Facet Publishing

Summary

The purpose of this book is to explore the main issues facing information workers employed by media organizations, that is, broadcasters and publishers of newspapers, magazines and websites. Each chapter examines an issue that librarians, archivists, cataloguers, researchers and other information professionals are likely to face in their working life, with chapters written by practitioners who have faced these problems themselves. The aim is to spread knowledge acquired through practical experience to help solve and prevent problems as they arise. ‘Media librarian’ in this book does not refer to those looking after multimedia collections in public or academic libraries, although some of the issues discussed may be useful to them. In addition, although controversial among practitioners, the author uses the term ‘media librarians’ to refer to all who carry out information work for media organizations (although their actual job title may be ‘Researcher’, ‘Media Manager’ or ‘Information Manager’, for example) for historical reasons, for convenience and because she has never considered libraries to be exclusively collections of books.

Media librarians have a low profile in the information profession and among their employers. Academic, legal and public librarians are often intrigued to discover that some of their peers work for the same people who provide their television programmes and daily newspaper. Journalists write articles perpetuating the idea that libraries are dusty book collections run by stern ladies with date stamps, unaware that the people who provided their newspaper database or background research are part of this profession.

Yet media companies, producing vast quantities of content in an increasing variety of formats, need people both to help them fill up column inches, pages or hours, and to organize this content afterwards so that it can be found again. The profession offering the best skills to meet that need is librarianship and information services. Librarians are the specialists in connecting people who work in media companies with the items they need to do their jobs and putting it where they can find it again. Although unlikely to be called librarians or, in the 21st century, to be working in a room called ‘the library’, information professionals continue to carry out this task for media organizations throughout the world.

Summary

One of the key tasks carried out by newspaper libraries since the 1990s has been the archiving of news text to be passed on to news aggregators (or ‘hosts’ or ‘vendors’ as they are variously known). Delivering this text has never been much of a priority for newspaper publishers, one consequence of which is that these online archives do not contain the entire content of the printed newspaper, largely for legal and contractual reasons. As the editor and Richard Nelsson have said elsewhere (Schopflin and Nelsson, 2007), the labour-intensive and timeconsuming task of newspaper text archiving has been ripe for automating or outsourcing, yet in most cases remains a key in-house activity of the library. Why this might be is explored in the current chapter, which looks at the implications of today's newspaper content being available and searchable via online databases. The author worked at the Glasgow-based Herald newspaper between 1994 and 2006, latterly as Head of Rights and Information. He is currently Knowledge and Information Manager with the Scottish Institute for Excellence in Social Work Education. He is also a noted expert on issues concerning information and the law, in particular online newspaper copyright.

This chapter will describe some of the legal factors that affect the creation and management of digital text archives and the role the librarian may play in these processes. It will look in particular at the 2001 US Supreme Court judgment in favour of freelance journalists whose work was being sold to online news vendors, a key moment in highlighting why newspaper archiving is not straightforward. And in case anyone thought that the issue was settled, at the time of writing (November 2007) members of the US Writers’ Guild are on strike because they feel they are not being remunerated for the repurposing of their work on digital and mobile platforms. As media organizations continue to reuse their content in new formats, it becomes more than ever important that somebody is ensuring that the correct metadata is added to it so it is not used for inappropriate purposes. This has to be done by the only people who care about the content of newspaper and television output after it has been published, that is the librarians, archivists and information professionals.

Summary

Small specialist and regional news libraries face different and often more extreme challenges than their larger, national cousins. At times they are at the sharp end of change, their size making them vulnerable to conglomeration and developments in the industry. Conversely, they sometimes miss out on the technological investment and upgrading which leads to restructure and adjustment in larger organizations. In this chapter, Colin Hunt describes the reinvention of the library at the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, a local newspaper read by and reflecting a famously characterful and active local population. His story covers more than three decades of struggle, change and innovation.

As he illustrates, regional news libraries are united by their diversity, as their holdings and activities closely reflect their geographical location. However, local news librarians across the world will recognize the opportunities presented by holding niche, specialist collections and the challenge of surviving in an increasingly globalized world. In the UK at least, regional news libraries have closed outright at an astonishing rate in the past ten years. The author's experience shows that with good ideas and strong leadership, they can not only stay open, but the collections and local knowledge held by their librarians can be an important means for their parent organizations to learn about and celebrate the local communities they serve.

Introduction

Newspaper libraries are different. I just didn't realize how different until a summer afternoon in 1973 when I walked into the Dickensian rabbit warren that was the old Liverpool Daily Post and Echo building.

