MTR in Need of Librarians

Who says that information managers are restricted to libraries? There are exciting careers to be found in the world of information. In this increasingly globalized world of knowledge exchange and retrieval, jobs such as this is becoming the norm. Take a look at Hong Kong's MTR need for an information professional.

MTR CORPORATION
Get Your Career On The Move
Are you looking for a career where you can make a difference? As a MTR Corporation team member, you can.
In MTR Corporation, we have expanded our business from beyond the construction and operations of a mass transit railway system. We have prided ourselves in growing the communities and enhancing the quality of life of Hong Kong people. Today, MTR Corporation is a diversified company with interests in transportation, property management, many other commercial activities, investment projects and consultancy services worldwide.
We would like to invite applications for the positions of:


(Ref: J09031)

Reporting to the Manager-Knowledge and Information, you will perform the role of a Technical Librarian by maintaining a library of essential records for the Projects Division. You will maintain key aspects of the Intranet Portal including smart interactive organisation charts, on-line reference libraries, etc. using the SharePoint 2007 platform. You will also be a centralised resource to respond to hotline requests and support staff in the use of knowledge management tools through the new Intranet Portal.
You should have a Higher Diploma in Management Studies or equivalent and 3 years' relevant working experience.
Applications
You are invited to apply online at http://www.mtr.com.hk/careers or send in your application stating the position you are applying for and relevant reference number either by email to recruit@mtr.com.hk or by mail to the following address on or before 27 February 2009:
Human Resource Management Department
MTR Corporation
G.P.O. Box 9916
Hong Kong

Tim Berners-Lee talks about the future of the Web

Although he has sometimes been mocked for his unusual communication style, Tim Berners-Lee is still one of the most fascinating personalities of the 21st (and 20th) century - and definitely someone whom you would sit down and listen to when he talks. Almost twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee helped create the World Wide Web. He continues to lead the World Wide Web Consortium, overseeing the Web's standards and development.

However, his vision never ended with the the current day form of the Web. Rather, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. A Semantic Web, in other words.

About Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He

Imagining Communities: The Emergence of Trans-Asian Consumer Communities

Human information behaviour and Human-Computer Interaction are areas of study, particularly in Library and Information Science. Drawing from supporting knowledge from disparate disciplines as computer graphics, operating systems, programming languages, communication theory, graphic and industrial design disciplines, linguistics, social sciences, and cognitive psychology, IB and HCI are powerful concepts which continue to shape the way LIS practioners .

However, the LIS cognitive schools of thought assume universal concepts, and are often devoid of ethnological methodology or cultural comparisons. Unfortunately, this resonates to the library and information professions as users are often painted with the same generalist brush. Multicultural librarianship is often limited to market segmentation and specialized reading lists. What about cultural user behaviours? Cultural information retrieval studies? LIS often does not cross into the realm of cultural studies, despite the fact that there is much to examine.

Larissa Hjorth's The Game of Being Mobile: One Media History of Gaming and Mobile Technologies in Asia-Pacific is an interesting microanalysis of social media behaviourial differences between Korea and Japan. It offers much food for thought for LIS professionals, particularly for those who overgeneralize their user groups and standardize one-size-fits-all attitudes in designing information systems. Hjorth highlights some interesting points:

(1) Asia-Pacific Region - Marked by diverse penetration rates of gaming, mobile and broadband technologies, which are subject to local cultural and socio-economic nuances. One of the dominant modes of socializing the consumption of new technologies is through the role of cute culture (also known as kawaii).

(2) Rise in mobile media - Marked by the rise in particular modes of gaming in these regions. South Korea and Japan represent two opposing directions for gaming - Korea emphasizes MMOGs played on stationary PCs in social spaces while Japan pioneers the mobile (privatized) convergent platforms and devices such as the handhelf PSP2 and Nintendo DS.

(3) Public and Private Spaces - Previous domestic technologies such as TV and radio reconfigures public and private spaces. 19th and 20th century technologies therefore have always been part of the way in which space is redefined.

