Just start writing

This post isn't strictly about librarianship. It's about studying IT and librarianship. But hopefully, it'll be helpful to someone out there.

I'm writing an assignment at the moment on e- and m-learning and how my library can embed our services in these environments at our University. I struggled for almost a week with the readings, trying to frame my argument, trying to decide how I was going to approach the topic. At first glance it seemed so simple, but once I delved into the readings, it got way more complicated.

My 'aha' moment came last night: I know this stuff. I know what libraries do in the e-learning and m-learning contexts. We embed ourselves in learning management systems, we create online tutorials, we offer key services via mobile devices. And so I started writing. Ignoring the literature, I just wrote and wrote until I was finished putting all my thoughts down.

After that, I went back to support my thoughts using the literature.

This might seem obvious to everyone else, but it really was an epiphany to me. Top assignment-writing tip: Don't allow yourself to get bogged down with the literature. You know this. Start writing.

The social scholar

Whoops. I forgot to post for a while...

I've settled on a topic for my dissertation and have started giving talks about my research. I'm calling it "social scholarship", but it could be digital scholarship, or networked participatory scholarship, or even open scholarship. It's about how researchers use social media during the research process: from conceptualisation of the idea for research to dissemination of the research output.

Here are the slides:

Social scholarship from neen01

You need to dress professionally, Part the second

I wrote a while ago about dressing professionally. Here's a great related post by Sarah Houghton at Librarian in Black.

Not everyone thought it was great. One of the commenters on her post said: "Just one of the reasons librarians are not taken seriously which results in inadequate pay and status."

Oh dear. The debate continues.

Research data management

There's a lot of talk in our Library lately about research data management. Our institution is in the process of creating policy around research data and the question in the Library is "How will we support research data management?"

A look at the literature tells me this isn't a new topic. Academic libraries overseas have already tackled the issue of data management and some have created libguides and web pages about it. The support provided by these institutions seems to focus on assisting with the writing of a data management plan and consulting on steps within the data management process, like file format conversion, metadata creation and the choosing of an appropriate repository to archive the data.

I'm interested in how we will approach this topic. What skills already exist in our Library to support research data management, and how much training will be required so that we are able to meet this challenge? My sense is that there is a handful of librarians who are aware of the issues and who have enough of a foundation to begin to support data management. But the roles need to be thought through: will this become another aspect of the subject- or liaison-librarian's job? Or will it be a specialist task, reserved for staff in a new "Digital Scholarship" centre in the Library?
 

Thoughts on social scholarship

My assignment this week was to examine social scholarship. There seems to be a number of terms for social scholarship, including open scholarship and digital scholarship. The definition I found most helpful was this one from Veletsianos and Kimmons:

“the open scholar is someone who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work and secondary uses of any or all parts of it – at any stage of its development.”

We were asked to explore the use of social media tools by researchers, academics or scholars - whatever you want to call them - to disseminate or enhance their research and to aid in the research process. 

It was interesting looking at the various tools that are used by researchers. Many use the common ones - Academia.edu, or LinkedIn - but what was more interesting for me was the use of tools like Twitter, Scoop.it, Slideshare and blogging. One of the common threads in the literature on this topic is the use of these tools for crowdsourcing of research and to discuss the research process - as Veletsianos and Kimmons put it: inviting ongoing criticism...at any stage of development. And yet what I found (in my tiny, unscientific study) was that the researchers I looked at didn't use the tools for this purpose. For them, it was more about getting the word out about their research output, enhancing their reputation, and gaining more citations. 

I'd be keen to do a proper study of what's going on at my University in this regard. One of the researchers I interviewed believes that the potential for the use of social media tools in research is enormous and that it has already changed scholarship.

The other area we investigated was the role librarians can play in supporting the use of social media by researchers. I can think of two main roles: training in and promotion of different tools. Are there any others you can think of?

Are librarians partners in research?

In a post I published in February this year, I asked whether librarians are indeed partners in research. I didn't get any responses, which either means my blog isn't read, or other librarians are also not quite sure where we stand on this topic.

I'm writing an assignment this week on digital scholarship and came across this interesting talk by Martin Weller. 

I found it telling that he refers to librarians and research assistants in the same breath: as "people who do stuff for you". 

So maybe we're not seen as partners in research yet. 

