The Googling Librarian

An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education popped up which once again highlighted the information (or lack of) needs of college students. It has been a recent phenomenon -- this argument and counter-arguments of the necessity of libraries and librarians in the face of Google-ization. For every viewpoint that the Internet has replaced the information services of libraries, there is the stance that users' are even more confused about information overload and the mess that is the Web.

I tend to agree with a what Dennis Dillon says in a new article, Google, Libraries, and Knowledge Management: From the Navajo to the National Security Agency. Libraries and the 'Net play are different entities: libraries play the library game, not the information game. Google is the same for everyone. It is not tailored for different user groups, and it does not change, as local users need shift. Google's very nature is different from that of libraries.

Here's the kicker folks: We could wake up tomorrow to the news that a banking conglomerate has purchased Google and intends to turn it into a private corporate information tool, and wants to convert the content to French. Although just a silly hypothetical situation, Dillon makes a good point that the nature of people and organizations such as Google are not playing the same games as libraries.

Perhaps this is what libraries with foresight such as McMaster University Libraries are doing. They're integrating new technologies to supplement and complement existing facilities. Before it's too late. I personally talk a great deal about emergent technologies, particularly Web 3.0 and the Semantic Web, but in the end, I believe that these are mere tools that facilitate for the growing organism of libraries. In the end, interior design is as every bit relevant to how users perceive the physical spaces of the library as Facebook's uses for increasing outreach to students. But put the two together: and we pack a powerful punch. Dillon leaves us with a freshly yet somewhat disconcerting commenting:

Libraries have become so enamoured of technology that we sometimes cannot see what is in front of our faces, which is that there are still people in our buildings and they are there for a reason.

The Future of Digital Librarians

My colleague and mentor The Google Scholar discussed a bit about the Semantic Web and Web 2.0. Is it relevant to the profession of librarianship? Absolutely. How do we achieve it? Edie Rasmussen and Youngok Choi released a study in 2006 that surveys the skills that practitioners lack in What is Needed to Educate Future Digital Librarians. In this study, the two authors found that while many librarians are young and fresh out of graduate LIS school, they often lack the skills that are necessary for them to thrive in the increasingly digital world of libraries. LIS curricula are often limited to introductory classification and rudimentary information technology courses. There appears to be a real disjunct between the actual job descriptions that are required for newer positions and the actual skills that librarians receive in LIS school. Rasmussen and Choi's study finds that respondents are often frustrated over the "training gaps" during their studies for the following:

(1) Overall understanding of the complex interplay of software

(2) Lack of vocabulary to communicate to technical staff

(3) Knowledge of Web-related languages and technologies

(4) Web design

(5) Digital imaging and formatting

(6) Digital technology

(7) Programming and scripting languages

(8) XML standards and technologies

(9) Basic systems administration

In my own experience as an information professional, I find that these skills are sorely lacking in my own education. I'm finding it increasingly my own initiative to get caught up in the literature and the technologies. Who really has time to learn OAI-PMH metadata standards, XML, EAD, and TEI? Many librarians keep abreast of their field -- but on top of their current duties. But the problem remains that LIS schools do not to train technicians even though that is what they're doing - their mandate is to nurture scholars. Which I can understand. Yet, we can't fit a square peg into a circle. There lies the conundrum: something's got to give. But what? That has remained the intense tension in the field of LIS since its inception. With the advent of the Web and newer technologies, this gap will only widen.

Web 3.0 as in Automation?

I often wonder what kind of automation will make it possible for the Semantic Web. I know there needs to be an automated web browser (or something similar), but what would it look like? The solution could look something like Automatic Character Switch (ACtS), which is a strategy and a philosophy rather than a standard, meaning community moderators can independently implement their own ACtS methods. Similar to AJAX, ACtS is invoked only when it is necessary; that is, only when a web space is connected to a community.

So what is ACtS? According to Yihong Ding, ACtS only allows different communities to recognize whatever they can identify from a web space. A web user can set up a local web spce that stores his web resources. When he subscribes to a new web community, he uploads his local web space to the site while the site customizes its resources based on the community specifications. ACts begins with a user's subscribing a web space to a community. The community server thus performs a community-sensitive resource identification procedure to categorize (information retrieval) and annotate (semantic annotation) public resources stored in the web space. Thus, the local web space creates a community-specific view over its resources, which composes a community-specific sub-space. But ACtS is only a theory. For it to be realized, there needs to be two premises:

(1) A uniform representation - Web spaces similar to what is on Web 1.0. This requires advancement on HTML encoding. In particular, this means independent HTML encoding of individual web resources.

(2) Character recognition and casting technology - A combination of information retrieval and semantic annotation methods.