(4) Imagined Communities - Through mobile media and media communities such as gaming, we are seeing emerging unofficial imaging communities that will impact on official imagined and transnational synergies.

(5) Remediating Technology - Customizing invites uers to conceive of technology as remediated. Through cute customization of mobile media and games in the region, new technologies are linked into earlier cultural histories and media archaeologies that are distinctive from European or American models.

(6) Cute Technology - Cute is fundamentally linked to the adaptation of new technologies, such as mobile media and SNS. This phenomenon distinctively differs from Western modes of user customization modes and demonstrates that technologies are much socio-cultural as they are industrial.

(7) SNS in Asia - Unlike Western or European social networking systems (SNS) that are consumed by children and teenagers, in Korea's Cyworld both young and old engage in the politics of cute representation online as a reflection of offline identity. Because of such localized features of not only the SNS, but its specific geographical and cultural audience, its success outside of Korea (and the Korean diaspora) is far from assured.

Facebook as the Accidental Billionaires

If you're looking for a good read or something for the Christmas gift shopping list, Accidental Billionaires is worth a consideration. A quick and delicious read, the book reveals lurid details of Facebook's rise from the ashes of Mark Zuckerberg's laptop to the top of the social media empire. The story of Facebook in essence reveals the very primordial needs of social media: to connect, both in a digital realm and in a physical sense. The cast of characters that led to the modern day story of Facebook is one of seamy deception, corporate sleaze, and cutting ambitions. Author Ben Mezrich puts it best when he points out that at the heart of Facebook's origin was a simple connection point for young adults:

Online, it would be the same thing; the thing that would drive this social network was the same thing that drove life at college -- sex. Even at
Harvard, the most exclusive school in the world, it was all really about
sex. Getting it, or not getting it. That's why people joined Final Clubs.
That's why they chose certain classes over other ones, sat in certain seats
at the dining hall. It was all about sex. And deep down, at its heart,
that's what [Facebook] would be about, in the beginning. An undercurrent of
sex.

If you don't have much time for reading, then perhaps waiting for the movie Hollywood version could be another option. It's coming out later this year.

What becomes of public reference libraries when research from home is so convenient, and so easy?

"I used to live in reference libraries," he said, but added that now he prefers staying at home and doing his research online. He said he'd recently asked a reference librarian what she'd been doing with herself lately. She'd said..."editing Wikipedia."

. . . said Douglas Coupland in a recent interview he had in Toronto after a reading when he took a potshot at libraries across the world with his apparently innocent quip about the demise of the gates of bricks and books. Much has been said in not only library literature, but in popular writing, too, about the value of public institutions such as libraries. The same goes for academic libraries, where Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning and programs at the University of California System, told a room full of university librarians that "the university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas."

It's unnerving to imagine the library of the future as differently as it is from the current day library. But perhaps this is innovation, a reinvention of the model of librarianship as technology transforms society and culture. Librarians need to continually inject fresh ideas to the profession; although, easier said than done with institutional bureaucracies and hierarchies which often overshadow creativity. Decentralization is necessary; and it's about time, too. In my opinion, librarians need to focus on their specialties, and here are some ideas:

1. Research - Librarians need to specialize, and focus on information retrieval. Reference should be conducted by front-line staff; librarians, on the other hand, should do in-depth research which requires more than a duration of a few minutes of a reference transaction. These types of ibrarians should be rebranded as "social science researchers" or "business researchers" to reflect the high quality of work that they do behind the scenes. With the internet and such easy access to information in this connected world, quality reference is the only way to save not only the value, but the public perception of a librarian's work.

2. Collection Management - The literature and lingo says it all: libraries are moving from the physical to the digital. Some public libraries have adapted and increasingly take a proactive bookstore model. Some have even branded this as Library 2.0. But that doesn't seem to be enough. Libraries must start thinking of breaking down a century-old mindset of a Taylor-ist model of operations and to one which requires creativity and economy. Can libraries ever be purely digital online libraries? Can they merge with bookstores? Churches? Malls? Can academic libraries, one of the most traditional institutions of most universities, be ever able to merge with classrooms and student service centres into something extremely unique? We're not talking about learning commons; we're going beyond just the library. To something unthought of yet.

