Concordia University announced this week that it is adopting an open access policy for its research. According to the University’s press release, librarians played an essential leadership role in this policy:

Gerald Beasley, Concordia’s University Librarian, was instrumental in the campus-wide dialogue on open access that began more than a year ago. “I am delighted that Senate voted to support the recommendations of all four Faculty Councils and the Council of the School of Graduate Studies. There are only a handful of precedents in North America for the kind of leadership that Concordia faculty have demonstrated by their determination to make publicly-funded research available to all rather than just the minority able to afford the rapidly rising subscription costs of scholarly databases, books and journals.”

Further, the university has launched an institutional repository service called Spectrum. At present, it has approximately six thousand dissertations available. The repository is maintained and operated by the library. In reading the Spectrum Frequently Asked Questions, I also came across this statement explaining how open access improves research impact. This is an excellent point to raise as this is an important concern for many researchers.

Question: How does depositing in Spectrum increase research impact?

Research repositories benefit faculty members by bringing about broader dissemination, increased use and enhanced professional visibility of their scholarly research.

When work reaches a wider audience, it often leads to an increase in citations. According to Peter Suber, open access to research publications increases the audience for a work far beyond the audience of any priced journal, even the most prestigious or popular journal. Studies in many fields show a correlation between open access and citation-count increases from 50% to 250%. See this Open Access Citation bibliography.

Congratulations Concordia!

What an interesting announcement from the Library of Congress! I wonder if the librarians in charge of organizing this archive will make any effort to organize it geographically (e.g. US and non-US) or catalogue it in some other way. In any case, this is a great example of how cultural institutions keep up with social media. I can see value in preserving the archive in its raw form, but some kind of finding aid or navigation tool would be extremely helpful especially for those that want to conduct research using the resource.

Curious to know more? You can read more about the announcement on the Library of Congress blog and also read why the US National Archives opted not to acquire the archive (short answer: they specialize in federal government records).

Adapting the library profession, practice and buildings to become more eco-friendly is a long term challenge. Until I had the opportunity to attend a presentation on the topic last week, it was difficult to see what exactly what should do. Initially, I thought of the infrastructure: upgrading library buildings and spaces to obtain the LEED certification, the world’s best known standard for environmental architecture. But that’s only the beginning, there’s so much more librarians can do to address the world’s environmental challenges.

Fred Stoss’s presentation last week at CASLIS Toronto was a wonderful combination of inspiration and knowledge. Among other things, I learned about the history of the green library movement which can be traced back more than ten years ago when the ALA launched the “Libraries Build Sustainable Communities” project. Stoss also pointed out that libraries and librarians have played an important role as educators and supporters of activists; take the example of the Acid Rain Information Clearinghouse that Stoss helped to launch in the 1980s. He also covered some of North America’s best known cases of green library buildings: the Bronx Library in New York City (LEED Silver),  the Semiahmoo Library and RCMP District Office in Surrey, BC (LEED Silver, Canada’s first LEED library) and the Lake View Terrace Library in California (LEED Platinum).

Stoss also raised several exciting possibilities for collaborations to encourage environmental educations. Librarians can support teachers educating students about the natural world by providing books, research databases and suggesting resources such as the National Digital Science Library and answering student questions. There is also the relatively untapped frontier of working with informal educators working at museums, parks, wildlife reserves and other settings where an outdoor educator may not have established and reliable access to a library and a librarian’s advice. In addition to educators, librarians can support the green economy in their communities by helping civic leaders prepare well researched grant requests and other planning documents.

