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6023 results in Facet Publishing

Page 246 of 302

  • 6 - Healthcare Information and knowledge management

  • Lyn Robinson
  • Book:
    Understanding Healthcare Information
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2010, pp 185-226

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter considers some issues of the management of information and knowledge, including the management of collections, records and archives as they specifically affect healthcare information. These topics have a very large, general literature which will not be reviewed here. The focus will be on the areas where the problems and solutions are specific to the healthcare domain, or at least particularly pressing, or where the healthcare domain has been an innovator and a leader for the rest of the information sector. As we shall see, this has very often been the case, most especially for the well-resourced and information-intensive pharmaceutical sector (Bawden and Robinson, 2010). For overviews of a large literature on information management in the healthcare sector, see Berg (2004), Taylor (2006), Anagnostelis (2008), Bath (2008), Jha, Doolan, Grandt, Scott and Bates (2008), Cleveland and Cleveland (2008), Burke and Weill (2008), and Goldzweig, Towfigh, Maglione and Shekelle (2009).

    The health sector has always been in the forefront of the adoption of new technologies for communicating information. Examples since the 1960s include the application of the digital computer, and later the PC; microforms; magnetic tape services and CD-ROMs; online databases; the web; intranets and portals; and mobile devices.

    This chapter provides an overview of this scenario, with literature references as appropriate, picking out significant aspects and examples, and is structured into four sections:

  • • healthcare libraries and information services, looking at the contributions of various types and sectors of library/information services and networks of services within the health domain

  • • managing healthcare information, including the management of collections, records and archives, and knowledge

  • • providing healthcare information, covering aspects of information services which are particularly significant for healthcare

  • • standards, evaluation and impact, dealing with ways health information specialists have evaluated their own services and the information they provide, and their impact on the life and work of their users.

    • Two previous books have dealt thoroughly with some of these issues and should be consulted for the situation up to their dates of publication (Booth and Walton, 2000; Walton and Booth, 2004). A British Library Research Report from 1997 offers a review of many initiatives and research projects which formed the basis for current practice (Merry, 1997). Wood (2007a) gives a wide-ranging account of health sciences librarianship, particularly from a US perspective.

  • Afterword

  • Lyn Robinson
  • Book:
    Understanding Healthcare Information
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2010, pp 227-230

  • Summary

    This book has been written with the aim of providing an overview of the whole area of healthcare information so that readers can gain an understanding of the way in which health information and knowledge are created, communicated and used. It is, as we have seen, a particularly information-intensive domain, with an information-rich environment, in terms of the number and diversity of its information resources and communication pathways. It is also an area which is quite introspective in information terms, as we can see from the many journals, articles, and web resources devoted to health information, and the services which provide it.

    This extensive health information literature is obviously a great advantage to the writer of a book such as this, as it means that the reader can be directed to it for detailed coverage of specific aspects. To have reproduced even a part of this material would have resulted in an impossibly long book, while to have ignored it would have made the book seriously incomplete.

    To include links to a significant part of the health information literature, and to provide a reasonable range of examples of resources and services, runs the risk of producing a disorganized compilation, which would be difficult for the reader to comprehend fully. Some structuring is necessary if an explanation of this complex area is to be effective. In this book, this has been provided by the conjunction of three frameworks: domain analysis; communication chain; and the categorization of resources into levels. The author's hope is that this conjunction of frameworks has provided a helpful basis for the reader to gain a real understanding of the topic.

    Keeping up to date

    Healthcare information never remains static. At the time of writing, in the UK current issues included the absorption of the main NHS information provider, formerly the National Library for Health, into a new NHS Evidence service, with unclear consequences for many of its services. Controversy about the feasibility of the troubled implementation of an electronic medical record system intensified as a result of the problems caused by the economic downturn. Plans to allow patients greater choice of family doctor services were announced, leading to issues of need for information about doctors, and about transferability of medical records.

  • 5 - Healthcare information sources, services and retrieval

  • Lyn Robinson
  • Book:
    Understanding Healthcare Information
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2010, pp 133-184

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Healthcare information resources are diverse and very numerous. It is therefore not possible to give anything approaching a complete list here, nor to produce a list of the ‘best’ resources, since healthcare is a dynamic domain and its resources change over time.

