But the truth is technology has changed how our users behave when they seek information and how they interact with each other. Nowadays, libraries are not the main place where they can satisfy their need for information; they do it through the Internet. Through Google, in particular. And they like to do it by themselves. Also, users have become more demanding: they don’t want you just to give them the information they seek; they want it to be accurate, the latest, and they want it now and for free. But don’t expect them to go all the way to the library, and if they are already in the library, don’t expect them to get up from their computer screen and walk all the way to the reference desk. Instead they’ll ask their colleagues through Messenger or they’ll send an email or even publish a comment on their Facebook profile.
These changes mean a great opportunity for New Professionals as we are “digital natives” and we also behave in this way when we search for information or communicate among ourselves.
"NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW PROFESSIONALS"
ReplyDeleteProposed paper for the New Professionals Conference organized by CILIP Career Development
Group, 6th July 2009, Metropolitan University London
by Nicholas Robinson-Garcia
Graduate Trainee, EC3: Science and Scientific Communication Evaluation, University of Granada, Spain
As Internet develops itself continuously, new technologies arise. These new technologies not only create new sources of information (such as websites), but also influence the way people communicate with each other (blogs, wikis, social networks, for instance). This new environment gives rise to new opportunities for Information Professionals and substantially changes the librarian’s work. New Professionals are perfect candidates to fulfill the new career profiles as they are “digital natives” and - for the first time - their technological skills make them able to compete with senior professionals developing their careers. In this paper we analyze the changes new technologies have brought to information communication and we review new career profiles that are appearing as a consequence of all these changes. We discuss some of the changes that Web 2.0 has brought to public libraries and how new professionals can take advantage of them showing the success stories of some Spanish New Professionals. Also we examine the transformation of scholarly communication with the appearance of Web 2.0 tools and illustrate the new career profiles that are appearing as a consequence with success stories.
ReplyDeleteSince Tim O’Reilly (2005) coined the term Web 2.0 and Michael Casey (2005) talked for the first time about Library 2.0, librarians have found themselves snowed under with lots of new concepts associated with technology that have made substantial changes to their daily work. During the last few years, information professionals have been overwhelmed by the constant need to update themselves, trying to keep up with new trends and trying to understand how these changes affect the way users communicate.
ReplyDeleteAll of this effort has - in some cases - become an obsession (Blyberg, 2008), creating two streams. On the one hand, those professionals who think of new technologies as a revolution which changes the profession into something different where librarians are connected to their users through social networks, talking to them through a blog, sharing links instead of sharing books and answering users’ requests instantly through a chat. And those who think that technology doesn’t have such a big impact on the library’s objective (Annoyed Librarian, 2008) of serving the community’s information needs without having to put much stress on how users interact with each other.
In this paper, we try to explore a middle way between these two views. We discuss how technology might affect new professionals and whether new career profiles are possible in this ever-changing environment. We discuss the importance of trying to satisfy users’ needs and keep up with changes in their behavior when they search for information or when they communicate. Finally, we show three success stories in Spain of New Professionals who have been able to discover niches in the profession which weren’t covered; identifying needs that hadn’t been satisfied. Each case will illustrate a field of endeavor - libraries, academic research and business - in order to demonstrate that new career profiles arise no matter the institution we work for.
Nowadays, when someone mentions the words “new technologies”, we quickly think about Internet, blogs, wikis, social networks and all that Web 2.0 represents. The incredible outburst of new technologies has made such an impact on our lives that it blinkers us in many ways, not letting us get a whole picture of how society is evolving and what role librarians and information professionals should fulfill.
ReplyDeleteTraditionally, libraries have been conceived as closed spaces where users would turn up whenever they had the need for information. Librarians would sit at their desks and wait for users to come to them. With Library 2.0, we talk about open spaces, interacting with users no matter where they are (Casey, 2006). We think of it as a new philosophy, a revolution which changes completely the perspective not just of librarians, but also of the view people have of librarians. It sounds so good that we’ve become obsessed in some ways, theorizing about what Library 2.0 really means (Maness, 2006). We have even discussed what it is and what it isn’t (Blyberg, 2008), as if a new paradigm had arisen and changed the whole profession thanks to the development of some new tools. But, has such a big change really taken place? Are there such big differences between then and now? Must we, as new professionals, adopt a new role?
Well, if we have a close look at what happens around us, the answer to all of these questions would be: yes and no. In many ways, libraries still do what they did just twenty years ago. These new technologies are no more than tools that enable us to get to our users in easier ways. In other words, libraries were closed spaces before not because librarians weren’t interested in their community, but because they didn’t have the tools to reach their customers. The Internet has become a great opportunity for the expansion of library services, many of them being referred to now as web-based library services (Maness, 2006). But nevertheless, the librarian’s role and the library’s goal haven’t changed. Quoting Keith Fiels, executive director of ALA (Robinson, 2008):
“My take is that libraries still do the things they did a hundred years ago but all these things [technology] have been added on top of it.”
Understanding the opportunities, but also the limitations technology gives us; helps us to develop a more critical view of how to make the best of them in order to become successful professionals. Another reason why it is important to maintain a critical view is because many librarians, in order to keep up with all these new tools; sign up for everything, without really thinking whether they need them or not. It is important always to keep in mind that most of these tools were not developed for libraries, so we always have to focus on what it is we want to achieve when we use them.
In this sense, Meredith Farkas (2009) made a very illuminating analysis of the main reasons that 2.0 web technology fails when applied to library services. These four reasons can be summarized as follows:
ReplyDelete- Normally, this type of initiative is not linked to the institution’s goals and is not reflected in the library’s policy.
- Many libraries start using these services just to show they are “cool” without being really interested in them, but to show they know about them.
- In many cases, they are just the “toy” of one or other of the employees and have nothing to do with the library as an institution.
- Creating a blog takes just five minutes. The difficult thing is maintaining it.
But the truth is technology has changed how our users behave when they seek information and how they interact with each other. Nowadays, libraries are not the main place where they can satisfy their need for information; they do it through the Internet. Through Google, in particular. And they like to do it by themselves. Also, users have become more demanding: they don’t want you just to give them the information they seek; they want it to be accurate, the latest, and they want it now and for free. But don’t expect them to go all the way to the library, and if they are already in the library, don’t expect them to get up from their computer screen and walk all the way to the reference desk. Instead they’ll ask their colleagues through Messenger or they’ll send an email or even publish a comment on their Facebook profile.
These changes mean a great opportunity for New Professionals as we are “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) and we also behave in this way when we search for information or communicate among ourselves. So, the answer to the big question “Do we really need new professionals in this ever changing environment?” Is “Yes”, we certainly do, and we are perfectly capable of developing new strategies to achieve our main goal of serving our community.
As we’ve seen with the many examples in this paper, New Professionals are making a real impact on the profession and, thanks to new technologies; they are being able to reach places others haven’t been to before.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, in order to get that far, you need a dose of creativity and you need to maintain a very optimistic, enthusiastic attitude. New Professionals can only discover new work niches by searching for information needs that haven’t been satisfied and demonstrating they have the most suitable profile to fulfill the new position.
All the examples we’ve given do have one thing in common. In each case, it has been individuals who have taken the initiative, so we can’t talk about a general transformation of the profession. The profiles we have shown are probably exclusive to these individual professionals, but they do represent an encouraging start for a new generation of library and information professionals.
http://ec3.ugr.es/publicaciones/NRobinson_CILIP_060709.pdf
ReplyDelete