Social media: things to ponder

I'm part of a social media working group here at my library. What that means is we manage, monitor and update the various social media accounts for the library. The use of social media in our library started as an experiment. Because of bandwidth issues in South Africa, the use of social media on campus was restricted for many years. At the time we started, we had to create our accounts "under the radar", and advertising the fact that we were on these platforms via our web site was forbidden.

The reason we went the route of social media is because we believed that what we had to say about the library would be better distributed via social media rather than just via our web site. We chose Facebook and Twitter initially and just recently, we've started using YouTube as well for distribution of training and promotional videos.

Here's what I've learned so far and issues I'm still grappling with:

- The management of social media for an organisation can't be an ad hoc thing. We've become more coordinated in our efforts to push information out to our students and it seems to be working.

- Success on social media means different things to different people. Do we want tons of followers? Do we measure success by the amount of interaction we get from our readers? I think success should be measured by the amount of interaction with and relevant messages we create for our followers. Are we speaking to their needs? Are they following us because they get what they want via these media?

- Librarians tend to be tentative about having a voice. This has been a bug-bear of mine for a while. South African library bloggers, for example, tend to curate information and quote sources, rather than comment on issues. I believe social media lends itself to and demands personalisation. Followers aren't interested in "party line", generic messages. They want to know who we are, to feel that they are interacting with human beings and to have some fun in the process. Our accounts have slowly evolved from impersonal message-driven platforms to conversational yet informative sources, but we still have a long way to go.

- Twitter seems to be more popular amongst our population than Facebook. I'm not sure whether that is because of the different ways we use the two accounts, but it's worth studying. This week, we invited social media guru, Dave Duarte, to speak to us about the management of our accounts, and one of the things he mentioned was that, for example, nostalgia works very well on Facebook, while current, fresh information is key on Twitter.

- Social media demands 24/7 management. What does this mean for librarians, who don't work 24/7? What if someone contacts us at midnight for help with their assignment? Making it policy that we interact with someone at this time is risky and not everyone will be on board, for obvious reasons.

How difficult is this really?

"This might sound like a condescending question," [WARNING BELLS!] "but how difficult is this really?"

Students, eh? So much arrogance, so little life experience.

The question was asked of me by a student to whom I'm teaching Digitisation. Digitisation is an odd thing to teach. You have to mix theoretical concepts with practical stuff like how to create a .tiff file. And you have to assume no one knows what a .tiff file is. So you get those students who think that what you're teaching them is boring and obvious.

Well, of course it's boring and obvious. Mostly. But what I said in reply was this:

"Yes, it's not difficult. Pushing a button on the scanner is easy. Filing images is easy. The exciting part is knowing you're part of something bigger. Knowing that you're creating a repository that is making the academic output of your institution visible to the world. Sitting down with an academic who has a collection of slides never seen before and knowing that making them available digitally will change the way research in that area will be conducted. Listening to a photographer tell you about the collection of photographs he's donating to your archive, knowing that this is his opportunity for his work to be seen all over the world. A monkey could do the scanning part. But it's not difficult to find the excitement in digitisation."

Underwhelmed

More observations from my experiences as a student:

I've used Library databases, e-books and e-journals to a limited extent at work. I'm not a subject librarian, so expertise in this field isn't a requirement. In order to complete my assignments, I'm relying heavily on them at the moment and I have to say: I've been underwhelmed. 

I've been working against the clock during this time away: we attend lectures from 8.30-4 and we have the evening to work on assignments. When you're in a rush, the last thing you want is:

1. ... for the off-campus login to the Library databases to not work. Because you know that no one will be at work at this hour to fix it, so you'll have to wait for the next day.

2. ...for the web interface to be clunky: you need to find what you're looking for without having to scratch around and click on random links, hoping they'll take you to where you want to be.

3. ...for the e-journal platform to be down. See point 1 above.

4. ...for the publisher site of the journal article you've finally managed to find to be down. Argh.

5. ...to find out that, just to read an e-book, you have to go through 20 steps and produce a DNA sample.

5. ...to download an e-reader, save an e-book to your bookshelf and then, when you want to read it the next day, get a message saying that the installation of the reader doesn't work. 

It's a valuable experience being a student: I've taken off my librarian-goggles and I'm seeing things through my clients' eyes probably for the first time. 

Yesterday, on my Twitter feed, I read a tweet that said something along the lines of: "I'm tired of people saying today's students are lazier. We use Google because it works."