    The nature of guides to healthcare resources has also changed as the extent and diversity of these resources has increased, as is clearly shown by the multiedition series of guides edited by Leslie Morton. In the first edition (Morton, 1974), the editor's statement was that:

    The book attempts to provide a comprehensive guide to the general and specialized literature covering the medical sciences … limitations of space have not permitted a separate chapter for every branch of medicine, but readers will find that several of the contributors have covered their subjects very broadly.

    By the fourth edition (Morton and Godbolt, 1992), the attempt at comprehensive coverage had been abandoned:

    This book is intended to serve as an evaluative guide to the most important sources of information that each contributor has recommended from experience of the subject, rather than as a directory of sources.

    Morton and Godbolt's 1992 guide was the last of its kind. Since then, guides either have been restricted to specific subjects within healthcare, for example Snow's (2008) guide to pharmacy resources, or have been devoted to finding knowledge for evidence-based practice, for example De Brún and Pearce- Smith's (2009) ‘toolkit’. These latter may emphasize analysis and evaluation of information as much as, or more than, resources (see, for example, Guyatt, Rennie, Meade and Cook, 2008).

    Morton and Goldbolt's book stands as an excellent and thorough account of the information sources in healthcare and the health sciences just before the advent of the internet, which has been one of the major drivers for change. It is still worth consulting, to get an understanding of the nature of the ‘traditional’ sources in the domain.

    Since it is not possible to enumerate all resources, or the ‘best’ resources, we will focus here on an explanation of the types of resources available and their purpose, value and significance, giving examples for each. The examples will sometimes be the best known or most widely used, of their kind, but often will just be ‘typical’ examples.

  • 2 - History of healthcare and its information environment

  • Lyn Robinson
  • Book:
    Understanding Healthcare Information
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2010, pp 39-70

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The prevention and treatment of disease is one of the oldest recognizable ‘practical disciplines’, and among the first to be recorded in documents. Healthcare has always been in the lead in adopting new technologies and media for recording and disseminating information. Considering the history of healthcare and the kinds of recorded information which have been created to support it at various times gives us an essential perspective on the situation today, without which it is not possible to adequately understand how and why healthcare information is as it is. This is the justification for focusing on the historical aspect of domain analysis in this chapter.

    The history of the healthcare professions (medicine in particular) and of the scientific research which has contributed to the field is an academic subject in itself, with an extensive literature. Here, we can only attempt an outline view, drawing mainly from a few leading monographs of the subject (Porter 1996, 1997; Bynum, Hardy, Jacyna, Lawrence and Tansey, 2006; Conrad, Neve, Nutton, Porter and Wear, 1995), all of which provide copious further reading for those interested; for a shorter and more popular survey, see Strathern (2005). In view of the main purpose of this book, we will mainly focus on the Western style and tradition of healthcare; for an account of the history of other traditional medical and healthcare approaches, for example those of China and India, see Porter (1997). We will take a chronological approach, focusing only on those aspects which have had a direct influence on the communication of healthcare information. To a large extent, this means focusing on the history of medicine, the other healthcare professions, in an information context, having appeared only relatively recently.

    The ancient world

    Presumably some attempts were made to treat injury and disease in the earliest human communities, but of this we have no record. The first written records of what we can regard as organized healthcare are found in the earliest known civilization of the Bronze Age, along with the establishment of large settlements, the cultivation of crops, sophisticated metal working and the organization of time and space through calendars and maps. With these, of course, came the development of scripts and writing, and hence administration and bureaucracy.

  • 1 - The healthcare information domain

  • Lyn Robinson
  • Book:
    Understanding Healthcare Information
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2010, pp 1-38

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter deals with the nature of healthcare itself – one of the largest, oldest and most important of the information domains – and of its associated disciplines and professions. The analysis is necessary in order to set the context for later discussion of information users, resources, etc., and involves several domain analysis approaches, particularly:

  • • consideration of the kind of documents encountered in the discipline

  • • epistemological consideration of the nature of healthcare knowledge

  • • structures and organizations that are important for healthcare and its knowledge base

  • • bibliometrics, to illustrate the size and nature of the healthcare knowledge base.

    • Each of these has a historical perspective, which will be considered in Chapter 2.

    Because a discipline is defined in large measure by its knowledge base, generally expressed as information in documents, this chapter focuses on the ‘creation’ stage of the information chain. The topics discussed here have extensive literatures in themselves, so this treatment will be tightly focused and very selective in its quotation of references and resources, which will usually be used simply as examples.

    Nature of the discipline

    In order to understand the healthcare domain in information terms, it is necessary first to understand something of the disciplines and professions within it. Before that, the idea of ‘healthcare’, and indeed of ‘health’ itself, must be clarified.

