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ALISE Meeting on Participatory Librarianship

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, [email protected]

R. David Lankes
OITP Fellow and
Director, Information Institute of Syracuse
Alan S. Inouye
Director, ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy

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Kindle

OK, so I’ve finished my first book on the Kindle, and I have to say I like it. Once again, I’m not wading into the DRM discussion, because it has been easy for me to add non-protected material for free. I can say that functionally they got it right. I was on vacation, could do the whole trip on a single charge, and even buy a new book without my laptop from the airport. Having tried many an ebook in my time, this one is clearly the best.

Summary:

Good –

Lightweight
Easy to read screen
Easy to put material onto
Computerless browsing of store and delivery of materials
keyboard
Included dictionary
Clipping and Note Taking

Bad –

Awkward email interface to convert books
Horrible web browsing
Cost
No backlight

There are a few things for the wish list (aren’t there always):

Cheaper – I’d love to have a class I was teaching use these, but can’ in good conscience have students plop down $400 for the device

Better production tools – Converting a document through e-mail attachments for local use (as opposed to having them delivered directly to the Kindle for $.10) is just plain odd. I’d love a desktop or web based method. As it is, you email a doc to a free address, and get a web link back that has the converted document. Odd that we have to go back to a listserv interface for a new ebook.

In fact what I would really like to see is a sort of kindle community (accessible on the web and through the Kindle) that allowed for the production and exchange of documents, reading lists and reviews. Something that allowed me through the web to convert a document and then share it with everyone. There is a Kindle/Amazon service for publishers, but it is geared around producers working in isolation to build books to sell. It would be much cooler to create an online community that let folks not interested in making a dollar off of books to convene.

A real solution for reading at night

A better cover

So would I recommend it? Yes, certainly over the Sony ebook, which is more stylish, but the wireless book buying of the Kindle is miles beyond the Sony book store.

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Conversants: Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

Introducing Conversants. Conversants (ISSN: 1940-5022) is a limited-run, open-access journal about participatory networks. Part of a joint project on Participatory Librarianship (http://ptbed.org) between the Information Institute of Syracuse and the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP), the journal is a forum for the exchange of ideas relating to conversation-based theories as well as their applications in knowledge environments. Articles and essays are solicited not only to increase our understanding of participatory approaches to virtual and physical settings, but also to challenge the scholarly and practice communities. The emphasis of the journal is on durable concepts that transcend any particular technology or suite of functions.

While treatments related to all types of settings are welcome, a special emphasis is placed on the library domain and the role librarians play as facilitators of conversations. Submissions might include:

• Empirical articles analyzing user contributions to web resources;
• Thought pieces concerning the library as conversation;
• Podcasts of presentations concerning Library 2.0; and
• Discussions of curricular initiatives to incorporate new web technologies into information science education.

All submissions will be reviewed by the editors of the journal and then, in keeping with the central tenets of participatory networks, made available for ongoing public review via CommentPress. Authors are encouraged to follow these conversations, and can incorporate these comments into revised drafts.

Unlike most journals, pieces are published as they are accepted to encourage timely discussions of current trends and events. Selected pieces will be edited into a volume exploring participatory librarianship.

Please e-mail submissions to [email protected] in Word, HTML, RTF or ASCII text format.

The editorial board of Conversants comprises:

Editors
• R. David Lankes, Associate Professor Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies
• Joseph Janes, Associate Professor University of Washington’s Information School
• Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor District Library
Associate Editors
• Todd Marshall, Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies
• David Pimentel, Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies

If you are interested in joining the board, please contact David Lankes [email protected]

More information is available on the project website at http://ptbed.org/conversants.php

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Latest (Last?) VRD Book Now Available

Hot off the presses and now available the proceedings of the last VRD conference Virtual Reference Service: From Competencies to Assessment. Also included are the results of the Digital Reference Education Initiative (DREI) project that include full competencies for virtual reference librarians developed by the virtual reference community.
Here’s a link on Amazon:

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Marshall Bibliography Added

Todd Marshall has compiled a brief bibliography on Conversation Theory and Participatory Networks (from a scholarly perspective). It is listed below and has been added to the “Readings” page of the site. If you see things missing or want to add, please let me know.
Participatory Networks Bibliography (12/3/2007)

Bechtel, Joan M. (1986). Conversation, A New Paradigm for Librarianship? College & Research Libraries 47 (3). pp. 219-224.
Bernard, Scott. (1980). The Cybernetics of Gordon Pask. International Cybernetics Newsletter (17). pp. 327-336.

Fisher, Kathleen M. (2001). Overview of Knowledge Mapping. In: Mapping Biology Knowledge. Springer, pp. 5-23.