I think we can't afford to dismiss statements like these. We need web sites and online interfaces that just work when students need them. 

From Librarian to Clueless Student

Being a student again is an interesting experience, especially from a Library use point of view. Studying at a different institution to my home one puts me back in the shoes of someone who has no idea of the workings of the Library. I'm now able to look critically at how an academic library attempts to familiarise students with what it has to offer.

Here are some observations so far:

- I only got my student card a week after I arrived here. That meant that I was an outsider for a week: I was stopped by security when I wanted to enter the Library and I couldn't use any of the facilities.

- We were introduced very early on to our personal subject librarian. She gave us an hour lesson on what we could find on the Library web site and how to use the databases.

- I still can't get into the Library databases. There's a process you have to go through to get a pin number in order to register on the site. The pin has apparently been sent to my institutional email address, but I have no idea what that is. This is very frustrating, as I have an enormous amount of work to get through and some of the sources we're using are only available through the institution's databases and/or e-books.

- I really appreciate being able to communicate, via email, with my subject librarian. I've emailed her about the pin problem and hopefully, we'll be able to sort it out together.

- Being able to use the Research Commons is fantastic. There's a comfortable lounge to sit in, free, fast wireless, coffee on tap and clean bathrooms just around the corner.

- I have no idea how to photocopy anything yet. I'm going to go to the Library today to find out.

Pinterest for Special Collections

I'm doing my Master's at the moment and one of our assignments this week has been to blog about two social media tools that we'd like to use in our Library. Here are my thoughts on Pinterest:

I have, for a while, been interested in the potential of Pinterest as a social networking tool for academic libraries. A fairly new platform (it was started as an invitation-only site in 2010), CNN reported last year that it was the third most visited site in the US. Briefly, Pinterest is an online board onto which users can “pin” interesting images and/or links.

There are various ways that academic libraries can use this tool. It has visual appeal and lends itself to activities such as advertising new books by pinning images of book covers, as well as announcing events in the Library by pinning images of posters.

The potential use of Pinterest that most interests me though, is that of creating a historical image collection. Many academic libraries these days have digital repositories where they curate and collate their digital Special Collections. Pinterest allows one to create an online collection of historical images outside of this repository. The benefit of this would be that information such as this is pushed out to Library patrons, where they are and using the tools with which they are familiar.  

See, for example, what Southwestern University in Texas is doing with their Pinterest Board to promote Special Collections.

You need to dress professionally

I attended a presentation recently where the audience - predominantly academic librarians - was told the following:

"You need to dress professionally. Just because the students are in jeans and trainers doesn't mean that you should be."

I'm not sure why, but this opinion irks me. And yes, I think it is an opinion, rather than a fact. Dressing "professionally" does not make me a better librarian. Conversely, wearing jeans doesn't make me a bad one either.

I posed the question of professional dress on Facebook and got some interesting responses. Some are adamant that the way we dress affects the way people treat us. I think there is a fundamental flaw here: we accept that people should judge each other by appearances. I think we shouldn't.

One responder said: "Your argument is flawed. It is not the other person's responsibility to get to know you first and then judge you for who you are. The fact is you are already saying who you are by dressing sloppily. Dress for the occasion/situation and you will be judged by who you are. If you want to be taken seriously then dress seriously!"

Here is where the disconnect happens: casual attire = sloppy = inefficient/bad at your job; professional attire = neat = good at your job. I don't think this is necessarily so. Is casual attire always sloppy? What exactly is "casual" attire?

To me, the most interesting response was the following: "Define 'professional'. It is not a universal definition, it is very contextual. Also, quite outdated. The 'professional' attire is clothing that you *need* to perform your specific profession. Uniform / lab coat / safety goggles whatever."

I hadn't thought of it like this. What do I need to wear to be able to carry out my job as an academic librarian? Certainly not safety goggles. Heels? Would a tailored suit help me to do my job better?

What do you think?

Librarians are partners in research. Discuss.

There's a lot of talk these days that academic librarians should be partners in the research process with academics and students. How this is carried out differs from institution to institution, but it can include things like helping with reference management and citation, finding appropriate journals in which to publish and assisting with the writing and/or formatting process. My question during a presentation this morning was: are academics and students on board with this? Do they accept this new role of librarians? Do they see them as more than just people behind a desk who can help them find a particular reference? The answer from the podium was that it differs from department to department. Some are more accepting than others. I'm not sure. What do you think?