    Health and healthcare

    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. This definition was established in the WHO constitution, written in 1946, and has not been modified since (World Health Organization, 1946).

    This ambitious definition is a broad one, unusually so for the time when it was originated, insisting that health includes social, as well as mental and physical well-being, and also in promoting a positive ‘well-being’ view of health. This is in contrast to a more negative viewpoint, which has influenced much medical practice: that health is simply the absence of disease (a diagnosed biological malfunction) or illness (the personal experience of the consequences of disease). These two views of health persist side by side (Baggott, 2004).

  • 3 - Producers and users of healthcare information

  • Lyn Robinson
  • Book:
    Understanding Healthcare Information
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    09 June 2018
    Print publication:
    30 April 2010, pp 71-94

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Studies of the production and use of information are important aspects of domain analysis, and they have always had particular significance in the healthcare area; for example, this has always been one of the most popular areas for the study of information use and users. Such studies have a very clear practical importance for information providers in the area: if you do not know who your users are, what their needs are, or how well they are provided for, it will be very difficult to provide an adequate service.

    This importance has increased since around 1980 because changes in the information environment, promoted by the drivers for change noted in Chapter 1, have changed the nature of information production and use. In particular, there is now a wider range of both producers and users of healthcare information, and a greater diversity of means for communication between them. This makes it all the more important to have a good understanding of the changing roles of information producers and users in the new environment.

    Producers of healthcare information

    We noted in Chapter 1 that the ‘traditional’ producers of healthcare information, namely:

  • • scientific and clinical researchers, in academia, government institutes, health services, scientific industry, and international organizations

  • • health professionals (mainly doctors and mainly senior)

  • • managers, administrators and regulators in government and health services, and in international organizations

  • • providers of medicines, equipment and healthcare products

  • • medical journalists and commentators

    • had been joined by a variety of newer ‘voices’, particularly:

  • • a wider range of healthcare professionals

  • • providers of ‘well-being’ products and services

  • • patients, carers and recipients of healthcare, both as individuals and groups.

    • This reflects a generally more rich and complex environment for information production. In the ‘traditional’ situation, dominated as noted in Chapter 1 by a relatively small range of types of printed documents, producers and users were closely matched. Researchers wrote primarily for other researchers, and to a limited extent for clinical professionals. Clinicians, mainly doctors and nurses, wrote largely for each other, and to a very limited extent for patients and carers.

  • 9 - Libraries and the management of research data

    • By Martin Lewis, Director of Library Services and University Librarian at the University of Sheffield.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 145-168

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Perhaps the starting point for any discussion about libraries and research data is to ask whether managing data is actually a job for university libraries. The answer to this question is ‘yes and no’. ‘Yes’, in the sense that data from academic research projects represents an integral part of the global research knowledge base, and so managing it should be a natural extension of the university library's current role in providing access to the published part of that knowledge base. ‘No’, because the scale of the challenge in terms of infrastructure, skills and culture change requires concerted action by a range of stakeholders, and not just university libraries.

    This assessment, from the perspective of the United Kingdom (UK) in 2009, is not a prescription for inaction on the part of university libraries, however. On the contrary, libraries have a key role to play in developing both the capability and the capacity of the higher education sector to manage research data assets. Some of them are already doing so; and, as for the rest of us, we need to take steps to understand the landscape even if we lack the resources to make immediate progress locally.

    As with any emerging area, the management of research data is still evolving. In this chapter, by ‘research data management’ we mean the storage, curation and preservation of, and provision of continuing access to, digital research data – in other words, most of the processes at the centre of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)'s Curation Lifecycle Model, as well as in the lower half of the outer circle (Figure 9.1). Perhaps more simply, this is not just about the storage of data, which is how the subject is sometimes represented and how the requirement to ‘do something’ about research data is often manifested locally.

    It's worth taking a little time to reflect on how the management of research data sits alongside the other relationships that the modern university library has with its academic community. We'll then consider what the drivers are for investing time and effort in managing research data, before looking in more detail at what contribution university libraries can and should be making.

  • 12 - In search of the road ahead: the future of academic libraries in China

    • By Michael Robinson, Institute Librarian at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, as well as the founding Director of the Hong Kong Museum of Education.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 217-234

  • Summary

    To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

    (Chinese proverb)

    Envisioning alternative futures

    Some of the trends influencing the future directions of library services seem so inexorable and so emphatic that it might be easy to assume that they affect all libraries around the world in much the same way. Google, as perhaps the most obvious of examples, is now the most recognizable of global brands and not surprisingly is assumed, in consequence, to be having a major impact on the future of library services everywhere.