Ford, Nigel. (2004). Modeling cognitive processes in information seeking: From Popper to Pask. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 55 (9). pp. 769-782.
Ford, Nigel. (2005). “Conversational” information systems: Extending educational informatics support for the web-based learner. Journal of Documentation 61 (3). pp. 362-384.
Glanville, Ranulph. (1993). Pask: a Slight Primer. Systems Research 10 (3). pp. 213-218.
Lankes, R. D., Silverstein, J. L., Nicholson, S., & Marshall, T. (2007). Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation. Information Research, 12 (4) paper colis05 (http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis05.html).
Lankes, R. David and Silverstein, Joanne L. and Nicholson, Scott. (2007). Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation. Technical Report. Information Institute of Syracuse, Syracuse, NY.
Laurillard, Diana. (1999). A Conversational Framework for Individual Learning Applied to the `Learning Organisation’ and the `Learning Society’. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 16 (2). pp. 113-122.
McKeen, James and Guimaraes, Tor and Wetherbe, James (1994). The relationship between user participation and user satisfaction: An investigation of four contingency factors. MIS Quarterly 18 (4). pp. 427-451.
Pask, Gordon. (1975). Conversation, Cognition and Learning: A Cybernetic Theory and Methodology. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Pask, Gordon. (1996). Heinz von Foerster’s Self Organization, the Progenitor of Conversation and Interaction Theories. Systems Research 13 (3). pp. 349-362.
Patel, A. and Kinshuk, and Russell, D. (2002). Implementing Cognitive Apprenticeship and Conversation Theory in Interactive Web-Based Learning Systems. In: Sixth Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, pp. 523-528.
Pimentel, D. M. (2007). Exploring classification as conversation. In Tennis, Joseph T., Eds. Proceedings North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization 2007 1, pp. 1-8, Toronto, Ontario. (http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1893/)
Scott, Bernard. (1993). Working with Gordon: Developing and Applying Conversation Theory (1968- 1978). Systems Research 10 (3). pp. 167-182.
Scott, Bernard. (2001). Cybernetics and the Social Sciences. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 18 (5). pp. 411-420.
Thomas, Laurie and Harri-Augstein, Sheila. (1993). Gordon Pask at Brunel: A Continuing Conversation about Conversations. Systems Research 10 (3). pp. 183-192.
Wenger, Etienne. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, New York.

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Draft Report from LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

Today someone asked me about how the new LC report (http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/draft-report.html) meshed with participatory library concepts. Much of this is very compatible: user create materials, wider cooperation, distribution of tasks, etc.

However, a central tenant of participatory is the focus on conversation and how artifacts only make sense in the context of someone’ use. Perhaps it is the nature of the beast, but this approach to bibliographic control is in making descriptions of artifacts more standard and more efficient. So it is participatory in process, but not result. What would help is a recognition (perhaps as part of the cohesive philosophy of bibliographic control discussed) that any artifact, and thus it’s description, gains meaning and utility in the context of communities and conversations. Further that these conversations and context often exist BETWEEN records and items.

My question for the committee would be how could bibliographic control incorporate contexts between items or be applied to conversations and non-document like objects? What are your thoughts?

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What a Girl Should Know who Wants to be a Librarian

Thank God for the New York Times making their archives available on the web. While doing some research I ran across this little gem from 1912:

“THERE is a certain type of girl who seems born to be a librarian. She is ambitious, but not specially creative; fond of books, but with no marked aptitude for writing; intelligent and well educated, but not inclined to take up the work of a teacher, with its heavy demands and its cramping limitations, or to go into an office where literary tastes are usually at a discount.”

A worthwhile read:

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Kindle and NowNow

OK, I got the Kindle (I’m an eBook freak, sue me). There are plenty of places to read the reviews, and the potential criticisms, so I won’t retread that ground. Rather, a clarification and a funny story.

The clarification first. I’ve read on several posts about the Kindle charging for free material, and restricting everything to a proprietary format that is DRM’d. Yes, the books you buy through the Kindle/Amazon store are proprietary and DRM’d. Yes, if you e-mail a document directly to the Kindle it costs 10 cents. However, if you have a computer with a USB port (Mac or Windows), putting your own content on the Kindle is easy and free. Amazon really messed this up in their marketing, but in the manual it shows you how to put a txt file directly on the Kindle, or how to convert a Word or html file for free. Instead of e-mailing it directly, you can email it to an alternate address, and they send you back the converted file all ready to copy over USB…free. Have a speech you want on the Kindle? Free. Itinerary? Free. Project Gutenberg texts? You guessed it.

OK, now the story. I turn it on and browse around, and find a menu “Experimental.” In there are services Amazon is playing with and one is called “Ask Kindle NowNow” that reads:

Ask us any question you want. Real people will research your question on the Web and send up to three answers to your Kindle, usually within in ten minutes.”

How am I not going to try this? So I ask “what is meant by participatory networks?” Sure enough a couple of minutes later, sent right to the Kindle, an answer. I’m reading through it and get really excited that they are talking about social networks, then Web 2.0, then Library 2.0! Wow, I say, Amazon knows about libraries! I keep reading and something starts sounding awfully familiar here. Sure enough the whole answer was a direct quote from the tech brief I co-authored for ALA. There at the end is a URL that points me right to the brief. So at least I was cited and can be happy that someone in NowNow land found my stuff, I just wish there was a bit of a preamble.

A little while later I got two more answers. The second one pointed to a CoLIS paper I did, and the third pointed to an item Todd Marshall posted on http://participatorynetworks.com/ . Looks like I have to do some more looking into NowNow (just found http://www.nownow.com/ ). Also interesting in light of the recent DigRef discussion on commercial grade services and eRef.

Click “Read More” for the full responses.
Continue reading “Kindle and NowNow”