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Summary

Introduction

Current records: records which are being used to support current business and organizational needs. Also known as active records.

This chapter is about recordkeeping from the perspective of the people who create and use the records to support their business, personal or social activity. It is quite difficult to draw an absolute line between the recordkeeping activities for current records and those for non-current records, but for the purposes of this book, they are distinguished not only according to their currency but also by the owners. We will look at good systems, how we can establish or improve them and how they should be maintained and reviewed. With the advent of computers, information and records manifest not only in physical formats (for example paper or magnetic tape) but also in digital format. Therefore we will address managing current records in this challenging hybrid environment. The section also covers security issues and introduces vital records management as far as it is necessary as part of current recordkeeping.

In contemporary organizations records, especially digital records, are created at an incredible rate. They can be used, deleted and misplaced without any organizational control. Much of what end-users think of as records are in fact non-record information, ephemeral records or drafts. Amongst other possibilities, records can be created in the computer system, received in paper copy from outside the organization, formally drawn up on paper or be the result of hand-written amendments to paper print-outs. Thus they may physically reside in disparate locations as well as be rendered in different media. With the rise of computers good administrative staff with filing skills have disappeared. End-users are usually expected to set up and use their own systems, either individually or as teams, and there is rarely any training or guidance unless records management is in place.

Computers have been revolutionary in their impact on the way we conduct business, in terms of automating drudgery, speeding up operations, analysis and improving consistency. However, as the computer systems designersdevelop more user-friendly applications, any centralized control over record creation and registration becomes increasingly difficult. End-users have, and will continue to have, enormous power over the fate of the records they create and receive – the challenge for archivists and records managers is to convince organizations and individuals of the benefits of sound recordkeeping practice.

Summary

Introduction

Interest in ontologies has grown rapidly in recent years due to the adoption of an increasingly semantic web. The web is by no means the only place where ontologies may be implemented, but it is the use of ontologies on the semantic web that is the primary focus of this book, as they have the greatest potential, and as such are likely to be of greatest interest to the modern library and information professional.

The chapter starts with an introduction to the semantic web and its most recent incarnation as linked data, before considering more closely the standards that have been adopted for structuring the semantic web. Finally, the last part of the chapter looks at how ontologies have been increasingly adopted in a wide variety of libraries as well as other cultural heritage institutions and commercial organizations.

The semantic web and linked data

The semantic web is about moving from a web of documents to a web of data, from one that is primarily designed to be read by humans to one that can be read by machines. It first started gaining widespread attention in 2001 with publications in Nature (Berners-Lee and Hendler, 2001) and Scientific American (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila, 2001). The web has put vast quantities of information at our fingertips, but much of this information is unstructured and it requires a lot of effort to gather and analyse the information resources that we need. For a simple informational query we pay little attention to the effort required. If we want to know what time a show starts it is generally simple enough to enter the name of the theatre and browse the pages for show times. But as queries require collecting data from multiple sites, the task can quickly become arduous. Wanting to know which shows are playing in a five-mile radius of where I am and which start after 8p.m. would require aggregating information of multiple sites, or at least visiting a site that had aggregated that information on my behalf. Some types of information have many aggregating sites (e.g., hotel and holiday information), but there is a vast amount of information that may not be commercially viable for aggregation.

Summary

Assess is a critical part of EBLIP and involves assessing the located evidence for its quality (often known as appraisal or critical appraisal) and quantity. There is also a need to weigh up or balance the results from different types of evidence, to get to know the evidence and what it is saying and then to put it into the context of the wider, overarching problem and the situation in which the decision is being made. While previous work within EBLIP has focused on appraising or assessing research evidence, this chapter will begin with research evidence but move on to examining how to assess other types of evidence and incorporating these into the decision-making process.

When assessing the evidence you may be asking yourself: of the evidence assembled, what pieces of evidence hold the most weight? Why? What evidence seems to be most trustworthy and valid? What evidence is most applicable to the current problem? What parts of this evidence can be applied to my context? This chapter considers how research evidence can be assessed using critical appraisal techniques, how critical appraisal techniques can be developed and used more routinely, the role of systematic reviews and a framework for weighing different types of evidence against each other. It aims to help you evaluate and weigh evidence sources and determine what the evidence says as a whole. Although assessing is a critical part of the EBLIP process, it is worth bearing in mind that there is little point in solely paying attention to this part of the process if the articulate and assemble aspects have not been thoughtfully executed in the first place.