    In a broad sense, this assumption may well be correct. Global trends in the use of information are inevitably influencing both the type of services which libraries offer and the way in which they offer them, so that we have begun to see a redefinition of what a library actually is. One expression of this, for example, has been in the prominent development of the ‘learning commons’ in Western academic libraries, where traditional stack runs and study furniture have given way to spaces intended to promote and encourage a more interactive, collaborative and online learning environment (JISC, 2006). Elsewhere in this book, colleagues discuss the impact of this and other such forces and trends, be they the dominance of Google, the rise of content creation and knowledge management, or the changing role of the information professional.

    However, is there a ‘one size fits all’ future for libraries around the world? The aim of this chapter is to adopt a slightly different stance on the future of the academic library, by suggesting that alternative futures exist, depending on where in the world you happen to be. While indeed Western libraries are contending with the impacts of ‘Googlization’ (Miller and Pellen, 2009) and the behaviours of new generations of information users (Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005), along with many other issues, libraries in less developed parts of the world are often dealing with a different set of challenges and are, in many respects, some distance behind their Western counterparts. To envisage library futures from an Asian perspective, for example, we need to conceptually accommodate issues such as Asia's vast and diverse geography, its immense variety of cultures, languages and rates of social and economic development, its levels of infrastructure and its political systems.

  • Introduction: We create the future!

    • By Sue McKnight, International leader in libraries and eLearning. She is Director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources at Nottingham Trent University in the UK.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp xvii-xxii

  • Summary

    A stellar cast of international leaders in their disciplines have combined to provide a thought-provoking book on the art of the possible, sharing their extensive experience and visions for a different but exciting future for academic librarianship. Their contributions are aimed at stimulating ideas and identifying challenges that will be faced in the not-toodistant future. Library leaders, managers, would-be managers, library and information science educators and academic library staff will find useful information that can be applied today, as well as issues for envisioning a different academic library future.

    Over the years, there have been many articles and books on the future of library services. While some articles have suggested the end of libraries, most offer a thoughtful insight into the need to be constantly monitoring our environment and the needs of our customers. An emerging theme that develops from the literature is the importance of managing change. Sapp and Gilmour (2003, 14) sum this up effectively: ‘Change happens. Transformation, however, is planned.’ The future will be different, and we can help shape the future if we have models, insights and visions that stimulate innovative management and practice.

    Another theme in the literature on future library services is that change keeps happening. So although there have been past predictions, it is important to keep scanning the horizon and developing new visions of what academic library services could be like. Therefore, to help inform future transformations in academic library services, this book brings together a series of essays by international experts to provide a firm basis from where we can envisage a new future.

    This book comes at a challenging time. The global financial crisis has focused attention on the need to be more efficient but also to continue to innovate. Lowry et al. (2009, 17) note that financial pressures ‘will incentivise some libraries to make profound organizational change rather than incremental adjustments’. Back in 1994, Hawkins wrote an entire article on the need to move beyond incremental adjustments: ‘Creating the Library of the Future: incrementalism won't get us there!’ (Hawkins, 1994). However, the future is more likely to be a series of incremental changes as well as major new initiatives.

  • 4 - Web 2.0: redefining and extending the service commitment of the academic library

    • By James G. Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University in New York, Damon E. Jaggars, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Services at the Columbia University Libraries.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 55-68

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Web 2.0 advances the capacity for communication, collaboration, and contribution. By promoting social interaction and content exchange, Web 2.0 responds to ‘human’ objectives. People want to be successful. They want things to turn out well, and to achieve their personal goals. People want to be happy. They care about their well-being and contentment. People want to be productive, achieving results and realizing benefits. People want progress, a sense of betterment and forward movement. People want relationships, satisfying personal connections and attachments. People want experiences, sometimes as observers and sometimes as participants. People want to have impact, to influence events and people, and to have a significant effect. How can academic libraries tap into these ‘human’ interests and build more responsive and effective service programmes?

