For over a year, I have been reading and learning about the insights of neuroscience. The starting point for such learning should be the science; Dr Norman Doidge’s book “The Brain that changes itself” is a key popular book in this area. There are other books that have developed this theme for other contexts. In the field of economics, I am reading, “Create Your Own Economy” by Tyler Cowen. There is also Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind,” that uses neuroscience as a metaphor to think about business and career development.

To my great delight, the Toronto Star newspaper  has launched an eight day series on neuroscience by writer Alanna Mitchell. Today’s article is called, “Brains: the secret to better schools.” Most of the examples concern the traditional education setting, mainly the primary school level in fact. However, I think the points made in the article can be generalized to other contexts, not least of which is continuing education. Let me take you through a few quotes from the article to get you thinking and hopefully inspired.

“We used to say that intelligence was 80 per cent genetic and 20 per cent environmental,” says Martin Westwell, a neuroscientist in Adelaide at Flinders University. “Now we tend to say that it’s 20 per cent genetic and 80 per cent environmental.”

The brain is malleable. And the research is showing that if students think they can learn, then they do. If they think their intelligence is fixed at a low level – whether because of social or economic status, skin colour, gender, family history, which country they live in – then they stick to that level.

“It is absolutely clear that the brain is not fixed,” says Westwell. “And in schools the kids who see intelligence as malleable have a better trajectory.”

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To many neuroscientists, today’s mainstream education system is mired firmly where medicine was during the Middle Ages. Practices continue based on tradition, not science, just as medieval doctors used leeches to bleed patients without knowing whether it worked.

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“It’s like lighting the fire. Learning skills are inert until they are driven by intrinsic motivation,” says Jonathan Sharples, a neuroscientist at the Institute for Effective Education at the University of York in England.

It’s the opposite of being ordered to memorize something for no apparent reason and then spitting it out on cue. The human brain just doesn’t respond well to being told to hold the body still for long periods, focus the mind and learn something just because another person tells it to do so. The brain needs context and meaning. It needs to know why it should learn.

All of those observations strike me as promising and worthy of contemplation. The claim that modern education is stuck in the dark ages may be a bit controversial but I think there is something to it. Part of the problem may be that those aspiring to apply neuroscience to formal education systems presume that learning is the only or primary goal of formal education. In contrast, Tyler Cowen argues that economists have identified at least three motivations for education: “First, we go to school to learn something. Second, we go to school to demonstrate our smarts and perseverance, or in other words to show that we can ‘jump through hoops.’ Economics call this the ’signaling model of education.’ Third, we go to school because it is (sometimes) fun.” (Create Your Own Economy, p 106).

You can read an overview of the series and read the rest of the articles over at the Toronto Star.

What do you think of these findings? Would they change how you design education programs? What about how you teach others what you know (either in a formal setting or when you are assisting a friend, colleague or family member)? As a professional dedicated to the effective use of information and knowledge, this series reminds me of the complexity of the problem. And that I shouldn’t accept it when people say they are past learning something.

When I’m not thinking about libraries proper, I often think about records, information and knowledge management. In that environment, activity is driven by a combination of organizational needs and compliance requirements. Certain kinds of records must be kept for a certain period of time – for many people, the requirements to keep income tax related records for seven years is a good example. There are also times when records and information has to be managed in order to support work, analysis and other needs of that nature.

The social cost of poor records management had not occured to me however. In yesterday’s New York Times, there was an article called Recession Drives Surge in Youth Runaways which described growing numbers of young people who decide to run away from home. The full extent of the problem is not understood and the authorities often have a difficult time helping those who need help due to poor records and weak record systems. Here’s what the article found:

And in 16 percent of cases, the local police failed to enter the information into the federal database, as required under federal law, according to a review of federal data by The New York Times.

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Police officials give various reasons for not entering the data. The software is old and cumbersome, they say, or they have limited resources and need to prioritize their time…The police also say that entering every report into the federal database could make a city’s situation appear to be more of a problem than it is.

But in 267 of the cases around the nation for which the police did not enter a report into the database, the children remain missing. In 58, they were found dead.

