Tales of a Librarian

Hey there. Yesterday evening after work I attending a meeting/focus group which was attempting to analyse the changes which have occurred and that are continuing to occur in e-information job roles. It was being held by another part of my company, but the other participants that were there seemed to come from quite a diverse set of occupational backgrounds, yet all working within what could be termed e-information roles. There were people from media, various public sector organisations, education, business, academia…

We were first given a brief presentation about the research that had been conducted into this subject by the researchers so far, and that which had already been gathered from the literature. It was quite interesting to actually sit and think about the variety of occupations where e-information work is becoming increasingly important as well as increasingly common. Areas such as e-government and e-learning seemed to be particularly prominent, but in addition to this there is a whole variety of areas involved in this which I had never really thought much about, particularly enginneering and construction and such, sectors which to be honest, i really don’t know very much about. There was also an increased awareness of e-information in business, not simply as e-commerce, but where the information is itself the product, for a variety of different uses and purposes.

After we had been given an outline of precisely what constituted an ‘e-information role’ in the context of this research, and an outline of the project that was being conducted, we broke off into groups to discuss things in more detail, drawing from each of our own individual experiences. The questions we were asked to discuss involved numerous different facets of the same theme - which sectors did we believe e-information roles were most prominent in, what skills did we believe were neccessary to do such roles, examples of job titles, particularly ones that had changed to reflect new e-info roles and so forth. It was interesting what others had to say. Personally, i felt a like my youth was a slight disadvantage in this instance, as for as long as i have been interested, things have pretty much all been electronic, and i felt as if i could not really comment on how job roles such as my own had changed (as i have only been in the job since November!) - although i could make some informed guesses. It was also quite difficult to think ‘outside the box’ as it were, beyond my own individual job and sector and into that of others’. It opened my eyes to see how information professionals were viewed and utlised in other areas, such as business, by those that had not neccessarily done the ‘typical’ qualifications, such as the postgrad ILS course or IM degree etc. In fact, among some of the group there was a general belief that such training was unneccessary as a prerequisite for many e-information roles, particularly those that were more management orientated and did not involve any kind of technical knowledge or speciality. I can understand where these people are coming from in a sense, as being older and more experienced they themselves confessed to having entered the profession without such qualifications. Indeed, i presume (although do not know for sure) that such degrees such as the information management etc. are probably fairly new and were not available, say, 20 years ago. Similarly, i can imagine that ILS courses were most likely fairly centred upon librarianship back then too - creating a divide between traditional librarianship and information managers that is gradually growing closer these days.

However, i think that there is still something to be said for the ILS courses etc.! ( although i have to say that) in defining the profession. But it has made me think more widely about how i define my potential career - do i think of myself as a librarian? (I think that, in general, yes, i do - and i am quite happy with this identification). But is this really a true reflection of the roles that many similar people end up doing when they leave such courses? Hmmm…

Other small points of interest: A lecturer from my old course was meant to turn up but didn’t, which was a shame…; someone raised the very interesting (and related) point about where on earth are jobs such as that we were discussing to be found on websites such as monster and s1jobs etc.? - i’m glad someone else seems to have noticed that we fall through almost every classification - although it was also pointed out that s1jobs used to have a category called ‘librarianism’ (a disease?); finally, a researcher whose work i had used during the lit review and research of my dissertation was also there, but alas, i did not have a chance to speak to him. Oh well, maybe another day…

Technorati Tags: e-information, job roles, work, change, librarianship

Hey, have a look at the website of the Universal Display Corporation, and in particular, the concepts page, which lists a whole range of new devices that they envisage as being possible in the future. Just imagine what this could do for ebooks and the like… Reading it makes you feel like your in a science fiction movie or something! On the right is just an example of something they have imagined, which they describe as ‘the ultimate portable communications device’…

Technorati Tags: ebooks, design, displays, screens, computers, technology

A very interesting paper by Bennett & Landoni (2005) was published in The Electronic Library. They present discussion of some of the main definitions of ebooks and suggest their own four-dimensional definition of ebooks, focusing on content, format, purpose and use.

They also highlight some of difficulties ebooks have faced in getting off the ground, suggesting that whilst the ebook should, to a certain extent, be a the digital equivalent of the printed book e.g. ‘a medium where information is organised and structured so that it can be presented to the reader in order to facilitate consultation‘ (pg.10), where consultation is considered to include ‘browsing, searching, extracting, comparing and assessing relevance and quality of information presented‘ (pg.10), it also needs to take into account the advantages and disadvantages inherent in the medium, particularly in terms of legibility, portability and autonomy.