3. Marketing - Fundraising, advertising, communications. Librarians have not been successful yet in the translation of important issues like open access and digitization to a public mass audience. Yet, why is it that corporations like Sony do such a remarkable job at Bravia HDTV and makes masses salivate? Brand management is a niche that libraries must develop even though it's the least of the priorities of librarians. This must change - marketing, social media advertising, event promotions - are the saviours of a languid institution. Libraries are also public spaces; yet, it never attains the same prestige as art galleries or museums. If we expect to survive and achieve relevance, we must adapt.

4. Classifications & Technologies -What is a librarian without knowledge and information management skills? Librarians need to be innovators with not only socia cataloguing, but ultimately the future of the web. Katherine Adams has argued that library and information science and computer science have lots in common in the next version of the web, namely the Semantic Web. These types of librarians, rather than work in inhouse libraries, need to join R&D laboratories, research institutions, and teach in higher education. They need to join the ranks of the intellectual elite.

Archives and Culture

Archival programs in North America are few and far between. Only a handful of programs available, the majority of archive programs are narrowly focused on records management techniques. Unfortunately, for social and cultural historians, this narrow approach has its limitations. Although as a profession, archivists have worked side-by-side with historians through the ages, archival sciences is still a young academic field. As Alex Ben's Excluding Archival Silences: Oral History and Historical Absence Excluding Archival Silences: Oral History and Historical Absence argues,

archives remain, largely, material repositories of cultural memory. It is an accepted historical problematic, however, that culture is often resistant to material preservation. There exists an undeniable and profound tension between scholarly efforts to reconstruct history and interpret cultural traditions and the fragmentary, and often limited, material record. That is to say, scholarship is shaped by a sinuous negotiation around the historical silences that encompass all of material culture. Historical silences, however, can at times be marginalized (or at best excluded) by a sensitive configuration of material evidence with oral history.

The new generation archivist should be motivated by the long term preservation of moving images and by the invention of new paradigms for access to celluloid, tape, bits and bytes. It should be rooted in historical, practical and theoretical study - and rather than limiting itself to one methodology, it needs to assign equal importance to heritage collections and emerging media types.

One example of innovative ways of recording the past is UBC's First Nations Studies Program's oral history archive projects. In particular, Interactive Video/Transcript Viewer (IVT) is a web-based tool that sychronizes a video with its transcript, so as users play the video, its transcript updates automatically. In addition to searching a video's transcript for key words and phrases, and then playing the video from that point, IVT includes a tool that allows users to create a playlist of clips from interviews for use in meetings. While it took historians thousands of hours of transcription work, IVT transcribes in real-time. These are the types of technologies archivists need to be aware of, in order for us to create active archives. And this is where information professionals need to be aware - to anticipate the needs of its users.

How Much Is Too Much?

Ruth Connell's Academic Libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and Student Outreach: A Survey of Student Opinion is a sober look into how not to use social media. From the results of her survey of college students at Valparaiso University, a one-size-fits-all model simply does not work when it comes to using social network sites for library outreach. Because of privacy features, librarians must intrude into the social private spaces of its users if it wants to have access to its outreach audience. But surprisingly, Connell's research reveals that students actually resent a library/librarian's intrusion into their private space. As the article argues, it is important not to annoy students but rather let them come to the library on their own terms.

This is a fascinating analysis, and one worthy of a closer look by all librarians who wish to use the trendiest technologies as outreach to their user populace. For a while, the Web 2.0 mantra encouraged most to try out new ideas, new concepts, cool technologies. But now that we've reached a plateau in the development of social media, concerns such as privacy, copyright, and best practices must be kept in mind by librarians information professionals who need a fine balance with the public and private space of their users.

