Competency O: “identify ways in which information professionals can contribute to the cultural, economic, educational, and social well-being of our global communities”
INTRODUCTION
“A global information professional is someone who thinks about the information field on a global scale – as a global environment to share and learn collaboratively, gain inspiration, and facilitate new knowledge that can generate new ideas. Global information professionals result in information organizations that are more connected and stronger both globally and locally” (Holmquist, 2015, p. 376)
As Holmquist alludes to in her look at the global information professional, the global information community benefits local organizations and institutions as well. As such, it’s necessary that the twenty-first century information professional be cognizant of practices and opportunities regarding trans and international partnership and make use of the ability to ‘share and learn’ collaboratively made possible by new technologies. In my discussion of Competency 0, I will explore some of the ways Holmquist suggests for engaging with the global information community as well as highlight the experiences of libraries and information organizations around the world concerning library and information science education, meeting the needs of underserved patrons toward social well-being, open access initiatives, digital preservation and digitization, and information literacy education. In looking at how global organizations approach the same challenges faced by all information professionals, it’s possible to foster intercultural collaboration and strengthen our professional practice.
Holmquist acknowledges just how critical technology is to cultivating connection across geographic boundaries when she writes “technology has challenged the need for a physical presence regarding how, when, and where learning, collaboration, and sharing information takes place” (p. 374). In the same way that technology has created greater opportunities for information access, it has similarly provided increased venues for professional development. She recommends that information professionals can engage in the following four activities toward becoming a global information professional:
- Engage in global learning communities
- Read articles about libraries and information organizations worldwide
- Attend conferences
- Pin, follow, and/or search for other global information professionals
In adherence to her suggestion, in my first piece of evidence, I include a written summary and reflection of my experience in attending the Library 2.0 international Mini-Conference titled Design Thinking: How Librarians Are Incorporating It into Their Practice in March 2018. The virtual conference was held through Blackboard Collaborate and ran for a period of three hours which included an opening keynote address, time to attend three (out of a possible nine) thirty-minute presentations, and a closing keynote address. During the opening keynote, attendees shared their locations which included Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Nepal, Fiji, London, and more in addition to the continental United States. Further, one of the opening keynote panelists included Sidsel Bech-Petersen who shared her experience in applying design thinking to the transformation of the Aarhus Public Library into Dokk1 in Denmark. During the panels, I also had the opportunity to hear the perspective of an academic librarian who used design thinking to improve communication in her library at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Both the presenters and the attendees evidence the degree to which virtual conferences can truly meet the information needs and interests of a global information community.
Further, I discovered that much can be gleaned from reading about the experiences of international libraries and information organizations such that a global perspective on the same discourse that drives domestic librarianship is achieved.
LIS Education
As an example, Pradhan looks at the correlation between Library and Information Science (LIS) curricula and the skills necessary for employability in LIS-related professions through a case study at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India. Pradhan writes that LIS programs all over the world have had to contend and adapt to prevalence in new technologies and that LIS education in India specifically has consistently evolved to reflect new demands and developments in information professions especially as they relate to technology. Pradhan also makes note that “India, being a populous country and the largest democracy of the world, requires huge number of libraries and information centres which can deliver information for the inclusive development of all citizens” (Pradhan, 2015, p. 107). Interestingly, the data regarding employable skills revealed that “soft skills” like communication were the most desirable with 100% of respondents including it in their response. IT skills followed closely with 95% of respondents including it. The study showed that 100% of LIS students find employment in their chosen field shortly after graduating in India but it should be noted that the group of LIS students profiled is very small – 84 MLIS students over ten years of the program at the university.
Digital Preservation
“Digital preservation remains one of the most critical challenges facing scholarly communities today, as a growing amount of electronic content is emerging and organizations worldwide are moving towards preserving information for the next generation before there is technological obsolescence or data loss” (Kari & Baro, p. 142).
In looking at digital preservation practices in the institutional repositories of academic libraries in Nigeria, Kari and Baro (2016) discovered that while many institutions practice digital preservation, the majority do not have preservation policies in place to integrate the behavior into their organizational culture. Further, they acknowledge that the primary challenge regarding digital preservation at university libraries in Nigeria concerns the lack of adequately trained staff and recommend the development of educational programs which accurately prepare future librarians for twenty-first century digital practice. Notably, the authors write “to design such programs, we need to understand the staffing patterns in repositories, the activities performed in IRs, and the practical skills that are needed to manage IRs for a long time. There is increased demand for librarians with skills needed to run a digital preservation program, especially for university libraries in Nigeria and other developing countries. It is expected that the amount of information created in an electronic environment will continue to rise exponentially” (p. 142). This statement appears as an opportunity for global information professionals to provide relevant information as well as offer support in facilitating development of sustainable digital preservation practices in information communities outside their own.