My career until that point had followed the prescribed path for budding librarians in the 1960s: a spell as a junior in the local public library, study for my ALA with day release, sandwich courses and finally a spell as a fulltime student at a commercial college. Then followed the move into industrial libraries (as they were then known) with a period at Lucas Aerospace, where Def-Stans (Defence Standards) and the Official Secrets Act ruled. After two years it was on to Imperial Metals, part of the giant ICI group, an information unit at the cutting edge of librarianship in the early 1970s.

Summary

Our final chapter looks at the how media librarians are viewed by their colleagues, the journalists and programme-makers in the newsroom and editorial offices of the world's media companies. The author is a newspaper librarian and elder care columnist living in Fargo, North Dakota, USA. She is the author of Minding Our Elders (2005), speaks on caregiving issues, and has a blog and website, all under the brand ‘Minding Our Elders’. In her highly personal account, Carol Bradley Bursack recounts her unusual route from library fan, through life and non-media library jobs, to becoming a newspaper librarian. She gives an honest picture of the way that journalists view the library ‘help’ and how our status and image can improve when we demonstrate to the news-makers how valuable we are to them. The issues she touches on are increasingly relevant to the modern media librarian. No longer necessarily locked up in our basement morgues, today we attend editorial meetings, train people at their desks and provide expert advice on the spot.

This chapter may bring wry smiles of recognition to the faces of some readers. Never hungry for status, librarians tend to arm themselves against patronizing remarks and downright rudeness by hugging their superior knowledge, skills (and, often, qualifications) to themselves. This book aims to add to that armoury, not just by sharing advice and experience, but with a reminder of how important we are in creating the world's newspapers, magazines, websites and television programmes and making sure people can find them again. If we can celebrate our amazing abilities more loudly, perhaps our colleagues will finally recognize them too.

The librarian: larger than life – gatekeeper of knowledge

I was a quiet child, small for my age, fragile, contemplative, with little to say. My life truly began when I discovered books. I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, USA. Back in the early 1950s, Fargo was still a fairly small town. I'd hop on the city bus, ride downtown, and get off in front of an ornate brick building called the Fargo Public Library. I'd push through the fortresslike doors and enter the library as an artist enters the Louvre: with a reverent heart. I'd inhale the aroma of aging wood, cleaning wax and musty, seasoned books, feeling a kind of wholeness I felt nowhere else.

Summary

As journalists have turned from ordering press cuttings files from their organization's library to accessing their information online, new roles have emerged for media librarians to apply their traditional research and organizational skills to the online world. This chapter intends to demonstrate the value of research intranets to media libraries and organizations, and provide library practitioners with an idea of best practice in terms of creating and maintaining such a resource. The authors are part of the Guardian's Research and Information Department; they were directly involved with the relaunch of their research intranet and are now responsible for its ongoing management.

The chapter examines what a research intranet is, the history of intranets in media libraries and how these have evolved to become resources used by leading media organizations. A successful research intranet depends on a number of factors, which range from content and design to user-testing and marketing. By demonstrating and assessing how specific media libraries are using and developing their intranets this chapter gives library practitioners guidelines about managing intranets and meeting user needs. The increasing sophistication of information technology and the rise of Web 2.0 applications offer greater opportunities to enhance intranet development. It is the authors’ belief that, as media librarians, they are ideally equipped to take advantage of these.

Introduction and history

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) an intranet is a ‘local or restricted computer network; spec. a private or corporate network that uses Internet protocols’. As a website intended solely for internal use, its content is produced by the organization, for the organization, in order to communicate effectively the issues which affect its members. Intranets promote knowledge-sharing and provide a single and secure point of access, allowing a company to manage its information and reduce the cost of information sourcing, printing and distribution. Intranet content can include staff directories, policies and procedures, bulletin boards, staff discounts and activities. Available and accessible to all members of an organization, an intranet is an ideal platform on which a smaller department such as a library can make its presence felt.

Summary

Introduction

This chapter provides some examples of what is often referred to as ‘best practice’, the aim being to illustrate some of the areas relating to web accessibility covered elsewhere in this book with examples of good practice. The term ‘best practice’ can be defined as ‘a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc.’ (Wikipedia, 2007). The term is also discussed in relation to developing approaches to finding and implementing best practice, where best practice is defined as ‘the best way of doing things in the sector (or [outside] the sector if useful examples can be found)’ (Brophy, 2006, 149).