Siva Vaidhyanathan and Critical Information Studies

Siva Vaidhyanathan, who is entertaining as he is informative, is a cultural historian and media scholar (a rare combination these days), and teaches Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia. His ideas and concepts are multidisciplinary -- Vaidhyanathan has even coined the field of studies, “Critical Information Studies” which synthesizes key aspects of both Cultural Studies and Political Economy by interrogating the “structures, functions, habits, norms, and practices” of particular aspects of information culture.

One of the preeminent historians of American copyright, Vaidhyanathan's arguments often examines how these issues go beyond simple arguments about digital “rights” to include consideration of the more subtle impacts of cost and access that have the potential for chilling effects on a “semiotic democracy” that is situated in “global flows of information.”

In many ways, Vaidhyanathan counters the utopian web which Henry Jenkins calls "participatory culture." Rather than accept utopian enthusiasms about "Web 2.0" uncritically, critical information studies exposes the potential vulnerabilities in democratic institutions posed by such issues as Digital Rights Management, tampering with electronic voting, and otherwise trusting private corporations with public information infrastructure. CIS looks at 'semiotic democracy' -- a big picture examination on just how digital and social media are affected by corporate producers.

CIS is an intellectual antidote to the the Web 2.0 social media phenomena, and offers the tools to analyze the Web more thoughtfully and carefully. But CIS is an exciting field, just as it is beginning to take shape and gain its own sense of identity. Afterward: Critical Information Studies - A Bibliographic Manifesto is required reading for those interested in CIS as it provides a detailed "taxonomy" of disparate disciplines which comprises the CIS. These disciplines include American Studies, Anthropology, Communication, Computer Science, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, Legal Studies, Library and Information Science, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Musicology, Political Science, and Sociology. Interestingly, since Critical Information Studies cuts across these and other more traditional academic domains, Vaidhyanathan describes this as being a "transfield."

The Problem of Information Overload 2.0

Renowned psychology Barry Schwartz famously coined the term "paradox of choice" which stems in the research in his book with the same title. In his findings, Schwartz integrates various psychological models for happiness showing how the problem of choice can be addressed by different strategies.

Web 2.0 has not made life any easier for us, even though the tools might seem as if they're saving us time and space. If anything, Web 2.0 has a byproduct: an overabundance of information - and with that - choice. As I've argued in an earlier post, I point out:

Information professionals face a plethora of choice each and everyday of our
working lives, from what brand of coffee to buy in the morning to the database
we want to conduct for a search. So many choices, so little time to choose.

Here are some of the social media services that I use: Twitter, CiteULike, and Del.icio.us all have their advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately, I've found that social media has been a mixed blessing. Not only has information overload produced sometimes confusion as to prioritizing my resources (Youtube first, or Facebook later?), so many tools results in a saturation of user ID's and passwords. Ultimately, we can only have so many sticky notes to remedy our overload of passwords, particularly as services ask for different combinations of numbers, letters and capsizes.

The Semantic Web, as mysterious as it may seem to most, might be one opportunity to solve this password/ID overload. Whereas Web 2.0 is about searching, Web 3.0 is about finding. Imagine a web in which logging in to any browser can bring up personal settings that have been uniquely tailored and customized according to your needs and preferences. In this utopian web, the social mayhem can at least be organized.

Social Media & Affordance

In Week 2 of social media bootcamp, aka. LIBR 559M, affordance is a key theme in examining the use of social media. Affordance is an interesting concept in social media and Web 2.0. According to Wikipedia's entry, affordance is a "quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action." Different technologies can be viewed under this light -- just how much affordance does each have, and how can we use these same principles in examining social media? With new tools emerging so rapidly, it's a challenge to keep up, let alone using them effectively in our every day work as information professionals.

