• Recording of Scholarly Perspectives Webinar on research literacy for early career researchers
  My portion of the presentation begins on slide 25
  (tags: webinar presentation informationliteracy learning graduatestudents recording)

• Research literacy primer: Equipping early career researchers with the skills they require to create high quality papers | Scholarly Perspectives Resource Library
  4 external speakers + “Michael Habib, Scopus product manager and former Reference Librarian presents on how early career researchers can use specialist research tools to discern quality and authority in a sea of information.” – Tue, 25/05/2010 – 13:00; Host: Penn State University Library
  (tags: webinar presentation informationliteracy graduatestudents)

Title: Toward Academic Library 2.0: Development and Application of a Library 2.0 Methodology

Authors: Michael C. Habib

Issue Date: 17-Nov-2006

Publisher: School of Information and Library Science

Abstract: Recently, librarians have struggled to understand their relationship to a new breed of Web services that, like libraries, connect users with the information they need. These services, known as Web 2.0, offer new service models, methods, and technologies that can be adapted to improve library services. Additionally, these services affect library users’ information seeking behaviors, communication styles, and expectations. The term Library 2.0 has been introduced into the professional language of librarianship as a way to discuss these changes. This paper works to establish a theoretical foundation of Library 2.0 in academic libraries, or Academic Library 2.0.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/1901/356

Available for download: http://mchabib.com/masterspaper.pdf

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I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the paper. Please leave feedback in the comments. Thanks.

Technorati tags: library 2.0 library-20 library2.0 L2 web 2.0 web2.0 academic libraries academiclibrary20

,or, The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Identity

I am a little late on this topic, but feel it is important to add my 2 cents. Fred and Terrell have already laid the groundwork for what I am going to say by focusing the conversation away from privacy to identity. While much of this repeats what they have already said, I believe my point is a little different. This post will first examine what could have been done differently and then look at the underlying causes of this issue. Lastly, I will examine what this experience teaches us about how we should implement Library 2.0 services.

It has been interesting to see students’ reactions to the “new” Facebook. It appears to me that Facebook’s biggest mistake was rolling it out as an automatic opt-in feature. Chances are that if they quietly added it in the background, it would have spread virally without a peep.

For example, lets say Facebook added a little link somewhere on the page that says, “Want to make it easier for your friends to stay updated on what you are doing, try the new Facebook feeds?” A few students would notice this and think, “Cool now I can use this new feature that no one else knows about.” When one of their friends visited their page next, they would see the feeds complete with the notification that their friend had begun using the feeds. In this way most students would have first been introduced to the service by invading their friend’s privacy and not their friends invading theirs.

The final ingredient for a successful implementation strategy would have been to give students control over what aspects of their Facebook lives they want to share through the feeds. By turning all the feeds on automatically, students were shocked to see something they thought was private broadcast to their networks. For example, many students might be glad to share new groups they joined or friends they have made, but some students might not want all of their comments immediately apparent. To summarize:

1. Bait early-adopters. There were students waiting for this to happen who would have chosen to turn the feature on immediately and then pressured their friends to do so.
2. Let students choose to turn the service on based off their experiences with the profiles of early-adopters.
3. Let students choose what aspects of their life they want to highlight and which they would rather slide under the radar.

This brings us back to the title of this post. When it comes to our identities, we like having control over how we present ourselves to the world. That is one of the reasons that social networking sites are so useful to college students. It is a way to mold your identity so that you can determine who your friends are to be. Social networking profiles and interactions present us as we wish to be seen. Given this, students were using Facebook to present different versions of themselves to different friends. When this illusion was broken, they in effect lost control of their identities. I would thus argue that the underlying concern of most students is not a loss of their privacy, but a loss of their identity. Students don’t mind sharing their personal information with the world, but want to have control over when and how it is shared.

However, if this experience gets students to think more about how they present themselves in their virtual communities, it is a good thing. So far, this experience seems to have done more to drill home the reality of online life than either university instruction or the press.

So what does this mean for Library 2.0?

First, we might want to change Rory Litwin’s primary problem of Library 2.0 from privacy to identity. This might be a better way to explain these principles to a group of students who are accustomed to sharing their data. Privacy is how we think of these issues, but is it how our users think of them?

Second, we can use this as a guiding principle when developing Library 2.0 systems. What people are researching and reading for pleasure presents a remarkable amount about their identity. We need to design systems that allow users to have control over how they present their identity. If a user wants to appear as though they read Joyce and not Grisham, then we need to allow them this choice. We also need to create ways that users can mask their identities or create multiple identities. For example, this blog is a central part of my professional identity and my MySpace account is a central part of my (online) social identity. While I have chosen to attach my real name to both, it is comforting to know that I could have chosen to present one or the other anonymously.

Third, it shows that we have a long way to go in integrating content creation skills into our information literacy programs. However, we now have an excellent example to use when discussing responsible content creation. In my previous response to Rory’s privacy post, I highlighted three information literacy skills that I felt we needed to teach as a result of an increasingly read/write world. Given this movement in understanding from privacy to identity, the three skills we need to teach would now be:

1. Identity
2. Ownership
3. Security

To gain a further understanding of why I feel these are the three primary principles, I encourage you to read my original response to Rory.