There are several issues to take notice of here. The reports are being entered into a crime related database and arguably, that may not be a great place to store this type of social services information. Further, the users of the system find it difficult to use. There is also a cultural problem where records are not kept properly since that could be embarrassing. Sadly, there does seem to be an implication that a lack of records leads to a greater chance of death or something else terrible happening. I would be the first to admit that this is a large, complex problem that needs a whole host of people to cooperate. Good records and record systems could go a long way to solving the problem though.

Today, students from the Faculty of Information will hold a “Dare To Ask” challenge where they will answer questions to all who come to them. There are two objectives to the event; 1) raising money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation (a charitable organization that focuses on the AIDS crisis in Africa) and 2) “to raise awareness about the role of information workers (librarians, archivists, museum workers, journalists, writers) in their communities. The students believe that a key role of information workers is to be socially active members of the communities they serve.” It is an interesting idea and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it before.

The issue of library/information philanthropy is something I’ve been thinking about lately. There are plenty of options for those interested in pursuing this route – donating money to literacy campaigns run by public libraries, helping academic libraries expand their services or you can even sponsor a book in need of preservation at the British Library and more. These are all worthy goals and should not be discounted. I do wonder if library/information philanthropy of that type is a bit too backward looking. Charitable activity is a competitive space with all kinds of good causes vying for attention. What kind of program would best distinguish information services from other causes? I would speculate that a focus on services may work better over the long run than a focus on collections or buildings.

Welcome to Open Access Week (October 19-23, 2009). Open access is a philosophy that I am passionate about. While I have had the privilege of access to Canada’s largest libraries (the Toronto Public Library – the largest public library in the country and the University of Toronto, the largest Canadian library by number of items), not all have that access. As a high school student, accessing resources in research libraries was a difficult task that few pursued (one could borrow items from the local University library but for each borrow request, I had to get a letter from the high school librarian vouching for me).

Now, you can have a look at the Directory of Open Access Journals and find articles from a variety of fields. The physical and medical sciences have embraced the principles of open access to the greatest degree, but there are other disciplines as well. I hope this trend continues and that more researchers see fit to contribute to it. One question that open access advocates do not seem to consider is how the open access movement impacts those industries that depend on intellectual property (e.g. movies, film, pharmaceuticals, software, engineering, law, investment and the rest of the creative economy) protections. Figuring out a way to balance the open access ethic with the legitimate desire of creators to profit from their work has long been a thorny question in copyright. Part of the value of open access lies in rebalancing the debate more evenly.

York University has distinguished itself as a leader in the open access arena by proclaiming that all articles, books and other scholarly communications produced by librarians and archivists there will be available on an open access basis. I know and respect several librarians at York University and this increases my respect for them even further. The policy was passed on October 1 of this year and it will be evaluated again in a year.

My impression is that Canadian universities, as a whole, are lagging behind their American counterparts in adopting open access (I’ve blogged previously about the Ivy League Compact on Open Access Publishing Equity). However, I get the sense that the gap is smaller here than in social media where many institutions in Canada were years behind the United States. Indeed, fellow library blogger Heather Morrison has written about Canadian leadership in open access movement compiled a great list of open access news and announcements from across Canada that is worth a look. For information professionals working in education, this is an area for us to lead both in advocating for its value (e.g. scientific research becomes available to all who want it) and showing how to implement it.

To underscore the importance of open access, I am making my Master’s thesis, “The Role of Civil Society Organizations in the Net Neutrality Debate in Canada and the United States,” will be available on an open access basis through the University of Toronto TSpace depository at the end of November.  Further details on how to access it will be posted it when it goes online.

When I approach a cashier to make a purchase, I hope to conclude the transaction smoothly and quickly. Few things irritate me more in that context than trying to get the cashier’s attention during the process. I have had several experiences where I am poised to pay for an item, only to find the cashier engaged in an apparently irrelevant conversation with a co-worker. I feel like saying, “I’m a paying customer, so can you please focus on me so I can pay?” I find that a frustrating experience. Maybe retail staff are simply not motivated enough to deliver quality service? I think part of the problem is proper customer service skills are simply handed down as orders, rather than explained. I, for one, think it is better to explain rules and show how they make a positive contribution. [Conversely, if a rule cannot be explained or does not make a positive contribution, then maybe it should be reconsidered!]