Let's take a look at telephones: Telephones allow the placing and receiving of calls, which in isolation are not affordances, but which substantively enable the affordances of communication and information exchange. First coined by perceptual psychologist, J. J. Gibson who used it as a core component of his ecological theory of human perception, affordance is now used in a range of fields, including but not limited to cognitive psychology, industrial design, human-computer interaction (HCI) and interface design, and artificial intelligence. The Learning Affordances Wiki discusses six key points about affordances, and each has the potential in helping explore the affordances of any social media technology.

1. Positive and Negative - Affordances can be useful or a hindrance

2. Fit for Context - Affordances have to be fit for purpose - be aware that it may not work everywhere.

3. Changing Contexts - Because affordances do not transfer to each context, the learner must create and develop new affordances, to develop the ability to match a particular affordance to the context.

4. Ontologies - Affordance is relational, an adaptation – its part of a complex adaptive ecology.

5. Perception - Affordances are inseparable from perception. We perceive affordances rather than objects.

6. Ethics and Power - Because affordances also a way of taking up a position, they also endorse, challenge, undermine, confirm particular discourses - it means taking up a position within (or against) a social ecology.

7. Mastery - As a professional, there must be an ability to discriminate between contexts, which means being embedded in one's micro-culture and community as well as one's individual identity.

Social Media Course at SLAIS

I'm currently taking a course on social media at the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies (SLAIS). I must admit: I'm deeply impressed. Much to my surprise, LIBR 559M avoids the Web 2.0 hoopla that was so popular with literature and workshops; instead, it examines social media (i.e. blogs, bookmarking, mashups, wikis, social networking sites), its concomitant trends (i.e. web 2.0, library 2.0) and how web 2.0 principles can be applied to the delivery of information services in the digital age. Some goals that LIBR 559M aims for are:

• Demonstrate an understanding of using social media in information-based organizations
• Apply social media to manage emerging challenges in information provision
• Discuss social media as a set of tools to raise awareness and promote services
• Identify the pros/cons of using social software
• Reflect critically on use of social media; trends and tools
• Position tools in a larger (macro) global and sociocultural context for collaborative learning and education in the digital age

I'm quite excited about this course. Even though this is only the first incarnation, I have good feelings about the content and where it's going. With the recent lull in Web 2.0, we've come to the realization that new ideas, new concepts, new designs are needed to reassess the impact of social software and media. This course is a good start as it challenges the existing courses on how social media can and should be taught.

The Birth of the Digital Novel (Digi-novel)

Publishing is going to get a whole lot more interesting. Anthony Zuiker's new book, Level 26: Dark Origins is an interesting concept which combines three types of media: book, movie, and website. Zuiker, creator of the "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation", is releasing what is to become a new genre of literature, the "digi-novel" -- which amalgamates the three media -- and in doing so, challenging the boundaries of traditional book publishing. Anthony Zuiker believes the "digi-novel" will launch a "revolution in publishing for the YouTube generation."

Level 26: Dark Origins, to be published by Dutton Sept. 8, is the first in a series in which each book will be supplemented with 20 videos, or "cyber-bridges," featuring actors playing characters from the novel. The series, written with Duane Swierczynski, features a rogue investigator who hunts serial killers. In referring to to 25 levels used by law enforcement to classify serial killers, the digi-novel introduces readers — and viewers — to level 26.

This is an experiment. Perhaps too early to call as a 'revolution' for writing and publishing. But it certainly does cast libraries in a different light. It moves beyond the physical borders of shelf-space, and into the realms of the digital web, and beyond. How do we catalogue products and media that have no specific guidelines, not even in the AACR2 and RDA? As an experiment to better engage readers, this 384-page innovative digi-novel will be more than just a book on the shelf, as readers (viewers?) can watch the story on film and log in to unlock deeper levels of the experience. The experience has begun.

The Fall of Wikipedia

How Wikipedia has fallen. In response to growing instances of false information being deliberately inserted, particularly into entries connected to living people, the Wikimedia Foundation will soon create an editorial approval process that appears to fly in the face of its open-access policy.