The term should be treated with a little caution, however, as it can be open to interpretation and will depend on who is making the judgement that something is deemed to be ‘best practice’. For the purposes of this chapter, best practice will simply refer to examples of good working practices, initiatives and projects relating to web accessibility. It is not an exhaustive list, as evidence of best practice can sometimes be difficult to identify in literature or in library promotional material, perhaps because libraries are simply getting on with the job of providing an accessible and interesting website that will meet the needs of as many of their visitors as possible, but may not be actively promoting or reporting on it. Therefore, the examples provided here intend to demonstrate how web accessibility is being addressed through evidence of improving access to resources and to the overall experience; raising awareness of accessibility issues; studies undertaken to explore specific issues relating to web accessibility; and finally, activities and/or initiatives undertaken to improve and encourage access for all – including the importance of involving users in the process.

Enhancing the overall web experience

There is evidence of good work being undertaken not only to improve access to web resources, but also to enhance the overall experience. For example, Walsh (2006) describes some innovative ways in which visual content has been made accessible to visually impaired people. Examples include an online art exhibition presenting six works of art. Each work has a link to an audio description (which is presented as a speaker icon with alternative text).

Summary

The rationale for Web Accessibility: practical advice for the library and information professional is to provide a practical introduction to web accessibility for library and information professionals, students and lecturers. The subject is an important one because of the increasing provision of resources in an electronic format, in particular via the world wide web, together with raised awareness of the importance of widening access for all. Increasingly, recognition is given to the fact that it is a moral duty as well as a legal requirement to take reasonable steps to ensure that no one is excluded from access to goods and services, including access to web-based information and resources, and that it also makes good business sense to widen the customer base. Although there is an abundance of advice and guidelines available on the subject of web accessibility and usability, this book aims to provide practical advice from a range of experts and practitioners in this area, covering the issues relevant to the library and information sector.

The term ‘accessibility’ can mean different things to different people. In the library environment it can relate to the library functions and ‘ensuring that all services are usable by all users’ (Brophy, 2007). Libraries should be physically accessible and sensitive to the needs of users, and there are a number of recommendations for this, including:

Summary

Introduction

This chapter describes how RSS has been used at the London School of Economic and Political Science (LSE) to enhance access to information on training courses, including information literacy classes, for staff and students. RSS underpins much of what we recognize as Web 2.0 and social software. In his recent book, Bradley (2007) argues that in order to fully exploit social software in libraries, it is essential to understand RSS technology. Even a basic understanding can allow all librarians, not just those running a schedule of teaching or training, to make their information more accessible. However, our experiences show that RSS has information literacy implications: users must re-think how they access information on the web. Rather than visiting a website to see what is new, users are afforded a mechanism for picking up new information automatically. The tools required, while simple to use, arguably do require a greater level of information literacy on the part of users. Therefore, paradoxically, while RSS has provided LSE with an opportunity to make training information more widely available, staff and students need greater information literacy skills to fully exploit the technology.

What is RSS?

There is still some disagreement over what RSS actually stands for. Originally, it meant ‘RDF Site Summary’ (where RDF is the Resource Description Framework, www.w3.org/RDF), but it is now generally agreed to stand for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Each definition provides an insight into its potential uses: as a ‘summary’ of what's new or has recently changed on a website; or as a method for ‘syndication’ of content, allowing information to be re-used in a variety of contexts.

RSS is a dialect of XML. It is a machine-readable language, much like HTML, designed to provide a rigid framework in which information can be contained. At its simplest, an RSS document provides a set of items, each of which has a title, a description and a link to an online resource. A series of items, almost always provided in some kind of chronological order, makes up a feed. The feed itself contains additional metadata indicating, for example, the source (e.g. the website) from which the items were drawn, the time and date of its publication, and the contact details of the publisher.

Summary

In the summer of 2006 the University of South Florida's Tampa Library embarked on a new project to create a pilot video for instructional purposes, using the talents of a YouTube amateur video blogger. The production of the pilot video, and another following it, eventually created momentum for the library in embracing YouTube for hosting instructional videos. How and why such a project could become an agent for change will be the subject of this chapter.