Critical appraisal

Critical appraisal of research is an element of EBLIP that has received much attention in the literature and in practice. It is an important part of the process because it helps you to determine the worth of the research literature, but doing critical appraisal is not a skill that most librarians have been familiar or comfortable with. However, it is a skill that is relatively easy to teach and can be developed over time. Furthermore, some elements of the process are akin to other tasks that librarians are familiar with, such as critical thinking (a skill developed during master's-level study), or choosing the most appropriate results from a literature search, which requires decisions about applicability.

Summary

Records management is crucial to ensuring that any organization can perform its mission effectively and can demonstrate transparency and accountability to its stakeholders; archives management ensures that we have reliable recorded evidence of the history of individuals, organizations and society as a whole. This book has followed the record's path from creation in an adequate recordkeeping system, through the application of classification and access techniques, evaluation for business, legal and historical value to proper destruction or preservation and access in the archive. Regardless of whether the cycle is split into two separate functions within an organization, the two are inextricably linked and complement each other.

Summary

Introduction

Ontologies are for use, and generally such use extends beyond that of the creator of the ontology. It is therefore important to consider the different ways ontologies can be explored, or rather, interrogated. ‘Interrogate’ has associations of more close and formal investigations of an ontology, which is indeed what ontologies are designed for. Ontologies will be queried by different users in different ways, and there are a wide range of tools of varying complexity for interacting with different ontologies, but ontologies are formal representations of knowledge and to extract the full value from an ontology requires queries of equal formality.

Ontologies, and the associated instance data, are generally interrogated for one of three reasons: to determine whether an ontology is suitable for reuse; to extract information from an ontology/data set; and to gather information about an ontology's use. this chapter considers each of these reasons in turn, and discusses some of the most appropriate technologies for each:

• interrogating ontologies for reuse

Summary

Introduction

The definition of archives given in Chapter 1 is ‘records of one organization, family or individual, selected for permanent preservation because they provide key evidence of the entity's history’. Chapter 1 also covered the various media that records – and therefore archives – come in, the different types of archive repositories, what working with archives involves and the wider context, together with sources of information and support. It also gave an overview of what archive users and researchers might be looking for in the archives. This chapter will build on the concepts and principles articulated in Chapter 1, continuing to follow the journey of archival records as they move away from the main body of records that will be destroyed and begin to be managed differently and separately in order to safeguard them for posterity.

In managing archives we are seeking to keep a comprehensive record, which provides the evidence of what happened and why, for the future, for ever. This requires the identification of a set of documentation which gives the history of the individual, family, organization or community. We also need to look after them in a way that gives them the best possible chance of surviving the ravages of the environment and human interference over time. It also requires making the records available, publicizing their existence and interpreting them to make them more accessible to more people. These three aspects of managing archives all need to be in place to do the job properly, but it is also important to be able to advocate and justify the resources expended, because caring for archives over time is an expensive proposition.

Chapter 4 is organized to follow the work process that needs to be in place to manage archives from the time we first start to think about taking archives into custody. It does not cover preservation, the aspect of managing archives which addresses the archives’ accommodation, environment and handling procedures in order to preserve them, as this is treated separately in Chapter 5. We start with the collecting policy which dictates the overall content of the archive, through acquisition of archives and accessioning or logging them in.

Summary

Introduction

The historical evidence suggests that the health professions might never have developed EBP had it not been for the development of sophisticated research tools such as PubMed/MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library for identifying authoritative evidence (Eldredge, 2008a). By working with health professionals in using these tools, health librarians were pivotal figures in the development of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and the broader EBP movement. From supporting health professionals in EBP, health librarians have gone on to develop and use evidence within their professional practices – EBLIP. This chapter will provide a context for health librarian's work, describe EBLIP within the health library field and the state of the evidence base, and discuss the types of evidence used by health librarians. Two case studies show how EBLIP has been translated into practice and demonstrate how health librarians continue to push the boundaries of EBLIP. Finally, the future directions for research and EBLIP practice will be considered within a health library context.

