Karen M. Drabenstott
Associate Professor
School of Information
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092 USA
Voice: (734) 763-3581
Fax: (734) 764-2475
karen.drabenstott@umich.edu
Thanks to CRISTAL-ED members who responded to my call for new topics. Despite the few messages, we received good suggestions that will raise their ugly heads again in late August should I be unable to find guest editors to volunteer to take them between now and then.
Our next discussion is entitled "Generation-Next Students Voice Library Issues of the Future" and we will depart from our usual routine of one topic and one guest editor. Instead, Anne Abate, who is no stranger to our LISTSERV membership, will be featuring her University of Kentucky students in the class, "Current Problems in Library and Information Science." Anne will introduce her students and the format for our new topic.
I'd like to say a few things about Anne before I turn CRISTAL-ED over to Anne and her Kentucky Wildcat students. Anne is librarian at Dinsmore & Shohl, the largest law firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. Prior to working at Dinsmore & Shohl, she held professional positions in a variety of libraries. Anne has an MLS from the University of Kentucky, an HAB from Xavier University, and completed her doctorate in computer technology in education from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, less than 72 hours ago.
Let's do a great job helping the students explore current library issues!
Anne K. Abate
Librarian
Dinsmore & Shohl
Cincinnati, Ohio
abate@scis.nova.edu
For the next four weeks, our moderator will not be an individual, but a group of students. Anne Abate (a moderator of several discussions over the last few years), is teaching a course this summer on "Current Problems in Library and Information Science" at the Northern Kentucky campus of the University of Kentucky. Our moderator will be the 17 students in this course. The purpose of the course is to examine the current philosophical and managerial issues in library and information science with a focus on the origins, analysis, evaluation, and current status of these issues. The students in the class come from a variety of backgrounds: education, public libraries, special libraries, academic libraries, archives. They are excited about the possibility of sharing ideas with the readers and contributors of CRISTAL. The students have selected eight topics which they feel are the most important or pressing or interesting issues in the field today.
Each week, two topics will be introduced with the broad topic area and a brief paragraph and a set of questions put together by teams of students from the class. We hope that you will ponder the questions carefully and add your thoughts to the philosophical discussion that has been going on since the middle of June. The students are all subscribed to the list, but are only here to "stir the pot" or keep the discussion going if it slows down. Please give the students plenty of material to discuss in class on Tuesday and Thursday evenings!
With that brief introduction, on to the first two topics ...
Topic One -- Students on Team: Rick Goheen and Susan Wilkins
Library schools/graduates/training/competencies/continuing education
Students in library school today are expressing great concerns regarding the content of their library school programs and whether they will be prepared for their full career in libraries. Professionals are also concerned about the quality and content of library school education. In recent issues of Library Journal, Herb White has been asking us to ponder questions such as "What is a library professional?", What should professors be teaching students?", What is library school?" Here are a few additional questions to ponder:
(And a question from the students in this class especially to any of the students on the list -- Do you feel you are receiving a strong foundation for such a diverse profession?)
And if that one does not strike your fancy ...
Topic Two-- Students on Team: Annabel Ihrig and Melissa Scheirey
Information Ethics
One of the many issues arising out of our research into the issue of professional ethics is the changing role of the information professional. In Library Journal (May 15, 1998), John Berry suggests that the next logical professional step for librarians is to elevate ourselves to the "high risk role of information advisor." To do so would require not only the kind of value judgments made by other professional such as doctors and lawyers, but also possible charges and fees for these services.
Back to all of you. (Let's show these students the benefit of all of that professional experience out on the list!)
Dan Lester
3577 East Pecan
Boise, ID 83716-7115
Voice: (208) 383-0165
dan@84.com
Students in library school today are expressing great concerns regarding the content of their library school programs and whether they will be prepared for their full career in libraries.
Greetings, students and colleagues. This is coming from an old-time library geek (MLS '68) who has been automating libraries since 1965 and still has a decade or more before retirement (if stress doesn't kill me first). Discussions such as this one provide me with a bit of lunchtime relaxation, along with a sandwich and salad.
