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Summary

Introduction

Learning has often been associated with particular physical spaces, whether formal classrooms or lecture theatres, or more informal spaces such as a workshop or studio. However, learning spaces have been changing, and moving either partly or fully online (Brown, 2005), leading to new and different learning and teaching experiences.

Emergent technologies – from the earliest electronic resources to virtual learning environments (VLEs), communications tools and social media – have enabled a radical shift in how educational space may be defined (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and an increasing blurring of the relationship between learning spaces and the other online spaces a learner may inhabit. Even the most traditional offline course should expect some or many participants to be engaged in the recreational use of social media. Nearly half of all respondents to the 2009 Oxford Internet Survey reported having created a profile on a social networking site (Dutton, Helsper and Gerber, 2009) and this looks likely to rise: the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 73% of American teenagers used social networking sites (Lenhart et al., 2010).

For me, the net is a wonderful learning network and for some it is a lifeline and for others it is a tether to their boss or a source of harmful misinformation, disinformation, and distraction. Since when is the world starkly divided into eitheror alternatives?

Howard Rheingold (quoted in Anderson and Rainie, 2010, 13)

The modern learning experience takes place in a hybrid space that merges the physical and the digital, the formal with the informal, and increasingly shares responsibility between the educator and the empowered learner. Digital library (DL) providers can engage in new ways with users, changing the ways in which resources are used and valued. However, the rules and behaviours of elearning and online social spaces are still (and likely will remain) in flux, with privacy concerns and the potential for bullying both important as social media spaces are brought into the elearning process (Davis and Lee, 2008; Keashly and Neuman, 2010).

Summary

Introduction

The major European digital library (DL), Europeana, currently holds metadata on 19 million cultural heritage objects that allows for unprecedented resource discovery and links to the actual objects on the sites of 1500 content providers. Metadata in this context refers to the data that describe the key characteristics of the digital content; for instance the name of a work, its creator, date of creation and other background information. Metadata can either be quite simple or extensive and specialized. The cultural institutions that have provided data to Europeana have done so under the conditions specified in the Europeana Data Agreement, first issued in 2009. One of the conditions governing this metadata is that it can be reused for noncommercial purposes only.

Evidence from user research commissioned by Europeana shows that reuse of information consistently comes up as the number one priority for endusers. Work on open metadata is therefore high on the agenda for meeting user expectations and needs, since open metadata is a necessary condition for the reuse of information. To understand better how to combine the wide range of aspirations of Europeana, content providers and endusers, Europeana organized a highlevel brainstorming workshop in July 2011; this chapter summarizes its findings.

We will first introduce the concept of a business model that helps to evaluate the potential for value generation in the case of digital cultural heritage. Then we examine in more detail the balance of risks and benefits for cultural heritage institutions. Finally, the chapter provides recommendations on how to overcome the risks.

Business model

In the context of this chapter a business model is understood to be ‘the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value’ (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).

The theoretical framework of the business model consists of interrelated building blocks that depict the logic of how the organization intends to deliver value (see Figure 23.1):

1 Customer segments: an organization serves one or several customer segments.

2 Value proposition: an organization seeks to solve customer problems and satisfy customer needs with value propositions.

3 Channels: value propositions are delivered to customers through communication, distribution and sales channels.

4 Customer relationships: each value proposition offered to a client group establishes a relationship.

5 Key activities: the activities that are required to offer and deliver the value proposition.

Summary

Introduction

At some point in your career you are going to have to talk money. Even if you never plan to be in a position with budget handling responsibilities, there are many other situations where you will find yourself involved with finance. You might be running a conference or event, and need to decide on charges, sponsorship packages, deal with speaker expenses, and negotiate deals with nearby hotels. Many job adverts now describe salary as ‘according to experience’ or ‘negotiable’, so you will need to be prepared to negotiate for the wage you want. You may be responsible for buying or maintaining subscriptions to services, handling fine or photocopying payments, or deciding how much to charge for commercial photography.

