Yesterday and today, I was notified that I received two seperate grants to attend conferences. This is fantastic news! The timing was perfect too – it came just in time to raise my spirits. There is a week left in the semester before everything is due…

I am now registered to attend the Canadian Library Association conference in Montreal, May 29-June 1 (where I will be co-presenting a poster session). I am also registered to the Special Libraries Association conference in Washington DC in June. While I will not be presenting at SLA, I will be taking a few courses, participating in the Research & Development (it occurs to me that I could now claim to work in “R&D”!) committee and otherwise enjoying the conference. I’m hoping to blog about both, but it already looks like I will have a very full schedule – I may end up with Twitter length blog posts.

I love everything about research, especially social science research. In class on Tuesday (my final Information Policy class), a guest speaker made the point that library advocacy in Canada suffers from a lack of studies (and that using US data in Canada is rarely convincing). I couldn’t agree more – I often read articles in newspapers about studies conducted in the US and wonder, “Hmm… I wonder if this is true in Canada?” My first professional effort to address this problem was born last summer when I approached Meghan Ecclestone, a fellow student, and proposed that we study the professional development activities of students in the Faculty of Information. Some of the preliminary findings of our study were reported by Dean Seamus Ross at the Ontario Library Association conference back in January. Meghan and I will be presenting our results at this year’s Canadian Library Association Conference in Montréal.

Why did we conduct the study? First, there is almost no information on Canadian students in the information field in the literature (in fact, I found only one study anywhere, about archival studies). Second, I was curious to know more about what my fellow students were up to. Why do I think others in the profession would be interested? Well, I hope that the findings will help employers understand more about students and what they are capable of. It should also assist educators (and professional associations!) in designing programs to meet the needs of students. I don’t want to go into it too much more, but this is the sort of work that I would like to do more of. Almost everyone in education (and libraries etc) would benefit from understanding students better, especially if such understanding raises above the level of anecdote.

In addition to the above, I am conducting research for my Master’s thesis on net neutrality policy in Canada and the United States. Many in Canada may be unfamiliar with this issue as it has a lower profile here than in the US, but that is no reason not to be interested. The debate over Net Neutrality is fundamentally about the future of the Internet and its role in society. Will freedom of expression continue to be protected (or even advanced further)? Will ISPs and governments respect privavy rights? What will happen to non-profit uses of the Interenet such as health research, tele-medicine, education and so forth, if net neutrality fails to be upheld? My project is specifically focusing on the views and activity of civil society organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the American Library Association and so forth. I hope to some day turn this project into academic articles or perhaps a book.

In addition to conducting my own research, I am interested in supporting others as well. I am a member of the Special Libraries Association Research & Development committee which provides grants to researchers. This is my first term working on this Committee and I look forward to reporting more about it later. Needless to say, if you are looking for funds to conduct research on information professionals, please do consider applying for a research grant.

Last week, YouTube launched an educational section where videos from colleges and universities have been posted. There is a lot of content from major American universities already: Stanford has more than 500 videos, MIT has nearly 900 and several hundred from Harvard. Thus far, I have not seen anything there from any institution in Canada or the United Kingdom (or indeed, anywhere outside the USA). While such projects certainly offer education more broadly, I wonder what the goal is. Are the universities trying to promote themselves? So far, there is a mix of lectures, special events and some PR material. I wonder if librarians are involved in making this happen and curating the YouTube presence? These are points to return to at some later point.

One more YouTube note before I get down to work. The Library of Congress now has a channel on YouTube with about 70 videos. The Library itself also has a blog post explaining their strategy and some of the planning that went into this project. I would love to see more Canadian institutions get involved in similar projects – there are plenty of large audio-visual archives that should think about this more. I think it is also significant that the Library has put copies of this material on a public place like YouTube rather than keeping it in a content island on their own website. Half the battle in projects like this is making the resources and content easy for users to discover and use. Users should not need to radically alter their habits to simply find information resources. This is one reason why I think podcasts (using RSS, the iTunes Music Store etc) are a good way to distribute content – people can obtain it when they wish by whatever method they wish.