First, NO GRADUATES from ANY program, and particularly those in a program such as Library/Information Science/Theory/Technology, will be prepared for their "full career." The world is simply changing too rapidly, and I don't think anyone has any reason to expect change to decelerate. To put it in perspective, I first studied computers that had vacuum tubes in them, then ones with transistors, then chips, then VLSI chips, etc. And software has changed just as rapidly, developing as quickly as the chips and disks necessary to house them. It was in all of your lifetimes that Bill Gates thought that 640K of RAM would be enough for anyone in the future. Well, he was off by several orders of magnitude.
The Web has developed since I came to this job (presumably my last) in 1990, and has already turned the world upside down. Heavens, when I came here the library had a total of six computers, and only one of them (mine) was a 386. If you're "traditional students" like my daughter, who just got her master's degree two months ago, you finished the last year of high school and college and graduate school in that time. You've seen the same changes. If anyone had told you in 1990 what the Internet and the Web would be like these days, would you have believed it? Probably not. If I could have predicted it, I would have retired early and rich by now on Amazon.com stock alone.
So, the key is: don't even imagine that you'll have learned all you need to know for your career. Even in pre-technological days, a library school education couldn't do that, and it certainly can't now, and never will be able to do so. But...have you learned how to learn? Have you learned to be comfortable enough with computer and network and communications technology to use these things, plus whatever else hasn't been invented yet, for the next 30 to 50 years? Have you learned how to work well with others, whether colleagues, superiors, subordinates, or users? Are you willing to deal with ever-increasing rates of change in your job and in your life? Can you deal well with ambiguity and confusion? IF you can answer YES to those questions, and a few others that don't cross my mind at the moment, then you're well prepared for your professional career. If not, well...consider something else that won't change quite as fast.
Remember, every day you don't learn something is a day wasted.
Tony Debons
Professor Emeritus
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
debons@sis.pitt.edu
As a starter about the future of library and information science: Can we come up with a set of assumptions about what the world of library and information science will be like in year 2005? If yes, then we can marshall our intellect around them.
Keith V. Trickey
Liverpool Business School
k/v/trickey@livjm.ac.uk
Congratulations on setting good topics rolling!
I'll come out straight away and confess to being a member of teaching staff on undergraduate and postgraduate information and library management programmes in the U.K.
First Topic
Q1. I can duck this one straight away and claim we attempt to reflect the variety/diversity of the work places into which our students go. Perhaps a more honest answer is the criticism that the library schools are remote from the work place has an element of truth in it. This leads to some unhelpful biases, i.e., a tendency to over focus on what is "hot" professionally or research "sexy" rather than what the student requires to be an effective professional. (Side track: I teach good old cat and class - which has been massacred in the U.K. library curriculum over the last 10 years -- the profession still requires it -- not as a complete job skill but as an element in the full professional formation. Our students [Liverpool JMU] still get a reasonable [compulsory] supply [not enough in my thinking!] and it improves their employability -- word is getting around among employers that we still do it, they are getting jobs because of it.)
Q2. IT is one for the workplace -- the library schools cannot dictate the software packages used by employers (perhaps Bill Gates can?). What we can do is have clarity in the skill we seek to develop in our students. I would identify these as either core or generic core skills -- are your ubiquitous things like AACR2, MARC, LCSH and the equivalents in other subject areas. Those professional standards round which we gather rather than dispute. Generic -- are meta skills that a student, once out in the profession can customise to the specific workplace. So we teach database building using Access -- we expect students to learn both the specific package and the structure of the activity of database building. If they go into a work place that uses a different database they will customise their generic skill to fit that system.
The ability of the student to map from specific to generic (mata structure) and then map back to the example that presents and learn from the new example is a very important part of the professional thinking of the librarian.
Q3. It is very important that our graduates can hit the ground running and make an obvious contribution to their workplace straight away.
I think as educators it vital we remember that we are preparing students for an active skill intense profession. We are not in the process of building mini academics or research superstars (these are acceptable added skills) but functional professionals whose task, to quote Michael Gorman, is to "give access to the recorded knowledge and information of humankind."