    Web 2.0 and library users

    Web 2.0 advances the focus on the interests of users and the expectations they bring to service environments that are increasingly dependent on digital and network technologies and tools. Users seek customization and personalization, the ability to shape content and applications to their personal interests and styles. They want enhanced openness, a free flow and exchange of information and ideas, without barriers. They seek a self-service capability to control and act on their needs, with minimal intervention by others. They embrace the reality of mutability, of constant change and hybrid approaches and styles. They see the value of collective intelligence and the need to question traditional sources of authority and prerogative. They increasingly understand software not as a product, but as a service, a capability shaped by many for the benefit of all. How can academic libraries leverage these new requirements and embrace the user more actively and iteratively in service conceptualization, development and delivery?

    Web 2.0 highlights the shifting requirements that users bring to the technologies that are so integral to their personal and professional lives. Clearly, users want more and better content and access. They want convenience and new capabilities, to do things they never were able to do before. They seek high levels of participation and control over the information and service settings where they work and share. And they expect enhanced levels of individual and group productivity, to get more done with lower and even no cost. Web 2.0 should mean rapid technology development and deployment, never really finalized and always a work in progress. It means perpetual assessment, constantly evaluating and reshaping.

  • 3 - Libraries as places: challenges for the future

    • By Andrew McDonald, Professor and Director of Library and Learning Services at the University of East London. Previously he was Director of Information Services, Professor of Information Management and Strategy at the University of Sunderland, and before that Deputy Librarian at Newcastle University.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 31-54

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Many universities and other institutions around the world continue to make considerable investments in imaginatively designed new and refurbished library buildings (Cannell, 2007; Designing Libraries, 2009; Drew, 2009; Edwards, 2009; McDonald, 2002a; Niegaard et al., 2008; Wu, 2003). This is despite some almost reckless predictions about the end of libraries as ‘places’ due to the rapid growth of networked electronic information and the use of the internet. We are seeing a huge resurgence of interest in creating these new ‘places’ designed to enhance learning, teaching and research and to ‘inspire’ succeeding generations of scholars (Watson, 2006, 2007, 2008; Hoare, 2008). Ironically, the welcome advances in information technology, together with significant changes in the way people use public spaces have only served to strengthen the role of libraries as important places in our universities.

    A librarian who has been given the exciting responsibility of creating a new building has two significant managerial challenges: developing a compelling vision for the new space and leading the project to make sure the vision is realized. Place making is an enjoyable and creative art, and success requires a thorough understanding of the planning and design process (Khan, 2009; McDonald, 2007a) and an appreciation of the important qualities of creating good 21st-century space (McDonald, 2003, 2006, 2007b).

    Although the emphasis in this chapter is primarily on university libraries, the principles discussed are sufficiently generic to relate to other sorts of libraries and, indeed, to learning spaces in general. They are equally relevant to all place-making activities: a major new building or an extension, a refurbishment or an adaptation, smaller projects concerned with making better use of existing space, or a mixture of these.

    Let us first explore the nature of the managerial challenge.

    The managerial challenge

    Shaping new library spaces remains a substantial and complex managerial challenge, arguably the biggest and most important professional challenge the library manager will face. It involves vision and strategy, leadership and management, communication and creativity, and project management with all its associated risks. Many library managers may only have one opportunity to plan a new building in their career, and even though very large capital sums are often involved, they will almost certainly have had little experience or training for managing such a project.

  • 5 - Second Life and libraries: boom or bust?

  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 69-86

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Second Life (SL) is arguably the most popular and well known of what are known as multi-user-virtual-environments (MUVEs). While awareness and knowledge of MUVEs is growing there are still many who have only a vague idea of what they are and how they relate to the future of libraries and higher education. In 2008 Educause added a section on SL to its ‘7 things you should know about …’ series, which provides a useful framework for this discussion.

    Launched in 2003, Second Life is the largest virtual world, with tens of millions of square meters of virtual lands, more than 13 million registered users (or ‘residents’), and a thriving economy…. Developers of Second Life continue to refine the application, adding functionality and increasing the level at which aspects of the environment – such as the flowing of water, the movement of trees in the wind, the way light changes during the course of a day – reflect those of the real world. Residents of Second Life exist ‘in-world’ through personal avatars, [animated figures that can walk, run and fly] and can spend time in any of a vast number of locations (or ‘islands’) that have been created for purposes including education, socializing, entertainment and commerce.

