Ariadne gallery

Book Review: Understanding Information and Computation

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 23:51:07 +0000

Martin White reviews a very individual perspective on the extent to which the growth and structure of the World Wide Web is governed by the fundamental laws of physics and mathematics.

I have been a member of the information profession for almost 60 years, but then I started at a very young age. Indeed I was a library assistant at the age of four. My grandfather was the volunteer librarian for the small library in Clanfield, Hampshire, which opened up for a couple of afternoons each week. My job was to stack the books up, and help him put them back on the shelves. I felt very important.

Book Review: Using Mobile Technology to Deliver Library Services

lisrw — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 12:05:05 +0000

Fiona MacLellan reviews a practical guide to mobile technology and its use in delivering library services.

My initial thought upon seeing Using Mobile Technology to Deliver Library Services was available for review was that it was a topic of which I have limited knowledge – but part of its appeal was that I could learn about a new subject. After I registered to review the book I then had second thoughts. I began to worry that the book would be too advanced for me.

Book Review: User Studies for Digital Library Development

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:10:17 +0000

Selenay Aytac reviews a collection of essays on user studies and digital library development that provides a concise overview of a variety of digital library projects and examines major research trends relating to digital libraries.

User Studies for Digital Library Development provides a concise overview of a variety of digital library projects and examines major research trends relating to digital libraries. While there are many books on user studies and digital library development, this work operates at the junction of these two domains and stands out for its insights, balance, and quality of its case-based investigations. The book brings together points of view from different professional communities, including practitioners as well as researchers.

Book Review: The Embedded Librarian

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:32:15 +0000

John Azzolini reviews a comprehensive overview of embedded librarianship, a new model of library service that promises to enhance the strategic value of contemporary knowledge work.

Librarianship as a profession is confronting a growing demand to prove its worth. Library patrons expect utility. The organisations that fund them pre-suppose a contribution to their bottom lines.

The calls for this proof come from librarians themselves as much as from their employers. And the tone of the questioning is persistent if not redundant. It can be distilled to a fundamental query: Can the library sustain its basic mission of effectively and efficiently fulfilling its users' information needs given the technological, social, and economic developments that are transforming how people interact with data, documents, and each other?

Librarianship: In Search of the Value Proposition

These transformations have been occurring for some time, in different areas of living and working. Though not flowing from a single source, for librarians the impacts from these changes have seemingly converged on their profession as if they were collusive forces.

A global financial crisis and its lingering downturns have resulted in deeper budget cuts for many departments in every type of institution, public and private. A rising trend toward direct information consumption has caused many everyday users as well as executives to believe that removing librarians from the knowledge cycle is the next logical step. Caught within the sights of cost-conscious decision makers, libraries and information centres have become vulnerable to downsizing.

Students enter universities - even secondary schools - wedded unconsciously to their handhelds, always connected, assuming unmitigated and near-immediate digital satisfaction for their knowledge wants. Most of them were born into this socio-technical life-world as if it were a natural order. They know and expect nothing else. In such an environment, librarians orchestrate access but need not be confronted. They maintain crucial databases and finding aids, but can do so unseen and disembodied. They can be relegated to infrastructural innards.

For-profit organisations, the home of law firm and business librarians, are looking upon the outsourcing of support staff with increasing favour. And while library positions have not yet been handed over wholesale to third-party providers, there is industry trepidation that it could move in that direction. The threat is vague but distinctly present.

Many have taken to the outlets of library opinion and prediction, warning of impending disintermediation and possible obsolescence if the field fails to embrace drastic changes in how it carries out its service mission. Blogs, journals, and conferences are animated with calls to re-conceptualise philosophies and re-direct core methods. Some commentators merely emit distress signals on behalf of the library community. They are invocations of crisis without even a stab at real solutions. Others, however, are serious attempts to map out alternative pathways to a more stable occupational future. These need to be reckoned with.

A common path taken by the more constructive endeavours is demonstrating how librarianship can re-establish its value in a rapidly changing environment. This value is understood to be the knowledge-creating and disseminating efficacies that libraries bring to their users more ably and with less cost than other institutions. Since libraries are housed and financially supported by parent organisations of some kind, the value is usually construed as a combination of business and mission-relevant attributes. The emphasis on mission may be more pronounced in academic and public libraries, while corporate and firm libraries stress the financial aspects, but it is ultimately about how management assesses the library's contributions to the organisation's long-term integrity. Granted, the value has a large practical component for a library's patrons; the direct benefits are the answers, leads, and guidance they obtain when visiting the reference desk or searching the collections. However, the final criterion for most libraries will be the value proposition attributed to them by upper-level decision makers. User satisfaction is a valuable standard, but in the end it is often translated into a determination of whether the library produces distinct results in light of the resources devoted to maintaining it.