Topic 2: Information Ethics
Ok so I have been in the profession over 20 years and am just a shade cynical at times. The quote form Berry appears to me (out of context) to be the classical cry of the professionally insecure. In the U.K. there have been endless tedious debates about the "professional image" of the librarian -- and a gallop away from the "L" word as a professional descriptor. (I am a librarian and proud to be so. The path that Berry suggests is a possibility for those who wish to follow it -- there is plenty of other professionally demanding work to be done within the existing area of activity. The U.K. Library Association has a code of professional conduct -- I suppose my question is -- day-to-day -- who is governed (in their actions) by the code.
More please!
Frank Exner
fexner@yahoo.com
Let it never be said that I wasted a chance to brag on my library school (North Carolina Central University School of Library and Information Sciences). Some of those who read this post have read my previous posts and, therefore, know that I am part of a three librarian family (me, my wife, and our daughter) all educated at North Carolina Central University (NCCU). If this sounds familiar, skip the next paragraph.
I am an information engineer, my wife is a children's librarian, and our daughter is a medical librarian. All of us have received our professional library training at NCCU during the 1990s, and all of us knew, early in our schooling, what specialties interested us. NCCU, though a "small" school, gave all of us what we needed to be successful immediately.
My wife knew, when she entered NCCU, that she wanted to be a public librarian. Early in school she was drawn to children's librarianship. These became the focus and passion of her program. When I entered NCCU I knew that I was working in a corporate documentation department and, given my age, would continue to do so. With CD-ROM and on-product information delivery rapidly approaching, however, the IS program was my clear choice. This became the focus and passion of my program. Our daughter was a biology and pre-med major in college. When she became interested in librarianship (I hope Mom and Dad had something to do with it), medical librarianship was an obvious choice. NCCU has a program in special librarianship which, with an independent study, fit her needs. This became the focus and passion of her program.
I describe our journey in such detail for two reasons. First, I am very proud of NCCU and will brag at any opportunity. Second, and more important, I believe that my family offers an unusual lens through which to view library education. Among us, we range from one of the profession's most traditional forms to one of its newest.
Any MLS program is graduate school. (I know ... that's obvious.) That means that more responsibility for success falls on the student. The fact that a school offers a wide variety of courses does not mean that any given student has to take them all. The school's responsibility is to offer enough cohesive courses that, together, they prepare a graduate to do professional work. The student's responsibility is to choose a school that offers an education appropriate to his or her goal and then to pursue every iota of knowledge available.
Paul B. Wiener
Special Services Librarian
SUNY at Stony Brook
"One of the many issues arising out of our research into the issue of professional ethics is the changing role of the information professional. In Library Journal (May 15, 1998), John Berry suggests that the next logical professional step for librarians is to elevate ourselves to the 'high risk role of information advisor.' To do so would require not only the kind of value judgments made by other professional such as doctors and lawyers, but also possible charges and fees for these services.
It's a little hard for me to take this issue seriously. It sounds like one of those issues that arises despite the lack of evidence that it has ever actually been exemplified in real life. I know "library ethics" has been an "official topic" for years, but before I spend more time thinking about this, I'd like to hear of one (all right, two or three) instances ever of a librarian who gave out information (or more typically, pointed to a possible source of information, since those librarians who specialize in subject content usually find other careers) the validity of which was considered at the time a serious issue, a risky issue, with possible life -- or health -- or safety-related consequences, one which the patron raised. I can't think of one in my 19 years.
And no, I'm not prepared to accept liability and predict that if librarians (rather than whole libraries) ever are, that's merely another spike into the heart of the profession and professionalism -- part of the general erosion of trust that is crippling this country.
Dan Lester
3577 East Pecan
Boise, ID 83716-7115
Voice: (208) 383-0165
dan@84.com
I'll agree with others that the liability is a non-issue to librarians and other information professionals. Yes, it is an issue to lawyers -- and they deal in information (as do physicians and others) -- but their liability is regarding what they DO with the information, not the fact that they provide it. And, every librarian I know had thoroughly beaten into their head in library school that we provide the information, but the patron is the one that uses it, evaluates it, and so forth. Heavens, if someone asks me what the capital of Kansas is, I won't just say "Topeka," I'll show them a source that shows them that Topeka is the capital. Almost every day a reference librarian has questions that s/he can answer without referring to a source, but they still show the patron the source.