The health library context

Health librarians often collaborate with other health professionals in a fast-paced environment that demands high levels of accountability for the accuracy of their work. Any mistakes can result in missed diagnoses, inappropriate treatments, incorrectly trained health professionals (Maggio et al., 2015) or misguided research projects. Many health librarians take years to establish credibility for their expert skills among other health professionals (Hannigan and Eldredge, 2014). With increasing frequency, health librarians work outside of physical libraries in roles as embedded colleagues, liaisons, clinical librarians, informaticists and informaticians; therefore, throughout this chapter the term health librarian will be used to describe all of these roles.

The context in which health librarians work is continuing to change (Funk, 2013). At one time, the majority of health librarians worked in hospital libraries. Now, in the USA many librarians work in centralized academic health-science centre libraries that co-ordinate access to electronic databases for their users, including health professionals and staff in affiliated hospitals. The National Library of Medicine in the USA coordinates outreach and other centralized functions. In the UK, health librarians work in hospitals, academic institutions and, increasingly, throughout other NHS organizations. Collections for NHS staff are centralized and health libraries are monitored and supported by a national Library and Knowledge Service.

Summary

Introduction

‘[Records management is] the field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records.’

ISO 15489-1:2001 (E) Information and documentation –Records management – Part 1: general

Chapter 1 defined records management as ‘a comprehensive regime which controls records through their lifecycle, including: deciding what records to create; organizing them so that they support business needs and authorized retrieval; evaluating and imposing retention requirements; documented destruction or designation as archives’. I think of records management as encompassing everything that happens to records from the point that someone conceives the need to document something to the point that record is destroyed – and if it is not destroyed it continues to be managed as an archival record indefinitely. However, as this book makes a distinction between the main phases of the lifecycle broadly based on currency and custodianship, this chapter deals with what happens when records are no longer needed constantly for current business purposes to support the operational work of end-users. It is at this stage that records managers – professionals whose main function is concerned with managing records effectively – usually get custody of the records, or at least get involved. The next chapter deals with managing archives, which requires a different set of skills (sometimes from a different individual) and different storage facilities, to look after records which need to be kept indefinitely for reasons separate from immediate business needs.

Records lifecycle: a metaphor to describe the existence span of records divided into stages to reflect the different processes needed to manage them.

According to our Chapter 1 definition, records are: ‘recorded information in any media or format, providing reliable evidence of human activity’. Thus, records management is exactly what the term implies: managing records. It is about control, about knowing what records the organization needs and creates as well as making sure the records are organized effectively. Moreover, it is about understanding what the organization does and which records arise from its functions and activities. We noted earlier this link between activity and record: records arise from work, rather than the work aim being to create records.

Summary

The political, social, technological and financial landscape in which public libraries operate has undergone dramatic change in recent years, presenting the sector with daily challenges ‘in the field of digitization, changing usage patterns, and evolving expectations of patrons’ (Irwin and St-Pierre, 2014, 1). In countries such as the UK, public sector budget cuts have resulted in widespread library closures and had a negative impact on traditional metrics such as visit and lending figures (Anstice, 2015). Efficiency measures and staffing reductions have led to an increase in self-serve, community and volunteer-run facilities and have engendered a culture which is increasingly reliant on external funding. Yet, rather than accepting their muchprophesied demise (Worstall, 2014), public libraries across the world have responded to this altered environment and to a ‘revolutionary shift in user behaviour’ brought about by the ascendancy of the ‘networked information landscape’ by developing innovative service-delivery models, multi-functional library spaces and new ways of working, and by reinventing themselves as ‘invisible intermediary’, ‘memory institution’, ‘learning centre’ and ‘community resource’ (Brophy, 2008, 8).

