Survey Applicants Needed

This is an unusual aside from my usual blog posts, but bear with me, its only short.

Laura Williams and I have had our paper proposal accepted for the CILIP New Professionals Conference 2011. As part of our presentation we will be investigating ideas surrounding professionalism. If you work in the library or information sector, it would be great if you could find a few minutes to fill in our survey. In return, we will be extremely thankful! The link is pasted below, and the survey shouldn’t take long to fill in, we anticipate 5-10 minutes depending on if you get carried away with the open ended questions.

http://edu.surveygizmo.com/s3/531572/What-makes-an-information-professional

You’ll be able to see the results of the survey as part of our conference presentation in June along with loads of other great speakers. I dare say a blog post will be appearing relating to the matter afterwards too.

Librarians? More interesting than campanology!

Why would someone study librarianship?

Recently I was thinking about the many things that we have been told regarding library advocacy and defending the profession in the public sphere (see my recent post on Defending Librarianship). I was trying to think of a clear and succinct response to the commonly phrased question that a good 99% of library school students have been asked, “isn’t that just about books?”. I couldn’t really come up with one, however…

I’ve decided recently to enhance my usual response of “No” (captial N necessary) by also explaining why I enjoy the course and detailing the things that I study in the hope of enlightening whoever asked the question. Whilst thinking about all the aspects of my modules that I like, as well as those that I’m less keen on but still appreciate the relevance of, I got thinking about Information in a very broad sense. I’ve realised that some of the bits that I enjoy the most in my course are not the ins and outs and minutae of the course that we learn, but rather the big picture stuff that these details allow you to fit together.

I’ve always enjoyed big picture stuff. It somehow seems kind of dream-like. Kicking back, staring at clouds and trying to fit everything together-esque. With the big picture (or maybe it should be The Big Picture?) there always seems to be a positive spin on things. Where projects seem impossible, zoom out and think about the issue as a whole, and often enthusiasm will return and hurdles are suddenly overcome.

Maybe librarians are the big picture? Image courtesy of ho_hokus on Flickr

I think all this is relevant when looking at Information. Often, especially towards the end of a library school term, too many details can start to grind you down. All the tiny caveats of topics can start to seem pointless, especially when Joe Bloggs fails to appreciate the relevance of it all other than learning the alphabet so that their books can be shelved in a rudamentary fashion. At times like this, looking at The Big Picture can remind oneself that without all these details, chaos would ensue. Finding things, both in a hardcopy and technological sense would be a nightmare. People would question why things are not where they want them and why their librarian/information specialist cannot find them. In addition to this, the details are interesting.  Maybe not to everyone, but then I found Chemistry dull (sorry Mr Jones, stories about your experiences with campanology failed to liven up lessons) and lots of people find that exciting (chemistry, not bell ringing). Information pervades every aspect of our lives, so what could be more relevant than studying how we manage its day to day challenges?! There are so many routes to information, ways to search for it, different forms to find it in. More people engage with library studies on a daily basis than they care to believe. Sorting your shopping when you get home? OK, its a bit of a stretch but its a degree of cataloguing. Can’t find that thing you want to buy on Amazon? That’ll be a problem with your search query, or a metadata issue.

So next time someone questions your choice of study or profession, tell them that A) it is arguably better than both chemistry and campanology combined and B) it is pretty damn interesting.

ISKO-UK Event – Public Access to Information

Yesterday afternoon I headed down to London to attend an event discussing public access to information, put on by ISKO-UK and TiPS. I was initially unsure if to attend the talk, hosted at UCL, as it meant a day away from studying and incurring an additional expense via a train journey (and a bus from my house to get to the train station, now £5.20! Extortion!).

Despite my reservations though, I am glad I went, and it turned out to be a great talk. If all of their events are of a similar quality I would definitely reccomend them. The event consisted of four speakers and a panel session at the end. It was free to attend for students and the topic linked into many modules that are often covered on postgraduate courses. The speakers were all engaging and entertaining- I’d reccommend keeping an eye out on the ISKO-UK and TiPS sites incase the PowerPoint slides are put up. The titles from the individual presentations are available on the ISKO-UK site. In the mean time, I thought I would try and pick out a few things that I found interesting. I have tried to be quite selective from my notes as they are rather volumous in nature, so hopefully the bits that I have picked out will be of interest to others too.