Further reading and resources:

Antonelli, Monika, The Green Library Movement: An Overview and Beyond, Electronic Green Journal, 2008

The Library Journal Design Institute (a one day workshop on design issues; the 2008 workshop focused on environmental issues)

Green Libraries. A directory of green libraries, mainly a US focus

This evening, I attended a great presentation on OPSpedia organized by Toronto Wiki Tuesdays. The presentation covered how a small team of three people built a social media space with blogging, networking and professional networking with almost no budget. Technologically, the team used a combination of MediaWiki (also used for Intellipedia and GCpedia), WordPress and BuddyPress. Socially, approximately 3900 users are registered to OSpedia (i.e. about 6% of the Ontario government’s 65,000 workers). The system, still in pilot status, looks like it has been very successful so far. The implementation was also fairly fast – some discussions started in the fall of 2008 and it was launched by the spring of 2009. The internal case for the project rested on three pillars: to better capture the knowledge of retiring/departing staff, to encourage technologically savvy staff to engage more deeply with the organization and to help staff in different units and ministries work together on problems of common interest.

Going through my notes for the event, I found a few other aspects of the project noteworthy. To address concerns about possible abuse or misuse of the system, the designers implemented a two strikes rule for news (i.e. if a news item – be it a blog post or link to a resource – received two warning/negative votes, it would disappear from public view and by reviewed in greater detail by others). The other general rule adopted for the system was called “accountability through attribution”: you have to sign your name to your contributions so that encourages people to behave well. The wiki aspect of the system currently has approximately three thousand well developed articles.

This was the first time I have attended a Toronto Wiki Tuesday event and I found it a valuable experience. I got to see how an organization has developed these tools and encouraged people to use them. It is also inspiring to see an example of a new system being built and seeing social media tools being used to serve larger goals. The casual atmosphere – good natured heckling is encouraged – also fostered an atmosphere of frank discussion and lively debate that really pulled me into the event and made me smile.

Information literacy instruction is a core responsibility of many academic librarians, but there is a structural tension. In my experience working for the AskON service, I encounter what I call the “skills vs rules” dilemma when working with student: a student over wants a ruling on an issue rather than seeking to explore the issue or learn about it. For example, a common question I encounter would be, “Is X resource peer reviewed?” The student is usually looking for a simply yes or no answer so they can move on to the next step in their work.  My general approach is to issue the ruling, explain the process I used to come to the decision and then offer to lead the student through the process.

Wikipedia poses another example of this issue in my thinking; many students like to use this resource but many instructors hate this. Why? The old, superficial way to think about this conflict is between the technologically savvy Generation Y student and the technologically unsophisticated instructor that barely tolerates technology. In my view, the real issue that professors and academic librarians have with Wikipedia is not technological, it is cultural. For some, the open nature of the editing process is a problem (though I would point out that the design of the system makes vandalism extremely easy to repair). For others, it is the lack of expert contributions. I can appreciate both those concerns, but the real problem is that the student isn’t being through enoug they’re just skimming the surface of available research and knowledge.

One of the outcomes of a proper university education should be to acquaint students with the vast universe of knowledge that exists out there and the skills to work through it. Simply telling them not to use a specific resource might help them with a specific assignment, but it does not build lasting skills. Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to provide students with a simple list of “do this” and “don’t do this”: they are capable of better. As a teacher of a friend once remarked, they should push for greater depth.

Pam Allyn, a literary expert and the author of What to Read When who runs an organization that educates teachers, agrees that the time has come to abandon the class novel – leaving it to selected high school English classes designed to teach the classics. While some teachers can be effective with the approach, she says that often students tell themselves: “I have to get through this book. I’ve got to learn to understand it the way my teacher wants me to.” That can be boring for good readers, she says, and “devastating” for struggling students.

Tina Gordon, president of the Canadian Council of Teachers of English and a resource teacher at a Winnipeg-area high school, says many teachers are trying new approaches – such as introducing one book in many different ways, or reading excerpts out loud – and seeing the value in choice in English class. She understands why many teachers still love the class novel, wanting to expose young people to the books they love. But, she says, “some of our practices we keep because they’re tradition.” And because, she adds, both teachers and parents hold on to the idea that “what makes a more educated person is if they can quote Hamlet.”