A concrete attempt to re-assert the business and service value of librarians has been the adoption of the practice model known as embedded librarianship. Although it has been applied in libraries in one form or another for a few decades - without necessarily using the word ‘embedded’ - only in the past several years has it risen to widespread notability. Judging by the upsurge in professional discussions and published cases devoted to this approach, librarians of many types are expressing keen interest in the value-enhancing potential of embedding themselves. Its contemporary significance is fully examined by David Shumaker in The Embedded Librarian: Innovative Strategies for Taking Knowledge Where It's Needed. The author, an associate professor at The Catholic University of America's School of Library and Information Science in Washington, D.C., is a well-known chronicler of embedded practices. This book is the field's first attempt at a comprehensive review of embedded librarianship's shared features, variable manifestations, and elements for success among major types of libraries.

Book Review: Information 2.0

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:49:00 +0000

Milena Dobreva reviews the newly published book of Martin de Saulles which looks at the new models of information production, distribution and consumption.

Writing about information and the changes in the models of its production, distribution and consumption is no simple task. Besides the long-standing debate on what information and knowledge really mean, the world of current technologies is changing at a pace which inevitably influences all spheres of human activity. But the first of those spheres to tackle is perhaps that of information – how we create, disseminate, and use it.

Book Review: The E-copyright Handbook

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 23:30:54 +0000

Charles Oppenheim takes a look at the latest of Paul Pedley’s copyright guidance books, and, in some respects, finds it wanting.

Paul Pedley is a name that needs no introduction to aficionados of copyright textbooks, being the author of several such books published by Facet Publishing in the past (and reviewed by Ariadne [1][2][3][4][5]). His latest effort, The E-copyright Handbook, attempts to cover the fast-moving and complex world of electronic copyright, using an interesting approach. Rather than the traditional way of such books, describing the media and describing the rights granted to copyright owners, the way the law applies to each media type, exceptions to copyright and so on, his approach is a mixture but with some emphasis on activities, as a glance at the chapter titles shows: Introduction, Content Types, Activities, Copyright Exceptions, Licences, the Digital Economy Act, Enforcement and The Hargreaves Review.

It is a complex approach, which requires careful cross-referencing and also checking that material is neither duplicated, nor that is anything is overlooked. It is not clear to me whether the book is meant for reading through, or whether it should be just dipped into when a particular issue causes someone to check the law; but I found the approach confusing.

The book also suffers from being in a fast-moving area, where the law, and technology, change fast and although it is clear that Facet got the book published in record time, as there are numerous references to 2012 developments in the text, the work is already out of date in several places, and will no doubt get more out of date as the months go on. Another problem is that the book cannot make up its mind whether it is written for UK readers, or readers in the EU, or in the USA. All too often, different countries’ court cases are mentioned together; one is (say) a UK case and another is a US case. Without the understanding that US law and UK law in this field are very different, people will come to incorrect conclusions about the significance of the cases to them in their day to day work. Moreover, all too often the cases are described without any court decisions relating to them being provided; so one is left with the worry ‘why did the author mention this case at all?’

Book Review: Getting Started with Cloud Computing

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 22:42:54 +0000

Martin White reviews a collection of essays on cloud computing that attempts to clarify the technology and its applications for librarians and information professionals.

I will admit to having read very little in the way of fiction writing over the last half-century though perhaps as a chemist by training I do enjoy science fiction from authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Fred Hoyle. All were distinguished scientists, none more so than Fred Hoyle, who was Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.

Book Review: Mob Rule Learning

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 12:15:59 +0000

Fiona MacLellan reviews a book which discusses the current unconference phenomenon and highlights the learning opportunities that these environments offer.

The unconference phenomenon is something that I have heard lots about and have previously tried to read information about; however what this basic research has never been able to do is convince me of the necessity for the unconference or camp environment. Michelle Boule in this concise and easy-to-read book has managed to go at least part way to achieving this. Through use of case study, interview and example, the book provides an overview of the history of the unconference alongside the benefits it may represent to individuals and organisations. Boule illustrates the bene

Book Review: Managing Research Data

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 13:51:34 +0000

Sally Rumsey reviews a book which describes and explains the topics of interest central to practitioners involved with research data management.

