Entries tagged as ‘Good reads’
Image from the Library Juice Press website, libraryjuicepress.com.
An interesting read awaits me! Once I figure out how to buy a book that I am QUITE CERTAIN will not be at Chapters anytime soon I am buying The Politics of Professionalism: A Retro-Progressive Proposal for Librarianship by Juris Dilevko. He is a professor at the Faculty of Information (and from whom I took a fantastic class called “Literature of the Social Sciences and Humanities”), and has published a most controversial book on the shortcomings of library education. A shortcoming, he argues, that has resulted in a profession distracted by fleeting technologies, preoccupied with professional advancement,and unconcerned with “the possession of meaningful knowledge that can be turned toward social good.”
WELL.
The first chapter is online (Merci a Monica for sharing that information), and is an enticing read for those among us who care about library education. Which is me. Why? I dunno. But I’ve blogged about the issue before. And I’m NOT EVEN IN LIBRARY SCHOOL ANYMORE.
I think I agree with some of what he says regarding subject knowledge, and the need for more reflective thinking in our profession. But I wonder about where many of my colleagues fit into his vision of librarianship, i.e. Librarians who work with eLearning, or digital initiatives, or information systems. I’ve seen what happens when those arenas are left to non-librarian technical teams, and it ain’t pretty. Or those who manage the libraries, and worry about glamorous things like who’s going to cover the desk when everyone is on vacation, or where we’re going to get the money for more computers. I wonder about where they fit in. But perhaps those questioned will be answered in Chapters 2 through 6.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Faculty of Information, Good reads, i-school, librarians
Back in November, I conducted an interview for the Special Libraries Association’s Toronto Student Group. I met up with Sophia Apostle, an MLIS graduate currently working as the Knowledge Resources Manager for Coutts Information Services to discuss her professional experiences and to gain some insights from her about how students can get into the job market. It was lots of fun, and we had a great time chatting. You can read the interview on the SLA-TSG blog here.
It’s always nice meeting new people in the field – yay libraryland!
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Good reads, librarians, volunteer activities
I’m in the middle of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s, “The Tipping Point.” It’s a very interesting read, in which Gladwell attempts to put his finger on how certain social behaviours or events go from being a blip on society’s radar, to being a full-blown social phenomenon. Gladwell argues that these success stories got to a tipping point, and then exploded into popular culture.
The particular section I’m reading is an anecdote about a company called Gore – as in GoreTex, though they also make tons of stuff for the electronics industry, health care and the military (and here I thought they only made rain jackets). Gore never has more than 150 people at a single plant; if a plant grows beyond that, they buy a new plant and split the group in half. The founder, Bill Gore, noticed that things get clumsy at a hundred and fifty, and that in small plants every part of the process for designing and making and marketing a given product is subject to the same group scrutiny to ensure a constant climate of innovation and sharing, and a holistic understanding of production. There is a common relationship among workers so that they are constantly moving forward and a sort of “peer-pressure” develops which ensures everyone is working toward a unified goal.
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Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Good reads, knowledge management
This is an article review I wrote for our Information Technology class. This article is drawn from Ariadne, which is a great online magazine: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue55/. It’s a UK magazine which is nice – I find everything I read from the library world is North American, so it’s good to get off the continent once in awhile. The language is a bit technical, but not too much; certain articles will push you out of your comfort zone, but since the content is entirely focused on technology in libraries and information centres, it’s never too far from home.
I can’t remember what the original assignment told us to do, but I basically turned it into a literature review of how people interact with wikis (a sparse topic, to be sure). This is a topic that is near and dear to me – people always get excited about implementing new technologies, but of course you have to win over people’s hearts and minds if you ever want that technology to be used. I’m facing this challenge in my work at the Library of Parliament this summer. I am creating a large e-resource that will be used by all the parliamentary librarians, and hopefully by the public as well. I’m acutely aware however, that I must conscientiously ensure that the technology is usable, but also that I show people how to use it and why they should use it. I’ll have to draw on information literacy principles to ensure that my work doesn’t go to waste simply because I ignored the most important part of it: The people using it!!
Guy, M. (2006). Wiki or won’t he? A tale of public sector wikis. [Electronic version]. Ariadne, October (49). Retrieved October 17 2007, from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue49/guy/
In the article, “Wiki or Won’t He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis”, author Marieke Guy discusses wiki technology and its applicability in the public sector. As a member of the Interoperability Focus team at UKOLN, a centre for digital information management, Guy has written many articles concerning issues of web services in the library environment for online periodicals such as Adriane and d-lib. The aim of this article is to assess wiki use in the public sector, and suggest the means to extend and improve its application.
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Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Good reads, information management, web 2.0