Source: Erin Anderssen, Letting students choose books could make them better readers, Globe & Mail, March 29 2010

Intuitively, the findings reported in this Globe & Mail article, Letting students choose books could make them better readers, strike me as very plausible. I remember accessing the school and public library during my elementary years with great fondness. I’ll confess that I wasn’t reading the great novels of the nineteenth century though – I wanted to read about the Cold War, World War II, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, technology and so forth. I certainly fiction as well, but I think that something like two thirds to three quarters of my reading then (and now) tends to be non-fiction.  I wonder if the unrelenting focus on reading novels is part of the problem with engaging young students. Maybe some of them want to learn about history or other non-fiction topics more than they want to read fiction? I think that Tina Gordon makes a good point in arguing that some practices in reading education is little more than traditi0n. Tradition can be a good thing (e.g. the rule of law in the West) but it shouldn’t be continued solely on the basis of it being traditional.

This article – Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google – from Forbes, a US business magazine, is a great read. It is especially inspiring for librarians in schools and those working in companies. Here are some particularly good quotes:

As a former corporate lawyer, I owe much of my success to effective research skills that evolved, with the help of skilled trainers, as new tools came along. As a former executive officer at a company that had 1,200 employees in 29 countries worldwide, I know that without adequate media literacy training, kids will not succeed in a 21st-century workplace

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In a recent study of fifth grade students in the Netherlands, most never questioned the credibility of a Web site, even though they had just completed a course on information literacy. When my company asked 300 school students how they searched, nearly half answered: “I type a question.” When we asked how students knew if a site was credible, the most common answers were “if it sounds good” or “if it has the information I need.” Equally dismal was their widespread failure to check a source’s date, author or citations.

This is troubling for it implies that information literacy training, at least in this specific Dutch case, is failing. One possible explanation is laziness – critical evaluation of information takes longer than simply applying the first thing you find. Yet, I am reluctant to accept the suggestion that laziness is the whole explanation.

Students at many elite schools are learning critical 21st century skills while librarians are eliminated from budget-stressed school districts. The result? What a University College of London study called a “new divide,” with students who have access to librarians “taking the prize of better grades” while those who don’t have access to school librarians showing up at college beyond hope, having “already developed an ingrained coping behaviour: they have learned to ‘get by’ with Google.

I’m very conflicted about this observation. On the one hand, it clearly demonstrates the critical contribution that librarians make to education. On the other hand, it highlights just how great the challenges are to bringing education to all. I do believe that everybody has the right to participate in a rich education and that librarians have an important role. Without the foundation of skills to do research, find relevant information and evaluate it, college and university study becomes close to impossible and career success is equally undermined. If you’re still coming across people that think that Internet search engines eliminate the need for librarians, here’s yet another way to show them the error of their ways.

Last week, I attended an event jointly organized by Knowledge Workers Toronto and the SLA Toronto Chapter called Dealing with Information Overload. The presenter, Karl Dawson of phiScape AG, has proposed a solution to information overload using software. The application he presented is still in the early stages but I gather that it is intended to automatically generate two types of results: summaries and indexes. I think the concept of it is that the software essentially takes a first pass at reading the text and then gives the actual human reader less to go through. I can see some potential for this kind of approach in terms of improving reader productivity.

The potential benefit of this system goes something like this.: if you could read fifty news article in an hour, maybe I could read a hundred news summaries in less time. I should reserve judgement on this approach but I’ve seen things like this before and have not found them that helpful. If you read a series of 10-50 news summaries on events around the world, how informed do you feel? It is the difference between reading the International Herald Tribune and reading the actual New York Times and Washington Post. You can cover more ground in a sense but I wonder if you get more out of it. Still, the presenter made the point that most popular reading innovations lately – such as the Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader – are basically aiming to replicate the experience of reading a print book in digital form. This reminds me of the early decades after printing came to Europe; some people thought that manuscript books were far superior and some printers responded by trying to make printed books look like manuscripts (or having scribes add finishing touches to a printed book). In hindsight, that was just a sign of a transition from one technology to another.

Can you think of any technologies or tools available that actually improve on the reading experience? Make it more pleasant? Or perhaps more productive? I will happily agree that the invention of hypertext (and XML) in the 1990s was a big leap forward, but what else is happening in the reading technology world?