They attest that as the screen resolution offered by ebook readers and their ilk is widely known to be of much lower quality than that offered by printed books, there is a strong need to offer some ‘added value’ to the ebook, in order to justify the ‘discomfort’ of reading them. They suggest:

• lower numbers of words per page
• title headings on each page
• clearer page layouts
• tools for searching and browsing (indexes and tables of contents, bookmarks and annotations, etc.)
• diversity of presentation styles possible (highlighting the differences between adult and childrens print books, and between reference, non-fiction and fiction print books)
• opportunties to personalise presentation styles to meet individual needs (e.g. text size, font, etc.)

They also review the barriers to ebook take up as found by a study commissioned by JISC in 2003, the most important being:

• the wide diversity of software and hardware products/platforms associated with ebooks
• differences between ebook and print book supply chains
• the reluctance of publishers to make publications available in ebook form/promote them out of worry of the effect on their revenues
• difficult to understand pricing models
• various problems with cataloguing and metadata
• Bennet & Landoni also suggest that there are various complexities associated with copyright that need to be addressed (e.g. see current news article on DRM by BBC)

The study also found that the numbers of library users that were unaware of ebooks and their library’s own ebooks holdings was high. However, one interesting finding was that although out of the students questioned none were likely to use ebook for private reading/pleasure, 71% of the academics questioned and 72% of students questioned said that they would buy the ebook in preference to the print book if it were substantially cheaper (regardless of whether it incorportated added value functionality).

They also point out that ebooks will need cataloguing, integration with other library resources and easy location by users. I guess this comes down to promotion and accessibility again, something that we as librarians should be actively developing, and ensuring that users are fully aware of how to access and utilise the services available to them. In my years as a student, I think i used a grand total of one ebook (yet about 30,000,000 ejournals!), which was in fact included in the reading list of a class instructed by one of the authors of this article! I’m not sure how I felt about using it to be honest, I think that for dipping in and out of it was very convenient, but for serious study? I really see their point about added functionality, however, particularly the keyword searching, as i think that would be very useful indeed, for example, i’m sure that i am not the only one to have spent ages pouring over an index page trying to locate information on a small topic area, and having to flick back and forth and back and forth… then losing your pages… aaaargh! If there was a way of adding comments/annotating parts of the text (such as the comment function in word), this would also be a great addition, as I am loath to do this to my own textbooks, and wouldn’t dare do it to the library’s!!

And if your not sick of ebooks by now, another article recently published in Aslib Proceedings by Gunter (2005), reports on the results of research into the early market for ebooks in the UK. It finds that a significant proportion (85%) of respondents (randomly selected members of an online panel) were aware of ebooks, and among half (49%) had made trial use of them. 38% reported having purchased an ebook, and of these people, the most popular types of ebook generally tended to be technical books and non-fiction publications, again, highlighting users apparent preference for ebooks as a medium for reference work rather for reading extended passages and things such as novels.

The main perceived advantages of ebooks was that they can be obtained more conveniently than going via a bookstore and they are often cheaper than hard copy versions. Having said this, however, it is worth pointing out that of those respondents who had borrowed an ebook from their library, a greated proportion (37%) still preferred the hard copy over an electronic copy (28% preferred electronic version).

[Sources: Bennet, L. and Landoni, M. (2005) E-books in Academic Libraries, The Electronic Library, 23 (1), pp.9-16; Gunter, B. (2005) Electronic Books: A Survey of Users in the UK, Aslib Proceedings, 57 (6), pp.513-522]

Technorati Tags:research, ebooks, functionality, library, users, electronic publishing, academic libraries

A research paper by Rowlands and Nicholas (2005) has found that academics now place very considerable reliance on a wide variety of electronic resources for finding relevant journal articles. Google and other search engines were the fourth and fifth (respectively) most depended upon sources of this information. And whilst chasing up references in papers remained the most depended upon method of finding other relevant articles, the library was rated in 11th position out of a possible 12!.

They reflect that “the convenience and speed of electronic tools was highly appreciated but the role and importance of the physical library merits serious reflection… Clearly, libraries need to consider their position/visability in a digital world where their users are removed from them and not even conscious they are the ones who pay the access bills. We have found in our log studies that usage depends highly on visability and libraries are facing real problems maintaining their visability in an increasingly digital world”

[Source: Rowlands, I. & Nicholas, R. (2005) Scholarly Communication in the Digital Environment: The 2005 Survey of Journal Author Behaviour and Attitudes, Aslib Proceedings, 57 (6), pp481-497]