In North America, early literacy and lifelong learning remain strong focuses for public library programming, as do developing and providing services to underserved populations and socially excluded groups such as homeless, disabled and incarcerated populations. Increasingly, however, public libraries are also embracing a new identity as digital literacy and inclusion centres: providing free computer and WiFi access and developing electronic collections, which continue to be in high demand. In a 2013 national survey of Americans aged 16 and older, 77% identified free computer and internet access as a ‘very important’ library service and indicated a strong interest in the wider uses of technology in libraries (Zickuhr, Rainie and Purcell, 2013). The cumulative results of the Impact Survey (Impact Survey, n.d.) also provide good evidence of how patrons are using library technology in the USA and the significant outcomes and benefits they report from its use (Crandall and Becker, 2016). And libraries are responding to these needs: investing in more e-books and diverse eresources such as magazines (Recorded Books, 2016; EBSCO, n.d.), comic books (Midwest Tape, 2015) and internet-based learning tools such as Gale Courses (Gale Cengage Learning, 2015) and Lynda.com (Lynda.com Inc, 2015), and facilitating public access to new technologies ranging from 3D printers to recording studios (Zickuhr, Purcell and Rainie, 2014).

Summary

School libraries have played an important role in the education of young people around the globe for many decades, but today they are more critical than ever. The school library is often the best-equipped ‘classroom’ for educating digital youth accustomed to self-directed information seeking, personalized learning and content creation. Evidence for what works is increasingly important as education transitions from an industrial-age model of teaching to a digital-age model for learning. What do we want students to learn? How will they best learn it? How will we know that they have learned it? In an attempt to address these questions, school libraries are embracing EBLIP to validate and gain support for new ways of learning. This chapter examines several dimensions of EBLIP and illustrates how evidence-based approaches are changing school libraries and the work of the school librarian or teacher-librarian.

Overview of school libraries today

Initially conceived as traditional libraries defined by their collections, school libraries evolved to support school curricula. When audio-visual media began to package information in sound and image, school libraries became media centres and information literacy replaced bibliographic instruction as best practice. The most recent evolution of school libraries is as networked, digital and physical environments for young learners where they confront information overload and screen-based reading. The curriculum is guided by a definition of information literacy that includes critical reading and thinking. The pedagogy is information-based enquiry that requires learners to construct new knowledge within a curriculum-based learning task, such as the following:

You are a journalist who uses primary sources to refute the claims of Holocaust deniers. Publish a print or online news report that contains your strongest evidence and arguments for the Jewish Holocaust as a historical event.

This kind of intellectual challenge requires librarians and teachers to work collaboratively, gathering evidence of students’ progress, or lack of it. Evidence resides in students’ work and instruction takes the form of feedback. As students use feedback to revise their work, so the teacher-librarian team uses feedback to revise their teaching.

Everyone is a learner as students work in a participatory culture of face-to-face and online learning communities and educators collaborate in communities of practice. This kind of evidence-based approach to instruction has significant implications for the school library and the work of the teacher-librarian.

Summary

Introduction

With a large number of ontologies already available, there will be many occasions when an ontology will already exist that fulfils some or all of an information professional's ontology requirements. The reuse of existing ontologies can not only help with the integration of data across different systems, but may, importantly, also reduce the repetition of work.

This chapter starts by considering the importance of reusing existing ontologies in more detail, before going on to explore some of the tools that are available for identifying existing ontologies, and some of the issues that may contribute to deciding whether or not to incorporate a particular ontology.

Reusing ontologies: application profiles and data models

The reuse of existing knowledge organization systems and processes is well established within the library community. Most libraries find it far more appropriate to adopt or extend an existing classification or cataloguing system than create a bespoke in-house system, with the advantages of a custom-made system far outweighed by the costs of maintaining the system and making use of other institutions’ data.

The principal reasons for reusing an existing ontology are the same as those for reusing other existing knowledge organization systems: cost-effectiveness and facilitating the interoperability of data. Although cost-effectiveness may be considered particularly pertinent to adoption of an ontology with a large number of instances, and interoperability particularly applicable to the adoption of existing element sets, both reasons apply (albeit not equally) to both parts of an ontology: the development of a logically consistent element set with clearly defined classes and properties that can accommodate all expected types of instance is not necessarily a simple process, whilst the adoption of the same instances across multiple platforms may facilitate information retrieval from multiple sites and sources. For the sake of simplicity, however, here we primarily consider cost-effectiveness in terms of ontologies with a large number of instances, and the advantage of adopting existing element sets for data interoperability.

