tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26069568916978055712012-02-17T03:38:50.500Zthe changing role of the information professional.Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.comBlogger251100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-28860285521596918262008-06-19T17:45:00.006+01:002008-12-09T10:19:29.102Z

There's a great deal of debate at the moment concerning copyright and how it affects us now and how it will affect us in the future. After the recent announcement (that actually deserves a blog post all of its own) that the Associated Press expects people to pay to use quotations of more than five words and thereby making a mockery of the fair use that we have all embraced, it's refreshing to

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-2887899502203415562008-06-17T16:58:00.001+01:002008-06-17T17:00:23.431+01:00

Chris Anderson's "Free" article got me wondering, what would it mean for librarians if everything is free?Librarians have traditionally acted as gatekeepers to vast quantities of information which would otherwise be inaccessible to their user bases. An anomaly in a world obsessed with market forces, they have carved out a subversive role providing access - usually at no cost to the user -to

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-79739499861809346432008-05-25T11:09:00.009+01:002008-05-25T12:21:23.186+01:00

CERLIM's conference series "Libraries Without Walls" has for a number of years looked at the distributed provision of library services. This is usually understood as librarians reaching beyond the confines of the book-filled buildings with which they will forever be associated. But could one ever be a librarian without actually being involved in running a library at all?For academic libraries,

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-69062245242302052402008-04-13T21:18:00.005+01:002008-04-13T22:00:27.402+01:00

I'm not the first to suggest similarities between the role of a DJ and that of a librarian - both are involved in selecting, describing, disseminating and preserving information - but it occurred to me that recently both are being challenged to prove their continued relevance in the digital age.Now that everybody can easily assemble an enormous library (sic) of music on their PC hard drive - be

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-53675989823228033382008-03-27T11:56:00.003Z2008-03-27T12:06:02.239Z

It's been a while since we returned from Croatia, and Mark and I are still reflecting on a number of issues that came out of our discussions on everyone's a librarian now. Since then, I attended LILAC with another colleague, which was an interesting conference, not least for its attempt to cram in four keynote speakers over the two days. I'll be writing more on LILAC after some more reflection,

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-76173167619006019602008-03-13T11:19:00.004Z2008-03-13T13:32:21.098Z

It looks like more and more people are casting a critical eye toward web two, and what it means nowadays. Meredith Farkas has an interesting entry here regarding First Monday, and its issue on Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. Full articles are available here -I've managed to read a number of the articles now, and even though I may not agree with everything said here, I'm impressed with the way

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-33047942462580412672008-03-07T09:38:00.006Z2008-03-10T21:00:49.527Z

For a while now, Mark and I have been debating whether or not to change the sub-title of the blog. The more we discuss the term web 2.0, the more we feel that it is becoming outdated. Where it was once a convenient shorthand for a group of technologies which changed the ways in which people interact with the web, the meaning has become obfuscated through overuse, and it has become something of

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-45974282824144607272008-02-12T11:56:00.006Z2008-12-09T10:19:29.282Z

We had a great time at BOBCATSSS 2008 and would like to thank the organizers and all the people we met. It was interesting to talk to so many librarians from all over Europe and to exchange ideas, in the beautiful surroundings of Zadar. We were especially pleased with the attendance at our workshop and the ideas it generated. We are looking at the ideas, and hope to upload them to the wiki site

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-90492033715471676732008-01-30T10:30:00.000Z2008-01-30T10:48:20.641Z

While Mark was busy at a session on Open access vs copyright, I attended one on Special Needs in Libraries. The first speaker was Toni Kennedy from Australia, and talked about how she had worked to improved prison libraries in New South Wales. She mentioned a number of strategies, including training inmates as assistant librarians had helped to counter a culture of second hand books, and no

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-5269295197046295412008-01-29T11:03:00.000Z2008-01-29T11:25:30.239Z

We attended a panel this morning with Margaret Heller, Patrick Danowski and Tom Roos on the subject of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 (the latter, in case you were wondering, was envisioned by Roos as the ultimate arrival of the semantic web allowing for much greater sophistication in the retrieval of information).Topics discussed included privacy issues (and librarians' role in educating users about these,

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-20785413695475534652008-01-28T15:09:00.000Z2008-01-28T15:21:03.058Z

Greetings from BOBCATSSS2008! (and apologies for any typing errors - this is a very strange keyboard!)This morning we heard two keynote speakers:Ana Marusic addressed the role of the medical publisher, a field in which issues of trust are paramount since lives depend upon the publication of accurate evidence.It was interesting to hear her describe the role of the modern publisher as moving away

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-9183845229759582772008-01-27T10:04:00.000Z2008-01-28T11:34:16.452Z

We have been talking for a while about the changing role that information professionals play - especially in the academic sector that Mark and I primarily support. One of the areas that we have been discussing at work is the issue of "digital footprints" - the trackable trail that one leaves behind when interacting with the internet. This has started to become more and more of an issue -

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-9844628478200735452008-01-22T08:30:00.000Z2008-01-21T17:58:55.394Z