Depending on the organization you work for, you might have to bid internally for your funding, and make a case for all your expenditures. This is known as zero-sum budgeting, when you cannot rely on automatically receiving any money. Even if your department is a core item in the organizational budget, and is guaranteed some funds, you may find that your budget is being cut, and you are asked to find substantial savings. It is impossible to justify expenditure or identify areas where you can economize if you don't have a good understanding of your budget, and well organized documentation.

Budgets

Managing money is an important skill in all management positions. In library and information work, even if you don't run a team or a department, you will often have some financial responsibility, such as an acquisitions budget for your area. If you are a solo practitioner you might have the budget of the whole library to run.

Managing budgets and money is also a large part of project management, and showing that your organization is financially capable is important for getting external funding – no one is going to give you money if they think you are likely to mishandle it. A well managed library budget can also ‘give a professional image to the library and help raise its profile amongst stakeholders’ (Horsfield, 2010).

Therefore a knowledge of budgets and how they work is vital for any development work you would like to do in your service – even if you won't have control of the money yourself at the end, you will need to know enough to put in a good, feasible proposal.

Summary

Welcome to the 21st century, where information professionals roam the land. You can find these adaptable creatures in almost every evolutionary niche: health, education, banking and finance, law, the IT industry, government (national and local), schools, universities. Their camouflage skills are excellent; they are often no longer distinguishable by their titles of ‘librarian’ or ‘archivist’, instead merging seamlessly with their new environments with titles such as ‘transformation manager’, ‘knowledge strategist’ and ‘content expert’.

With such a diverse population, it can be hard to pick out distinguishing characteristics that identify information professionals as members of the same tribe. Cardigans, buns and spectacles are no longer considered reliable indicators. Researchers who have spent time close to the tribe claim that the only distinguishing physical characteristic is a certain liveliness, intelligence and curiosity around the eyes. Even in conversations, it is not always possible to spot a well assimilated information professional. They will use the same value terms and keywords as others in their surrounding environment, and will easily pick up on the argot or jargon of their local community.

It is astonishing to think that the vast majority of these information professionals sprang from a relatively limited number of training institutions: library schools as they are often called. One of the continuing mysteries surrounding information professionals is how a generic course, usually lasting no longer than a year or two, can produce so many information professionals who thrive in specialized environments. In fact, new research suggests that much of the development of the information professional takes place in the wild (or on the job), and it is rumoured that one reliable method of identifying information professionals is to search their conversations for the presence of the mysterious phrase, ‘I bet you didn't learn that in library school.’

If these indications are correct, then we must accept that there is considerable scope within the information professions for continuous professional development (CPD): self-education, which begins where the more formal library school training left off. Many methods and forms for this CPD have been posited; we have definite evidence of training courses and conferences. These can be distinguished from non-information professional conferences by the nature of the queer plastic objects known as freebies left behind. We also know of the existence of professional organizations, where information professionals could relax in the company of their own kind.

Summary

Introduction

Though it might not feel like it for those vital first few weeks in a new job, there is professional life outside the workplace. Although work-based activities and development are interesting and important, you will also find personal and professional value in other professional involvement.

This might be attending conferences or other learning or networking events; or joining a professional organization, and getting involved as a member, volunteer, or committee member. You could find interesting and innovative ways to share your professional thinking and insights with other members of the profession – do you have a passion for haiku? A knack for communicating through cake?

All of this involves learning new skills, and honing your existing ones. While you are doing this, you might start thinking about the future of your career: where you would like to go next, and how you are going to get there. Career planning can seem intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. As an information professional, you will already have most of the skills you need to think about how to develop your career.

In this chapter we will look at all these types of professional involvement and planning. It isn't a prescriptive guide to how to get involved – there are as many ways to get involved in your profession as there are types of information professional, and we hope the case studies in this chapter will inspire you to come up with some of your own.