    (Educause, 2008)

    The costs of a Second Life

    One question that arises early in any discussion of SL is that of cost. It is possible to participate in SL without any expenditure of money. There is no cost for the SL program download, nor for the avatar and its use. While some areas of SL are blocked from entry by their owners, most areas are open to the public at no cost. Additionally, many interest groups have been organized. You can join multiple groups at no cost and receive notification of their activities. Most of these activities – poetry readings, plays, dances, classes, discussion groups – are also available at no cost. And there are locations called ‘sandboxes’ on which you can build and script objects to store, at no cost, in your inventory. ‘Sandboxes’ are regularly cleaned of the objects created there. You must own, be given owner privileges or rent property in SL in order to permanently place objects. Owning land costs money.

  • Foreword

  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp vii-x

  • Summary

    I am delighted to have been asked to write a foreword to this important book. I will comment on some of the challenges discussed by the distinguished authors and reflect on the scope and international nature of the debate swirling around the question of ‘Whither the academic library?’

    It is entirely appropriate that not only are the authors who address this question hugely respected figures in their domains, but also they reflect between them a truly international perspective, or more accurately, a developed world perspective, reminding us all rather painfully of the new kinds of information schisms that divide countries in the digital age.

    The future academic library envisioned by our authors recognizes a rapidly changing context – in technology, publishing, user behaviour and expectations, all of which challenge the very nature of academic libraries, their leadership, organizational sustainability and integrity.

    I am particularly struck in the debates on the overall theme of the library of the future that we are at a stage in our digital journey which is full of paradoxes, and our library organizations need bold innovation in management now more than ever. Models centred on traditional styles of control and efficiency will not suffice in the world of make-or-break challenges that libraries are facing. Pioneering leadership and radical innovation in management are not generally associated with academic or other libraries: but they really need to be. In this I have been influenced by Gary Hamel and his arguments for a revolution in leadership attributes.

    Looking through the contributions, I see commonly agreed challenges, but no common solutions. Everyone refers to the importance, even centrality, of the web and particularly Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. The opportunities of the Web 2.0 and social networking world are clear to all and there is much activity across libraries to embed these technologies in appropriate ways within their services, and more widely within a digital framework of learning and teaching and research processes. This should contribute to the continuing relevance and visibility of librarians and information specialists in supporting enhanced student and academic experiences. It remains, however, a non-trivial challenge to embed this changed approach within libraries, to upskill colleagues, and to try to keep pace with digital-native users.

  • 1 - Waiting for the barbarians: seeking solutions or awaiting answers?

    • By Derek Law, Now a professor at the University of Strathclyde, has worked in several British universities and published and spoken at conferences extensively.
  • Edited by Sue McKnight
  • Book:
    Envisioning Future Academic Library Services
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    20 April 2010, pp 1-14

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Cavafy's (1961) famous poem describes the paralysis induced when waiting for an event that never happens, finding distraction in other things while expecting imminent cataclysm. Libraries have perhaps been guilty of this in recent years, joining the chorus bemoaning the imminent arrival of the digital barbarians and undertaking a whole series of avoidance tactics which make libraries ever more efficient but ever less relevant. Like Cavafy's senators, libraries have prepared themselves, decked themselves in finery but have waited for the future to come to them rather than gone out to engage with it.

    The arrival of aliteracy

    Recently, a well known national chain of bookshops stocked perhaps the ultimate symbol of what a post-war baby-boomer and wholly literate generation would see as the final, conclusive evidence of dumbing down – a Leonardo Da Vinci action figure. Leonardo Da Vinci, the advertising blurb noted, was the original Renaissance man. He was a master of painting, science, language and (most importantly of all!) the inspiration for Leonardo Di Caprio's name. The website proudly noted that an Einstein action figure would follow. Presumably he would conquer evil with equations. While it is very easy to make the case for this as dumbing down, it is also a marker for the seismic shift which is taking place. There is always inter-generational tension, but we are on the cusp of an era when all the certainties of literacy may well disappear. We are close to a world of aliteracy, where reading and writing as generations have known them become optional, life-style choices rather than the fundamental attributes of a civilized person. Coupled with this is a move from a text-based society to an image-based society. A whole range of shared cultural reference points relied on words:

  • • Doctor Livingstone, I presume

  • • The Charge of the Light Brigade

  • • Never in the field of human conflict …

  • • e=mc2

  • • I have a dream.

    • These vaguely remembered phrases, and dozens like them, carry a raft of meaning and shared values known to everyone, or rather, everyone above a certain age. But consider the shared cultural reference points of recent years. Everyone can conjure the images of the fall of the Berlin Wall, of the lone protester in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square, or of the little girl running naked and screaming down the road in Vietnam.

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