Technorati tags: facebook identity privacy socialnetworking web20 library20

If you haven’t checked out Matthew Williams blog yet, here is a blurb from his most recent post:

However, in the information age where these facts are always at our fingertips, the need for memorization is far less important. The more important questions are “can you find the information?” and “can you analyze this information?”

Plagiarism is not the fault of the internet, it is the fault of poorly written essay prompts. Most times, these essay prompts are poorly written because they misunderstand or do not recognize this shift in emphasis from content mastery to higher order thinking skills (i.e., it isn’t what you know, but what you can do with what you know).

There are a few things in his essay I might argue with, but much of it is spot on. This excerpt highlights much of what I think information literacy is about these days.

Yesterday I attended BarCampRDU at the Red Hat campus in Raleigh. Fred Stutzman did a wonderful job of organizing, so everything went smoothly. I am going to take some time over the next few days to look over my notes and blog some of the ideas that I thought of during the discussions. Overall I had a great time and look forward to participating in many more unconferences in the future. It was an excellent way for the local tech community to get together. Now that I understand how unconferences work, I would like to take a more active role in either planning or in leading a talk next time round.

You can see Flickr photos tagged BarCampRDU here and blog posts tagged with the technorati tag here.

The first talk I went to was “Refactoring Your Wetware”:

Andy Hunt of The Pragmatic Programmers likes to talk about how your brain works. Pole-bridging, pragmatic learning, the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, and even a little of Getting Things Done are all fair game.

While this session turned out to be more of a talk than a discussion, it was still very interesting. Andy began by setting forth the following ideas:

Using more of your brain’s horsepower!
• (experts rely on intuition) context dependent > context free (novices follow rules)
• Mastering knowledge doesn’t increase your professional effectiveness
• Problem for certification programs
• So? ->> tweak the brain
• Brain compared with computer model.
• Fast non-linear part, slow linear part but only one can access memory at any time
• 10% analytical, verbal — Geeky
• 90% irrational non-verbal – Artsy

He then went over a number of ways to get take advantage of that 90%. I feel it was a good start to the day as it got people thinking about how to look at things from different angles. Below are the notes I took. They are relatively raw. I think they are all in my own words, but a few phrases may accidently match Andy’s slides. If you get a chance to see this talk of his I would suggest going.

Thus design matters. (iPod example)
• Check out the video of Microsoft iPod – loses the design and good sense
• Drawing on the right side of the brain
• Trace an upside down image, but don’t label in your mind focus on the lines
• Default to symbol instead of reflecting on the deeper meaning

How to engage r-mode processing
• Focus on sensory experience
• Use building blocks like legos during design sessions
• Emphasize cross sensory feedback
• Lozanov Séance — yoga inspired breathing and repetition in dark room with baroque music and foreign words being repeated
• “Write drunk, but revise sober”
• Start with multi-sensory learning and then follow with traditional learning
• Memory stores every input
• Right mode actually scans these memories, but it is hard to transfer the harvested memory to the left mode because it is like trying to verbalize a dream

Image streaming
1. Ask yourself a question / pose a problem
2. Close your eyes for 10 minutes
3. For each image that crosses your mind
1. Describe it outloud
2. Imaging it using all five senses
3. Source of image not as important as interpreting it – rub eyes, look at bright light first

Journaling
• Write three mages a day in longhand, uncensored, never skip a day
• Typing is very L-mode being at the keyboard is a bad place for creativity
• BOOK – A Whack on the Side of the Head.
• Seeing something from a completely different point of view causes the right mode search algorithm to kick in differently.
• Avoid mental locks – Made me think of a book I read called The Eureka Effect that discussed very similar ideas.

Magic of the “oracle”
• is to focus pattern matching by broadening scope
• This made me think of Socrates (because he was motivated by the Oracle at Delphi). Maybe he was using his right brain?

Need to keep track of great ideas or your brain gets lazy and stops worrying about it.
• Capturing good ideas. Andy uses a space pen w/ notepad, index cards
• PDA with a wiki or sticky notes, voice recorder on pda,
• My new idea talk to Bluetooth earpiece while walking home and have the call recorded to my blog.
• Pocketmod.com
• Transcribe and integrate I a hyperlinked space (wikispace)

Context switching is bad and ruins productivity
• Multitasking and interruption like checking email (-10iq) worse than smoking a joint (-4iq)
• Second monitor yields productivity gains of 20%-30%

That was the end of my notes. I will post more notes and ideas later over the next few days.

Technorati tag: barcamprdu

Best Buy’Â’s Anderson understands that harnessing the full power of the Creativity Economy means more that implementing new technology and designing captivating new products. He likes to say that the great promise of the creative era is that, for the first time in our history, the further development of our economic competitiveness hinges on the fuller development of human creative capabilities. In other words, our economic success increasingly turns on harnessing the creative talents of each and every human being, regardless of sex, age, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

The above quote is taken from “The Future of the American Workforce in the Global Creative Economy” by Richard Florida (From the June 4th issue of Cato Unbound via Arts & Letters Daily).

