Information Research Weblog

According to The Association of College and Research Libraries, Information Literacy's website: http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/informationliteracy.htm, it provides such a vast of valuable information for librarians, students, and researchers. The layout of the information is clearly organized for first time users and frequent users. The website provides users with the overview, standards & guidelines, resources & ideas, professional activity, and news. When I attending college for my undergraduate degree, it would have been benefical if I knew about this particular website...it probably would have made my research steps much easier.

The owner, Rob Colston, has drawn my attention to learning-theories.com

This interesting site presents information and links on various theories of learning - many of which are also employed in information research. Here are a couple of Rob's definitions to whet your appetite:

What is a theory?

* A general principle that explains or predicts facts, observations or events.
* A theory is generally accepted as valid having survived repeated testing.
* Note: A theory can never be established beyond all doubt.

What is a model?

* A model is a theoretical construct or mental picture that helps one understand something that cannot easily be observed or experienced directly.

In the article entitled, "Public Services in Special Collections" by Florence Turcotte it explains how some research libraries are trying to bring in K-12 students into the "real research world." I think it would be very cool for a k-12 student to have field trips to famous public & research libraries especially in New York City. I also believe the children will be amazed at the architecture of the building let alone the information inside. If students were more exposed to the "real research world" as they grew older they will appreciate the nature of research. When I was in high school my firends dreaded going to the public library to research information. They dreaded the fact because I never learned how to research information correctly. Luckily, I worked at my local public library since I was about 14 years old...so I was taught by the reference librarian (friend/co-worker. My experiences with researching information in high school was a breeze. It was just a matter of when I was going to sit down and read, digest and spit out information on my computer.

Growing incivility in society, among other things, contributes to a library's problems according to this report from the New York Times.

Every afternoon at Maplewood Middle School’s final bell, dozens of students pour across Baker Street to the public library. Some study quietly.

Others, library officials say, fight, urinate on the bathroom floor, scrawl graffiti on the walls, talk back to librarians or refuse to leave when asked. One recently threatened to burn down the branch library. Librarians call the police, sometimes twice a day.

As a result, starting on Jan. 16, the Maplewood Memorial Library will be closing its two buildings on weekdays from 2:45 to 5 p.m., until further notice.

I was checking on the e-mail address of an old friend in the USA - Dan Carter, at the University of South Carolina, and I followed a link to a lecture he'd given. I recommend the whole of it, but this paragraph struck me as very relevant in the UK, where higher education is becoming more and more a factory system and where the question has to be, To what end?

At the same time, even as we make the argument that higher education can help in raising the standard of living in this state, we should not lose sight of the notion that education is more than simply an avenue to making money and competing economically. We hear much about the value of creating a skilled and technologically proficient pool of workers for the new economy and that is certainly true. In an educational system that works as it should, students will learn how to engage in rigorous analysis, to think logically and sequentially, to speak articulately and to write good prose. Those skills undoubtedly make them good workers. But the inescapable reality is that-in the not too distant technocratic future-we will need only so many people to run the information economy; many of the rest will be marginalized and sidelined in the "service" sector with little need for highly specialized technical education. If we concentrate entirely on the utilitarian value of learning we open the way to creating a society in which there is little purpose to educate this half of the population.

Read the whole piece here

Just back from Murcia, Spain, and the Scout Report draws my attention to a report from the Council on Library and Information Resources on New-Model Scholarship: How Will It Survive? by Abby Smith. The 'new model' is defined as: "specifically, the variety of Web sites and other desktop digital objects that faculty and graduate students are creating that fall somewhere short of “published” but are worthy of access into the future." Three examples are given, the History of Recent Science and Technology site at the Dibner Institute, the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, and Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia. The key issue dealt with by the report is the problem of ensuring that these sites are permanently archived for future use.

'Permanent' archiving is an interesting issue - especially in the digital world. Physical objects can survive centuries, but we are uncertain as to how long electronic documents can survive. Much depends not only on the storage medium, but also on the technology for 'reading' and displaying the record. I can no longer use 5.25" discs on my computer - and don't know anyone who can. So - what I wrote in the past now has to be scanned if I wish to put it on my Web site.

And how long will Information Research and its related Web sites, including my personal Web site, survive my disappearance from the scene? I am in the process of trying to ensure that the journal survives, but even that is at risk, given the apparent lack of interest in its survival from the LIS and information systems research communities.

The one thing of which we can be sure is that nothing is for ever!

As the producer of a significantly sized Web site, plus electronic journal, plus discussion list, plus Weblog, which has no financial input whatsoever, except out of my own pocket, I was somewhat surprised by the latest Knowledge@Wharton Newsletter - a fortnightly e-mail message fronting a Web site which touts research undertaken at Wharton, i.e., it is a publicity medium for the business school. Now it suggests that, in addition to its sponsors (lucky guys!) it needs donations from the recipients of the messages. I don't know how much Wharton is worth these days but, given the fees it charges for its MBA programme, I doubt that it is near to going broke.

Meanwhile, anyone who wants to sponsor InformationR.net has my e-mail address!

Very interesting site, Chris - it will also be interesting to see how the rankings change as other things come on line.

Your point about the lack of communication among the various areas of the 'information field' is also spot on - this is one of the things that IR is trying to change, by publishing information systems papers, as well as information management papers. David Ellis, David Allen and I wrote a paper a couple of years or so ago which looked at the lack of cross citation between information science and information systems in two areas where one might expect common interests - information retrieval and information seeking behaviour (user requirements in info. systems parlance). We found very few people who were cited in both fields.

Ellis, D., Allen, D.K. & Wilson, T.D. (1999) Information science and information systems: conjunct subjects disjunct disciplines. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50, 1095-1107

As I'm working here in Sweden at the Hogskolan i Boras, I thought that some readers of IR-DISCUSS and of this Weblog might be interested to know of new positions in the Swedish School of Librarianship and Information Science in this institution. Three new positions are being advertised, at the Professorial level:

1. Professor in knowledge organisation and Information Retrieval (IR) Professor or Guest professor for 3 years

This professor is expected to teach both at PhD and undergraduate levels within the area of knowledge organisation. This sub-area includes issues of representation and organisation of information. It is desirable that applicant has knowledge about sub-areas such as classification, indexing, IR-models, methods of evaluation and representation for different media.

2. Professorship of information seeking and use. Fulltime professor No 1 (tenure type position)

This professor is expected to teach the areas "information seeking" and user studies at PhD-level as well as undergraduate levels. The field includes issues on how individuals and groups relate to and use information in different contexts - such as in connection with school/learning, knowledge creation and decision making in everyday life - and in professional environments.

3. Professorship in organisation and management of library and information services. Fulltime professor No 2 (tenure type position)

This professor is expected to teach in areas related to the organisation and management of information services and information dissemination at the undergraduate and PhD levels. Knowledge about subareas such as service management, organisation and planning, knowledge management and development and quality management of library and information services, information economy and/or information policy is desirable.

Further information with reference numbers, persons to contact, etc., can be found on the Hogskolan Web site.