In my second piece of evidence, I include a discussion post from INFO 220: Resources and Information Services in Professions and Disciplines: Digital Humanities wherein I examined one international digitization project and one domestic digitization project both using OCR (optical character recognition) technology to compare their processes and outcomes. Holley (2009) describes the Australian Newspaper Digitization Program which sought to digitize historical newspapers through OCR technologies but ran into issues of accuracy regarding the machine properly translating the text in the physical document. The most effective way to correct these inaccuracies included recruiting volunteers to make manual text corrections within the digital documents. However, she acknowledges another challenge in the process when she writes “we quickly realised that using the Macquarie Australian national dictionary (first published in 1981) was unlikely to make any difference to OCR results, since at the time Australian newspapers were published (1803-1954) pure English was being spoken primarily, and there were few Australian colloquialisms that might appear in those newspapers. Jumbuck (sheep), Billabong (watering hole) and tucker (food) were the only possible exceptions we could think of”. In their newspaper digitization project of historical New York City newspapers, Strange, McNamara, Wodak, and Wood felt their project most benefited from the inclusion of metadata tags over manual corrections as they were primarily concerned with digitization for text-mining purposes. The different experiences here reflect how information organizations approach similar projects through a global perspective.
Open Access Initiatives
As I mentioned in Competency B, open access initiatives are a major priority for academic libraries. Awre, Stainthorp, and Stone (2016) look at a collaboration among three universities in the United Kingdom that explored a variety of open access policies and standards toward developing their institutions’ own best practices in implementing OA policy. The project participants established a set of criteria against which to measure their progress. In keeping with the open access spirit, they made their criteria available via an open spreadsheet and the contribution of nine additional institutions has allowed for the recognition of open access policy trends and developments across academic institutions in the UK. Claire Bishop (2015) considers open access in the context of her information organization, the Tate Archive (as part of the Tate Gallery in the UK). The Tate Archive undertook a project of digitizing and releasing to the public 52,000 items within their archive. Wherever possible, they employed a Creative Commons license but she addresses how other factors are significant in allowing for open access including relationship management. Bishop suggests that if you’re clear on your goals and motivations for wanting to make works accessible and can articulate them to the rights-holders bearing in mind their relationship to the work, an open and honest conversation can go a long way toward obtaining licenses. She goes on to include the type of Creative Commons license they employed as CC-BY-NC-ND and explains their reasons for doing so. Bishop also addresses orphan works and how to use exceptions to copyright law effectively to the organization’s advantage.
Social Well-Being
In addition to considering how international libraries contend with programs and services, it’s worth exploring how these institutions contribute to the culture of librarianship reflected in professional standards regarding access and equality as well as how they might serve as benchmarks for American libraries to embrace similar practices. In my third piece of evidence, I include a discussion post from INFO 210: Reference and Information Services wherein I look at how public libraries in Norway and German consciously became a welcoming and supportive space to newly immigrated refugees. Librarians in Norway found that the immigrants ultimately had a more positive view of the country and its government because of their positive experience with the library and that those who made use of the library’s services saw themselves as stakeholders in the organization even when they were no longer required to use the library. Public libraries all over Germany designed fundraisers, programs, and materials specifically for the influx of refugees in the country and not only met the information needs but anticipated the information needs of this community. Additionally, through the implementation of intercultural programming including workshops and discussion groups for all ages, the library was able to cultivate empathy among the members of their information community and foster goodwill between German patrons and patrons who were refugees as well between refugee patrons and the library and other public services. The experiences of these international libraries is inspiring and ultimately shows long-term benefits not just to the organizations but to the national culture. American libraries may be well served to the models provided by Norway and Germany.