I’m starting to think about distribution projects like this more. Where can we add value? There are at least two broad ways to do this. Librarians (and related professionals such as archivists) understand quality issues and preservation – their digitized projects are likely to be of high quality (and thus pleasant to use). In addition, we can bring our classic set of skills – indexing, cataloguing etc – to make these resources easy for people to find. I would also hope that we can measure the effectiveness of our cataloguing to see what type of indexing resonates with people (e.g. do people find the content by tags or do they prefer to search based on title? Or some other criteria?). The basic data to answer that kind of question should be easy to obtain – analyzing it will be more difficult but the pay off will be in more responsive cataloguing that makes sense to users. This sort of ongoing evaluation of cataloguing effectiveness is difficult to do in traditional book cataloguing, but easier to do in digital cataloguing.

Yesterday, the Toronto Star newspaper published an article on the research and information behaviour of first year undergraduate students in Ontario (Profs blast lazy first-year students, April 6). The premise of the article – or, if you prefer, the punchy-if-misleading summary of it – is that today’s undergraduate students are incapable (or unwilling) to undertake research at the university level, preferring to rely on sources such as Wikipedia. Tellingly, the author of the article describes the present cohort of students as “the Wikipedia generation” and appears to consider this a slight. The possibility that an admiration of (and use of) Wikipedia could indicate worthwhile values regarding cooperation, open access and writing does not appear to be considered here, sadly. To paraphrase Clay Shirky, isn’t better to spend half hour an hour a day or week improving or creating a Wikipedia article rather than watching TV? Wikipedia itself also encourages some good work habits for contributors, such as the importance of citing sources.

There are two points I wish to comment on from this article; one on Wikipedia and one regarding post-secondary education more generally. When it comes to Wikipedia (or indeed, the Internet more generally), attacking a specific resource is not very useful. Likewise, simply praising a source as utterly reliable is not very useful (everyone, I’m sure, is aware of the 2005 Nature study comparing error rates between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica; an interesting claim, though subsequent commentators have critiqued the study). As a former teaching assistant, I can tell you that simply creating lists of banned and approved sources does not get you very fair. Ultimately, students need to learn information literacy skills to evaluate information (. That is what educators should focus on in my view. It is the information equivalent of teaching a person to fish (i.e. how to evaluate a source) instead of giving a person a fish (i.e. here is a list of trustworthy sources). If a person is starving for lack of information, then sure, start them off with some good resources. But after that has passed, teaching evaluation skills is next. That is more difficult than it sounds to do well, but librarians and professors need to work together to get students on that path. Insulting students for being lazy might embarass a few into doing better, but that should not be the only approach.

Moving on to the study’s main conclusions (as summarized in the article), I continue to be skeptical and curious about it. The article’s summary of the article does make some interesting economic points however. If universities are largely funded on the basis of per capita student enrollment  (i.e. each additional enrolled student bring X dollars into the institution), then such a system creates incentives to retain those students and weakens the incentive to fail or expell students for weak performance. However, this set of incentives should also encourage universities to provide better support – and we do see cases of that all over such as writing labs, math clinics and the like. Where the article gets both more interesting (and more controversial and provocative) is the following section:

James Côté, a sociology professor at the University of Western Ontario, says the survey confirms a lot of recent research, and that the decline in student preparedness began years ago but has more recently accelerated.

“It’s a wider societal issue, where leisure is very much valued and work habits are not necessarily reinforced in the way that they were in the past. The work ethic is not what it used to be … no pain, no gain doesn’t seem to be prevalent any more.”

Côté co-authored a book, Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis, that in part chronicled the issues professors have with today’s students and he writes a blog where he hears from professors all the time.