As to what the library will be like in 2005, here are a few predictions.
That should be enough for a start.
Keith V. Trickey
Liverpool Business School
k/v/trickey@livjm.ac.uk
Dan Lester on "liability" hit the spot -- going back into the mists of time will remember the Shannon Weaver model of communication -- all about "information" and coding and decoding. I think this model sits at the back of much of our thinking -- also the misleading use of the term "information" in that context -- if they had used the term "signal" things would have been clearer. We need to differentiate between the signal (the carrier of the content) and the content itself. There is a huge difference between a radio signal being distorted or shredded by electromagnetic field or source and many of the process/content dilemmas we have to deal with in information work. In essence when the user or client poses the "authority" question, "Who sez," it is vital the answer we give is not "Me!" unless we are a recognized (certified?) authority in that area of practice rather than the information structure for that area.
Robert M. Ballard
rballard@bambi.acc.nccu.edu
I agree with Dan that the previous discussions have been very thought-provoking. While perhaps we have not heard as much from current library and information sciences students as we would like, I hope that they have been reading and thinking. Dan's statement number six particularly concerns we...the decline or possible decline in rigor of undergraduate academic programs in the United States. If this indeed is caused by or will be a result of "distance education," then will not graduate programs and specifically our own programs likewise be similarly affected?
Robert Bauchspies
Export-Import Bank of the United States
robert.bauchspies@exim.gov
Greetings:
Musing over the two themes here, may I first say "BRAVO" to Dan Lester for his reply regarding Theme 1. While it has been widely understood, that many college graduates (bachelor's level) conclude that "learning how to learn" is the "must have" competency upon graduation (especially so perhaps in liberal arts programs and those not readily attached to "tooling," etc., such as CS, engineering, etc...), MLS programs must beginning weighing the learning continuum and greater emphases which are placed in current and emerging technologies. Recalling earlier discussions about core competencies and so forth, surely librarians must be adept at certain current applications regarding information access and management but as important perhaps, would be the knowledge on how to stay current with the awareness of change in the same. Fortunately, vendors have it in their interest to keep would-be subscribers (read libraries) abreast of the evolution in their products. Lexis-Nexis is a case in point.
The second theme regarding library ethics is more of interest to me at this point given the questions and some of the initial responses. Having reread John Berry III's May 15 editorial entitled:
"Risking Relevant Reference Work" as well as ALA's 1995 "Code of Ethics," certain key phrases and words do stand out which legitimize Annabel and Melissa's questions.
Mr. Berry suggests librarians must "risk giving...value judgments" regarding information provision or acquiesce library reference service's to its "slow erosion and obsolescence."
The "Code" states in Item 1: "We provide...accurate, unbiased...responses to all requests."
Item 6 states: "We do not advance private interests at the expense...of...our employing institutions."
Mr. Berry is building off the reality of the Internet and increasingly enabled end-user accuracy in information retrieval facilitated in part by improving search engines. Clearly he is advancing the issue.
For anyone who has worked in an institution where important decisions are made based on the information provided, the integrity, accuracy, and weightedness of the information are significant factors. This is a given. When a dozen news stories are writing about the same issue, each with a different emphasis, what is a librarian to do when a CEO wants the truth? In financial arenas where so much hinges on what someone says or what rating agencies are doing or threaten to do, again what is the most reliable? Often decision makes extend the responsibility to the information gather to assess and provide, the most reliable, responsible source(s). Many decision makers do not have the time to wade through oceans of information related to their particular information need.
Over the Internet when a couple hundred hits on a search are returned, should we port this to the patron? We can show patrons how to use the Internet or any other application toward its maximum utility (which is also our charge) but there are many, especially, at the senior level, just want the information, undesiring to sift through ranked relevancies, etc.
A reference librarian in the electronic age, must continue to have subject expertise and not be afraid to rely on such expertise to evaluate information for its integrity, value, etc. Yes, we should still make one aware of the plethora, but increasingly with must advise. Students writing papers are regularly given Subject Guides to resources provided by the library...what then is the difference, for their compilation also involved the assignment of value by the librarians who created them. It is perfectly legitimate for a patron to ask, what is the best source for...?