As one of the most heavily used public libraries in North America, the Toronto Public Library is an important institution in the library community. I often use the Library’s resources online and visit branches and always feel good about my experiences. Recently, I started following TPL’s announcements on Facebook just to see how the institution is making its presence felt in that area. It was through Facebook that I learned that TPL is launching a new website which you can know see in beta. I’ve taken a screenshot below to preserve what it looked like in March 2010:

I see several interesting contrasts with TPL’s current website. The overall size of the site is bigger; it goes “over the fold” in my browser. It strikes me as a much more intense Web experience compared with the current site, but absolutely nothing wrong with that. I also see a much greater emphasis on events; you can see that Globe & Mail writer Margaret Wente has a talk at TPL in April and that the library is participating in an event called “Keep Toronto Toronto Reading Festival.” The centre block of the site – which highlights new items in the collections including children’s fiction – reminds me of the University of Toronto Library website that also highlights recent items. Overall, the site’s design looks like it will be more dynamic and there is a higher chance of seeing new and interesting information here every time I come to visit. Access to the collections, catalogue and other library programs is still clear to me. The site is friendly and I would have to give it high marks. You can read about the planning and thinking behind the redesign on the TPL’s Web Team blog. The Web Team is to be commended for their extensive communication and efforts to consult with users in this process.

On a different note, I also came across some statistics on TPL’s performance in 2009 and the data is impressive. For anybody that thinks that public libraries are losing popularity or are failing to deliver the services and collections people want, these kind of statistics really counter that way of thinking. According to a January 19, 2010 press release, the Toronto Public Library had a record year of usage in 2009:

• The number of materials borrowed (over 31 million) jumped by 5 percent over 2008
• People visited the library’s 99 branches 17.5 million times, up 8.5% from last year
• eTitles (including eBooks, eAudiobooks and music files) were borrowed 88% more than in 2008
• In-branch computer use increased by 11.5%

After reading Thomas L Friedman’s columns in the New York Times for months and part of his earlier book on globalization, The Olive Tree and the Lexus, I decided to pick up his book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty First Century. Some of the technology aspects of the book have dated a bit since the book was first published in 2005, but other aspects of the book remain fresh and very interesting. At times, the book can be scary as Friedman lavishes page after page describing brilliant, driven and successful scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs from India and China. You almost have the sense that if you make the slightest misstep, a thousand highly educated Indians will immediately take your job through outsourcing. In continuing to read through the book and critically evaluate it, I realize some of these concerns are slightly exaggerated. Still, the highly competitive nature of the global economy cannot be denied. Friedman suggests that there are some skills that remain critical in helping individuals (and organizations) thrive in an age of global competition: learning how to learn, navigation, compassion and curiousity. I think librarians exhibit and can foster all of those qualities. I’d particularly like to focus on the navigation idea since the concept of “knowledge navigators” was explored in the SLA alignment project.

Friedman writes about navigation in the seventh chapter of The World is Flat:

Second, we need to think more about how we teach navigation skills. As the world flattens out, more and more knowledge, information, news, software, commerce, and communities will reside on the World Wide Web. Out children will interact with each other, with the wider world, and with all that resides on the Web without many filters. Therefore, teaching them how to navigate that virtual world, and how to sift through it and separate the noise, the filth, and the lies from the facts, the wisdom, and the real sources of knowledge becomes more important than ever. When the Web first emerged, I used to joke that if I had one fervent wish it would be that every modem sold would come with a warning label from the surgeon general that would say: “Judgement Not Included.” (pg. 310-311)

If I ever have to explain or define what “information literacy” is again to a non-librarian, I will refer them to this quote. A high and ever increasing volume of information does not eliminate the need for librarians in any way. Formerly, librarians based their work on a scarcity of knowledge, but I’ve learned that every kind of abundance creates a different need or scarcity elsewhere. With an abundance of information, judgement and time to organize it and make use it of it is lacking. That’s one way that librarians will continue to stay relevant and valuable.