We were delighted to see the (unreferenced!) phrase "we are all librarians now" appearing in this report, commissioned by JISC and the British Library, into the habits of young internet users.I guess this means we've either tapped into the zeitgeist, or are just full of old cliches ;-)While we might disagree with the press release's claim that the "Google generation is a myth" (isn't the phrase

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-84569283357140336472008-01-21T16:44:00.000Z2008-01-21T16:49:22.557Z

Part of our presentation for BOBCATSSS uses this report from Pew. It examines the online behaviour of teenagers in the US and finds that a high percentage are engaged with web 2.o activities such as social networking. They are also creating and re-mixing content to a degree that we haven't seen before. Crucially for us as academic librarians, the age range indicated (12-17 year olds) will be

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-58708793578565990432008-01-21T09:49:00.001Z2008-01-21T09:56:56.894Z

These three words keep going around in my head at the moment. Part of me is convinced that they are the key to how information professionals need to react to the ever changing information world that is being presented to us.I was talking about it with a colleague the other day and she asked me if there were any parallels to this in the librarian's world. At first, I stumbled, but then I realised

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-73152547905162087592008-01-20T13:06:00.000Z2008-01-21T14:03:51.405Z

We did a practice run of our BOBCATSSS workshop for some of our colleagues last week and this has been the starting point for some interesting discussions.The librarian's traditional position of authority, as gatekeeper between the user and the information they seek, is now being eroded - as Chris Anderson identified in The Long Tail, anyone can now publish their thoughts online, without the need

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-83565450583741210052008-01-18T16:25:00.000Z2008-01-21T10:28:44.754Z

The Telegraph has an article about how students are "turning to the University of Google" for quick, easy answers. The academic concerned, Professor Tara Brabazon from the University of Brighton rallies against an academic world where she describes using these search engines and Wikipedia as "white bread for the mind". She continues to suggest that we need to teach students interpretive skills

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-51388769273894191052008-01-17T11:51:00.000Z2008-01-17T12:25:27.823Z

"The easy access of the Information Age means we're all librarians now, but without the crucial training"So wrote Clive Thompson (in Time Out) back in 2004(!)(Thanks to Peter Suber who compiled the now-defunct RLG news digest ShelfLife in which I found this quote. Peter now edits Open Access News which is also highly recommended)

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-69945665573983091212008-01-16T11:46:00.000Z2008-01-22T12:36:38.491Z

There is a fascinating blog entry that absolutely agrees with Mark and I that everyone is a librarian now. Or at least according to the library of congress. They are posting archive photographic material to flickr so that crowdsource tagging can help them organise the pictures. They want people to:"tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-60847660986811503142008-01-11T10:06:00.000Z2008-01-21T10:09:14.759Z

As part of our workshop for BOBCATSSS, we are trying to pin down what we feel is the role of the librarian. What we thought would be a quick slide has turned into a massive brainstorm, and naturally has even touched upon Ranganathan. We've distilled it into a number of areas, but are interested in what you think. Comments please!

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-88277543750849763602007-12-12T19:25:00.000Z2008-01-21T10:43:30.797Z

Read. This. Book.That would be my advice to anyone interested in trying to grasp an understanding of how and why the information professional profile is changing. I was all set to do a review of the book, when Mark pointed out that there was an excellent one available at ALA Techsource...But I can't resist mentioning a couple of points - he talks about the limitations of atoms, and how something

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-5840419899177798502007-10-21T09:57:00.000+01:002008-01-22T09:04:34.452Z

We recently had some franchise students vist the library. Franchise students are ones that, although their final qualification is awarded by Sheffield Hallam, have their teaching undertaken by one of the Further Education Colleges in the area. The ones I saw were a collection from Sheffield College, studying Tourism. The difficulties arise when I have to show them what resources are available

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-49009875436207840392007-08-21T09:46:00.000+01:002008-01-21T09:48:26.795Z

I mentioned the BOBCATSSS symposium a while ago - we heard today that our proposal has been accepted. We have designed a workshop around the concept of "everyone's a librarian now" and will be presenting it over the course of the conference. More information on BOBCATSSS is available here. Hope to see you there.

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-12771293114005501132007-06-15T15:35:00.000+01:002008-01-18T15:59:07.502Z

I was invited to give an overview of Web 2.0 at an event organised for LfN (Libraries for Nursing) at Sheffield Hallam.The theme of the study day was "Making Web 2.0 work for you and your library - the use of Blogs, Wikis and RSS in Health libraries" and it was good to see a number of speakers from NHS backgrounds as well as the usual suspects from HE.The other speakers were mostly giving case

Mark Cloweshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08593356692279932268noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2606956891697805571.post-91180053041053580572007-04-21T09:35:00.000+01:002008-01-21T09:44:00.070Z

The 16th BOBCATSSS Symposium is to be held next January, and they are looking for paper submissions. As the theme is "Providing Access to Information for Everyone" we are probably going to examine this from the point of view of the information professional in the information society, the digital divide and what we can do as librarians.Here is the call for submissions;"Contributions in any form -

Matt Borghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08619848292205958010noreply@blogger.com0