How this "best" is ascertained is hopefully drawn from the acquired and ongoing developing knowledge of the reference librarian. Hence Item 1 in the code sounds good, but "unbiasedness" in the arena of information provision, as with research in general, is intrinsically hermeneutic. We are bias by the sheer fact of our identity and then some.
Regarding not advancing private interests at the expense of our institutions again, I would need to add the following. Former Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill mentioned that "all politics is local" hence even the most altruistic employee has self-interest as a primary ingredient to merely being employed. Is it the pay check? Seeking a gold star, an attaboy, a brownie point and so on, may be dismissed by most in terms of questioning one's motivation, but hoping for recognition for your efforts has long been a cry of librarians. Proactive information dissemination can win you praise, heighten the library's profile and value, etc. Doing such for the good of the institution surely; but then the positive feedback or the raise isn't so bad either, especially if intentions relate to proving your worth, etc. And what about climbing the ladder? Most organizations hope employees have ambitions which involve advancing their private interests if we qualify such interests with parameters which pertain to job responsibilities and organizational mission.
Allen Brewer
Retired Software Engineer
Doctoral Student CLIS
University of Maryland
abrewer@wam.umd.edu
I think the greatest deficiency in current professional education is the lack of preparation in forecasting and planning. To some degree we are all responsible for decisions that are affected by our views of the future and our expectations about future events. With all due respect, if the faculty of Library schools cannot reasonably forecast library operations as little as five to 10 years out, (e.g., 2005) then how can they expect to design a course of study that their students can expect will prepare them for a professional career?
This issue, forecasting the future, is not limited to library or information professionals or to library schools. The millennium bug is possibly the greatest example of a problem that was foreseeable and was the direct result of poor quality assurance and professional practice. It is technically possible for a century compliant date to be stored in 4 bytes with a single byte used for month and day respectively and a two byte field used to store a four-digit year. The common explanation that non-century compliant dates arose from the need to conserve memory is technically a patent lie. The millennium bug arose from practices that did not consider possible future ramifications.
Forecasting the future is necessarily subject to some degree of uncertainty, however, there is a body of literature that addresses forecasting and there are numerous researchers that have addressed these issues. For example, the developments of microprocessors have, for the last two decades, followed Moore's Law. Given Moore's Law, the presumption that no one could have anticipated the design, construction, or marketing of the Pentium chip and products that incorporate it is really absurd. I don't doubt that the name Pentium might not have been anticipated, particularly since it was the sixth generation in a family of the x86 product line that included 8086, 8186, 8286, 8386, 8486, prior to the Pentium. It, however, is about what one should expect for the next successive doubling of chip capacity in 18 months over what was available in the 80486.
Whether it was reasonably possible to anticipate the development of the Internet from its origins in ARPANET is a matter of opinion. Whether it was possible to anticipate the developments in business-to-business purchasing, beginning with EDI and developing into e-commerce is also a matter of opinion. It is my opinion that professional's have some obligation to provide leadership for their professions. I do not see how any profession can do this if it adopts the mantra "nobody could have anticipated _____."
Robert Bauchspies
Export-Import Bank of the United States
robert.bauchspies@exim.gov
In contrast to my (unedited) ramble about LIS school programs and ethics in reference service, may I briefly add the following:
Information value means different things to different individuals, organizations, cultures and societies.
"Relevance" is equally diffuse.
Information services must operate within context and the ability for one to maximize subject expertise is limited by the tools one may use and the resources one has access to. The continuing "art" of learning within a subject specialty, is compelled to be technologically adept and maintain a two-headed current awareness if such competence has service and teaching as ambitions. Needless to say, "classic works," however defined, are still shelf ready in my personal library, when I need them.
Anne K. Abate
Librarian
Dinsmore & Shohl
Cincinnati, Ohio
abate@scis.nova.edu
Greetings, list readers!
After a huge surge of activity early in the week, the list has slowed to a trickle. Please continue to digest and comment on the topics from Week One (Library School Preparation and Information Ethics). The class is reading your postings and they are bringing forth great discussion.