Conferences

Conferences are a fantastic opportunity for development. They give you opportunities to increase your knowledge formally, through attending sessions, and informally, though sharing ideas with other delegates. They are one of the best networking opportunities you will encounter, and they usually have time set aside specifically for networking, often over meals or drinks. This is a great way to get to know people in a social (yet professional) environment.

Attending conferences can help you improve your listening skills; learn how to network; develop your presentation skills; teach or facilitate workshops; and get writing practice by blogging or writing-up the conference. All of this looks great on your CV, and can be good fun, too.

Conferences are inspiring. It can be rejuvenating to spend time with infectiously enthusiastic fellow professionals, and to hear about the great projects they are running or the innovations they are making.

Summary

Introduction

As an information professional you may find that marketing doesn't come naturally to you. Unfortunately, just having a great service isn't enough. If you don't let people know about the benefits that your service can offer, you are not doing all you can to provide them with the service they need.

Marketing isn't a dirty word, or an extra that sits on top of your services. It is an integral part of meeting your users’ needs – as the CILIP code of professional conduct states, members should ‘Ensure that information users are aware of the scope and remit of the service being provided’ (CILIP, 2004).

A key point about marketing, particularly of information services, is that it needs to be benefit-led. While this might sound obvious, much library and archive marketing has traditionally been feature-led – ‘we have [x number] books! And [x number] databases! Come visit!’. These types of marketing message will only resonate with those who are naturally inclined to be excited by large numbers of books or databases – other information professionals.

What marketing should be doing is informing your users (and non-users and lapsed users) of what you can do to make their life better. Rather than telling them how many books you have, tell them that you can find them something new and exciting to read. Don't state that you have many original historical documents available – shout about how you can help them to find unique sources to produce unique research. Don't send out a bland e-mail telling staff that the electronic library is now available from their desktop; lead by asking, ‘Want to save time on your research?’

If people don't know why they should use you, they won't, and will therefore not get the benefits of all the carefully curated information resources you have purchased for them. It could be argued that lack of proper promotion of library and information resources will have a detrimental effect on the quality of information that your users will receive – either driving them to Google, or leading them to pay for information which they could have got free from the library. Increased visibility will increase usage, and is the best possible way to stop accusations of irrelevance and prove your value.

Summary

Introduction

Continuing professional development (CPD) is an important part of being a professional. It is a commitment to keeping your knowledge and skills up to date; without it, your development will stagnate, and you will fail to provide the best service possible to your users.

There are various aspects to professional development. One of the first things to do is to assess the skills you already have (carry out a skills audit). You should then look at the skills and knowledge required by your current role, and see which areas you need to strengthen. You can follow this with a more aspirational assessment – look at the positions you might like to occupy in the future, note which skills you need to develop, and plan your CPD accordingly. This will help you develop as a professional, as well as aiding your career planning.

A commitment to CPD is important because:

Summary

Introduction

One of the phrases currently pervading the media is ‘the current economic climate’. Whatever you may think about the global economic situation, recessions and economic uncertainties facing many countries are producing a straitened economy, with pressure on people and organizations at all levels to reduce spending, and ‘do more with less’.

This is as true in the information environment as in any other sector. Libraries, archives and information services are facing cutbacks and closures. In 2011 many UK public libraries were under threat of closure due to reductions in council funding: at the time of writing, news and campaign website Public Libraries News reported, ‘433 libraries (344 buildings and 89 mobiles) currently under threat or closed/left council control since 1/4/11 out of c.4612 in the UK … Librarian professional body CILIP forecasts 600 libraries under threat (inc. 20% of English libraries)’ (Public Libraries News, 2011 (statistics updated daily)).

Even if your service is under no threat of closure, you may be facing reductions in staff or funding. The corporate, legal and financial sectors, in particular, have been subject to some heavy outsourcing of their information work.

Demonstrating value

Services are also being asked to produce improved results with reduced resources. You might find this involves re-evaluating your services, or finding new ways to demonstrate your value for money or return on investment. You might be asked to put a monetary value on the services you provide, either a notional value for budgeting or a real value, which will be charged against other departments in your organization.

