Wired Professional Development: New Librarians Connect Through the Web

ABSTRACT

Taking advantage of professional development opportunities is imperative for new academic librarians. Even if not a position requirement, continuing education and professional involvement have the potential to inspire and improve job performance. While online resources should not replace traditional professional development experiences such as conferences, they can certainly provide additional ways to develop skills and expertise. Connecting with other librarians electronically through listservs, virtual conferences, and other online opportunities can make such involvement more accessible for new professionals.     

On the Preservation of Knowledge,or “Paging Doctor Johnston,Doctor Johnston to Surgery!”

ABSTRACT

Aggressively promoting a Web site is the best way to ensure that colleagues and information consumers are aware of the resource's existence. A strategy that worked well for one such resource, The Researching Librarian, is discussed. Methods such as submitting the site to search engines, announcing the site to members of relevant listservs, and informing the media will increase awareness of a resource and usage for sites providing useful and needed content.     

Education for Digitization: How Do We Prepare?

This paper examines the characteristics and variety of digitization training initiatives in North America and to a lesser extent, Europe, and the growing development of credit-bearing courses and programs within higher education relating to digitization, with a specific focus on librarianship. Information was collected in response to an inquiry posted in late July 2004 on the ARLIS, JESSE, and DIGLIB listservs, supplemented by ongoing perusal of these sources, Web searches, and suggestions from colleagues. It also briefly discusses the benefits and challenges associated with the development of digitized library resources, and the need for greater attention to professional development for those working in digitization.     

Job Searching on the World Wide Web

The Internet is being increasingly used both by job seekers and companies as a resource for employment opportunities and recruiting. Job listings, career development "centers," and company information are available on every internet tool: listservs, newsgroups, gophers, telnet sites, and the World Wide Web. This article will explore the capabilities of the Web as a tool for finding employment and developing a career.     

IFLA and other International Library Associations,Institutions and Organizations

Column Editor's Notes

This workforce column, guest written by Jill Mierke, evokes memories of the saying, you are not alone. The challenges of workforce and workplace leadership for any library chief executive officer are many and varied. We come to those roles usually as experienced (if not seasoned) professionals, but we do not always have the theoretical grounding and specific professional practice experience a dedicated human resources professional might bring to the organization. A Master's in library and information sciences qualification is no guarantee that you will have the requite knowledge, skills, experience, and abilities to be a good people manager or a strategic leader of the library workforce. This article paints a compelling picture of what success for library human resource management and leadership can look like, through the lens of an experienced and seasoned human resources professional. Recent workforce research is telling us there are many roles within our libraries that are now being successfully filled by “other” professionals. In our ever changing and dynamic information landscape, the human resources strategic advisory role is one of them.

As always, I invite further contributions to our ongoing discussion! Please submit articles for this column to the editor at vicki.williamson@usask.ca     

Determining where physical therapists get information to support clinical practice decisions

Objective

To determine the information sources utilised by physical therapists (PTs) to support clinical decisions.

Methods

Physical therapists in the United States were invited via professional listservs and electronic newsletters to participate in an online survey.

Results

Journal articles were the most frequently utilised source of information, followed by databases (PubMed was most frequent). The frequency of utilising evidence‐based resources was not significantly affected by the number of years of experience as a physical therapist (PT), working in a state that allows direct access to PT services or doctoral vs masters/bachelors degree.

Conclusions

Compared with a previous study (1994), there has been a transition in physical therapy information seeking, with greater reliance on evidence‐based information.     

LIFENET/INTERNET and the health science librarian

The Medical Library Center of New York, a cooperative library agency for the health sciences, developed a program to offer an electronic communications system (LIFENET) with access to the Internet for its members. Information on documentation and training as well as statistics on the subsequent use of the system and of the Internet are discussed in the article. Specific examples of how health science librarians are using the system include bibliographic verification, reference, research on integrated library systems, production of duplicate journal lists, and professional activities such as electronic mail and discussion groups (listservs).     

