" which developed on the original studies of three tutorials to explore the meaningfulness and relevance of such tutorials. One particularly interesting point was that the check list role of the tutorials seemed popular - it could be used as a reference tool for checking that references and bibliographies are correct.
In between those two papers, Judy Xiao added an American perspective (from City University of New York) with a presentation on "Collaborating for student success: a model for librarian embedding in Faculty Blackboard courses" describing how the Blackboard VLE could be used to support information literacy, providing opportunities for pre- and post-instruction surveys and in some cases including plaigiarism detection software. In particular, the paper advocated embedding services for courses with a significant research element and where the librarian has specialist subject knowledge.
The afternoon sessions finished with three demonstrations of library management software, including Vero a Croatian next-generation catalogue system based on an Oracle database; Qulto, an integrated collection management system in use in central and eastern Europe; and Austrian Books Online, a collaborative digitisation project undertaken with Google.
I'll write more about day two soon!
* Generally, where proceedings papers or presentations are available for the sessions I describe, I will include a link to them. The proceedings are free to access online, but you may need to register to read some of the full-text papers.
Monday morning's sessions began before the conference formally started with Petra Pejsova's workshop 'Grey literature: from hidden to visible'. She described the work of the National Technical Library of the Czech Republic in this field including a National Repository of Grey Literature and its involvement with the international grey literature network, GreyNet. This presentation also included a demonstration of OpenGrey, the successor to OpenSIGLE (since June 2011), although still provided by SIGLE (Systems for Information in Grey Literature in Europe). One particularly interesting exercise during this session involved examining and commenting on a typology of grey literature - which seemed to me to be quite an impressive attempt to define more clearly the somewhat ambiguous meaning of this term. It was particularly interesting to see discrete format types - such as websites and datasets - which are often collected and managed separately included in this typology.
The opening speeches welcoming participants to the conference summarised the two main themes of the conference:
- "Changes in the world of services: Evolution and revolution in library services"
- "Changes in the world of electronic resources: Information and digitization"
This was followed by Lynn Silipigni Connaway's paper "'I always stick with the first thing that comes up on Google': Motivating student engagement with the digital information service environment"*. This described the information behaviour of groups of high school students (the "emerging" phase"), undergraduates (the "establishing" phase), postgraduates / research students (the "embedding" phase), and respected scholars (the "experiencing" phase), as identified from a study which used semi-structured interviews, diaries and an online survey. The results were sobering - as information sources, librarians were rated lowest by student participants although academic faculty and teachers were rated highest. Student comments included "Google doesn't judge you" - in contrast to librarians who, that respondent felt, did judge. The presentation ended with an appeal for librarians to judge contexts and situations carefully in order to give the most appropriate possible service and to be aware of the barriers created by jargon.
The afternoon parallel sessions began with a presentation by Jette Hyldegaard and Haakon Lund on "IL web tutorials: constraints and challenges from an HE perspective" which discussed the findings of the SALLY project which evaluated three Norwegian information literacy tutorials using usability tests, focus group interviews and questionnaires. The paper ended with recommendations to integrate information literacy tutorials "with students' social practice" and with course pages (to ensure they are not seen as library stand alone services). The SALLY project was also described in the final afternoon parallel session, "Evaluating the role of web-based tutorials in educational practice: using interpretative repertoires and meaning negotiation in a two step analysis" which developed on the original studies of three tutorials to explore the meaningfulness and relevance of such tutorials. One particularly interesting point was that the check list role of the tutorials seemed popular - it could be used as a reference tool for checking that references and bibliographies are correct.
In between those two papers, Judy Xiao added an American perspective (from City University of New York) with a presentation on "Collaborating for student success: a model for librarian embedding in Faculty Blackboard courses" describing how the Blackboard VLE could be used to support information literacy, providing opportunities for pre- and post-instruction surveys and in some cases including plaigiarism detection software. In particular, the paper advocated embedding services for courses with a significant research element and where the librarian has specialist subject knowledge.
The afternoon sessions finished with three demonstrations of library management software, including Vero a Croatian next-generation catalogue system based on an Oracle database; Qulto, an integrated collection management system in use in central and eastern Europe; and Austrian Books Online, a collaborative digitisation project undertaken with Google.
I'll write more about day two soon!
* Generally, where proceedings papers or presentations are available for the sessions I describe, I will include a link to them. The proceedings are free to access online, but you may need to register to read some of the full-text papers.
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