Transcript Slide 1

The New Academic Librarian
OR
“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it”
Professor Peter Brophy
Manchester Metropolitan University
United Kingdom
Dinosaur
• What do you call a dinosaur that’s never
at a loss for words?
Thesaurus
What we do is extraordinary!
“Most (eScience data) archives which
contain primary research data are
domain (i.e. subject) focussed. There is
a consensus that domain experts are
best placed to provide support for the
users of the archive data, and moreover
are best placed to define new data
products and user services.”
[Digital Curation Centre, UK, 2005]
Emerging new/revised roles for
the academic librarian
Supporting learning and
research where they occur
– within the users’
workflows
• Communicating and sharing
meaning
• Engaging with the language
and process of learning
• Five emerging roles
Critical issue 1 – Communicating
and sharing meaning
“Let us imagine a language ...The
language is meant to serve for
communication between a
builder A and an assistant B. A
is building with building-stones;
there are blocks, pillars, slabs
and beams. B has to pass the
stones, and that in the order in
which A needs them. For this
purpose they use a language
consisting of the words 'block',
'pillar', 'slab', 'beam'. A calls
them out; - B brings the stone
which he has learnt to bring at
such-and-such a call. - Conceive
of this as a complete primitive
language.”
[Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations]
Etiquette
• A gift may be refused once or twice
before it is accepted
• Do not give red or white flowers
• Do not give scissors, knives or other
cutting utensils
• Do not give clocks, handkerchiefs or
straw sandals
• A small gift for the children is always
appreciated, but do not give green hats
Being part of the dialogue
Learning the
language game
• Terminology
• Concepts
• Interpretation
Data – Information – Knowledge - Meaning
Language games in universities
“An academic discipline ……is not primarily
content, in the sense of facts and principles. It is
rather primarily a lived and historically changing
set of distinctive social practices. It is in these
practices that ‘content’ is generated, debated and
transformed via certain distinctive ways of
thinking, talking, valuing, acting and, often,
writing and reading.”
Gee, 2003
WFAU “has recently recruited a dedicated
science archive curator, who does not have
an astronomical background. It is expected
that the Unit will continue to require staff
from a range of backgrounds, and with a
range of skills: the technical requirements
of WFAU’s science archive curation
greatly exceeds that which can be
comfortably provided by professional
astronomers.”
Critical issue 2 – engaging with
the language and process of
learning
What business are we in?
Academic libraries are
fundamentally in the business of
human learning rather than in the
information business. Our
resources and skills are
dedicated to the sharing of
knowledge and understanding and
meaning, not simply to organising
and preserving information
artefacts, whether printed or
electronic.
Learning is what libraries are
for …
"I want a poor student to
have the same means of
indulging his learned
curiosity, of following
his rational pursuits, of
consulting the same
authorities, of
fathoming the most
intricate inquiry as the
richest man in the
kingdoms."
Antonio Panizzi, 1836
Learning
the ‘information
transmission’
model …
… is breaking
down
Objectivism
“views the world as an ordered
structure of entities which
exists and has meaning quite
apart from the observer or
participant. Much of science and
technology has traditionally
been taught on this basis: what
needs to be achieved by learning
is a closer and closer approach
to complete (and thus ‘correct’)
understanding.”
Constructivism
• “Learning is a constructive process in which
the learner is building an internal
representation of knowledge, a personal
interpretation of experience. This
representation is constantly open to change,
its structure and linkages forming the
foundation to which other knowledge
structures are appended. Learning is an active
process in which meaning is developed on the
basis of experience. This view of knowledge
does not necessarily deny the existence of
the real world .. but contends that all we know
of the world are human interpretations of our
experience of the world. … learning must be
situated in a rich context, reflective of real
world contexts for this constructive process
to occur.”
Bednar et al.
Active learning
“If you hold a cat
by the tail, you
learn things you
cannot learn any
other way”
Mark Twain
Learning together
“Learning is a social
process that occurs
through interpersonal
interaction within a
cooperative context.
Individuals, working
together, construct
shared understandings
and knowledge.”
Johnson et al.
New roles for the academic
librarian 1
Embedding the library in learning
“A vision of a multi-professional team of academics,
learning technologists and information specialists
creating a learning environment and learning
experiences with the learner at the centre”
“Intelligent deployment of technologies must be
predicated upon multi-professional dialogue”
Pedo-techno-gogs
“librarians (or others) who are characterised by their
possession of pedagogic knowledge while also
bringing specific expertise”
New roles for the academic
librarian 2
Promoting literacies
“The word illiterate, in its
common acceptation,
means a man who is
ignorant of … … Greek
and Latin”
Philip Stanhope, 4th Lord Chesterfield
Literacies
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Adult literacy
Basic literacy
Business literacy
Children’s literacy
Computer literacy
Early literacy
Emotional literacy
Family literacy
Financial literacy
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Functional literacy
Health literacy
Information literacy
IT literacy
Media literacy
Numerical literacy
Technological literacy
Visual literacy
Workforce literacy
Information literacy
Librarians argue that IL is:
• “the overarching literacy essential for twenty-first
century living”
• “the foundation for learning in our contemporary
environment of continuous technological change”
and that
• “information literate people are those who have
learned how to learn”
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Libraries and literacy
information literacy has
to argue for its place
alongside many other
conceptions of literacy
… (it is) literacy writ
large and situated
literacies … to which
we must bring our
skills and our
contribution
New roles for the academic
librarian 3
Publishing the outputs
“a set of services that a
university offers to the
members of its community for
the management and
dissemination of digital
materials created by the
institution and its community
members”
Clifford Lynch
New roles for the academic
librarian 4
Integrated environments
Merging the VLE, the VRE, the
library portal and the rest
into the users’ workflows to
create a seamless experience
New roles for the academic
librarian 5
Curating the data
“The advent of e-Science is a
reflection of digital data curation’s
importance to science more widely,
given … the 'data avalanche'
experienced by many scientific
disciplines”
“Researchers across a wide range of
domains are … finding themselves
faced with new and challenging
responsibilities for curating digital
data.”
UK Data Curation Centre
“Change is the
constant, the signal
for rebirth, the egg
of the phoenix”
Christina Baldwin