Integrating core information competencies into a traditional curriculum: a collaborative approach

To prepare for a career, in which they keep up-to-date with current physical therapy procedures and health care trends, it is imperative that students become life-long learners. Four core competencies have been identified as skills to promote life-long learning: e-mail, professional electronic mailing lists (listservs), online data-base searching, and searching the World Wide Web. This paper discusses integrating the core competencies into the curriculum of a physical therapist assistant program through a collaborative effort between the physical therapist assistant program faculty and librarians.     

The Prevalence and Practices of Academic Library Journal Clubs

Increased mention of journal clubs in the library literature and the recent creation of clubs at the authors' institutions sparked curiosity about how widespread they are in academic libraries. An online survey announced on library listservs assessed their prevalence and practices. Library journal clubs promote current awareness, analysis skills, group cohesion, and intra-library knowledge, and offer a low-cost professional development opportunity in times of budget difficulties.     

Librarians at the Bounds of Rationality: How Bounded Rationality Can Help Us Help Others

“Bounded rationality” is a concept used in the social sciences to help identify and predict how individuals make decisions. An offshoot of rational choice theory, bounded rationality accounts for the fact that completely rational decisions are not feasible in practice and states that individuals use heuristics, or rules based on past experiences and information, to make decisions. The disciplinary home of bounded rationality is behavioral economics, but this concept is becoming more popular in other branches of the social sciences to help explain and predict human behavior. We can benefit from looking at librarianship from the perspective of bounded rationality, which has been done infrequently in our professional literature. Bounded rationality can explain how our users create heuristic shortcuts to simplify the decision-making process and deal with the multitude of choices and information available. If we can understand and harness these heuristics, we will better understand how our users make decisions and better determine how we can assist them. Moreover, librarians could also be said to make decisions using bounded rationality. Tasks such as collection development and the reference interview involve the use of heuristics on our part to process all the information we have available to us. Becoming aware of this process can provide for a more mindful and efficient way of making choices. This concept article will describe bounded rationality, apply bounded rationality to aspects of library service, and discuss the possible use of the concept as an assessment tool for our services.     

Access vs. Ownership:

Throughout the entire history of libraries, the primary objective of any library has been to collect and house information of interest to the specific clientele which it serves. Libraries operated under the premise that materials would be obtained by the library for use on site by those persons authorized to have access to that information. As we move towards the twenty-first century, this concept of the primary function of the library must be questioned. Due to several factors, the library can no longer function solely as a warehouse of information. In order to survive as information professionals for the future, librarians must shift their emphasis from one based on ownership to one based on access. This paper will examine the factors behind the need for such changes and will also examine their impact on the role of the librarian as an information professional.     

Approval plans for religious and theological libraries

The task of acquiring materials in the area of religion on a level to support research and teaching for graduate or professional programs is a challenging one. Even within the relatively narrow scope of religious or theological studies, the quantity of published material makes it a substantial task to review all newly published titles. The concept of an approval plan, whereby books published within a defined subject area (or areas) are automatically shipped to the library, at first seems a logical and elegant method of reducing the burden on typically overworked bibliographers. Unfortunately, experiences from a variety of seminary and theological libraries corroborate our essentially negative experiences with approval plans. It appears that for specialized collections such as theological libraries, approval plans may be a good idea whose time has not (or perhaps never will) come. Some of the problems with approval plans are discussed, and the alternatives used by the Divinity Library at Vanderbilt are presented.     

An evolution of experts: MEDLINE in the library school.

Question: What is the real value that medical librarians bring to the health care environment? How have library science educators, frequently former practitioners themselves, responded to the challenge of expert searching?Methods: In this paper, I give an historical introduction to the landscape of medical information retrieval through the development of MEDLINE. I then look at the evolution of training in online searching and its place in the context of library school education and particularly the effect of generalist education on future specialists. Finally, I acknowledge the new role of the informationist as another assertion of our professional expertise.Conclusions: The three interdependent subsystems of our professional machine—our schools, our association, and our professional peers— must all respond to this challenge by asserting our expertise in our curricula, in our continuing education, and in our dialogues with each other. Only by acknowledging the interaction of these subsystems will real and positive changes be effected to benefit our profession and our constituencies.     