Just as internal charging can help you put a price on your services, a similar system can be used to help quantify your overall value, by looking at how much users would have to pay if you weren't available. A high-profile use of this principle is the British Library's report Measuring Our Value, which demonstrated that ‘for every £1 of public funding the British Library receives annually, £4.40 is generated for the British economy’ (British Library, 2004).

Summary

This book has given you the tools to thrive in your first professional role: to manage projects, money, users and your own development. You should have a clear view of how to move forward in the profession, and to make sure that you, your users and your professional peers get the most out of what you do.

You should understand how to think about project management, and how to make sure that you are using the most suitable tools for the job.

You should be more confident in measuring and communicating success – in all forms of communication. While communicating well is very important, don't worry if you are scared of it. Practice helps to build confidence, and peers will support you, and provide useful feedback. Remember that all forms of communication feed off each other, and learning to communicate with peers in writing can help you to have more confidence when communicating verbally with users.

Place the needs of the user at the centre of your role. This is easiest to do if you align yourself with them – understand their values, use their vocabulary. Knowing what they really want will help prove your value, too.

Remember that marketing is a vital part of providing a good service, and strongly connected with meeting your users’ needs. It can take some special effort, but can also be part of your everyday activities. Just being the most professional person you can in all your interactions is great marketing. You could take this to its furthest extent, and become ‘embedded’. Think about the extent to which place defines your role.

Meeting users’ needs is likely to involve working with technology. The advent of technology hasn't changed what the fundamentals of our job are, just how we do it. The more you know about technology, the more you can get involved in using it to deliver cool and innovative services.

You don't have to learn to code – though it's great if you want to! There are applications and services you can use, without having to understand all of the technology behind them. You should know enough to support your users, and to collaborate with IT specialists and coders. You also need to understand the fundamentals of digital preservation, for future information curation and retrieval.

Summary

Introduction

It is likely that one of the first things you do in a new professional role is to get involved with project management. Perhaps your workplace is running a project your managers would like you to get involved with, or someone has asked you to manage a small-scale project. You might be specifically employed to do project work – there are frequently project-based roles in library and information science (LIS), which may appeal especially to early career professionals. These roles frequently have short-term contracts (of a year or less), and allow you to gain experience in different areas of LIS work. There may also be the chance to turn a project position into a permanent role with your employer. Your project involvement might be:

Summary

Introduction

An online presence for your service is vital, and new professionals may be expected to contribute to their workplace's web presence.

Nearly all institutions have a web presence of some kind. The advent of Web 2.0 and social media technology has made it possible to move away from static, merely informative web pages to a more interactive web presence. Moreover it has made it possible to do so quickly, easily and cheaply – without the need for experts or investment in expensive equipment. One of the things we will consider in this chapter is how library and archive services are using social media effectively.

But it is not just information about the service that users expect to find online. They want information about collections and materials – and, ideally, online access to the materials themselves. Information about collections can be made available by exposing your library or archive catalogue to Google, if the system allows, and you have the technical expertise available to do so. You could also release your data as open data, or linked open data, as mentioned by Lukas in Chapter 5.

Chapter 5 also looked at sustainable digital preservation, and talked about why it is important to ensure long-term access to materials. In this chapter we look at the principles of making your collections as online-accessible as possible, and how to facilitate access to your sustainably preserved material. First, Jane Stevenson of the Archives Hub will explain how to create archival descriptions that are web friendly, interoperable (usable by more than one system) and sustainable. Then we will look at how two library and archive services are putting these principles of openness and accessibility into practice, using social media tools.

Creating effective descriptions of archive collections for an online environment

When you think of archival finding aids, you might think of printed, or even written, handlists. Frequently stored with the materials they describe, and often on paper so old and yellow that they seem part of the archive themselves, paper handlists and printed descriptions were, for many years, the standard source for information about an archive.

