Scholar | Speaker | Writer | Teacher | Advocate
I’ve just been officially appointed Chair of the ALISE Conference Juried Papers Committee. This committee is responsible for jurying the papers presented at the 2009 conference. Don’t be surprised if the process involves some participatory concepts in the review and acceptance process.
For those interested, I need to nominate 5 additional members or the committee, and I know I’ll be looking for referees.
ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy and ALISE invite Library and Information Science Educators to a Meeting on Participatory Librarianship and Web 2.0 in the Curriculum.
January 9th, 2008 9-11 at the Free Library of Philadelphia
(just three blocks from the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center)
The library landscape is constantly in flux. New technologies, new practices, and new theories are the sign of an active field. However, these dynamic forces also lead to confusion and conflict. It also leads to a spate of new services and functions that are sometimes awkward to integrate into existing research, operations and curricula. In today’s world of Web 2.0, Library 2.0, social networks, blogs and wiki’s what concepts are durable and what is new that must be imparted to the next generation of professionals?
Thinking through this issue – its technological and professional implications and legislative and policy overlaps – is an example of the type of work conducted at the American Library Association’s (ALA’s) Washington Office. ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP), a part of the Washington Office, and Syracuse University’s Information Institute of Syracuse have initiated a project to examine this issue under the rubric of participatory librarianship (http://ptbed.org). Simply put, participatory librarianship recasts library and library practice from the fundamental concept that knowledge is created through conversation. Since libraries are in the knowledge business they are, therefore, in the conversation business – in both the digital and physical worlds. Participatory librarians approach their work as facilitators of conversation. Be it in practice, policies, programs and/or tools, participatory librarians seek to enrich, capture, store and disseminate the conversations of their communities.
As part of this effort, project researchers are seeking input from library and information science (LIS) faculty and students on how participatory concepts can be integrated into curricula and to identify ongoing related research. The input of the LIS research and education community will be incorporated into a Participatory Library Starter Kit. This starter kit will present case studies from a wide variety of settings including: public, federal, and academic libraries; library vendors; and, of course, the LIS research and education community.
The session will describe the research, seek input, and provide some background information and tools from ALA’s Washington Office. It will provide an overview of participatory concepts and invite your input. Also described shall be the work of ALA’s Washington Office, share some of our policy materials and legislative information, and solicit your thoughts on which public policy issues deserve the highest priority.
Those interested in attending should contact: R. David Lankes, rdlankes@iis.syr.edu
R. David Lankes
OITP Fellow and
Director, Information Institute of Syracuse
Alan S. Inouye
Director, ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy
Joanne Silverstein, Scott Nicholson, Todd Marshall and I have had a paper accepted to CoLIS entitled “Participatory networks: the library as conversation.”
Here’s more on the conference:
“Featuring the Future”
http://www.hb.se/colis/
will take place in Borås, Sweden,
August 13-16, in 2007,
and is organised by the Swedish School of Library and Information Science.
CoLIS is a series of international conferences for which the general aim is to provide a broad forum for the exploration and exchange of ideas in the field of library and information science (LIS). To be examined at CoLIS 6 are theoretical and empirical research trends in LIS, together with sociocultural and technical issues relating to our understanding of the various roles, natures, uses and associated relationships of information, information systems, information processes, and information networks. As in previous conferences in the series, this one, too, promotes an interdisciplinary approach to research.
Participatory librarianship and the whole “Library as Conversation” idea is certainly catching on. I’ve put together a list of presentations I’ve either given or are planned for 2007 at: http://iis.syr.edu/projects/PNOpen/2007Tour/
In case you’re curious, here’s what’s coming up:
“Participatory Librarianship” South Central Regional Library Council Library: Place Service or Both Series, Ithaca, NY March 16
“The Library as Conversation” The Regione Toscana- Servizi Bibliografici, Florence, Italy April 12
“Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation” Amigos Member Conference, Dallas, TX. May 2
“Participatory Networks” Nylink Annual Conference, Saratoga Springs, NY. May 9
“Collecting Conversations in a Massive Scale World” ALCTS National Conference, Washington, D.C. June 22
“Future of Information Search and Retrieval” ALA Panel, Washington D.C. June 25
The Regione Toscana- Servizi Bibliografici, the Regional Office in Tuscany, has invited Lankes to speak on “Library as Conversation: How to face the Challenge.” The talk will take place as part of a workshop which will be held in Florence on April 12th.
On February 15, 2006 at 6 p.m. SL (9 EST) the ALA Washington Office will hold it’s first event in Second Life, a 3-D virtual world. R. David Lankes from Syracuse University will give a presentation on a paper commissioned by the Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) entitled “Participatory Networks: Libraries as Conversation”. OITP commissioned this paper from the Information Institute at Syracuse in an effort to provide an understanding of intersection of libraries and Web 2.0. This lecture will be an opportunity for everyone to hear what web 2.0 is and how they can use this new technology to engage their patrons.
The ALA Washington Office is pleased to be able to reach out to members, librarians and library supporters via this new communications medium. Represented by avatars, librarians from around the world will be able to view this presentation from the comfort of their homes or offices. The presentation will be held at the Info Island Amphitheater. Please let OITP’s Mark Bard (AKA Galen Noltenius in SL) know if you need a teleport to the amphitheater.
To create a free Second Life account to view this event, please go to http://www.secondlife.com
David’s paper can be found at http://iis.syr.edu/projects/PNOpen/
For more information on the ALA Washington Office in Second Life, please consult an earlier blog entry here.
For those interested, here is a list of presentations I have coming up.
The Syracuse University School of Information Studies is working with
the Onondaga County Public Library and Syracuse University Libraries to
create the Library and Information Science Interest Group (LISIG).
The goal of LISIG is to bring together:
– librarians,
– Masters and PhD students interested in LIS,
– faculty members, and
– other interested parties
together on a regular basis to talk about bigger issues in library and
information science. The goal is to connect academia with practice by
facilitating cooperative research projects that connect faculty and
students with the needs of CNY libraries. Librarians are invited to
attend and bring their research needs for presentation.
Meetings are open to anyone interested and will be held twice a month,
once at OCPL and once at Bird library.
Meetings will be on Tuesdays from 1-2:30.
The fall dates and tentative locations are:
Oct. 10 – Syracuse University, Bird Library, Hillyer Room
Oct. 31 – OCPL, Central Library, Board Room (in the Galleries)
Nov. 14 – OCPL, Central Library, Board Room (in the Galleries)
Nov. 28 – Syracuse University, Bird Library, Hillyer Room
Dec. 5 – OCPL, Central Library, Board Room (in the Galleries)
Dec. 12 – Syracuse University, Bird Library, Hillyer Room
Questions about the Bird Library meetings should go to etcalvi@syr.edu
and questions about the OCPL meetings should go to gmcox@onlib.org.
Other questions can go to Scott Nicholson at srnichol@syr.edu.
Lankes will present at the 2006 Charleston Conference. Here is the title and abstract:
Massive Scale Librarianship
There are two types of discontinuities faced by a field: those you expect, and those that you don’t. The Internet was an unexpected event in librarianship. Few could look at the early days of telnet, gopher, and even the web and truly appreciate its impact on libraries. Yet even so, library science has adapted. Not always elegantly, not always completely, but adapted. Unlike the Internet that had a largely unexpected impact, very large scale computing is an obvious coming challenge. We know computing power, storage and bandwidth are going to increase. Knowing this, it is incumbent upon the library and information science field to consider what is a world like where you can walk around with the entire contents of the Internet in your pocket.