The first talk was given by Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner. Christopher is a Corporation Sole, similar to the registrar of the Public Lending Right. It seems something to do with librarianship and information attracts Corporation Soles as it was not a concept I had come across before the start of my MA, and now I know of two. The Information Commissioner representing both himself and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) discussed the difficulties of trying to balance the competing interests of the ‘right to know’ against the ‘right to privacy’. The need for a ‘privacy commissioner’ against the role of the ICO was discussed, but ultimately dismissed as missing the point of larger issues at hand. Another commissioner would not help to decide who ultimately decided the balance and interplay between the two interests of privacy and freedom of information. Mr Graham stressed that where correctly implemented, the Data Protection Act works well. A need to proactively disclose information was a theme that ran through all of the presentations, with the viewpoint that publishing data sets can enable mash-ups to take place. For this to take place, data needs to be produced in a re-usable format. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as a driver for publishing information and showing value for money was also discussed. The ICO is on Twitter @ICOnews.

The second presenter was Carol Tullo from the National Archive. The key point that I picked up on from the presentation was the introduction of standards for releasing datasets. These will help to transform how information is used, and released. By attempting to provide one standard for the re-use of data, the public will have more confidence in what they are able to do with it, encouraging an increasing amount of mash-ups and such like. It is hoped that this will partly be achieved by the adoption of an ‘Open Government License‘, produced by the National Archives. Checks and balances adopted in licenses can be maintained with greater ease where only one license is in use, which in turn will further the public’s confidence to adapt and use the data. The Protection of Freedoms Bill was also mentioned- Clause 92 is to be updated to improve and reflect these changes and aid advancements for the release and re-use of data sets by public authorities. Also of interest, was the creation of a central agency, potentially arriving in Autumn 2011 of a ‘Public Data Corporation’, responsible for licensing and information inventories.

Something that was mentioned by Ms Tullo that I feel deserves a seperate paragraph was a way of ranking standards of data created by Tim Berners-Lee in 2009. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a full reference for it, but hopefully a good search for it should yield plenty of results. It ranges as follows:

1 Star – Data published on the web in any format

2 Stars – Structured data

3 Stars – Data in open standard formats

4 Stars – Data with the use of a URL  to identify it’s location

5 Stars – Data that is linked to others and collaborates with it accordingly

Following Ms Tullo was Professor Charles Oppenheim, who discussed problems with UK information law. The presentation was deliberatly provocative, so the below may not represent his actual views. One of the main concerns flagged up was regarding the 8th principle of the Data Protection Act (DPA) and the prevention of information transfers to other countries where adequate laws for data protection are not present. The USA was highlighted as an example where the laws are not deemed fit- the PATRIOT Act introduced following 9/11 was mentioned. The PATRIOT Act overrides the data protection act, by allowing the investigation of any data that is deemed to hold information relating to terrorist activity, and the owner of the data need not necessarily be informed. The problems relating to this were then expanded to problems relating to Cloud Computing and the location of data on servers. Other issues discussed included the classification of what was defined as ‘sensitive data’, and problems with qualified exemptions from the FOIA.

The final speaker was Paul Davidson from Sedgemoor District Council. He appeared in his role as Chief Information Officer and discussed the work he does as part of the Local e-Government Standards Body (LeGSB). Themes for e-standards and linked data were strongly focussed on throughout the presentation. Pillars for maintaining e-standards were shown as below:

What is the information?

• semantics and meanings
• quality (making sure the user is confident that they can re-use the data)

Why is it being exchanged?

• Usage rights, can it be reused?

How is it exchanged?

• Syntax (format of the information)
• Authentification (who is using it?)
• Transportation (how to move the information around)
• Information Governance and Assurance (how to protect the data, as well as encourage its use)

Applications for the above criteria were then explained, as were the differences between public and private data, the result being that it is far easier to apply the standards to public data.

The Open Government License and guidelines were also mentioned, explaining that they should encourage users to take data away and make mash-ups. This is due to the alternative formats that data is now being published in, whereas previously information was often produced in one restricted, predefined format.

The next ISKO-UK event is on Facets of Knowledge Organisation in July.

Defending Librarianship

Career development aids and advice on preparing for the future seem to be everywhere at the moment. The New Professional’s Conference has a theme of professionalism and activism, the SLA’s theme for this year is being ‘future ready’, and this afternoon our MA/MSc programme cohort had a talk from @Lyndsay2020 and @Kathyennis which rounded up a lot of what different channels have been saying and transformed it into an engaging and useful session. I thought I would blog a little of what was covered.

One point which really stuck with me from the session was something that echoed what @theREALwikiman mentioned in a talk that was delivered by himself, @LexRigby and Joel Kerry on behalf of CILIP’s Career Development Group the other week. This was the importance of not shying away from explaining what a librarian is and does.  Too often we dilute what we do, either using an alternative title, or comparing it to another, possibly more familar role.