Information Literacy
Since information literacy and information literacy education/instruction is a subject in which I’ve previously expressed interest and discussed in depth, I was curious to explore its theory and practice from a global perspective to get a better sense of how information literacy is recognized and taught in countries outside the United States. In my initial searches around the web and on social media, I did not find much information. However, Association of College and Research Libraries, despite being a division of the American Library Association published a white paper in 2017 titled Global Perspectives on Information Literacy which includes chapters written by “information literacy experts from around the world, including Africa, Canada, Europe, Oceania, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and seeks to share individual international perspectives that demonstrate how information literacy is viewed, taught, and conceptualized internationally” (“ACRL Global Perspectives on Information Literacy paper released”, 2017).
In my fourth piece of evidence, I include an overview of one chapter from the comprehensive document written by Daniel Dorner who has researched, written on, and developed a conceptual model for information literacy in the Asia/Oceania region. Dorner, who is from New Zealand, particularly highlights how information literacy standards and educational tools tend to favor Western social and intellectual structures and in order to be effective, information literacy education must recognize information literacy that reflects culturally-informed and context-driven information concepts and behaviors. The model that Dorner introduced in 2012 resembles ACRL’s Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education evidencing how the organization considered international perspectives in developing conceptual frameworks.
EVIDENCE
International Look at OCR Projects Discussion Post (INFO 220: Resources and Information Services in Professions and Disciplines: Digital Humanities)
I include as evidence of Competency O a discussion post that looks at two separate digitization projects including one from the National Library of Australia. It’s useful to examine the two projects in comparison to each other to discern if geography and/or local culture drives the organization’s practice.
Wk 5- Information Needs of Underserved Populations Discussion Post (INFO 210: Information Reference Services)
In this discussion post, I examine how libraries in Norway and Germany specifically served as welcoming centers to newly immigrated refugees and asylum-seekers in both countries. As I mention above, I find it worthwhile to explore how libraries in other countries are genuinely providing equal access and anticipating the information needs of a frequently underserved community of patrons such that it can be instructive to the practice of American libraries.
International Conference Summary and Reflection (Competency O)
I submit as evidence for Competency O this written summary and reflection of my experience attending an international virtual conference through Blackboard Collaborate. During the conference, I took copious notes but to better convey what I learned and took away from the experience, I synthesized those notes into this document which includes description of the concepts covered during the opening and closing keynotes and the panels I attended as well as my understanding of how international virtual conferences are an effective means of furthering professional development within the global information community.
Global Perspectives on Information Literacy Post – Chapter E (Competency O)
For the purposes of this evidence, I identified a document equivalent in length and scope to a an academic journal article and provided an overview and brief analysis of its content in a format similar to discussion posts I’ve included as evidence for additional competencies. Because I created this work specifically as evidence for Competency O, I lacked an appropriate template but I feel that through this work I have demonstrated engagement with the text and identified its key points such that I now possess a stronger understanding of the global perspective on information literacy and am inspired to conduct additional research on the topic in the future.
CONCLUSION
While it’s imperative that information professionals always be aware of how best to serve their specific information communities, much can be gained toward that service and the information profession by exploring, interacting, collaborating, and learning from the practices and experiences of information organizations around the world. Technology has permitted an unprecedented ability to connect with others and the global information community serves as yet another iteration of participatory culture. As such we should seize the opportunity to leverage expertise across the global information community to continuously improve our profession on an international scale.
References:
ACRL Global Perspectives on Information Literacy paper released. (2017, March 13). Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/news/member-news/2017/03/acrl-global-perspectives-information-literacy-paper-released
Awre, C. c., Stainthorp, P. p., & Stone, G. G. (2016). Supporting open access processes through library collaboration. Collaborative Librarianship, 8(2), 99-110.
Bishop, C. c. (2015). Creative Commons and Open Access initiatives: how to stay sane and influence people. Art Libraries Journal, 40(4), 8-12.
Dorner, D.G. (2017). Chapter E. In Global Perspectives on Information Literacy [White paper]. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/whitepapers/GlobalPerspectives_InfoLit.pdf
Holley, R. (2009, March/April). How good can it get? Analysing and improving OCR accuracy in large scale historic newspaper digitisation programs. D-Lib Magazine, 15(3/4). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march09/holley/03holley.html
Holmquist, J. (2015). Global learning networks. In S. Hirsh (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (pp. 374-380). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefeld.
Kari, K.H., and Baro, E.E. (2016). Digital preservation practices in university libraries. Preservation, Digital Culture, and Technology, 45(3), 134-144.
Pradhan, S. (2015). Study of employability and needed skills for LIS graduates. DESIDOC Journal Of Library & Information Technology, 35(2), 106-112.
Emily Moss - Electronic Portfolio 