It's been argued that prominent figures such as Ted Kennedy, Tony Blair, and David Beckham have over the years been targets for vandalism on Wikipedia, and the new rules reflect the fact that as Wikipedia grows in importance, so does the weight of the mistakes it carries.

In my opinion, this move is a shame. The very principles of Web 2.0 and social media are being shattered by this need for this editing process. The beauty and freshness of Wikipedia is the fact that content could be self-corrected over time and blips would be self-regulated by users, often specialists themselves. It's a strength that content is revised up-to-the-minute; and with errors will come revision. The equilibrium of correction will eventually override the temporary glitches that inevitably occurs with real-time mass-produced content. That's why Wikipedia has become the de-facto place for quick information fact-checking. Why do we need a board then? Wouldn't that defeat the original purpose of a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"? Is it merely a public relations farce? We'll see.

Archives and Culture

The information profession often lacks a cultural approach in its methodological inquiries. Victorial Lemieux is perhaps an exception. A new and rising star scholar, Lemieux has won several awards for her scholarly and professional work, including the 2001 W. Kaye Lamb Prize (awarded to the author of the article that most advances archival thinking and scholarship in Canada) for “Let the Ghosts Speak: An Empirical Exploration of the ‘Nature’ of the Record.”

Using empirical data from a case study of record-keeping practices in indigenous Jamaican commercial banks that collapsed to explore the “nature” of the record, Lemieux continues a thread of debate appearing in previous issues of Archivaria which questions the definition of a record, whether the meaning of a record is fixed at the point of creation or evolves over time, and who authors the record. In the end, Lemieux argues that there is no single valid conceptualization of the record; instead, there are many valid conceptualizations arising from particular social contexts, and, further, the meaning in records is engendered over time by all those involved in the processes of incription, transmission, and contextualization, including record-keepers.

Top Twenty Summer Must Reads

The summer time is for reading and reflection. If you have some time, please do some thinking about some of the reading that gives your mind more thoughts for discussion, more ideas for action. In my opinion, there's a few titles worth mentioning as must-reads for information professionals. They are non-fiction titles which reflect on different areas of interest, a wide range of ideas.

20. Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture - An outstanding look at the coffee culture in North America, and reveals the Starbucks' history of addiction and success

19. Status Anxiety - A rising star philosopher who can translate his ideas to a mass audience, de Botton reveals what makes us all anxious.

18. Groundswell - An essential title for all businesses who use social media.

17. Good to Great - I don't need to say too much about this book. It's already a classic now.

16. Stealing Myspace - Not enough is research into MySpace's history. This book does the job.

15. Planet Google - With so many books on Google, Stross' seems to be the best

15. Mc Job - Outstanding resource what management techniques work, and what don't

14. Grown Up Digital - Insightful look into how the digital generation live their lives according to the Web

13. Reinventing Knowledge - Fascinating historical examination of how libraries and knowledge have been reshaped over human existence

12. Six Degrees - Mathematician Watt's look at how closely interwoven are our lives and coincidences.

11. Linked - An examination at how links and connections actually play a vital role in human society, especially in this digital age

10. Long Tail - This book forces us to think about the way we supply & demand economics in the digital era

9. Wikinomics - Insightfully examines how wiki's and collective intelligence has reshaped how business is conducted

8. Everything Is Miscellaneous - An intelligent philosophical inquiry into how the digital age has refashioned the hierarchical taxonomic world

7. Tipping Point - Gladwell's look at how small things can produce large dividends

6. Paradox of Choice - Too much of anything is bad for you, and too much choice is no different.

5. The World Is Flat - A journalistic examination into how geography no longer matters in the digital era

4. Here Comes Everybody - Shirky looks at how social media has changed the way we live our lives

3. Paradox of Time - Looks at how time is a finite resource, and strategies on how to make the most use of our time.

2. Free - Chris Anderson's new book redesigns the way we think about open access & source and how business models must adapt to it

1. Remix - Perhaps the best book that Lawrence Lessig has produced to date, a funny, evocative, and charming examination into how 'free' remixing should be evaluated