With the current focus on stemming high-school dropouts, discipline and punctuality are not longer reinforced, and students come to university expecting to continue that, he added.

I’ve read Ivory Tower Blues and found it interesting though I cannot recall all of its points now. Has punctuality declined? I’m not so sure.  Is youth cultre (or “Canadian culture” in general) become more fixated on leisure? That’s an interesting question for a wealthy society to consider – in a rich country, there is simply more time for leisure and leisure becomes much more important to people once all their more fundamental needs are satisfied. What about Work habits? Depends on what you mean. I know plenty of students who work part time while they study, in addition to organizing conferences, editing journals and so forth. In quite a few cases, they are working (academic, extra-curricular and paid) more than forty hours a week. My observation might be flawed as I tend to meet highly motivated students. While I am inclined to view this kind of claim skeptically, I was happy to discover Professor Côté’s blog which I have just started to read. My early impressions of that blog are positive and it is the sort of blog where even when you disagree, you still come away having learned something.

A few days ago, I came across an interesting project to make available an easily searchable database that shows all contracts (2004 to present) awarded by the Government of Canada. You can find this at disclosed.ca. I have only experimented with it a little, but what I have seen so far is encouraging. This is a good example of what librarians need to do. Sure, the contract information is out there but absent a good tool to organize it and make it available, it has very limited value.

I’ve been following similar open government efforts in the United Kingdom and United States with great interest over the past year or so, but there are relatively few examples of it in Canada. I would be very interested to know of more cases though.

I read Stephen Abram’s blog on a regular basis and have met him several times, but this video was still interesting to me. He expresses some of the same views that I hold on libraries. Libraries have played an important role in my life for years and years. I like to visit them, I like to work in them and I find them to be a valuable resource. I am particularly inspired by the role he has played in professional associations.

I’ve never met Michael Stephens, but I’ve certainly read his blog and other writings. He does some very cutting-edge work; his dissertation looked at blogs. Libraries might be strongly associated with books, but that is only part of the picture in my view. He also makes the point that technolust is a danger for some – we need to remember that people are what make these organizations tick. I can understand that case but I’ve talked to a number of non-professionals who, for some reason, equate “librarian” with “check out clerk.” This is something that needs to be addressed. But that is not going to be done here.

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Some inspiration was something I needed this evening. There are two weeks left in the semester and I’m working on some final projects. Some of my friends have already found employment, which is encouraging to hear in this economy. I myself will be working on my Master’s thesis over the summer – as well as participating in several conferences – so there is still plenty to do after the present crunch period comes to a conclusion.

Yesterday, I watched TVO’s episode on Ontario’s Innovation Economy (listen to it as an MP3 or watch it online in video) which was filmed in Waterloo, Ontario. Waterloo is a fairly small city in Ontario that has become famous as the home of the Research in Motion (RIM) company (which makes the BlackBerry communications device) and home to major scientific research institutions such as the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. It was interesting discussion to observe, but it could have pushed for greater depth. In the midst of so much bad economic news, it was a delight to see that RIM is actually hiring several thousand people and that people in that region are optimistic about the future.

I think innovation is great and such be encouraged more. I aim to be innovative in my own professional work but there are challenges. Public institutions are often less culturally supportive of risk-taking and other attitudes that support innovation. That is not meant to be a blanket statement by any means – there are still many exceptions and there are some signs that risk aversion is on the decline. What I wonder about in the context of the TVO episode (and other contexts) where innovation is always reduced to engineering, computing and the like. There are only so many engineering programs in the country after all. I’d like to see innovation understood more broadly.

Two final notes; it was interesting to see Richard Florida discussing a Canadian city and Canadian issues at length. I’ve read several of his books and find them to be optimistic and interesting, though they tend to focus on the United States almost exclusively. On a different level, one comment from Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM fascinated me. He stated that one of the major problems that companies need to address is the lack of attention to intellectual property, both in terms of corporate strategy and at the level of law. It stikes me that this need could be addressed well by a collaboration between a librarian and a lawyer. The role of the lawyer should be clear to most readers. The role of the librarian may be less clear however. While the lawyer can certainly help at the end of the process (e.g. filing a patent etc), the librarian helps everywhere else by providing support and knowledge management.