It's time to introduce the topics for Week Two. If nothing inspired you the first week, take a look at what these groups of students have been thinking about:
Group Three
Collection Development
Becky Douglas and Kevin Proffitt
The issues surrounding collection development and building useful collections for library users have long been popular topics among library professionals. These issues are growing even more complicating with the advent of electronic sources. From our discussions, we have decided that outsourcing and access vs. ownership are two of the hottest issues in collection development today. Based upon this thought, please ponder and comment on the following:
And if nothing strikes you there:
Group Four
Tenure and Academic Status for Librarians
Rick Goheen and Susan Wilkins
People have divided and strong opinions concerning faculty status, tenure, and unionization for librarians as evidence by a review of the February 1998 CRISTAL discussion, "Faculty Status for Librarians: Who Wants it, Who Needs it and Why" (led by Rosemary Fouad).
Many of the arguments in favor of tenure for librarians focus on achieving parity with teaching faculty in terms of the benefits associated with faculty status such as salary, sabbaticals, and job security.
That should give you all something to chew on for the rest of the week. Remember, feel free to comment on any of the four discussion ideas. We have students tracking every thread and we will be wrapping up at the very end of the four week.
Thanks.
Dan Lester
3577 East Pecan
Boise, ID 83716-7115
Voice: (208) 383-0165
dan@84.com
We all like money to a greater or lesser extent, and the things that it can do for us. I won't argue that, but I'll continue to say that anyone who went into library and information science as a way to get rich was ignorant or misinformed. Yes, we want to feed ourselves and our loved ones, to enjoy a few "luxuries," but if we want serious money we'd better get an MBA or a computer degree. And by that I don't mean the computer things taught in library school, but a serious degree in CIS or CS or a similar field.
Collective bargaining is on the way out. Look at the statistics on union membership over the last decades and it is obvious. Faculty status is fine, but even at "publish or perish" universities, the faculty status for librarians is second class at best, and will always be thus, at least until the Ph.D. is the minimum requirement to work as a librarian. There has always been a pecking order in academia, and that is unlikely to change. Physics and philosophy are at the top, followed by most of the sciences, then the social sciences and humanities, then business, and near the bottom education and librarianship, with only those in physical education (or some newer term like exercise science) lower on the pecking order. I've always had faculty status at the universities where I've been employed, but I've never taken the job for that reason, and never would. We'll only improve our status in the academic pecking order by DOING better and DOING more in the academic community. And, I don't count on it happening in any of our lifetimes.
See above. We'll gain recognition and regard by our performance. Period.
Tenure SHOULD be a dying institution. A century ago when it was adopted, faculty needed protection from indiscriminate termination based on their ideas, religion, gender, or whatever. These days there are more than adequate protective laws and regulations for faculty, as well as most other employees in the U.S.A. Tenure means something to many academics, but to those outside of the academy it is seen as a sinecure that shouldn't be provided. The general public has the same impression of public employees at any level of government, and most people in the private sector resent the sinecure that public employees at ALL levels have and that those in the private sector lack. Typically, the paraprofessional or clerical staff in libraries in public agencies gain their "tenure" in six months to a year, even more rapidly than faculty.
Yes, the majority of tenured faculty deserve their continuation, but the existence of "tenured turkeys" do such a vast amount of harm to the image of academics that tenure should be eliminated.
Yes, I'm tenured. Yes, I've been tenured in other institutions as well. The pervasiveness of the image of the sinecure became clear to me on the two occasions when I left a tenured position for a new position at another university. Colleagues and nonacademic friends expressed shock that I was leaving a tenured position for one where I'd have to earn it again. They all asked, "What if you don't get tenure this time?" I simply replied that if I earned it once, I was sure I could earn it again. And, if I couldn't, I knew I wouldn't be happy in the job, and would be looking anyway. Yes, security is nice, but it doesn't begin to compare to the satisfaction that comes from a job that is done well, a new service that is developed, the improvement in an existing operations that are made.
Cheers.
Robert P. Holley
Director
Library and Information Science Program
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48202
Voice: (313) 577-4021
Fax: (313) 577-5525
rholley@cms.cc.wayne.edu
Why does this question pose a dichotomy rather than a continuum? I'd compare outsourcing collection development to outsourcing cataloging and to using paraprofessionals at the reference desk. All three decisions can be justified as a way to conserve resources for other needs and probably provide an acceptable level of service but have hidden costs that are often not recognized.
