Category Archives: Opinion

Items, comments, written from my own, personal point of view.

Digital Native or Digitally Naive: Library and Information Services for the Next Generation #2

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I spoke at this meeting, organised with considerable flair and efficiency by the East of England Information Services Group of CILIP, earlier this week. It was good to see that the many delegates were such enthusiastic futurists, that the scope for creative library services is still yet to be exhausted, and that the concept of the ‘google generation’ was largely regarded to be a myth.

I talked around the concept of ‘influences’; the idea being that in order to say something about the services which will be needed in the future, we should consider factors influencing the information communication chain in the present. I usually suggest we pay attention to issues within the realms of technology, society, politics and economics, although others may hold that alternative or additional forces are at work.

Whilst it is holistic to consider each aspect of the communication chain, [authorship, publication/dissemination, organisation, indexing/retrieval and use], it is perhaps not unexpected for library services to prioritize their users; what sort of characteristics are engendered by exposure to technology, politics, economics and society ? This query is embedded in concept of ‘generations’, currently a popular field of writing and research within library and information science.

The ‘generations’ theme purports that we are products of the influences to which we were exposed in our formative years (I would take this to mean from childhood to mid-twenties, but again, others may have their own understanding and I have not found a definitive answer yet). The well known phrase ‘baby-boomers’ has been joined with categories including ‘veterans’, ‘generation X’, ‘generation Y’, millenials, and ‘generation Z’ or the ‘Google Generation’, and there are others. These time-related slots are intended to contain people whose formative years occurred at a particular point in time, and thus whose influences would have been similar. Alas, like any attempt to organize, there are problems, in that there is considerable variation in the definition of the categories and their time limits, and that there are people whose ‘formative years’ extend well beyond the boundaries of decency. Whilst many of us were exposed to glam rock idols such as T-Rex and Sweet once a week on the telly, (ha ! look them up …) – we are nevertheless content to download the angsty Kings of Leon onto our iPods any time we want, 30 years later. In spite of their early years, people can adapt. We can all be classed as members of the ‘Google Generation’ as we all use Google to our benefit. However, the advent of services such as StreetView and Google Books raise important questions, and not just those of privacy and copyright. We have to consider the impact of access to just about anything and everything in digital format – by anyone, from anywhere. What role will the library have when books can be downloaded to ebook readers – when social networks such as those offered by LibraryThing replace so much of what we offer ?

But – if we take a broader look, the concept of generations can be helpful. Not everyone adapts to technological changes, menu hierarchies rather than analogue choice. There are still those who search out books. At the other end of the spectrum, those used to instant, often non-contextualised answers and virtual worlds may require something different. It is easy to imagine that differences are dictated by ‘technological’ age – but there are other influences on both users and on the information communication chain which we can also take into account.

Economics affects us all; broadband is easy but expensive. Borrowing books saves money and communities fight bitterly to keep their public libraries. Academics publish in their own repositories rather than via commercial journals. Changes in society such as increasing isolation, limited income, the need for inspiration, affect the design and provision of public spaces, many of us drawn to buildings with a particular atmosphere and ambiance. Government policies such as increasing use of web technology to communicate with the populace and increasing the numbers in higher education, also effect the needs of users and consequently the services that our libraries should offer.

I concluded with Library 2.0 – a term I resisted at first, but one which now I think summarises how we could behave, even if it is not, as many have said, a new paradigm, and even if it only tells us how to discover services for the next generation, rather than telling us what they are.

Library 2.0 then :

– continually and purposefully changing the way libraries do things
– giving better service to existing users and attracting new ones
– improving communication between the library and its users
– encouraging users to participate in the design and delivery of services
– making good use of technology and digital information

Data Information Knowledge Wisdom (DIKW)

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The information sciences might reasonably be thought to concern themselves with information, and many of us use the DIKW hierarchy as a fundamental, conceptual model for defining the boundaries and relationships between these associated terms. Indeed, much has been written in the literature on this simple structure, and it is readily digested so that practitioners can move on to the business of dealing with recorded information.

I have just encountered two texts, however, which suggest there is yet more to say, if philosophical debate appeals:

1) A recent paper in the Journal of Information Science (2009, vol 35 number 2, p131-142), by Martin Fricke, which argues that the DIKW hierarchy is unsound and methodologically undesirable.

“…The paper concludes with a sketch of some positive theories, of value to information science, on the nature of the components of the hierarchy: that data is anything recordable in a semantically and pragmatically sound way, that information is what is known in other literature as “weak knowledge”, that knowledge also is “weak knowledge” and that wisdom is the possession and use, if required, of wide practical knowledge, by an agent who appreciates the fallible nature of that knowledge.”

2) A book by social anthropologist Tony Crook (loaned to me by one of my students –thanks!), entitled “Exchanging Skin. Anthropological knowledge, secrecy and Bolivip, Papua New Guinea”. (2007, Oxford University Press).

Crook’s text concerns the Min region in western Papua New Guinea, and eludes to the serious challenges made to euro-american habits of thought, by Min knowledge-making practices. He attempts to resolve these challenges by suggesting that the Min regard knowledge as a person – he writes specifically about anthropological knowledge as ‘the textual person’.

“ …. having faked an incision into his left thigh by using his right hand, and telling me that he has opened his thigh and shown me his lamlam (knowledge, advice) inside, Dominicus Sulumeng presses his hands on my skin and insists that now his skin has gone onto mine, and that my skin has gone onto his: he says, having exchanged care for advice, that we are ‘one skin’. “ p29.

“In Bolivip, knowledge is composed through other people’s bodily resources [….], and ventures forth in the form of a person: in the way in which it influences and becomes part of other people, and with a ‘skin’ of its own, we might even conclude that, as a detachable analogue, ‘knowledge’ is itself a person.” p29.

I am not sure whether information and knowledge are the same “weak knowledge”, personified or otherwise, but it is good to exercise the brain.

Database State

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A small article in April’s Information World Review drew my attention to this report, Database State, by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. Seems there are some vacancies for good information professionals.

“Foreword

In October 2007 Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs lost two discs containing a copy of the entire child benefit database. Suddenly issues of privacy and data security were on the front page of most newspapers and leading the TV news bulletins. The old line ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear’ was given a very public rebuttal.

The millions of people affected by this data loss, who may have thought they had nothing to hide, were shown that they do have much to fear from the failures of the database state.

In the wake of the HMRC fiasco, and all the subsequent data losses that came to light in the months that followed, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust sponsored a meeting of academics and activists with an interest in privacy. These experts attempted to map Britain’s database state,
identifying the many public sector databases that collect personal information about us. The task proved to be too big for one seminar, highlighting the need for a more in-depth study of the ‘Transformational Government’ programme.

The Trust, therefore, commissioned the Foundation for Information Policy Research to produce this report, which provides the most comprehensive map of Britain’s database state currently available.

Of the 46 databases assessed in this report only six are given the green light. That is, only six are found to have a proper legal basis for any privacy intrusions and are proportionate and necessary in a democratic society. Nearly twice as many are almost certainly illegal under human rights or data protection law and should be scrapped or substantially redesigned, while the remaining 29 databases have significant problems and should be subject to an independent review.

We hope this report will help to highlight the scale of the problem we are facing and inform the ongoing debate about the sort of society we want to live in and how new information systems can help us get there.

 

David Shutt
Lord Shutt of Greetland
Chair of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd.
March 2009″