Getting started

Librarians at the University of South Florida (USF), an institution serving about 45,000 students, with 35,000 on campus, teach information literacy in a variety of settings: some of them have had experience teaching LIS 2005, a three-credit information literacy class for undergraduates, in the library school; the majority teach single instruction sessions and orientations for students at all levels; but the bulk involve classes for first-year students. The motivation behind creating a pilot video did not originate from some grand plan to reach ‘millennials’ on YouTube with an information literacy message; it started simply from the desire to see more readily available short videos on the internet that could be used in the library instruction classroom. There were precious few interesting, entertaining, or engaging short videos relating to information literacy. The best video available on the topic of information literacy was a short, 15-minute streaming video entitled ‘E-Literate’ (New Literacies, 2000). ‘E-Literate’ was used in many classrooms in the USA at the time it came out in 2000. It highlighted the dangers of not properly evaluating one's sources, especially internet resources, in finding information. ‘E-Literate’ also offered some astonishing statistics about information overload and the information explosion created by the internet. However, ‘E-Literate’, as good as it was as a teaching tool, had become dated by 2006. It had been made before Web 2.0 technologies; the statistics it gave were pre-blogs, pre-social networking websites, and pre-YouTube, all of which have revolutionized internet use and interactions among users.

Using Web 2.0 technologies

As YouTube, Google videos, and other video-hosting websites became more popular, librarians at USF looking for good multimedia products to enhance library instruction discovered that materials posted on the web were more current and entertaining than the ‘E-Literate’ video. YouTube videos were particularly useful because their brevity made them ideal for 50–90 minute class sessions.

Summary

Introduction

The importance of providing appropriate training and awareness on the topic of web accessibility cannot be stressed enough, for without a proper understanding of accessibility issues and of the tools and techniques to apply accessible design to websites and web applications, the widening of access for as many people as possible will be severely hampered.

Before even considering training in the design of accessible websites, a more fundamental approach to the issues is needed. General disability awareness training will provide a wider understanding of how different impairments can affect people, and thus enable more informed decisions to be made on the provision of accessible resources and on how to work with people who may have different access requirements. For example, when considering the requirements of blind and visually impaired people it is useful to understand the different types of impairments that can be experienced (only a small percentage of people who are ‘blind’ have no sight at all), so in some cases it may be necessary to provide screenreading assistive technologies or scanners, but in others simply providing large monitors can greatly improve accessibility for a considerable number of people with visual impairments.

At the very least, an understanding of how different assistive technologies work with operating systems and with websites is important. However, training in the use of the assistive technologies provided is equally important, so that, in the case of a library, staff can help visitors to use the software provided on the open access PCs.

Many organizations offer such training. For example, the RNIB offers a range of training courses, both in-house and public, aimed at designers, developers and content authors as well as website owners, project managers and marketing personnel,1 and the Force Foundation charity2 has been working with librarians in developing countries to help make their libraries (and websites) more accessible (primarily for print-impaired people) and has run workshops on this topic in Latin and Central America and in Vietnam (Owen, Craven and Maskort, 2007).

Design for All

The design of accessible websites is often referred to as ‘Design for All’.

Summary

Introduction

The web, possibly more than any development since the discovery of electricity, has the potential to provide and liberate, but there exists also a responsibility for authors and designers to ensure it does not prevent and restrict.

There are a vast variety of types of website with many purposes and myriad audiences. All of these factors play a part in the actions that must be taken to ensure the site is as accessible as is relevant or achievable. A site may be simple or complex, textual or graphical. It may be for marketing or sharing, for information provision or information gathering. It may be for the general public or a subset of them, it may be for a known group of people with known characteristics. These factors must be determined before any consideration of accessibility can be made.

The increasing pervasiveness of ICT into the realm of the library and information professional offers an opportunity for increased engagement with a wider variety of users. In some instances the characteristics of these users are known and can be directly catered for, but in most cases the user audience is not known. The range of potential characteristics and needs across this largely unknown audience is therefore as great as within the general populace, and online resources must be designed and created with this factor very much in mind. This chapter will highlight the effects that good and poor practice can have on the user's experience.

What is ‘Design for All’?

In brief, ‘Design for All’ is the creation of a resource that is accessible to, and usable by, every member of the community for whose use it is intended. However, this very concept is a contentious one. Some would argue that ‘Design for All’ (along with its equivalent in common usage in North America ‘Universal Design’) simply means the creation of a single resource that can be accessed and effectively used by every person on the planet. Some would argue that the creation of a range of different resources, all of which are suitable for some users, and which reach all users when taken as a whole, also fits within the definition of ‘Design for All’.