Though I've been director of the Library and Information Science Program for almost five years at Wayne State University, I continue to select materials for French language and literature because of my doctorate in that area. I order from Livres du mois, the French trade bibliography; various publishers' catalogs; and slips from library vendors. The faculty send me requests, mostly for interdisciplinary items or for grey literature in their prime research areas. I also look at my approval plan books.
Our French vendor would be willing to set up an approval plan or a blanket order plan that would save me quite a bit of effort after a heavy initial investment of time in selecting the profile. I certainly have other things to do.
The major hidden cost would be that I would not know the collection nearly as well as I do now. From my review of the sources listed above, I have a good sense of the current publishing output including materials that I don't select. I can easily adjust my selectivity depending upon available resources. I can also choose materials to meet faculty research interests that would be hard to define in an approval plan profile. I can notify faculty of materials of critical interest to them. If I were a reference librarian, this knowledge might also help me better answer the occasional reference question in my subject area.
But are these additional benefits worth the cost of my time? As an administrator who is always looking for "efficiencies," I don't know for sure. In my case, I teach collection development and feel that I keep up to date on trends as an additional value for the time that I spend. (I give students a six-page document on my mental processes in selecting French materials.) On the other hand, in places where bibliographers/selectors may not have the needed subject expertise, might it not make sense to rely upon outside experts to make the decisions?
These are not easy questions. How can we devise reliable research studies to address such slippery questions? I don't have any good ideas.
Another issue, that I won't treat in any detail here, is my worry that outsourcing collection development will lead to "cookie cutter" collections without the spikes of excellence caused by the individually tailored decisions of multiple selectors across libraries.
Anne K. Abate
Librarian
Dinsmore & Shohl
Cincinnati, Ohio
abate@scis.nova.edu
What happened?
After an initial "rush" we have had very little traffic. I have the next two questions, but I have been holding back waiting for some more comment on the first four questions. Is everyone on vacation? The students really want to hear from you. We hope that you have been busy collecting your thoughts and will give us some more feedback today.
Thanks.
Anne K. Abate
Librarian
Dinsmore & Shohl
Cincinnati, Ohio
abate@scis.nova.edu
Although the traffic has been slow, some great ideas are coming out of the list during this extended session. Again, please feel free to fall back to anything from the last two weeks, but it is now time to present the next introductions. The issues this week were technology and Internet filtering. Please read the introductions from the students carefully and respond freely.
P.S. The class officially ends on Thursday of this week. I will be around to wrap-up at the end of the fourth week, but I hope the students stay connected and join in the discussion.
Team Five
Technology -- Rosemary Ashton and Constance Sanders
Technology is having a tremendous influenced on all types of libraries. In a February 1998 articles in Computers in Libraries, Schuyler addresses concerns about temporal limitations to digital information. He addresses three concerns about access to information in online periodicals: with online materials, what happens if you stop subscribing; online editions of some periodicals are not always complete; since articles are generally retrieved one at a time, what happens to theme issues or articles that present various viewpoints of the same subject?
Another technological concern of this team was the management of online resources. Given the chaotic state that online information is in, broad based metadata standards appear to be the technology of choice for that task. Librarians are only the beginning of the equation. All internet contributors must be convinced of the necessity of using such metadata standards. How much chaos or high recall is the searcher of the internet willing to tolerate? It seems that implementation and deployment of metadata standards is now a public relations issue. In the U.S., Australia, Scandinavia, and the U.K., the Dublin Core is being used widely. Is it up to librarians to proclaim the benefits of metadata standards for online resources to the public as well as manage libraries and information centers? (Quite a bit to think about in this paragraph!)
Team Six
Internet Filtering -- Carrie Hughes, Christopher Kiefer, Jim Mainger
In an age of high speed communication and rapidly evolving computer technology, the Internet is quickly becoming the "one stop shopping" source for information needs. In response to this new form of information, educators and librarians have begun providing Internet access to their patrons and students. However, controversy in the content accessible on the Internet has led to a debate over restriction and constitutional rights.
Please offer your comments generously to the students.
Thanks.
You may join the discussion and look over the list of past and future topics.
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