Higher Education institutions (HEIs) in the UK are planning and implementing infrastructure and services to manage research data more urgently than they did for research publications. One policy framework sent to UK vice-chancellors from a major UK funding body (EPSRC), which set out clear expectations of responsibilities for data management at institutions within a given timetable, appears to have been the spark that prompted research data management (RDM) to be taken up by the upper echelons of management, and concrete activities set in place to start addressing the problem.

Book Review: Implementing Technology in Libraries

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 14:49:35 +0000

Elizabeth McHugh reviews a first published work that she feels is a straightforward, jargon-free guide on how to implement technology solutions in libraries.

At some point in our careers there may, indeed in these fast moving technological times, will be a period or periods when we will be required to be part of, lead or manage a project implementing technology solutions in libraries. At 173 pages long, with 13 chapters and 5 appendices, the author seeks to provide the reader with a clear, practitioner-written, jargon-free guide to doing so.

Book Review: Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 17:07:52 +0000

Wajeehah Aayeshah reviews a comprehensive book on educational games that highlights the attributes of effective games usage but which also identifies the potential problems when using them in a pedagogical context.

Using Games to Enhance Learning and Teaching: A Beginner’s Guide is exactly what the title maintains: a beginner’s guide. The editors and primary authors, Nicola Whitton and Alex Moseley, have provided an extensive overview of using games as a pedagogical resource. While this title highlights the benefits of effective games usage, it nonetheless also identifies the potential problems when employing games in a pedagogical context.

Book Review: I, Digital – A History Devoid of the Personal?

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:17:27 +0000

Chris Rusbridge reviews an edited volume that aims to fill a gap in ‘literature designed specifically to guide archivists’ thinking about personal digital materials’.

We are all too familiar with the dire predictions of coming Digital Dark Ages, when All Shall be Lost because of the fragility of our digital files and the transience of the formats. We forget, of course, that loss was always the norm. The wonderful documents in papyrus, parchment and paper that we so admire and wonder at, are the few lucky survivors of their times. Sometimes they have been carefully nurtured, sometimes they have been accidentally preserved. But almost all were lost!

Book Review: Information Need - A Theory Connecting Information Search to Knowledge Formation

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:10:55 +0000

Brian Whalley reviews a book about a new theory of ‘information need’ that builds upon the ideas of Allen and Taylor from the 1960s to provide a basis for information searching.

The front cover tells you succinctly what this book is about; 'A theory Connecting - Information Search – to – Knowledge Formation.' Equally bluntly, I shall set out my credentials for this review. I am not a library/informational professional but I have an interest in delivering digital and information skills to students. I have read and reviewed this book to further my own knowledge of the subject, as well as to see what (new?) ways there are for students to use search tools and methods as well as enhance both their digital and information literacies.

Book Review: Being an Information Innovator

lisrw — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:22:06 +0000

John Paschoud reviews a book which formalises the processes of being what many of us would like to be within our information-based organisations - innovators and entrepreneurs of the Information Age.

For Learners... and Practitioners?

Superficially at least, this book seems to be very clearly designed for students on a structured course at first degree or masters level for would-be information management professionals. In terms of structure I’m sure it’s ideally suited to that audience, with each of five chapters including learning objectives, review questions to test understanding, and group discussion topics.

Book Review: The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping

lisrw — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:50:08 +0000

John Azzolini reviews an anthology of perceptive essays on the challenges presented to archival thought and practice by Web 2.0, postmodern perspectives, and cross-disciplinary interchanges.

Librarians, archivists, and records managers do not share identical challenges or controversies in their practical endeavours or theoretical queries. However, a common issue for all the information professions and a dominating topic of discussion in their literature is the fundamental change in the structure and distribution of knowledge caused by mass digitisation. The proliferation of daily digital content, in quantity, reach, and manifestation, is confronting them all with a disquieting role ambiguity. The expanding tools and expectations of Web 2.0 have made this self-questioning a recurrent one, but they have also stimulated invigorating debate on the purpose and direction of these fields. The perception is one of extraordinary change initiated by emerging technologies, unprecedented knowledge production and dissemination, and a new centralised role for the information user. In these galvanising changes leading library and archives practitioners are sensing opportunities for confirming the professions’ relevance, in the estimation of other scholarly disciplines and of society at large, but, perhaps most of all, in their own eyes as well.

Book Review: From Lending to Learning

lisrw — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:25:28 +0000

Tim Davies reviews a spirited defence of public libraries, which tries to define their core purpose and which argues for a re-positioning of their place in society.

For those of us who work in public libraries these are, in the words of the old Chinese proverb, 'interesting times'. The service is under scrutiny at both local and national levels, with an intensity unknown in previous generations. Public libraries are in the news, with headline stories on the BBC's Today and Newsnight. They are the focus of demonstrations and read-ins, as councils struggle to balance severely reduced budgets.