HIV/AIDS Internet resources: a selective guide

With so many options available for answering questions on the network, this guide is intended as a subject-specific tool for reference librarians to use when assisting patrons in retrieving AIDS-related information. It focuses on the major electronic sites, resources, listservs, online journals, and databases on HIV/AIDS that are available free of charge on the network, listed in alphabetical order. The Internet is constantly evolving, and while the resources in this guide have been carefully examined online for content and accuracy, files and sites are continuously being eliminated, added, and updated. Users, therefore, are encouraged to be flexible and adaptable when browsing, and to try new modes of access on the network.     

Making the case for recordkeeping literacy: a narrative approach

The role of recordkeeping in our personal and professional lives is rarely perceived as a topic of mainstream interest outside the world of professional records managers and archivists. While corporate records management has been written about throughout the recordkeeping literature, there has traditionally been less focus on what McKemmish describes as the role of ‘personal recordkeeping cultures’. Yet personal recordkeeping can play a role in creating a sense of belonging, especially for children and families. For example, within the field of Australian early childhood education, one of the key policy documents replicates a similar theme with the aptly titled ‘Early Years Learning Framework – Belonging, Being & Becoming’. By reflecting on her own personal recordkeeping story and that of her family, the author aims to explore the purpose of recordkeeping awareness and the role this plays in the wider profession. This article will draw upon relevant recordkeeping theory as well as some key early childhood education literature to introduce how ‘recordkeeping awareness’ could be reconceptualised as ‘recordkeeping literacy’. She will also explore what impact a reconceptualised understanding of continuum-based ‘recordkeeping literacy’ may have upon evolving recordkeeping theory and practice.     

What master do we want? What master do we need?

Over the last few decades, archival education has increasingly been successful in obtaining an autonomous position within the university. In order to strengthen this position there is need for more quality research output, but this should not be left to Faculty: the archival profession as a whole should be research-oriented. The author argues that modern definitions of a professional and modern developments in didactics will enable archival education to deliver modern, professional and research-oriented archivists.     

New generations

It is time for a new generation of librarians to take over the work of restructuring the Federal Depository Library Program and to build new networks of partnerships in order to develop a program for the dissemination of government information in the next century. A new association of government information professionals will help to provide the framework needed for individual librarians to develop professional networks within, and outside of, librarianship and to establish direct partnerships with information-producing agencies. The Chicago Conference on the Federal Depository Library Program has taken the first steps in that direction.     

Museums: Fostering a Culture of ‘Flourishing’

This forum presents a personal view from a museum professional of the museum field's stake in the sustainability movement. The author takes the opportunity of a discussion within a national museum association about the possible implementation of environmental sustainability standards and argues instead for systematically engaging the entire museum field in re‐thinking and restructuring the foundations of culture in our society. The author concludes that sustainability will require rebuilding the foundation blocks of our social and economic structures, both locally and globally, and that museums have the potential to play important roles in facilitating these processes. However, as is the case with all change, new skills will have to be acquired, values will have to be reassessed and priorities will have to be reset. These are the challenges of the 21^st century.     

Web内容挖掘在数字图书馆中的应用

Web信息是数字图书馆数字资源的重要来源，文章详细阐述了对Web内容中的文本信息的挖掘，包括：文本自动摘要、文本分类和文本聚类。在挖掘过程中基于用户需求和用户特征，针对文本分类，重点分析了分类过程和在数字图书馆中的应用；针对文本聚类，介绍两种基本聚类原理以及与文本分类的不同之处，重点论述其在数字图书馆中如何应用。最后提出内容挖掘与用户挖掘的结合更有助于服务用户。