Summary

It's time to stop boring our users with conducted tours of our libraries, earnest library guides, and endless demonstrations of those arcane databases that we love so much. Something has happened. Our users have new mindsets and new expectations. Our information role has spread from buildings and collections to encompass the whole electronic world. Users are creating phenomenal amounts of content individually and collaboratively on the web. We have to recognize the importance of this new landscape in the content we teach. More fundamentally, we now have a new range of tools available to help us transform our teaching into something which is both more fun and more engaging for our users. This is the challenge of Web 2.0 to information literacy (IL). In this introductory chapter we shall investigate why we wrote a book on such a volatile subject, and consider:

Summary

Every few months on the information literacy discussion list ILI-L someone will raise the question ‘how can I convince students not to use Wikipedia?’ At Oregon State University, we do the opposite. We require every one of our first-year composition students to use Wikipedia as a background source for a researched argument essay. In the last two years, activities using the collaboratively authored encyclopedia have become a cornerstone of our information literacy curriculum.

The challenge

In 2001, the Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries partnered with writing faculty to deliver information literacy instruction in every section of WR 121, OSU's First Year Composition (FYC) course. As the only course all OSU undergraduates are required to take, a major goal of FYC is to introduce students to the processes and practice of academic writing. When the libraries came on board our challenge became: how do we help FYC students learn to research like scholars?

OSU instruction librarians use the metaphor of a scholarly conversation to describe the process of academic research. Davidson and Crateau introduced this metaphor in 1998, after developing the idea for four years in OSU's Honors Writing Course. The conversation metaphor emphasizes broad, open-minded exploration. Just as someone (with social skills) will spend some time listening before jumping into a conversation with new people, someone with information literacy skills will ‘eavesdrop’ on the scholarly conversation taking place in the literature before developing and announcing their own thesis.

The ‘eavesdropping’ part of scholarly research is difficult to teach. In the early stages of our collaboration, librarians and writing faculty alike reported that too many students were developing their arguments first and doing their research later. For these students, ‘research’ meant ‘find quotations that support my thesis’. They were not learning from the sources they found; they were not discovering new ideas or lines of enquiry. In short, they were not researching like scholars.

To be successful we needed to do more than show students new databases and skills; to research like scholars they needed a new way of thinking about the nature of knowledge itself. To see this, it is helpful to look at the work of Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini (2005). In How College Affects Students, they review the huge body of research examining the cognitive, social and other skills students develop as a result of higher education.

Summary

Introduction

This final chapter will take a critical look at some of the developments in web accessibility guidelines and assessment, and will provide some sug - gestions as to how these could be improved, in particular through a more holistic approach to web accessibility. It will then move on to consider accessibility issues surrounding the new emerging technologies and how these might relate to library and information services.

We have seen how the guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) have been widely accepted as an inter national standard for helping to ensure that web resources can be made widely accessible. But how successful has this approach proved in practice? And will the WAI guidelines continue to be relevant in a rapidly changing technical environment, in particular in a Web 2.0 environment with increasing use of technologies such as blogs and wikis, communication tools such as instant messaging and internet telephony applications such as Skype?

A critique of the WAI approach

WAI has been tremendously successful in raising awareness of the need for access to web resources for people with disabilities and in encouraging governments to enshrine such commitments in legislation, with WAI's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) having been widely adopted as best practice for use by web content providers (see Chapter 5, section on ‘The Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines’).

However, even among individuals and groups who may be committed to web accessibility principles, there are growing criticisms regarding the approaches taken by WAI. Researchers and accessibility practitioners in the UK (including the author of this chapter) have been exploring these limit - ations, which include inconsistencies and ambiguities in the guidelines, the failure of the guidelines to reflect technological developments, and the diverse ways in which the web is now being used.

As described in a paper by Kelly et al. (2005), the approach developed by WAI is a simple model based on three components (illustrated in Figure 10.1): guidelines for web content (WCAG), guidelines for authoring tools (ATAG) and guidelines for user agents such as web browsers (UAAG). The assumption is that if authors follow the web content authoring guidelines using authoring tools that are based on ATAG and users make use of browsers that are based on UAAG then the resources will be universally accessible.

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1 - Media libraries in the 21st century

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6 - Legal issues for news databases and archives

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7 - The regional news librarian: a survivor's guide

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8 - Swimming upstream in a media library

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Contents

2 - The virtual media library (I): managing intranets

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Index

Contributors

9 - Best practice examples of web accessibility

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1 - Introduction

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8 - Information literacy and RSS feeds at LSE

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12 - Joining the YouTube conversation to teach information literacy

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8 - Design for All in the library and information science curriculum

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Contents

Frontmatter

3 - Design for All – how web accessibility affects different people

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1 - Introduction: making the connections

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7 - Using Wikipedia to eavesdrop on the scholarly conversation

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10 - Web accessibility in the future

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