I am happy to report that librarians know both the how and why of customer service. In preparation for my training at AskON tomorrow, I was asked to read an article called, “The effects of librarians’ behavioral performance on user satisfaction in chat reference services,” by Nahyun Kwon and Vicki L. Gregory published in Reference & User Services Quarterly (RUSQ). In brief, the authors analyzed transcripts from Internet chat reference sessions to determine whether or not compliance with reference librarian guidelines increased user satisfaction. The answer is yes. What makes users satisfied? The authors found six behaviours to be particularly important:

• used the patron’s name during the reference interview;
• communicated more receptively and listened more carefully;
• searched with or for the patron;
• provided pointers;
• asked the patron whether the question was completely answered; and
• asked the patron to come back if they needed further assistance.

Those all sound like good practices. The third item reminds me of research I heard about in grad school on approachability which claimed that patrons in libraries think librarians are more approachable when they are up and about helping somebody, rather than seated at a desk. I have encountered some of these behaviours when on the phone with various companies and generally find they strike a good note.

The 2009 issue of Inforumed, the alumni magazine of the Faculty of Information (University of Toronto), is now available. I wrote some of the short articles for this issue as a member of the Alumni Association. I am excited by some of the research happening there and appreciate that the magazine offers a venue to connect with some of these projects. You can access the high-resolution PDF of the magazine online for free. The person pictured on the front cover of the magazine, shown above, is Professor Matt Ratto who has created a “Critical Making” class. I didn’t take that class as a student, but it definately looks creative and interesting. As I understand it, part of the class involves creating physical items to manifest abstract concepts (e.g. one assignment was to create “an ethical machine” and I gather that somebody made a STOP traffic sign as a result).

At the end of October 2009, GeoCities will cease to exist when Yahoo! pulls the plug on the service that helped wanted many personal websites back in the 1990s. All is not lost however: the Internet Archive is undertaking an effort to store as much of this material as they can, but it is unclear how they are doing that or if they should. In many ways, GeoCities is past its prime but there is still plenty of interesting content there and it shows how the early days of the Web operated. Comparing Web usage from 1997 to 2007 could make for an interesting research project, I imagine.

The Internet Archive’s efforts to ‘archive’ GeoCities, however impressive, cannot be considered “archiving” in the professional or classic sense. The relatively low cost of data storage (low is not the same as zero or free though) seduces some to think that simply everything produced should be stored – it would appear that is how the IA is ‘archiving’ GeoCities content. Simply making copies of as much content as possible is not what I would call an archive. Imagine an organization is moving out of a building and setting up elsewhere, would it make sense to “archive” every single piece of paper and data in the office? Such an archive would be both large and difficult to use. What criteria are being used to determine what should be kept? What about the people who created the GeoCities content?

The article linked to above raises some interesting questions about the durability of data on the Internet. Institutions such as universities and libraries have, in many cases, existed for decades or centuries. It is unlikely that a dissertation or other valuable item at Harvard or Oxford will be in danger of loss (though fire, flooding and other disasters are always a possibility), but is that the case for free Web services? If the example of the sudden death of GeoCities is any indication, then one has some reason to be skeptical about the longevity of data in cloud applications such as Gmail. Maybe there will be a move, at some point, to introduce “data longevity” standards into user agreements? Maybe such guarantees will serve to differentiate free services from paid ones? In the final analysis, it may only be traditional archives that can be counted on to archive content professionally and retain it for the long term.

It is banned books week in the United States (September 26- October 3) , always a good opportunity to recall the importance of the profession’s commitment to freedom of expression and intellectual freedom more generally.

According to the Banned Books Week website, the tradition started in the early 1980s and has only grown since. The American Library Association has also put together a good Banned Books website. I have often thought that a course dedicated to reading banned books would be a great educational experience.  In fact, some books that have been challenged frequently in the USA (e.g. To Kill A Mockingbird and The Lord of the Flies) were required reading in English while I read others (e.g. 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; we like dystopian fiction here in Canada; “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood was assigned reading and also good) for book reports with the enthusiastic support of teachers. I am also delighted to report that Google Books has put together a Banned Books website too. In reading through the list of books mentioned by ALA, I was surprised to see that the education authorities in Toronto sought to ban “The Lord of the Flies” in 1988.