I was interviewed for an article in the latest issue of CASLIS’s (CASLIS is a division of the CLA) publication, Special Issues: Bulletin of the Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Information Services Vol. 19 No. 1 (2009). Last summer, I had the opportunity to volunteer in CASLIS Ottawa to organize events for students working in the Ottawa area. There are several interesting articles in the issue such as advice for those attending conferences. If you are looking for the section involving me, that is on page 7 where I am interviewed with several other students.

A friend of mine sent me a great April Fool’s joke today (I actually think this would be fun to play) where Blizzard introduces Archivists as a character class in Diablo III.

From the website:

In my writings, I have recounted stories of the barbarians and their endless battles with the demons of the frozen north, and devoted pages to the wizards of Caldeum who harness the primal forces  of reality. But the might of these heroes is nothing compared to the power of the archivists of Westmarch. These brave souls wade into battle wielding tome and quill, armored not in ensorcelled plate or links of chain, but in the knowledge of generations past. These archivists fight not only for our future, but for our past as well.

I first encountered an archivist in the ruins of the great city of Travincal. While exploring one of the long-abandoned temples, I was drawn by the flickering of faint torchlight through a distant doorway, and then, as I crept nearer, by the sound of a voice. There was a feeling in the air of danger near at hand, an electricity that made the hairs on my neck rise. I inched forward, breath caught in my throat, grateful for the safety of the hallway’s long shadows. Then I saw him.

[...]

I have the utmost respect for the archivists, these warriors of myth and legend. We know their names: Alimet Two Quills, master of illumination with both left and right hand; Morienne the Scrivener, a midwife whose poetry stole the hearts of kings and brought tyrants to tears; and Salazar Cid, the Master Transcriber of Gea Kul, whose bombastic penmanship is known in all the lands of the Twin Seas and beyond. But these are only a chosen few. The members of their honored fraternity are many, and their numbers grow every day.

As much as I enjoy such things (who among us didn’t enjoy the film The Name of the Rose?), I wonder how many people think of archivists like this. In contrast, you have the next generation of archivists: Digital Archivists, Now in Demand (New York Times, Feb. 7, 2009)

For an example (large and high resolution!) of the concept art, click on the More button:

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Several of my friends in my graduate program have been offered and have accepted positions, even though they will not quite be done for a few more weeks. I will not be available for full time employment for several more months as I am still researching and writing my Master’s thesis, but I follow such developments with great interest. It is reassuring to see that employment trends are still looking promising in my field, despite all the bad economic news that one sees on a daily basis. I want to dig a bit deeper than that though. In aticles in various places – often the New York Times (e.g. As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force) – that argue that the recession is having an uneven gender impact. Industries dominated by men (everything from financial services to automotive manufacturing) have seen major losses in employment while those sectors dominated by women (nursing, teaching and so forth) are, thus far, seeing very few losses.

I wonder why women-dominated sectors and professions tend to resist recessions better? It might be that such professions tend to be public sector and that sector is comparitively more stable in terms in employment. For Canada, librarianship is female dominated (78% female in 2004 nationally); perhaps the sector will continue to soldier on despite the recession. Last fall, I met someone in the field who had the bad fortune to have his first job interview on September 11, 2001 (having graduated from his Master’s program a few months earlier) and thus spent more than six months searching for employment. This person has now found a very good position at a consulting firm, so it worked out. That’s another potential positive aspect to the recession; it encourages people to think more creatively about employment (and services and technology; the 1930s was actually a time of substantial innovation in several sectors).

Perhaps more men should consider working in the historically women dominated professions. In my field, there is plenty of interesting things happening and new job postings are continuing to be released on a regular basis.

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