The article discusses how the greatest job growth is in the creative and service sectors. The creative sector includes such fields as science and technology, design and entertainment, and knowledge work; while the service sector includes such fields as customer service, retail, and food services. Unfortunately, the creative sector is much better paid. The excerpt above describes one of the solutions to this problem that feels right to me. All employees should be given the opportunity to apply creative solutions to their work.

I also think that libraries of all sorts can play a key role as the workforce continues its transition. It has always been the goal to serve all users no matter what their job. While many workers in creative fields have received excellent educations and have ample intellectual resources available, service workers are often left wanting for resources. It is important that libraries strive to make materials available that will assist service workers in their creative endeavors. As more of these materials become available on the web, librarians also need to train users in how to discover the appropriate resources for themselves.

I have not yet been able to read all of the comments for “The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Privacy” by Rory Litwin, but would like to share my current views on this very important issue. I have previously blogged about my recent use of social networking software and blogs, but I haven’t yet touched on the idea of privacy. Like community, I became very interested in privacy issues while working at the Northborough Free Library. While there, I dumped all of their interlibrary loan records, helped rewrite their computer use policy to reflect the recent passing of the USA PATRIOT Act, and changed the settings on the public access computers to eliminate patron browsing records. When I came to graduate school I did not exist on the web and was proud of it.

I am still very concerned about patron privacy and I remain slightly paranoid about my web presence. However, given my profession, it is important to have a web presence. Furthermore, I want one. I am tired of being paranoid about what potential employers may think when reading my blog or googling me. This doesn’t mean that I don’t expect them to google me. In fact I encourage it. However, I do my best to maintain a professional presence and to control the amount and type of information that is available about me. ClaimID was created with this function in mind and is the type of tool that everyone will need in the future.

As Rory mentioned, many millennials (which by some definitions I am, though I think of myself as GenX), lack the concerns for privacy needed to responsibly manage their personal information. However, while Rory chalks this up to immaturity, I would argue that it is more a lack of proper education. While we would all like private corporations to take responsibility for educating their users in responsible use of their services, this is not realistic. It is for this reason that information literacy training is fast becoming one of the most important services provided by a library. Under the Library 1.0 model, library patrons were consumers of information resources, now they are also contributors. Consequently, I have come to believe that we, as librarians, need to educate our users to be responsible contributors to Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 services. So then what does one need to know to be a responsible contributor?

There are three issues that I think librarians need to educate their users on.

1. Privacy
2. Ownership
3. Security

The first two Rory touched on, but I would like to add a little. We need to teach our users that it is their responsibility to control their personal information. Library 2.0 involves “radical trust” of our users. This radical trust means a significant loss of control. As much as we would like to protect them, we can’t always. With our Library 2.0 services, we need to be clear about what information patrons will be sharing and give them control. We also need to educate them on how to use commercial services. As Rory mentioned, this gets into the second issue, ownership.

We need to educate our users about copyright. The read/write web makes everyone an author. Thus far, the education system has failed to teach people about intellectual property. Librarians are all about providing information for free. Not many other people are. Information is a very valuable commodity and librarians have to remember this when educating their patrons.

We need to have excellent security measures in place. I am more afraid about my credit card company getting hacked for my data than I am about the information I choose to share about myself. It is important that we build secure systems so that we can keep our patrons information safe.

All this being said, I often worry about whether what I am about to post will cost me a job someday. Yesterday, my mom and stepfather both commented that I looked kind of scraggly in the picture I had in my sidebar and that I should chose a different picture if potential employers might be reading my blog. The picture is down now. It is still all over the web however. I have tried to separate my professional and personal online lives the best I can. I don’t try to hide my personal life, but I try to make sure that potential employers will recognize the differences between my serious LinkedIn/ClaimID side and my social Myspace/Friendster side. That is the type of distinction we need to get our users thinking about.

library 2.0web 2.0 academiclibrary20

Yesterday, Brian Russell (audioactivism.org) spoke to my blogging seminar about podcasting. His talk discussed a number of topics including the use of podcasting for activism, not journalism. I, however, was most interested in his discussion of media literacy which describes the ability to understand the the structure and presentation of content in mass media. This is clearly a very important skill for an informed public in an age with so many different types of media. I certainly see this as highly related to information literacy. While librarians train patrons to evaluate information on the web and in print media, it seems that the evaluation of audio/visual forms of mass media, such as TV, are often left out of information literacy curricula designed for college and adult students. I am not sure if school media specialist’s are trained to teach these skills to students. One important aspect of media literacy seems to be empowering individuals to understand how mass media communications are created and designed to influence viewers. I think all too often librarians, myself included, focus too much on how users can evaluate the end product and don’t go into enough detail on how websites or journals are actually created. Stepping back and examining the structure of something can often add a deeper level of understanding. For example, learning algebra adds an additional layer of meaning to simple arithmetic. Brian will be podcasting the entire discussion soon and I will add a link then.