The session today picked up on this and to illustrate the problem, we were asked to draw what we thought a librarian looked like (in an abstract sense) and annotate our creation, explaining the abilities we had given them. Unfortunately I don’t look have any pictures of our super-librarian, but we included suggestions along the lines of the ability to juggle numerous tasks and situations, and a hat stand with a variety of headwear symbolising the diverse roles librarians can find themselves in. One drawing also clutched a bear to symbolise the work librarians do with the young- thankfully it didn’t look like this though:

Thankfully Ive never met a librarian who looked like this! Image c/o stopthegears on Flickr

Lyndsay and Kathy then highlighted how many of the skills that we had illustrated in our librarians were transferrable to a number of professions, as were the skills that we had said we hoped to learn whilst on the course. This showed both how important it is to nail down just what makes a librarian important, and how difficult it can be. Along the same lines, if a group of librarians-in-training highlight abilities that can be seen as generic to a number of professions, who knows what users and clients think?!  To help remedy this we then focussed on drawing out abilities that could be used to defend a professional position within a firm and truly justify the role of a librarian or information professional. Some of the skills highlighted were as follows:

• Research abilities
• Collection management and development
• Community profiling
• Classification and cataloguing
• Use and control of metadata
• Thesaurus construction

It was stressed that skills such as those above should be differentiated from others such as time management and other general personal traits as whilst they are skills you pick up during a professional course, they are not what makes a librarian unique. The emphasis was on what is learnt as part of a librarianship qualification that cannot picked up on another course.

What I need to work on following the session is ensuring that I do not dumb down librarianship to people, something that it is all too easy to do when its been a long day and someone asks what it is that I’m studying. We must ensure that librarians take the credit  deserved in return for the training and effort invested in developing those core skills.

Another big thanks for @Kathyennis and @Lyndsay2020 for taking the session and raising the above points. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

PS. As a complete aside… I was going to entitle this ‘In defence of librarianship’ but it brought back too many memories of Richard Evans’ “In Defence of History’. A module I took as part of my undergrad in History called ‘Historical Argument and Practice’ made sure I didn’t want to discuss that book ever again. So I changed it.

The Benefits of Branching Out

After reading “Why should special librarians defend public librarians?” by @Woodsiegirl I started thinking about the interplay between special and public libraries and wanted to share my experiences of making module choices for my MA programme. Whilst I can no means claim to be any particular type of librarian or information professional, my interests have been very much focussed towards ‘special’ libraries. This was influenced mainly by my graduate traineeship in a law library and volunteering in an engineering library. So, when I started my MA, I was determined that all my module choices would point in that direction. Despite this, when it came to finalising my options I decided to branch out and take the public libraries module. I’m really glad I did this and as a result I wanted to put down a few points relating to my experiences of choosing modules in the hope that come the next academic year it might help someone!

To illustrate the enjoyment that I have gained from picking a module outside my future career aims, I wanted to mention the visits I have attended. The prison library visit I blogged about the other week was linked to the public libraries module, and today we visited a local branch library and were kindly hosted by the Head of Library Services. Today was a really interesting talk and focussed on the provision of library services for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities. If it wasn’t for the public libraries module that I’m currently taking I would have missed out on both of these experiences. Now a few points that will hopefully be useful…

• Do not worry too much about tying everything to your future job hopes: I was very concerned about increasing my employability by choosing modules relevant to my future aspirations. By diversifying I not only feel more knowledgeable about the profession as a whole, but feel more able to talk about areas of librarianship that I knew little about previously- surely that can only be a good thing for networking and interviews?!

• Pick something you think you will enjoy: This one is self explanatory really, and is a staple for pretty much every bit of advice on choosing modules, but it is true. I love my modules, and feel more inclined to sit and work at something I find interesting. It is a great way to give a bit of extra ‘oomph’ towards the end of term as deadlines approach.

• Choose something outside of your normal interests: This kind of contrasts with the previous point, but I think it is still important. Pushing yourself outside your normal interests, and outside your comfort zone is a good thing. It can add an extra challenge to your course, and makes for a good talking point.

• Try not to choose modules just on how they are assessed: I was tempted to look for modules that were only assessed through essay writing, but after a bit of thinking and inspiration inspired by a slide show by thewikiman I realised I should probably do a module with a bit of a technical side to it. Plus it is nice to have a change from writing to something more practical once in a while!

• Modules aren’t the be all and end all of your career direction: Or at least I hope not. See Lex Rigby’s post which discussses the structure of career paths I’m no careers counsellor, but I like to think that what you do in addition to your module choices can count just as much for future employment as what you do on the course. Get involved in other things too!