The number of instances that may be created on average per hour will vary considerably in ontology development (as Hedden, 2010, notes for taxonomical terms), but the creation of a high-quality ontology can nonetheless be expected to be extremely labour-intensive, especially when talking about an extremely large ontology or broad subject area.

Summary

Academic librarianship is well suited to EBLIP. In this chapter, we provide some context as to why this is the case – the rapidly changing role of academic libraries and librarians, as well as higher education institutions more generally. The knowledge base of evidence is described, in terms both of the types of research available and of the size and scope of the available evidence. The knowledge base in academic librarianship is growing quickly, due to research on developing issues in higher education and academic libraries, as well as an increased focus on assessment and evaluation programmes for continuous improvement and demonstrating value.

We discuss the types of evidence sources available for academic librarians to draw on beyond the traditional journal article and conference presentation, and examine how librarians are creating evidence, in some cases by collaborating with others who work outside of libraries. Methods used by academic librarians for finding and using evidence to inform decision making are presented, along with considerations regarding organizational climate, or readiness for EBP. We conclude with examples from the academic library sector of successful application of the principles of EBLIP for informing changes in practice and transforming organizational processes.

The changing landscape and growing body of evidence

The role of academic libraries and the practice of academic librarianship have been transformed in recent years by dramatic changes in both higher education and scholarly publishing. Print has transitioned increasingly to electronic form and librarians have been vigilant in ensuring seamless access to online resources as well as encouraging their integration into discovery layers and learningmanagement systems. In anticipation of emerging publication models and platforms with new licensing requirements, highly skilled experts in acquisition, discovery and access are required. At the same time, conversations about learningmanagement systems’ features, including customization and personalization, have advanced students’ and researchers’ engagement with library resources in order to improve learning outcomes. Physical library facilities have also changed, increasingly employing participatory design methodologies with campus stakeholders, with a focus on users’ needs. All of these changes have both drawn from and contributed to a growing body of research, making academic librarianship the ideal setting for EBLIP.

Summary

Introduction

It is important that information professionals are not only users of existing ontologies, but that they build their own. This is not only important because of the large number of areas that still require the development of ontologies, but also because it is only through the development of ontologies that we come to fully appreciate the associated tools and technologies.

This chapter starts with a broad methodology for building an ontology and an overview of some of the different tools that are available for building an ontology. The chapter finishes with an ontology development example that focuses on the development of an ontology element set, designed for capturing information about bibliometric metrics and indicators.

Approaches to building an ontology

There have been a number of different approaches to ontology development, although as Noy and McGuinness (2001) state, ‘there is no single correct ontology-design methodology’. The appropriateness of a particular methodology will depend heavily on the purpose of the ontology; the approach taken in the development of an enterprise ontology to aid with the retrieval of internal documents in a multinational corporation will differ significantly from the development of an element set by a postdoctoral researcher within an academic institution wanting to publish a particular set of research data.

Tonkin, Pfeiffer and Hewson (2010) distinguish between three types of method - ology for ontology development methodologies: self-reflective methodologies; collaborative approaches; and empirical methodologies. A self-reflective methodology is the simplest: a single person is responsible for the development of an ontology based on the knowledge he or she already possesses. In the case of the post-doctoral researcher mentioned above, a self-reflective methodology may prove sufficient, especially where it is a highly specialized area with a limited tradition of data sharing. Where there is a more established history of data sharing, or a domain is too large for a single person to comprehend or encompasses differing perspectives, then a collaborative approach may be more appropriate, with a consensus viewpoint being based on multiple individuals’ expert knowledge. Such a collaborative approach could be important in the development of an enterprise ontology in a multinational corporation, where no single individual would be sufficiently knowledgeable on the organization as a whole or the different perspectives involved.

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Index

2 - Managing current records

Summary

2 - Ontologies and the semantic web

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5 - Assess

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References

Conclusion

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6 - Interrogating ontologies

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4 - Archives management

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11 - Health libraries

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Acknowledgements

3 - Records management

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10 - Public libraries

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12 - School libraries

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4 - Adopting ontologies

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Select bibliography

Contributors

Frontmatter

Index

9 - Academic libraries

Summary

5 - Building ontologies

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