Book Review: University Libraries and Digital Learning Environments

lisrw — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:38:31 +0000

Sylvie Lafortune reviews a collection of essays that examine the transformation of academic libraries as they become part of digital learning environments.

This book examines how academic libraries are realigning themselves with the university of the 21^st century, which is increasingly becoming a digital learning environment. The expectations of the Google generation, the interdependence of teaching and research, and the changing roles of library staff and technology all play a fundamental part in this environment–and to lead the discussions in this book, the editors have called on 18 experts and practitioners.

Book Review: Innovations in Information Retrieval

lisrw — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:11:39 +0000

Martin White reviews a collection of essays on a wide range of current topics and challenges in information retrieval.

Information Retrieval and Enterprise Search

For much of 2011 I worked on a project commissioned by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, on a techno-economic study of enterprise search in Europe. There is no dispute that the volume of information inside organisations is growing very rapidly, though much of this growth is the result of never discarding any digital information. The scale of the problem is well documented by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) in its report on 'Big Data' [1].

Book Review: Making Software - What Really Works, and Why We Believe It

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

While acknowledging the genuine usefulness of much of its content, Emma Tonkin provides helpful pointers towards a second edition.

Published by O'Reilly, as part of the Theory In Practice series, this book is essentially academic in focus. It takes the form of thirty chapters. The first eight of these aim to provide an introduction to the area of software engineering, or more specifically, the collection and use of supporting evidence to support software engineering practices. These initial chapters are satisfyingly broad in scope, covering topics from human factors and personality to complexity metrics and the process of authoring a systematic review.

Book Review: Envisioning Future Academic Library Services

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

John Azzolini reviews a timely collection of essays that highlights the values of institutional leadership and resourcefulness in academic librarianship's engagements with Web 2.0.

Since networked information technology has initiated a breathtaking transformation of knowledge practices, librarians have had a generous supply of thought leaders whose lifetime experience has permitted them to issue credible translations of the 'writing on the wall'. Recently, however, there seems to be many more analysts (and soothsayers) and much more anxious observation and published interpretation of such writing. And the message comes in a red ink, in bold, and with distinct portent, when not downright ominous.

Book Review: Preparing Collections for Digitization

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Michael Day reviews a recently published book on the selection and preparation of archive and library collections for digitisation.

Over the past 20 years a great deal of information and guidance has been published to support cultural heritage organisations interested in undertaking digitisation projects. It is well over a decade now since the seminal Joint National Preservation Office and Research Libraries Group Preservation Conference on Guidelines for digital imaging [1] and standard introductory texts on digitisation like Anne Kenney and Oya Rieger's Moving theory into practice [2] and Stuart Lee's Digital imaging: a practical handbook [3] are of a similar age - although still extremely useful. More up-to-date guidance is also available from services like JISC Digital Media [4] and the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative [5].

Into this mix comes this new book on the preparation of collections for digitisation by Anna Bülow and Jess Ahmon, respectively Head of Preservation and Preservation Officer at The National Archives in Kew, London. The book claims to fill a gap in the existing literature, covering the practical aspects of safeguarding collections during image capture. It is perhaps worth noting upfront that the main focus of the book is on textual resources and documentary records, meaning that it would seem to be most useful for those working in the libraries and archives sectors.

The first chapter provides some essential context, linking digitisation initiatives to the ongoing collection management practices of archives and libraries. It makes the general point that collection management has three main aspects: the development, use and preservation of collections.

Collection management involves making well informed decisions in order to prioritise actions and optimise the allocation of resources to maintain as much accessible value as possible. (p. 5)

Bülow and Ahmon argue that digital technologies have created new challenges for collection management, e.g. being partly responsible for a shift in attention from the development and preservation role to the development and use role. In practice, however, the link between the roles can be more nuanced. For example, in some cases digitisation may benefit conservation aims by helping to reduce the physical handling of fragile materials. In general, however, the authors feel that while the long-term sustainability challenges of digital content remain unresolved, "digitization of any book or document cannot be seen as a preservation measure for the original itself." (p. 8). The chapter concludes with a brief outline of the four phases of digitisation, each of which is made up of multiple steps. Of these, this book focuses primarily on the first two stages, covering all of the tasks that need to be done prior to imaging (e.g. selection, rights clearance, document preparation) as well as those associated with the digitisation process itself (imaging, quality assurance, transcription, metadata creation). The remaining two stages, chiefly facilitating use and sustainability, are not dealt with in any detail by this book.