Summary

Introduction

At some point your role as an information professional will almost certainly involve some form of teaching or training, such as:

Summary

Being a new professional isn't always easy. With the range of roles available to information professionals becoming ever more diverse, the variety of required skills and knowledge is also growing. New professionals often find themselves in a role where they are expected to acquire and use new skills rapidly. In a time when budgets are being reduced, it is unlikely that all of these learning and development needs will be satisfied by formal, workplaceprovided training, and staff are increasingly expected to be responsible for their own training and development.

This toolkit is designed to help you through this transition – from settling in to your first professional role to managing your career development. Packed with case studies from new and experienced professionals, the toolkit will give you new perspectives on library and information science (LIS) work, and guide you towards the resources and information you need to help you grow professionally.

This book is aimed primarily at newly qualified librarians and archivists who are in their first professional roles. Students, trainees and those interested in a career in the information professions will also find it useful, especially if they wish to prepare themselves for what might be expected of them in their first professional role and tailor their professional development accordingly. Established professionals may also find useful information or exercises, especially if they are moving into a new role, or coming back to the profession after a career break.

Building on the experiences of both new and established professionals, this book contains contributions not only from the UK and the USA, but also Canada, the Netherlands, Greece and Australia, and from a wide variety of sectors, including academic, public and law libraries; archives and special collections; and specialist information providers in a number of environments.

There is practical advice about how to get your library or archive service online, tips on digital preservation and project planning, and information about external funding sources and how to apply to them. Learn how to carry out a skills audit to find out what you need to learn and what training you need, then discover how to make the most of your formal and informal learning, and apply it in the workplace.

Summary

Introduction

Information professionals and technology have been linked for a long time. While it may be tempting to think that the association began with the move towards computer-cataloguing in the late 1960s, Murley (2009) mentions that one of ‘the featured programs at the 1938 AALL [American Association of Law Libraries] Annual Meeting was “The Use of Microfilm in a Law Library”’, and that microfilms and microfiches were still being discussed well into the 1970s.

Nearly 40 years of talking about a single technology may seem to show libraries as being slow-moving adopters. While this may be true for some, others have been at the forefront of implementing new technologies: Berners- Lee mentions how librarian Louise Addis at the Stanford Linear Accelerator encouraged the establishment of the ‘first web server outside CERN’ (2000, 50). There is a digital divide with our very profession: at the time when many information professionals are taking a leading part in driving new technologies, many libraries and archives still have records on paper, or locked into proprietary software.

Why this dichotomy? Although stereotypes would have you believe that information professionals are either computer-fearing luddites who would write with quills if modern feathers weren't so shoddy, or devoted technophiles who would sooner lose an arm than their smartphone, the reality is much less clear-cut. Much of the disparity comes down to resources, human as well as technical. To implement a new technology in an information environment, you need staff who can appreciate possible uses and learn how to use it, know enough to teach others to use it, and can install and maintain it. You also need a management and a user base of people who are prepared to accept change, and enough time and money to fund the project.

You can be as enthusiastic as you like, but if your organization is tied into Internet Explorer 6, or can't afford to replace its obsolete computers, you are unlikely to be able to implement whizzy technical solutions.

The move towards automation

A major technological change in libraries was the move to cataloguing on computers.

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17 - Support for users within an educational or e-learning context

Summary

PART 3 - USER STUDIES IN THE DIGITAL LIBRARY UNIVERSE: WHAT ELSE NEEDS TO BE CONSIDERED?

23 - A business-model perspective on end-users and open metadata

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8 - Managing money, budgets and negotiating

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Preface

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12 - Professional involvement and career development

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4 - Marketing your service and engaging stakeholders

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10 - Upskilling and professional development

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7 - Generating funding and doing more with less

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Conclusion

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Frontmatter

1 - Project management

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6 - Getting and staying online

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Index

2 - Teaching, training and communicating

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Appendix: Budgeting example spreadsheet

Introduction

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5 - Using technologies

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Contents

Acknowledgements

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